Introduction to IVP Congregational Development Campaigns
During the past few decades congregational life in InterValley Project (IVP) communities has been changing. The communities themselves are experiencing a greater influx of new immigrants, loss of social and political capital, and an increase in religious diversity. Like other institutions in urban areas, many inner-city and near-suburb congregations, which have been centers of spiritual, social, and civic life, now find themselves working hard to connect in meaningful and powerful ways with community members.
Congregations, too, are in an ever-changing environment. The remnant of church leadership is aging, and the demanding pace of life and economic pressures force many young families to work multiple jobs. In Catholic churches, in particular, priests are called to serve multiple parishes. This leaves them with little time to offer the church and its surrounding community.
As this change occurs within the life of the church and beyond, many congregations are seeking ways to renew themselves and to respond to the communities in which they are situated. And, as congregations are called to renewal, so too are the broad-based social justice organizations to which they belong. The member organizations of the InterValley Project are also challenged to respond in new and different ways to recreate powerful communities for action.
This coming year, drawing on the resources and experience of Andrea Sheppard, IVP Congregational Development Campaign Training Director, IVP member organizations will enter IVP's third year-long campaign of congregational development work. IVP organizers will work with clergy and lay leaders of their member churches, temples and mosques to strengthen these congregations by building more effective relationships and leadership for action in their communities. Congregational development work is designed to make good congregations, great congregations.
IVP's Congregational Development Program is based on the pioneering work of Julia Greene, who developed this approach to strengthening congregations when she worked with Father Dan Finn at St. Mark Parish in Dorchester, Massachusetts. She introduced this approach to Andrea Sheppard, her successor at St. Mark's and to IVP, when she served as Merrimack Valley Project Lead Organizer.
IVP organizations include the Granite State Organizing Project (GSOP), the Kennebec Valley Organization Sponsoring Committee (KVOSC), the Merrimack Valley Project (MVP), the Naugatuck Valley Project (NVP), the Pioneer Valley Project (PVP) and the Rhode Island Organizing Project (RIOP).
The Congregational Development Campaign
The core of the congregational development work is a relationship-building campaign, also called a “one-to-one campaign.” With training from staff organizers, clergy and lay leaders organize a campaign in their congregation designed to invite all congregants into an 8-week effort to build relationships across the congregation, develop new leadership in church and community life, and surface new energy and commitment to act on issues discovered through this relationship-building process.
The preparation for the campaign, the campaign itself, and the follow-up typically last approximately 6 months, from late fall to late spring. It occurs in three phases:
- Fall pre-campaign, a 6-week period in which a core team of identified leaders in a congregation (along with the Pastor, Minister, Rabbi or Imam) are trained, together with their counterparts from other congregations in their IVP member group, to conduct their own one-on-campaign in their own congregation. The training takes place in weekly workshops in which leaders are taught how to organize and recruit for the involvement of the entire congregation, beginning with a campaign kick-off event for their congregation.
- Winter campaign, an 8-week period of weekly campaign meetings involving large numbers of congregants. These one-hour meetings typically take place after the largest service of the week. They include several one-to-one relational meetings within the meeting itself, a chance for people to commit to engaging in at least two one-to-one relational meetings during the coming week outside the meeting, as well as theological and scriptural reflection. This is the heart of the campaign. These meetings are led by members of the core team, and new participants are invited to help lead each succeeding weekly meeting.
- Spring post-campaign, a 6 to 8-week period in which congregational leaders prioritize issues for action and decide how to take effective action. A “post-campaign” of local actions is derived from the common values, interests, and issues discovered in the one-to-one campaign.
How Campaigns Can Strengthen Congregations
The enhanced strength and spirit which emerges from these campaigns centers on a core of congregants and clergy from each congregation (ranging from 20-100+, depending on the size of the congregation) committing to do one-to-one meetings with people from across the congregation-community. A one-to-one meeting is a 30 minute meeting in which two people share in a conversation with one another about who they are, where they are from, what brought them to this congregation and community, why they remain, and what they would like to act on for change in their congregation and community. It is an 8-week campaign developing the art of meaningful and powerful conversations that lead to action.
