No More Church Isolation
by Rev. Mark Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader
We can do this now. We can form communities of practice, churches learning and pursuing transformation with ongoing collaborative support.
Until now, even though churches may be connected through their denomination, they largely felt like they had to go it alone, making their way in this world. But no longer. One really healthy and helpful innovative change in the current context is the opportunity to partner with other churches, collaboratively moving toward adaptive transformation.
Here's what we mean – Churches are now forming communities whose leadership is pursuing a common objective. These churches form a Community of Practice with others sharing a common aspiration.
At Pinnacle, we have been gathering and facilitating Communities of Practice now for about ten years. Typically these are groups of churches whose leadership (pastor, ministry, program staff, and lay leadership teams):
Learn together – Often they are using one of our books, content from one of our initiatives, or taking in a live Seminar.
Engage with other congregations in the COP – Often they gather once a month online with others in the COP, sharing stories of wins, fails, insights, obstacles, and suggestions. This cross-pollination with other churches pursuing the same goal powerfully encourages, inspires, and applies a subtle accountability toward missional progress.
Use Personalized Coaching – Typically a coach from the Pinnacle Team works with the leadership of each church, personalizing the learning and implementing the cross pollination from the other activities.
One of the best aspects of these COPs is how they bridge the insight gap between clergy, staff persons, and lay leaders. Rather than clergy and staff only engaging a developmental experience, then trying to translate everything to their lay leadership, all are involved. In the COP, collaborative learning and inspiration happens. This means the entire leadership of a church is hearing the same content, being inspired by the same experience, collaboratively learning. This type of experience facilitates forward movement. When lay leaders are brought into this kind of experience, they are interested in serving on the lay leadership team, rather than reluctant.
Here are some of the ways COPs are forming:
Denominationally gathered – I taught a class that turned into a COP with a denominational group last winter and spring. Since they were all from the same denomination, they instantly understood each other, sharing what was working, or not working, in their contexts. The collaborative learning was so encouraging.
Grant funded – Central Seminary in Kansas City received a Lilly Grant in 2020, with Pinnacle providing the programming. Each year since, we’ve gathered a COP with churches from around the country. These churches are from various denominations and locations, yet are united around our Reshaping Church Transformation Initiative. Because of the Lilly Endowment’s generous support, the cost for participation is minimal. A new grant funded Reshaping Church COP will begin in 2024. To explore participation, https://www.cbts.edu/central-seminary-lifelong-learning/reshaping-church/
Developmental Stage COPs – This winter we are doing a retreat with 12-15 churches from a denomination who are in similar stages of development, using Size Transition Theory and Practice to help them make changes and move ahead. The commonality of similar type of churches is what draws them together, plus guides their collaborative partnering after the initial training, moving into a COP.
Transformation Focus – We’ve done COPs around our Transforming Church Initiatives: Making The Shift, Farming Church, ReShape. These are groups of churches who engage one of these processes, pursuing transformation in a guided way. We tend to launch these when groups of churches organically rise up and are ready.
No longer must churches flounder on their own, enduring the isolation, feeling cut off from others who share similar dynamics. Now churches can be part of a COP, part of a village of churches so to speak, who are pursuing common aspirations. Though plenty of clergy and church staffs are part of groups, now their lay leaders and teams can do the same.
Please get in touch to explore an existing COP for your church, or to explore starting a new COP for your church. We are glad to connect you with other churches who’ve experienced a COP so that you can hear directly from them. We are very hopeful this new way of being in relationship as churches will continue to gain momentum, emerging as a significant way to learn and grow as churches in this twenty-first century context. Start with our website: https://www.pinnlead.com/