From the beginning of his ministry as the seventh bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana, the Rt. Rev. Edward S. Little II has beamed a spiritual focus to follow. Personifying the lighthouse on the diocesan seal, Little has delivered powerful messages that illuminate priorities for Christ centered living and ministry.
Communicating the right priorities is one of the keys to strategic leadership. I offer a glimpse of Little here as a model of such leadership.
Little’s strategic legacy began with his seating sermon in 2000, in which he called on his new flock to embrace the lighthouse as a vision for individual and congregational ministries. To prompt and guide, he set four core values for the diocese:
A passion for the Gospel of Jesus Christ
A heart for the lost
A willingness to do whatever it takes
A commitment to one another
Throughout the 15 years since that sermon, Little gathered story after story of how these values are beautifully lived in the parishes of northern Indiana. While he loves recounting them, he’d rather that everyone become skilled at telling his/her own story.
Strategically, the Bishop sought to strengthen congregations so that people have stories to tell. He named the Rev. Canon SuzeAnne Silla as Canon to the Ordinary and blessed her to use her extensive congregational development experience to establish the Diocesan Congregational Development Institute (DCDI).
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Leadership challenges come in many forms. One constant we must all face is the ever changing nature of God’s creation, including that of our faith communities. Effective leaders recognize this and pray and work together, seeking understanding of situations and options, and modeling a willingness to move forward, even when the way is unclear.
This quote, from SSJE’s Brother Give Us A Word meditation, captures this constant state of change and reminds us that:
“God prunes, and, as He prunes, enables the tree to grow with a better growth. He cuts down in order that He may graft in, and He would let the old life grow with new fruitfulness.” - Richard Meux Benson, SSJE (1824-1915)
Our June contributors share stories of change that encourage pruning and grafting in ways to cultivate congregational vitality and fruitfulness.
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I was at a parish recently for an all day workshop. The parish leaders were struggling to recruit new volunteers and keep the volunteers they had from burning out.
One parishioner made this key observation, “It’s frustrating for our workers to show up for an event that is poorly attended.” Put another way, their volunteers are disheartened when their work doesn`t produce an intended impact or make much of a difference on a specific ministry at their parish.
Across the United States, nonprofits are seeing a decrease in volunteerism. A September 2014 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes a ten-year low; the same report shows that states with the highest unemployment rate also report the lowest number of volunteer hours.
Just because you have extra time, it doesn`t mean you are going to spend it volunteering.
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While my wife browsed TJ Maxx for summer trousers, I sat on a curb outside and observed people going in and out of TJ Maxx. Here is what I observed:
Perhaps 95% of those entering TJ Maxx were female. The majority of them were middle-aged white women. Of the women under age 40, the majority were Asian. Those entering with babies were almost all Asian.
I didn't see a single African-American customer, or Hispanic customer, and only one South Asian.
More than half of those who went in came out empty-handed, having browsed but not purchased.
This wasn't a text-while-walking crowd. Most came in alone. These were "lumpy" people, looking (I speculated) for affordable fashion to make them feel less lumpy.
None of these observations has any value component. They are simply a profile of those entering this one store. But imagine how helpless you would be as manager of this TJ Maxx branch if you didn't know who your customers were. If the manager is smart, he is measuring everything I observed and far more. How long each customer stays inside, the exact percentage who purchase or don't purchase, the actual average sale, what they bought, where they browsed. And how the metrics are changing.
Imagine trying to lead a church and not having such metrics available to you. How would you know how to serve people if you didn't know their gender, age, race, socioeconomic circumstance, average stay time, and what "products" they actually consumed. You would always be guessing, and in all likelihood, you would be guessing wrong, because you would assume the next twenty people in the door would be like you.
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Several years ago I was inspired by a wonderful Southern Baptist friend who could, at the drop of a hat, quote a relevant verse from the Bible, no matter the situation. I realized how few verses I knew by heart, so I became determined to memorize some scripture.
I started with an easy one – the 23rd Psalm - as my husband and I drove to a get-away weekend in the hills of southern Indiana. I had the psalm committed to memory by the time we made it to our charming rental cabin, positioned next to a pond. A rickety set of wooden stairs descended from the gravel drive, beckoning me to come closer to the still waters. I sat on the steps, listening and watching nature reveal the secrets of the ecosystem around me. I repeated the psalm, and meant every word of it.
