What I saw was the importance of taking risks.
Three dozen child choristers took the risk of singing from the chancel steps. Three older girls took the risk of singing solos. One succumbed to stage fright, but that experience will teach her more than a dozen easy successes.
The pastor preached from the heart, taking the risk of sharing his passion. Adult choir and worship leader risked a merging of Jewish chant and a prayer accentuating the rich nature of God.
As a finale, a musician opened wide the congregation’s stunning pipe organ for a complicated fugue by Liszt.
To my mind, the service touched deeply because of these risks. I heard excellence, too, but it was the passion, the daring that made spirits soar.
Congregations need to take more risks — the risk of growth, for one thing, and the risk of change. The risk of welcoming diversity and allowing younger members into leadership. The risk of not controlling the pastor and encouraging the pastor to speak from the heart and to lead from a vision.
Not everything will work. Risk opens the door to failure. But failure is a better teacher than success.
In each of the Seven Key Factors for nurturing congregational health, risk-taking is critical:
• Membership Development: the risk of allowing new life to claim a place in the body.
• Leadership Development: the risk of working as an intentional team and not as partisans.
• Communications Strategy: the risk of embracing new technologies
• Spiritual Development: the risk of encouraging personal spirituality, as well as corporate
• Young Adult Ministry: the risk of embracing a constituency whose experiences and expectations are quite different
• Church: the risk of hearing the questions people actually are asking
• Metrics: the risk of knowing the results
Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant, and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the publisher of On a Journey, and the founder of the Church Wellness Project www.churchwellness.com.
