George Bullard's Journey

Journalism is Not Dead . . .

. . . its delivery system and economic engine have just morphed into a different form in a galaxy far, far away.

Newspapers are going bankrupt. Magazines are hemorrhaging. Journalism is threatened. The Internet is exploding with new knowledge sharing. What is going on here?

Newspapers and magazines have forgotten what business they are in. The apparent decline of journalism is an unintended consequence.

If You Only Talk with Pastors You May Miss the Point!

Too many Christian parachurch organizations, and some consultants and coaches, only talk with pastors when assessing a congregation. In doing so, they may miss the point. They get a subjective and prejudiced view of reality within the congregation. They get a very important view from the pastor[s], but not always an accurate view.

The point is to know if persons in the pew/chairs are being effectively served and assisted to grow as disciples, and are they being motivated and pulled into the congregation’s external context through missional efforts? To genuinely discover this you must talk with the persons in the pew/chairs, and perhaps for the latter characteristic the people in the congregation’s external context.

The Emergence of the 80 Percent Budget

During recent months I have experienced the emergence [or perhaps the re-emergence] of the 80 Percent Budget in congregations. These types of budgets are being impacted by several factors. Two primary factors are the current economic situation, and high fixed costs in the areas of personnel and facilities.

The 80 Percent Budget comes about this way. Congregations, in response to the economic crisis, are lower their budget by an average of 20 percent to 80 percent of either their 2008 budget or their intended 2009 budget. To do this they have not been able to simply adjust soft spending on programs, missions, ministries, and activities. They have had to adjust hard spending on personnel and facilities. The adjustments on all areas have been difficult. The adjustments in personnel have tended to raise the intensity of conflict in the congregation.

Moving Your Congregation From Face to Fellowship to Friendship

For congregations to be characterized by deep, meaningful relationships with one another, they must move their internal relationships from face familiarity to meaning fellowship to true friendships.

Face familiarity is when people recognize one another, particularly at church events, as being someone who is familiar and that I ought to know. Perhaps the people know each others’ names, but only pass in the hallway with a simple “hello”.

Meaningful fellowship is where people have occasional times to interact with one another at various church gatherings but have no ongoing friendship relationship.

True friendships are when people know one another, have periodic to regular relationship encounters with one another, have life concerns for one another about which they pray, and consider one another friends who can be called on for various life needs.

Particularly when congregations have more than one worship service the percentage of relationships based on face familiarity rather than meaning fellowship or true friendships may be higher than when a congregation has one worship service. The key word here is “may”.

When true friendships exist among a large percentage of congregational participants, then complicated and even potentially divisive issues can be handled with relative ease. When face familiarity is the depth of too many relationships then it is difficult to handle complicated and potentially divisive issues in a positive way.

Posted via email from George Bullard's Posterous

Are the Financial Contributions to Your Congregation Up or Down?

Since Christmas how have the financial contributions to your church changed?

Please take our one question poll by clicking on this link:

Take Poll.

Conflict Can be Healthy

In his book, Every Congregation Needs a Little Conflict, George Bullard shares the following about the potential of conflict to be healthy:

“Conflict can be healthy. Consider a violin. This instrument is capable of producing beautiful music as a result of appropriate tension on the strings, and artful drawing of the bow across the strings. Conflict also can be unhealthy. Too much tension on the violin strings will break them, or untalented drawing of the bow across the strings will produce painful noise rather than beautiful music.

Just as it takes people with special skills to tune and play a violin, it takes individuals with special skills to deal with different types of conflict.” [11]

See and purchase this book at TCP Resources Store.

Poll on Increase/Decease in Intensity of Congregation in Your Church

I invite you to take this one question poll on the increase or decrease in conflict in your local congregation since Christmas:

Conflict Intensity Poll

Reaching People Under 40 While Keeping People Over 60

In a certain sense the essence of this book is described in its title and subtitle—Reaching People Under 40 While Keeping People Over 60: Being Church for All Generations. Congregation who seek to be a church for all generations will certainly have fewer challenges around conflicts and differing visions between various generations.

It is obviously a book targeting primarily existing congregations who are at least twenty years old and have begun to experience a generational divide. It speaks ably to the conflict that arises when congregations feel the need to start a new type of worship service to keep younger generations from leaving and to attract families/households with children.

Authors Eddie Hammett and Randy Pierce themselves represent some of this generational divide. Eddie is a 50-something, long-term churchperson, and Randy is a 30-something long-term seeker who has now embraced a Christ-centered faith journey. They ably speak from churched and non-churched, modern and postmodern perspectives on how congregations can embrace all generations.

The book offers win-win solutions. Hope. Realistic tactics for existing churches. Virtually every church that is more than 20 years old will confront this issue, and will either put in place a process to address it, or will divide over the generational issue and lose a significant portion of this vitality and vibrancy.

Implied in this look is an important message for churches less than 20 years old. These congregations may believe they are immune to a generational divide. If so, they lie to themselves about other things also. Look in the mirror. This could be you in a few years.

George Bullard, The Columbia Partnership, GBullard@TheColumbiaPartnership.org

Thoughts on the Arrival of My New Grandson

Today Brendan William Bullard was born at 1:03 p.m. in Mt. Pleasant, SC outside of Charleston. He is my third grandchild, and the third child to my son, Jonathan, and his wife, Shannon. Unlike my first grandson, Nolan, who is six, and my only granddaughter, Elizabeth James, who is three, I was able to see, hold, and sing to Brendan within two hours of his birth. Distance prohibited this experience with the first two grandchildren.

As has become my custom, when I held Brendan for the first time today and he became fussy, I began singing to him “Jesus Loves Me”. I have made it a habit to sing this song when holding all three of my grandchildren as babies. I have wanted the sound of my voice, singing, and words about Jesus, love, and people to be part of the early hardwiring of their brain about life experiences and values. Often I have sung to them the words as “Jesus loves you”!

My oldest grandchild, Nolan, was the first to benefit from this practice. When he observed me singing to Brendan today, and it became his turn to hold his new brother under the watchful eye of parents and grandparents, he began singing “Jesus Loves Me” to his new brother. It was an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life. It is a song I hope Brendan will sing for all of his life.

I can’t wait to see Brendan again on Thursday when I will be able to hold and sing to him again! The whole world is new to Brendan. We are singing a song in a new land for him.

Posted via email from George Bullard's Posterous

Conflict is All Around Us

In my book, Every Congregation Needs a Little Conflict, I share the following about the presence of conflict:

“Think about the simple act of clapping your hands. If done as an act of praise it is a healthy action. If done to assume authority by clapping hard to get the attention of people around you, it moves into the grey area. If done to indicate you intend to slap or hit someone, it is an unhealthy action. However, the act of bringing your hands together is the same in each incident. The force and intent are different.” [11]

See and purchase this book at TCP Resources Store.