An overview of The Unglued Church pilot project in Pittsburgh Presbytery, designed to assist congregations navigate the cultural tsunami of change affecting the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)

1. Next Church Workshop, Atlanta -- February 23, 2016
The Unglued Church
Susan Rothenberg, Jim Kitchens and Deborah Wright
Welcome. Intro.
Pittsburgh is my little town with many neighborhoods and many, many, many Presbyterians. And Presbyterian churches
We joke often that Pittsburgh is always 10 or 20 years behind the rest of the county, but we have not been immune from the huge changes happening in
the mainline churches, or really all faith communities in the U.S.

2. Does this sound familiar?
Many churches are stuck in anxious
conversations that always seem to be
centered on the same struggles playing
in a seemingly endless loop - not
enough money, not enough members,
too big of a building, and a too small
mission vision.
This is the story we hear from many of our churches in Pittsburgh. A story with which many of you are quite familiar. They are stuck…in anxious
conversations

3. What if…?
…our presbyteries were
proactive (instead of reactive) in
helping congregations address the
cultural tsunami facing all
churches?
And we began to wonder in Pittsburgh — what if we became proactive instead of reactive to the wave of cultural change hitting our churches?
Historically, presbyteries become involved in churches when there’s conflict, or a transition, or when a congregation has sputtered out to the point that
closing the church is the only option — and usually when there’s no more money, no more people, and a building in disrepair.
We believe the underlying cause of these difficult presenting issues is the cultural tsunami affecting all of our faith communities.

4. The End of “TheWayWe’ve
Always Done It”
Presbyteries and congregations (pastors and elders
alike) respond to congregational issues and needs with
time proven “technical” responses (sometimes
disguised as crisis management) that may not be
effective.
Adaptive change is a way of examining the
PCUSA’s current situation from new perspectives
that encourage fresh thinking and discovery of options
that might not otherwise have been considered
We have a history in our churches and presbyteries of reverting to the “way we’ve always done it” when there are problems. We tend to operate from the
perspective that problems can be solved with a conflict management team or a new pastor or a better curriculum.
But we believe that adaptive change is a way of examining our situation that offers new perspective and fresh thinking that is faithful to what God is
leading us to do as we build the NEXT church. In a few minutes, we’ll talk more about adaptive change and what it looks like in a church context,
specifically how it was applied in Pittsburgh.

5. Pittsburgh Presbytery
✤ 146 worshipping communities in Allegheny County
with approximately 30,000 members
✤ Nearly 60 congregations with membership less than 100
✤ Since 2003, only 5 of those congregations have grown
✤
Since 2003, only 16 churches of any size have grown
Source: Research Services, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)
Pittsburgh is both a typical and atypical presbytery.
What is atypical is that we have a lot of congregations in a very small geographic area. We have 146 worshiping communities in a single county. To put
that in perspective, there are only 50 Starbucks in Allegheny County. There are only 50 Subway sandwich shops in Allegheny County. And only 25
McDonald’s in Allegheny County. And we have 146 PCUSA congregations in that same area. It isn’t a stretch to say that we are overbuilt in Pittsburgh
Presbytery.
We are typical in that many of our congregations are quite small, and are getting smaller and older. Only 16 of our 146 churches have grown since 2003,
according to PCUSA research.
Pittsburgh Presbytery has become somewhat well known for our work in planting new churches. We have numerous new church plants happening in our
presbytery, Pittsburgh Seminary now have a new church development track for M.Div. students, Vera White of 1001 Worshipping Communities is a former
presbytery staff person who led the charge for new churches in Pittsburgh
But we have intuited that there is a piece of the puzzle missing. Even in the heady buzz of new church development in our presbytery, most of us are
ordinary pastors, pastoring churches who are struggling with the changes impacting American faith communities.

6. About My Church
Emsworth United Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, PA.
In 2011, I was called to serve as a 3/4 time temporary supply pastor for this lovely little church in the western suburbs of Pittsburgh. Emsworth United
Presbyterian Church.

7. Emsworth U.P. Church
✤ Since 2003, membership declined from 99 to 66.
✤ Average worship attendance declined from 56 to 40
✤ Half of members age 65+ (33.3% age 75+)
✤ 32% of members age 50-64
Fairly typical story. Although Emsworth had never been a large church, their decline over the years had been significant.

