Miraculous Expectations

Our new bishop, Paul Hirschy, talks about the areas in which he wants to focus attention during the next four years.

Steve Dennie

September 2001

Paul Hirschy was born in 1946, and grew up on a farm near Monroe, Ind. The Hirschy family--Paul was the youngest, with four older sisters and one older brother--attended the Winchester UB church, which later relocated into the town of Monroe and is now the Monroe UB church. In the spring of his senior year of high school, during special services at the Monroe church, Paul sensed God calling him into fulltime Christian service. Although he had already been accepted at another college, he entered Huntington College in the fall of 1964 and began preparing for the ministry. He graduated in 1968, and then entered the Huntington College Seminary. He received his Master of Divinity in 1972.

In August 1969, while still in seminary, Paul became pastor of the Park UB church in Bluffton, Ind. He served that church as pastor for nine years. Then, in August of 1978, Paul accepted a position as manager of the United Brethren Publishing House. The 1981 General Conference, upon Paul's recommendation, closed the printshop, but they then elected Paul to the first of what became five terms as Director of Church Services.

Which brings us to 2001. At this summer's meeting of the United States National Conference, Paul was elected bishop, taking the place of Ray Seilhamer, who moved on to become Associate Dean of the HC Graduate School of Christian Ministries.

Paul and Barb Hirschy were married in June of 1969. Barb is from Pleasant Valley UB of Lake Odessa, Mich. She graduated from a secretarial school in Michigan, and then came to Huntington College, graduating in 1971. She now teaches kindergarten in Huntington.

Paul and Barb have three children. Jason, the oldest, lives in Fort Wayne, where he works for a plumbing company and is in an apprentice program. Heather graduated from Huntington College in 1999 and then went to Washington, D. C., to work for South Carolina Congressman Jim DeMint. She is currently doing a three-month volunteer stint with Africa Inland Mission in South Africa, after which she plans to return to Washington to look for a job. Amber, the youngest, is a freshman at Huntington College.

Communications Manager Steve Dennie interviewed the new bishop in September about his observations of the United Brethren church during his 20 years as a denominational official and the areas in which he wants to focus his attention.

Strength in Diversity

One of our strengths is our openness, diversity, and freedom. We are not narrow in terms of structure. When people want to try something creative in ministry, they can do it. Previously, the Discipline required every church to have the same administrative structure, but over the past 20 years we have changed that, giving churches the freedom to develop a structure that fits their own needs. That creates some interesting challenges in working with different churches, since they don't always have common terminology, and a term won't necessarily refer to the same entity, but it's well worth it. The same is true of conferences; they don't need to operate the same.

Some Areas of Personal Focus

We're basically no different from the national average, where 85% of the churches are plateaued or declining. We need to help some of those plateaued churches catch a new vision and start growing. Some declining churches may need to go through a restart to bring new life, because by themselves, they aren't willing to make the changes needed. Those are issues we have to face.

We have a lot of older congregations that need to catch a new vision. Many haven't kept up even in terms of modernizing facilities to be attractive to younger generations. Many people will say that's not important. But when young parents bring their precious children into a nursery, and the nursery is not fresh and clean and new, they won't come back. So it is important. Updating facilities must be on the agenda of some churches if they're going to attract new families.

Another great need is for good, qualified pastors. A number of our ministers will be retiring in the next few years and we need good replacements. However, there aren't many young ministers coming through the Huntington College Graduate School. So that is a need we will be asking people to pray for.

Good pastoral leadership is one key to building a healthy church. Laypersons can do a lot, but they want good pastoral leaders to help set the agenda and add enthusiasm and direction. I definitely want to build on quality lay leadership, because it's a team effort.

We will model the team effort at the denominational level. It's not just me as bishop running things, but we have a whole team of people, starting with the national board and Executive Leadership Team, along with the five leadership teams. So the pastor shouldn't look at it as a one-man show, but should be capable of giving positive leadership to the laypeople.

Healthy Churches

In our annual pastoral reports, I want to ask some different questions, so that we measure the things we say are important. For instance, I want to track the conversion growth rate in our churches--the number of new people who are new converts, rather than just transfers from other churches. Instead of asking, "How's your attendance?", I want to ask, "How many new people are you reaching?"

One of the interesting things we're finding is that people won't listen to strangers. They'll listen to an acquaintance or someone they know something about, but in today's culture, if you start talking to someone about your faith but you don't have some kind of relationship, they probably won't give you much time. So we need to help our people understand that that's how you reach today's culture--you build relationships with people, then you have opportunities to plant and reap. We call it Spiritual CPR--cultivating relationships, planting the Gospel through our actions and words, and then reaping the harvest.

We will also use the Natural Church Development survey as a tool for evaluating the health of our churches. The survey covers eight quality characteristics that are an integral part of healthy churches. I will encourage churches to use the Healthy Church training and to take the Natural Church Development survey, and I will encourage pastors to either receive the Healthy Church training or invite us to bring it to their church. I personally plan to continue doing Healthy Church training and following up with churches on their NCD survey results, because I think it's important.

I will also put a lot priority on prayer. I have committed myself, when I'm in the office, to spending an hour or two in the morning praying for pastors and ministries. I really want to model the importance of prayer and build it into our church fabric and structure.

I also want to encourage our healthy churches in the area of multiplication. It's not enough for us to have healthy churches. Healthy churches multiply themselves. This doesn't necessarily mean starting another church. It could mean helping with a restart, like the Emmanuel church in Fort Wayne did with Anchor Community Church. It could mean starting another service which would reach new people. Or it could mean starting a new ministry--a youth center or some other community outreach. Our view of what it means to multiply ourselves is too narrow.

Chipping Away at the 85 Percent

I think the Healthy Church emphasis will be received positively by the churches that really want to do something. Those that just want to maintain--I don't think much will excite them unless the Holy Spirit really gets hold of them and they realize, "Hey, we're going to die if we don't do something."

In the United States, we have 25-30 churches that are doing really good solid ministry. That's only about 10 percent, so we fit that same national average, where 85% are plateaued or declining. We would be hard-pressed to find more than 15 percent of our churches with a solid, healthy ministry. I want to see that number increase from 30 to 50, then to 75, and eventually to 100 out of our 250 United States churches. We'll change the image of the denomination that way.

It'll take time. But when we have 100 churches that are healthy, growing, and doing something significant, the statistics will start turning around, finances will go up, and the worship attendance will go up.

We'll still have to deal with the churches that aren't making it, but I don't want the focus on those who aren't making it to distract us from those who are, because the momentum of the church will be turned around by the healthy churches that are doing something.

We will be working with this through the Healthy Church emphasis and the Healthy Church Leadership Team. Some churches will respond, but some won't, either because they're not willing to make those kinds of changes or they don't see the need to. If you don't sense the need, you won't act. I'll help people become aware of the need to update their facilities and change some of their mindset about what it takes to reach unchurched people.

Miraculous Expectations

A personal theme for me will be "Miraculous Expectations." I'm using Ephesians 3:20-21 as a reference, "He is able to do immeasurably more than we are able to ask or imagine." Many of our churches don't have the expectation of seeing God marvelously change unbelievers into believers. I want to make that a passion and to talk about it regularly, so that people say, "I want to begin expecting God to make that happen in our church." In so many of our churches, it's business as usual and they've lost that expectation.

One church where this is happening is the Main Street church in Walbridge, Ohio. Pastor Ron Ramsey says, "We've got that expectation. God is changing lives all the time." As a result, the church is growing. If we can get more churches to catch that passion for miraculous life-change, then dynamic things will happen.