"A Place at the Table?" by The Rev. Lisa G. Fischbeck
I sat at the table with the four of them. They were optimistic, smart, creative and educated. And they wanted to help provide housing for the homeless. They had contacted me to see if The Episcopal Church of the Advocate (Chapel Hill, NC) might be open to the possibility of allowing a cluster of "tiny houses" to be built our land. They had creative ideas for funding, design, and development. They had thought through many dimensions of the project, but were open to questions and ideas, open to making adjustments. In other words, they were open to collaboration.
I sat at another table, this time with two university administrators who had gone by our church site on a Saturdaybike ride and spotted at an old barn located on our property. The Advocate had acquired it when we bought our land, but over the years, it was deteriorating to the point of becoming a liability.
But it was perfect for the program these men had in mind. They were looking for old barns throughout the county that could, with the owner's permission and outside funding, be taken apart, board by board. High school students would be brought on field trips to learn local history and construction processes. Weathered old boards would be offered to local artists. Beams and rafters would be salvaged for adaptive re-use, made into furniture or sold to local builders for use in new construction. Though they had ideas and a well-developed plan, they were open to questions and other ideas. They, too, were open to collaboration.
We live in a time of innovation and collaboration. People, institutions and organizations are coming together to create systems and businesses that improve our environment, our democratic processes, and the lives of the poor in our communities and in our world.
Much of this work comes under the umbrella of "social entrepreneurship". It includes a business plan that would allow for some profit, but not a lot; the motivations more for societal gain than for material gain. Projects are designed to be "scalable," to be adjusted and applied in a variety of settings. Sometimes these efforts include local governments, sometime they emerge despite local governments.
Often, they happen without the church.
More people are acting for good
Christ transforms culture with or without the Church. Concurrent with a decline in institutional church attendance, there is an increase in the number of people who are choosing a simpler life, eschewing greed and acquisition, finding ways to work with others and help others, within their own community and beyond. The "Buy Local" movement is part of it; adaptive re-use of structures and support for the arts are, too. Social media allows for grassroots fundraising and investment in small businesses near and far.
Certainly not a prevailing trend, but increasingly, individuals, organizations, and institutions are doing good and philanthropic work in the world. Those outside of faith traditions are finding ways to honor the dignity of others, to bring about social justice and societal change, what Jews call "the repair of the world." While often local and small scale, this change is not just happening with a handful of optimistic young adults like those who came to speak with me about tiny houses for the homeless and barn wood for local use.
Read more » I sat at the table with the four of them. They were optimistic, smart, creative and educated. And they wanted to help provide housing for the homeless. They had contacted me to see if The Episcopal Church of the Advocate (Chapel Hill, NC) might be open to the possibility of allowing a cluster of “tiny houses” to be built on our land. They had creative ideas for funding, design, and development. They had thought through many dimensions of the project, but were open to questions and ideas, open to making adjustments. In other words, they were open to collaboration.
I sat at another table, this time with two university administrators who had gone by our church site on a Saturday bike ride and spotted at an old barn located on our property. The Advocate had acquired it when we bought our land, but over the years, it was deteriorating to the point of becoming a liability.
But it was perfect for the program these men had in mind. They were looking for old barns throughout the county that could, with the owner’s permission and outside funding, be taken apart, board by board. High school students would be brought on field trips to learn local history and construction processes. Weathered old boards would be offered to local artists. Beams and rafters would be salvaged for adaptive re-use, made into furniture or sold to local builders for use in new construction. Though they had ideas and a well-developed plan, they were open to questions and other ideas. They, too, were open to collaboration.
We live in a time of innovation and collaboration. People, institutions and organizations are coming together to create systems and businesses that improve our environment, our democratic processes, and the lives of the poor in our communities and in our world.
Much of this work comes under the umbrella of “social entrepreneurship”. It includes a business plan that would allow for some profit, but not a lot; the motivations more for societal gain than for material gain. Projects are designed to be “scalable,” to be adjusted and applied in a variety of settings. Sometimes these efforts include local governments, sometime they emerge despite local governments.
Often, they happen without the church.
More people are acting for good
Christ transforms culture with or without the Church. Concurrent with a decline in institutional church attendance, there is an increase in the number of people who are choosing a simpler life, eschewing greed and acquisition, finding ways to work with others and help others, within their own community and beyond. The “Buy Local” movement is part of it; adaptive re-use of structures and support for the arts are, too. Social media allows for grassroots fundraising and investment in small businesses near and far.
Certainly not a prevailing trend, but increasingly, individuals, organizations, and institutions are doing good and philanthropic work in the world. Those outside of faith traditions are finding ways to honor the dignity of others, to bring about social justice and societal change, what Jews call “the repair of the world.” While often local and small scale, this change is not just happening with a handful of optimistic young adults like those who came to speak with me about tiny houses for the homeless and barn wood for local use.
Urban Habitat in Oakland, California, collaborates with stakeholders of every level to improve public transportation, gain housing justice and climate justice, and train prospective board and council members in the ways of effective local government participation. The California Community Foundation in Los Angeles creatively funds projects from a cache of more than a billion dollars. Pay for Success and Social Impact Bonds are working to reduce youth recidivism, expand early childhood education, and address homelessness.
Each of these projects is learning as it goes, emerging, evolving and finding ways to collaborate with others, assessing resources at hand and using those resources in order to have a positive and caring impact on quality of life of others.
Implementing the concept of tiny houses for the homeless on the campus of the Advocate would require the participation of visionaries, for sure, and also financiers who would explore and provide sources of money…local government whose rules and fees would need to be upheld or exempted…social workers…local businesses. And the Church.
I wonder what would happen if other churches – churches of every size and in every community – committed to discern whether God might be calling them to engage with a changing world in new and collaborative ways, to join or create efforts with nonprofits, for-profits, government, non-government, academic and philanthropic agencies to improve the lives of people, particularly the poor and those on the margins of our society.
I wonder what would happen if churches then assessed the resources we have been given, from people to buildings to land to endowments, and considered how we might leverage them in order to engage with those outside the church who are finding creative and energizing ways to do good in society and in our world.
Along the way, we would need to explore how the structures of our own denominations and judicatories help and hinder us for such collaborations. We would need to examine our attitudes, our pride, our theology, about profit and non-profit, about collaborating with those who do not share our faith, about compromise. We would need to have conversations and prayer, discovering, cultivating, and assessing ways for the Church to be a part of such innovative conversations and solutions.
It can certainly be said, and I would argue, that to engage with so-called “secular” institutions and organizations is not without evangelism. Ensuing relationships can and will transform the way the faith and the church is seen and known in the minds of individuals, communities, and generations. Some will be inspired to seek God and a deeper knowledge and love of God. And many will be given eyes to behold God’s justice, God’s mercy, God’s love.
Reimagining the Church’s role
Christians have a clear mandate from Jesus to give food to the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and those in prison. These things are fundamental to the life and work of the church. They are our baseline. But church volunteers are harder to find — and even the best non-profits spend too much of their time and effort seeking — the funds needed to keep organizations afloat. There is more that can be done, that needs to be done.
New occasions teach new duties. In Jesus’ day, there were poor and outcast, just as there are today. Like today, there were the politically powerful and the elite. Jesus had a lot to say to them about power and money. And he had a lot to say to villagers and city dwellers alike, about being fair in their dealings, about tending to the poor, about taking down the walls that divide human beings one from another. Many aspects of human existence are unchanged since Jesus’ day, and Gospel lessons still challenge.
But some things have changed, and how the faithful best respond to the poor and to the injustices of our world may be changing, too. The capacity to choose a lifestyle, a middle class with discretionary income to hold or to release, a capitalist system that not only allows for but is based upon the prospect of profit margins, all this is new since Jesus walked the dusty roads of Galilee.
The 21st century dawned with a clarion call for Christians, Muslims and Jews to find new ways to co-exist, to embrace one another. Rabbi Jonathan Sachs’ book, The Dignity of Difference gave us a blueprint, not to water down or put down our differences, but to respect and honor them. It is starting to happen. Collaborative sustainable ministries are gaining traction in churches and towns here and there across the country.
