A Concept of Appreciative Inquiry for Lay Servant Ministries

(This is the third of three blogs describing an Appreciative Inquiry process for Lay Servant Ministries.)

The purpose of LSM is to facilitate local congregations in making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  Targets of change must look at the best of what we do to lead, care for and communicate with others to further that purpose and how we call, equip, and send Lay Servants to achieve that purpose.

Organization: The district committee, augmented if necessary, can constitute a Core Team that will direct the task including selecting the strategic topics and defining the questions for inquiry.  (And in doing so, the seeds of change will begin within them!)  In preparation, members should read one or more of the references above, especially Cooperrider, Appreciative Inquiry and Whitney, The Power of Appreciative Inquiry.

Affirmative Topics: These define the focus of the inquiry and great care must be taken in their selection.  They must be about the things that are life-giving to an organization.  Since we are about making and being disciples, subjects that surround disciple-making, drivers of vital congregations and the areas of focus of the denomination seem appropriate.   Many Annual Conferences are having discussions about healthy churches, and topics on the very best of what makes congregations vital and fruitful in making disciples may arise from those discussions.

Let’s assume that the following Affirmative Topics are selected: making disciples; Lay Servants aiding pastors in becoming the best they (the pastors) can be; small group ministries; worship; service ministries.

Whole System Approach: The more who are involved in the inquiry process, the more creative it is and the better the alignment attained is.  As many stakeholders as possible at as many levels should be involved.  In the corporate world, whole companies can be involved in a weekend retreat.  Assume the Core Team (augmented district committee) has decided on the following approach to include as many stakeholders as possible.  It has elected to add two hours to the fall classes and do Discovery with the Lay Servants attending.  To extend those involved to include the local congregations, inquiry training (how to do the interview) will also be done and then Lay Servants will be asked to interview pastors, lay leaders and parishioners in their congregations.

Moving from Define to Discovery: The Core Team is also responsible for creative the inquiry questions.  “At the heart of AI is the “Appreciative Interview,” a one-on-one dialogue among organization members and stakeholders using questions related to: highpoint experiences, valuing, and what gives life to the organization at its best.” (Cooperrider, ibid.)  Assume the team has selected these questions for the first two topics above to be used in one-on-one interviews between Lay Servants:

Q1.  Describe a highpoint as a lay servant, a time when you were involved in some way in making disciples of Jesus Christ so much so that you felt alive and vibrant. 

What was your experience?  What was going on?  In what way does it give life to your church or the work of your church?  (Don’t be too humble in describing your role, we want to see how lay servants contribute their best to the life of the church.)

Q2.  Think of a time in your church when the actions of the Lay Servants contributed to the role of pastor in being the very best that he or she could be.  Tell the story.

What was going on?  What was the part of the Lay Servants?  In what way did the actions of the Lay Servant team give life to the pastor or the church? 

Q3.  If you could look into the future in five years, what would you like to see happening in your church as far as the laity and lay servants contributing to the mission of making disciples?  What would be the very best that could be happening?  Tell me the story you would like to see.  Think of it in terms of a movie or a book.  Don’t be modest in envisioning the role of Lay Servants.

Discovery: As was said above, the “Appreciative Interview” is the heart of discovery.  Lay Servants at the Advanced Course will be asked to interview others.  Then around tables they will discuss the interviews in turn with the intent of identifying best stories and themes that can be presented to the representatives of the Core Team.  Having experienced the interview process, they will be charged with returning to their congregations and conducting three or more interviews: with the pastor, with the lay leader, with a member of the congregation.  We may be talking about ten or fifteen churches or charges at most.  The district superintendent, part of the Core Team, can contact the pastors and encourage participation.  It would be best too if the Core Team can develop some introductory text to be used by the Lay Servant to preface the questions.  The questions might be modified for the pastors as follows (they would also need to be modified for the laity when they are interviewed):

Q1.  Describe a high point in the life of your church in making disciples of Jesus Christ when the Lay Servants (or any laity) contributed in a way that gave life to the process and the church.  Tell the story….(subordinate questions also modified)

Q2.  Think of a time in the life of your ministry when the contributions or support of your Lay Servants (or laity) allowed you to be the very best in your ministry.  Tell the story.  (subordinate questions also modified.)

Q3.  If you could see your church in five years as a vital and fruitful church making disciples and changing lives in Jesus Christ, what role would you see the laity and your Lay Servants playing?  Picture it, think of it in story, the best story you could tell for your church.

The inquiry results can be forwarded or technology such as Skype can be used to allow the inquirers and interviewees to report their discussions to the Core Team.

Do you see what can be happening?  Just because the conversation is taking place, seeds of change are being made.  Lay Servants are thinking ways they can best contribute to disciple-making or to the support of the ministry of the pastor; and the pastor, lay leaders, parishioners begin looking a different ways the Lay Servant team contributes or can contribute to the mission of the church.

Moving from Discovery to Dream: Not so fast.  Even as you are digesting the information, the best stories and the best practices need to be disseminated. Stakeholders need to be informed and kept as part of the process.  A public blog sponsored by the Core Team (district committee) that invites and encourages discussion may be appropriate.

