Alban Weekly from The Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States "PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: VOCATION, DISCERNMENT, CONGREGATIONS Natasha Jamison Gadson: How do you know when it's time to leave?" for Monday, 3 October 2016
Faith & Leadership
VOCATION, DISCERNMENT, CONGREGATIONS
Natasha Jamison Gadson: How do you know when it's time to leave?
The congregation of Turner Memorial AME Church in Hyattsville, Maryland, where Natasha Jamison Gadson recently joined the staff. Photo courtesy of Turner AMEResigning from a thriving megachurch was emotional and difficult for a minister on the staff. But once she realized that staying in a comfortable place was not the best use of her gifts, she knew it was time to go.
I sat in the pulpit on a recent Sunday, listening to our extraordinary choir singing J.J. Hairston's "You Deserve It." Their voices rose with the opening line of the gospel song, which promises everything to the Lord: "My hallelujah belongs to you."
I sat in the pulpit on a recent Sunday, listening to our extraordinary choir singing J.J. Hairston’s “You Deserve It.” Their voices rose with the opening line of the gospel song, which promises everything to the Lord: “My hallelujah belongs to you.”
I looked around and wondered, “Am I crazy for leaving?”
Six years ago, when I joined the ministerial staff of my current church home, I was told that no one leaves here. The consensus is that there’s nowhere to go from here. This is the top.
My church could be considered the Disney World of the African Methodist Episcopal churches in my region. We have three locations, state-of-the-art facilities, a robust youth ministry, music ministry directors who are also recording artists, and a membership so large that I stopped counting once we grew beyond 12,000 people.
Like me, our members are well-educated and upwardly mobile. Many have moved to Prince George’s County -- the nation’s highest-income majority-black county -- for educational or career opportunities.
We’re a regular stop for gospel artists, celebrities and politicians during their tours, promotions and campaigns. And our music and arts department puts on elaborate productions for Easter and Christmas.
Megachurches aren’t an unusual phenomenon, but a congregation of this size is certainly an anomaly for the AME Church, where most worshipping communities range from 30 members to 700 members. A church that has the financial capacity to undertake any ministry initiative one could imagine is certainly exceptional for African Methodism.
And it’s important to note that we don’t preach the prosperity gospel people now associate with megachurches. This congregation was built on the biblical preaching and expressive worship of the black church tradition.
There is no church like my church. Yet I’m leaving the staff.
When I told the ministers I serve with, the look of surprise on their faces made me weep uncontrollably. One by one they comforted me, assuring me that I will do great things at my new church.
This was an agonizing decision. I wrestled for months before saying yes to God, and I had moments of doubt almost every day after submitting my resignation.
Yet I knew that this decision was critical to my ministerial identity.
I’d been jolted into this a little over a year ago when I talked and laughed with fellow students in my D.Min. program for the last time. Over the crackling sound of the fire pit, one of them asked, “Natasha, are you being a good steward of your gifts by playing it small? You have a multiplicity of gifts for which there is a need in the body of Christ, and you are not being a good steward if you are not operating in them.”
He was right. I had gotten comfortable. I preached occasionally, communed with the shut-in monthly, participated in the worship liturgy weekly and greeted members after services. I complained that my gifts were not being utilized, yet I hadn’t taken any action to change my situation.
In the year or so since, several people have asked me the same question, including a friend and mentor who will soon become my new senior pastor.
What I came to realize is that the more I had grown accustomed to doing church, the less I was willing to do my part in being the church. Captivated by my setting’s splendor, I had been waiting for a ministry opportunity to arise rather than taking responsibility for sharing my gifts with a worshipping community that really had a need for me.
In a denominational context where ministerial identity is largely constructed based on a relationship with pastoral leadership, I realized that I needed to exercise personal agency.
Knowing that my skill set would never be fully utilized in my current setting, I did something my denomination frowns upon. I took the risk of establishing relationships with other senior pastors to identify ministry opportunities. I also leveraged my consulting work, offering my services without charge, which allowed me to demonstrate my capabilities.
My friend began asking me to preach, teach Bible study and serve when he was short-staffed at his growing church. It soon became clear to us both that God was sending me to join his ministerial staff.
One afternoon over lunch, I listened to my friend talk about the church’s needs. I sat quietly, knowing I was finally ready to accept his invitation.
Like many others, he wanted to know how I arrived at my decision. The short answer is his leadership. My new pastor skillfully marries our denomination’s valued traditions with innovative ideas to breathe new life into the worship experience. The opportunity to design and launch ministry initiatives for the fulfillment of his extraordinary vision far exceeds what I had to give up.
With only 680 members, my new church is certainly less influential and less wealthy than my current church. This will undoubtedly require of me twice the work with a fraction of the resources.
No doubt, I will miss the perfectly timed worship services and the efficiency of our operating procedures -- and most importantly, the wonderful people I have served for the last six years.
But I’ve learned the importance of sacrificing comfort on the altar of service.
