Continuity in Community Economic Development

Factor #6. Continuity in Community

Karl Evans

(After you read this article, you may wish to score your own community and congregation on their work in the area of Continuity.)

Community Reality = _____

Congregational Reality = _____

Congregational Mission = _____

Isaiah 65:17-22
For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind . . .
No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
For one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

Statement of Reality
The community structures that work stay in place long enough to be productive. Gee, how difficult can that be? But you might be surprised.

People want and need to see the results of their labors. If the community is changing groups, enough continuity must be in place to see that positive values and patterns live on. Clergy and lay leadership are left in place long enough to establish programs, see results and celebrate the community efforts.

The nation Israel has been a study in continuity (and lack of continuity!) for around three or four thousand years. When Abraham left the area we know as Iraq with his people, they left continuity behind. No one knows how long their ancestors had lived in that area. They settled in the area with established homes, institutions, businesses and culture. By leaving the area, they left all their community support behind. Poverty, social disruption, war, hunger and early death were likely.

However, Israel took with them the covenant Abraham had made with Yahweh. This was the basic continuity they needed to eventually build a new society. The whole of the Scriptures is the tension between continuity with the past and hopeful vision of the future. This struggle is lived out in the presence of the Lord. That presence especially as known in the Covenant. Was their continuity. Without that, however, all apparently would have been lost.

Mora County, New Mexico, has been a place of refuge and restart for hundreds of years. Family after family of Americans come into the area. They arrive from Alaska, Europe, Africa or eastern North America. They have often escaped disaster from places across the nation. Usually they eventually left Mora to take over some better piece of land away from Mora County. Then a new nation settled in Mora to replace them. The refugees always had little in the way of cooking ability, culture or hope. They built everything from scratch.

In Mora County the young nations had time to put things together for themselves. They seemed to understand they were just passing through, but needed to have a time to build a community. The North American refugees developed their own culture and government around Mora. They rebuilt their religion to deal with the new realities of life in this inhospitable area.

The toughest part of this scenario was that each group had to start over. Every group gave up everything to come in.

A sure sign of a community in trouble is the transient nature of professional service in the area. Clergy, school leadership, attorneys, bank officers and physicians stay only a short time before moving on. Sometimes, as usually in the case of clergy and school administrators, the community forces them to leave. For others, the decision is one’s own, often excused by a better opportunity elsewhere, etc.

A major failing of the church is the frequency of pastoral change. In the small congregation, the pastor may initiate many good programs. The pastor carries them out almost individually, then moves on. This leaves the congregation as weak as the day the pastor arrived. One can usually spot the weakest congregations in any area quickly. Count the number of its pastors over the past twenty years.

My wife and I have made a lifelong pattern of accepting the task of pastor leadership in troubled congregations. This has not been an easy pattern for service, but it has been educational.

One principle has become clear. If a congregation has problems holding on to pastoral leadership, the congregation is in trouble. The outer data is only the symptom of the reality of that congregation. Infighting within the congregation or the community may spell disaster for continuity. A self-important controlling group within the congregation may fight for control. A frequent turnover of pulpit committee leadership may be a symptom. Any problem, if carried throughout the congregation, can be destructive to the congregation, and thus to the life of the community. Anyway, frequent pastoral change is usually a prime symptom of internal trouble.

Questions for Evaluation:
√ Does our community have a core of professional leadership that has remained stable for many years?

√ Does the core change only with honest career moves or personal needs?

√ Do we have patterns of clergy leaving after a few months or a year or two?

√ Do we have difficulty bringing in and keeping physicians, nurses, dentists,
attorneys and school administrators and top teachers?

Examples:

☹ (Bad Example – the pastor left almost immediately) One congregation turned the ‘Pastor’s Study” over to the church secretary because she needed to use the room to work up the Sunday Worship Bulletin. They took the key to the room away from the pastor. The pulpit committee said he could work from home or from the church library. She needed the study for one hour per week because a computer was there. She needed to do the worship bulletin.

☺ In one congregation I visited in Kansas (I forget which one) I stumbled across a special service. The congregation invited the leadership of the community to come to the church for a special service. The point of the service was to thank God for the gift of these persons. All the sacred time was spent telling the god what these and others had done in the community. Of course, these leaders included many of that congregation.

What are your own brainstorm and creative thoughts to increase community continuity?

1. What evidence have you found to support the rating you have given your own community?


2. What evidence have you found to support the rating you have given your community?


3. What programs might work in your church and community?


4. What will be your work in this process?


5. How will you reveal these thoughts to your church and community?