WCPC Mission Study

Whitworth Community Presbyterian Church

Mission Study

2012

 

Prepared by Dr. Keith Tanis, Interim Pastor

 

The following mission study is a summary of what I have learned about Whitworth Community Presbyterian Church at this point in her history. This study is based on my observations and conversations over the past year as Interim Pastor, as well as the extensive data provided us through the “Church 360” mission survey. This survey was taken by a large cross-section of our congregation and represents viewpoints expressed by the Session, leaders and members of the congregation.

 

Whitworth Community Presbyterian Church (hereafter “WhitPres”) has served the city of Spokane WA for 90 years. The church is strategically located at the edge of the campus of Whitworth University a block west of Division Ave/US-395, the major N-S corridor of Spokane.

 

OUR STRENGTH AS A “PROGRAM” CHURCH

 

WhitPres has grown and developed from a single cell, “family church” where “everybody does everything” to a multi-cell congregation often identified as a “program church”  of 750 members. As a program churches, WhitPres depends on competent professional staff and lay leaders to maintain programs for all age groups of her membership. WhitPres hopes to attract new members by the vitality of these programs.

 

In the snapshot of our church taken by the “Church 360” mission survey, WhitPres is largely in a “developmental” stage. We spend most of our time and energy developing and maintaining effective programs, making regular evaluations and incremental changes based on those evaluations. We communicate to our members what programs may fit their needs in order to get them more involved in our ministry. We strive to keep our programs relevant to the changing needs of our members and attractive to visitors looking for a church home.

 

Our ministry programs are largely focused in four areas, the spiritual formation of children and adults, worship, pastoral care of our members, and a five-day-a-week daycare and preschool center. In addition, WhitPres supports a number of missions both globally and locally.

 

 

Spiritual Formation

 

ADULTS

The primary vision of our church is “Being and Making Disciples.” Discipleship is part of our DNA. We nurture discipleship in intentional groups where disciple making relationships and practices are created through spiritual formation.  Dr. Steve Watts leads these ministries with competence and with a deep passion for spiritual formation through the following efforts.

 

Growth Groups:  Of our approximately 35 small groups, nearly 20 are “Growth Groups”.  These are covenant-centered groups of about 8 to 15 people with a designated leader who seeks to engage the Bible, encourage community, and invite others. Growth Groups are a highlight of our church, but some struggle to invite new comers and multiply.

 

Adult Sunday Morning Education: Our adult Sunday classes are part of a three-focus strategy of teaching theology, scripture, and topical application. Our friendship with Whitworth University professors who share their teaching gifts with us creates a unique education environment for which we are grateful.

 

Men’s and Women’s Ministries: Several groups and special events make up a relational network in our Men’s and Women’s ministries where learning and one-on-one mentoring takes place. Each year several new believers are formed in these ministries. 

 

Primetimers: Though most ministries at Whitworth include seniors, we do have a special group for those who are in the 65+ age range. This group provides community to some who are isolated.  It also provides a ministry opportunity to those of all ages who may lead the programs, events, and trips.

 

Equipping: Lay Ministry is an important challenge for us. In the past we created an “equipping” model through the use of a gift and talent database. We find this system useful, but many in our congregation continue to be served rather than serve.  A new team has been created to address this, but we are challenged to release people into ministry.

 

Mentoring New Believers:  We believe the membership process can be an opportunity for spiritual formation.  A class and a group of mentors help people to create a customized plan to connect with the resources and relationships at Whitworth to grow in Christ. While many individuals who go through this process are transferring from another church, some are new believers or returning believers who are making life-changing commitments to Christ.

 

 

CHILDREN & YOUTH

We understand that the future of the church in every age depends on nurturing our children and young people to be disciples of Jesus Christ. That happens in a Sunday morning Sunday School, which provides the core curriculum of the church, and a Wednesday night program for children and youth. The Sunday morning program has about 40 elementary kids and 25 Jr/Sn high youth. The Wednesday night program  is attended by about 30 elementary kids and 40 Jr/Sn high youth. The extra youth on Wednesday night are from the community.

 

Since relationships are key to developing faith in children just as in adults, we are grateful for many dedicated volunteers who lead and teach our children and youth. Several adults lead “D-group” or discipleship small group leaders of youth.

 

The family ministries team is led by Rev. Mark McIlraith, Faith Alderete, and Jennie Atkins.

