However, this irenic view of contemporary Canada is marred by a concerted campaign against religion by some that flies in the face of the espoused principles and values that a truly multicultural, pluralistic society holds.

The whole point [of pluralism] is to enable groups to “throw up a shield” against the pressure of consensus, and develop and promote alternatives that are rejected by the powerful, or by society as a whole…When people in liberal societies see themselves as out on the vanguard of history…they’re least likely to concede that they might, just might, be making a mistake, and most inclined to feel instead that the thing to do is shatter the shield wall around the remaining bastions of unenlightenment rather than permit them to persist. It’s when a consensus is at its most self-confident, in other words — and therefore most vulnerable to the errors of overconfidence — that the kind of pluralism that might serve as a corrective becomes hardest for that consensus’s exponents to accept.

Ross Douthat, New York Times opinion column “The Challenge of Pluralism”, March 19, 2014

Many champions of tolerance have themselves become intolerant of views contrary to their own. They have fallen victim to the old axiom that power corrupts.

This is ironic because those who in the past were unjustly marginalized  should know best the injustice associated with oppression. Yet they have gained power and now themselves are the oppressors of another minority.

The clash of values that has polarized our society is (in my opinion) really a dispute about whether or not anything should be normative in our society. The goal of those with power or influence seems to be to eliminate anything normative for the sake of maximizing personal autonomy. Since all religions have group norms, religion is the focus of their attention.

So, in theory, pluralism offers peace and opportunity for all, while in the contemporary Canadian experience it also offers conflict and challenge to religious people. Christians need to respond to both the challenge and the opportunity.

Challenges

There are two serious challenges Christians face: dilution and assimilation.

Dilution

Many times I’ve been told by someone who is not a Christian that we are both climbing mountains, and when we get to the top we’ll discover we were climbing the same mountain, just different sides.

That sounds really warm and fuzzy, but it isn’t true. Christianity makes truth claims that are irreconcilable with any other religion, and I’m sure other religions would say the same about themselves. Christianity claims that Jesus Christ is the way to God. If I agreed there are other ways to God, then Christ is but one option among many, and I’ve diluted my faith. More than that, religions have incompatible treatments of sin and redemption that can’t be reconciled. Because Christianity is unique, being agreeable by smudging, ignoring, downplaying, or minimizing our differences only diminishes our faith.

Assimilation

The second challenge is to surrender to social pressure and give up our differences completely. If I were to just agree that Jesus was only a great teacher, or that the Bible is a cultural relic, then I could assimilate and be just like everyone else. Problem solved! But at the cost of the distinctiveness and power of my faith.

In Canada, the pressure to assimilate comes not from other religions. We seem to happily coexist even when each believes theirs is the correct religion. The only pressure comes from the secular elites who have it in for religion.

Response to the Challenges

Safeguarding the Faith

We must resist dilution and assimilation. We need to hold on to our differences if we are to have anything unique to offer the world. Miraslav Volf makes the point that:

Christian communities will be able to survive and thrive in contemporary societies only if they attend to their “difference” from surrounding cultures and subcultures….Whoever wants Christian communities to exist must want their difference from surrounding culture, not their blending into it…Christian communities must “manage” their identity by actively engaging in “boundary maintenance.” Without boundaries, communities dissolve.

Volf, A Public Faith, p. 81

Boundaries are absolutely necessary when defining authentic Christianity. Note that the boundary is around our beliefs, not our churches. I’ll address boundaries relating to people in another post.

Paul praised the Corinthians for putting boundaries around their faith¹ and Jude told his audience that they had to contend for the faith against those trying to subvert it.² The ancient creeds were also boundaries to protect the faith.

The best thing that pastors can do to protect against dilution and assimilation is to teach their congregations what we believe and to point out where we diverge from our culture or society.

Use of Culture

Living in a culture that is foreign to us, we need to be wise about how much of it we participate in. Volf provides three options for Christians when assessing how much of the surrounding culture we can use:

1. Some elements of our culture can be adopted because there is no specific Christian replacement. His example is sharing meals with non-Christians.
2. Some elements can be acceptable to Christians when put to a different use. Designing our homes for hospitality is his example. This would be in distinction to homes that are designed as retreat centres for their owners. Another example is marriage, for which the dominant culture has a very different understanding of it than Christians do.
3. Some elements need to be rejected because there is no place for them in a Christian’s life.

We must be vigilant to be sure we do not compromise our faith. We can’t isolate ourselves from our society without losing the ability to be a witness, so we do need to participate in society, but do so without compromise.

