Why "practices"? What the word adds to how churches plan
Church leaders have no shortage of vocabulary for what they do: programs, ministries, initiatives, goals, values, strategies. The framework that became known as the five practices of fruitful congregations chose a different word. That choice was not accidental, and it carries a view of how communities, and the people in them, actually change.
Programs and practices
A program has a beginning and an end. It is designed by a few people, launched, promoted and evaluated; then it is replaced by the next one. Congregations accumulate programs the way attics accumulate boxes. A practice is different. It is something a community does over and over, that it gets better at by doing, and that shapes the people who do it. Welcoming strangers, worshiping, studying Scripture together, serving neighbors and giving money are not projects a church completes. They are activities without a finish line.
The difference matters for planning. A council that thinks in programs asks, "What should we start this year?" A council that thinks in practices asks, "What do we already do every week, and how could we do it more faithfully?" The second question is less exciting and usually more fruitful. It directs attention to the ordinary: the Sunday welcome, the quality of the prayers, the way a new member is invited into a group.
A borrowed idea
The language of practice has a respectable intellectual history. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue (1981), defined a practice as a complex, cooperative human activity with its own standards of excellence and its own internal goods: goods that can only be gained by taking part in the activity itself. Chess, farming and architecture were among his examples. You cannot buy the satisfaction of a well-played game; you have to learn to play well. Practices, in his account, are where virtues are learned.
In the 1990s a group of American theologians and educators applied the idea to Christian life. The collection Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, edited by Dorothy C. Bass (1997), described a dozen practices, among them hospitality, keeping sabbath, testimony, discernment and household economics, as shared activities through which people participate in God's work in the world. Craig Dykstra and others developed the theme for congregational education. Church-growth writers, meanwhile, were talking in terms of programs, systems and purposes. The five practices framework, published in 2007, brought the vocabulary of practice into the world of congregational planning.
What the word implies
Thinking of welcome, worship, learning, service and giving as practices has several consequences.
- Repetition is the point. A practice improves through doing it again, with attention. Musicians and athletes practise scales and drills not because they are new but because they are basic.
- Everyone takes part. A program can be run by a committee; a practice belongs to the community. Hospitality delegated entirely to greeters is no longer a practice of the congregation.
- Excellence is internal. The standard is not what impresses outsiders but what the practice itself requires: a welcome that actually helps a stranger belong; worship in which people actually pray.
- Formation is the fruit. Practices change the practitioners. A congregation that serves its neighbors week after week becomes a different kind of community.
- Failure is part of learning. Nobody masters a practice without mistakes. A church that thinks in practices can try something, fall short and adjust, without treating every setback as a verdict.
Limits of the language
The word can be misused. "Practices" can become a fashionable relabeling of the same programs. It can suggest that faithfulness is mainly a matter of effort and technique, when Christian theology insists that grace comes first and that fruit is a gift, not a product. And a focus on doing ordinary things well can, if pushed too far, discourage congregations from the genuinely new work their context might demand.
The best uses of the framework hold these tensions together. Practices are human activities, but in a theological account they are also means by which God works on people. Repetition is essential, but practices also evolve as communities learn. The phrase "best practices", borrowed from management, is less helpful than the older idea of spiritual disciplines, which never pretended that technique could replace grace.
Using the idea in a meeting
A simple exercise can bring the distinction to life. Ask a church council to list everything the congregation did last year. Then sort the list into two columns: things the church does every week or every month, and one-off events. For each item in the first column, ask: Who takes part? How do we know if we are getting better at it? What would "a little more faithful" look like next year? Many councils discover that their energy has gone into the second column while the first has been left to habit. That discovery is often where renewal begins.
For the five practices one by one, start with radical hospitality; for the question of why there are five of them rather than some other number, see our essay on lumpers and splitters.
Sources and further reading
- Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, University of Notre Dame Press, 1981, chapter 14.
- Dorothy C. Bass, ed., Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, Jossey-Bass, 1997; see also the Practicing Our Faith project.
- Lewis Center for Church Leadership, "An Interview with Bishop Robert Schnase", July 2007.
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