By George Bullard
This week it was announced the Alban Institute will substantially cease operations on March 31st. It was also announced that its valuable archive of resources will likely be picked up by Duke Divinity School.
In whatever way one spins this story, it is death for Alban. If Alban were a congregation we congregational champions would call it a legacy congregation. This is where operations cease but valuable resources pass to some other entity that uses them in the name of, and in honor of, the former organization.
An outsider’s view
As a person who has spent almost 40 years as a congregational champion engaging in research, writing, consulting, coaching, curating knowledge and teaching about congregations, it is hard to see Alban go. At the same time it was predictable for Alban and other similar organizations.
My first contact with Alban was in the mid-1970s when I started following the work of one of its consultants — Speed Leas. I later took training from him on conflict mediation.
We also saw several months ago the repurposing of the Center for Congregational Health, which for more than 20 years sought to focus on the vitality and vibrancy of congregations. In a way this was a death of CCH as we had known it.
During my years of championing congregations I have extensively used a life cycle assessment of congregations. Applying this model to organizations like Alban and CCH yields interesting observations.
Alban completed its first generation building up congregations and leaders under founder Loren Mead. As it moved into its second generation it addressed some much needed management issues. Along the way it lost vision, institutionalized and was never able to recover. Now, near the end of its second generation, it had to accept death.
CCH, under executive leader David Odom, developed some important and significant education and intervention programs. It built a good reputation in many congregational and denominational circles. At the end of the first generation of its life cycle its parent organization reconceptualized its mission and took it in another direction. Its client focus changed. It is the death and burial of a vision by another method.
It is hard for even congregational champion organizations to have a second generation of life beyond the culture of its founder or long-term director. At times, their first generation is one-of-a-kind and perhaps they do need to recreate themselves for a second generation. What congregational champions tell congregations to do — transform — they have trouble doing themselves. Thus, they die.
Resurrection
There is another sense in which Alban is not dead. In many ways it lives on in the leaders, congregations, denominations and parachurch organizations it has built up for 40 years. Its impact has been tremendous and will be felt for several generations into the future.
Alban will specifically exist in the coalition of some of its former consultants who have gathered at http://www.congregationalconsulting.org/. CCH’s service to congregations is resurrected in the Center for Healthy Churches, led by Bill Wilson, the former president of CCH.
Beyond the vision issue for Alban and others there are also economic issues at play. How can affordable services be offered in a post-2008 economic culture? What is the economic engine when the Internet is geometrically increasing the free exchange of information and knowledge? Can parachurch organizations who champion the work of congregations be vital and vibrant themselves when so many other methods of championing congregations have emerged?
The solution is more radical than many organizations imagine. It is time for those who desire to help congregations to be vital and vibrant to reconceptualize their ministry. We must start with a clean sheet of paper and recreate the world of congregational champions.
When Alban and CCH died did that signal congregations no longer need the services they offered? No. Congregations in many ways need the services more. Congregations need third-party providers to keep them from becoming myopic, ingrown and dysfunctional. More important, third-party providers help challenge congregations to thrive as vital and vibrant Christ-centered, faith-based communities.
A reality is that many congregational champion organizations, denominations and other similar organizations may need a death and resurrection to force them to transform. Without it their voice is just noise because congregations know there is no credibility in third-party providers if they cannot “practice what they preach” and transform themselves.
We have been through the third-party provider phases of chaplain, clinician, consultant, coach, peer learning communities and knowledge curators. Is the future in one of these or is it something else?
Who will join me in resurrecting the spirit of movements like Alban? Can there be a new reformation of what congregational champions need to look like 40 years after Alban launched?
Let me hear from you at [email protected].