Pieces of the Puzzle

I’m unsure of what metaphor to use for the Intentional Interim Minister’s job. In training I was told that our job was like a private investigator’s (except no crimes been committed). We would come in, ask a lot of questions, formulate a theory as to why certain events occurred and then execute a plan to solve the church’s problem. I’ve also conceived of the metaphor of CSI (except no one’s dead). What each metaphor shares is an attempt to recreate a series of events that brought the church to its present point. After this is achieved, the IIM will then help the church to deal with any lingering issues and then move on.

But each of these metaphors presents a problem: the focus is on the IIM and what he can figure out. With these metaphors, what is the role of the church in this situation? Is it to sit around and wait for the IIM to answer all of the questions? Clearly a fresher approach is needed.
I’ve been mulling over (and using with Pecan Grove) the metaphor of a puzzle. The current church is like a puzzle with various pieces scattered around. There are lots of pieces to this puzzle, and I don’t know what (or where) they all are. So I’m depending upon the members of the church to share them with me and then to help me put them together to form a coherent narrative about how the church has arrived where it is.

But this puzzle isn’t the kind you put together by yourself. It’s more like putting a puzzle together over a vacation with the rest of your family. The more eyes you have on the puzzle, the more likely you are to have a solution. And the faster it goes.

In order to help identify the pieces, I’m setting up a series of listening groups with different members of Pecan Grove. This last Sunday, I put out sign-up sheets for several periods of time that last about an hour each. I asked the church to sign up at one of the times on Sunday afternoon in groups of nine or ten. Two of the senior adult classes told me that it would be difficult for them to come back up on Sunday afternoon, and they asked if I could meet with their classes during the Sunday School hour. These groups will start meeting on this coming Sunday.

For each group, I’m going to ask two questions: First, on a scale of one to ten, with one being utterly demonic and ten being heaven-on-earth, how would you characterize the current state of Pecan Grove? Second, what do we need to do to move higher up the scale? Essentially, I see this as performing a SWOT analysis and getting the church members to participate in identifying what is working well, and what is not working well in the life of the church.