Alban Weekly from Alban at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States for Tuesday, 2 October 2018 "Christian accountability in a #MeToo world"
PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
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Christian accountability in a #MeToo worldvinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States THE CHURCH MUST CONFESS AND CHANGE IN RESPONSE TO #MeToo
Now that the pace of the #MeToo movement has slowed from shocking daily revelations, the real work, the true reckoning, begins.
Before #MeToo went viral in fall 2017, with scores of women sharing stories of sexual assault and sexual harassment, I had found it hard to know what to do when I heard an off-color break room comment or felt objectified, overlooked or interrupted. I'd make mental notes of men who gave me the creeps and listen carefully when other women shared their experiences.
I would share my own experiences in hushed tones and with raised eyebrows, omitting names if it seemed professionally risky. When someone would say, "Oh, now that he's married, he's less creepy," I'd nod. But internally, my suspicion would not relent.
This practice, I now understand, is a whisper network. Monica Byrne rightly points out that what some call gossip is often the exchange of sanity- and life-saving information. But whisper networks are imperfect. Those on the outside of a whisper network or who are new in town don't get the information. And whisper networks provide only the bare minimum of protection, alerting us to avoid known predators and exploiters.
Moira Donegan sought to overcome the limitations of the whisper network when she developed the Media Men list, an anonymously crowd-sourced Google spreadsheet that allowed people to list men in the media industry who sexually abused, harassed or coerced others. The creation of the list sought to give women an alternative place to report harassment without fear of retaliation, judgment or reproach. Women were able to exchange important information outside the rules and laws that govern HR offices and law enforcement. The list was live for only a few hours before its viral existence surpassed Donegan's capacity to manage it.
Continue reading from Alaina Kleinbeck »
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, INSTITUTIONAL LEADERSHIP
Alaina Kleinbeck: Christian accountability in a #MeToo world
iStock / Kameleon007
Members of the media industry have shared their stories and demanded an end to systems that perpetuate sexual assault and harassment. The church has secrets, too, and must change, writes the director of Duke Youth Academy.Now that the pace of the #MeToo movement has slowed from shocking daily revelations, the real work, the true reckoning, begins.
Before #MeToo went viral in fall 2017, with scores of women sharing stories of sexual assault and sexual harassment, I had found it hard to know what to do when I heard an off-color break room comment or felt objectified, overlooked or interrupted. I’d make mental notes of men who gave me the creeps and listen carefully when other women shared their experiences.
I would share my own experiences in hushed tones and with raised eyebrows, omitting names if it seemed professionally risky. When someone would say, “Oh, now that he’s married, he’s less creepy,” I’d nod. But internally, my suspicion would not relent.
This practice, I now understand, is a whisper network. Monica Byrne rightly points out that what some call gossip is often the exchange of sanity- and life-saving information. But whisper networks are imperfect. Those on the outside of a whisper network or who are new in town don’t get the information. And whisper networks provide only the bare minimum of protection, alerting us to avoid known predators and exploiters.
Moira Donegan sought to overcome the limitations of the whisper network when she developed the Media Men list, an anonymously crowd-sourced Google spreadsheet that allowed people to list men in the media industry who sexually abused, harassed or coerced others. The creation of the list sought to give women an alternative place to report harassment without fear of retaliation, judgment or reproach. Women were able to exchange important information outside the rules and laws that govern HR offices and law enforcement. The list was live for only a few hours before its viral existence surpassed Donegan’s capacity to manage it.
In many ways, the Media Men list was simply a rumor mill. That is partly the point. It pressured people to pay attention. It democratized the availability of information. It is an imperfect answer to the imperfect design of institutional accountability structures. But it came to be because institutions fail to adequately protect women and men from harassment, abuse and coercion.
Two photojournalists, Daniel Sircar and Justin Cook, noticed the number of people in their field being named for sexual misconduct. They wanted to change their industry for the better. They drafted a Google form, calling men (and others) to sign a letter asking industry organizations, conferences and workshops to publicly condemn harassment and discrimination, to share the steps they’re taking to ensure a safe working environment, and to ban people who make events and work unsafe.
