Calling

Jim Goodmann

Regional Director, Calling Congregations

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June 26, 2010

The Turnaround: One Story

“Resurrection isn’t easy,” says Noele Farrell, the teenage heroine of Andrew Greeley’s novel Lord of the Dance. Rev. Dr. Mary Louise Gifford, pastor of Wollaston Congregational Church (UCC) in Quincy, MA, can cite chapter and verse why this is so. In her book, The Turnaround Church: Inspiration and Tools for Life-Sustaining Change , she tells the story of a congregation that had moved from 900 members in 1950 to twenty five and into virtual hospice care according to the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ when she arrived as the pastor in 2003 – their first full-time pastor in more than twenty years.

And there begins a new song. Over the next six years, the congregation changed its patterns of worship, education, stewardship, and governance. The church also grew to near 100 members in the same period and became (again) a place where children are nurtured, where tithing and stewardship of buildings and other resources were reclaimed and where leadership was engaged around imagining with the pastor what God might bring into being with their help. Altogether, it was a demonstration that a church at risk is not necessarily one destined for extinction.

The turnaround was hardly an overnight sensation but one that occurred through a leader’s patience and persistence, a gift for effecting change in an inspired order – and for reading people. “My professional background as both a psychotherapist and community organizer had taught me to see beyond what was evident, to look deeper, to find something positive, the hidden gems of this church. On my first tour of the facility, I was shown a stage in the parish hall. As strange as it may sound, that stage was the positive thing I knew I could build upon…I could see some of the lively performances that had taken place in the past and imagine those that might take place in the future. Sometimes, imagination is all it takes for a vision…” (p. 8). Consequent to deep listening on her part, there began the long conversation – pastor assisting parishioners to understand that the church they inherited was not the church that lived in their memories. That church had died more than a decade ago, perhaps two, and living through that news required both gentle and abrupt moves.

Pastor Gifford began by re-creating the space for congregational worship, moving it to Wednesday evenings during the summer, inviting those who came to more participatory worship and the company of her musician friends. They held summer evening services in the social hall for this and the subsequent two summers. The pastor also added a Healthy Kids Vacation Camp and a Church Mouse luncheon that hosted voices from other denominations and other religious traditions of the neighborhood.

Near to reviving worship was the renovation and renewal of church education space – opening Sunday School and other programs to the children of the neighborhood. With three years of operating funds left, Pastor Gifford moved to melding a creative use of remaining funds with grants from the Conference and other entities for staffing to accompany her own efforts. In addition, Wollaston Congregational engaged in a neighborhood ecumenical study of worship through funds from the Calvin Institute. The church was also revived as a placement for seminarians.

The final challenge was the issue of leadership. Gifford asked that, instead of the traditional church board, a church council be created that required action that could be undertaken sooner and that deliberative processes assist, not stymie, necessary innovation. This was, by far, her largest challenge as so many of the remaining members of the church were on that board. Again, a painful reckoning with change was the swinging door to the church’s enlarged sense of itself.

In broad strokes, these were the moves that renewed a congregation, one that Pastor Gifford believed from the start had a vocation – and not to closing. When I spoke with Mary Louise Gifford not long ago, she remarked that they have moved from their “turnaround” status to what she called “a new church start,” one that hoped to engage additional Pastoral Residents for Turnaround Ministry (www.wollycong.org) after the original one of 2009 and one where the children of the church are the ones who provoke their parents to regular attendance.

This is one story, an important sign of hope for the church in search of renewed life in the 21st century. I am confident that there are other stories of churches that have turned around. We would hear them!