8. “How will you grow our church?”
In one of my first interviews with their PNC, this was their question…”how will you grow our church?” My answer at the time was, “I won’t. Only God can do
that. And any pastor who tells you differently is lying.”
They called me anyway.
But that question revealed the anxiety that was creeping into a small congregation. After a 30 year pastorate, they were entering a new world that didn’t
look like the world they had known.

9. Growing = Surviving
✤ Not enough people
✤ Not enough money
✤
Can’t afford full-time pastor
like we used to
✤ The building is too expensive
✤
Need young families
✤ We’re tired/old/worn-out,
depressed
✤ Mostly depressed
✤ Our neighborhood has
changed
✤ Four other Presbyterian
churches within 2 miles
Their question about growth was really a question about “How will we survive?” The issues they had are probably familiar to all of us.
For the first year, I spent a lot of time listening, working on stewardship issues, fiddling with worship style, learning about the community around them. I
reached out to folks who had drifted away from the church. We took in a couple of new members. I loved my church and I didn’t want to be the pastor that
failed them by not helping them “survive.”
But it wasn’t until the NEXT Church Conference in 2012 that I heard a different Biblical and theological framework for thinking about the issues affecting
my little church. It was a keynote address by William Stacy Johnson that changed my thinking about the theological issues at stake in the furious work we
do to survive.

10. The Logic of Survival vs
The Logic of the Cross
✤
His keynote was focused on the logic of survival and the logic of the cross…that the church has two ways of living — as those who are perishing or as
those who are being saved.

11. “There is something that needs to happen to the
PCUSA and to Christianity. And that something is
the Gospel. The Gospel needs to happen to us. The
Gospel needs to push us beyond the habits of the
past, beyond the logic of survival–it needs to push
us beyond the fear of perishing to embrace the
logic of the cross.
This something that pushes us on is the
conviction…that Jesus was right, that death is not
what ultimately defines us, that resurrection is real.
What pushes us on and will determine our strategy
going forward is nothing less than the Gospel–we
are being saved.” — William Stacy Johnson (NEXT

12. Many churches today are stuck in an endless cycle,
asking the wrong question about the wrong
problem.
✤ “How can we grow?” is the wrong question
✤ “How can we grow?” is about butts, budgets and
buildings
✤
“How can we grow?” is about anxiety, not
faithfulness. A scarcity mindset isn’t Biblical
✤ “How can we grow?” is about living as ones who
are perishing instead of those being saved
I realized that my little church was asking the wrong question about the wrong problem. And I think that’s the place many churches find themselves in
today. We are asking the wrong question about the wrong problem.

13. How do we get break the cycle
and become “unstuck?”

14. What’s the real problem?
Moneyball, in case you haven’t seen it, is about baseball. But it’s also not about baseball. It’s about culture change. About how hard it is to change a culture, and about how it important it is
to do just that, when the world around you has already changed.
And it’s just that mixture of hardboiled pragmatism about a changed world – in this case the world of baseball – and creative ingenuity to defy tradition in order to change that makes me
think that the secret to the church’s future may lie in this very good movie.
In brief, here’s the setup: Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane wants to change the way his team approaches baseball. Why? Because baseball has become an unfair game.
It used to be, you see, that the key to producing excellent teams was to recruit the best young players and develop them into future stars. Your prospects, that is, rested in your scouts and
player development program. But then something happened: more revenue starting coming from televising your games than from ticket sales, and suddenly the larger the television market
you played in the more money you had and, thanks to free agency, the better players you could buy.
Which is where Billy Beane comes in. Because the A’s are a small-market team (like my Pittsburgh Pirates!), he doesn’t command a payroll like teams from big-market areas like Boston or
New York. So Beane decides that he and his team need to think differently, discarding the subjective criteria of the past and embracing a highly analytic approach to the game that discovers
undervalued players who out perform their peers in terms of their ability to get on base.
It’s not a popular move. After all, the traditional practices of baseball were long-standing, and the guardians of that tradition were not about to roll over to some upstart manager talking
about a changed world.
The following clip gives a sense of the resistance Billy Beane faced: (warning, strong language at 1:38).
PLAY CLIP
“What’s the problem?” Billy Beane keeps asking. To which his scouts reply that the problem is that they’ve lost their best players to richer teams. But as Beane says, that’s not the problem.
The problem is that the world has changed but they haven’t. They’re still playing by the old rules. And so Beane urges them to abandon the cherished practices that may have worked once
but were not suited to the current situation.

