Catherine Thompson is the
Rector of Church of the Annunciation in Lewisville, Texas. Since I came to faith and the Church when
Annunciation was a mission church of the Diocese of Dallas in the late 50s, I
was pleased when she asked me to give her some coaching last year.
She is facing two
interesting challenges in taking on the calling of Rector to this
congregation. First, she has all the
issues of following an over 20 year tenure of her predecessor. I have written on these challenges in other
places, so for this blog, let me just say that thanks to her predecessor’s work
at the end of his tenure, and the good lay leaders of that congregation, and
her own pastoral abilities, she is weathering through this well.
Second, she is facing the
on-going challenges of a church moving back and forth between the conflicting
demands of an over-grown Pastoral Size congregation and an under-developed
Program Size. This issue will take a
much long time to address. In fact, I
could write a book on this topic. Oh
wait, I already did.
In this blog, I want to
share a creative way that Catherine discovered to help build a more cohesive
and creative Vestry. She had been doing
a great job in getting the Vestry centered on goals and what needed to be
addressed for the future. They have
over-come some substantial hurdles in debt reduction and staffing. However, at the same time such intentional
goal directedness has a tendency to wear on even the best congregational
leaders. She was sensing that this year
she needed “something” different from goal setting at her Vestry Retreat. I suggested that her hunch was right and that
she needed to do something that focused on the health and mutual support of
leaders for and to one another.
She came up with a great
plan and she gave me permission in this blog to share it with you. This year Catherine began the retreat by
stating her intention to set goals aside and focus on the life of the vestry.
She then shared a video
presentation “Why Leaders Eat Last,” by
Simon Sinek with her leaders. (Here is
the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReRcHdeUG9Y )
In the presentation, the teacher focused on
creating a safe place for people to work together. It points out the pitfalls of not attending
to creating this kind of safe place and how humans who do not feel such safety
react to challenges and changes, mostly in negative ways. Catherine then led the members in a
discussion of what they needed to do to make the Vestry such a place.
The results were
surprising and insightful. After an open
and frank discussion of the needs they felt, the Vestry eventually returned to
some planning. This time there was a
surge of energy, creativity, and commitment that had been lagging in recent
meetings. As I listened to the story, I
could also hear the energy that Catherine felt from that retreat.
What did Catherine learn
from this creative venture? I would
suggest that she learned one of the fundamental truths of healthy community
life. It is the need to strike the right
balance between task and group life.
Many years ago, I learned
this truth in my early work in organizational development. It came from a secular source, but it has
direct application to the Church. I
would say it has even more application to the Church. This truth is at any moment in a group’s life
there are two needs. One is the need for
structure and meaning that comes from “purposefulness.” Individual and groups of humans badly need a
sense of purposefulness. We need, in
other words, goals and direction. We
need to know where we have been and where we are going. An essential element of what we call
“self-esteem” is found in such purposefulness.
Many parents need to learn this lesson in regards to their
children. For years, parents have been
urged to praise their children and this does have value, however if the praise
isn’t attached to purposefulness, the praise soon sours into meaninglessness or
worst narcissism.
Second, a group also needs
to attend to its affective life of mutual trust, caring, and create what we are
seeing in this blog to be “a safe place” to belong. It has been my experience that many Vestries
pay far too little time dealing with this issue or striking this balance. Even a vestry that primarily meets and
maintains corporate life in reports, budgets, and plumbing, will grind out into
a un-healthy place over time. Here is a
critical point; “community” in the New Testament doesn’t just happen by
carrying out business, even purposeful business. It happens when we attend to the needs of our
interior corporate life.
Of course it is possible
for Church leaders to become too preoccupied with the interior life to the
point of abandoning purposefulness for an attempt at emotional well-being, but
this happens much less than the grind of usual life. I have met many former Vestry Members who
tell me that after a term on their local Vestry, they would never serve
again. When I ask why, they refer to how
lacking in trust, love, and mutual regard, their experience was. What a sad testimony for a Christian Church
where such behavior is supposed to be normative for us.
Notice that I say striking
the right balance because this is the challenge that leaders face. We need to know how to maintain this healthy
balance and the sign of it is creativity, spontaneity and a sense of meaningful
work. I also like the way Catherine
introduced this topic from outside by way of the video. Often the least effective way at getting to
this balance is to announce that we need to “look at the way we relate to one
another” which can often create the exact tension that we need to avoid.
How about
your Vestry, Ministry Team, or Organization?
Are you striking the right balance between these two needs?. If you are, you can probably feel it and see
the fruit. If you are not, the signs are
often low commitment, morale, and mutual regard.
