Leadership Development – Salvaged Faith

Life Goes On

Posted on February 3, 20122 Comments

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My number one personal ministry goal for 2012 has been to encourage lay leadership and to empower my congregation to make decisions, take ownership, and answer the call of God in their own lives.

One of primary ways our church is answering that challenge is by reorganizing our leadership structure and by adopting a single board model. We spent a few months tweaking this process in the fall and then the second week of January, our new board met for some planning, team building, and organizing.

But then I left for vacation. I took two full weeks off from the church. And, holy cow, did I need them.

I was exhausted. All the planning of the fall… all of the work surrounding Advent and Christmas… the build-up to the new structure and implementation… it was a lot going on all at once. Getting away was important.

If I am 100% honest with all of you, I assumed life at the church would coast on by while I was gone. I wasn’t expecting any major problems. I know my folks and they are good people and would get on fine while their pastor wasn’t there. They’ve done it before, they could do it again.

What I didn’t expect was for them to take things by the reins and keep on charging forward! =)

I get back and find out that six of our leadership team attended a training while I was gone (I was hoping 2 or 3 would go). And not only did they attend, but they got together for pizza afterwards and debriefed and now want to begin meeting weekly to keep these ideas alive and to support one another. In my wildest dreams, I was hoping I might get some of our ministry leaders together once a month, and they are asking ME to meet weekly. Hallelujah!

As I was getting ready to head out of town, a new ministry was formed in about 10 minutes. Conversations went back and forth between Sunday School and the Sanctuary and two days later, we have 15 casseroles in the freezer ready to be sent out at a moments notice to folks coming home from the hospital, new parents, grieving relatives, and stressed out families.

Yesterday afternoon, I recieved a phone call from a lay person who had organized three couples to host a chili lunch after church. They don’t want it to be a fundraiser, just a way for people to get together and have a good meal. All I needed to do was add it to the calendar.

I feel absolutely honored and blessed to be a part of this church right now. These folks keep surprising me, encouraging me, and you can just feel the Spirit of God moving in our midst.

I have never been a details person. I don’t work well behind the scenes. What I do best is seeing the big picture. When I translate that into ministry, I truly feel called to empower, support, and connect my lay people in the work of ministry that we do as the Body of Christ. For four years, we wrestled with having enough people who trusted in themselves and God enough that they could take the leap of faith and DO ministry. I ended up doing a lot more detail work than I should have, walking beside folks, and helping them to understand they CAN do this work, too… that it is not all the pastor’s responsibility.

Coming back from this vacation, seeing the work and ministry and growth that has happened already this year, I feel like we have crossed a HUGE milemarker. We are well on our way. God is good. And the church is alive and well.

a church that agrees too often

Posted on August 24, 20111 Comment

After a few years in my congregation, I realized I had a major, however, hidden problem…

My church didn’t know how to disagree.

This may not seem like a problem on the surface. What pastor wouldn’t be thrilled by a church that jumped right on board with their requests and was quick to respond in the affirmative to a query.

The problem is… not all my ideas are that great. And instead of really tackling an issue and building consensus, a quick yes with no discussion was getting us no where. No one gained ownership. The formation of better and stronger ideas through brainstorming was not being accomplished. I learned a quick yes was far worse than a toughly battled over no.

There was an underlying issue that was at the root of this “problem.” A church with a history of conflict was finally in a place of peace. No one wanted to rock the boat. No one wanted to disagree for fear of starting a whole new season of problems. It was easier to say, “okay,” than to step up and take the risk.

A culture of yes, however is just as harmful as a culture of no. I could never be sure if people really agreed with an idea or were just too unsure of themselves to say anything. It is eerie having an administrative board meeting that only takes 15 minutes because everyone votes up the agenda items without discussion.

This past winter, I gathered our leadership together to begin tackling the problem. I wanted to let them know it was okay to disagree. It was okay to have an opinion. This was a safe place to raise questions and bring up different ideas.

So we played a little game: Early Bird vs. Second Mouse.

I had found the game on a site full of ice-breakers, but I knew instantly that it would be helpful. The group was divided into two opposing sides and each was tasked with defending a statement. One half of the room had to prove “The early bird gets the worm” and the other half had to support “The second mouse gets the cheese.”

Each statement has its own merits. And it wasn’t anything that any of our folks would take personally.

First, each group had to discuss amongst itself and figure out why their statement was the best. This took brainstorming, conversation, and creativity.

Second, each group had to figure out how to present their position to the other half of the group and myself, the impartial judge. I was amazed at their energy, their humor, and their abundance of good and thoughtful responses.

At the end, we asked if anyone had been swayed by the other side’s argument. One or two did say that they naturally felt like the other side fit more in line with their own life philosophy, so it was hard to defend their own statement.

It was a good conversation, but then I took it a step deeper. I asked them why they thought we were playing this game. And I asked them to think of the last time they disagreed in a meeting.

