Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. I'm Jeremy. I'm Matt. You've probably never heard of a grace analysis. This tool, developed by Ken Priddy, provides a structure that you can use to create a clearer picture of the most important areas in your church. To address More than just identifying pain points. The grace analysis looks at the whole life of your church and gives you an intentional way to move forward towards growth. Today, matt's going to break down this idea for us and describe how Flourish leverages this type of analysis to support your church. Welcome back to the Church Renewal Podcast. I am Jeremy Seferati and I am being joined today again by Mr Matt Bolling. Welcome, matt, good to be with you. Glad that you're here. I'm glad that you're here as well. Listener, today we're talking about the grace analysis. Matt, please tell me about the grace analysis. What is it? What's it used for?

Speaker 2: 0:49

Yeah. So this is another tool that I learned from Ken Priddy, and it was probably the earliest exposure that I had to thinking about the emotional system of a church. And so church is an emotional system, because the collection of people who themselves have emotions, and so the collection of them is an emotional system. And there's a lot of emotions that can be present in a congregation in a time of transition that can be the result of just simply the loss of the previous pastor, so say, a long-term pastor. I was talking with the church here recently that has a 30-year pastor who's going to retire next year and they're thinking about what they're going to do. There's a lot there in the emotional system of the church, even from a beloved 30-year pastor who is going out on a high note. There's still a lot there in the emotional system. Much less if there had been some of those more severe circumstances a three or four or five right where there had been a split or an infidelity or a death or the leadership's fractured or the staff's broken or whatever, and so there can be a lot in the emotional system. So grace is an acronym, so let me give you what the acronym stands for and then we'll go through each one. So the G stands for grief, the R for reconciliation, the A alarm. The r for reconciliation, the a alarm, the c for celebration and the e excitement. Okay, and again, uh, I will uh give my thanks to ken pretty for introducing me to this. This is his tool that that I uh enjoy and use. All right. So the g is grief, um, so there can be grief in a congregation for a lot of different reasons, at least the loss of the previous pastor, and that should be expressed rightly.

Speaker 2: 2:29

Mourning we read through in Psalms of Lament is appropriate. It's unusual for Americans. They can feel that hurt, but sometimes they express that, sometimes in anger or withdrawal, and elders are wise to realize that people mourn in different ways and express it in different ways. But mourning is appropriate and necessary for moving forward and a transitional pastor can help a church mourn correctly.

Speaker 2: 2:54

I'm reminded of a story of a church that we're working with right now. It happens to be a revitalization. I'm coaching the pastor and worked with them for several years and in a strategic planning process that we did with them this year we were working, asking the spirit to help us understand what are the particular issues that were needed for this church church to move forward. They discovered in that process that the first thing they needed to do was to mourn rightly and sometimes you just uncover that this pastor's been in the seat for almost two years. But it's one of the things that they need to work on and kind of put some things to bed before they can go forward. So if that's needed in a transitional period, then we want to pay attention to that.

Speaker 1: 3:33

So that's the G in phrase Before you move on to reconciliation is this is delivery of this analysis in like a structured interview, or how's it gone through?

Speaker 2: 3:45

It's more a pickup. It's more. This is part of our heuristic right, and so this is part of what our transitional pastors are going into the scenario with. It's what our church health assessment will pick up on. Okay, got it, and so we'll highlight something like this as if it's a particular pain point in a church. It'll show up in the church health assessment recommendations or as a pain point and then recommendations around it.

Speaker 1: 4:05

Do you have like a grace analysis section where you lay these things out as you're?

Speaker 2: 4:09

Not necessarily, it's something that's in our brain but it's not a section in the report. I gotcha Yep, all right. So G is for grief, r is for reconciliation, and so this is where we talked about in a podcast episode. We talked about the idea of a sacred assembly and a lot of times you'll have a sacred assembly because there have been conflict and unreconciled relationships and so we'll put in the show notes just resources for that again. So reconciliation If there's been conflict or there's brokenness in relationships, there's estrangement between people, there's division between the congregation and leadership very common we're going to try and help bring about that reconciliation.

