Living Stones group grapples with ministry issues

I hadn’t really planned to spend five days in Des Moines, Iowa in February. But I’m glad I did.
It wasn’t the lure of Des Moines’ annual skywalk miniature golf tournament; or the excitement of sharing a hotel with hundreds of Methodist youth; or even the amazement
of being in a city where the hockey team’s mascot is a pork chop.
I was a last-minute substitute on the 3-person team our diocese sent to a Living Stones gathering there. Maybe you’ve never heard of Living Stones. In shorthand, it is a partnership of 26 organizations—American and Canadian dioceses, seminaries and even a religious community. All of them are committed to revitalizing ministry at the local level.
Living stones has been around since 1994 when eight American and Canadian dioceses began meeting. In some ways they have been pioneers in local ministry development—helping and encouraging each other see ministry in new ways and to figure out what works best in local churches.
That means that there isn’t one “cookie cutter” model that fits every diocese. Each must ask what works in their diocesan mission strategy and in their local culture.
And that’s where the meeting comes in. A big chunk of the time is spent in “cluster groups” of for dioceses. Each diocese brings a case study to the meeting that addresses some questions they have about local ministry development. One by one, each diocese presents its report, and has a structured conversation with the others in the cluster.
It is an energetic and helpful conversation filled with questions and observations. The kind of stuff worth traveling all the way to Iowa to hear. Our report was about the diocesan process for forming people locally (without going away to seminary) for ministry in our congregations. The responses we received from our cluster group were thoughtful and encouraging.
There are also plenary gatherings at Living Stones. This year’s speaker was Mike Wagner, a marketing expert with a background in theological education. As incongruous as this might sound, he brought those two worlds together by talking about how important it is for churches to know who they are and what they are about.
In the advertising world that’s called branding. In the church world it has more to do with clarity of mission. In both cases, you do better with spreading your message if you know what you are about.
Spokane has participated in Living Stones since 2004 and became a partner in 2005. The Rev. Canon Holladay Sanderson has been our diocesan coordinator and active in other facets of the leadership of Living Stones. She even invited the group to meet in Spokane in 2007. Our other team member was Lisa Stagaman of Spokane, a veteran of the Commission on Ministry who brought years of experience to the table.
One question that always arises when we participate in meetings that require travel and hotel stays is “What’s in this for us?” That’s always a good question because we want to steward our resources wisely, particularly in times like these when there are economic struggles everywhere.
For this meeting, I’d say that what’s in it for us is the opportunity to be in ongoing conversation with dioceses and seminaries who are wrestling with some of the same questions about ministry, congregations, education and training and good theology of ministry. It’s about gathering some wisdom from peers. It’s about building on learnings from previous years.
We do a lot of work on this in the diocese in groups like the Commission on Ministry, the Diocesan Commission on Theological Education (DCOTE) and in Diocesan Council. But in Living Stones we can draw on the experiences—both successes and failures—of others. And we can do the same for them.
Five days in Des Moines in February.
A better prospect that it would seem, even without skywalk golf.