From this experience the congregation begins to understand itself in a way it never has before this intentional campaign time. It is transformed into a community with relational understanding and power to act. The “4:00 o’clock Mass people” talk with the “11:30 Mass people”. The “youth” talk with the “60+ Seniors Club”. The “Vietnamese” talk with the “Irish.” The “clergy” talk with the “laity”. Through these intentional conversations in which people share their life journeys with one another and what they care most about in their lives and how they want to strengthen their congregation and community, congregants connect with one another and make commitments to work together for their congregation and community. By the end of this campaign, there is power to act on their interests. With just 35 people doing 2 one-to-one meetings, each of the 8-weeks of the campaign, 560 new relationship emerge. Relational understanding and power is created which did not exist prior to this campaign.
As relational power emerges, leadership is also developed to put this power into effective action. With each week of the campaign, there is a one-hour campaign meeting after the largest service of the weekend. In these weekly campaign meetings, different teams of volunteer leaders are trained by the IVP organizer each week to create an agenda to welcome everyone into the meeting, reflect on scripture and theological themes of the campaign, celebrate and count the one-to-ones which are happening each week, conduct different trainings on how to do one-to-ones, and select who they will meet during the coming week in their one-to-one meetings. (Each participant places his or her name and contact information on a card in a basket, which is passed around for the one-to-one selection). At the end of the meeting, there is also a time for congregation-community announcements and announcements for the broad-based IVP organization.
Through these campaign meetings, IVP organizers, clergy, and current lay leadership are enabled to identify new leaders. New leaders are identified based on who volunteers to help lead a weekly meeting, who remains after the meeting to help evaluate and strategize on ways to improve the campaign, who is relational and does more than the required 2 one-to-ones each week, who brings others to the meetings, and who responds to participation and leadership in the broad-based organization during the campaign. A range of people, from those who are already in congregational leadership positions to those who no one knew before the campaign, accept the opportunity to become an emerging team of leaders committed to strengthening their congregation and community.
Scriptural and Theological Connections
Theological and scriptural reflections are a key component to linking faith and action in the congregational development, one-to-one campaigns. Each congregation selects its own theological and scriptural themes as it creates its eight-week congregation development campaign, guided by training from the IVP organizer. A Jewish congregation in Boston developed its eight-week one-to-one campaign along the themes of Passover and concluded the campaign at Passover with a community Seder. A Unitarian Universalist congregation in Quincy, Massachusetts combined its presidential legacy (the home church of the Quincy-Adams families) with the principles of Unitarian Universalism as a political and theological basis for its campaign.
Evaluation of the Congregational Development Campaign
While each participating congregation sets its own campaign goals with IVP organizers, there is
a standard set of goals by which to measure each campaign’s success:
- a specific number of core team leaders to recruit for and organize the kick-off of the campaign;
- a specific number of campaign participants from the congregation (representing the diversity of congregational life) to go through the entire eight-weeks;
- a specific number of relationships to be built across the congregation-community during the eight-weeks;
- a specific number of new leaders to emerge from the campaign for the congregation;
- a specific number of new leaders to emerge from the campaign for an IVP organization, the broad-based organization;
- action at the end of the campaign, based on what issues and interests have emerged and where the most
energy is for action in the congregation-community.
These goals help the organizers and members of the congregation-community to strategize and work toward the
achievement of the three components of congregational development campaigns: 1) building relationships,
2) developing leadership, and 3) taking effective action on congregation-community interests. The
achievement of these individual congregation goals, in turn, strengthens the relationships, leadership,
and effective power for action in IVP groups.
Key Lessons
The following is a summary of key lessons derived from congregational development organizing and key components for successful development campaigns.
- The Clergy-Leader’s Spirit-led Vision and Willingness to Re-Organize and Re-Member the Congregation. The Clergyperson must have a Spirit-led vision for the present-future of her/his congregation. The Clergyperson must be willing to give up control to gain real power (relational power which allows for the Spirit’s movement and guidance among God’s people). Congregational development work requires a visionary Clergyperson to step out of the “emergency room” trying to maintain what is left of a past nostalgia in a congregation, and to step into a “birthing room” of a renewed congregation.
- A Focus on Foundation-Building in the Whole Congregation Versus an Extraction of the “Best Leaders” for the Broad-Based Organization. Congregational development focuses on the health and vitality of the entire congregation, not just the development of a small core team of leaders dedicated solely to the work of the larger, broad-based organization. This model focuses on building a strong, local foundation in a congregation and connecting those from the larger group of participants who have the interest in the work of the broad-based organization. The energy derived from the campaign is directed simultaneously toward local actions in the congregation and toward city- or region-wide actions in the broad-based organization, such as InterValley Project organizations.