Speaker 2: 4:49

We will help. I'm thinking of a church that we helped where, when the previous pastor had left, the elder board said, in wanting to preserve his reputation, they had said really very little about his departure and what produced was distrust between the congregation and the elder board because they hadn't said enough and there needed to be a process of helping them come back together again, congregation and elders. This actually is somewhat frequent. Right is that we're trying to bring about that reconciliation. So it can be between congregation and leadership, it can be between leaders, it can be among congregants, among significant families in the church, and we just want to see that, because that's what Jesus wants. He wants us to live out that one. Jesus has torn down the dividing wall right and so he wants us to live out that one baptism that we are all baptized into the name of the Father, son and Spirit. We're in one family. We're all baptized into the name of the Father, son and Spirit. We're in one family and we want that love among people to be the thing that the watching world sees, and reconciliation can help bring that back. So that's the R in grace, okay.

Speaker 2: 5:58

The A is alarm. When we write a church health assessment report, we style the main body of it as a series of pain points and if there's a place where things urgently need to change, we're going to sound the alarm. There ought to be, as Ken puts it, a godly urgency to take action, to repent many times, to go in a new direction, to stop doing some things and start doing others. And there are people in a church who've seen this for a while, but sometimes maybe leaders didn't validate it. I was in a circumstance, in a church actually, where I pastored, where a really quite wonderful family she'd served on the search committee that had brought me into this church. They were in the church and they were rightly agitating for change that would help the church have more of a missionary mindset. And they got shut down time and again. And you know what they did they left, they left.

Speaker 1: 6:59

You know how I knew that how? Because godly people in a church who bring godly points to leadership and get ignored typically don't create a ruckus. They typically leave Godly people, godly people.

Speaker 2: 7:12

And they did. They left. They went to a church that was more missionary-oriented and local, like you want to see unbelievers come to Christ, yeah. So they tried to sound the alarm and we will. We'll sound the alarm if we think there's something urgent that needs to change. We have a transitional pastor right now that's helping lead and just encouraging along the way, a church where he's the transitional pastor and they have not exercised church discipline, formal church discipline in 30 years and they're doing it for the first time and he's trying to help them do it well, and that's an alarm. Church discipline is a mark of the church, right, all Protestant churches. That's a mark of the church that we exercise godly discipline. Because we love people, we sound the alarm about their sin and their need to turn back to Christ.

Speaker 1: 7:56

Can I assume that when you talk about urgency, we talk about change? A part of what you're saying is the? If you don't heed this, this bad thing is likely to happen. This is why this is urgent.

Speaker 2: 8:11

Yes, absolutely yeah. So we're in the neighborhood of things that are, you know, like jesus would talk about in the letters of revelation these are these are life-threatening um things for the life of a church, right? If a church will not discipline its members, j Jesus is displeased and we will call that out Because you need to follow Jesus. That's why you're there as a congregation.

Speaker 1: 8:31

Why I called you into his family. So we have grace, we have reconciliation, we have grief reconciliation alarm.

Speaker 2: 8:38

And then the fourth one is.

Speaker 1: 8:39

You said that better than I did.

Speaker 2: 8:40

Yes, and then we have celebration. Is the C in grace? All right. So when we're doing the SWOT analysis which the transitional pastor will come in, we'll do a formal one in the church health assessment correlating all the data that we know. But many times transitional pastor will sit down with a small congregation almost everybody over the first three months and just ask them for an informal SWOT analysis. We'll produce a formal one in the church health assessment.

