The outcome of the table conversations

Here are Melle Poole's summary comments taken from a document from 2017 03

CHURCH VISITING: RE-IMAGINING THIS MINISTRY

Experiences with Church Visiting (some of what was reported from the table conversations)

I never even knew this existed...what is it?
I view this as an evaluation – we view our churches through rose coloured glasses...there is no accountability. We have a good system, but we don’t follow it. It’s a good way of gauging where our church is at.
We were vacant and struggling and asked for visitors, and they refused to come because of distance. People seem to often refuse to travel to distant churches.
Churches should be shown the report before the report is read at Classis as the church may disagree with what is being reported.
I thank the Lord for church visitors – 3 times the church visitors came and they helped connect individual to much needed support for him and family.
If we are supposed to do visits every year, there should be a change to the church order as it is not being done.
There is not always the will to let the pastor go to serve other churches.
A glowing church visitors report about the church, and an Art. 17 for its pastor happened at the same meeting of Classis.
I did not know there was such a thing as church visiting.
It isn’t happening.
I don’t see the value of it.
It seems to be used mainly when things go bad – it does serve a purpose then.
Church visiting has been positive for me.
I’ve been in council for 7 years and never had a church visit.
We called church visitors, and also had a mediator. We had to be very careful not to say the hard truth to the church visitors, given privacy legislation.
I have served as a church visitor, have done visits, and it was a positive experience.
Helpful.
I did a church visit just last night. Positive. Encouraging.
Our council had a very positive experience when church visitors visited recently.
Our experience has not been so positive.
The church visitors came at our request as we were experiencing trouble.
I would not miss church visiting much if it did not happen.

Comments about Church Visiting

Can’t get volunteers for being a visitor, because you need to train them first.
I would love to be a church visitor, but I need to be trained first.
It takes time to do it well, and it seems like no one has the time or will to do it well.
Not just anybody can be a church visitor.
Do self analysis – surveys - and report to Classis.
Declare the practice to be dead.
The practice is sort of ineffective.
Is a crisis visit a difficult thing?
Culture of hiding struggles in the church.
Do church visitors have enough authority?
How do church visitors filter out the BS?
Times have changed. The practice and goals of church visiting are more 400 years old. Do we have to change the practice and the goals? Tinkering with existing practices may not be enough.
Too much change over of leaders.
Church visiting is good for sharing best practices, sharing positive experiences, and for mutual accountability.
Classis needs to hold the church visitors accountable.
The focus needs to be on what is helpful, how God is working in the church, and what the next step needs to be, rather than looking at the whole journey.
Church visiting is a good tool for building relationships between the visiting team and the churches.
A way to structure the visit is: a. to meet with the pastor (and spouse) say over a meal, b. to meet with the whole council, c. to meet with the council for a while without the pastor.
Can do spot checks on church administration issues, safe church, financial accountability, ministry shares, etc.
Our council would appreciate more regular visits.
Is it really feasible to ask elders to do this ministry?

The need for training and mentoring

Training and knowledge is needed to be a church visitor. People will join if they know what they have to do and how much time would go into it.
Things can unravel quickly and so it’s important to have regularly scheduled visits and consistency so that meaningful visits can take place, before things are a crisis situation.
Mentorships of an experienced church visitor by someone who has done a lot of visits and going with them together after the new person has had the training.
Train visitors in getting at the real issues.
We need to learn how to be relational, how to do circle conversations.
We need trained assessors.
Visitors need to have a good facilitator leading them before they meet with a church council.

Our Church Culture and Our Expectations

We sometimes are so focused on doing the business right...but we are missing what’s most important. The spiritual growth part.
Churches need to intentionally have a focus on pastor health and church health even if it means sending them and even giving them a Sunday off.
How do we encourage churches and councils to take an honest look and be willing to truly see our needs and weaknesses?
Pastors need to share pulpit and rotate more so that churches know the pastors and it’s not quite a cold call. Increased connections would improve vulnerability and support.
Is it necessary to read the report and make things public?
Sounds like a performance evaluation and we don’t like that...afraid of how that might be...feels arduous.
Easy to say, “If you have trouble, ask.” But the reality is that sometimes people need to be asked.
Is the role of church visitors to tell us what to do or to help us find answers?

Who Should Do Church Visiting?

