A pastor recently emailed me:
I have let fellowshipping together with other pastors slip in
recent years--ever since my year-long illness/hospitalizations.
Would you email the next meeting time and place?
The health of the cluster with
pastors working together and serving one another is absolutely
vital in the new paradigm for CB Mission Northeast. I believe
the urgency of this and the need for change will be highlighted
as I point us in the direction I believe we must boldly go.
Our Mission!
In
obedience to God and His Word, the Conservative Baptist movement
has demonstrated an historic commitment to the Great Commission.
The Conservative Baptist Mission to the Northeast exists to
assist churches in fulfilling the Great Commission with a Great
Commandment passion as they bring the diverse peoples of our
region to new life and maturity in Jesus Christ. We seek to help
plant culturally-relevant churches, link churches together in
ministry, assist churches in crisis, network pastoral leadership
and resources for churches, and strengthen churches through
prayer, biblical proclamation and growth ministries
(Preamble to CBMNE Bylaws).
Our mission has been and will
continue to be to help churches accomplish their God-given
mission to fulfill the great commission through the planting and
growing of healthy biblical churches.
The question is: how can we
accomplish this in ways that are faithful to the scriptures and
fruitful in results?
Changing Paradigm!
Whenever we talk about change
we run many risks. One risk is that as we reflect on the need to
change some may wrongly infer that those championing the change
do not value the past with the efforts and faithful service of
others. Nothing could be further from the truth. God has used
the faithful service of our CB family down through the years to
build his church and bring many into the kingdom.
Furthermore, I believe the old
paradigm could continue to be effective if all the parts of the
paradigm could be successfully implemented. By the old paradigm
I mean the system of Associate Directors, Ministry Specialists,
Cluster leaders serving as board members, and a variety of
committees all to help the Executive Director implement the
Ministry P.L.A.N.S. and come to the aid of pastors and churches
in crisis. When CB New York and CB New England merged together
to form one region nine years ago, it was noted that a single
director could not possibly serve the needs of an association
now doubled in size and territory apart from the above system
being fully implemented. At our best, the executive director had
1 full-time executive assistant, 5 of the 7 Associate Directors
needed (all part-time), 1 part-time Director of Church Planting,
and 5 part-timers serving with finances and a variety of other
administrative tasks. All of these positions were under funded.
Today this staff of 13 is down to the executive director, 1
full-time administrative assistant, and 1 part-time associate
director. Clearly change is needed.
Another difficulty in the
change process is the pace at which change occurs. As a pastor I
often heard different people say, “we gotta
speed things up, it’s taking too long”, and others say, “we
need to slow down, we’re going too fast”. This often occurred
after the same meeting. What happens in a single church is not
too different when working with 250 churches. However, as a
leader of change in a single church I had weekly opportunity
though sermons, regular board meetings, and one-on-one
conversations to nurture the change process. As a leader of
change in our association of churches it is a different story.
We are attempting to increase avenues of communication through
new communication tools and visits to clusters. As I outline the
pace of change below it is keeping this in mind and hoping to
engage as many in the process as possible.
The New Paradigm
Last year at our Annual Meeting
we outlined the broad strokes of change that grew out of the
work of the Transition Committee:
1. The need to reaffirm the
associational nature of CBMNE.
2. The need to redistribute
ministry responsibilities to the local church.
3. The need to foster closer
fellowship between local CB churches.
4. The need to increase giving
to the organization & at the same time, make the organization
cost-effective.
5. The need to provide easy
access to leadership.
Over the course of this year
the new paradigm implementing some of these changes is beginning
to take shape. At first, the change appears to be a slight shift
in focus, but the implications and resulting structural changes
are huge--more on that below.
The subtle shift!
I described the old paradigm
above as a system of Associate Directors, Ministry Specialists,
Cluster leaders serving as board members, & a variety of
committees all to help the Executive Director implement the
Ministry P.L.A.N.S. & come to the aid of pastors & churches in
crisis. This viewed CBMNE as a pseudo-denomination with the
resources to help the churches throughout the northeast.
As noted above, our
difficulty implementing this model was the lack of
denominational dollars to fund it.
The new paradigm affirms our
DNA as an association of churches working together at a grass
roots level. The role of the association and its leadership is
to facilitate churches working together to accomplish our common
mission through the implementation of the Ministry P.L.A.N.S.
Churches will look to and resource one another primarily through
their clusters to plant and grow healthy, biblical churches.
This type of “hands-on,
churches helping churches” is part of our history and is
happening throughout our region today. Here are just a few
illustrations of it:
-
Neighboring churches lent
elders to a new church plant in Central Islip.
-
Long Island church
installed new furnace for flooded church in central NY.
-
Restoration team formed
from several churches to care for fallen pastor.