Speaker 2: 9:04

So we want to hear from people hey, what do you think the strengths of your church are? And we want to celebrate those Part of the emotional system. It can't all be the negative. There are things to celebrate in every church, even if it's just Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. The fact that a church is willing to stop, slow down, engage a transitional pastor is reason for celebration, and we've heard that from congregants. They'll say it is so good that our elders heard us and that you're here, because they know that they need help. And so we want to celebrate things. And there's things's always things to celebrate in the history of a church and even in the present of a church, and so we want to do that, we want to celebrate it and we want to see where Jesus is at work and talk about it.

Speaker 1: 9:54

Now we can assume that most people know what a SWOT analysis is, but just for the sake of anyone who hears that and says, I'm sorry, what that's a strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis, where you're looking at strengths and weaknesses, what you have internally that's a strength or a weakness, and what you have externally, that's either an opportunity or a threat that you can then respond to in the direction that you're moving to maximize your efficiency and your effectiveness.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Threats can also be. There are certainly threats that come from outside, but there are also threats that can come from inside, absolutely yeah, so you can have threats, both internal and external. Okay, so, grace, grief, reconciliation, alarm, celebration. The last one is excitement. Okay, what can we look forward to? Right? What's there to be excited about?

Speaker 2: 10:39

You know, as we look forward to eventually the end of a transitional period is that we get a new long-term pastor, and so we're at least looking forward to that. But we want a new pastor to come into a revitalized congregation, a congregation that's excited. They're looking forward in their future. They know what God's called them to, they're aware of their past and their present church health, and they're trying to improve it. They've got a good sense from the Lord about who they are, where they're going, and so they're looking forward with excitement to what God's gonna do, and that should be in the emotional system of the church. It may not be where we start, but it's certainly should be through the transitional period that we get to a place where we're excited about what God could do in the future and that what this pastor could lead us into. That's the grace analysis, awesome, awesome.

Speaker 1: 11:28

I appreciate that. The goal here, then, of both holding this as your heuristic within Flourish, but also in thinking about it and then presenting your findings and the report back to the church, I can assume but you can speak to speak to this the goal, the outcome that you want to see from this is that they would not just have a better understanding of who they are, but they would be able to better respond in the moment and set themselves up for success as they're moving forward, based on what their actual needs are now because of their experiences. There's a clunky way of saying it, but is that essentially?

Speaker 2: 12:05

No, that's exactly right. Yeah, so the point of a diagnostic is to do something at the end of the diagnostic, and so if this uncovers areas where we do need to celebrate and there is excitement, then we want to say that. If there's places of alarm, then we want to act on that. If there's places that are unreconciled, we want to work towards that, and if we need to grieve, we need to grieve, and so this is designed to give us categories of valuation that we can then act on.

Speaker 1: 12:32

All of this under, as the acronym says, a grace perspective that says we are fallen sinners. Jesus came and died for us because of our sins. We move forward in his strength, not in our goodness. Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 12:47

And we have the. I guess I would just add on to that that we have the freedom in the gospel to, because we're accepted in the beloved, because of jesus work for us. The father wanted us in his family. We have the freedom not to cover up the reality of the challenges of the situation but to freely admit them because they can exist in the same space. If we understand the gospel.

Speaker 1: 13:14

They can exist in the same space as us being received in the beloved, and so we're okay same space as us being received in the beloved, and so we're okay not being perfect because we're not Okay. So you just went someplace that I was actually going to end this episode and then just keep on recording to get this content down. But you've gone there, so I'm going to go there. All right, go there with me if you would Sure, and if you don't want to, we'll cut it out. You talked about the church where the elders had a need to go back and do more communication about the previous pastor and to reconcile, because, in the attempt to protect the pastor's reputation, they did not disclose enough information. Right, that's essentially it.

Speaker 1: 13:57

Yeah, in my experience, there's a couple of fears that motivate that kind of response. On the one hand, you have the motivation of we do want to protect this pastor's reputation for the future, and this is not something that should invalidate, but it is something serious that they needed to take care of and we don't want to expose that. Okay, makes sense. Two is we don't want to undercut our own trustworthiness by exposing something that happened on our watch that we should have caught, and if we do this, people are going to lose trust in us. That's a problem if it's a fear.

