John Wesley UMC Prayer Team
Braving 29-degree weather with snow on the ground, a prayer team from John Wesley UMC in Cincinnati, Ohio, prays for the residents of the home behind them. The prayer team program resulted from the Rev. R. J. Davis' "visionary project" for "Creating a Culture of Renewal®." (Photo courtesy of R. J. Davis)

Learning to Shift Church Culture Offers Hope, Vision amid Today’s Turmoil

by

United Methodist Insight Exclusive

There’s no denying that these are tough times for churches. The sudden, sharp shock of the coronavirus pandemic accelerated a decades-long decline caused by people’s increasing distrust of organized religion. Combined with social challenges such as racism, poverty, and war, many church leaders have teetered on the edge of despair, wondering if their congregations will survive. Some have left ordained ministry in the past two years.

Yet, a movement of hope and vision has emerged over the past decade that combines some of the best interpersonal relationship skills with a theology affirming that God wants to partner with humans in co-creating redemption for the world. The movement, “Creating a Culture of Renewal®,” [RSP1] has come to be known in recent years as a curriculum through which church leaders, both clergy and lay, learn how to discern God’s vision for their ministries and how to invite church members to move from faithfulness as disciples to leadership as apostles.

At the heart of “Creating a Culture of Renewal®” is a United Methodist clergywoman who has been on a remarkable – she would say “miraculous” – journey toward this significant moment in church history. Rev. Rebekah Simon-Peter has used her experience in pastoral ministry and church consulting to develop the concepts that participants say literally has resurrected their churches and their individual ministries.

On a faith journey

Rev. Simon-Peter speaks of “Creating a Culture of Renewal®” – frequently referred to by the acronym CCR – as a journey from being a follower of Jesus Christ to becoming a partner with Jesus in co-creating a world redeemed by God’s love.

“I really believe, honestly, that the main reason the church is in decline is that churches have stopped dreaming like Jesus,” said Rev. Simon-Peter in a telephone interview. “Maybe we didn’t even know we could.

“Jesus’ disciples were at a first stage in their development when he was with them,” she continued. “Remember, they started out as fishermen, what we’d call blue-collar workers, who developed a whole different set of skills as Jesus led them. But Jesus didn’t carry out his own vision – he commissioned his disciples to do the work. That’s when they became apostles, carrying out his vision. Modern day apostles learn to work with teams, delegate tasks, and empower their people.

“And here we are thousands of years later, still doing the work of apostles.”

Calls for leadership development

Like the apostles of old, Rev. Simon-Peter’s own faith journey has taken her to places she didn’t expect to go. Born into an interfaith family with a Jewish mom and a Catholic dad, she was raised Jewish. She converted to Christianity because, as she told her rabbi, “Jesus came to me in a vision and I need to find out who he is and what this is about.” Eventually she felt called into ordained ministry in The United Methodist Church. She began serving in several pastorates, including becoming the first female, white associate pastor in a predominantly Black congregation.

However, after twelve years of serving in pulpit ministry, she began to experience the kind of burn-out that even conscientious pastors encounter.

“I had the perception that with ‘a little more time, a little more effort,’ the church would grow, but it turned out that no amount of time or energy could force a church to grow without a shift in its mindset,” Rev. Simon-Peter recalled. She entered into extension ministry.

“Right from the beginning of my extension ministry, there were calls for leadership development,” she continued. “I knew I wasn’t the only one who was beating my head against a wall.”

Rev. Simon-Peter said she discovered that what was missing from most leadership development programs was emotional intelligence – that is, a leadership skill that focuses on how people relate to each other as a way to increase people’s discernment of God’s will. Now CCR uses an assessment tool called DiSC®, meaning Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness.

“In the first group I led, I invited eight colleagues to meet on a phone bridge,” she said. “People began to get a sense of why things were going so badly in the church; we all had a sense of walking in the dark.”

Soon she added retreats and workshops to her curriculum, adapting the coursework based on her participants’ feedback. “People let me know, ‘this is really good stuff.’”

A decade later, “Creating a Culture of Renewal®” now has trained 1,000 church leaders who are replicating the movement in much the same way the early church grew – through personal testimonies of the awe-inspiring changes its precepts have wrought.

A three-year course

Today, CCR operates as a three-year course of retreats and distance learning for cohorts of 12 participants at a time. Groups begin in January and September. According to the website, CCR works by:

  • Reaffirming participants’ experience to which God has called them;
  • Recognizing they have God-gifted leadership qualities that are unique to them;
  • Communicating with more clarity and focus—even when there are differing personalities, priorities, and opinions;
  • Uniting their congregations and seeing their God-given vision come to life.