It is possible, perhaps even probable, that God is calling the Church to transform the way in which we engage in and with the world to respond to the cry of the poor. Sometimes we will invite others to our table.
But for the most part, I suspect, we will be asking if we can have a place at the table that is being prepared.
[The Rev. Lisa G. Fischbeck is the founding Vicar of The Church of the Advocate, an Episcopal Mission in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.]
Monday, March 21, 2016
Sacred Strategies is about eight synagogues that reached out and helped people connect to Jewish life in a new way -- congregations that had gone from commonplace to extraordinary. Over a period of two years, researchers Aron, Cohen, Hoffman, and Kelman interviewed 175 synagogue leaders and a selection of congregants (ranging from intensely committed to largely inactive). They found these congregations shared six traits: sacred purpose, holistic ethos, participatory culture, meaningful engagement, innovation disposition, and reflective leadership and governance. They write for synagogue leaders eager to transform their congregations, federations and foundations interested in encouraging and supporting this transformation, and researchers in congregational studies who will want to explore further.
Buy the book »
Ideas that Impact: Social Entrepreneurship:
"Three Insights from David Bornstein"
How does a vision for change come to life in transformed lives? Social entrepreneurship author David Bornstein has spent his career writing in answer to that question. He studies organizations and individuals who effectively mobilize change in their communities and around the world, and his work is critical for Christian leaders, who have been in the life-changing business for a couple of millennia already.
Read more »
How the work of visionary social entrepreneurs translates into the world of Christian ministry.
How does a vision for change come to life in transformed lives? Social entrepreneurship author David Bornstein has spent his career writing in answer to that question. He studies organizations and individuals who effectively mobilize change in their communities and around the world, and his work is critical for Christian leaders, who have been in the life-changing business for a couple of millennia already.
Here are three strategies Bornstein identifies as keys to social change.
- Make habitual change easier. Organizations “need to make desired behaviors as simple as possible -- removing the need to make decisions, so people act reflexively.” As an illustration, Bornstein discusses the confusing world of recycling(link is external): there are a myriad of labels used to designate recycling bins (paper vs. cardboard vs. electronics), and this abundance bewilders people looking to ditch their newspapers. The result: a population eager to recycle, but unsure how. This problem will continue “until recycling becomes automatic, like slowing down when you see a stop sign” (imagine the carnage, he suggests, if every town designed its own!). A habitual behavior, particularly a communal one, is hard enough to change without making it more complex than it needs to be.
- Approach your community as an ecology or web of relationships. Bornstein emphasizes that societies are webs of relationships, and that effective leaders know how to apply their efforts so change cascades through those networks. Consider what he calls “the Girl Effect(link is external)” and social challenges related to nutrition. If you want to catalyze change in a community around a web of problems related to disease, education and poverty, pay attention to the influential role mothers play in a community, particularly in the lives of children. Because no one is a brain floating in a vat, influence can only reach individuals by flowing along the channels of family and friendship, of institutions and traditions. Together, those form an ecology.
- Think in combinations. Bornstein stresses that social entrepreneurs are “creative combiners” whose institutions “foster whole solutions” to pressing social ills. This is how local networks of micro-lending made Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank an explosive force for change, or the Harlem Children’s Zone(link is external) addressed poverty in its community. Dr. King was thinking like a social entrepreneur when he suggested(link is external) that good Samaritans needed to think about repaving the road to Jericho. Bornstein teaches Christian leaders to look at the parts in light of the whole, to (for example) prudently combine generous giving with skillful advocacy for communal needs and strategic local partnerships to remedy them.
Being a leader sometimes means feeling unsure of the path, says the leader of Thistle Farms and the Magdalene community, two Christian institutions that are helping women recover from prostitution.
Read more »Being a leader sometimes means feeling unsure of the path, says the leader of Thistle Farms and the Magdalene community, two Christian institutions that are helping women recover from prostitution.
When I was young, I learned to pray, “Jesus, Lord, my friend and guide, please be always at my side.” It was comforting to imagine Jesus holding my hand and guiding me on my way so I would never get lost.
As I grew up, the road felt more precarious. I didn’t seem to be able to find a clear guide; there was not a simple fork in the road where I got to choose a sweet, snow-covered lane.
In fact, like many people led to start new ministries, I felt compelled to forge a new path. It began in 1997, when I (and others) took the first steps to found the not-for-profit Magdalene community in Nashville, Tenn., to serve women who have survived lives of addiction, prostitution and trafficking.
We opened up a single home and invited five women to come and live in community at no cost for two years. We didn’t take any public funding and avowed that we wanted to be a witness to the truth that love is the most powerful source of change in the world.
One important part of the early journey was to be clear about the mission. Our model was simple, influenced by the sixth-century Benedictine Rule, grounded in hospitality, reverence and love. As a community, we created 24 spiritual principles for living together and published them in a collaboratively written book, “Find Your Way Home.”
But though the mission felt clear, the path of leading this community felt uniquely narrow and unsure at times.
There have been times I barely navigated the confusion that settled in on me like a thick mountain fog. One of the first residents, Julia, relapsed about 18 months after we opened the program. She fought against the pain and abuse she had suffered, but less than two months after her relapse, she was tortured and murdered by a john in the cab of a semi truck.
It was heartbreaking, and made me question my ability to lead this community. And it wasn’t just Julia’s story that was painful. All the women served by Magdalene had traveled down roads more perilous and broken than I could imagine. On average, the women were first raped between the ages of 7 and 11. They had seen the undersides of bridges, the short side of justice and the backhand of anger long before they saw the inside of prison walls.
The dedication and determination needed to travel this path meant that I had much to learn. I needed to learn to ask for financial and professional help. I needed to work on healing my own woundedness from being sexually abused as a child. I needed to commit more of my life to this calling.
About five years into the work, it was clear that it was time to create another new path. We were growing more concerned about the economic well-being of the women in Magdalene. So we began a social enterprise. Thistle Farms(link is external) -- named for the tough weed with a beautiful purple flower that the women use to make paper -- produces all-natural bath and body care products to promote healing and offer steady employment.
Starting a business meant that I was on a steep learning curve again. Running a bath-and-body-care company wasn’t what I prepared for in divinity school, and I had to learn about branding, marketing, sustainability and management.
When we first began, for example, I didn’t know that having employee manuals and strict manufacturing procedures would reduce stress in the workplace. I didn’t know how to talk about love and still be seen as relevant in the marketplace.
I now have a clearer lens through which to read the Gospels -- I can read stories like the Good Samaritan and see myself as the guy in the ditch who has been rescued by many good people. The work has also helped me see that the imperative moral issue facing the church is the suffering of others. I can see the stranger as God and feel the transformational power of love.
Learning how to lead a social enterprise and a residential community has been the greatest gift I could have asked for as a pastor, and I didn’t even know I needed to ask for it. I didn’t know that without this work, I would have been lost in my vocation.
The work is not just transforming me and the women I am serving. It is also transforming the wider community. Both the products and the women who sell them are educating others on the myths of prostitution; they are teaching that women do recover, that longer prison sentences and more prisons are not the answer, and that there is a crucial need for more residential communities.
No one does this kind of work alone. To forge new paths in ministry is truly a community endeavor. Throughout the past 15 years, volunteers and staff with needed expertise have repeatedly come along -- often just in time. Right when we needed to expand our line of products, a chemist walked through the door. Just when we sought to gain access to a national chain, I ran into a friend who knew the president of the board!
Residents and graduates of Magdalene help lead the company, as well as learning skills in manufacturing, packaging, marketing, sales and administration. Thistle Farms now has products in 220 retail outlets and serves as a best-practice model in the United States, reminding ministries they can hold tightly to their core values and still be successful as businesses.
We now are hoping to share our expertise to help even more women. This year we have welcomed more than 700 people from around the world into our immersion day programs to show other communities how to replicate our model. We have formal partnerships with four other women’s social enterprises. In the past year, the women stood before audiences at more than 300 events, articulating our mission and courageously sharing their personal stories.