Then make meaning of the information gathered through interviews and discussions.  What are the emerging best stories?  What is the essence, the core values, the best that Lay Servant Ministries in your district provides that gives life to your churches?  What are the root causes, the values, the strengths, the equipping, the spiritually forming process, etc. that give life to the best of what Lay Servant Ministries provides?

(In the Dream part of the process, the Core Team will try to determine how amplify the positive core that has been discovered.)

Dream: Now is the time to envision valued and vital futures (and not yet time to filter and sort).  It may be an opportunity for a day retreat to bring as many stakeholders together as possible to dream about what might be.  The idea will be to create bold, provocative, even outrageous images of a future reality.  To focus the discussion, the Core Team might introduce one the outputs from the inquiry one at a time.  (Assume for a minute that several of the pastors wanted to see house churches led by laity).  Presented with that focal point, table groups would conduct a dream dialogue, collect the dreams, maybe even creatively enact the dreams.  Presentations might be made to the larger group where bold themes and opportunities emerge.  It’s possible to present the opportunities in visual form with “mind mapping” software such as “Free Mind” (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page), “MindMaple” (http://www.mindmaple.com/), and “Simple Mind (http://www.simpleapps.eu/simplemind/) to allow discussions of priorities.

Moving from Dream to Design.   You will now have more dreams than would be possible to implement, and many better than others.  The Core Team (augmented district committee) now gathers the information, further augments the team with champions that they suspect will needed for implementation of dreams.  The Core Team continues to communicate the dreams to ever widening stakeholders using newsletters, blogs, or interactive websites.

Design.  Now is time to move to what will be, to create the future.  In this phase, form is given to the values, ideals and dreams that have emerged.  “In short, it involves sorting, sifting, and serious choices about what will be.”  (Whitney, The Power of Appreciative Inquiry)  Priorities are made congruent with the change targets or affirmative topics that the whole process began with.  Conceptual provocative propositions (stories, narratives that stretch and affirm) are created, built on the idea that words create worlds.  (Whitney, ibid.)  The propositions are stated in the present tense, are grounded in what works, and are provocative and desirable (Whitney, ibid.)  Let’s assume the following Provocative Proposition (written in the present tense) emerged from our team:

Radical greeting (hospitality) is the very beginning of disciple-making.  The attitude of our Lay Servants and laity permeate the worship atmosphere from invitation, to the parking lot, to conversations in the entry way and sanctuary that welcome and connect guests of the church and the body of Christ.  Laity are involved in hourly, daily, and weekly follow-up of guests and in connecting them to small groups or activities in the church that “stick” them to the church and move them along the process of discipleship.  Guests of our church become disciples.

If there were four affirmative topics, the process may yield a dozen actions of which only half may be able to be tackled by teams of stakeholders in the coming year.

Moving from Design to Delivery (Destiny).  The products of the Design phases are the “Provocative Propositions” that bridge between the best of what is and the best of what might be (Whitney, ibid.); but they do not prescribe specifics courses of action or actions.  The first element of moving from design to delivery is to recognize and celebrate what has been learned and transformed within the Body of Christ to date because of the efforts of the whole.

Delivery.  Delivery (Destiny) involves selecting, self-organizing, and implementing actions that will lead to a new future.  Whitney (Ibid.) suggests the following steps:
1. Review, communicate, and celebrate accomplishments;
2. Generate a list of potential actions;
3. Self-organize for inspired action projects;
4. Support the success of self-organized projects; and
5. Begin systemic application of Appreciative Inquiry. 

The “Provocative Proposition” on Radical Greeting above could reveal a number of actions, large and small to be implemented at conference, district, and local church levels.  The Core Team would have to involve numbers of people in self-organized teams to achieve them.  For example, a team may be created to create a course on Radical Greeting intended as both an advanced course and to be taught within congregations.  Selection of team members as well as strong support would be necessary. 

Or suppose the concept of Lay Servants as House Church leaders suggested in Dream above was chosen.  A House Church Leader course of study using existing courses along the development of an umbrella course may be needed.  Again, again self-organization using members from a number of levels including the local churches would be needed, especially from the church from which the concept may have emanated.  Only a few steps at a time would be possible and the Core Team (augmented district committee) would need to monitor, support and celebrate the achievements of the teams.

But why use the word destiny?  Recall that we said that inquiry in itself is intervention.  Just by virtue of asking questions, seeds of change are planted at every level.  Appreciative Inquiry can become the catalyst for change and for continuous improvement going forward.  Ideas may be implemented outside of the Core Team’s view.  For example, churches may ask that Affirmative Inquiry (AI) be used as a visioning process facilitated by Lay Servants.  Lay Servants may ask that an AI course be developed and taught using The Power of Affirmative Inquiry as a text.  Lay Servants may be asked within local congregations to lead various aspects of the disciple-making process.  Lay Servants may take it upon themselves to get involved in making disciples in ways that had never before envisioned.  The pastors and district superintendent may decide to repeat the process on an annual basis involving a quarter of the churches and Lay Servants each year.  All of this may happen just because the questions were asked about the very best we do.  We create our destiny.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”  Peter Drucker