This open letter brought to light a different whisper network: men who were fed up with toxic work cultures that diminished their female and other minority colleagues. Sircar and Cook didn’t want to whisper their concern and support in hushed networks; they sought to organize their voices and work with their female colleagues to change the culture of the photojournalism industry.
The long-term effects of these two efforts on the media industry remain to be seen, but both are instructive to ways we think about accountability in the church.
We, too, have our open secrets. We, too, are well aware of the ways that the church has failed to protect people, particularly women and children, from abusive clergy. We have institutional structures whose imperfect systems of accountability presume not only innocence but also forgiveness before repentance and reparation. Our institutions, much like those in the media industry, are undergoing vast changes as they cope with fewer resources and rapidly shifting cultural conditions.
We exist in a world that needs a Ministry Men list as much as it needs a Media Men list to awaken us to the close proximity and vastness of sexual abuse, harassment, coercion and other oppressive behaviors in ministry. I regularly hear stories of men and women in ministry who have treated others dismissively or abusively. Our work cultures in the church have failed to foster the full accountability we need for every person to thrive.
We, too, need innovation in the accountability structures we use to protect women, children, people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities and others who experience marginalization. We, too, need to liberate the information whispered in the break room or the bar across town from our churches and offices. We, too, need men who are fed up with the toxic ministry culture to unveil their whisper network and demand accountability in ways that our institutions cannot or will not.
Throughout his ministry on earth, Jesus called religious authorities to see women, children, the ill, the oppressed with new eyes. The apostle Paul called early churches to be places of welcome for the disenfranchised. This was a wholly new vision of community, and a radical call to responsibility toward others. This is the Christian call, whether in first-century Palestine or 21st-century America.
May we, too, speak up and make change.
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: ACCOUNTABILITY
Loving accountability
Holding someone accountable is a way of loving that person, writes a chaplain and Alban author. When we fail to hold someone accountable, we have to ask ourselves if it was because we did not love them enough to tell them the truth.
Read more from David Keck »
David Keck: Loving AccountabilityWe might think of accountability in one of three ways.
A politician speaks before ravenous reporters and promises that “going forward there will be greater accountability.” We like the idea, and our community’s anger may be somewhat mollified, but deep down we’re really not sure if anything will come of it.
A church member, incredibly frustrated at the repeated failure of the pastor and budget chair to provide information, enters the committee meeting with dread. She knows that accountability is needed, but these are people she cherishes, and holding them accountable is painfully regrettable, to be done only in the most extreme circumstances.
Augustine writes in chapter 10 of his Confessions, “A brotherly person rejoices on my account when he approves me, but when he disapproves [i.e. holds me accountable], he is loving me.” Here, accountability is an integral, indeed necessary part of the Christian life for communities and individuals.
Churches often think about accountability in one of the first two ways – either as a word to be thrown around to appease immediate sentiments, or as an anguished last resort, deployed only when there are no other options. Augustine’s recognition of a love that underlies accountability seems rarely shared.
Churches may have a hard time with accountability for a number of different reasons:
- church members feel it’s not their responsibility or within their competency to question what the pastor does
- holding a committee chair accountable might mean needing to find another chair (or losing him and his stewardship pledge to a neighboring church)
- to speak up is to risk losing friends or starting a conflict, and Christians don’t get into conflicts
- Christians believe Jesus wants us to forgive, not judge
- a pastor’s ego may be so fragile that no one wants to risk saying anything negative
- a pastor’s ego may be so colossal that no one believes raising any questions would do any good
Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, reminds us that “Each of us will be accountable to God,” (Romans 14:12, NRSV). The term translated here (and elsewhere in the New Testament) as “accountable” is logos. This critical word also means reason, inner logic, word, and ultimately the Word, Jesus Christ. So when Christians practice accountability in the congregation, they are, in some sense, abiding in the reason-for-being of the congregation, the inner and ultimate ordering of a community that follows the incarnate Logos. This is no small matter. In some sense we should all rejoice in this blessing, not run away from it.