If you visit the 11,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and studio, you will see a communal vision that is still forming. We are only partway down the path, and we pray every day together for the grace to keep walking in community.
I have never found that simple fork in the road that I imagined as a child -- thank God. It has been all the twists and turns that have helped me find the place that feels just right to me. The view from here is breathtaking and fills me with gratitude.
"The Wetlands where Church and Social Ventures Meet" by Mike Baughman
The head of a Dallas coffeehouse/church urges the church to reclaim its role as an agent of social change, joining with social entrepreneurs to give new life to the world.
Read more »
The head of a Dallas coffeehouse/church urges the church to reclaim its role as an agent of social change, joining with social entrepreneurs to give new life to the world.
Sometimes, the best way to learn about the church may be to get as far away from it as possible, to attend a meeting or conference that has nothing to do with the church at all. That’s what I did this fall when I went to San Francisco for the Social Capital Markets Conference, SOCAP13(link is external), a gathering of social entrepreneurs from across the globe.
As the “community curator” of Union, a Dallas nonprofit coffeehouse/church that exists to care for its neighborhood, I wanted to learn more about social ventures and perhaps pick up new ideas that we could use.
At SOCAP, I found all of that and much more. I found inspiration, hope and God at work beyond the walls of the church. I found fertile ground that the church has yet to engage. More accurately, I discovered ground that the church once owned but abandoned and now must work to reclaim.
In many ways, SOCAP was like Annual Conference for the social venture community. About 2,000 social entrepreneurs and funders attended the event, all united by a common agenda: to advance the common good while remaining profitable. Social ventures generally seek to change the world while also generating a profit.
I have never been more inspired or more hope-filled at any church conference than I was at SOCAP. I met person after person who had identified a need somewhere in the world and was now working to offer a solution.
It is a strange and disturbing thing when a “Methodork” such as me, an ordained elder who deeply loves the United Methodist Church, is more inspired by a social venture conference than General Conference. But that is what happened, and I am apparently not alone.
I know many seminarians who are abandoning the ordination process to pursue more creative means of changing the world. They generally see the church as unfit or unwilling to empower them in these ventures. So they learn about God at seminary and then go get an MBA or an MSW to learn how to change the world.
Kenda Creasy Dean, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, attended the event to help her prepare for a new class she will offer next spring, “The Church as Social Venture.” In a hallway visit, Dean told me that she too has seen many seminarians forgo ordination because they believe they can be more creative and effective working outside a denominational structure.
“I want to equip them for this kind of work,” she said.
Dean said that she had recently written Jeffrey Sachs, the author of “The End of Poverty(link is external),” to ask why he didn’t view churches as possible leverage points for ending poverty.
She never heard from him -- and wasn’t surprised.
“If I were to guess, the answer is that there’s simply not much compelling evidence that churches in the last 50 years are all that interested in social impact,” Dean said.
Churches do a lot to alleviate local suffering, Dean said, but she has come to realize that “it’s the government and economic policies, not the gospel, that have been responsible for the planet’s most dramatic improvements in the people’s quality of life.”
There are, of course, exceptions. The North Texas Annual Conference, for example, recently launched The ZIP Code Project(link is external), an effort to eradicate poverty in two ZIP codes in northeast Texas. And many more examples surely exist.
But even so, the church has largely abdicated its role as the primary agent for social and economic change in the U.S. It is a sad development, given the church’s historical role in civil rights, temperance, child labor, suffrage, abolition and every other significant social movement in American history.
But if the church has dropped the baton, others, especially in the social venture world, have picked it up.
Steve Wright, the vice president for poverty insights at the Grameen Foundation(link is external), vividly illustrates the very different mindset that social entrepreneurs bring to their work.
In his conference presentation, Wright talked about Antoinette Tuff(link is external), the Georgia bookkeeper who convinced a would-be school shooter to surrender to police by talking to him about love.
“Just as we look to the ledger for profits as evidence of success, we must learn with intention and rigor to look into our communities for love as evidence of success,” Wright said.
I could not believe what I was hearing. A top executive at a major nonprofit told a roomful of business leaders and entrepreneurs that love matters as much as profits.
Then Wright closed the way all good prophets do, by challenging his listeners to see their calling in a new way.
“How can we build communities where Antoinette Tuff is ordinary?” he asked.
As the crowd rose to its feet and cheered (you can view his speech here(link is external)), I looked around that room filled with highly effective people who yearned for love and thought, “What an incredible opportunity for the church!”
Though I now live in Texas, I grew up on the Jersey Shore, across a lagoon from wetlands. There, at an early age, I learned that wetlands are a place where worlds come together, filling the oceans, air and land with life. Without wetlands, oceans die and the air falls empty.
- What if the church and the social venture world built a “wetland”?
The church shares with them a common mission: the transformation of the world. And though we may not be as effective at transforming the world as we once were, we have the very things that most social ventures need: property, people, funding and a narrative of servanthood.
- What would happen if we swallowed our pride and asked for help?
- What would happen if churches and denominations invested in social venture startups rather than more staff members to prop up our over-programmed congregations?
- What could it be like if bishops and district superintendents were free to spend less time on institutional management and more time mobilizing congregations to partner with change agents in our districts, annual conferences and countries?
- What if our seminaries trained pastors in the art of community organizing and sustainable investment practices?
- What if we partnered with someone like Steve Wright to figure out how to measure love in a community and add that to our dashboards?
- What if we came together to create a new “wetland,” giving new life to the world?
Planting & Harvesting Seeds of True Self:
A Circle of Trust® retreat for women and men of faith
April 18-20, 2016 | Lake Louise Christian Community | Boyne Falls, MI
Our souls want to experience a connection with one another and creation, and to develop the habits that will sustain our passions without wearing us out. Our souls crave opportunities to pause, reflect, and re-discover who we are, not who the world proclaims that we are. There is a desire to be seen and to see what is true and real for us, beyond role or position. Our souls long to engage in a community that listens to and affirms the stories of our lives. We long to know that the work we do and the way we live is planting seeds toward a hopeful, world-changing harvest.
This three-day retreat is designed to help you imagine what it would mean for you to inhabit your life and work fully as your best self, and will use the Circle of Trust® model developed by Parker Palmer and the Center for Courage & Renewal. This is an intergenerational retreat for women and men of faith who desire to step out of the rigors and routines of daily life and into a time of renewal and restoration for their soul -- a time to name and claim their soul stories.
This retreat will be facilitated by the managing director of Alban at Duke Divinity School, Nathan Kirkpatrick, and the program development director at Lake Louise Christian Community, Sarah Moore Hescheles.
Learn more and register »
----------------------"Taking Time for Ministry" by Bruce Epperly - Alban Weekly for Monday, 14 March 2016
"Taking Time for Ministry" by Bruce Epperly
When I recently encountered Gillian (not her real name), she was in a hurry as usual. I asked how she was doing, and in response she enumerated all the things she was doing at church and her young children's many extracurricular activities. I grew tired just listening. Although she initiated our coffee break, I felt like I was a nuisance as she looked at her watch and checked her phone whenever it buzzed. After we parted company, I recalled that every time we meet, Gillian is on the run, never fully present, and always looking toward the next appointment. I noted that whenever we get together, I begin to feel rushed as well!
Gillian's story mirrors the realities of ministerial life. She is a high-functioning, effective minister. Her church is growing. She is active in her denomination's regional body and well-respected. Yet, she lives her life on the run, always harried and weary, and never giving full attention to her family or spiritual life. She is smart and well-educated, but her sermons often suffer from lack of reflection. Like another externally successful pastor I know, Dean, she routinely becomes sick following Christmas and Easter as a result of her frenetic schedule. Dean confesses that he needs to slow down and simplify his life, but he admits that he's on a treadmill and believes that slowing the pace will harm his church. Both Dean and Gillian need to pause a moment to take time for ministry.