My new church home will be different, but the work is important. My new congregation is focused on discerning and embracing their spiritual gifts to achieve social justice within the African-American communities represented by their membership.
In light of the current racial climate, this allows me an important opportunity to operate in my gifts and passion for helping other people find their own gifts and passion.
In addition, far from being complacent about our county’s relative wealth, my new pastor is committed to partnering with other pastors to shine a light on the socioeconomic disparities many of the county’s residents are facing.
And my new pastor is making an effort to connect with the increasing Hispanic population by creating Spanish worship opportunities and connecting with Hispanic community organizations.
The very last Sunday I served my beloved church, I cried through all three services. My pastor enjoyed watching me go into the ugly cry each time he made the announcement and the congregation thunderously applauded. He hugged me tight as my colleagues presented me with flowers and members told me how proud they were of me.
I’m sure I will doubt my decision. I will idealize the last six years, even the most difficult seasons. But I know I’ve made the right choice. Am I crazy for leaving? In one sense, yes. But I am choosing to lay claim to the woman in ministry I have the potential to become by fully embracing this new season.
Read more from Natasha Jamison Gadson »
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: PASTORAL TRANSITION
Preaching the Transition
On Friday afternoon, Pastor Souris is sitting in her office, working on Sunday’s sermon, when the telephone rings. The caller tells her that the major employer in the community has just announced layoffs. Some of the managers who make the decisions and some of those affected by the layoffs are members of the congregation.
In another community, a telephone call to Pastor Cromwell’s home late Friday evening informs him that the congregation’s church building is on fire, and he rushes to the church. As the evening progresses, it becomes obvious that the fire damage is serious enough that the congregation will not be able to worship in the building on Sunday.
In a third congregation, as Pastor Stuart spends the Saturday morning before confirmation Sunday reviewing his sermon, a police officer arrives at the church to ask some questions. It seems that the confirmation teacher, a beloved board member scheduled to assist in the service, has been charged with child sexual abuse. The accusation comes from a member of the confirmation class.
In yet another congregation, Pastor Perkins opens the mailbox and finds a letter from a lawyer, which states that a deceased member bequeathed the congregation $2 million.
In many congregations, the chair of the pulpit committee telephones the pastor of another congregation to invite him or her to come for an interview or to consider a change in call. In many more congregations, the pastor pauses from preparing the Sunday sermon to look out the window and note for the hundredth time that the people in the neighborhood are very different from the members of the church and that the congregation is not doing much to welcome them.
As these pastors return to preparing their sermons, something is different. Another voice is asking to be heard; another participant is demanding to speak; another reality needs to be addressed. An event that will launch a time of congregational transition–a process of reshaping the congregation’s faith foundation, identity, and ways of being–has found its way into the preaching. As the preacher studies Scripture, the transition and the biblical text seem to interpret each another. The preacher wonders how the transition will affect his or her ability to proclaim and the congregation’s ability to receive the message. As the congregation works its way through the transition, the pastor ponders how preaching and worship, the congregation’s essential activity, can collaborate with other congregational processes involved in the transition. Most important, the preacher weighs the benefits and risks of using preaching to address the transition and ponders how to incorporate the transition into the form, content, and delivery of the sermon so that the gospel rather than an agenda is preached.
Regardless of what the pastor decides, a congregational transition will find its way into preaching. Contemporary homiletic theory understands that preaching cannot be reduced to a sermon text or manuscript but is, in fact, an event involving several active participants. Generally speaking, these participants include the congregation, the preacher, Scripture, God, and the occasion. For example, Fred Craddock, professor emeritus of preaching and New Testament at the Candler School of Theology, Atlanta, asserts that the preacher “works within an unusual network of trust and intimacy that makes the separation of character from performance impossible” and that a sermon “is to be located among a particular group of listeners as much as with a particular speaker.”1 Whether the Bible simply provides historical continuity with the ongoing life of the people of God or determines the sermon’s central message, governing image, and basic vocabulary, Scripture is nonetheless indispensable to preaching. Since Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, the church has affirmed that God the Creator, Christ, or the Holy Spirit is the principal actor in preaching.2 Anyone who has preached at a wedding and a funeral in the same week can attest to the power of the occasion to shape the preaching event. Charles Campbell, associate professor of homiletics at Columbia Theological Seminary, argues convincingly that “the powers and principalities”—the powers of death at work in the world—also participate in and shape our understanding of preaching.3While the congregation, preacher, Scripture, the occasion, God, and even the powers and principalities all contribute to the preaching event, the role and importance that each participant plays varies in every sermon.
In the life of every congregation and preacher, a congregational transition at times looms so large in a preaching event that it becomes the lens through which Scripture is interpreted, the congregation is addressed, the preacher is heard, and God is experienced. If we understand congregational transitions as kairos moments in the life of the congregation, occasions of grace that mark a definite and perhaps definitive shift in the life trajectory of the community, preaching’s potential as an effective tool and a faithful response becomes obvious.
