Leaders Understand the Difference between Authority and Leadership Post#4

I want to end this first section on the basics of leaders and leadership by underscoring something seldom mentioned in presentations on leadership but is always present in a community of faith. This is the relationship between authority and leadership. Why is this seldom discussed?

The first reason is that authority remains mostly assumed. Church leadership is made most aware of this when something goes wrong even though a congregation is surrounded by the symbols of authority in the vestments we wear, the scriptures we read, the creeds we profess, and the titles we use.

The second reason is the negative connotation given authority by authoritarian leaders. Authority does not mean the same thing, but it is often confused in the context of the egalitarian nature of American Church culture, even in a denomination with the name “Episcopal.”

I remember dealing with a conflicted vestry and at one point in the emotional tension of the meeting, I tried to lower tension level by saying, “I think if Bishop Payne were here, he would say that the really important thing….” That is as far as I got before I was interrupted by a red-faced angry man who banged the table and said, “What right does Bishop Payne have to tell us what we should do?” At that point, I looked around and most of the leaders including the rector sat staring at the table.  I respond with, “What part of Episcopal did you not understand when you joined this church?” This reference to our authority vested in the diocesan bishop actually empowered some of the vestry to speak up in the face of this attempt at emotional intimidation. As some reason returned to the room, the emotional temperature cooled down. Later I learned that the angry vestry member never returned. That was a good thing for their leadership. Attempting to control things by emotional intimidation is always unhealthy.

To acknowledge this usually unspoken dynamic, I often use the terms “ordained leader” and “lay leaders.” Let me elaborate. Because of our Episcopal and historic Anglican identity, the ordained leader (rector or vicar) has a special role among the leadership. For example, the canons state the right of the rector to preside at vestry meetings. While many episcopal leaders do not know this, the vestry cannot meet without the rector present unless the rector gives permission for that to happen. Some rectors delegate to a warden the job of presiding at vestry meetings. When that has been the custom, I always recommend that before the rector leaves the parish, he or she reclaim that right so that the vestry members are clear that the new rector may choose to function as chair of the meetings. In mission congregations, the above also applies to vicars and bishop’s committees.

Add to this that nothing ends the honeymoon phase of a new rectorship faster than the senior warden informing the new cleric, “In this parish, I chair the vestry meetings!” That is why, by the way, one of the chief functions of an interim is to restore normal operating procedures. All rectors have their quirks, and the transition time is when those should be eliminated and replaced by our regular canonical procedures.

A few times over the years, I have worked with a church where the rector is not a leader and does not take on the “ordained leadership role.” You can guess correctly that such congregations are already dysfunctional by definition. Usually what has happened is that the Rector lost an early struggle with some powerful lay leader or leaders but did not resign. Sadly, the rector accepted a passive role functioning as a kind of chaplain to the community. That leaves the clergy person a not much respected figurehead who functions more like the vicar of a family chapel subject to doing what the “real” leaders want done, like a character out of a bad 18^th century English novel.

On the other hand, when the ordained leader assumes a “father or mother knows best” directive style of leadership, this is authoritarian leadership. Its effect is to create dependency in the congregation and to silence any lay leaders who simply object to a rector’s decisions. Again, this creates dysfunctionality.

When an ordained leader functions in a healthy manner, two good things happen. First, the whole congregation, including the lay leaders, are reminded that the local congregation represents the wider Church and the mission of Jesus in the local community. Second, the ordained leader is the one who holds the policy and procedures of the congregation in place and negates bad behavior on the part of dysfunctional leaders and members. In other words, the ordained leader is most responsible for maintaining clear boundaries.

This authority can also be seen in important functional ways. For example, when I have worked with vestries in writing mission statements, I always interject near the end of the process this guidance, “The Rector gets the last draft of the statement.” When asked why, I point out that the rector will be the one who reminds the congregation of its mission, shares this mission with potential and new members, and l mentions this from time to time in preaching and teaching. I then remind the vestry that if the Rector has to stop to open the bulletin and read the mission statement, it isn’t yet the real mission. The rector has to say it and believe it in a naturally congruent manner.