Time is a profoundly theological issue, reflecting our understanding of our relationship with God and our sense of vocation. While we can't manage time, we can intentionally slow down time, aligning our experience of time with God's everlasting and abundant life. We don't have to live as the White Rabbit from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, who races about without clear direction, repeating the mantra, "I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date." We can have the time of our life, recognizing that life is filled with unexpected occurrences, by living our lives more gently and intentionally, and claiming small Sabbaths every day.
I believe that a leisurely attitude toward time is essential to healthy and life-changing ministry regardless of the tasks and appointments on our calendar. A leisurely attitude toward time helps us savor the moments of ministry and relationships and creates a spacious environment for those who seek our pastoral care. Too often when people encounter their pastors, the pastor gives the impression that he or she is being interrupted and wants to conclude the encounter as quickly as possible to get onto something more important. Such busyness, however, sends a negative message to congregants and visitors -- you really aren't that important to me, your problems really aren't that serious, and I, the pastor, must focus on what really matters!
I believe pastors can make friends with time and transform their encounters with congregants and visitors.
Read more »
When I recently encountered Gillian (not her real name), she was in a hurry as usual. I asked how she was doing, and in response she enumerated all the things she was doing at church and her young children’s many extracurricular activities. I grew tired just listening. Although she initiated our coffee break, I felt like I was a nuisance as she looked at her watch and checked her phone whenever it buzzed. After we parted company, I recalled that every time we meet, Gillian is on the run, never fully present, and always looking toward the next appointment. I noted that whenever we get together, I begin to feel rushed as well!
Gillian’s story mirrors the realities of ministerial life. She is a high-functioning, effective minister. Her church is growing. She is active in her denomination’s regional body and well-respected. Yet, she lives her life on the run, always harried and weary, and never giving full attention to her family or spiritual life. She is smart and well-educated, but her sermons often suffer from lack of reflection. Like another externally successful pastor I know, Dean, she routinely becomes sick following Christmas and Easter as a result of her frenetic schedule. Dean confesses that he needs to slow down and simplify his life, but he admits that he’s on a treadmill and believes that slowing the pace will harm his church. Both Dean and Gillian need to pause a moment to take time for ministry.
Time is a profoundly theological issue, reflecting our understanding of our relationship with God and our sense of vocation. While we can’t manage time, we can intentionally slow down time, aligning our experience of time with God’s everlasting and abundant life. We don’t have to live as the White Rabbit from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, who races about without clear direction, repeating the mantra, “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.” We can have the time of our life, recognizing that life is filled with unexpected occurrences, by living our lives more gently and intentionally, and claiming small Sabbaths every day.
I believe that a leisurely attitude toward time is essential to healthy and life-changing ministry regardless of the tasks and appointments on our calendar. A leisurely attitude toward time helps us savor the moments of ministry and relationships and creates a spacious environment for those who seek our pastoral care. Too often when people encounter their pastors, the pastor gives the impression that he or she is being interrupted and wants to conclude the encounter as quickly as possible to get onto something more important. Such busyness, however, sends a negative message to congregants and visitors – you really aren’t that important to me, your problems really aren’t that serious, and I the pastor must focus on what really matters!
I believe pastors can make friends with time and transform their encounters with congregants and visitors. Nearly everyday someone knocks on my study door and begins their conversation with, “I know you’re busy.” My response is typically “No, I’m not busy. I have all the time in the world right now. Come in!” I have learned to cultivate a spirit of leisure which creates an atmosphere of calm hospitality. This isn’t an accident but the result of certain spiritual practices that transform time from scarcity to abundance. While there are many other positive practices, suited to a pastor’s age, family situation, congregational context, and personality type, many pastors have gained a new experience of time from the following practices:
First is the practice of contemplative prayer. In silence, we experience everlasting life. In focusing on God, we gain perspective on life and let go of the need to control our calendar.
Second, we can take time to pray the moments of ministry. I use a simple breath prayer whenever I go from one task to another. I breathe deeply and pray, “I breathe God’s spirit deeply in.” I say this prayer throughout each day: logging onto the computer, checking e-mail, as I begin to study and write, when I pick up the phone to call, answer the phone or check my messages, as I hear a knock on the study door, or greet our administrative assistant. This simple prayer weaves together the many tasks of the day into a tapestry of grace.
Third, the Benedictine counsel to “see everyone as Christ” changes the quality of our encounters from rushed to spacious. I pause whenever someone comes into my study or as I enter a hospital room to experience the holiness of the other. You can’t hurry holiness; you must let it emerge in the spaciousness of the moment.
Fourth, monitoring our emotions and energy throughout the day helps us see if we are succumbing to fatigue, hurry, stress, and impatience. If I experience a negative mood emerging, and am able to adjust my schedule, I change course by taking a short walk, walking to the country store or library, or reading a few pages of a recreational book.
Finally, it is important to attend to the dynamic balance of ministry, study, family, and spirituality. A healthy life involves taking time to be present in all the important areas of life. If I am neglecting one area, I try to focus on it later in the day or week.
We all fail in our attempts to be intentional about making time our friend. As a monk once confessed, we are always falling and getting back up again, over and over. Our commitment to making time for ministry through prayer and simplicity, and seeking dynamic balance, will create a spacious environment for our congregants, greater for well-being for us, healthy intimacy in our relationships, and depth and creativity in our preaching, teaching, and problem-solving.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Pastors today are overwhelmed by the perfect storm of too many responsibilities, too few resources, and too rapid congregational, cultural, and technological changes. Many of them confess that the cares of modern ministry have nearly choked the life out of their holy service. A Center in the Cyclone is a resource for integrated personal and professional transformation and healing for pastors; better equipping them to be effective spiritual leaders for the long haul of professional ministry.
Buy the book »
Make Time for Your Own Renewal:
"Planting & Harvesting Seeds of True Self: A Circle of Trust® retreat for women and men of faith"
April 18-20, 2016 | Lake Louise Christian Community | Boyne Falls, MI
Our souls want to experience a connection with one another and creation, and to develop the habits that will sustain our passions without wearing us out. Our souls crave opportunities to pause, reflect, and re-discover who we are, not who the world proclaims that we are. There is a desire to be seen and to see what is true and real for us, beyond role or position. Our souls long to engage in a community that listens to and affirms the stories of our lives. We long to know that the work we do and the way we live is planting seeds toward a hopeful, world-changing harvest.
This three-day retreat is designed to help you imagine what it would mean for you to inhabit your life and work fully as your best self, and will use the Circle of Trust® model developed by Parker Palmer and the Center for Courage & Renewal. This is an intergenerational retreat for women and men of faith who desire to step out of the rigors and routines of daily life and into a time of renewal and restoration for their soul -- a time to name and claim their soul stories.
This retreat will be facilitated by the managing director of Alban at Duke Divinity School, Nathan Kirkpatrick, and the program development director at Lake Louise Christian Community, Sarah Moore Hescheles.
Learn more and register »
Ideas that Impact: The Leader's Time
"Ministers Managing Time" by Ronald Sisk
Time management is best addressed sequentially, through a series of touch points that punctuate a minister's relationship with a congregation -- times when mutual expectations and intentions can be shaped and spelled out. Those touch points include:
the negotiation of an initial contract;
the establishment of a ministerial schedule;
the observation of contractual vacations, holidays, and sabbaticals;
the minister's daily self-management; and
times of congregational change.
For the most part, it is the skill with which we ministers address the issue at these critical points that determines our competence as time managers.
Read more »
Managing your time as a minister just may be the single most difficult issue you face. The problem of managing ministerial time has a long and not always hopeful history.
The minister’s need for Sabbath rest, time away from the job, and personal and family recreation was virtually ignored until the middle of the 20th century. Relatively little thought was given to ministers’ need for a life apart from their work. At that point, a number of cultural factors came into play, including changes in the secular workplace leading to an expectation of more balance between work and family life. In Christian circles the pastoral-care movement began to emphasize the need for ministers to be emotionally and physically healthy themselves in order to lead their congregations toward health.
