When I first saw the CD’s I had a child like excitement (like having your "15 minutes", only this is more like 2 seconds when the reader scans the CD’s insert). Nature Girl came out first. It was Gay Pearson’s first CD. She writes of playing at St. Andrew’s Church and more recently organizing its Jazz in Worship series. The disk includes Billy Taylor’s "I Wish I Knew How It Fells To Be Free", the piece that the Community of Julian of Norwich danced to around the altar just before the Great Thanksgiving of the Eucharist.

Recently Jim Ridl’s Five Minutes to Joy and Madness arrived in the mail. The title coming from the first piece in the CD; an excerpt from "5 pieces for discerning the soul of Trenton" a composition of Jim’s that was commissioned by the parish.

Now that I’m living in Maine I hear very little about the parish’s life. My impression is that jazz as an element of its life is much reduced. But that seems to fit the way jazz, its musicians and the clubs operate. Live moves on. Jeff moves away from Trenton, Joes Mill Hill cuts back on the number of evenings with jazz, Jim gets more New York gigs.

So, where did jazz fit in the issues of a parish’s self definition and marketing. What follows is a broad and brief overview of issues in organizational self define and marketing. Comments are included on the particular issues of St. Andrew’s and its relationship with Trenton’s jazz community.

Defining the congregation is a statement of how we see ourselves; how we understand our identity and purpose as a congregation in relation to the external environment. That self-understanding must be grounded in the realities of our life as a congregation. For example, if we hope to increase in size, there needs to be evidence that there is a population base we can draw from, that we are ready to learn how to grow, and that we are willing to change our life as a community to invite and adapt to the new members. There have been parishes that make the decision to grow, try one or two methods to invite people, attract a large number of visitors, and have none come back. In one parish they sent out a mass mailing inviting people to a specific Sunday. They attracted forty visitors for that Sunday (This doubled their average attendance.). They did special music; the priest put extra attention into the sermon; they worked at being friendly. No one came back. They stopped trying. In this case the problem seemed to be that they had too limited an understanding of how to grow. They had sent a team to a one-day diocesan evangelism event; this is not enough training! Weak follow-through with the visitors was certainly part of the problem. The more essential issue was that what visitors seemed to pick up from the congregation was that new members were needed to allow things to remain as they were. The new people would bring new money and energy but hopefully not new ways and new ideas. The message was received within a climate of liturgy and social life that was dull and depressed. This congregation needed to work on its own renewal before it was going to be able to be a place of hospitality to others. A parish’s self-definition must be grounded in the realities of its life.

Organizational self-definition may be primarily of interest to those who are already members. It clarifies how we see ourselves and how we want to use resources. However, the self-definition may also be part of an external marketing effort and so be of interest to both the membership and potential members.

1. Size – How large do we want to be? How large are we able to be?

2. Ministry Area – How do we define the scope of the parish’s ministry? Is it directed at individual and family pastoral care and/or spiritual development; does it explicitly include equipping people for Christian living in the workplace or in civic life? Is it more directed at nurturing and equipping people for Christian living in the daily life of the family, workplace and civic life or is it more directed toward the corporate life of the congregation whether in its common service or evangelism toward others or its functioning as an organization? How does the congregation define itself in terms of geography; is it oriented to this neighborhood or town or is it regional in its draw?

3. Episcopal Church/Anglican Tradition and Spirituality – To what extent has the parish incorporated the riches of its own larger tradition – a culture of: common life and prayer and individual spiritual growth; that assumes that people have a vocation, a ministry; that is interested in stability and change; that sees spirituality as related to our relationships with God, self, creation and others/society; etc. We are likely to offer something of value to ourselves and others to the extent we have drawn on the best of our own tradition.

4. In Relation to Other Congregations in the Area – How is this congregation seen when compared with other congregations?

5. The Culture and Demographics of the Congregation’s Ministry Area – How might we address this particular community? How do we address the larger contextual issues this community faces?