In the end, we laid out some ground rules for future conversations and I think we instilled a sense of safety and comfort for some of the hard decisions we would face later in the year.

It was a fun morning of disagreement. And I say that because I firmly believe that conflict is not in and of itself a bad thing.

papers and work and delegating

Posted on December 3, 2008Leave a comment

I am exhausted this morning. And I really need an assistant at the church. If by July I’m still feeling these stresses, I’m going to insist that we hire someone part time. Because I have so little time to do the things that I really need to do.

For example. I got up at 6:30 this morning to finish typing newsletter articles. 1) yes, other people should be helping to write articles… that will be addressed starting in January, 2) once I get the articles typed, I have to arrange them on the page and then I head to the office to print out all the copies.

Part of this is my fault. I love doing graphic related things (not that kind of graphic!) And I’m the one with patience for the copy machine that jams every three copies. And in some ways, its easier to simply write up the quick announcements and articles myself instead of tracking down 10 people to each write their little piece. So I have done it myself.

My point is – all of those tasks above can and should be done by someone else. My contribution should be my montly column, coordinating with others re: the calendar and that’s that.

I’m getting better about delegating. sort of. I have someone in mind to take over the newsletter if I can convince her to do it. And I’m meeting with someone next week about helping me to coordinate visitation to our homebound and nursing home residents and new visitors. I figure, if I have someone telling me who needs seen on any given week, it will be easier for me to follow through!

I’ve also been trying to make some long term plans for ministry for next year. But again, I think I’m taking too big of a chunk of the work for myself – at least planning wise.

We are trying keep our committee meetings to 6 per year (some meet too often with little to do, and others only meet once or twice a year – this is an attempt at compromise). So I got to brainstorming and realized that six meetings neatly helps our mission team to focus on one color of our Rainbow Covenant each month – if, that is, our Special Sundays are handled by the worship team. So I brainstormed what would be logical colors to focus on based on the mission activities we do in various times of the year. And I called our mission chair into my office and wanted, really, to say: here is an example of how we can arrange our year. She breathed a sigh of relief – I’m so glad that you did that, because I thought you wanted me to! (doh!)

If I can give the team the outline – and they are the ones who implement it… is that still okay?

welcoming the sojourner

Posted on October 17, 20082 Comments

I’m attending a conference right now in Illinois about immigration and the church. And I have been incredibly moved by so many of the personal stories, the images and videos of raids and border crossings, the statistics, the songs from across the world, and the witness of people of faith. It has been not only informational but inspirational. (wow, that sounds so cliche).

Before I get too far away or let the thoughts escape me, here are some of the important moments so far for me:

From Rev. Joan Maruskin

“I greet you in the name of the migrant, refugee Christ”
What are three groups that God specifically tells us to care for? The widows, the orphans and the strangers/migrants/foreigners/immigrants
our journey of faith is a communal migration story
in 1849, the state of Pennsylvania had a choice between making german or english the official state language. english won by only one vote.
st. benedict – closing the door to the stranger is closing the door to the sacred
Jesus’ family fled to Egypt after his birth… if they had fled to the US today, Mary, Joseph and Jesus would have all been sent to separate detention facilities to await trials before they would be granted the status of an asylee.

From Diane McClanahan and Barb Dinnen

immigrants who had fled from Central and Southern American countries where they faced political and religious persecution and those around them were “disappeared” came to the U.S. and in the Swift raids in Marshaltown, Iowa – again faced “disappearance.” No clergy, no lawyers, no family was allowed in to see the detainees – and no one knew where they would be taken or what would be done with them.
The story of Arturo – a young boy whose parents were deported after the Postville raids. His dad wanted him to be a vet, but now, the young boy wants to be a lawyer.
Recently, ICE agents raided a church in North Carolina.
From Denny Coon, UM pastor in Iowa: story of a man with two daughters. He makes $5/day in Mexico or he could cross illegally into the U.S. to work for $7/hr at a Wal-Mart in Michigan… what would you do as a parent?

conversations around ministry

Posted on October 1, 20082 Comments

First, I’m so glad that the other young adult clergy in my conference are so outspoken with me. (thanks Allison!)

Second, we had some conversations with our district leadership and two of our Leadership Development Ministers (conference positions that help us all to think about various aspects of ministry) about one of Lovett Weems 10 Provacative Questions – particularly

Can the church change to reach more people, younger people, and more diverse
people?

There were a variety of area clergy and lay people there and in many ways we broke the question down into many different parts.

1) what church are we talking about?

Certainly we on the bigger level were talking about the institution which is extremely hard to change. But if we think about the local congregational level, change can be difficult too. What happens when the church is seen as the body of Christ? THEN I think, we start to realize that not only do we need younger people and more diverse people and we must change to include them, but that we need them because we are not complete without them. It is like walking around without an arm, or without a head.

2) are we thinking about growth? success in numbers? fruitfulness?