15. The Problem
✤ The world has changed and change is constant
✤ Culture no longer values going to church or being a
member of a church
✤ Faith needs to be connected to daily lives beyond
Sunday morning
The problem we have in the PCUSA is not that “my church needs to grow.” The problem is familiar to all of us who have read the Pew Report or any of the
8 zillion articles about future church.

16. As long as you think the problem is lower
attendance or giving, then the only
possible response is to do what we’ve
always done, except do it better. So we
preach the same as we always did, except
now we use screens and PowerPoint. And
so worship hasn’t really changed, but now
we’ve thrown in a drum set. What we are
doing is fundamentally the same, yet we
somehow expect different results.
Our pastors and our councils at every level are a lot like the scouts sitting at the table with Billy Beane. We think the problem is…about attendance and
money,
A few years ago, around the time I was ordained, Pittsburgh Presbytery went through a huge staff reduction. We ran out of unrestricted funds after years
of drawing down the endowment. People were laid off, everyone was depressed, it was a anxious time in a system that tends toward anxiety even in the
best of times. I was in a meeting with our executive presbyter and I said to him, “Well, the money has run out. This is the best possible thing that could
happen to us.” And he looked at me like I was a crazy woman. I said, “Now we’re gonna found out what we’re about, what matters to us, what it really
means to be the presbytery and depend wholly upon the grace of God.”

17. Jesus’ words in the Beatitudes reminds
us that we’re most blessed when the
bottom falls out from under us.
You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope.
With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most
dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the
One most dear to you.
(Matthew 5:3-4— The Message)
I still feel that way. In fact, Jesus’ words in the Beatitudes remind us…

18. We’ve got to think differently.
We’ve got to think theologically.
The logic of the cross. We are not perishing. That certainty informed my preaching and teaching after 2012 and William Stacy Johnson’s keynote at NEXT.
IN 2013, I went back to the NEXT conference and I met Jim Kitchens and Deborah Wright who were thinking the same sort of things I was. And they
introduced me to adaptive change.

19. Rev. Jim Kitchens &
Rev. DeborahWright

20. Adaptive vs.Technical Change
✤ What’s the difference?
✤
What mix of change are we now
facing?
✤ How do we engage the hard work of
adaptive change?

21. Examples of Technical vs. Adaptive
✤
Taking meds to lower blood pressure vs.
making lifestyle changes
✤ Implementing electronic systems for medications
vs. encouraging nurses and pharmacists to
challenge doctors’ dubious prescriptions
✤
Spraining your ankle vs. losing your leg

23. Technical Problems vs
Adaptive Challenges
Technical Challenges Adaptive Challenges
Easy to identify Hard to identify, easy to deny
Lend themselves to cut and dried
solutions
Require changes in values, beliefs,
roles and relationships (messy)
Authority can often solve it Stakeholders have to solve it
Requires small changes in
organization
Causes large, complex change
People are often receptive to
change
People strongly resist change
Solutions can be easily
implemented
“Solutions” require
experimentation and take a long
time

25. ShouldWe Look for Best
Practices?
✤ When faced with technical change, best
practices are your friends
✤ When faced with adaptive change, best
practices can be your nemeses
✤ Engaging adaptive change requires you to pay
close attention to your particular context

26. The Unglued ChurchTeam
✤ Rev. Ayana Teter, Associate Pastor in Pittsburgh
Presbytery
✤ Rev. Sarah Robbins, who led a historic church through
decline, sale of property, nesting and merger
✤
Rev. Susan Rothenberg, pastor of small church in
decline, but with some assets/time
After meeting with Jim and Deb, I came back to Pittsburgh and began taking with two colleagues about introducing adaptive change practice to our
churches in Pittsburgh. Ayana had a group of struggling small congregations in her branch area…the southern part of Allegheny County, an area in which
recovery after the steel mills closed never really happened. We wondered if we could work with Jim and Deb to develop a pilot program to work with a
cluster of churches to use adaptive change thinking to begin imagining a different future. Not to save them. Not to increase membership. But to faithfully
face the future and become unglued from the endless loop of anxiety about butts, budgets and buildings.

