Who doesn't want to learn about resources for their parish....in Latin!  For those of you who prefer English, try this:

Is your endowment invested the way you want it to be getting the exact results you're after?
Do you need help jump starting your planned giving program?
What about cost-effective background checks for staff and volunteers who work with children in your Church?
Or how about your stained glass windows?  Do they need some repairs or do you need to order a brand new one?

Vestments - are yours getting old and tatty?
And what about our Episcopal seminaries - have you checked in with them lately to see what they're doing?

Are you Thinking of starting a capital campaign?
Do you dream of new ways to bring peace to the Middle East?

If any of these questions wake you up in the middle of the night, then we have the resources for you! All of these folks - and more - can be visited in one afternoon at the Consortium's Commons during our 2012 conference.  Be sure to stop by and visit with our conference partners,  You'll gain insights and resources, and become eligible to win valuable gifts!

Can't come to the conference this year? We'll miss you.

All of our members have embarked on Capital Campaigns from time to time – some have been very successful, even in the throes of the most recent recession.  If your Church or Cathedral is:

1) in the middle of a Capital Campaign

2) About to embark on one

3) Just finished a capital campaign (either with great success or not so much)

when you register for CEEP’s 2012 conference you will want to consider signing up for Affinity Group 6.   In this session you can talk to others who have or are involved in the process and talk about your experiences with capital campaigns, capital campaign companies, the good experiences and the bad experiences - all in a confidential setting.  You’ll make some personal contacts you can benchmark with as you move forward in your own campaign.  This session will be facilitated by Frances Caldwell, Director of Giving for the Diocese of Virginia.  Kick Start the Conversation: Email Frances

Interviewing Capital Campaign Consultants: One of the things I get the most requests for in the CEEP office is references for capital campaign consultants – what to look for when hiring one, what bang you’ll get for your buck, etc.  We have three capital campaign representatives who will be with us as sponsors in 2012, and if you are considering interviewing one of them use your time at our conference for the process.  We will have private rooms available – all you need to do is sign up.  The three companies who will be present at the conference are:

• The Episcopal Church Foundation – Ms. Kate Adams
• James D. Klote and Associates – The Rev. James Sell
• Bloom Metz Consulting – Mr. Wil Sherk

If you want to set up an interview with any of these three while in Charlotte, please contact them directly  and tell them.  I will work with them to find space on site for you.
 

Is your Church or Cathedral located in the heart of downtown?  Perhaps you're near the State Capitol or in a rapidly changing urban setting?  Some CEEP parishes are located in declining downtowns; others in rapidly gentrifying areas.  These changes impact everything – from how to do outreach ministry to how to attract new members.  

You face unique challenges and opportunities for ministry and probably have a congregation from diverse geographical areas of the city to minister to as well.  This is your opportunity to network other clergy and volunteers to discuss how best to do ministry in an urban setting.  Join The Rev. Wallace Adams-Riley from the heart of downtown Richmond, VA, Rector of St. Paul's, and come prepared to share both your difficulties and successes with others.

When you register for CEEP's 2012 conference, if you're interested in this subject be sure to sign up for Affinity Group 5: The Challenges of Downtown Churches. 

You might also consider signing up for workshop C6 The New Urbanism, led by Jason Fout, theologian and ethicist, for an overview of this dynamic new movement in urban planning and design.  How does the built environment of a city or community or church form our moral imaginations? You will explore the New Urbanism's core principles, and discuss how the church can become involved. This topic will be of particular interest to all who care about particular places and love the people who dwell in them.

Want to kick start the discussion? 

Email Wallace Adams'Riley

Email Jason Fout

What's the secret to creating a vibrant congregation with a real sense of community?  Small Groups! St. David's, with its 2500 communicants and 7 Sunday services has had to dig deep to find ways to build communities of different interests within the large congregation.  Small groups focus on specific topics for limited time periods on subjects from "How to Read the Old Testament" to "The poems of C.S. Lewis" to one-night sessions on a variety of subjects including personal finance and buying and eating locally grown food.  The Church has also instigated geographically based sessions called Compass Groups.  

Come prepared to discuss your church's experience with small groups.  Are your small groups an important component of your evangelism program?  What are the stages of the spiritual journey and their relationship to small group ministries? What sort of small groups ministries has your church incorporated and in what ways have they worked (or not?)? Join Rebecca and others who are doing interesting and creative ministries in small group settings. Plan for an active networking opportunity with other endowed parishes striving to make the best use out of small groups for evangelism and spiritual growth.

