Ministry Design

Do you ever have a word pop into your head, be pretty sure you know what it means (but lack confidence), and think you might have a use for it? That happened to me the other day, and the word was aphorism. I looked it up, and confirmed my feeling that I knew what it means. Google defines it as “a pithy observation that contains a general truth.” and that states it better than I could.

The use I had for the word was to label a couple of pithy facts about ministry design that had been floating through my cranium for a long time. Although I had only two aphorisms in mind (and still do), I am sure there will be more.  I’m thinking a short list of these epigrammatic (ahem!) statements could go a long way toward creating a system of ideas that would be helpful to guide all kinds of ministry design approaches.   And this is the primary topic of my blog.

My two aphorisms are these:

• Every part of a ministry is a ministry.
• All design is redesign.

Let’s look at these statements more closely, one in this post, and the other in the next.  Then we’ll add posts as we add aphorisms.

Ministries involve people.  I believe it is commonly understood that if I am helping to deliver a ministry, I am ministering.  It doesn’t matter if I am helping as a part of a large ministry or if I deliver it all by myself, I am still ministering.  It follows, then, that whatever I do of this sort can be, and virtually always is, called a ministry, my ministry.  My ministry is often part of a larger ministry, a component of it.  Stated differently, the larger ministry has parts.  To illustrate: if I sing in a church choir, my ministry is to be part of the (larger) choir ministry.

Without consciously thinking much about it, we say the same thing about ministries in general.  For example, “our ministry to preschoolers is a part of our children’s ministry.”  In other words, the preschool ministry is a component of the children’s ministry.  More than that, we can extend this further.  E.g., “our children’s ministry is a component of our family ministries;” or, “our church’s ministries include family ministries.”

We also can employ this understanding in the other direction.  A preschool ministry has parts, whether they are age groupings or singing and story-telling times.  A choir member’s ministry includes parts such as rehearsal and worship time or worship services and concerts at rest homes.

We might say that ministries are nested like the Russian matryoshka dolls, and this is the technical term as well.

Our aphorism merely states nesting in a general way: every part of a ministry is a ministry.  This is a very important fact, because it says we can build up complex ministries from simpler ministries.  Conversely, it is entirely appropriate to conquer complex ministries by dividing them into parts, and these parts also ministries.

Teams, Stages, Personas, Surrogates

Ok.  From the previous blog posts,

• we have a team;
• we have its goals (or features that must be included in the ministry we’re going to design, such as faith stages); and
• we have identified personas (hypothetical people who together cover the range of characteristics that we expect of those who will experience our ministry).

That leaves us one more detail to discuss to answer the question posed by the title of this post; namely, who should design?

With only one twist, this discussion is easy: we look for people who can represent each of the personas we’ve decided to include.

The twist, though, is this: Ideally, the people we put on a design team would be people who will actually experience the ministry, who anticipate it.  We need a team of people who together have the range of characteristics we assigned to the various personas.

But, to find that group of people would be almost impossible.  That’s why we created personas, hypothetical people, in the first place.  So, we, instead of looking for real people, we look for people whose demographics (including faith stages) approximate somewhat each persona, people who are close enough to the persona that we can expect them to think like that persona would think.

By this we have introduced the use of surrogates.  A surrogate is someone who is put in the place of someone else.  In general, we do not want to use surrogates.  People with actual experience and who will actually experience the future ministry are by far the best people to provide input to the ministry design.  There is ample evidence that surrogates’ inputs miss the mark more often than any design team would like.  Their misses often require revised inputs and redesign.  But it is often not possible to find people with this experience, so most of the time in ministry design we must use surrogates.

We might call people like those we just described, those who approximate personas, half-surrogates.  But there will inevitably be situations in which the approximation is slight, and we will simply have to bite the bullet and choose full-surrogates.  The key question here, of course, is simply, “Can you think like the persona whose role you will play?”

So, if we have a team, essential design elements, personas, and wisely chosen surrogates, we know how to choose those who will design.  We have answered the question we set out to address.s

Teams, Stages, Personas, Surrogates

In the two previous blog posts, we recognized that for a discipleship ministry redesign: (1) we need to have a team of people to do the design and (2) at least some of these people need to represent the faith stages that Pastor Tim has suggested.  This leads to the obvious questions, How can we form a team that represents faith stages and Who or what else should be represented?

The second of these questions suggests the first in the sense that it implies that many points of view must be represented on a design team.  Spiritual maturity (or faith stages) is clearly one of these.  In broader terms, the spiritual goal of the ministry undergoing design must be represented.  But there are other things to be represented.  One is the potentially wide demographic range of those for whom the ministry is intended.  These include age, cultural background, educational level, affluence, and geography.  Another would be the insights and capabilities of those who will implement and deliver the ministry (Is it feasible?  Is someone with the requisite skills available?)  And there will be still others.