27. Our assumptions
✤
Some churches have the capacity to
adapt/reinvent/restart and need
assistance
✤ Some churches do not have the
capacity to reinvent/restart; can
they die with dignity and plant
seeds for new ministries/mission?
✤
Some churches will stubbornly
choose to do nothing and will not
change no matter what and our
polity lets them do that; it’s a
choice
✤
There’s no “one size fits all.” The
work will be contextual and
specific for each congregation
✤ Every church will have to engage
in the work of adaptive change at
some point in its lifecycle
✤ This work is crucial, not just for
our presbytery, but for
denomination

28. Our considerations
✤ Some churches are
suspicious of the
presbytery
✤
Earlier program to “right
size” in presbytery
generated conflict
✤
Project can’t be seen as
“presbytery staff-driven”
✤ No agenda other than
openness and
faithfulness to Spirit,
congregations and
communities
✤
Not a program only for
“struggling” churches;
not a sneaky means to
force church closure

29. Our goals
✤ Build capacity within the presbytery by developing a
bench of “Adaptive Change leaders” among teaching
and ruling elders in the presbytery, much as we have a
bench of interim pastors
✤ Help congregations and pastors adopt new ways of
thinking adaptively instead of reverting to technical
solutions

30. Our goals
✤ Develop a model of faithful “hospice care” for churches
at the end of their lifecycle, including called
“chaplains” who are honored in their pastoral work
✤
Influence the presbytery system with adaptive thinking
at all levels
✤ Provide a template that can be helpful to
congregations/governing bodies in the wider
denomination

31. Other goals/questions
✤ Where will the money come from to fund new ministries and
mission? Our assets are hidden/trapped in buildings and
endowments, many of which are held by small/declining/
depressed congregations. Be in partnership with NCD/1001 and
mission agencies of the denomination
✤
Can we find a better model for closing churches before the
congregation’s assets are depleted or in disrepair?
✤
Can we get upstream so that congregations have the opportunity
to define their legacy and receive excellent pastor care for the
saints who remain (honor the “withering vine”)

32. The Unglued Process
Assessing
Equipping
Incubating

33. Assessing
New Beginnings
✤ Facility/building review
✤ Demographic study
✤ Financial review
✤ Community “windshield tour”
✤ Historical review and appreciative inquiry

34. Equipping
✤ Training of adaptive change apprentices to work with
congregations in partnership with outside consultants
(Pneumatrix)
✤ Build a bench of skilled adaptive change pastor/elders
within presbytery

35. Incubating
✤ Help churches experiment with ideas
for new/legacy ministries in
partnership with NCD, mission
agencies, and community
✤ Give space for churches to share
ideas, experiments, successes and
failures

36. Resources/Partners
✤ Presbyterian Mission
Agency
✤ $50,000 grant from
PCUSA Office of Mission
Program grants
(Congregational
Transformation)
✤ Outside consultants
✤ New Beginnings
✤ Adaptive Change
Apprentices (9)
✤ Each participating
church paid $2500 for
New Beginnings
assessment

37. Church Recruitment
✤ Pre-presbytery meeting lunch with presentation by local
leaders and consultant
✤ Presbytery website
✤ Facebook/social media
✤
Letters to clerks of session and pastors
Ended up with a wide range of churches — much different than we envisioned. Some struggling. Some in early stages of a new pastorate. Some with no
pastoral leadership. Different areas of the county.

38. Apprentice Recruitment
✤ Facebook/social media
✤ Face to face conversations, working with presbytery
staff to identify potential apprentices with previous
training and experience in transitional/interim ministry
and COM work
Recruited 9 adaptive apprentices, including the 3 original leaders of the Unglued Church.

39. ChurchTimeline
✤ Meeting with all churches, apprentices and consultants to
introduce New Beginnings with PMA staff
✤ After NB assessments, meeting with same group to
review report and “house meeting” format
✤ Six (6) house meetings scheduled in each church to meet
in small groups led by church leaders and apprentice.

40. ApprenticeTimeline
✤ Apprentices met monthly for coaching with consultants
✤ USED the text: Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold
Approach for a Complex World by Sharon Parks which
explores the adaptive change teaching of Ronald
Heifetz at Harvard Business School
✤ Used case study method to report on work being done
with the churches and share questions/struggles

41. Apprentice Roadmap
1. Life Cycles of a Congregation and
Gathering on the Balcony
2. Leadership vs. Authority - Creative
Disequilibrium
3. Diagnosis - Reading the Landscape
and Naming the Elephants
4. Reframing the Questions/Resetting
the Defaults
5. Culture Shifting - New Lenses
6. Orchestrating Conflict
7. Fine Tuning the Role of Adaptive
Change Leader
8. Positive Deviance and the Value of
Failure
9. Jeremiah 29 and the Prosperity of the
City
10. Adaptive DNA

42. Case In Point Review
Describe the congregation and its
primary presenting issues.
Describe their experience with New
Beginnings, and the subsequent process
they have chosen to follow.
Describe the Pastor’s role in the process.
How is he/she reacting? Leading?
Supporting? Hindering?
What are some primary adaptive
challenges the congregation is aware of?
Unaware of?
What are some examples of ‘defaulting to
technical fixes’ that are at play?
What do you see as the faithful road
ahead for this congregation?
What is your prognosis of their
willingness/energy to take that journey
forward?
What have been the most satisfying and
the most exasperating aspects of your
experience as the church's apprentice?