Want to get a jump start on your discussion about small groups?  Email Rebecca and be sure to sign up for Affinity Group 4

When you hear the word legacy, do you automatically think about leaving your Church in your will?  Setting up a planned giving program and starting a legacy society? In this day and age, most of us do.  And it is right and a good and joyful thing to have a planned giving program in your Church.  

But what if a legacy were something bigger than money?  What if the true legacy we have to leave our Churches and our world is a deep commitment to changing who we are as a society? What would that kind of a legacy look like? How might we go about it?  150 years after the start of the Civil War there is still more we can do to heal the racial wounds in this country.  

If you're interested in thinking big about the meaning of the word legacy, email your ideas for the discussion ahead of time to either Barbara Miller, or Luke Back and enter into this rich and deep discussion of the broadest kind of legacy, Be sure to sign up for Affinity Group 3: Imagining a Different kind of Legacy! 

How recently has your Parish Business Manual been updated? Who performs annual review of your lay employees?  Your clergy?  What review form do you use?  What sort of personnel records do you need to keep?  Do you know how to fire staff in an efficient yet humane way?  How can you avoid the most common mistakes made by kind-hearted clergy - like making promises you can't keep or keeping people on staff too long because you know their personal problems?

The other big issue that will be facing Episcopal Churches – with the potential to bring financial havoc – is how to implement the Lay Pension System, Resolution A138, passed by General Convention and now canonical law. Your Church is required to be compliant with this law by January 1, 2013?  How do you move your lay staff from a defined contribution plan to a defined benefit plan?  What will the financial and personnel impact be for your church? How do you plan for it?

If these are questions you are facing spiritually, financially and ethically, you owe it to yourself to attend Affinity Group 2: Got HR Issues?  Led by Darien McWhirter, employment law attorney and author, and Pattie Christiensen, Vice President of the Church Pension Group specializing in helping churches implement the new Canon law.  This is a unique opportunity to bring your own issues and share your knowledge with other members of CEEP in a collegial atmosphere.

Within the next few years, about 50% of the Rectors and Deans of CEEP member parishes will be retiring.   Your congregation - and staff - will be in transition as you go through the steps of self-examination and reflection and preparing your parish profile.  When it’s completed, you’ll put on a different hat and begin marketing your church to potential new leaders around the country.  It’s a long process, and if the wrong selection is made, your congregation  could suffer for years to come.  

How do you pick the right rector/dean?  For that matter, how do you know the interim you pick will plant the seeds for positive new beginnings you are hoping for?  Transitions can be fraught with tension no matter how well meaning your parish leaders are.  

What can the Consortium do?  If you are in - or about to enter into - an interim period, you may want to register for “Affinity Group 1: Churches in a Rector Search” when you register for CEEP’s 2012 conference.  Jean White (pictured), who led the search committee for a new rector at St. Paul’s, Richmond will help attendees network, discuss problems and issues, and make friends with one another.  Who knows? Perhaps number 2 on your list would make a great number 1 for some other Church.  Like in other areas of management, endowed parishes have unique issues when hiring a new leader.  You owe it to yourself to hook up with others also in the process - maybe you can avoid some pitfalls or gain new insights as you enter into the adventure of transition.

I am not a fan of Mutual Ministry Reviews for many of the same reasons that Edward Demming gave 50 years ago after he left the American business consulting world in disgust and went to Japan and helped create total quality management and radically transformed the quality of Japanese products.

Why the Church wants to continue to import failed consulting technology into its life continually confounds me.

What we need to create is cultures of ministry excellence that rely on continual improvement rather than on annual reviews.  What is important here is not the review process but the underlying culture. We live in a competitive, adversarial, punitive, culture and strategies based on that culture have limited the ability to build sustainable cultures of excellence. The path to the future must be consistent with the future we desire.

Adversarial cultures do not create the Kingdom of God.

The alternative to the adversarial culture is the learning culture (see Peter Senge's work on Learning organizations) that is characterized by curiosity, wonder, empowerment, and excellence. Sadly, most review processes, because of the underlying adversarial culture, don't empower as they (in Demming's words) "rob the worker of their essential dignity".

Adversarial cultures focus on punishing failure,. Learning cultures focus on discovery, and will celebrate failure as one more step on the path to knowledge and excellence.

The challenge isn't to come up with a better review process. The challenge is to create the culture that could benefit from a review.