Counterbalancing these factors that have moved toward support for ministerial time off is the persistent cultural expectation that a minister should always be available to the congregation. Nobody would fault parishioners for wanting their pastor with them at a time of devastating grief. Nor does anybody fault a church board for wanting the pastor present when important decisions are made, or the homebound for wanting the pastor to visit regularly. Nor does anyone deny that the pastor needs to socialize regularly with members of the church. Nor can one blame a family in crisis for wanting the pastor present in a time of need. The issue of ministerial time management grows out of this inevitable tension between the legitimate demands of congregational life and the legitimate need of ministers for a healthy and balanced lifestyle.
I contend that time management is best addressed sequentially, through a series of touch points that punctuate a minister’s relationship with a congregation—times when mutual expectations and intentions can be shaped and spelled out. Those touch points include the negotiation of an initial contract; the establishment of a ministerial schedule; the observation of contractual vacations, holidays, and sabbaticals; the minister’s daily self-management; and times of congregational change. For the most part, it is the skill with which we ministers address the issue at these critical points that determines our competence as time managers.
The problem of how you’re going to manage your time as a pastor begins before you ever enter the parish. Most churches don’t think of themselves as “hiring” a pastor. They think of themselves as “calling one. And they assume that serving as their pastor will be the consuming passion of your life. They’re correct. But that doesn’t mean they have a right to your attention 168 hours a week. What is required for competence in time management is the kind of mental toughness that recognizes that none of us is indispensable to the kingdom of God, but each of us is indispensable to our family and to our own mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being.
Time management is not an exact science. Nor is it the same for each person. But good time management can make the difference between a successful, fulfilling ministry, and one that seems to splash about aimlessly in the shallows. Most important, time management is a skill that can be learned, and learning it is worth the time.
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Adapted from The Competent Pastor: Skills and Self-Knowledge for Serving Well by Ronald D. Sisk copyright © 2005 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
_________________________________________________________
FEATURED RESOURCES
The Competent Pastor:
Skills and Self-Knowledge for Serving Well
by Ronald D. Sisk
Competence in ministry is a moving target. A ministry technique that works in one parish may not work in another. What works today may not work five years from now. But a competent pastor will be able to adapt to changing locations and changing times. This book is intended to help pastors, seminarians, and lay people who work with pastors understand themselves and others and to keep a realistic perspective on their work and their lives.
Gifts of an Uncommon Life:
The Practice of Contemplative Activism
by Howard E. Friend
This book of ten essays is a breath of fresh air, a source of inspiration, a wake-up call, and a bold challenge for pastors, congregational leaders, and church members—both active and lapsed—who long for a new perspective, even a touch of creative irreverence. Howard Friend offers fort
hright, at times disarming, candor as he shares his personal pilgrimage of activism rooted in contemplation. Drawing on a range of stories from the Bible and his own lived experiences, Friend invites us to meet real people—pastors, leaders, everyday folks—who dare to dream a new dream, journey toward a far horizon, walk with tireless determination, and press on with awesome hope.
Tending to the Holy:
The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry
by Bruce G. Epperly and Katherine Gould Epperly
Tending to the Holy invites pastors to embody their deepest beliefs in the routine and surprising tasks of ministry. Inspired by Brother Lawrence’s classic text in spirituality, The Practice of the Presence of God, this book integrates the wisdom and practices of the Christian spiritual tradition with the commonplace practices of pastoral ministry .
The Spiritual Leader’s Guide to Self-Care
by Rochelle Melander and Harold Eppley
The Spiritual Leader’s Guide to Self-Care is an ideal companion for clergy, lay leaders, and others who would like guidance about how to make changes in their personal life and ministry. Readers may work through one of the fifty two sections each week or adopt a more leisurely pace. The guide includes journal-writing suggestions, personal reflection questions and activities, guidance for sharing the discovery process with another person, an activity for the coming week, and suggested further resources.
__________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2009, the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. We encourage you to share articles from the Alban Weekly with your congregation. We gladly allow permission to reprint articles from the Alban Weekly for one-time use by congregations and their leaders when the material is offered free of charge. All we ask is that you write to us at alban@div.duke.edu and let us know how the Alban Weekly is making an impact in your congregation. If you would like to use any other Alban material, or if your intended use of the Alban Weekly does not fall within this scope, please submit our reprint permission request form.
"Taking Control of Your Time: It's All About Priorities" by Bradford Agry
A very crucial skill in time management is sorting out how important various projects -- both short and long term -- are, so that adequate time is given to each. This means striking a balance between attending to immediate deadline-driven work and projects which have a longer time horizon, yet need to be worked on bit by bit. Obviously, if we only spend our days simply reacting and "putting out fires," we will never get to many other important projects that impact our organizations. So how do you insure that you get to this important work?
Read more »
Being busy and fully scheduled doesn’t always mean being productive. Too often we unknowingly become victims of what I call the “tyranny of busy-ness.” We often are rapidly accomplishing things and crossing off projects on our various lists yet not always getting the bigger picture as to how these various activities really add up to reaching our larger goals. What happens is that we become passive about our time and its management and react to what comes our way versus strategically looking at what we really need to be doing and planning for it.
A very crucial skill in time management is sorting out how important various projects—both short and long term—are so that adequate time is given to each. This means striking a balance between attending to immediate deadline-driven work and projects which have a longer time horizon yet need to be worked on bit by bit. Obviously, if we only spend our days simply reacting and “putting out fires,” we will never get to many other important projects that impact our organizations.
So how do you insure that you get to this important work? A good place to start is to make “appointments with yourself” for projects that are important, yet not urgent. Certainly, every day there will be unplanned interruptions that are often unavoidable. Many times in the scope of things these items may not necessarily be important but need to be tended to immediately. The trick is to leave space for these tasks but also hold fast to time for working on the more important ones. If you have a project due in a month, plan ahead by breaking the work down into a series of smaller chunks. By working in these planned smaller “work parcels” you will allow time for changes in direction down the line. What’s more, you won’t be forced to be behind closed doors for four days straight at the end and unable to handle the demands of your other day-to-day work.
If you know the priorities, the other half of the equation is figuring how to optimally schedule your time to accomplish them. I advise clients to have a weekly plan and then a daily one which is adjusted accordingly. To be a better time manager, start with a simple diagnostic exercise. For a week, keep a detailed log of how you are spending your time in 15-30 minute increments. Pay attention to things that could have been avoided like an unimportant meeting or spending too much time on “busy” work such as low priority e-mails. Look to see what your overall goals and priorities for that time period were and how much of your effort went toward them. This is a very explicit way of figuring out which activities were perhaps getting short-changed and which may be getting too much attention.
Your calendar is a finite universe. Learn to prune activities that are less important to your job and your organization’s mission. This may involve delegating or re-assigning tasks to others, sharing parts of the work, or perhaps making them a lower priority. If you and your colleagues are in agreement as to what the shifting set of priorities are, then all can plan accordingly. By explicitly making room and intentionally planning for the crucial items, you will begin to shift from being a purely reactive scheduler to a more proactive time manager.
Comment on this article on the Alban Roundtable blog
_________________________________________________________
FEATURED RESOURCES
The Competent Pastor:
Skills and Self-Knowledge for Serving Well
by Ronald D. Sisk
Competence in ministry is a moving target. A ministry technique that works in one parish may not work in another. What works today may not work five years from now. But a competent pastor will be able to adapt to changing locations and changing times. This book is intended to help pastors, seminarians, and lay people who work with pastors understand themselves and others and to keep a realistic perspective on their work and their lives.
Gifts of an Uncommon Life:
The Practice of Contemplative Activism
by Howard E. Friend
This book of ten essays is a breath of fresh air, a source of inspiration, a wake-up call, and a bold challenge for pastors, congregational leaders, and church members—both active and lapsed—who long for a new perspective, even a touch of creative irreverence. Howard Friend offers forthright, at times disarming, candor as he shares his personal pilgrimage of activism rooted in contemplation. Drawing on a range of stories from the Bible and his own lived experiences, Friend invites us to meet real people—pastors, leaders, everyday folks—who dare to dream a new dream, journey toward a far horizon, walk with tireless determination, and press on with awesome hope.