43. ✤ Built upon conclusions/observations from New
Beginnings — coming to terms with issues otherwise
ignored by many congregations
✤
Focused on training church leadership to use adaptive
thinking to begin imagining a different future story for
the congregation
✤
Used tools provided by consultants to shift thinking
from technical solutions to adaptive thinking
Working with the Churches

44. Animal Farm Exercise

45. Sacred Cow
What do we treat
as that which
cannot be "messed
with" in our
church?

46. Elephant InThe Room
What
issues
need
to
be
acknowledged
and
discussed
that
we
are
afraid
to
tackle?

47. What distractions are keeping us from moving forward?

48. Dinosaur
What is extinct
or needs to die
in order for us
to move
forward?

49. Roadkill
Are we willing to
name and embrace
our epic failures in
the past?

50. Assessment
✤ What is the energy level of this leadership/
congregation?
✤ What is the financial outlook for this congregation?
✤ What is the spiritual capacity/depth of this
congregation?
Build consensus for adaptive change around these issues

51. Narrowing the Options
Option Energy Money Faith
Age in place/no change Low Low Low
Restart/reinvent High High High
Rent building/use income to survive Medium Med/High Low
Sell building/lease sanctuary Low Low Low/Med
Sell building/nest with neighbor Medium Low High
Sell building/merge High Low High
Sell building/plant legacy/dissolve Low Low High
Sell building/lease space/plant legacy High Low High
Dissolve/give property to presbytery Low Low Low

52. WhatWorkedWell?
✤
Gathering churches together is key to help church leaders/
pastors feel less alone in their struggles and more connected to
presbytery
✤
We now have a bench of trained adaptive change leaders in
our presbytery to work with churches undergoing transition
✤
Growing awareness in the presbytery of need for adaptive
change instead of reliance on technical solutions and “best
practices.” More and better long-term/creative thinking about
closing churches and financial implications

53. WhatWas Challenging?
✤ New Beginnings was not an ideal tool for this work
✤ Resistance by pastor is often the issue holding
congregations back
✤ Timing (May kickoff)
✤
Frustration among congregational leaders about
inability to make decisions/narrow down options

54. What DidWe Learn?
✤ Adaptive change is hard, long-term process resisted by
congregations who are locked in “survival” logic
✤ People love their buildings, programs, traditions, and
pastors; in some cases, more than Jesus
✤
How to measure spiritual capacity/maturity? Lots of
cultural Christians in our pews. Need deep faith in
order to undergo discernment process that leads to
deep, often disruptive changes

55. AYear Later…
✤ Some churches are still stuck, and do not want to change
because it’s too hard, but are asking better questions
✤ Some churches are making the shift from denying death
to focusing on legacy as a model moving forward
✤ Some have made the shift from “we go to church” to
“being the church”way of believing and thinking
✤ Of the eight (8) Unglued Churches, five (5) have
undergone a change in pastoral leadership

56. Quotes from participants
Pastor Bob: “What has changed is that those who
are receptive to adaptive change and an evangelistic
approach based upon relationship have become
more vocal and have acknowledged the elephant in
the room — that institutional survival is not
necessarily our objective. We are beginning to see
greater initiative in identifying and executing
collaborative outreach efforts with other entities that
are presently bearing tangible fruit.

57. Quotes from participants
Pastor Donna: “The Unglued Church provided a
process for us to ask the “why” and the “how”
questions. The small groups welcomed many church
members into the conversation. The materials
provided an easy guide for the small group
leaders.The Unglued Church process helped us claim
our identity as a “community church,” called to reach
outside our walls to our neighbors.The resources
(written and human) gave us courage to step out in
faith in becoming who God is calling us to be.

