I often hear people from predominantly white churches say they wish their congregations were more diverse. And I wonder…

• Could they be serious about changes in congregational leadership?
• Are they open to change in worship? For example, are they willing to incorporate two or more languages in our liturgy? 
• Are they willing to seriously address issues of white privilege?
• Could they be committed to decentering whiteness as normative for their congregation?
• And forget about their church for a minute. Are they willing to take on issues of white privilege in their personal lives? 
• And more simply, do they seek diversity outside of church, and what is that experience teaching them?
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If we’re not willing to change anything and we’re not committed to examining and dismantling powers of white power and privilege, then could it be that we only want a diverse congregation so that we can fool ourselves into thinking we don’t have to do the work?

Pandemic Micro-Risk #1: The Chalk-It-Up
 
Pre-pandemic, I was putting together a resource for congregations called “The Micro-Risk Playbook.” It’s a collection of small innovations and that congregations could take on to nurture a culture of faithful risk-taking in their churches. I have a few of them posted on this website, but a quick read-through and you’ll see they’re not so useful during this pandemic.
 
So here’s Pandemic Micro-Risk #1: The Chalk-It-Up. 
This works for someone in your congregation who’s just spent some time in the hospital and is coming home soon (new baby, surgery, COVID-related...) Pick a day and invite people to FILL that person’s driveway and/or sidewalk with messages of love and support. Seriously, set a record in their neighborhood for applied chalk. Hearts, rainbows, mandalas, flowers, badgers… Have people bring their own chalk and remind them to respect social distancing if more than one group shows up at the same time. Will it take the place of a baby shower or a laying on of hands and prayer? Well, no. But will it say we see you, we love you, we’re with you? I think so. And what might it demonstrate to neighbors about the way your congregation shows up for each other?

So happy and humbled to have been a part of the ongoing conversation at The Ministry Collaborative. Talking here about how the pandemic has shaped and refocused church ministry in some significant ways.

The Micro-Play:
First of all, what’s a JAM? JAM stands for “Just Another Meeting.” You know – like the one you had last month, and the month before that. The meeting where the same people showed up with the same expectations, sat in the same places, and addressed the same issues. JAMs stifle creativity, they lull us to sleep, and worst of all, they reinforce the role of “leader” as “provider of institutional maintenance” when leaders could be so much more: visionaries, sparks, instigators, creators, connectors, sages…

The Art Swap is #5 in the Micro-Risk Playbook, a resource for churches striving to be less reasonable, less predictable, and more adept when it comes to faithful risk-taking.   

Your church has art.  Probably lots of it.  Lots of pictures of dead people.  Am I right?  Dead former pastors, dead church founders, dead theologians... On one hand, they're a tribute to the past.  On the other hand, they're kind of creepy.  Oh, and let me guess - they're mostly male.  

Here's the micro-risk.  Swap the art in the main hallway of the church building with the art hanging in Sunday School classrooms or in the children’s education area. This will look different for each community, of course. It may be especially useful for churches where foyers and main hallways primarily display relics of years gone by, or just pictures that hang there because that's just where they've always been. What happens when we replace them for a time with our children’s artwork? What conversations do we start when we replace our wall of retired pastors with the faces of our young people? (Are they also not ministers?) What do we affirm when the first piece of art one encounters in the building is a 2nd grader’s drawing of the Holy Spirit?

Lots of our congregations have rich, faithful histories. But asking ourselves what we want people to encounter during their first ten steps in the building is a rich, faithful question. This micro-play explores what happens when we exchange symbols of our past with symbols of our present and future. It’s a playful way of asking, “Who are we and how do we tell our story?”
 
The Micro-Difference:

• Playfully upends what may be an unanalyzed attachment to relics of the past
• Affirms that our children are not our future – they’re our present
• Invites congregation to think creatively about how we communicate our story

(This post was originally featured on Macedonian Ministry's "Leadership Conversations" blog, a great resource for leaders and congregations.)

Time and talent sheets are surveys that ostensibly present opportunities for service in the congregation and invite people to get more involved in church life. By and large they are a waste of time. Congregations are rarely poised to activate all responses in a timely and meaningful way, and even if they were, the message these surveys communicate is so often: “Institutional Maintenance is Hard and We Need Your Help! I Mean, Look At All The Busy Ways We Need Your Help!”
 
Disrupt the impulse to send out another of these surveys with this Micro-Risk, the “Anti-Time-and-Talent Sheet.” It asks a different set of questions – questions that are immediately relevant to participants and questions that can be wonderfully useful in helping a congregation take its own pulse and listen to its own story as it’s unfolding. “How have you experienced the presence of God in this community?” is a very different question than “What committee are you willing to join?” “What question is challenging you in your faith?” nurtures a church culture that is often squelched by questions like, “How can we use a couple extra hours of your time?”
 
For what are you most hopeful? What lament do you carry? Who or what are you praying for today? These are great questions for an Anti-Sheet.
 
And here’s the best part. The Anti-Sheet isn’t a “sheet” at all. Or it can be. But it can also be a giant canvas in the narthex with paint and brushes standing by. Or it can be a text you ask people to send during a quiet moment in worship. Or it can be a conversation starter on each table at your next potluck. Or it can be an actual sheet – twin, queen, or king – draped over a table with sharpie markers scattered around on it. Or it can be…
 
In the spirit of disruption, regardless of what shape it takes, go ahead and call this thing an “Anti-Time-and-Talent Sheet.” Why? Because you want to send a disruptive message right into the heart of an overscheduled, overprogrammed, and over-busy culture that says, We’re not here to give you one more thing to do. Really. We just value a deeper kind of sharing that doesn’t often happen in other places.
 
Trust that with one or two meaningful questions, thoughtfully asked and respectfully received, you can learn more about congregants than you can by seeing what jobs they’re willing to do.

​At Farm Church we have a prayer wall. It’s really just a 4x8 piece of chicken wire with a bamboo pole at each end. But every Sunday we unroll it and hang it up in our worship space. A basket of cloth ribbons and some markers sit on a table in front of it, and during worship there’s always an open invitation for folks to write down a prayer and tie it on. Names, places, hopes, concerns… Sometimes we take it to the Farmer’s Market too, where we invite people to add a prayer to the wall. Over time it’s become quite colorful.