Given such biblical principles, it is hardly surprising that the authors of the Scots Confession connected accountability to the integrity of a church. A genuine church includes “true preaching . . . the right administration of the sacraments . . . and . . . ecclesiastical discipline uprightly administered, as God’s Word prescribes, whereby vice is repressed and virtue nourished.” Christ promises to be in the midst of such a community (see chapter 18).
Indeed, practicing accountability is one way congregants and pastors become more Christ-like. Thinking back on times when I’ve been held accountable, I realize that these difficult moments helped me to be a better pastor and a better Christian. I developed the capacity to listen to congregants, respecting the awkwardness they might have felt or accepting the presence of anger in their voice. I learned how to be more faithful to our community, and my relationships with congregants improved.
The times when accountability broke down remain painful. What could I – what should I – have done differently? How could other members of our community have been helpful so that tensions would not have developed into conflicts and resignations? How did we miss opportunities to serve Jesus and strengthen our community, not weaken it?
If indeed holding each other accountable for the good of the church is essential for living out God’s call, how can we develop the habits necessary for this? Many churches have an annual review process for staff and/or committees, and these remain an important part of accountability. But the kind of accountability that develops a community and allows it to pursue its mission is the gentle, week-in, week-out process of helping each other to improve. How can we develop this?
Such habits develop much more readily when we Christians regularly confess our sins together and hear the good news of forgiveness. Good news! None of us are perfect! But God is, and God desires to sanctify us and perfect us through our liturgical community. When we allow such worship to shape us, we develop the recognition that we need one another’s critical eye in order to be more faithful.
We often imagine that the community of Hebrews 12’s “great cloud of witnesses” includes all the tender Christians who affirmed us with loving kindness, but Hebrews 12 also reminds us that love includes accountability. Evoking Proverbs 13:24 (“Those who love them [their children] are diligent to discipline them,” NRSV), Hebrews 12:6, 10-11 states, “The Lord disciplines those whom He loves. . . . He disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share His holiness. Now discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Discipline (accountability) is required for the formation of disciplines.
Thus, holding someone accountable is one way of loving someone deeply. When I failed to hold a church member accountable, was this because I did not love the person enough? Did I prefer my comfort, my own personal desire to avoid an unpleasant conversation, to this person’s (and our church’s) well-being? Augustine, Proverbs, and Hebrews all suggest that the failure to hold one another accountable is a failure of love.
How do we think about accountability? That’s another way of asking, How much do we love each other?
David Keck is the Chaplain at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. A Presbyterian minister, he is the author of Healthy Churches, Faithful Pastors: Covenant Expectations for Thriving Together (Rowman and Littlefield). Accountability is one of the central principles of this book.
Becoming mutually accountable: Strengthening clergy and congregations
Using a simple tool of accountability -- assessment or evaluation -- both clergy and congregations can enter a place of real growth, writes a pastor.
Read more from Donna Schaper »
Becoming Mutually Accountable: Strengthening Clergy and Congregations through Evaluation
Assessment is often viewed as a dirty word, but it is a necessity and even a positive tool. Without it we don’t know how to measure what has happened to us, through us, or around us.
Assessment, or evaluation, is nothing more or less than mutual accountability: we agree to be and do certain things and to allow others to help us see whether or not we did so. With this simple tool of accountability we can enter a place of comfort, safety, and personal growth. We can open the door to knowing what others really think of us rather than guessing at their points of view.