When ordained leaders function in a healthy manner, the leadership operates in a healthy way. The canons say it this way. The rector and the vestry are responsible together for the mission of the local congregation and are accountable for its organization life and operations. The line that I have heard some rectors inclined toward autocratic behavior wrongly use is, “I am in charge of all things spiritual, and the vestry is responsible for mowing the grass and funding the budget.” Such an attitude undermines the very nature of an “Apostolic Community” in which Jesus is the head and all leaders are servants. 

Let me end by observing that authority becomes most apparent when there is a change and subsequent transition in the ordained leadership. As the team of lay leaders develops their relationship with the new ordained leader, shared responsibility and ownership can become a healthy mark of a healthy congregation.

Note that in communities, authorities are often seen as good or bad. These descriptive words make sense given humanity’s long history of this dynamic. However, they should not be used for leadership. Leadership is either effective or ineffective. In my next posts, I will be turning to what makes for an effective leader.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Leaders Need to Maintain a Balance Between Mission and Community Post #3

 

Why this Balance Matters

Over 50 years ago, I attended a “Human Relationship Lab.” I was a senior in seminary, and I had been introduced to these gatherings by one of our professors. The basic premise of the labs was to combine experience in a group with observations about group behavior especially as it related to leadership.

One observation in this session was both simple and profound. It has stayed with me all these years and I have used the principle on many occasions. The facilitator drew on newsprint a straight line and then added two words:

                             Task_____________________Community                                                   

 Here is the rule. Leaders need to tend to two dynamics to maintain a healthy community. The first is task. The second is community life. Simple right? Now comes the profound part. When these dynamics become unbalanced, too focused on task or too focused on community, the group becomes unhealthy. Today we would use the word “dysfunctional.”

Over my years as a Rector, a Canon in a diocese, and a consultant to churches, I have seen lots of dysfunctional behavior in congregations. It often occurs when one of these two dynamics becomes over emphasized. When I observed such churches, I found that the leaders were not attending to this balance and were dealing with issues, not by trying to balance these, but by putting even more energy in their preferred dynamic. As a consultant, I would make recommendations to restore the balance. When applied, this always helped create a healthier community that was better able to accomplish its purpose. When ignored often conflict emerged.

Add to this that each of these two dynamics can be both healthy and unhealthy. For example, take the clergy person who believes the congregation needs to build a new worship space. In order to accomplish this task, it is necessary to raise money. The leader now takes every opportunity to hammer away at the need for people to give. The result is that members start saying things like, “The church is always asking for money.” This complaint is code language for “we are not feeling a part of this community.” Perhaps what was not being attended to was the need for members to fully own the decision. 

Back then, an expression that I used with leaders was that “Baby Boomers and GenXers think that any decision made without them involved, even if seems a good one to the leaders, was bad. That was important because the GI generation mostly trusted their leaders’ decisions, but the boomer generation did not! This generational shift in our society was a major issue for churches in the latter part of the 21st century.

The problem on the other side of the balance, community life, can be seen in several ways. First, the tighter the relationships become, the more difficult it is to include new people. New people see a self-described “friendly congregation,” as often made up of people who stand around at the coffee hour talking to each other while ignoring the visitors.

In the wider Episcopal Church in recent days the emphasis on “The beloved Community” carries that risk. If a group puts all its energy into relationships within the group, it can be unhealthy. In our church, which puts much emphasis on learning to love one another and reconciliation, this emphasis runs the risk of focusing too much on the present group’s relationships. The task then must become balancing our communities with a healthy understanding of the task of making new disciples.

Another example of see too much emphasis on communing is to imagine what happens if one of the leaders of a community comes from a dysfunctional family or is addicted to some substance. Then it is easy for the whole church “family” to become dysfunctional. This is a particular problem in our smaller churches, and we have lots of them. The solution would be balanced by greater emphasis on the church’s task or mission. 