One these “still others” is those who will facilitate the design process itself. However, because these are not part of the issue of demographic breadth, we won’t discuss them now, but rather in a later blog post.

The challenge with a broad list of points of view is to form a reasonably-sized design team that represents them all.  My friend Ella faced a similar challenge when our church asked her to lead a team to study the way the church communicates with its constituency.   That constituency involves the same demographic variety we have just discussed.  I liked her team’s solution.  They created categories of people by combining reasonable but otherwise random characteristics that covered most, but not all, important demographics.

They called them personas.  Over the past century the term persona has grown from describing the character an actor represents in a play to being a fictional surrogate for persons who have similar characteristics, and that’s how Ella’s team used the term.

There is an obvious problem with personas.  It is that any workable number of them will not represent all the demographics of a targeted ministry’s audience.  However, this is not as big a problem as it appears.  It’s a statistical thing.  A complete design has many parts, but there is not a separate part for each person.  Each part serves several people’s characteristics.  Therefore, if a complete design satisfies the needs of a rich set of personas, it will satisfy more than the characteristics embedded in those personas. It may not cover them all, but many of the ones that are not covered are likely not to exist. And if they do, we can redesign later.

Tim and I realize we need a team.  We will use Ella’s team’s personas, modified to include faith stages.  We still face the challenge of picking people to represent each persona, and we’ll want to minimize the use of surrogates.  But that’s the topic of my next blog post.

 

Teams, Stages, Personas, Surrogates

As I continue the story of my discussion with Pastor Tim from my previous post, I observe that we now have established an important element that must pervade our rethinking of our church’s discipleship ministry; namely, faith stages.  The question is, what’s a good way to assure this?  There probably are plenty of answers to this question, but the one we both liked was this: if we want the design to include certain features, we’d better gather a team of people to help us who can represent and advocate those features.  In other words, a good ministry design activity, regardless of its organizational setting, can be served well by involving a team of people, specifically, a team of the right people.  I contend that this is not only a good way to proceed; it is the best way to proceed.

So, how should we choose that team?  Who should be on it?  Depending on the organization’s polity, it might consist of just pastors or a combination of pastors and lay people.  To Tim a good part of the answer is to get people of a wide variety of life stages to be involved in the design.  This way the ministry has a better chance of reflecting the whole spectrum of people for whom it is intended.

I have no argument with Tim.  I agree — not from a theological point of view (though I share it), but from the perspective of good methodology.  Every ministry, no matter how narrow its scope, depends on consideration of – input from – the full spectrum of the people to whom it is intended to minister.  How can designers from a narrow part of that spectrum think viscerally about parts they have never experienced?

So, a good ministry design process will be performed by a team that includes at least people who represent those who will benefit from the ministry.  This is no surprise. Almost all design processes for anything beyond the simplest of designs, ministry or otherwise, are performed by design teams with interested participants.

The question now, though, is, how do we pick the people to put on the team?  I see a two-step process.  First, to describe the kind of people we need on the team; that is, what they will represent.  And, second, to pick them carefully.  We’ll consider these steps in the next two blog posts.

You can race me to the answers by responding to this post by clicking on “Leave a Comment.”

Teams, Stages, Personas, and Surrogates

The other day I was meeting with Tim, our Associate Pastor of Adult Ministries, discussing how to rethink our church’s discipleship ministry and who should help us. The discussion rather quickly centered on four topics that at first seemed distinct and then became more and more entwined. These topics were (1) faith stages, (2) design teams, (3) personas, and (4) surrogates. Together these topics say a lot about who we should engage in ministry design efforts.
It seems valuable to explore each of these topics as we think of ways to figure out who should help us create or redesign a ministry. So, In my next few blog posts I’ll describe how Tim’s and my conversation progressed. (And, Tim, I hope you’ll allow me a bit of artistic license here.)

As we talked, I wanted Tim to begin. He approached the topic theologically. (Surprised?) He is very familiar with the works of theologians who point out that in any church there are people at a wide variety of faith stages; that is, stages of spiritual development. He knows that a good program of church ministries will engage with people in all of these stages.
From his training and experience Tim also has a pretty good idea of what it takes to satisfy these needs. In other words, although wanting to minister to all stages is to state a need functionally, it’s clear that not very far behind this functional statement are, in his mind, some specific things he’d like to see in the outcome of the design process, in its product. In other words, in his mind the design that results from any ministry design process has to include things of which he has a pretty good idea right now. Although our discussion didn’t get that far, I know from other encounters that they are there.
So, we’ve got to find a way to work faith stages into the design. The question is, how do we do that? (Hint: think of our other topics.) I’d be happy to hear your ideas. You can share them by clicking on “Leave a Comment” under the date of this post.