Tending to the Holy:
The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry
by Bruce G. Epperly and Katherine Gould Epperly
Tending to the Holy invites pastors to embody their deepest beliefs in the routine and surprising tasks of ministry. Inspired by Brother Lawrence’s classic text in spirituality, The Practice of the Presence of God, this book integrates the wisdom and practices of the Christian spiritual tradition with the commonplace practices of pastoral ministry .
The Spiritual Leader’s Guide to Self-Care
by Rochelle Melander and Harold Eppley
The Spiritual Leader’s Guide to Self-Care is an ideal companion for clergy, lay leaders, and others who would like guidance about how to make changes in their personal life and ministry. Readers may work through one of the fifty two sections each week or adopt a more leisurely pace. The guide includes journal-writing suggestions, personal reflection questions and activities, guidance for sharing the discovery process with another person, an activity for the coming week, and suggested further resources.
__________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2009, the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. We encourage you to share articles from the Alban Weekly with your congregation. We gladly allow permission to reprint articles from the Alban Weekly for one-time use by congregations and their leaders when the material is offered free of charge. All we ask is that you write to us at alban@div.duke.edu and let us know how the Alban Weekly is making an impact in your congregation. If you would like to use any other Alban material, or if your intended use of the Alban Weekly does not fall within this scope, please submit our reprint permission request form.
---------------------
"How Do You Curate Human Potential?" by Victoria Atkinson White - Alban Weekly for Monday, 7 March 2016
"How Do You Curate Human Potential?" by Victoria Atkinson White
I recently congratulated a well-respected leader for hiring and developing a particularly stellar young leader. "Your employee is clearly bright and capable," I said to the senior leader. "What do you see next in her future?"
The leader looked at me as if I had spoken treason. "I have spent all this time getting her here. I need stability! I can't think about where she is going next."
The senior leader may not be thinking about where her young hire is going next, but the hire most certainly is.
Few remain with a single institution for the length of a career. Families move. Technology has enabled us to change jobs without leaving our home office. Travel is as easy as ever.
The U.S. Department of Labor reports that the average job tenure is 4.6 years nationwide, but in the religious world, it is only three to four years.
Hiring well takes effort and time, and it's understandable that senior leaders would focus their attention on trying to buck this trend and retain staff through competitive benefits and a positive work environment. A stable staff is safe and predictable -- but it's not a mark of a vibrant institution.
The work of a senior leader is to cultivate an institutional mindset of incubating talent.
Vibrant institutions take fresh talent and mold those hires into excellent leaders in their field -- not just leaders for a single institution. Courageous leaders seek out, nurture and support rising leaders, even knowing that those leaders will leave for other work one day.
Pastor and filmmaker Marlon Hall, who teaches in Leadership Education at Duke Divinity programs, is one of these courageous leaders. He sees himself as "a curator of human potential."
Let that sink in.
A curator of human potential.
Courageous leaders curate human potential not just because Christian institutions need leadership development but because it is part of their own calling.
Read more »
Bigstock/Jakub Jirsak
Courageous institutional leaders work to hire and develop the next generation of leaders -- even knowing that those leaders likely will leave to work somewhere else, writes a managing director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.
I recently congratulated a well-respected leader for hiring and developing a particularly stellar young leader. “Your employee is clearly bright and capable,” I said to the senior leader. “What do you see next in her future?”
The leader looked at me as if I had spoken treason. “I have spent all this time getting her here. I need stability! I can’t think about where she is going next.”
The senior leader may not be thinking about where her young hire is going next, but the hire most certainly is.
Few remain with a single institution for the length of a career. Families move. Technology has enabled us to change jobs without leaving our home office. Travel is as easy as ever.
The U.S. Department of Labor reports that the average job tenure is 4.6 years nationwide, but in the religious world, it is only three to four years.
Hiring well takes effort and time, and it’s understandable that senior leaders would focus their attention on trying to buck this trend and retain staff through competitive benefits and a positive work environment. A stable staff is safe and predictable -- but it’s not a mark of a vibrant institution.
The work of a senior leader is to cultivate an institutional mindset of incubating talent.
Vibrant institutions take fresh talent and mold those hires into excellent leaders in their field -- not just leaders for a single institution. Courageous leaders seek out, nurture and support rising leaders, even knowing that those leaders will leave for other work one day.
Pastor and filmmaker Marlon Hall, who teaches in Leadership Education at Duke Divinity programs, is one of these courageous leaders. He sees himself as “a curator of human potential.”
Let that sink in.
A curator of human potential.
Courageous leaders curate human potential not just because Christian institutions need leadership development but because it is part of their own calling.
Paul modeled this beautifully for us in the potential he curated in Barnabas, Silas and, most clearly, Timothy. Paul had the courage and self-awareness to acknowledge that he could not do what he had been charged to do on his own. He also knew he had to cultivate the kind of leaders needed to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. There wasn’t exactly a hiring pool of potential early church missionaries.
Paul knew that if he did his job well, those he trained, encouraged, challenged and mentored would leave him.
That is what courageous leaders do. They see the bigger picture of institutions and the development of leaders within them. They have the courage to look past the fear of bright young talent leaving their institutions and instead develop that talent for the present and future value of their institutions and others. They have the courage to curate human potential today to have excellent leaders tomorrow.
So if you accept the reality that your staff is going to change, how can you think of your institution as a generative organization, constantly recruiting, training and deploying leaders rather than dwelling on the stark statistics of hiring pools and staff turnover?
How can you look at the job requirements for your next hire as an opportunity to bring in someone incredible, someone everyone looks at and says, “Wow! How did they get him?”
Imagine yourself in an interview conversation like this: “I know you have a number of opportunities right now. Let me tell you why I think you would be an excellent fit here. If you give me three years, I can promise that you will have experiences in X, Y and Z. You will lead A, B and C teams, and you will develop 1, 2 and 3 skills and 4, 5, and 6 connections. You will help our organization reach H, I and J goals, so that you will have essentially worked yourself out of a job. At that time, you will find a new challenge either inside this organization or perhaps outside. I will help you do that. I want to set you and this institution up for success, and that means developing you as a leader.”
If you make that kind of clear investment in your hires, your institution will gain the reputation of developing leaders. Potential employees will come to you because of what they know you can offer them.
It is not treasonous or disloyal for institutional leaders to think of their hires’ overall careers. High staff turnover doesn’t necessarily reflect a failure in the hiring process; instead, it may mark success in developing human potential, and in deploying more competent and well-trained leaders into the workforce.
Paul had the ability and intellect to attract, train, mentor and nurture talent, as well as the courage to send these missionaries out into the world. His results are pretty impressive. Imagine what yours could be.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Supervision--the shaping of spiritual leaders--occurs formally and informally in many aspects of congregational life, and while supervision enhances the work of all concerned, it is rarely explicitly addressed in congregations.Shaping Spiritual Leaders provides a hands-on approach to supervision, addressing key areas such as identifying a learning focus, covenanting, managing conflict, understanding and using power and authority, offering and receiving feedback and evaluation, and celebrating and ending the supervisory relationship.
Buy the book »
Ideas that Impact: Staff Supervision:
"The Importance of Outcomes" by Gil Rendle and Susan Beaumont
An old saying goes "If you don't know where you are going, any path will get you there." This suggests that if you are not clear about what you, your staff, and your congregation are to "produce" in ministry-what the clear outcomes of your work are to be-then it is okay for staff members to spend their time on whatever their current practices or preferences of work might be. This leads to assumptions that work-any work-is appropriate whether it is making a needed difference or not.
Read more »
An old saying goes “If you don’t know where you are going, any path will get you there.” This suggests that if you are not clear about what you, your staff, and your congregation are to “produce” in ministry—what the clear outcomes of your work are to be—then it is okay for staff members to spend their time on whatever their current practices or preferences of work might be. This leads to assumptions that work—any work—is appropriate whether it is making a needed difference or not.