My former Bishop, Claude Payne, underscored this with his description of the Church’s two core values which are The Great Commission to make disciples and The Great Commandment to love one another. He would point out that maintaining a healthy balance between these two core values is a continual work of a congregation’s leadership both ordained and lay.

I would add this observation. A community that puts all its emphasis on itself is best defined as a cult. One that puts too much emphasis on the task is a corporation not a community.

How are your leaders doing at maintaining this healthy balance? What strategies might accomplish this? This model remains a basic tool in developing strategies aimed at health.  

 

 

 

Leaders and Leadership in the Faith Community Post#2

 

Are Leaders Born or Made Leaders?

This question has been debated for years, maybe for as long as we humans have been around. I have read arguments both ways. The problem with this question is twofold.

First, leadership is complex.

Second, this question focuses on leaders apart from groups or communities.

Studies of group behavior by several disciplines have revealed a very interesting dynamic of group life. If you put 100 random people in a room and give them a task or problem to solve, you will observe that about 10% or 10 people will step forward as leaders to help the group accomplish the task or solve the problem.

This dynamic has been observed across cultures, in different organizations, and varying institutions including churches. Approximately 10% of a group will self-differentiate from the group members as leaders.

I have called this series “Leaders and Leadership in Communities of Faith” for a reason. When we talk about leaders in our society, we often focus on individuals. We ask how a particular leader learned to be one or how that leader developed a style of leadership. But the other side of this is about leadership as a function of groups. Many of us who are seen as leaders have found ourselves in groups where a task or problem occurred, and we decided “to remain quiet” and waited for others to lead. And other do emerge. When I use the term leadership, I will be referring to how leadership functions as a dynamic of a group’s life. When I say leader, I will be referring to individuals and how they function as leaders.

Let me stay with leadership for a moment and underscore one of the consistent problems of congregations. Almost all congregations overestimate the number of leaders they have. For example, take a parish with 100 active members. If we take the research above seriously, we realize that this community will have approximately 10 leaders at any moment in time. Notice that they may have 9 to 12 Vestry members. They will also have a director of the altar guild, the ushers, the vergers, and servers. They may have leaders in Christian education and others in outreach. Now you see the problem. They have more leadership roles than they have leaders to fill them. To “mind the gap” as the British would say, there are two typical solutions that are always bad for the health of the community.

The first is to give one person more than one leadership position. I’ve been in congregations where a person has 3to 4 leadership positions. When this happens, they naturally lose focus, and the areas of ministry they lead will suffer.

The Second is to fill leadership positions with non-leaders. Let’s say St. John’s has 9 vestry positions but this year no one wants to serve on the Vestry. Often the nominating committee comes up with the names of helpful and pleasant folks willing to take a position but who are not leaders. That leadership recruitment strategy is called “No one else will do it!” What is wrong with this, you might ask. Nothing if all that is needed is maintenance. But if leadership is needed, the presence of non-leaders restrains the real leaders from doing what needs to be done. The leadership team will suffer because of the inability of those non-leaders to produce as part of the leadership team.

There are many applications to this but let me share one. During my time in the Diocese of Texas, when we had a church in crisis or that needed revitalization, we stepped beyond normal procedures. We placed a new clergy person in the community and then asked the Senior Warden and 5 to 7 members of the Vestry to remain in place for the next 3 years. Once agreed upon by the leaders, there will be no elections or replacements even if someone leaves the congregation. Our plan always worked for the betterment of the community.

Why? I let you ponder that question, but a clue has to do with team solidarity. This also reflects an unintended consequence of term limits for Vestry members. 

Leaders and Leadership in the Faith Community Post #1

 

Leaders Take the Initiative

When I worked for the Diocese of Texas, I met with parish leaders in a congregation in crisis. Their Rector had recently left after a year of conflict with the lay leadership. The giving had fallen off and then suddenly the HAV system died. They asked for help and Bishop Payne sent me to meet with them.

