The Cost of Being First

“The Constitution was our second attempt at a governing document, The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner’s fourth published book, and World War I really didn’t end all wars.  Henry Ford not only did not invent the automobile; turns out he didn’t invent the assembly line either. Coca-Cola wasn’t the first soft drink; that credit goes to either Vernor’s ginger ale or Hires root beer.  Even casual movie buffs know that The Godfather Part II, which won six Academy Awards, is superior to its predecessor, which collected only three.”

Watts Wacker and Jim Taylor, The 500 Year Delta, quoted by Renuka Rayasam in “Does Being First Matter?,” US News & World Report (August 6, 2006)

First is good, right?  Based on the fury surrounding the debate over college football playoffs or the pre-dawn shopping frenzy known as Black Friday, you’d have to think it’s worth fighting for.  But if you’re part of a church named “First Baptist” or “First United Methodist” or “First Presbyterian,” (the South Carolina Baptist Convention alone lists more than 200 “First Churches”) you may face a special challenge from which other churches are spared.

A local pastor once posited what he called the First Church Phenomenon.  I call it the Smuckers Rule.

When people who have only a social connection to church move to a new town, they often choose to join the “First Church” in that new town.  Their decision is as likely to be based on convention or convenience as theological affinity.

When someone joins “God is Awesome LifeBridgeCrossPoint Church” or something else that’s not so conventional as “First,” they are more likely to be choosing it because of its mission or theology or vision (and with a name like that, it has to be good).

If that’s true, “First” churches are more likely to have difficulty getting everyone on the same page than their uniquely-branded sisters.

Have you experienced the “First Church Phenomenon?”  If so, to what do you attribute it?

A New Old Church in Greer

When you hear “new church” and “church plant,” do you think of young, edgy congregations pastored by some guy with a soul patch? Me, too. It’s a reasonable assumption; ; newer churches tend to be younger than their established sisters (The American Church in Crisis, David T. Olson, 2009). That’s why I was so intrigued by a new church near here that’s reaching an older crowd.

I confess that when I first heard about St. John’s Baptist Church near Greer, SC, I assumed it was started by an angry splinter group, upset about the music or the pastor’s tie. But their under-40 pastor, Dow Welsh, whose experience is mostly with younger churches and more contemporary styles, says it’s nothing of the sort. “Even though we naturally attract older folks, they’re doing real ministry.” He got there a year or so after the launch and shakes his head in admiration that approaches bewilderment: “This is an energetic bunch.”

It will be interesting to see if and how the church grows. Seventy or so attendees now meet in space borrowed from another small congregation, but they’ll soon begin sharing their story with as many as 11,000 households. It’ll be tough. Dow points out: “You don’t just wander into a church like St. John’s; you choose it. But the people who do are committed.”

The church’s website explains their “sincere belief that traditional forms of worship and interpretation of the Bible are not only God-honoring but mandated by Scripture,” which seems no more dogmatic than other churches claiming the same for newer practices. And whether you accept all of that or not, you have to admire their straightforwardness.

How to Estimate Church Attendance

You don’t have to build space for people who don’t show up.  So what matters is attendance, not membership.  Mission consultant Andrew Jones, at his blog, TallSkinnyKiwi tells us how to get to the truth:

- 50% if its a Pentecostal worship service because they count the legs and forget to divide by two.

- 30% if its a Baptist church because they count members on the roll and not all of them are still living.

+10 if its a Vineyard service because those rugs on the floor were actually people!

+20% if it’s a fundamentalist church because they don’t count the people they didn’t want there.

- 30% if it’s an Anglican/Presbyterian/Methodist church because the number they gave you is from their huge Easter service.

+15% if it’s an ethnic/non-western service because all those people coming late missed the counting.

- 10% if its a megachurch because the worship team and welcome team got counted during all 5 services.

- 520% if its a Catholic church because they count the parish, not the church attendance.

+20% if it’s an emergent service because those having a smoke outside were not counted.

- 25 % if its a Reformed church service because they count the people who SHOULD have been there.

- 15% if it’s a house church because the neighborhood kids playing video games in the back room somehow managed to get counted with everyone else. So did the guy delivering pizza.