 

Worship

 

We have three worship services on Sunday morning. Two contemporary services are held in Quall Hall (8:30 and 9:45). We hold one traditional service in the sanctuary  (11:00). Our average attendance in all three services is 525.

 

Pastoral Care

 

Care for people in physical, emotional, social or financial distress is shared by our pastors, deacons and Stephen Ministers. As our congregation ages, we need to focus on the pastoral care of older adults so they remain a vital part of our congregation. That may require additional staffing in the future.

 

Daycare/Preschool

 

These ministries to families in our church and community serve 140 kids all week long! These ministries have moved from losing money to making money through strategic decisions, good stewardship and great leadership.

 

Missions

 

WhitPres participates financially and personally in many mission efforts in our community and around the world. These include:

 

LOCAL
Angel Tree Ministry

Boy Scouts/Venture Scouts

Camp Spalding

Christ Clinic

Christ Kitchen

Cup of Cool Water

Family Promise—housing the homeless

Latah New Church Development

Liberty Park Child Development Center

New Hope Resource Center

Presbyterian General Mission

Upwards Basketball

Westminster House/Church in the city core

Whitworth University International Students

Brazil: Gatrells (PCUSA)

 

INTERNATIONAL

Cairo Ministry: Ben & Emily Robinson (PCUSA)

Cameroon Mission: Jeff & Christi Boyd (PCUSA)

Daystar student, Nairobi, Kenya

EMI Cairo: Randy & Jessy Larsen

Forman Christian College, Pakistan

Ghana Mission: Partner International

Guatemala Partnership

Iraq Christian Churches/ O.F.

OC Spain church planting: Javi & Christie Malavi

One Great Hour of Sharing

Philippine School: Femme Munn

Wycliffe: Wayne & Elena Leman

Wycliffe: Paul & Janet McLaren

 

VALIDATED MISSIONS

Change4Children

Compassion International

PET Project (Personal Energy Transports)

 

SEMINARIANS

Konnie Clary—Princeton

Barry Ramsay—Princeton

                    SHORT TERM MISSIONS

                    Egypt: Gordon Jackson

                    Ghana: Caleb Nokes

                    Tanzania: John & Janet Yoder

CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE (Requiring both technical and adaptive change)

1.     Restructure leadership to improve communication and decision-making

 

While the congregation believes our church has a clear structure for decision-making, the session, staff and lay leaders realize that the structure of commissions and committees is often cumbersome and confusing. We have begun to streamline the session by down-sizing from 25 to 18 elders. We plan to engage a process of realigning commissions whose concerns often overlap (for example, Administration and Personnel). As an initial model, we should consider the simple structure recently adopted by the Presbytery of the Inland Northwest, which groups the core leadership functions of the church around three areas: managing (fiduciary), planning (strategic) and visioning (generative).

 

A related challenge is to more clearly define the role of staff, especially the role of the senior pastor/head of staff. We need to build a model of leadership where the authority and responsibility of the senior pastor, staff, session and commissions/committees are clearly defined. Our conversations should begin around the difference between leadership and governance and how those are understood in Presbyterian polity. The recent experience of our church suggests that a church of our size and complexity benefits from leaders who are able and willing to make decisions, to collegially seek and hear advice, and to be held accountable by the governing body.

 

As we restructure leadership for more effective ministry, we need to cultivate our relationships among session and staff members so that we reflect the fact that the business we are in is primarily a spiritual enterprise. We need to pray for each other and encourage each other to live a life of Christian discipleship.

2.     Rebuild our facilities to serve a growing ministry in a shrinking economy

WhitPres has been talking about facilities needs for many years. We continue to bump up against the limitations of our current facilities. We have built and remodeled several times over the years and eventually we will have to spend money to meet the needs of a growing congregation with changing needs in a shrinking economy. 

 

We are talking about several building options. One option is to add new main entrance with an office wing. Another option is to replace all of our facilities except the gym (the newest part of our campus). Two other options are “outside the box.” The first is to partner with our next-door neighbor, Whitworth University, to build an auditorium that will serve the needs of the church for a worship center and the needs of the university for a theater. The second option, not exclusive of the first, is to start satellite campuses in different parts of the city.