I’m a bit sorry now that I didn’t capitalize the word “from” in my subtitle.  While I’ve already said that

• the book is about ministries
• we want those ministries to change lives
• stories can form the basis for development of a ministry,

there is no doubt that most of the book is devoted to describing how a design can be derived from a story.  Did you catch the from?

Stories about someone experiencing a ministry are packed full of information about the ministry.  And, if we have a bunch of these stories, they not only provide more information, but also round out our understanding of the content of the ministry due to their variety of experiences.  Stories can tell us how the person at least:

• Became acquainted with the ministry
• Engaged with the ministry
• Found his or her way through the ministry
• Experienced each part of the ministry
• Evaluated or felt about the ministry
• Moved on to some other ministry

From in the subtitle affirms that, if we have the stories, we can extract from them the ministry design they imply.  Yes, the stories will suggest differences in design, and the team that is creating the ministry will have to choose between the stories’ alternatives.  However, a good extraction process will highlight the alternatives and make selection easier.

And how can we extract a design?  Well, my book gives the details, but the gist is this.  Ministries always have parts; they have ingredients that make them up.  We already observed this when we said people find their way through a ministry and experience each part.  From the stories we can not only name the parts, but also we can say something about them.  From the paths through the ministries we can find the relationships between the parts of the ministry.  Together, these allow us to create a complete picture of our ministry, and, my friends, that is a ministry design.  It comes from the stories.

As I continue to discuss what each word in the subtitle of my book, Tell Me A Story: Creating Life-Changing Ministries from Stories, it’s now time to discuss stories.

People love stories.  It doesn’t matter if they are true or made up.  It doesn’t matter if they are short or shaggy-dog.  It doesn’t matter if they are entertaining or thought-provoking, suspenseful or upbeat, happy or sad, significant or insignificant, retrospective or prospective, to the point or have no point at all.  A story captures our attention.

Good public speakers know the power of stories to drive home their points.  Pastors, in particular, know that a good story will make their sermons convincingly applicable or bring the congregation’s attention back from the afternoon’s ball game.  The greatest teacher of all, Jesus, used stories all the time.  In fact, in many settings He used only stories and left it to His audience to draw out the meaning.  And, in a broader sense, God gave us His Word, the Bible, in the form of a story of, first, His creation and, then, of His continued efforts to rescue a fallen human world.

It is this power of stories that prompted me to write Tell Me A Story as the story of a team of people who gather to design an evangelistic ministry.

But Tell Me A Story also treats stories in a different way. In the book a story is the description of what someone for whom a ministry is being designed experiences as they participate in the ministry.  It is hypothetical, but it is also aspirational.  If the ministry it describes were to exist (and it is our intent that it does), then the story tells how it would look, feel, and operate from the perspective of one for whom it is intended.

Why start with a story?  Because stories are very familiar.  Almost anyone can write about how people walk their way through a ministry – even one that does not yet exist, one that is present only in the writer’s imagination.  And pastors, in particular, should be able to do this almost effortlessly.

But more importantly, a simple story of this sort packs a lot of information about a ministry into a small space.  Tell Me A Story not only tells how to write a story like this, but also how to mine the story for the information it contains and turn that information into a functioning, life-changing ministry.  The story starts the process and provides almost all of its content.

The title and subtitle of my book, Tell Me A Story: Creating Life-Changing Ministries from Stories, are the product of a joint venture between my friends, Mathew and Jim, and me.  Mathew came up with the title all on his own.  I started the subtitle and we all worked it over until we settled on the current version, but without Life-Changing.  My editor, Dr. Larry Kefauver, liked it, and we were all set.  Then one day Jim cornered me and said (and I paraphrase), “Bill, your subtitle is lacking something.  Ministries are conducted to impact people, to change lives.  That’s why someone would want to buy and read your book.  There’s nothing in your title to indicate that.”  After several iterations, we settled on adding Life-Changing.

And changing lives, of course, is what ministries are all about.  As I said in my previous blog post about the word Ministries, “a ministry is an activity one person or group of people does for [others] … for God Himself, [for] those who are part of the Kingdom of Christ-followers, and [for] individuals of all kinds.”  Now, it’s unlikely that our ministries change God’s life, but that’s not their intent.  They are intended to acknowledge our allegiance to Him and to please Him.  But for the rest, the idea is to help them to grow toward “completeness in Christ” (Col. 1:28-29).  And, again of course, every ministry we do, for any of the persons we have named, changes our life, too.  Serving our Lord is part of our path to completeness.

So, my book, and this blog too, are ultimately intended, not to create great ministries, but rather to create ministries that have great impact on the lives of those they lovingly serve.  I know that you, my reader, want to have impact on lives as well.  So, sure, please read my book, but then join me by engaging in this blog, this forum, so that we can be “iron that sharpens iron” for each other as we strive to serve God as co-laboring ministry designers.

