2. More recent experiences
a. Experiences as Superintendent Minister and District Property Secretary in Sheffield
In 2002 I began to work in a new role, as Superintendent of a Methodist circuit in Sheffield. As part of my working into the role, I read a number of files left by predecessors that included, amongst many other things, various reports on churches and the circuit, by external consultants. All of them set SMART targets, but over a period of some twenty years, they were setting very similar targets. I began to wonder why it was that these very good reports, prepared by a variety of different consultants had still not resulted in significant change.
The circuit leadership team recognised that change needed to happen but could not find a way to energise the people in the churches of the circuit actually to move from a basic pattern that was about maintaining the status quo. It appeared unlikely that the approach of a SWOT analysis or setting SMART targets was likely to work and we therefore embarked on a different approach, an approach that was built around giving space for churches to tell their story – of where God had been at work and was at work, and to dream dreams for the future.
Yet the church nationally continued throughout the last decade of the twentieth century and into the twenty first century to produce models that were based on a linear, management model of change, such as Pilgrims Way’ [2]‘Know and grow’[3], ‘Building Confidence’[4] and Ian Johnson’s ‘Shaping the future’[5] All of these set out a very linear path to follow, although Johnson’s approach is more about process than pathway.
b. Doubts about the approaches that I had grown up with.
All of this experience, over some twenty years of circuit ministry, had led me to the point of recognising that approaches to change and development in the life of Church or Circuit did not seem likely to happen by using conventional business or strategic approaches to change. Indeed, with the exception of certain very specific projects within the life of a Church (such as a building project, employment of a new member of staff etc.) my conclusion was, and is, that such approaches do not and cannot work in churches for at least two reasons.
- They are founded on an organisational model that is essentially linear and hierarchical, whereas churches are better seen as voluntary associations of people.
- They are founded on an approach that is based on finding out ‘The facts’ and pursuing them to a logical conclusion; but people in churches don’t behave first and foremost in ways that are based on logic of that sort, but on emotion, feeling and spiritual or other experience.
My reading in Science and Religion, (authors such as Polkinghorne and Peacock[6] of earlier generations; and Poole and McGrath[7] more recently;) and in the popular philosophy of science, (Hawking and Gribbin etc.[8]) had also led to a deep questioning of linear approaches, at a time when there was increasing recognition in the sciences of an approach that was much less linear than the old Newtonian ways of thinking, with the emergence of chaos theories, the science of surprises.[9]
So it was, with all of these doubts and questions about conventional wisdom in terms of church development and change, that in 2008, I started to study at York St. John University for an MA in consultancy for mission and ministry, in the hope that it would better equip me for my new role as Development enabler for the Liverpool district.