But let’s face it; there are many things wrong with assessment. The call from the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education for “commonly used tests or other assessments” of student learning is a prime example. In response to these urgings, faculty members complained that higher education is far too diverse to be measured by standardized tests, that common learning measures would lead to costly and unnecessary federal intervention, and that if assessment was used as a consumer information tool it would oversimplify a complex higher education system and lead to comparisons among unlike institutions.1
In congregations, all the issues about assessment that concern higher education come to an even sharper focus. The clergyperson is seen as set apart and accountable to God first and people second. God, we believe, uses grace as assessment—for all human beings—and many people therefore resist evaluating others, wishing to remain outside each other’s critical embrace. But being critical, in the sense of examining something from all sides, can provide a positive moment of recognition. It can be a vehicle for grace, the grace that understands that nobody is perfect, that we all have flaws, that we are all partial, and that we need each other’s gifts to complete ourselves.
We clergy are not perfect and we are also much less important to church than churches think. A rabbi friend of mine understands this. When I left my Miami congregation he gave them a message: “The only way we will know how good Donna was here is in what you do now.” He got it: the goodness of a parish is in the relationship between the leaders and the congregation, not in the quality of any one leader. A leader is only as good as the fruit of his or her relationships. If the consequences of a person’s leadership are that the soil has been prepared for the next leader to enjoy even more trust and mutual accountability, then the leader has succeeded.
Even though some measurements don’t apply until long after we are gone, clergy—and congregations—need to periodically be informed as to how they and their performance are perceived. If done right, the evaluation process can have positive results for both clergy and congregations. It can lead congregations and their leadership to focus on what really matters. It can show that church boards are really teams of spiritual leaders and that leadership is the interaction of the system with itself, not just what the minister does—nor, for that matter, just what the congregation does. It is the healthy, mutually reinforcing, mutually evaluating action of the relationship between the leader and the system, the board and the leader, and each with the wider world in which the system is located.
Good evaluations and legitimate assessments help the congregational system go from fuzzy to focus. They address such questions as: What is it we are doing? Are we doing what we should be? Good assessments also offer the system a way to improve. Through effective evaluation the system is held accountable both to God and to its own constituents. We make mutual the accountability and give each other the grace that God has already given us. But, in order to conduct an evaluation that fulfills this promise, some guidance may be in order. In the following sections are some do’s and don’ts to keep in mind.
What Not to Do
Don’t poll the entire congregation about the pastor’s performance. General information can be very harmful. However, particular information can be very useful. To obtain such information, have a conversation with five percent of the congregation (for instance, 10 members of a 200-member parish). What is wrong with most evaluations is they are too complicated, too general, and provide information that no one takes responsibility for implementing. Complicated evaluations abuse precious lay and clergy time, and they don’t meet the goal of mutual accountability being the vehicle for grace. Simplifying the process by limiting the number of “assessors” can therefore be valuable.
When asking people for their assessments, do not use a written form. Instead, have a conversation with them, asking what they appreciate about the pastor and what they would like to see more of. Let this question be the place where people can register any of their disappointments.
Do not make the results public. Consider the assessment a treasured conversation between trusted friends (in both directions).
Do not link the evaluation itself to the raise. Instead, link the pastor’s response to the evaluation to the raise. In other words, evaluate in one season, do the budget in another season. Some congregations annualize the review; others do it early and often by means of as pastor-parish relations committee (PPRC) or similar mechanism. Ongoing evaluation has real strengths and creates the “muscles” we need to do it well. At the same time, annual evaluations have a formality to them that can help support positive, open, and diverse communication; they provide opportunities for multiple and divergent viewpoints, make space for difference, and allow for expressions of appreciation for the pastor and all those involved in the evaluation process. A combination of an annual formal evaluation and a regular mechanism for mutual feedback is the best set-up for evaluation. In either case, we need to allow the evaluation’s message time to sink in. For example, if it has been suggested that the minister spend more time editing his or her sermons, allow six months for this to occur. During that time, certain appointed people should provide regular and specific feedback. If the pastor responds appropriately to the feedback, reward him or her with a raise. If not, withhold the raise. Likewise, if you are asking the pastor to spend more time on an activity, be clear where the pastor should spend less time. Should he or she do less parish visitation instead? Make the issue of improvement a collective responsibility, not an individual accusation.