Responding to Secular Coercion

Finally, since those with power and influence regularly resort to the law courts, legislation, and employers to coerce the behaviour and attitudes they want from others, Christians are becoming victims of oppression and even persecution. The response to this challenge has been covered in another post, Living in a Hostile Society.

Opportunities

There are several benefits to being just one of many in a pluralistic culture, and they provide the church with opportunities.

Missional Vitality

When Christians were the dominant group in society, there wasn’t a lot of motivation for individuals to engage in mission because it appeared the mission was largely accomplished. It’s interesting that the cure of souls, from which we get the word curate (a priest or pastor), can be traced to the fourth century when Christianity became Rome’s state religion. There was a shift then from mission aimed at outsiders towards taking care of parishioners’ souls. In modern times, missionary zeal was largely channeled toward other parts of the world, rather than to our own neighbourhoods.

But in fact, the Christian mission wasn’t nearly as fulfilled in Canada as we thought.

Pastors, remember that God gave you to the church to equip its members to do good works.³ It is your responsibility to see that every member of your flock is productively engaged in mission, remembering that the early church’s success was mostly due to the witness of individuals working on their own. People only have so much time available, so be sure that every volunteer hour you ask for within the church is essential to the church’s mission. Otherwise, keep your parishioners free to be Christ’s witnesses elsewhere.

Individually, we need to permeate society and be excellent in whatever God has given us: our work, our relationships, our community involvement, and so on. Every Christian should be the best thing that ever happened in whatever context they find themselves.

Corporately, we need the boldness, vision, and radical tolerance for risk that led John Wesley to :

• hire a surgeon and a pharmacist to provide medical care for the poor in London
• open the first free pharmacy in London
• teach people to read
• start a bank which lent money to the newly literate poor to help them start businesses

What might the church do today that is just as creative, leading edge, and impactful?

We Can Use Our Voice

In a pluralist society, Christians are as much entitled as anyone else to contribute their ideas, which should be attractive based on their non-religious merits. The theological basis or religious motivation doesn’t matter to non-Christians. All that matters is that non-Christians can see the idea’s benefits. We can share good ideas for the environment, social justice, the economy, commerce, and so on.

Those who oppose religion are already trying to shut us down and keep us out of public debate. But history and research show that a minority can cause the majority to change its mind, although their strategy must be different from the majority’s.

• The majority usually relies on coercion to force public compliance with their programs. What people privately believe doesn’t matter as long as there is public compliance.
• Minorities can’t coerce. All they can do is convert people through persuasion. They do this by presenting new information or new ideas which cause the majority to re-evaluate their position. The most dramatic example of this conversion happening in recent history is the gay rights movement. An example from fifty years ago would be the 40 year campaign against smoking in public, and from a century ago, the women’s suffragette movement in the UK.

We want to persuade people that for society to flourish there must be a concern for community welfare. We want people to support policies and behaviours that:

• build strong families
• help people to redeem themselves from the messes they get in
• promote justice and equity
• care for the marginalized and integrates them into society

Leverage Our Inclusivity

The church is the most multicultural society on the planet. It was an incredible experience for me when I worshipped in churches in Australia, Thailand, India, Kenya, Malawi, England, and Scotland while on my round the world sabbatical trip. I felt right at home in all of them! Whatever ethnic group I was with, I knew I shared a common faith with them. Whether I understood the language or not, the worship was meaningful and very moving. I know what it is like to be in a foreign country and find a welcoming place.

Being such a multicultural, global body as we are, and living in as cosmopolitan a country as we do, we have a special capability of welcoming immigrants to Canada. We should excel at helping newcomers acclimate to their new home. Non-ethnic churches should support ethnic churches as much as they can so that in turn they can welcome their own ethnicities to Canada.

Conclusion

We have to be very wise regarding the forces that oppose religious participation in society, but even with their opposition, there is much that the church can do to advance its mission.

Key Point: We don’t need to be at the centre of society in order to be Christ’s witness for a better way of living.

The post Pluralism’s Challenges and Opportunities appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The third threat to our corporate witness is self-centredness. This is closely related individualism, but whereas individualism is about maximizing one’s personal rights, self-centredness is about attitude, specifically that “It’s all about me!” No one would ever admit to holding this attitude of course, but when people think:

• “I am irreplaceable and this place would fall apart without me,” or
• “The credit for that should have come to me,” or
• “I need to be in control of this,”

they are making it perfectly clear that, yes, it is all about them.

The main problem with self-centredness, from an organizational perspective, is that self-centred employees feel ownership of some aspect of the ministry. The employee who refuses to share knowledge, refuses to cross-train someone in their job, or who improperly acts like they have a veto, becomes a stumbling block to organizational faithfulness to Christ. How can an organization be faithful to Christ when an employee claims a trump card of ownership over some part of the organization?