This is the third post in my series on the words of the subtitle of my book, Tell Me A Story: Creating Life-Changing Ministries from Stories.  We are not taking the words in order, and today I look at the first word, creating.  Creating indicates action.  This is the verb of the subtitle.  It indicates what the reader can do once he or she has digested the book.

Definition.  Creating means bringing something into existence that did not exist before, taking something from a vague concept or goal to the point where it can be used.  For a ministry this involves taking a need or the germ of a ministry idea to the point where the ministry begins to impact people.

Genesis.  Let’s digress briefly to acknowledge that our Triune God is the original creator and became the source of any creativity we humans have when He created us in His image.  PTL.

Implications.  Because create is a verb, it requires a subject.  The subject of the verb create is almost always a creator, someone or some group that does the creating.  The subtitle of my book does not identify the creator, but both the main title, Tell Me A Story, and the subtitle imply an actor; namely, you, who read my book or this blog and then go out and help create or improve a ministry.

The verb create also requires an object, the thing that is created.  For our use, this something is a ministry.

Disambiguation.  (Sorry.  I borrowed and distorted this word a bit from Wikipedia.) My subtitle uses the word creating.  Inside the book and in this blog I rarely use this word unless I need a synonym either for clarity or to avoid using the same word twice in a sentence.  More often in the book I use “developing” or “designing.”

I use the words creating and developing as synonyms.  There are probably nuances of connotation between them, but I don’t need that fussiness.

Design is not a synonym.  It refers to only a part of creating or developing, the part that determines how the created item will look, feel or operate.  It does not include the action needed to turn that information into something usable, which create and develop entail.

On the other hand, if design is done comprehensively, the design will include not only a complete pattern for the created item, but also a complete plan for the work needed to turn the design into its usable form.  So, designing is the core of creating or developing.  It is the hard part.  My book and this blog adopt this comprehensive view of design.

Extension.  I am interested not only in creating ministries but in improving ministries that already exist.  Improving involves redesign.  But, for modern design methods, all design is redesign.  No design really begins from whole cloth.  This may not be obvious at first, but the explanation needs more discussion, and that discussion needs to be the subject of a future blog post.

As noted in my last post, for my next few posts (5 to be exact) I want to unpack — that is, elaborate on — each of the words in the subtitle of my book, Tell Me A Story: Creating Life-Changing Ministries from Stories.  By the time we’re done, I will have explained what the book is all about, why I wrote it, and synopsized its approach to the topic.  To accomplish this, it seems better that I take the words of the subtitle out of order, so I will begin with the subject of the book, that is, ministries.  That’s what it’s all about.

Definition.  At its core a ministry is an activity one person or group of people does for another person or group of people.  In the U.S. the term ministry is usually applied to the activities of a religious organization.  In other English-speaking countries, such as the U.K., it also applied to the activities (or categories of activities) of governmental organizations.  Elsewhere, the same kind of activity is usually called a program or a process or something similar.  The book focuses on the usual U.S. use of the term ministry and specifically on its use by Christian organizations.  And, while the book inevitably needs to mention those who carry out a ministry, its real focus is on what the ministry does.

Nature.  Ministries are altruistic.  They are done for what we have just termed “others.”  Specifically, these others include God Himself, those who are part of His Kingdom — that is, the Kingdom of Christ-followers, and individuals of all kinds.  For God, what is done is some kind of act of worship, devotion, or obedience.  What is done for the other “others” is intended in some way or another to help them grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ.  That’s about it: to do something for God, for His Kingdom, or for someone else with Christian purpose is a Christian ministry.

Structure.  Ministry is a noun.  Actions are verbs; they are things people do.  Ministries are nouns because they are titles, the names a collection of activities.   Tell Me A Story makes significant use of the fact that a ministry is a noun.  Perhaps the most important of these is to note that, almost by their definition, ministries satisfy an important truism.  This truism, or axiom, is best stated by two assertions:

• All ministries are made up of other, smaller ministries
• All ministries are a part of one (or more) larger, more comprehensive ministry

Why is this important?  Well, from a spiritual point of view, it points out that even the smallest action of a Christian for someone else is a ministry.  From a ministry design point of view, it lets us simplify the way we look at a ministry by clustering simpler ministries and recognizing that this cluster is also a ministry.  Likewise, we could subdivide a ministry – break it into smaller parts – in order to understand it better.

The book’s focus.  And why is this structure important to the book?  The answer is that the focus of the book is not primarily on smaller ministries, but on how to design ministries that become complex because their structure needs to be complex.  They need lots of parts.

Next Post:  “Creating”