Perhaps more retired pastors and elders, who are currently not serving on council, could be asked.
Would it be possible to invite one of the persons presently employed by Classis to do some or all of the church visiting? Perhaps a part-time chaplain.
Is it not most reasonable to invite primarily pastors to do this ministry, as they may be able to carve out more time for this ministry?
Should mainly retired pastors be asked to do this ministry?
Pay someone to do it.
Hire and or train counsellors or other professionals to meet church councils and congregations.
Most of our churches are understaffed which makes it nearly impossible to do this well if the pastor is the one responsible to do this.

New Ways or Other Ways of Doing Church Visiting

Create small group discussions. Some people will not speak in a large group or when the pastor is present.
Meet as peer groups – more as support groups.
Councils of church clusters, or the executive members of church councils, come together to support and struggle together.
Put the onus on individual churches to report to Classis on how they are doing, or to ask for help if they need help.
Meetings of the clusters can be incorporated into the agenda of Classis meetings.
Take time at Classis meetings to assess our churches with the help of proper assessment tools.
Incorporate the Sunday worship service into the visit followed by a visit with the council over a luncheon.

These are my thoughts: (Thanks for trying to breathe fresh life into church visiting).

What if churches were paired up for the purpose of church visiting? I think this could at least work for some churches. The idea is this.

Two churches agree to be “sister” churches for a determined length of time. These churches would self-select their partners based on things like an existing relationship, geographic proximity, or similarity of size and ministry.
One church would send the pastor and an elder to a council meeting at the other church for a church visit. The other church would do the same during that same year. They would report on their visits as church visitors normally do.
Besides the regular encouragement, accountability questions, and other features of a regular visit, they would explore ways they might mutually enrich one another—perhaps a shared ministry or a meeting to share best practices or pulpit exchanges. They would agree to pray for one another in the course of the year.

The potential advantages would be:

This would reduce the number of church visitors you require.
You would not need any special meetings to select church visitors.
The visitors would be top notch, because no church is going to send their worst representatives as ambassadors.
Each church would have two contacts per year minimum.
Other good things in the relationship between the churches could develop.
A relationship could potentially grow which would allow for increasingly honest sharing in the church visits.

This would not work for every church. However, if even ten churches chose to do this, fewer church visitors would be needed and good things might result from these relationships. Specialist would always be needed in case of stress in the congregations.

Other comments that have been made to me (MP) recently about church visiting:

Church visiting is quite rare in my experience – once in 6 years. But it was helpful. It needs to be more inclusive. The idea of supporting each other, being neighbours, is good.

My experience is that church visitors are not given the straight goods. How do we get at the truth, the real issues?

There needs to be affinity between the congregations/ councils if clusters are to work well.

Technical tinkering does not revive something that is dead. We may as well write off church visiting as we have known it. Our church culture is resistant to authenticity. We need different language to foster the historic values of church visiting, and we need to apply them in new ways. Perhaps an outside body of evaluators and overseers needs to be hired for this work.

Church visiting needs to be about authentic conversations. Trained facilitators may have to be used, so that in safe circles, honest and open conversation happens.

I will be a church visitor because I believe it is of value to the church if it is done the right way.

I like the way you re-imagine church visiting as working in neighbourly clusters. Ten visitors per cluster, including 2 alternates is ideal.

I have no desire for this work anymore. Increasingly we experience lack of community and build our own separate little kingdoms. I find that sad. When church visiting is carried out, and I have done a lot of heavy duty church visiting in the past, it is a job that is taken for granted.

I am afraid church visiting is going the way of the dodo bird, as family visiting seems to be. At this time my focus needs to be on my work as an elder in my congregation. Meanwhile I will see where church visiting is headed.

I need to leave the position for health reasons. But I am wondering, do churches still take the ministry of church visiting seriously?

I am not able to take on the position because I am very busy with other church work.

I am leaving the position because I am too busy with church council work. I also have some misgivings about the value of church visiting. I am observing that churches do not really share serious issues with us as church visitors. There seems to be reluctance to share struggles with “strangers” who come because of some church regulation. It is a formality we observe but from what I have seen church visiting as we do it now has very limited value.

Some things that stand out for me (M.P.) in the comments:

The need for training and mentoring for Church Visitors
The potential of clusters, or churches pairing up to be “sister” churches
Church Visiting as a regular part of Classis meetings
The ongoing need for “specialist” for stressful situations

The Healthy Church Task Force will get back to the churches with more on this.

Melle Pool, Church Visiting Coordinator