6. Uses Parish Strengths/Gifts – What are our strengths as a congregation? Are there people with gifts that might allow us to develop a unique identity or ministry?

7. Fits Where the Parish Is in its Life Cycle – If the parish is stable and healthy, it is appropriate to have a more "settled" self-definition. If the parish is in decline, it needs to see itself more as a "missionary society." How we see ourselves needs to be reflected in how our resources are used, e.g., in a "missionary society" self-definition the priest needs to be giving less time to internal nurture and more to evangelization of new members, programs that reach out may need to be more evangelistic, etc.

8. Rooted in Parish History – What are the stories in the history that may speak to a current need? What are the values that have served in the past that speak to the present generation’s longings and issues?

9. Potential Constituencies – Who might we establish a relationship with (e.g., volunteer fire company, performing arts community, business people, the homeless, etc.) that would contribute to a civic life and help the general population to notice us? This is partly where St. Andrew’s relationship with the jazz community came in. It was a relationship that had value in the way lives of members and musicians where touched and changed. It also brought the parish to the attention of the larger community. It is not that many people became members because of jazz but that they wanted to be part of a church that would have such a relationship.

1. Organizational Self Definition

Parish leaders explore various aspects of self definition and create a statement, a vision of:

-- What we value and how we live together

-- What we want to contribute to the world that God loves

-- What we want to achieve as a community of faith

2. Influencing the Image People Have

Members, and those outside the parish, have an image of this congregation. That image is the sum total of people’s impressions and ideas about the parish. Parish leaders need to discuss what image they would like members and others to have of the parish. You are seeking something that people can understand and appreciate.

3. Positioning

This is what sets your congregation apart from others. It needs to build on your strengths and be sustainable over the long term. You’re looking for a "position" that is not easily duplicated and will cause some people to walk or drive past other churches to get to you. How many people and which people will determine whether your position is as a leader, challenger (to the leader), follower (using what the leader does in your congregation) or ""nicher"". Another aspect of positioning is re-positioning the competition. An example of this is when we use an advertisement that says "you don’t have to leave your mind at the door to worship here." That ad’s inference is that other churches don’t want adult, thinking people. This is an attempt to define your congregation and the other at the same time.

4. Communicating

We need ways of communicating who we are in our invitation. Methods may include using existing members to reach friends and family, mass mailings, advertising in newspapers or radio, billboards, articles in newspapers, special events that draw people and also say who we are, etc.

Having "jazz" as part of your self definition is for a parish church the same thing as being known as a place that pays attention to families and children, or runs the largest feeding program in the city. It has value in what it is and it takes a community into a web of relationships that may enlarge the hearts and minds of those involved. It is however only one aspect of a more complex and rich organizational culture that needs to be shaped and nurtured.

For an Episcopal church such a culture might include:

1. Being an expression of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church -- knowing we are part of something larger makes us larger.

2. Having functioning images of the church that are rooted in scripture -- people of God, Body of Christ. All congregations struggle with distorting images that are carried in from the culture in order to make sense of the experience people have in the church. So we experience images of the church as "our club" (country club or bowling league, but it’s "ours" -- we pay the dues, etc), the church as a corporation or mental health center, or historical society, etc.

3. Having deep roots in an Anglican spirit -- comprehensiveness, liturgical, open-minded, mystery, beauty, etc.

4. Our groundedness in Anglican worship (the three fold pattern - Eucharist, Daily Office, Personal Devotions) -- in a matter that is focused on equipping people to make this pattern accessible in their lives.

5. Living in a worship category that has developed in Anglican history -- Evangelical, Prayer Book Catholic, etc.

6. Having clear organizational values about authority and power, respect of people, teams, etc. Doing this in the same way that any other organization in the society might do it.

Without a deeper, broader culture particular elements such as "jazz" can distort the parish’s life; with such a culture, these other elements become part of the congregation’s fullness of life. Ways in which Christ fills all things.

© Robert A. Gallagher, 1999