See Andrew’s original post.

Hands-Free Holy Water

Catholic churches in Italy are installing automatic holy water dispensers to help reduce the risk of spreading swine flu, according to a November 11, 2009 article at BBC News|Europe.  The new machines work like automatic soap dispensers, squirting water when a hand is passed under an infra-red sensor near the tap.

Inventor Luciano Marabese told Reuters that ”some people had stopped dipping their hand into the holy water font as they were afraid of infections.  Some people even pretended to touch the water but they just touched the marble edge of the font.  I think that it is a pity to lose our traditions.”

Need to install ‘em between the Wafermatic and the Confessionator.  See the complete article, including video of the unit in operation, at BBC News’ website.

Charrette

If you need to get to the heart of a planning issue quickly, or involve a group that’s hard to get together for more than a short time, you might consider getting en la charrette.  The term comes from a 19th century practice of the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts).   When assignments were due, the school sent a carriage or cart (charrette) through the streets of Paris to gather finished projects from architecture students, some of whom climbed aboard and continued to draw as they rode.

Today, charrette describes a intensive design process of limited duration.  A typical exercise, usually led by your architect, has four main stages, which may be spread out over months, days or hours:

1. Research.  Gather information on the community, the organization, the site, and the building (if applicable) via interviews, maps, data and foundational documents.  For churches, it’s critical to include a clear presentation of the organizational purpose and mission.
2. Analysis.  Articulate (usually in guided group discussions)  the opportunities, needs, resources and limitations apparent from the research and that follow from the church’s ministry objectives.
3. Synthesis.  Explore alternate plans that answer and fit the criteria that were identified in previous stages.
4. Feedback.  Share your ideas with appropriate groups to find a preferred plan.  Repeat stages 3 and 4 as required.

A charrette is an attractive option for churches.  It doesn’t require ongoing commitment from a large group.  (Need another committee in your future?.)  At it’s heart is the ability of a charrette to turn a sometimes incomprehensible process into an event.  Less time may equal fewer dollars spent on preliminary design.

Of course, no mechanism is perfect.  The charrette requires leaders to offer a level of guidance that matches the church’s polity and trust the crowd.  And no matter how successful the effort is, there is always more work necessary to bring it to fruition.  The upside, though, is that broad participation in the planning process greatly increases the potential for “buy-in” when it’s time to roll.

Is Your Church an Energy Star?

Even if you’re skeptical about climate change, you should be still interested in moving dollars from air conditioning to outreach.  And if you’re put off by the tendency of some environmental efforts toward moralization, you may find the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program worth a look.

EPA started the Energy Star program in 1992 to reduce energy consumption and power plant emissions.  It has since evolved into a far-reaching effort to provide information and guidance to anyone interested in reducing energy use and costs.

The Agency began by offering guidelines for homes and businesses and guidelines for ministry organizations - Energy Star for Congregations – appeared in 2007.  The guides compare actual energy use to conventional usage for each building type and designate those that beat do well (75 on a scale of 1-100) as Energy Stars.

Just this summer, the Agency released a free web-based tool – Performance Ratings for Houses of Worship - to help church leaders “assess the energy performance of their buildings; make more informed budgetary, investment and management decisions; and help Energy Star participants publicize their energy efficiency achievements.”  The tool is based on several specific characteristics shown to drive energy use:

• Number of seats in the worship area
• Number of days the building is open for use
• Weekly operating hours
• Number of personal computers
• Presence of a commercial food preparation area
• Number of commercial refrigerators, and
• Weather

Jerry Lawson, national manager of Energy Star’s Small Business and Congregations Network pointed out in an article for Worship Facilitites Magazine that the new Ratings apply to buildings whose primary function is as a place of worship – churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, meetinghouses – and not to other buildings that may be associated with a religious organization, such as living quarters, schools, homes, or buildings used primarily for other community activities. (It also applies only to worship facilities that have 4,000 permanent seats or less.)  Characteristics and usage unique to worship spaces are accounted for by comparing them only to other such facilities.

To help you get started, the Agency offers benchmarking data, webinars and other information at www.energystar.gov and at (888) 782-7937.