Do not let the temperature rise in the organization around evaluation time. Instead, quietly announce that an evaluation will be taking place and that anyone who has comments may send them to the PPRC or the personnel committee. Evaluation between congregations and pastors should become normal. Ordinary. The way we expect a very good friend of ours to invade our personal space—early and often.
What to Do
Do have two units, a personnel committee and a PPRC (or some other group of diverse, appointed people who hold genuine conversations with the minister regularly about what is happening in the parish). The members of the PPRC should serve at least three-year terms and should become known in the parish as the people to whom parishioners can talk if they have a complaint about the minister. The PPRC member should then determine how to deliver the message to the minister, whether one-on-one or in a meeting. The style and feel of these meetings should be one of intimacy, trust, and friendship. The second unit, the personnel committee, should then receive the evaluation of the PPRC and make decisions about raises and the like. There is nothing wrong with formal procedures! For
mal procedures would surely avoid some of the crises that accompany organizations today: pedophilia, clergy burnout, misuse of information, e-mail abuse, confidentiality violations, and worries about affirmative action, to name a few. The fact that no one watches clergy is terrible. Formal procedures matter; they just are at odds with the highly emotional, intimate, preciously fragile system that parishes usually are.
Do have a formal but simple job description for the clergyperson and have all members of both the PPRC and the personnel committee privately complete an evaluation of each part (based on a one-to-five scale) and hand it to the minister. In other words, do use numbers.
Do anticipate a three- to five-year “break-in” period for this method to work. Becoming “normal,” or ordinary, takes time.
Do allow the minister to also evaluate the congregation, using its bylaws and/or another device. If there is a “job description” for the congregation, it should be one developed by the congregation. If no such job description exists, ask the minister to do a simple one-to-five evaluation of how the congregation is measuring up to its bylaws. This creates mutual accountability, further strengthening the congregational system. The best pastor in the world can’t minister to a parish that is not focused on its work in the world.
Finally, submit both numerical evaluations to the PPRC and the personnel committee, who should then name future directions: What do we want to improve this year? In the name of improving these things, what will we eliminate?
Annually, the pastor’s job description should be weighted and changed, with extraordinary attention to the dilemma of trying to do everything versus doing some things well and others not at all, and compensating for weaknesses through the intelligent use of staff, lay leaders, and consultants or other external resources. This annual reassessment of the job description can be based on the conversations that have been occurring throughout the year.
When assessment is done graciously, normally, and in an orderly way, wonderful things can result. One is appreciation, another is trust, a third is clarity, and the final one is grace. At ordination we clergy give ourselves to God. The same is true for the baptism of the nonordained person, who is also given to God. Reminders of the sacred nature of our relationship to congregation, God, and each other are terribly important. They keep us alive. How we manage our relationships is a sacred activity. Evaluation, as part of that management process, is also therefore a sacred activity. The mutual accountability of assessment makes real our ordination vows and the membership promises of baptism—and is a vehicle to experiencing the deep pleasure of grace.
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NOTES
1. Margaret A. Miller, “The Legitimacy of Assessment,” The Chronical Review, September 22, 2006.
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Congregations want to support their pastors, but don't know how. Pastors love their congregations, but they don't know what to ask of their congregations to garner needed support. Everyone wants to thrive together, but so often we get stuck. This clear and engaging guide helps pastors and congregations bridge communication gaps and set mutual goals and expectations.
Dr. David Keck grounds his framework of expectations on both scholarly research and on interviews he's conducted with pastors and lay people. He finds many common difficulties in churches arise from failing to discuss priorities and expectations, and from not effectively working through the problems that arise when expectations aren't met. For pastors and congregants to arrive at common expectations, they need to understand each other-their respective needs, hopes, and distinctive callings.
This book provides concrete steps to aid congregants and pastors communicate their mutual expectations. Keck presents fifty "expectation statements"-examples of what pastors and congregations can expect of one another; a vital resource to anyone who seeks to initiate a discussion of expectations in their own church. Elucidating goals and expectations allows congregations and pastors to support one another and flourish, and fosters church health and harmony.
Learn more and order the book »
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