Yet, as in every preaching event, the faithfulness and effectiveness of preaching in a time of congregational transition is not automatic. During a congregational transition, faithful preaching ensures that the gospel—and not a program or agenda—is proclaimed and heard. Effective preaching leads the congregation to experience God’s presence, grace, power, and direction amid the transition. Faithful and effective preaching illuminates the mystery inherent in the transition, rather than seeking to eliminate it, so that God provides orientation and direction as the congregation moves into what is still unknown. Faithful and effective preaching models and declares that God speaks through change. God speaks as the congregation moves toward transition. The change itself may be the way God speaks.
1. Fred B. Craddock, Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), 23, 3.
2. See, for example, Acts 2:4; 4:8.
3. Charles L. Campbell, The Word Before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 68-69.
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This article is adapted from When God Speaks through Change: Preaching in Times of Congregational Transition by Craig A. Satterlee, copyright © 2005 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
Now available for kindle | nook | iBook
Read more from Craig A. Satterlee »
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Pastoral Transitions in the Age of Social Media
Social media is ubiquitous, and it has changed -- and is changing -- the nature of ministry. It is even changing the way pastors make transitions between congregations.
Read more from Adam Walker Cleaveland »
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How to Transition as a Leader, in Three Acts
Faith & Leadership
MANAGEMENT, CHANGE
Sam Wells on how to transition as a leader, in three acts
Sam Wells discusses three challenges leaders face during a transition and three ways to address them.Here is Sam Wells (from a recent email exchange with Faith & Leadership), discussing three challenges leaders face during a transition and how to address them:
1. Challenge: The temptation to regard your previous institution, where of course you licked everything into shape, as a template for your new organization.
If your new organization has a high self esteem, it will be insulted to be compared to anything else; if it has a low self esteem, it will quickly tire of hearing how wonderful your last place was, and will justifiably wonder why you didn’t stay there.
Solution: Only refer to your previous institution when specifically asked about it (in other words, probably never).
2. Challenge: The temptation to walk around your new institution rather as a new occupant walks around an apartment, making horrified faces and mocking glances, as if to say “I don’t know who was here before, and why they imagined magnolia was a good color for the sitting room or white for the bathroom.”
Things likely are the way they are because good people have tried alternatives and settled on what works, and a dominant constituency likes things this way -- otherwise they’d have changed them or gone elsewhere.
Solution: Ask lots of questions about why things are how they are and be slow to give your opinion even when it’s sought.
3. Challenge: To love a new set of people, even when at first they may seem very different or unlovable.
The people you have not made time to see in your first 6-8 weeks will always remember the clear statement that they’re not part of the inside crowd.
Solution: Get someone to draw up a list of the 50 key people in the new place and do whatever it takes to spend 30 min with each one in the first 6-8 weeks. By the time you’ve done that you’ll know what needs doing and who you need to talk to before you do it.
Read more from Sam Wells »
UPCOMING ALBAN COURSE: PREACHING ADVENT
Preaching Advent
An Alban Online Short Course
October 31 - November 18, 2016
Advent, the four-Sunday season preceding Christmas, is approaching rapidly. Because you may be looking for a little help in preparing to preach Advent this year, Alban is offering a three-week online short course that will provide you with new insights into Scripture and with specific ways to engage your congregation's imagination during this sacred season.
Learn more and register »
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HOW IS GOD AT WORK IN YOUR DAILY LIFE?
Living Like They Believe A Duke Youth Academy and Faith & Leadership CurriculumExplore the vocations, daily lives and redemption stories of four ordinary Christians in this set of free small group lesson plans. Choose from three four-session curriculum tracks -- each featuring films, Scripture study and practices -- to find the thematic focus that best meets the need of your group of high school youth, college students or adults.Download the curriculum »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Saying GoodbyeEdward A. White, Editor
Leaving a pastorate is hard on both congregation and pastor. Learn how to make this transition a growth experience for all. Written for congregations and pastors,Saying Goodbye, a classic from the Alban library, skillfully weaves accounts from clergy, laity, and educators of seven denominations with White's own insight as a former General Presbyter to create a resource for meaningful and healthy partings. The book includes examples of a "farewell" worship service and litany for closure of a ministry.
Learn more and order the book »
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Beginning Ministry Together: The Alban Handbook for Clergy TransitionsRoy M. Oswald, James M. Heath, Ann W. Heath
This important Alban book is about the transition period between the announcement that one pastor is leaving and the time when another pastor is well settled. The message brought by Roy Oswald and colleagues Jim and Ann Heath is that this is not an impossible time to be survived only with a lot of expert help. Rather, even though the task is complex, committed congregational leaders can handle it --with the help of people who have been on this journey before. Oswald describes how clergy and congregations can better end and begin pastorates. He shows them how to say good-bye and discern their needs for the future -- how to use the open space between pastorates for evaluation and preparation for a new day.
Learn more and order the book » -------
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