McDonald’s is Missing

I take my caffeine cold.  So when a coworker and I needed help staying alert on a long road trip, we stopped at a McDonald’s for some Atlanta wine.

I haven’t thought much about whether the chain’s current rebranding effort gives them a serious shot at Starbucks, but I was interested to see one aspect of the McCafe experiment I hadn’t expected: the word “McDonald’s” had been almost completely scrubbed away.  Take a look:

It was nearly impossible to find the old logotype anywhere on the premises.  The only exceptions were an old news stand and the highway sign (see below).  The next closest remnant was the “Mickey D’s Ice Tea” dispenser.  Only the Golden Arches reminded us of the building’s sacred heritage.

There was no doubt of course, where we were. Even behind a “Play Place,” familiar shapes and colors gave it away, and I wonder if an American could possible mistake the place for something called a McCafe.

But in the few places on the planet not yet familiar with the place, I wondered what assumptions they might make. Would they wonder about the apparent rear-end collision between the hipped roof and Play Place box? Would they care about the history of the color scheme and arches? Probably not. But for USAmericans, it will be a long time before this particular architecture is anything but a McDonald’s. How long will that take?

Translate the same questions to church buildings. St. Francis of Assisi is routinely misquoted as saying something along the lines of, “Preach the Gospel and if necessary, use words,” and some buildings will always communicate their purpose, with or without signage. Others will never communicate “church” to our culture, no matter how many crosses they stick up. Does it matter to you?

How dependent is your organization on labels and symbols to communicate its purpose? How much of this load is carried by the building you inhabit? Do your facilities present an obstacle to the effective communication of your most important messages?

Church Parking Solutions

My parents live in a city that is a tourist mecca, and their downtown church struggles to offer parking for people who want to attend worship on Sunday mornings.  Left unattended, the hard-to-come-by parking spaces will fill up with cars from all over the country driven by people more interested in souvenir t-shirts than spiritual matters.  The last time I visited, a tram full of tourists had to wait as I helped my father across the street.  The church has resorted to a combination of parking stickers that identify members, parking lot attendants and a sign that spells out their towing policy.

More recently, one of my pastors got a call from someone who tried to visit, but gave up after finding that all of the handicapped spaces were full.  We suspect that some were filled by senior adults stretching the definition of “handicapped,” but weren’t quite sure how to address it gracefully.  Tongue-in-cheek, we kicked around ideas like slashing tires and spray-painting threatening messages on windshields (softened, of course, by leaving tracts on windshields).  Practically, we wondered if a message like, “Thank you for coming; please remember to prominently display your handicapped parking permit so that we can honor our guests with special needs” would do the trick.

Enter the “parking solutions” catalog I received in the mail today.  It offers 30 pages of products designed to help churches control problem parking.  They range from signs that read “Thou Shalt Not Park Here” to bright red stickers, designed to be pasted onto the offenders window, that say, “VIOLATION | THIS VEHICLE IS PARKED ILLEGALLY AND IS SUBJECT TO TOWING AND IMPOUNDMENT | YOUR LICENSE NUMBER WAS RECORDED”.   The 5 x 8 stickers are available with “strong adhesive when you want them removed only with a scraper or with mild adhesive for easier removal.”  (I assume you check “Prophet” or “Grace” when you place your order.)

I didn’t find any WWJP bracelets.

I understand from personal experience the difficulty that thoughtless drivers cause for others, and the desire to make them “do right.”  I prefer to see churches use attendants instead of signs.  Like email, a sign, no matter how graciously worded, lacks the nuance that a smiling face can bring to challenging words.

Misplaced Sign

My friend Ramon Presson was at a church-based conference last week when he spotted this sign on the Men’s Room door.  Location, location, location.

Orthodoxy on Rails

Earlier this year, the site English Russia, which bills itself as “The Eastern Entertainment Channel” told us that “there is a widespread train in Russia to organize Orthodox-Christian churches in old railway cars.  The images are intriguing both because they reveal how old the practice is, and because how closely the old cars resemble traditional worship settings: Airstream Byzantine.  See the whole article.