For the past few years, this congregation’s representatives to the Diocesan Council had at the beginning of Council asked to be allowed to be seated even though they had not paid their Diocesan assessment for the past year. Texas had two assessments. The first covered the administrative costs of the bishop and his office and paying this was mandatory. If a parish did not pay this basic assessment, they were denied seating, voice, and vote at that Council. The second asking was for support of Diocesan programs and was more voluntary.

A congregation’s delegation could petition at the beginning of Council to suspend the requirement for that year and forgive the payment of the first assessment. This almost always passed because the other parishes recognized that congregations did at times face a crisis and nothing was gained by denying their participation. This particular congregation had used the action several years running and the Bishop did not want this pattern repeated.

After I was welcomed, the Senior Warden announced that Canon Martin had news to share. I smiled and said, “Actually, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the Bishop has arranged for a grant to solve the approximately $20,000 in needed repairs.” I then paused and added, “The bad news is the grant is dependent on your paying your full assessment for this past year.” With that announcement, I paused and waited.

Immediately the room erupted with objections. Several asked how the Bishop could be “so unchristian” as to demand this knowing how strapped the parish was financially. Finally, one person said, “There is no way that we can manage this financially.”  After another pause, I said, “I know a way to do it.”

I then asked, “Is the treasurer here tonight?” A man across from me nodded and responded, “I am.” I asked how much the assessment was for last year. He told me and I then said, “There are 11 of us in this room including me. If you divide the assessment by 11, how much is that?” He pulled out his calculator and punched in the numbers. Then announced, “$68.75 each.” I pulled out my check book while explaining that as a diocesan staff member, I was a part of their leadership. I wrote out a check for the $68.75 amount while adding, “Not everyone in this room may be able to give that exact amount, but some can give more.” I put my check down on the table.

There was dead silence. Finally, an older woman opened her purse and took out two $20 dollar bills. “This is from my tips at work,” she added. She put these down on top of my check. Another long pause followed. Then a vestry member sitting near me put his hand over the check and cash and said, “Canon Martin, I personally guarantee that we will send a check to the Diocese tomorrow for the full assessment. Several other smiled and nodded.  I responded, “Great.” After a further conversation about their needs, I said good night and left. I knew we would get their payment and that there would be no further requests from this congregation for the Council to suspend the requirement that their Assessment be paid.

What marks a leader from a follower?

When a problem or crisis arises in a community, the non-leaders complain and wring their hands indicating they don’t know what to do. The leaders step forward and take the initiative to find a solution. That woman with her $40 dollars was one. And the gentlemen who told me he guaranteed the assessment would be paid was another. Simply said, a leader takes the initiative when others won’t or can’t.

In my next blog, I will explore the question of whether leaders are born, or they learn how to become one.  

Evangelism and the Path to Discipleship

In my last blog post, I wrote about the pathway to membership, but as I mentioned, I prefer the word community. Now I turn to the important topic of an intentional path to discipleship.

Remember that Jesus called us to follow him as disciples. The concept of discipleship is often lost in an emphasis on evangelism only as conversion and often presented as a decision. Many evangelical churches make their single focus on getting people to confess their sins and accept Jesus as their savior. Jesus’ own emphasis was on following him by learning his teachings - his way, his truth, and his life.

However, this is important. Studies on multiple congregations in a wide range of denominations have shown that individual spiritual growth often has no relationship to the activities of people’s local congregation. In other words, spiritual growth happens when you are in the right place at the right time. A person who merely attended church could be in the same congregation for years but remain spiritually stuck while a new member sees an announcement about a special retreat, decides to attend, and experiences a remarkable amount of spiritual growth and insight from it.