The dilemma is that typically when staff do not know what they are to produce—or when staff do not know what they are being held accountable to produce—they tend to value and measure their work by the amount of time consumed or the number of tasks accomplished. We all have been in supervision meetings with staff or evaluation meetings with personnel committees where a person’s work was measured by how many hours were spent doing the work or how many visits, phone calls, reports, dollars, or volunteers were involved. The number of hours, visits, calls, reports, and so on is not a measure of what is produced in ministry but rather a measure of what is expended in ministry. Without a clear and shared outcome in place for a staff person’s work, it is impossible to judge if the expenditure of hours, activities, and resources was appropriate or effective. The real issue of hours and resources is not whether they were spent but whether they moved the congregation toward the outcome of ministry to which it is called by its mission. Staff members are not paid to work hard, but to achieve ministry.
Even more debilitating than simply working hard along any path because you don’t know where you are going is the truism of all living systems: When a system doesn’t know what to do, it does what it knows. It is widely recognized that ministry is in a time of great transition because we are learning how to do ministry in a culture that has greatly changed. In what often is described as an in-between time, leaders have recognized that what many congregations know how to do no longer works well, but many congregations do not yet know what will work—or are not yet practiced at doing what they have discovered will work. The consequence is that when outcomes are unclear, staff members are tempted to spend increasing amounts of time doing what they know how to do by attending committee meetings, revising structure, and working harder and longer at programs that used to work—with the hope that the extra effort at known tasks will make the difference.
Leaders of congregations are more likely to have a good idea of what they “do”—the activities of the congregation—than of what those activities are to “produce.” Keeping people in the congregation happy so that they don’t complain is not an appropriate product of ministry. More people participating in what we are doing is not necessarily a product of ministry. Yet it is hard for leaders to get more specific about what is to be produced in ministry—such as introducing a new generation to the faith, deepening the life of individuals so that their faith makes a practical difference in their daily living, or building a “bridge” into the community and the larger world that will introduce new people to faith.
For mainline, established congregations—Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish—the question of product did not need to be answered in the past. In an earlier time, these three dominant expressions of faith in the American experience had an assigned cultural role to play in the sociological structure of our nation. It was sufficient simply to be a “type” of congregation—Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish. That identity provided adequate explanation of what the congregation was to do. For established American congregations now, the cultural reason of providing a place for membership and national identity is no longer the dominant reason for the congregation to exist.
Mission statements are critically important in shaping outcomes. When well developed, they are statements of identity, purpose, and context, answering the following formation questions:
- Who are we?
- What has God called us to be and do?
- Who is our neighbor?
Outcomes provide the critical next level of specificity of calling and commitment that the congregation needs to understand clearly. Outcomes can be used to do the following:
- develop strategies
- set goals with staff
- answer questions about needed resources
- develop timelines
- provide structures of accountability
- give clarity to goals, making it possible to explain to the various voices in the congregation why some efforts have been given priority attention
In a fast-changing environment, it is possible to identify what we are to produce, but it is much more difficult to know from the outset what it will take to accomplish the outcome. Ends can be identified. Directions can be set. But strategies often need to be learned along the way. Leadership in the contemporary congregation, in fact, involves learning how to do ministry while actually doing it in a fluid and changing time. To be effective, the description of the outcome needs to be firm and in place. The way we get to the outcome needs to be held loosely and be malleable to allow new learnings that we will uncover as we do the work. The idea of being firm in purpose but flexible in strategy is a basic principle of the organization of behavior for all vital living systems.
The classic difference between a mission statement and a vision statement is that the mission statement describes what is to be done while the vision statement draws a verbal picture of what the results will look like if the mission is accomplished. The verbal picture is necessary to help people have a perceptual idea of the target: What will it look like? Creativity, invention, and adaptation will be needed along the way. It, therefore, is inappropriate to hold leaders and staff accountable for an expected outcome if the shape of that outcome needs to change while the work is being done. The verbal picture of the outcome nevertheless provides the direction: “This is what we are after.” Without the picture it is difficult for leaders and staff to know how to shape their work. The final results may—and probably will—vary from the original picture, but there needs to be a visual map from the beginning that will set direction.
We started with “If you don’t know where you are going, any path will get you there.” A much more important corollary is: “Knowing where you are going is much more important than knowing how you will get there.” Times of great change are moments of invention. New things need to be tried. Experiments need to be mounted. We need to be guided by what we are learning more than by what we already know.
Claiming a clear outcome for
ministry can be an anxious moment for the senior clergy because of our limited assumptions about leadership that insist that if we name the goal, we need to know how to get there. Senior clergy struggle with supervising staff in new work because they feel the inappropriate burden of needing to tell staff what to do when they are aware they are not themselves certain.
In fact, in the current environment, the leader who believes that he or she needs to know not only what is to be done but how to do it is a barrier to ministry. Great change takes place in the wilderness of new times. When Moses tried to do all the leadership tasks by himself, he became exhausted and the work of the people suffered greatly. It was when he was able to draw the picture of the Promised Land and work with Aaron and others to figure out the trip, day by day, that the slaves transformed themselves into the nation of Israel.
Comment on this article on the Alban Roundtable blog
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Adapted from When Moses Meets Aaron: Staffing and Supervision in Large Congregations by Gilbert R. Rendle and Susan Beaumont, copyright © 2007 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
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FEATURED RESOURCES
When Moses Meets Aaron:
Staffing and Supervision for Large Congregations
by Gil Rendle and Susan Beaumont
In When Moses Meets Aaron, Gil Rendle and Susan Beaumont help clergy responsible for several-member staff teams learn to be both Moses and Aaron—both a visionary and a detail-oriented leader—in order for their large congregations to thrive. They immerse the best of corporate human resource tools in a congregational context, providing a comprehensive manual for supervising, motivating, and coordinating staff teams.
When Better Isn’t Enough:
Evaluation Tools for the 21st Century Church
by Jill M. Hudson
Approaching the postmodern era as a tremendous opportunity, Hudson identifies 12 characteristics by which we can measure effective ministry for the early 21st century. Based on those 12 criteria, Hudson has created evaluation tools to help congregations improve their ministry, help members and staff grow in effectiveness, deepen a sense of partnership, and add new richness to the dialogue about a congregation’s future.
Traveling Together:
A Guide for Disciple-Forming Congregations
by Jeffrey D. Jones
By becoming congregations of disciples, churches and their individual members will prepare themselves to do the hard work of seeking God’s will and discerning God’s call, finding new possibilities in old answers as well as radically new ways to be and to do church. Jones guides readers through what it means to be a disciple, from key experiences that contribute to the growth of disciples to the practices of disciple-forming congregations.
Holy Conversations:
Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice for Congregations
by Gil Rendle and Alice Mann
Gil Rendle and Alice Mann cast planning as a “holy conversation,” a congregational discernment process about three critical questions: Who are we? What has God called us to do or be? Who is our neighbor? Rendle and Mann equip congregational leaders with a broad and creative range of ideas, pathways, processes, and tools for planning. By choosing the resources that best suit their needs and context, congregations will shape their own strengthening, transforming, holy conversation.
__________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2009, the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. We encourage you to share articles from the Alban Weekly with your congregation. We gladly allow permission to reprint articles from the Alban Weekly for one-time use by congregations and their leaders when the material is offered free of charge. All we ask is that you write to us at alban@div.duke.edu and let us know how the Alban Weekly is making an impact in your congregation. If you would like to use any other Alban material, or if your intended use of the Alban Weekly does not fall within this scope, please submit our reprint permission request form.
"People are Resources" by Gil Rendle and Susan Beaumont
Because ministry is about people, we often neglect seeing people themselves as resources for ministry. People, of course, are the recipients of ministry, and a changed person is often the goal of ministry. But ministry is done by people who also need to be seen as a primary resource for doing ministry.