Negative Consequences

When an employee thinks it’s all about them, they have a pretty tight grip on their part of the ministry that can cause problems:

• They suffer anxiety as they live in fear of losing control, which means losing their security. They fight desperately to hold on to what they have and become very controlling and manipulative, both harmful to team dynamics and a poor witness to Christ.
• They become prideful as they think of the ministry and its accomplishments as theirs. They puff themselves up and take credit all to themselves that should properly go to the team and to God, and, yes, some even to them too.
• They bear too much of a burden for the ministry and can easily burn themselves out. When they think everything depends on them, they have no one else to turn to because, after all, its their job to have all the answers!
• They engage in political behaviour, office politics, that encourages gossip and innuendo. They plant seeds of doubt about other staff, in order to protect themselves. They jockey for position, creating a competitive spirit on the team. They suck the joy out of the workplace. I remember one office I worked in that was intimidated by the behaviour of one particularly strong and opinionated individual, and the first day after the person left was the first day I ever heard laughter in that office! Sometimes you don’t realize what a chilling effect one person can have until they are gone!
• Perhaps worst of all, they stifle everyone else and shut down creativity, because they forcefully champion their own ideas.  Not much group discernment happens on a team of self-centred people! 

The Truth

The truth that overcomes self-centredness is that we belong to Christ, and so do our ministries. They are not ours! That means we are stewards working for an owner.

Jesus Christ is the greatest owner possible and, with his unlimited resources, he takes responsibility for his possessions.

Being a steward, you do not bear final responsibility for the ministry you lead. It is not all up to you! This liberating thought frees you to offer Christ

• your very best work,
• your highest commitment,
• every ounce of your strength,

and then allows you to stop struggling and rest, knowing that even with all that you have to offer, Jesus still has even more to offer back to you to help the ministry out. You have the most stupendous partner in ministry you could ever hope for!

Back in the 90s I was a deacon at my church. About ten years before, a pastoral moral failure devastated the leadership. I was just a young man in the congregation when that happened, but now that I was on the board with some of the deacons from that time, I saw the deep suspicion of all things pastoral that they still had. Each year, the board elections left the board divided 5-4 one way or the other between those who were suspicious of pastors and those who weren’t. The church was stymied into an impasse at the board level. It was an awful time for me as I anguished over this state of affairs.

One night at a prayer service I felt particularly burdened by the problem,

and then suddenly…

“And then suddenly…” I love that phrase when it relates to God showing up in our lives!!!!

…I spoke out words that I believe Jesus gave me to speak to myself on his behalf:

“This is NOT your church, this is MY church. I will look after MY church.”

What a release that was. Of course! This is Christ’s church, not mine. He is responsible for it and, as his possession, he will take care of it. I shouldn’t usurp Christ’s responsibilities! Let him look after his possession. Trust him to look after his possession. I just had to do my part as a deacon.

That is the beauty of this truth that we belong to Christ. If you and I care for the treasures we display on our mantels, how much more Jesus cares for your ministry, which after all is not your ministry but his!

Benefits of Being a Steward

Being a steward and not an owner has several benefits:

• As a steward, I can go to the Owner with a problem and get some help. There are resources beyond me that can be brought to bear on the ministry.
• I can focus on mission accomplishment instead of satisfying my own needs.
• I can let go of my grip on the ministry because someone else is already holding on to it.
• I can relax a bit and enjoy my work a whole lot more!

When a whole team thinks like stewards, you have the making of a great work environment because everyone has the primary role of serving.

 Building a Sense of Stewardship

As a leader, you should do everything you can to promote the idea that all employees are stewards.