I have reviewed a number of tools, including some 360 leadership assessment tools for leaders, and generally, they are inappropriate for a Mutual Ministry Review.  They tend not to look at the congregation's ministry - only the lead clergy.  In addition, putting such a tool in the hands of untrained people means it can be usee as a weapon to bludgeon the leader.

At Clergy Leadership Development’s training program, our Mutual Ministry Valuations have two foci: creating an appreciative culture focused on excellence in ministry and building the ego strength of leaders so they can explore failure from a place of curiosity and wonder rather than fear.
Is your Church really interested in creating cultures of excellence?  Or are you simply interested in punishing failure and cloaking it in fancy sounding language? If you really want to change your culture, try appreciative inquiry.

Robert J. Voyle, Psy.D., Director, Clergy Leadership Institute
For Coaching and Training in Appreciative Inquiry
Author: Restoring Hope: Appreciative Strategies
            to Resolve Grief and Resentment
503-647-2378 or    503-647-2382     

“Is anyone using a creative graphic to show progress in Annual Giving pledges as they come in? Something sexier than a thermometer?”  This question was floated this week by one of our CEEP member parishes.  Following are some creative thoughts and ideas from responding members:

• DON'T EVER USE A THERMOMETER.  People will think the church is sick!

• We created a graphic of our street-scape which was almost a whole block long.  We used thestreet- scape to create God's “garden of St. Paul's.”  As pledges came in more and more of the facility was greened and flowered (the Cathedral, the education building, the outreach facility, etc.)  until the whole graphic of the street-scape was filled in.  We used Paul's writings to the Ephesians about being rooted and grounded in the faith as our theme.

• An elevator rising to the top

• “I am the vine, you are the branches” - we had a huge vine throughout the undercroft with each pledging family represented by a leaf

• Loaves and Fishes - in a net

• Light of Christ -  pledging units represented by Lights

• A giant puzzle with pieces representing pledging families.  "WE are the body of Christ"

• Brightly colored papers with families’ names as blessings fluttering from the walls (kind of like prayer flags)

• I have seen some parishes use a roadmap

• A skyscraper being built floor by floor

• Once I saw a graphic that looked like the Candyland board game that was filled in and the pieces moved toward the finish line as pledges were received. 

Got Creative ideas?  Email me and I'll add them to the list!!!

According to Dr. Jason Byassee, Senior Pastor of Boone United Methodist Church, Boone, NC (and fellow in theology and leadership at Leadership Education at Duke Divinity School) and the Rev. Nathan Kirkpatrick, managing director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity School:

"In the last few decades in American society, it has been fashionable to be publically anti-institutional. As public trust and confidence in institutions has waned, many of the loudest voices have urged the deconstruction of institutional life and spoken hopefully of a day with no institutions whatsoever. Yet, as Christians, we know that God has no blessing for us that is not in some way institutionally-mediated and that it is through institutions that God is bringing shalom to a hurting world. Given this, the quality of life of our institutions matters greatly."

Join Byassee and Kirkpatrick in Charlotte for an immersion experience as together, you will explore the current landscape of Christian institutional life and how institutions are holding on to their God-given missions in the midst of a culture that critiques and questions their existence.  Participants will consider how we might sustain existing institutions and build new ones that are vibrant in their inner life and their public work. Finally, we will ask what kind of leaders are needed for these institutions and consider what resources they will need into the future.

These three sessions are intended to be taken as a whole course, for one or more persons from the same Church. Total time in the track with leaders is 6 hours. Participants will leave these sessions with:

•   A clearer understanding of the opportunities and threats facing Christian institutions today
•   An overview of the kind of imaginative, improvisational and courageous leadership that institutions need to challenge these threats
•   Strategies for interrupting present institutional activities that are either not working or not working optimally as well as strategies for    implementing new institutional practices
•   Frameworks for considering what is working and what isn’t working within their institutional life
•   An appreciation for the gifts and capacities of each person to be a leader at various levels within their institution
• Resources for ongoing personal and institutional development.

Participants must sign up for all three sessions during the conference: 

A5 - Friday, 10:15-11:45 AM (1.5 hours)
        A Sense of the Whole: The Present Landscape for Christian Institutions
B5 – Friday Field Work, 1:30-4:30 PM (3.0 hours)
       The Institutional Imagination: What Might Yet Be
C5 – Saturday, 8:15-9:45 AM (1.5 hours)
       The Character and Courage Needed: Leading into God’s Future