- The Leadership Potential of God’s Entire Community, Not a Chosen Few. Congregational development campaigns honor the Scripture's mandate that the divine spark of God is in all people, each individual in a congregation and its surrounding community. Everyone has the potential for participation and eventual leadership, not just a select, closed circle of existing leaders who already “do everything” in the congregation. In the recruitment phase of the pre-campaign, everyone in the congregation is invited to participate in the 8-week campaign. Recruiting new people into the process also creates the energy for the campaign. New faces, new ideas, new resources, new relationships, and new leadership give the needed “blood transfusion”, an infusion of new blood in the life and leadership of the congregation.
- Willingness to Discover Leadership in Unexpected Places. During these campaigns leadership emerges from unexpected places, which is a strength of the work. Often the most energetic and committed leadership comes from those whom no one seemed to know before the campaign. By inviting all members of the congregation to participate, you are giving people an opportunity to “come and enter” and then take the next steps of active leadership in the congregation and the community. If the Clergyperson always looks for leadership in usual places, she/he will end up with congregational life in its usual mode. In the pre-campaign, the Clergyperson and lay leaders intentionally recruit from all areas of congregational life to be a part of the process.
- An Understanding of Diversity as an Asset and Not a Liability. Diversity must be experienced as an asset and not a liability during the campaign. If a group is a strongly bound, homogeneous network there is no room for new and different people. In a congregational development campaign, a group is intentionally constructed as a heterogeneous network, which adds space for innovation. People come to the work with different backgrounds, experiences, skills, and networks of relationships. This adds to a vibrant reconstruction of community and creative potential.
- Intentional Use of Time – Campaign Time. The use of time is critical in congregational development. Time is intentionally used as a campaign, breaking out of normal cycles of time. As a campaign, time is organized as an arrow, piercing the routine cycle of organizational life. The development work is organized as a campaign, galvanizing people and their resources of time, energy, and commitment for a specific time, purpose, and set of goals. There is a clear beginning and ending, with clear goals to focus people’s energy (e.g. number of campaign participants, number of 1:1s, number of new leaders to identify, and getting to local action). There is a 6-week pre-campaign of recruiting and preparing for the campaign. There is an 8-week campaign with weekly campaign meetings to bring all participants together in a Spirit-filled celebration, accountability of the work of the 1:1s, and training in relationship-building and leadership development. There is a final celebration and campaign evaluation, followed by a post-campaign to prioritize local action and further develop local leadership. Every aspect is intentional, with a deliberate focus of time and its use. Without the “campaign mode” the work would be lost in the routine cycle of ordinary time.
- Focus on Values and Story, as Well as Self-Interest. Each week in the 8-week campaign there is a training on relational meetings. People are trained to listen to and share their life stories. There is a focus on sharing values in the individual and collective story-telling during the campaign. Issues come and go and interests vary greatly across a congregation. But common values bring the community together and hold them together as communities of faith. “What do you value in your life and in the life of the congregation and community and why? What are the “choice points” in your life journey in which you made a decision to go in a certain direction? (This illuminates your values.) What motivates and inspires us as members of a faith community? If a congregation can connect with and identify those common values, shared in a common narrative through the campaign, it will be a stronger community.
Conclusion
We hope this paper has been helpful in describing the IVP Congregational Development Campaigns and their benefits. Please contact Andrea Sheppard, IVP Congregational Development Training Director, Ken Galdston, IVP Lead Organizer directly, or speak with your lead organizer if you have questions or thoughts about these campaigns and how they might benefit your congregation. We look forward to the possibility of working with you during the coming year.
Andrea Sheppard, IVP Congregational Development Training Director
Andrea Sheppard serves as the IVP Congregational Development Training Director. Her work involves training IVP organizers and key leaders how to organize and lead congregational development campaigns in member congregations. She works with IVP in helping leaders and staff carry out IVP's Congregational Development Program.
Her work with IVP builds on her work at St. Mark Roman Catholic Parish in Dorchester, Massachusetts and a half a dozen other congregations during the past 6 years. She has worked with clergy and lay leaders to build strong congregations and has helped organize parish campaigns around economic redevelopment of the business district near St. Mark's, a voter registration, education and turn-out campaign, and a citizenship and ESOL campaign with scores of new immigrants at St. Mark's, as well as a neighborhood watch campaign.
Andrea, who grew up in Conyers, Georgia, is a graduate of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina where she majored in Religion. She is also a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School with a Master's of Divinity degree. She has studied community organizing with Marshall Ganz at Harvard's Kennedy School, and served for three years as a teaching assistant for his course, "Organizing: People, Power and Change."