| c. 2007 Religion News Service I call our Church Wellness Project a "best practices guide to nurturing a healthy faith community." The concept of "best practices" is widely accepted in many fields, but often is resisted in churches. Briefly, the concept means that some methods and processes are better -- more effective, more productive, more likely to achieve desired ends -- than others. In medicine, for example, complicated surgical procedures tend to follow widely accepted best practices. In sales, best practices include prompt response to inquiries, consistent follow-through on commitments, and tracking interactions with prospects and customers.
I call our Church Wellness Project a "best practices guide to nurturing a healthy faith community." The concept of "best practices" is widely accepted in many fields, but often is resisted in churches. Briefly, the concept means that some methods and processes are better -- more effective, more productive, more likely to achieve desired ends -- than others. In medicine, for example, complicated surgical procedures tend to follow widely accepted best practices. In sales, best practices include prompt response to inquiries, consistent follow-through on commitments, and tracking interactions with prospects and customers. The same is true in congregational life. To attain health, a congregation needs to adopt the best possible practices for doing its basic work. With some allowance for context, it is possible to identify best practices for such basic tasks as greeting visitors, handling church communications, training leaders, and serving young adults. If best practices are consistently employed in the Key Factors affecting congregational health, the congregation will tend to be healthy and to function effectively. Adopting best practices isn't easy or automatic. For reasons that are deep in our history, many churches tend to resist best practices. They cling to inherited ways even when those methods fail to work. For example, I know one congregation that insists on using signup sheets in the lobby for mission workers, even though no one signs up. They send out a printed monthly newsletter, even though few read it, and then they are surprised when people seem uninformed. They extend a verbal greeting to visitors during worship but then ignore them after the service, asking instead that the visitor fill out an information form. A best practices approach would replace each of those methods. If a ministry matters, recruit people personally. If information matters, get it out in the most effective way, which is likely to be e-mail for all but a handful. If you want visitors to feel welcomed, greet them personally. In the Church Wellness Project, our premise is that many congregations want health and effectiveness, and are willing to let go of practices that aren't optimal. Further, we think many congregations are ready to measure their efforts and to be guided by outcomes, as opposed to good intentions. We'll address outcomes next week. Meantime, please visit www.churchwellness.com , and write me at tom@churchwellness.com . Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant, and leader of workshops. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.
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