The first year focuses on developing congregational intelligence based on what Rev. Simon-Peter and her colleagues call the Platinum Rule: “Treat people as they want to be treated.”

Graduate Bonnie I. Marden, who serves as CCR senior faculty, described the first year as a time of self-discovery aimed at gaining congregational intelligence.

“We ask: who are these people that I’m leading?” said Ms. Marden, who began her ministry 27 years ago as a parish consultant in the New England Annual Conference. “How do you work well with people who sometimes drive you crazy? Who are we leaving out? Who’s not at the table?

“I tell CCR participants it took me a year and half to really understand, ‘What do you mean, they don’t see the world as I see it?’”

Rev. Simon-Peter calls the first year “learning how to say things in ways that other people can hear what you’re saying and finding the commonality to get people on board.”

CCR’s second year concentrates on “leadership smarts,” Ms. Marden said. “We take additional inventories of self-discovery, looking for our blind spots and unintentional self-sabotage. We clear out self-defeating stories in our heads.”

The third year teaches participants to build alignment for a “visionary” project that creates a sustainable shift in culture, Ms. Marden said. “The third year we build castles in clouds and then build steps to it,” she said. “We experience vision casting that we then can replicate.”

For Ms. Marden, her visionary project turned out to be writing a book on her specialty, “Church Finances for Missional Leaders,” which she described as a 360-degree look at finances and stewardship. She’s now leading workshops using the book and has been engaged to teach her subject as part of the continuing education program at UMC-related Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.

Additional CCR graduates described major shifts in their churches that some termed “miraculous.”

Transforming a congregation through a building

For example, the Rev. Leigh Goodrich entered the CCR course as she made a transition from serving as staff on the church-wide General Commission on Status and Role of Women to pastoral ministry at 200-member Faith United Methodist Church in South Burlington, Vermont. She’s finishing her third year and the change in her congregation has been significant, she told United Methodist Insight.

“When I came to the church, there was a sense that everything was fine and just needed to continue,” Rev. Goodrich. “I learned they were relatively enclosed, not engaged with community except to give money, and they had a significant deficit that continued to increase.

Faith UMC’s primary asset, its building, was also its greatest liability. The church had an unfinished basement and members used some rooms for storing personal possessions such as snow tires.

“Someone was complaining about a lack of storage space, and I said, ‘This is not a warehouse and I’m not a warehouse manager. I’m a pastor and I’m here for people,’ Rev. Goodrich recalled. “People looked at me and said ‘OK, I have to think about that.’

“Now it’s no longer their building but a gift to the community, a place where community members can come and perform their own ministries,” the pastor said. “For example, we don’t have expertise in childcare or taekwondo, but people in the community do, and their contributions keep the building going. Our building use has increased, we’ve added to our square footage and community outreach, and there’s no more deficit.”

CCR sparked a radical reorientation in the way the congregation sees the world, Rev. Goodrich said. “That’s life-giving and terrifying and that’s how we know it’s of God. I think it’s worth the three year investment; there are real skills that people receive.”

Reconnecting with the neighborhood

For the Rev. R. J. Davis, CCR’s emphasis on spiritual renewal has transformed his congregation, John Wesley United Methodist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

At 50 years old, John Wesley UMC is considered a relatively young congregation in the West Ohio Annual Conference, said its pastor, who will complete his third year of CCR in May. The church began through personal relationships in a growth neighborhood of Cincinnati. Today, even though some members have moved away, they still drive back for Sunday worship – a trait that Rev. Davis said contributed to the congregation’s disconnect from its surrounding community.

“I challenged our leadership and congregation to not refer to our neighborhood as Pleasant Run Farms but as ‘John Wesley’s neighborhood,’” said Rev. Davis. “We challenged our folks to begin prayer walking the neighborhood. We have teams of three to five people that walk assigned routes and stop in front of every home and pray for that home and those living in it.

“I instructed our folks walking the neighborhood to watch and listen for the clues that God gives you. If you see kids’ toys in yard there’s probably a family there, so pray for those needs. If you see a high school athlete sign, pray for teenagers.”

At Christmas, as people were emerging from coronavirus restrictions, the church organized a festival of carols in the parking lot of a community pool. Church members lit fire rings and served hot dogs and hot chocolate for all.

“We had 60 members show up for that event and with very little publicity we had 20 neighbors come,” said Rev. Davis. “They loved the experience; we let them know we’re praying for them.”

Despite the seeming success, there has been some resistance to the new outreach.