God restored my soul in those moments. I could have driven home right then and felt as refreshed as the entire weekend was supposed to offer.
As a consultant with the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF), I help congregations with projects for which volunteers are needed. Sometimes potential helpers are ruled out “because he is just really burned out right now,” or, “she says she can’t do one more thing until the rummage sale is over.”
I get it. Do-ers of the Word need some time to refresh along their busy way. Similarly, all worship and no action might prevent people from deepening their faith through service.
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We were standing and talking in the entryway of his church as the afternoon light on this early spring day flooded the well-designed and beautiful, inviting space. His is a large church, a new church building and a congregation that just keeps growing. It’s not a mega-church, he was quick to add, and I agreed; it felt warm and welcoming and I, for my part, felt downright connected to those with whom I was worshipping.
“What are your other services like?” I asked, noting that as a working pastor I don’t have the opportunity to worship at other churches as much as I’d like.
“The 8 o’clock is kind of the ‘original’ church,” he said; “traditional and simple. The 9:15 is a blended service, and the 11 o’clock has organ and choir and probably more hymns than at this evening service or the 9:15.” He said all this as the praise team was breaking down their instruments and wrapping up their chords. “It takes a lot of coordination of volunteers, but each service also takes on its own style and shape and meaning.”
At these words, as if on cue, a vast wall behind the altar table slid open and a few volunteers slid the drum kit back into its resting space. At the same time, two others were rolling the altar table to the center of the raised platform while another rolled the piano back to the left-hand side. “There it is,” he said, “now it’s all set for next Sunday’s 8 o’clock.”
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It was a rough first Sunday of Lent in church. Attendance was low, especially in one of our services. There were some explanations for the absences of our regulars (aren’t there always!). But the bottom line was that we had several new folks who were inspired by our Ash Wednesday outreach, and they came for the first time on a Sunday to find the church feeling awfully empty.
On Monday, I shared with my clergy support group that I felt like things were stuck at church, that we are just having the same problems over and over and making no progress. A colleague shared similar frustration in her context. When someone asked what was making us feel that way, we both realized it really came down to one rough Sunday. I had experienced poor attendance and frustration with the way we welcomed newcomers. My friend had had a hard meeting with church leaders. We had both let one Sunday color our perception of our entire ministry.
Maybe it’s just me and my friends, but I suspect we’re not alone in allowing ourselves to get swept onto the Sunday roller coaster. One good Sunday and we’re in the clouds. Church is growing! We are successful! One bad Sunday, and it’s all over. The church is dying. We are failures.
This roller coaster is not a clergy-only ride. A low Sunday or two, and my parishioners are glum as well. I cheerfully remind people that it’s the long haul that counts, but they often seem as unconvinced as I am.
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This past weekend a very close friend of mine got married. I was a groomsman (there were two grooms, in this case, and my wife was a groomswoman), so I wanted to give him a toast.
I started thinking about the toast more than a week before the wedding. I made notes in a notebook and in my phone and wrote down stories and asked for advice. I was fretting about it for days.
Some part of me wanted to impress everyone. I wanted to demonstrate that I was funny and clever and an excellent writer. I was having a lot of trouble figuring out what to say.
That is, until I remembered that this wasn't about me. This was about my friend and his wedding and saying whatever reminded him that he was loved and supported in his marriage and that we were grateful to have him and his husband in our lives.
This lesson—that it's not about me—is a useful one in ministry and in many aspects of community life. In most things we do in our churches, the goal is to love and minister to others. It's not to demonstrate how good or clever or right we are.
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ECF Vital Practices recently reposted on its Facebook page a list of signs of healthy church. It was a fine list for the most part, and like most such lists, it emphasized empowering people to identify and use their spiritual gifts and talents.
I wonder a bit about our rush to place the gifted in ministry, to find the right person for the right post so that all will run smoothly. We swim in the currents of a culture that treasures efficiency and competence. We love a well-run organization and we search for busy, competent people with track records for getting the things done.
I worry that we muddle competence and giftedness, and sometimes leave faith out in the cold all together. A well-run church may or not be faithful. It may or may not be steeped in love, forgiveness, and humility. It may or may not witness to a resurrection that comes out of the abject failure of a humiliating death.