 

Many mainline churches rattle around in churches built for a church culture that no longer exists. These “out of the box” options provide us an opportunity to spend more of our money on ministry whose demands will continue to change and less on buildings that too often become monuments to the past.

 

3.     Reframe ministry for a visual & technological age

 

We live in a visual and technological age. But WhitPres still depends heavily on print media for our in-house communication. On the one hand many long-term members like printed bulletins and newsletters they can hold on to, take home and, in some cases, hang on the refrigerator. On the other hand more and more members, especially younger members prefer to get their info on-line and on their mobile devices.

 

With more dual income families, it’s harder than it used to be to schedule face-to-face meetings and harder still to get commitments for long-term study groups. While WhitPres is a “reading” congregation, we need to communicate to a community and culture that watches more than it reads. We might consider the benefits of using technology in some new ways.  For example, we might consider

 

·         Leveraging the classes and services we spend so much energy teaching and leading by making them accessible to people on line and on their phones through webinars and podcasts.

 

·         Replacing some of our hard-to-schedule face-to-face meetings with virtual meetings that eat up less time but still allow for group conversation and collaboration

 

·         Providing a worship option that allows people to interact with each other over the text, theme or message of the day with more attention to the visual and performing arts

As we pursue these goals, we must make sure we don’t leave people behind who do not use the latest technology or whose idea of social media is simple conversation!

 

4.     Develop reciprocal intergenerational relationships with youth and college students

WhitPres is blessed to have 2700 young people literally next door, most of whom come from a Presbyterian/Reformed background. We have made an initial effort to reach out to them by providing a contemporary Sunday morning worship service at 11:01. But we need to stretch beyond this simple technical adjustment to learn how we can truly engage college students with families, couples and individuals in WhitPres for our mutual learning and support. We have an opportunity to become mentors to the next generation of leaders across the vocational landscape both here and around the world. We have the opportunity to be shaped by a new generation that sees the church and our culture through different eyes than the builders and boomers that have built and sustained the church we know today. We need to see both the church and our culture through the eyes of our young neighbors so that we can begin a transition that allows our church to lean together into God’s future.

 

We sense that youth are disconnected from the larger body of the church and that we need to rethink and reframe youth ministry so that we see each other as life long members of the community of faith.

 

TRANSITION TO A MISSIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE CHURCH

WhitPres is beginning to recognize that attracting people and getting them more involved inside the church is not enough. Our culture is changing. More and more people don’t go to church and are really not interested in church regardless of our programs, worship style or preaching.

We are beginning to recognize that in order to reach people in our community who are not interested in going to church we need to change. The challenge is, that, even though we sense we need to change, we really don’t know how. There isn’t an “easy fix.” We will need to do more than make incremental or technical changes to what we’re doing inside the church. The changes we will need to make are “adaptive” changes. They are changes for which we will need to learn new realities, new practices and new values. We will have to go outside the church and connect with people in our neighborhoods. We will need to begin to ask new questions. Instead of asking “How do we attract people to what we are doing?” we will ask “What are the ways we need to change in order to engage the people in our community who no longer consider church a part of their life?”

In order to make adaptive changes we will learn to experiment, try things, and test relationships.  Some of our experiments will fail, but some will succeed.  We will gradually become a community continually experimenting, learning and changing in relationship with people in our neighborhoods rather than simply improving on what we’ve always done. We will lean into a new understanding of who we are as a church. We will become a “missional” church—a church that is shaped by the bigger picture of what God is doing in our community. Some of our members have already begun this transition in their involvement in our community. We must learn from them and with them.

As WhitPres leans towards our community through a process of experimenting, learning and discovery, we will begin to ask “What is God up to in our community?” We will learn what the Spirit is doing out ahead of us in the communities and neighborhoods where we live and work. We will learn how the Spirit is inviting us to join what God is already doing in these places.  These engagements will change us, our understanding of the Gospel, our structures and habits and the ways we live the Christian life together.

These changes will not come easily. But, as we make them, our focus will shift from what God is doing inside the church to what God is doing outside the church. That doesn’t mean we will neglect the needs of people inside the church. But it does mean that the church will cease to be primarily where we go as consumers of religious services. With God’s help, WhitPres will become a church where we continually move outside our comfort zones to welcome strangers and transform our community with the good news proclaimed by our Lord, Jesus Christ: “God Reigns and is turning the world right-side up!”

 

April 9, 2012