“There are those who think we shouldn’t expend resources if it doesn’t bring people directly into the church,” Rev. Davis said. “I tell them, ‘People don’t care what we know until they know we care.’ There’s nothing in it for us other than being faithful to what God has called us to do. If people come to church, that’s wonderful. Maybe we won’t bring them into the church, but we’ll bring them into the Kingdom, and that’s more important.”

The pastor said he recommends “Creating a Culture of Renewal®” to anybody seeking to energize their ministry or inspire a congregation.

“At the heart of all of this is God’s desire to partner in redemptive work,” he said. “Our people feel like they are partnering with God,”.

Helping youngsters thrive

In Oklahoma, another Rev. Davis – not related to his Ohio counterpart – has inspired his semi-rural congregation to step out in a major ministry to children in the foster care system.

The Rev. Shannon Davis, who also has joined the CCR faculty, serves as pastor of 600-member First United Methodist Church in Woodward, a 12,000-resident community in northwest Oklahoma that he describes as a “hub.”

“It’s at least an hour to the next Wal-Mart,” the pastor noted.

While First-Woodward pursues the overall United Methodist mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, its local vision is for youths and children to thrive in northwest Oklahoma. In 2021, the church raised $15,000 to give to Care Portal to fill local youngsters’ needs that will keep them in their own homes.

“If their family needed a refrigerator, we bought them a refrigerator,” said Rev. Davis. “We’ve bought beds, diapers, even gas cards for working teens who are supporting their families.”

Rev. Davis said he learned through the annual conference that Circle of Care® intended to expand into northwest Oklahoma as part of its plan to build eight large sibling group homes across the state. That news led the First-Woodward congregation to a monumental decision: designating some of its 20 acres of property for the construction of two foster care homes.

“It’s hard to find foster homes for multiple siblings,” Rev. Davis said.

First-Woodward raised half of the $400,000 needed to begin construction and now there are two large homes on the property.

“Half of the money came from our church, but then all these other groups in town got involved,” said Rev. Davis. “Once we got people excited; it started snowballing. I credit CCR for helping us with that project.”

Their experience has First-Woodward looking to expand its children’s and youth ministries, the pastor added. “Our current campus sits across from the high school, so we have after-school programs. We’re thinking of getting a food truck to hold vacation Bible school in lower-income communities, or possibly helping other communities and churches jump-start their ministries.”

“We’re finding things that align with helping youth and children thrive,” he said.

For the Rev. Simon-Peter, the testimonials of CCR graduates fulfill her vision for leadership development – empowering today’s apostles to pursue “Jesus-sized” dreams, to become agents of transformation for their communities.

Outer success from inner divinity

“Part of what Jesus models is both humanity and inner divinity – that divine spark that’s in all of us,” she said. “That’s what we offer in CCR: challenging folks and holding them to account. We have a high level of accountability; I’m not a biblical literalist, but I believe in miracles. Miracles point to the shift in consciousness where we understand ourselves as one with God.”

Rev. Simon-Peter’s latest book, “Forging a New Path: Moving the Church Forward in a Post-Pandemic World” (Market Square Publishing) draws a parallel between the social changes wrought by the coronavirus pandemic with the changes wrought in the 14th century by the bubonic plague, also known the “Black Death.”

“The spiritual-but-not-religious movement isn’t new; it happened during the Black Death when so many people died,” said the author. “People thought the clergy, the church, would be protected, but they weren’t.

“Then, because the church wasn’t available to comfort and guide people, people started their own lay-led movements; spirituality took on its own form. The Reformation grew out of that. We’re poised for the next Reformation.

Churches ask, “When do things go back to normal? They don’t; it’s a new normal, not just in belief, but in experience. How do we do more with less? How do we get people back to church? How do you invite people back to gathering?”

Like CCR, “Forging a New Path” won’t offer quick fixes. It asks questions about “what needs to happen for the church to be pandemic proof, polarization proof, to be grounded,” said Rev. Simon-Peter.

In addition to the book, “Creating a Culture of Renewal®” will host two webinars, “Let Your Let Shine,” to highlight churches’ modern-day miracles that have emerged from the movement. Sessions are scheduled for April 4 and June 6 – all from 5:00-6:00pm Mountain Time (7:00-8:00pm ET).

“If the world is going to make the shift it needs to make, it’s not about doing more or simply choosing the right side,” Rev. Simon-Peter said. “I don’t believe church divides are necessary for healthy churches. I’m passionate about moving beyond polarization, creating visions for people to buy into and move forward.”

Given the testimonies of those who’ve been through the program, “Creating a Culture of Renewal®” appears to provide leaders and churches with the tools to move through our current stressful circumstances into a much brighter future.

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011. This content may not be reproduced without written permission from Insight. Email the Editor for permission.