•  Try to eliminate ‘my’ from your vocabulary with respect to the ministry you lead. I have a terrible time with this, but it is not my ministry, my board, or my staff. When I say it, I don’t mean it from an ownership perspective, just that I’m referring to the particular ministry, board, and staff that I’m associated with. However, now that I’m thinking about it I’ll do my best to refer to CCCC, the CCCC board, and the CCCC staff.
• Even if you founded the ministry you work for, recognize that you are not its owner. And if, like me, you were hired to lead an existing ministry, it was not given to you. In both cases we only have custody of ‘our’ ministries for a period of time to steward on behalf of their real Owner, and then we give them over to someone else who will do the same. So think about creating a succession plan to replace yourself. This shouldn’t be threatening to you. After all, if you are not the senior leader, you can’t be promoted if you don’t have a plan to replace yourself. If you are the senior leader, you don’t normally choose your successor (the board will do that) but you should always have at least have one credible candidate for interim leader. Thinking about replacing yourself helps you lessen your sense of ownership of the ministry. My post, Emergency Succession Planning, may help you think this through.
• Demonstrate that you, as the senior leader, are under higher authority.
  • Ask the board to give you a formal annual performance review. (It is surprising how many senior leaders do not get a performance review.)
  • Ask them to challenge you and ask probing questions. Put yourself under their scrutiny.
• If your board is stacked with your hand-picked favourite people, stop doing that. You really need an independent board, so let the board recruit directors. They should consult with the senior leader to ensure they are not recruiting people who would be damaging to the ministry (on the premise that the senior leader knows church members, donors, people in the community, better than the directors do).
• Finally, get serious about group discernment. How do you know what the Owner wants you to do unless you consult with him. When team members take part in discerning God’s will together, there will be a very strong sense of stewardship.

Please feel free to contribute any ideas you have for building within a ministry team the sense of belonging to Christ.

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Learn How to Tell Stories

So how do you tell a story well? There are lots of books that promise to let you in on the secret. If you check Amazon for storytelling books, you’ll find just under 20,000 of them! I haven’t read them all; in fact I think I’ve just read one. The good news is that after reading just this one, I felt no need to read anything else. Often the first book whets your appetite and then you read others to go deeper, or to get a fuller understanding. The book I read left me feeling I knew enough and what more could be said?

Many of the storytelling books I considered reading are quite generic. They might tell you how to tell stories that you could use around a campfire, or with your kids or friends, but will these books help you at work? I picked one that was written specifically for organizational leaders, and the table of contents includes the kind of stories that I, as a leader, want to tell.

The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling

In The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative, Stephen Denning walks you through the different kinds of stories that organizational leaders use, tells you when you should use each type, and shows how you craft a story to suit its particular purpose. Here’s just a brief summary of the story types:

• Sparking action stories help bring about change;
• Communicating who you are stories build trust in a leader;
• Communicating who the organization is stories establish your brand, building trust in the organization;
• Transmitting values stories help ingrain the corporate values so that people understand “how things are done around here;”
• Fostering collaboration stories develop a shared perspective among group members;
• Taming the grapevine stories work with the flow of office gossip to present an accurate understanding of what the gossip is about;
• Sharing knowledge stories spread knowledge about what works and does not work among staff; and
• Leading people into the future stories prepare people for change.

As an example of when you might tell stories, when I came to CCCC I was a complete outsider. People naturally want to know who the new ‘boss’ is, and they want to know the person well enough that they can predict what the person wants from staff. This book wasn’t published then, but I know now there is a name for the type of stories I told. I shared a number of “Communicating who you are” stories about key points of transition in my life, about critical incidents that formed my approach to leadership and so on. These stories were one way of conveying to the team my values, my beliefs about leadership, the culture I’d like us to have, and how I make decisions. I’ve told lots of stories since then, particularly “transmitting your values stories” to staff (for emphasizing our team values), and “communicating who the organization is” stories to external audiences.

You’ll discover that stories are usually quite short and to the point. Some people may think of them more as anecdotes than stories. I really found it helpful that Denning gives examples of everything he talks about, so you can always get an idea of how to apply his ideas. And for every type of story, he provides a template so you quickly know how to create it.

I think Denning’s book is great, and if you want to learn how to tell stories, this is the book for you.

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The Real Risk of Losing Christian Identity

A number of years ago, Christian Horizons was fighting to retain its Christian identity by appealing a ruling of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal that forced them to get rid of it if they wanted to continue to serve the public. As I sat in a courtroom listening to the arguments, I was deeply impressed by the pervasiveness of Christian faith at every level of this organization. The Tribunal argued that Christian faith, while it might motivate Christian Horizons’ employees, was not needed to simply feed people and care for their personal needs. Christian Horizons countered that their Christian faith informed every decision they made and the manner in which they provided care. They were not doing good deeds that anyone might do; they were doing Christian deeds for which they needed to retain their Christian identity.

An external threat endangered the faith-based identity of Christian Horizons, but history shows the greater danger usually comes from within the ministry. If you think it couldn’t happen to you, think again.

Churches, denominations and evangelism ministries have a clearly religious mission and are less likely to lose their Christian identity, but even they face the possibility they could lose their particular heritage from dangers within. If you think that would never happen, read a phenomenal PhD dissertation that analyzed the transformation of the United Church of Canada from its evangelical roots into the most liberal church in the country. Kevin Flatt, the author, had full access to the official records (including personal papers) of the UCC archives and to the surviving leaders who led the UCC through the last stages of this transformation. Fascinating reading! And one of the key findings relates to the importance of words and their meanings. The changes at the United Church originated at the top and involved very carefully crafted messages with intended double-meanings. Don’t ever think that words have no power! They do.