Speaker 1: 14:32

Three is and this is the one that I think is most insidious and that pastors and elder boards really need to watch out for if we expose the issue that was here, especially if it's a sin issue, especially if it's a moral failure, what we're actually doing is exposing the name of Christ to ridicule, and we need to protect the name of Christ by covering this so that it's not open to prying eyes. Right, that one is the one that I find to be the most insidious because of this reason, the only way sin is cleansed is when it's brought into the light, and Jesus is not concerned about his reputation. He's not. Jesus has taken care of his reputation. He's not. Jesus has taken care of his reputation. Yep, Jesus is in the process of taking we who do slander his reputation by our actions, and he's reforming us into people who reflect his reputation.

Speaker 2: 15:36

Right, and are his fruit, yep.

Speaker 1: 15:38

And when we have this impulse to well, the name of Jesus is going to be drugged through the mud, or the name of our church is going to be drugged through the mud if this gets exposed, that fear is one that I believe Satan will use over and over and over again To not just continue but to deepen the damage that was being done. Right, Right. That fear is one that, when it is not addressed from a very strong position of understanding grace and understanding the gospel, it's a litmus test for an eldership board. I'll be very honest here, I'm not going to pull my punches here. It is a litmus test for an eldership board. I'll be very honest here, I'm not going to pull my punches here. It is a litmus test If the eldership board wants to cover this up for the sake of not exposing Christ to ridicule. They fundamentally have not understood and applied the Gospel. Right.

Speaker 2: 16:36

And I think that it's a discomfort with how sinful we are. And I think if we have a discomfort with how sinful we are, even leaders that have led us, then actually what we have is a discomfort with the gospel itself. Because the gospel says I'm so bad, jesus had to die for me. There was no other way, but I'm so loved, he was glad to die for me. There was no other way, but I'm so loved, he was glad to die for me.

Speaker 2: 17:04

And if elders can come and say yes, this leader of ours, he messed up terribly. This is why all of us need the gospel. It's why we need the gospel Because we're the worst of sinners. In fact we're worse sinners than this man who sinned publicly because we know our own sin better than we would ever know his. And if elders can actually own the gospel that way themselves, then they actually get more respect from the congregation and it's actually a better witness to the community, because the community's like oh, these aren't people who are holding themselves up as morally superior, it's actually the opposite of that. That's interesting and that's very, very different than the conception that most people in the culture have.

Speaker 1: 17:53

I appreciate you giving me the freedom to speak. This is something that you can hear, matt and listener is deep in my heart Because and I don't say this to pat myself on the back, but I have embraced the gospel, I have embraced the grace of Christ in my life and it has brought me such freedom and such satisfaction and such security with who I am before God that I can go to him in the midst of my sin, knowing that his love has covered it, and receive the help that I need in my broken state. I want every believer to experience that freedom. That is liberation from the lie that Satan would keep us tied up in, that says wait a second, get yourself right before you go to God. Right, it's insidious, it's insidious, yeah for sure. So it won't be a dead horse, matt, thank you very much for this time.

Speaker 2: 18:50

You're welcome.

Speaker 1: 18:51

We have one more episode to go. Thank you for sticking with us. Please share this with a friend. We'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1: 19:15

When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy. If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at flourishcoachingorg and you can reach us by email at info at flourishcoachingorg. You can also connect with us on Facebook, twitter and YouTube and we would love it if you would like subscribe, rate or review the podcast wherever you're listening. Please share this podcast with anyone you think it'll help and if we get a client because of a recommendation you make, we'll send you a small gift just to say thanks, and a special thanks to Bay Ridge Christian Church in Annapolis, maryland, for the use of their building to record today's episode. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was produced by me, jeremy Seferati, in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you.