While we think that our church has been in numerical decline since the 1960’s, we have actually been in decline as a percentage of the population in the US since the 1880’s. But what we talked a lot about is that # of butts in the pew does not equal disciples of Jesus Christ. The point that another young leader and I tried to push was that disciples of Jesus Christ does not also equal butts in a pew. All of us agreed, disciples were the goal and so in many ways, we need a whole different metric for even thinking about the question of how we measure “success” on that front.

3) what kind of change are we talking about?

here is the hard part. Each and every church is different and will have to look different as we reach out to the varied populations that we live in. All of us will have to take seriously our context and who is around us: low-income? hispanic? upper middle class blacks? a whole city of 20-30 somethings? One pastor made very clear that we cannot all be a like, and perhaps we simply have to name that and claim that and live authentically the kind of church that we are called to be. Which is absolutely true. But we also wrestled with the fact that it is hard to do that with a structure and a discipline that makes conformity to the rule more desireable than fruitfulness.

An example: needing to have three year rotating terms for the Board of Trustees. I am never going to get young people to serve on that committee. They don’t want to committ for that amount of time! Short term projects are more desireable. But the whole structure would have to be changed to give the kind of flexibility and grace that is needed (see Lovett Weems question: Can we move from a structure of control to a structure of grace?) We also need to rethink the entire structure of the conference – in today’s modern technological and informational world, do we need district finance and district church and society and district this and that? no. their function has been replaced by the conference website.

I guess the piece about this conversation coming immediately after General Conference is that there is some talk about this need for change and flexibility. The structures that we have engrained in our Book of Discipline may have made sense for United Methodism in the United States in the 1960’s. But they don’t make sense for us today, and they REALLY don’t make sense for the United Methodist Church in Nigeria! I have great hopes that the church structure itself will have the room to change as we begin to either a) create regional disciplines or b) simply chop down the Discipline to the things that truly matter – the funadamentals of our church and provide a structure of grace for the church to be what it needs to be in ANY given community.

Lectionary Leanings

Posted on September 23, 2008Leave a comment

I am SO excited for this week’s texts. I play a MMORPG (Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game) and I so love the idea of Kenosis that I named my first character that.

Kenosis you ask? Check out the scriptures especially the Christ Hymn for Philippians.

Kenosis translated into English means emptying… self-giving… humility… pouring out

It is the embodiment of Christ into our human form – giving up his power, giving up his seat at the right hand of God, giving up his divinity in some respects in order to become one of us.

It is also the actions of Christ over and over again in his life and in his death. Giving up his power and status over and over to reach out to those who were hurting and sick and were chained by their sin. It is the action of Christ giving up his very life on the cross.

I’m really intrigued by how kenosis affects our views of leadership. A distant family member knew I was in ministry and he and his father are both pastors. We got to talking and they came to learn that I was THE pastor of my church. And not only were they amazed, but they also wanted to know if I called myself the “senior pastor.” Senior pastor? I’m the only pastor was my response. It’s not a question of being the one in charge, of being above everyone else – for me, leadership has always been about servanthood, about humility, about kenosis.

In Powers and Submissions, Sarah Coakley argues that we should come to see the incarnation and the cross as acts of “power-in-vulnerability.” These narratives remind us of our ultimate dependence upon one another and upon God while at the same time reminding us that letting go and opening up to the divine is what enables divine power to work in our midst. This power comes through dependence and relationship, through communion rather than a do-it-alone mentality. The practice of discernment exemplifies this power. Or, as Coakley describes it, “we can only be properly ‘empowered’ here if we cease to set the agenda, if we ‘make space’ for God to be God.”

In his article on postmodern leadership, Leonard Hjalmarson writes:

The leadership style that once dominated our culture is becoming passé. Instead of the Lone Ranger, we have Frodo: the Clint Eastwoods and Sylvester Stallones are replaced by ordinary men. Frodo, Aragorn and Neo (the Matrix) are self-questioning types who rely on those around them for strength, clarity and purpose. Indeed, while they have a sense of the need and a willingness to sacrifice themselves, they may not even know the first step on the journey.

He is describing a form of leadership that takes seriously both the interdependence of the Christian community as well as the idea of kenosis. Authority is shared and the agenda of the formal or ordained pastor is not the sole determinant of the direction of the congregation. At various times, Hjalmarson returns to the metaphor of storytelling and describes the pastor’s role as the narrator who weaves all of the various stories together, much like the mediating interpreter for Nicholas Lash. This vision of leadership is crucial if we are to emphasize the ways in which the Holy Spirit dwells in the community of believers – the body of Christ.

In many ways, I believe that is what kenosis is all about in the church… emptying ourselves so that the Holy Spirit can work through us. Embodying the mind of Christ means to set aside what we are entitled to, what we deserve, what is owed to us, and instead discerning the will of God and living our lives in obedience to it. And it is about coming together as the church – not a pastor leading as a lone ranger, but as the priesthood of all believers.

p.s. i wish i knew who did this watercolor – another blogger had it on their site, with no credits.