ALIVE AND KICKING RATIONALE

Workshop on Alive and Kicking: Revitalizing Rural Ministries
Proposed by facilitator and author, Marvin L. Anderson, Ph.D.

Based on the recent United Church of Canada resource, Alive and Kicking: Revitalizing Rural Ministries, Alive and Kicking workshops have been offered as a one-day event for rural Presbyteries in six United Church Conferences to date: Montreal and Ottawa, London, Hamilton, Bay of Quinte, Toronto and Alberta and Northwest.

For United Church Presbyteries or Districts thinking of hosting an Alive and Kicking workshop within their own region, there are several tangible outcomes to introducing this resource through a workshop venue for the benefit of lay members and ministry personnel of rural and small town pastoral charges. These outcomes include the following:

1) Introduction to and overview of the Alive and Kicking resource:

The workshop provides an accessible Powerpoint presentation to walk participants through the seven lenses discussed in it. This overview of the Alive and Kicking online resource familiarizes participants with its basic content and relevance to their own respective pastoral charges.

2) Learning about the World Café process:

In addition to introducing people to the Alive and Kicking resource, participants are engaged to reflect on how each of the lenses pertains to their own congregation by using the World Café group process (http://www.theworldcafe.com). This process resembles the same kind of table conversations people ordinarily have in their homes and local cafés, hence the name.

My observation is that participants who attend this workshop are much less tired by the end of the day, in part because they have been moving around and talking to each other during the course of the workshop, and have had meaningful conversations about subjects that matter to them. For those congregations in need of more honest communication and dialogue among themselves in discerning their future vision, the World Café group process can be a useful and practical template for participants who want to use it in their local Board, Session and Council meetings in their home congregation or pastoral charge.

3) Meeting and getting acquainted with other people:

Despite the ease with which people in small towns and rural communities relate socially to each other in their own locales, the increasing sense of isolation in rural communities and small towns means that people from one community probably do not know that many people in a neighboring small town or rural community. This Alive and Kicking workshop can help members of different congregations and pastoral charges not only get acquainted with each other, but allow them to share their common concerns and best practices with congregants and ministry personnel from other places.

4) Re-evaluating and re-imagining the spiritual life of their congregations:

Through both the World Café process and more formal presentations, participants are invited to think concretely and prayerfully about their own congregation and home pastoral charge in a relatively neutral and thoughtful learning space. This is carried out with the professional help of two facilitators, one being the guest facilitator and author of Alive and Kicking, Dr. Marvin L. Anderson, the other being a local leader. The latter facilitator could either be ministry personnel, a Conference or Presbytery staff person, designated lay minister or lay leader.

5) Modeling adult learning/reflection and lifelong education:

The intentional pairing of the guest facilitator with the local leader allows for mutual learning. Furthermore, teaming up is more fun and collaborative. Such collaboration requires that the local leader or facilitator is not only familiar with the seven lenses discussed in the Alive and Kicking resource, but is willing to follow up on the ideas and learning generated by the day-long workshop.

6) Networking opportunities:

Meeting and getting acquainted with other people, as cited above, is integral to community building. It is also prerequisite for networking. The process of networking is the formalized and explicit use of that community building process to strategically foster connections and contacts with other people we would normally not meet. Working for any kind of congregational renewal or community development requires this level of collaboration and networking, especially given the nature of distance and isolation so basic to rural ministries and communities.

7) Celebrating the Good News and the rural church:

As followers and disciples of Jesus Christ, the prophetic and transformative force of the Good News is often lost in our desperate and frenzied efforts to keep the doors of our congregations open. For this reason the focus of the Alive and Kicking resource is helping its readers to make the conceptual and practical shift from survival and maintenance to revitalization—even in the midst of rapid change and difficult times.

Members of small membership United Church and other congregations need the tools to reframe their present situation and re-evaluate their context. Also required is an intentional focus on learning and retrieving spiritual practices and disciplines, including worship, learning, and other activities outlined in the Alive and Kicking resource.

Given that these are hard times economically and socially, people need more opportunities to have fun. As various historical movements for social change have demonstrated in the midst of hard times, celebrating the Good News and our rural congregations is not only integral to keeping faith and hope, it is vital to sustaining the future of the rural church.