When I became the Dean of the Cathedral in Dallas, I found a typical pattern that exists in many Episcopal Congregations. Adult Education amounted to random classes based on clergy or lay leaders’ interests. I call them the Theology 401 classes. These assume that members are ready for advance information. I lamented to our staff the lack of any 101 classes on the basics of Prayer Book liturgy, the different forms of prayer, finding a daily devotion, understanding the basic doctrines, or how to read and interpret scripture. A better approach is to focus on Christian Formation. Christian education often aims at information while formation aims at integration of information to behavior feeding our minds, bodies, and spirits.

One of my favorite preachers and teachers was Pastor Bruce Theilmann of First Presbyterian Church Pittsburgh. He once noted that churches where members carried bibles to church and attended classes only on passages of the bible often produced Christian Pharisees not big-hearted loving disciples of Jesus, people who reflected Christian maturity. Tragically, this has proven true on many occasions.

What needs to be done to correct this information only approach? Congregational leaders, and especially their clergy, need think about the steps our people need to take to move from seeker or nominal church member toward fully devoted followers of Christ. While each member is unique, spiritual directors have long understood that there is a path all disciples take. So, think about what activities we should systematically offer that will move members on this path of Christian maturity. My understanding of spiritual growth followed a classical model of 7 steps:

1.    People of whim

2.    People of law

3.    People of Grace

4.    Discipleship

5.    Journey to the Cross

6.    Death to self

7.    The resurrected life

W  What we did at the Cathedral was to create two tools, The Cathedral Core Curriculum and A Cathedral Way of Life. 

W We then asked all members to take the first four core classes aimed at a clear understanding of discipleship even if they had been members of the Cathedral for years. These were:

1.    Christian Believing using the Baptismal Covenant as an outline.

2.    How to Read and Understand Holy Scripture.

3.    Anglican Spirituality, introduction to the Prayer Book as a guide.

4.    Your Call to Ministry in the Body of Christ, an introduction to vocation and spiritual gifts for ministry.

     We communicated that all four were important and that it did not matter the order people took these. We also created opportunities for retreats and/or days of reflection aligned with the Church year to introduce the deeper life of the last three steps. We encouraged people to experience these steps, and the core curriculum was also our path to baptism and confirmation. We knew that people needed to proceed at their own pace often this depended on life’s circumstances. When I left the Cathedral over 50% of our members, old and new, had taken the core courses and over 50% were following the Way of Life that we offered. It was one of the most significant achievements of my ministry of 42 years! I can send you an outline of these if you email me, deankevinmartin@gmail.com.

     Of course, there are other models of Christian growth and other steps that clergy have created for their congregation. While I was working on my evangelism series, a good colleague of mine, Paul Fielder, sent me the text of his new book to review. The title is Living the Transformed Life. It is being published and should be available in the next few months. I will send notice when it is available. Thinking like a Spiritual Director and acting on his pastoral experience, Paul gives a series of spiritual exercises that begins with a guided spiritual retreat done over several days or weeks if one needs a slower pace. His chapters move people along this path of “Transformation.” These exercises aim at deepening believers’ relationship with God, and they can be done individually or in small groups.

     There are other ways to do this too. In my opinion, The Alpha Program starts people on the path of Discipleship. Cursillo has often been a weekend that transforms members into disciples. My former boss, Bishop Claude Payne, attended a Cursillo and started asking why this is not offered at the front door of a parish rather than allowing years of membership before attending one. He introduced this at his home parish in retirement and the lay people have embraced it. It has become the method for membership connected to baptism, confirmation, and reception.

     Does your congregation have an intentional path toward discipleship? Remember that believing people can just attend church and eventually they will catch discipleship is like believing that putting them into a chicken coop once a week and hoping that at some point they will lay eggs. Discipleship is spiritual transformation. It was for the first 3 centuries of Christianity. It has been in every revival and movement from Benedict to Francis to Wesley. It is the primary work of Jesus, disciples making disciples that continues the Jesus Movement up to this day.  

Create an intentional path of discipleship and watch the transformation of your congregation from members to disciple!