Competence may get in the way of remembering that we all depend on God, and that God's ability to create something from nothing depends not at all on our efficiency.
Give me a bumbling effort drenched in prayer any day over a well-oiled operation with no room for incompetence, or the incompetent.
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I am so not an engineer. I’ve never been a huge devotee of personality typing, but even I can see that whatever personality types make good engineers must be extremely different from my own. We see things differently, approach problems differently, and even evaluate outcomes differently.
Greater Los Angeles is full of engineers, and my vestry reflects this abundance. My last two senior wardens, as well as the clerk of the vestry have been engineers. It’s been awesome. Their gifts of organization, project management skills, meticulous spreadsheets, and focus on problem solving have helped to pin me down to earth, and to turn creative speculation into real projects.
Earlier in my ministry, I might have felt threatened by the sorts of piercing questions engineers tend to ask. How and when exactly will this get done? What will it cost? What tools do we need? How will we know when it’s finished? I might have rolled my eyes after the meeting, sighing over the joy-killing realism, the lack of room for rushing wind and fiery spirit.
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Vestries: Start Strong in 2015 Are you interested in practical, spiritually grounded resources for your congregation? Consider a free subscription to ECF Vital Practices: A collection of articles, tools, and resources by and for congregational leaders. With a subscription, you’ll receive 12 issues of Vestry Papers as well as the monthly Vital Practices Digest delivered to your inbox.
In this month’s Digest, we’re offering 5 ways to help your newly forming vestry get off to a strong start, with the 5th being a calendar template to assist you in setting up your year round stewardship program.
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Priests should practice PDA.
Before someone files a complaint, let me explain. First, I mean married priests. And second, I mean chaste and sweet PDA. Holding hands at an open house, an arm around the waist or shoulder, a peck on the check or a smooch goodbye. None of the sloppy, get-a-room PDA of frat houses or high school highways. But rather public displays of affection that signal deeply rooted affection and love for the significant other.
Why do I think this is a vital practice?
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I thought I knew my leadership style pretty well. I was the reliable person who showed up every week. I didn’t usually say much, but I could be counted on to be present and to offer an opinion when I felt strongly. Yet, during my time on my church’s Leadership Table (what most Episcopal churches would call a vestry), I found I was fulfilling a slightly different role: the person who asked hard questions.
From time to time, we all surprise ourselves. This has happened to me often, especially when I find myself in a leadership role.
Last year, I stepped off the Leadership Table, which led me to reflect a bit on my experience. My church, St. Lydia’s, is a young congregation. I participated in the process of coming up with our governance guidelines and helped guide as we moved from parish hall to rented space to our own storefront. I loved being on the leadership team. The group is optimistic, courageous, and supportive and it was overwhelmingly positive experience.
During my time on the leadership team I found a thoughtfulness and thoroughness in myself I hadn’t recognized before. I found I was one of the more cautious members, encouraging us to ask difficult questions and think about what to do if things don’t go as planned, without acting out of fear.
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Welcome 2015!
For many congregations, January is the time for annual meetings and vestry elections. Changes in leadership teams bring opportunities to explore new ways of looking at the familiar challenges facing your congregation. As new vestries form, fresh perspectives emerge as the group begins their work together to discern what God is calling them to do.
To kick off the beginning of the new year, we invited experienced leaders from across our Church to share a leadership approach, experience, or strategy. Here are their stories:
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The new year is always a great time to think about what we want to accomplish. But all too often we make overly ambitious, impossible resolutions with their focus on our selves, our bodies, our pocketbooks. And when we fail, we revert to our old ways of being, disappointment and sometimes self-loathing just below the surface.
I wonder if we might develop resolutions with two parameters. First, we could craft resolutions guided by a simple philosophy: just one more. Instead of going from coach potato to Iron Man, pledging to hit the gym every day and reach a single-digit BMI, our resolution could be just one more work out session, one more home cooked meal, one more day of eating healthy. One more hour without a cigarette or one more percentage point socked into the savings account.
One more doesn’t seem overwhelming. One more is possible. And sustainable.
The second parameter is to think about resolutions that aren’t me-focused. Sure, losing weight or exercising more, quitting smoking or saving more money are good goals. But they target our physical and financial health. What about resolutions that support and strengthen our spiritual health?
