The Tully Principle of 52 Equal Sundays
by Lovett H. Weems, Jr.

 After Easter, attention in the church is likely to turn toward plans for the summer. Such plans often include a “change of pace” with adjustments in worship times, number of services, types of music, etc. These changes may seem appropriate at first since fewer people may be attending, and clergy and staff will be joining parishioners in taking annual summer vacations. Not so, says the Reverend Bill Tully, rector of St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue in New York City.

When Mr. Tully came to St. Bart’s in 1994 from St. Columba’s Church in Washington, DC, he was faced with the task of either helping the church to grow or helping to close it. The 1,300-seat sanctuary was attracting only 125 people each Sunday. The church was continuing to operate only by drawing from endowment funds. “When I arrived I was pretty honest with the congregation," he recalled. "I said, ‘We’re going to grow.’” Tully reminded his new congregation that all living things need to grow – a daunting idea in a congregation that had been living on endowment and with no real notion of proportional giving, tithing, and stewardship.

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Should You Change the Worship Time for the Super Bowl?
By Adam Hamilton

We have five worship services each weekend at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection. The last of these services begins at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday evening. This year, on the Sunday the Super Bowl was played, we moved the start time for that service from 5:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. This permitted us to conclude worship by 5:30 p.m., allowing worshipers to go to their Super Bowl parties. One of our committed families wrote and asked if this change in the worship time wasn't sending the wrong message - that football was more important than worship. I appreciated so much this person's heart and desire not to compromise our faith or to capitulate to our culture. I also heard from other members who are deeply committed to Christ saying they would attend worship rather than watch the opening of the Super Bowl. I thanked them for their commitment and shared my rationale for the change.

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Leaders do not need answers.
Leaders must have the right questions.

Pastor Dave Summers of the First United Methodist Church in Tempe, Arizona, uses a question modeled after one used by a high school principal at the beginning of faculty meetings. Dave finds that opening staff and church council meetings with this question gives a positive focus to the meetings.

“What’s good at our church?”

Editors:  .Lovett H. Weems, Jr. and Ann A. Michel
Production and distribution:  Joe Arnold

Copyright © 2007 by the G. Douglass Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Leading Ideas material may be freely distributed with attribution (exclusive of material protected by separate copyright).