Ministries that focus on extending God’s love to the world through compassion and development work that can also be done from a secular perspective face a much higher risk of losing their Christian identity, because superficially at least, it appears faith is nothing more than a motivator for the good works the ministry does. These ministries must be vigilant to ensure their Christian identity and mission are retained and continue to shape their programs and services. This is a lesson we have learned from the experiences of several Christian ministries that are no longer Christian.

Stories Protect Identity

Two college/seminary presidents recently recommended a book to me, Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions. It is an analysis of how many Christian higher education institutions lost their Christian identity, and how Calvin College, Wheaton College, University of Notre Dame, St. Olaf College, Valparaiso University and Baylor University kept it. There are a lot of factors related particularly to education, but the main factor that applies to us all is that the Christian colleges and universities that keep their Christian identity alive and vibrant do so by imprinting their stories on students and faculty, so that they know they are part of an ongoing narrative. They have a communal memory of their Christian vision and ethos (the ‘way of life’) that is kept alive by leaders who frequently tell detailed accounts of their story, and who interpret its meaning for the circumstances they face in the present day.

Many of the Christian universities and colleges that became secular did not intend to do so, it just happened gradually because their leaders did not recognize the long term consequences of the many decisions they made about education philosophy, the role of religion in education, and the content of their communal life. Surprisingly, leaders of Christian higher education institutions were not able to adequately articulate the theology of their identity and mission.

I have to say something here. My dissertation research included a survey of 100 agency leaders that is relevant to this finding. It showed that about one-half of the senior leaders of Christian non-church ministries have had no formal theological training. So if you haven’t had a course in theology, I suggest that you do some continuing education to strengthen your ability to provide theological leadership to your ministry.

Now back to the book’s research. The presidents lacked the necessary theological resources and therefore slowly but increasingly accommodated the surrounding culture and lost their distinctiveness. The faith of the founders became nothing more than their motivation for founding the school. Pietism was another important factor in the secularization of Christian schools because it led to the separation of personal faith and religious practices from the intellectual and professional work of the institution. Without well-developed theological resources to draw upon, the leaders accepted the secular idea that faith is personal and that it should not intrude into public life.

To keep the Christian identity strong, it must be made concrete in the vision, ethos and employee selection criteria.  All of the research in this book is encapsulated in the author’s statement that the Christian tradition must be the organizing principle for the identity and mission of the institution and that the Christian story as a “comprehensive, unsurpassable, and central account of reality must be held strongly and confidently enough to shape the life of the [institution] decisively in all its facets.”

Leader as Storyteller

The senior staff person is crucial in setting the overall direction of the organization and is therefore crucial to the protection of the ministry’s Christian identity and its transmission to a new generation. He or she must believe that the Christian account of life and reality is publicly relevant to all facets of the organization’s life. Leaders are responsible for articulating a compelling vision of their ministry’s identity and mission to the board, staff and other stakeholders. The leader is not just the senior pastor, superintendent or executive director, the leader is also the ministry’s Chief Keeper of the Story, who needs to be a storyteller par excellence.

Strategic statements such as vision and mission statements are like the theological formulations found in Romans and the so-called ‘teaching’ books of the Bible. They are explicit statements of doctrine. But all scripture is for edification and teaching, and that includes the narrative parts of scripture as well. The creation account, the history of Israel and the ministry of Jesus are recorded in scripture because they have just as much theology crafted into them as Paul wrote in Romans, but it is implicit rather than explicit in most cases. Narrative and declaration go together to teach us about God. And your ministry narrative and strategic statements go together to teach us about your ministry. The narrative puts life to the declarations.

So document the stories that illustrate your ministry’s mission, vision, culture and values. Through stories, show how the Christian faith has shaped every aspect of the ministry.

I see it as my responsibility to keep the stories of CCCC alive and meaningful to a new generation of ministry leaders and staff. My hope is that the Christian identity and ethos of CCCC will live on as others keep the stories in circulation and become part of the CCCC story themselves. I rarely (if ever) tell a story just for the sake of telling a story. There is always a point I want to get across. Sometimes I might explain the point explicitly, but that usually takes the fun out of it for the listener. Most often I tell the story and trust that the listener will figure out its point on their own.

So now you know how important your ministry’s stories are. How do you craft and tell your strategic stories? I’ll give you a resource for that in another post when I review a great book on creating stories for the work world.

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