Church leaders might consider these two parameters at the first vestry meeting of the year as they set some “new year’s resolutions.”
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The answer to the title’s question might seem completely obvious to you. Maybe I should’ve made it more controversial. Try this: “Stop Praying (like you’ve been doing) at Church Meetings!” More to the point, I’m suggesting we might benefit by thinking about precisely why and how we pray at church meetings.
It is or at least should be relatively obvious why we do. We actually believe that God the Holy Spirit is a partner with us in our work of discernment, and being a member of Christ’s own body means, by definition, that our deliberations are a part of the dynamic of the Holy Trinity itself. Prayer is one way to name that mystery.
It’s just that, sometimes, prayer at church meetings is little more than an add-on (“Okay, let’s get started. Who wants to lead us in prayer?...”) or, equally bad, an agenda pusher itself (“Dear God, help this miserly vestry who seem happy with being habitual penny-pinchers to understand that you are abundant and they really need to cough up for more spending …”) Technically speaking, that is a prayer.
Or consider these two real-life examples.
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I went on a ghost tour a few years ago in Lower Manhattan . We walked by old buildings and parks and our guide told us about the people who had died there and also about the occasional hauntings that had been reported. It was more of a history and local folklore tour than a ghost tour. I would argue that the things that haunt us are not spirits of the dead but memories of the past.
We can often feel these “ghosts” of the past in old church buildings and in our communities. In the churchyard of Trinity Wall Street, where I work, more than 11,000 people are buried, from extremely wealthy people and founding fathers to the poorest of New York’s residents. I’ve heard no reports of ghost sightings on the grounds, yet Trinity’s long history affects what Trinity does and how it understands itself.
We can often feel these ghosts in our relationships. A parishioner who has had a bad experience at another church may be extra-sensitive to what the priest says or does, for example. That parishioner might not be responding simply to the individual, but to the ghosts of past priests.
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Part 4 of 4. (Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
Maybe this blog should have been the first, but as we close this series, I must remind you that there is no such thing as solo leadership. You can't lead without followers, you can’t lead well without other leaders, and you are often called to follow different leaders. The decision to lead from the side is a decision to engage with other leaders in your congregation.
At the Howell family reunion my sister Marion started a back massage line with her nephew Brendan. Each person rubbed the back of the person in front of them, and had their own back rubbed by the person behind. While we recognized Marion and Brendan as leaders, we sometimes forget that success came because others followed their lead. Those who joined the line were followers of the first back scratchers, but were leaders of all those who had not yet joined.
Being a leader from the side includes following good leaders. If someone in your congregation has a creative proposal, show your leadership by following. Show your following skills by joining the team, seeking out useful resources, sharing in the work, exploring frustrations, and advising. Be sure to tell your fellow leaders, and others, what a good idea it is. But be careful! You model the best leadership by following without taking over.
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As far as church-elevator talks go, this one is a doozy.
Sure, it's definitely hard to talk about faith, about my personal relationship with Christ. But money and how I give (or don't give)? We're on thin ice.
The sarcasm is thin veneer over the truth: Talking about faith can be difficult but adding money (stewardship) to the mix is part-root canal, part-calculus.
Yet here we are, in the middle of the stewardship season, when many churches are making their annual appeal for pledges and contributions so that they might build a budget. Our congregation, like many, has invited people to speak about stewardship during the worship service. These five-minute talks are meant to encourage and inspire generosity in giving, but they're also a foray into the difficult task of talking about matters of money and faith. Just as we need to be able to articulate why we believe in Christ, we should be able to explain why we give to the church. If we don't have an understanding of giving that we can explain to others, then we're likely to see it less as a spiritual response and more as a dues-paying obligation. And often, obligations become sore places of resentment, scabs that keep getting knocked off when money is tight or the unexpected strains our resources.
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Where your worry lies...there your heart is also
What keeps your leaders awake at night? What generates intense discussion in your vestry? What motivates your members to write letters, whisper in the parking lot, or furrow their brows during announcements?
Ministry involves a certain amount of anxiety. We live in anxious times, and the future of the whole church project is pretty uncertain.
As a priest who has always served congregations with uncertain futures, I have given up on the idea that I will always sleep well.
I pay attention to what has the power to keep me awake at night.
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