58. Quotes from participants
Pastor Kathy: “We found the House Meeting
Leader's Guide and that whole process structure to be
badly designed and confusing. It also was not a
spiritually based process, but rather seemed to be an
unsuccessful attempt to use tools of outdated
business models. As a church, we would not exist
without the Spirit and the calling and leading of
Christ. I believe that any process called New
Beginnings should have meetings based in the Spirit's
leading, empowerment, promises, and love.

59. Unglued Church 2.0
Assessment
✤
Partnership with Presbyterian Foundation “Project
Regeneration”
✤
Using “MissionInsite” tool together with on-site conversations
with community stakeholders
✤
Adapting “Starting New Worshipping Communities” from
1001 for better understanding of spiritual pose/depth of
congregation

60. Financial Assessment
A financial health report will be generated using tools
from the Presbyterian Foundation’s “Project
Regeneration.”
∞ church attendance data from at least the past five years or more;
∞ financial giving patterns by its members over the past five years or more;
∞ cost projections for continuing the church’s current ministry and
building maintenance (ongoing expenses as well as deferred
maintenance costs);
∞ a formal appraisal of the church property;
∞ a candid discussion of the congregation’s vitality and future potential for
ministry from a financial perspective
Lots of churches have poor financial management skills and/or only a very vague idea of how they are actually doing financially. PF’s project regeneration
is an in-depth analysis of church finances and a good way of measuring financial capacity of a congregation.

61. Community Assessment
✤ MissionInsite study of community, including
demographics, income and religious attitudes
✤ Conversations with stakeholders in the community
served by the church including political bodies/
leaders, education officials, other non-profits, religious
organizations, business owners, community
organizations, etc.

62. Congregation Assessment
✤ Appreciative Inquiry conversations to determine
history, patterns of behavior, “sacred cows,” depth of
involvement by laity, energy levels of leadership and
laypeople
✤ Spiritual discernment using adapted materials from
1001 New Worshipping Communities, led by adaptive
change advisor (over 6-8 weeks)
Who is Jesus? What is Church? What is witness? What is Gospel? What is a disciple? What does it mean to love as God loves? What dream has God given to
you about your church’s future? How do you know if this future is what God desires or what you desire?

63. Covenant
✤ Churches and Adaptive Change Advisors will be
required to review and sign an agreement to fully
engage in process
✤
Without a financial investment, churches more likely to
give up in the middle of the process; the work is hard

64. In Pittsburgh Presbytery
✤ COM will be using some of these tools to assist
churches in pastoral transition and conflict
✤ Will be asking different questions about “vitality” and
“sustainability”
✤
Begin to look at future real estate liabilities and assets;
think through implications of how to best utilize church
property and assets for sake of the Kingdom of God

65. But, we have this treasure…

66. 2 Corinthians 4.1, 7-12
Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in
this ministry, we do not lose heart….But we have this
treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this
extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from
us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not
forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying
in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may
also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are
always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life
of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is
at work in us, but life in you.
We have this treasure in clay jars.
That’s what Paul says. That’s what he tells the church in Corinth. We have this treasure in clay jars.
The people in Corinth were in quandary. They were stuck, endlessly obsessing about the small stuff: class distinctions, differences between Jew and
Gentile, questions about circumcision and proper foods, who could be an insiders and who were the outsiders. What kind of hymnal, what color flowers,
proper doctrine, polity and policy – you know, all the nit-picky stuff that can quickly sink a church.
Paul believes that the church in Corinth has forgotten that our stuff and our rules and our doctrines and our traditions are not the point. They have
forgotten that the church is not the treasure, but a clay jar that holds the treasure. And it’s a good thing because a clay jar is…what? (HIT THE POT WITH A
HAMMER)
Vulnerable. Fragile. A clay jar does not last forever. The treasure inside the jar – the Gospel of Jesus Christ – is the thing that cannot be broken.
The clay jar exists for one purpose and one purpose only-- to carry the richness and fullness of the Gospel. And, as the the prophet Jeremiah tells us, the
clay jar sometimes has to be broken and reshaped. Again and again. Breaking and reshaping the clay jar is the work of the potter. That is God’s
transforming work in us, and with us -- the clay jars of church.
Congregations get caught up in thinking our job is to preserve of the clay jar instead of the treasure. Sometimes we think that the extraordinary power of
the gospel begins with us. But Paul reminds us that the extraordinary power comes only from God.
To borrow a brilliant phrase from Walter Bruggemann, -- it is time for us to get smashed for Jesus. For sake of the Gospel. For the NEXTChurch.

67. The Unglued Church