-
Cluster assists church with
false teaching of their pastor.
-
Men’s and women’s retreats
planned by clusters.
-
Pastors share ideas,
struggles, prayer requests and encouragement in an email
yahoo group to augment Western NY cluster fellowship.
-
The churches in a cluster
joined together for a praise service.
-
Pastors and churches join
together for ordinations and installations of pastors.
Our goal is to facilitate this
“hands-on, churches helping churches” so that it becomes the
norm throughout our region. In order for this to happen we must
strengthen our clusters and provide the structural changes that
will facilitate this.
The Changes
What are the kinds of changes
we’re talking about? The following are not
recommendations at this point, but illustrate the types of
changes that may need to happen:
Restructure and/ or
eliminate standing committees
since many of their functions will happen at the cluster level.
For example instead of the Procedures Committee reviewing
membership applications, the application would be reviewed by
the cluster where church would be a member.
Restructure the Executive
Board, currently
cluster leaders also serve as board members and committee
members. The wearing of multiple hats will prevent the cluster
leaders from focusing on the increased responsibilities placed
on the clusters.
Revising Associate Director
positions in light of the new paradigm.
Provide alternatives for
conducting association business
if no annual meeting is held. For example, if we wanted to have
several regional conferences throughout the northeast to enable
more church and lay involvement, there is no provision to adopt
a budget or elect officers. Possible solutions could be proxy
voting or ratification of a budget by vote of the clusters.
It is important to remember
that the above are not recommendations, but illustrations
of the types of changes that may be necessary.
A Proposed Plan for Change
We need to try a grand
experiment. Before we solidify changes into bylaws or a
structure that we have not proven to work, we need the freedom
and flexibility to try some changes, with the understanding that
some of them may prove to be just what is needed, and others may
have looked good on paper, but fail miserably in practice.
At next year’s annual meeting,
I propose that we consider resolutions to place certain sections
of our bylaws in abeyance for a specific period of time (perhaps
2-3 years) to allow the freedom to establish functional
structures that facilitate the new paradigm for our association.
At the end of that trial period, sections of the bylaws placed
in abeyance revert back to our existing bylaws unless properly
amended or dealt with in another way.
The following plan outlines the
process leading up to next year’s annual meeting:
-
The Procedures Committee
presents proposed resolutions to the Executive Board for
consideration at the January Executive Board meeting.
-
The Board Members discuss
the proposed resolutions they are considering in their
clusters in the spring.
-
The Executive Board votes
on the resolutions at their May board meeting.
-
Notice of the resolutions
is mailed to member churches 60 days before the Annual
Meeting.
-
The resolutions are voted
upon by messengers at the annual meeting possessing written
credentials from their churches. A three-fourths affirmative
vote of credentialed messengers present and voting is
required for the adoption of a resolution.
Please note that the above plan
does not rule out the possibility that amendments to the bylaws
could also be presented at next year’s annual meeting in keeping
with the procedures outlined in our bylaws for amendments. The
difference between a proposed amendment and the resolution for
placing a section of the bylaws in abeyance,
is that the amendment is a permanent change, while the
resolution for abeyance is temporary as outlined above. We will
seek to be very clear what kind of change is being proposed.
But Wait, there’s more!
At
the same time as these changes are being processed, life and
ministry continues on. God is doing wonderful things in many of
our CB clusters and churches. I see growing relationships and
caring for one another in many of our area fellowships. I hear
reports of people coming to Christ, baptisms and new members
being added to the church. A pastor recently told me they
finally broke through the 400 barrier. A pastor retires and the
search committee lists the problem the new guy will face is a
building program, because they are out of room! Another pastor
told me this week that after losing people through a “back door
revival” they’re growing again. Still others are growing through
painful struggles within their church.
Throughout this period of
change, there is much we can continue to do to strengthen our
relationships with one another. The stress of change often
causes relationships to suffer, let’s not let that happen. We
can do that by keeping the mission the reason for the change.
Christ’s clear mandate to the
church is her mission—to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Our
mission as an association is to help churches help one another
to be obedient to Christ’s mandate.
Our mission gives birth to a
compelling vision of a large group of growing, healthy, biblical
churches filled with children, youth, and adults, reaching their
communities with the good news that God loves them and offers
all people the free gift of eternal life through the Lord Jesus
Christ. The alternative is the eventual slow death of both
churches and our association.
In a day of widespread church
decline in America, it is absolutely essential that we be a
catalyst for congregational transformation; helping
dysfunctional, ingrown churches become healthy, growing,
biblical churches that are changing their communities and the
world with the gospel of Christ. By God’s grace and through His
power, we can do it…together!
Respectfully submitted,
Randy M. Keeley
Executive Director
October 3, 2006