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Because ministry is about people, we often neglect seeing people themselves as resources for ministry. People, of course, are the recipients of ministry, and a changed person is often the goal of ministry. But ministry is done by people who also need to be seen as a primary resource for doing ministry.
The confusion about people being either resources or goals can often be seen when a congregation stretches its vision in a way that requires the addition of a new staff person. To take the step of increasing staff, money often needs to be raised and new structures may need to be put in place. When the new staff person finally is identified and begins work, there is great celebration and a sense of accomplishment. Then the level of energy and activity often settles down and little new happens. At the heart of the inactivity and lack of change is confusion over resources and goals. The new staff person commonly is mistaken for the goal. When the new person is put in place, it feels right for leaders to check the task of increasing staff off their to-do list and settle back to life as usual.
The problem is that the new staff person isn’t being recognized as a resource needed to address some other goal of ministry. For example, the goal of the congregation is not to hire a new youth minister, but to provide or to increase ministry with youth—for which it is determined that the resource of a new youth minister is needed. Likewise, the goal of the congregation is not to hire an additional music director with skills in contemporary worship, but to provide worship that speaks to and meets the needs of people who do not respond well to traditional worship—for which a music director with contemporary skills is needed.
A difficult transition for senior clergy and congregational personnel committees is to recognize staff and leaders (clergy or lay, paid or volunteer, full-time or part-time) as resources not goals, as providers not recipients of ministry. Schooled in pastoral care and community support, senior clergy and personnel committees mistake their role as being caregivers to the people who are called forth as employees or volunteers to lead the ministry of the congregation. Consider the congregation that accepted the reduction of a staff member’s hours (without commensurate reduction in salary) because the staff member found it difficult to arrange for child care. Or the congregation that was reluctant to mention the associate pastor’s absences and failure to complete work assignments because he was “having a difficult time at home.” Of course, in faith communities we need to be careful and responsible in our relationships with others—coworkers included. Workers, however, need to be seen by senior clergy and personnel committees as resources for, rather than recipients of, ministry. Like all resources, they need to be stewarded, directed, aligned, supervised, and used with accountability. Organizationally this function of leadership is known as human resource management.
It is widely acknowledged that clergy, who are expected to provide primary leadership and management to congregations, are not well prepared for the task of human resource management. Identifying some contributing factors is fairly easy:
- Professional training typically focuses on the disciplines of the profession itself. Running a law office or managing a medical practice requires another complete body of business knowledge and experience that lawyers or physicians must either learn or purchase to support their primary practice. Such training is not sufficiently provided in their professional preparation. In like ways, the seminary offers preparation for ministry, not for congregational leadership and people management.
- The performance of ministry has a long tradition of taking the form of “lone ranger” leadership, in which congregations practice clergy dependence (and scapegoating) by believing that all ministry is up to the clergy. Clergy often collude by trying to do it all.
- The growth in the number of large congregations that need multiple staff members—and therefore more formal practices of staff management—is a relatively new cultural experience. Attention to developing a leadership skill set related to human resource management was not previously needed or well regarded in congregations.
- Having an abundance of resources (primarily dollars and volunteers) does not encourage or require learning how to manage or steward resources. This is easily seen in settings where leaders manage their problems by “throwing money at them” because they have the money to throw. Established congregations come from an earlier American cultural background in which people’s time (like money in an expanding economy) seemed like an inexhaustible resource. Members were expected to give hours, days, and weeks to participation and leadership in their congregation. Leaders today, however, are providing ministry with and to people with a rapidly decreasing amount of discretionary time and who experience a vastly expanded competition as to how they will use that discretionary time. People’s commitment to their faith or their congregation can no longer be measured by the amount of time they give. As discretionary time shrinks, leaders have to learn how to use volunteer time more effectively, replace volunteer hours with staff hours, and manage staff as a costly and limited resource.
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Adapted from When Moses Meets Aaron: Staffing and Supervision in Large Congregations by Gil Rendle and Susan Beaumont, copyright © 2007 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
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FEATURED RESOURCES
When Moses Meets Aaron:
Staffing and Supervision in Large Congregations
by Gil Rendle and Susan Beaumont
In When Moses Meets Aaron, Gil Rendle and Susan Beaumont help clergy responsible for several-member staff teams learn to be both Moses and Aaron—both a visionary and a detail-oriented leader—in order for their large congregations to thrive. They immerse the best of corporate human resource tools in a congregational context, providing a comprehensive manual for supervising, motivating, and coordinating staff teams.
When Better Isn’t Enough:
Evaluation Tools for the 21st Century
by Jill M. Hudson
Approaching the postmodern era as a tremendous opportunity, Hudson identifies 12 characteristics by which we can measure effective ministry for the early 21st century. Based on those 12 criteria, Hudson has created evaluation tools to help congregations improve their ministry, help members and staff grow in effectiveness, deepen a sense of partnership, and add new richness to the dialogue about a congregation’s future.
The Alban Personnel Handbook for Congregations
by Erwin Berry
Today’s congregational leaders increasingly serve as human resource managers for ordained and nonordained persons. This handbook provides practical and proven strategies for managing church staff and addresses the particular ethical issues that faith communities need to consider to serve as effective stewards of those whom they employ.
The Competent Pastor:
Skills and Self-Knowledge for Serving Well
by Ronald D. Sisk
Competence in ministry is a moving target. A ministry technique that works in one parish may not work in another. What works today may not work five years from now. But a competent pastor will be able to adapt to changing locations and changing times. This book is intended to help pastors, seminarians, and lay people who work with pastors understand themselves and others and to keep a realistic perspective on their work and their lives.
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Reframing Hope
Ministry, In, With, and For a New Generation
From her vantage point as an under-40 pastor, Carol Howard Merritt, author of Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation, explores what ministry in, with, and by a new generation might look like. What does the substance of hope look like right now? What does hope look like when it is framed in a new generation? Join with Carol Howard Merritt as she unpacks the central themes of her new book, Reframing Hope: Vital Ministry in a New Generation. She explores the spirit of collaboration that has grown up in our culture as the diffusion of authority continues to move toward a network of sharing resources and information. She shares the spiritual longing she sees in those of her generation and acknowledges that people will no longer settle for one-way preaching and entertaining services—they want their worship to become meaningful; they want their spirituality to lead to action. Does this describe you? Or a dream you have for your congregation? Don’t miss this chance to learn from one of the leading voices of younger adult ministries today.
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Copyright © 2010, the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. We encourage you to share articles from the Alban Weekly with your congregation. We gladly allow permission to reprint articles from the Alban Weekly for one-time use by congregations and their leaders when the material is offered free of charge. All we ask is that you write to us at alban@div.duke.edu and let us know how the Alban Weekly is making an impact in your congregation. If you would like to use any other Alban material, or if your intended use of the Alban Weekly does not fall within this scope, please submit our reprint permission request form.
Continue Your Own Learning & Development
Reimagining Health Collaborative 2016: The Church and Mental Health
Duke Divinity School
Do you or others in your congregation live with mental illness?
Does your congregation long to promote mental health and to respond faithfully to the needs of people with mental illness, but you are not sure how?
Are there opportunities within your congregation to learn from and walk alongside people with mental illness?
Do you want to partner with other congregations that are faithfully and creatively engaging mental health and mental illness?
Over the course of our lives, approximately 45% of Americans will develop some form of mental illness-from depression, anxiety, and substance use to many other mental disorders like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Suicide claims 40,000 lives per year in the United States and is a leading cause of death among adolescents and adults. Living with mental illness, particularly serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, is filled with both challenges and opportunities. The church must be equipped and energized to respond faithfully.
The Reimagining Health Collaborative at Duke Divinity School invites Christian congregations to partner with each other and with Duke Divinity School faculty, students, and staff,to envision and to implement faithful practices related to health and illness. This year's cohort of congregations will focus specifically on mental health and mental illness. Further information about the program, with application materials, can be found here.
For more information, email Rachel Meyer, Program Director of the Reimagining Health Collaborative, at rmeyer@div.duke.edu. Applications for this year's cohort will be accepted until May 1, 2016.
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