Leaders and Leadership #6: Agency and Priesthood

In my last blog, I shared my 10-80-10 principle. I discussed the first “10” representing the Natural or Instinctual Leader and why many times they are unteachable. My additional comment is that even an instinctual leader can commit to being a life-long learner.

In this blog, I want to look at the “other 10” and who this represents. This I call Agency and this topic will lead us to our next blog about an issue that effects all clergy leaders and is underestimated in our development. This is Habit.

To get at Agency, let me start with some experiences that I had working with clergy in the Diocese of Texas. That diocese is large both demographically and geographically. Because of this, many clergy there spent almost all their ministry within the diocese. This also means that we had information from each of their parishes during their tenures. This was significant because “past performance is the best indicator of future behavior” as many managers know.

In several situations, clergy were struggling in leading their congregations and we found that they had a history of leading congregations into decline. This sometimes led to conflict with the lay leadership. Unlike previous administrations, and sadly a widespread practice at that time, such conflict would be resolved by the diocese simply moving them to another parish. We found a better way. This was to use their history to show them the need for a re-evaluation of their leadership. We used the Clergy Development Center, an ecumenical ministry, that helped pastors understand themselves better and to apply this to future ministry.

I was the point person in these interventions and was the go-between the clergy and the Center. During this process, I learned that a predictable pushback to receiving this re-evaluation was “What would I do if they tell me that I shouldn’t be a priest?” What I would say was that this is not the purpose of the re-evaluation. The task of the Center is to help you understand how and where you would work more effectively. In several situations, this led dramatically to a significant change for the clergy and introduced me to what the Center called Agency.

Here is what they meant. For some clergy, the parish is a frustrating and complex place. They arrive and discover that ministry in a congregation involves more than they expected. They wanted to be an agent with a manual and instructions on how to celebrate communion or how to make hospital visits, or how to take communion to homebound people. There are many clergy who are good at these tasks and act as agents of the Sacraments, pastoral care, and/or spiritual direction. When the boundaries and the tasks assigned are clear and there is a structure provided for them, they do just fine. 

There are places where this happens better than in a parish. Take, for example, a hospital visit. Hospitals have very regimented schedules. If you arrive too early to give communion, the patients are busy being fed, clothed, cleaned, and given treatments such as X-rays and/or tests. A minister needs to adjust to this and come at a more convenient time. If surgery is scheduled for early morning, then the best time to come is the night before surgery. Notice how the institution creates structure, and if you learn and follow it, you can function well.

Parish ministry has some of this structure with Sunday and weekday services, regularly scheduled vestry meetings, etc., but what is a clergy person to do on Monday mornings or Wednesday afternoons? Much of parish life is unstructured. In fact, clergy must learn to self-structure in a mostly open system with little supervision and direction. These skills are mostly leadership skills and doing them in order to help the whole community accomplish its purposes and goals is what leadership is about.

In the interventions that I mentioned above, the Center helped the priest understand that priesthood for them meant being an agent and the best places for that were chaplaincies in institutions like hospital, schools, and the military. In each situation, we helped them transition to such a ministry, and in EVERY case they did well. Some clergy with this view of priesthood find this truth by accident.

In summary, all ministry involves some Agency, but ministry in a congregation where that priest is the only ordained person has little of this. If a priest enters expecting all ministry in a congregation to be agency, problems quickly arise. This creates a void in ordained leadership, and moving to another parish never resolves the problem.

What all this shows us is that Agency may be ministry but is not leadership! It is a function or a task which can have great meaning, and some clergy thrive on this. However, the openness of leadership in a community has its own demands for self-structure (discipline) and such areas as vision casting, goal setting, and creating strategy. For ordained leaders, as professionals in the best sense of that word, we “must attend,” meaning function as an agent, but for leaders this is also an opportunity to open doors for relationships and influence. Agency is seldom for a leader an end in itself.

This whole topic leads us to the important issues of self-disciple and habits. In my next blog, I will explore the habits of ministry and leadership further and particularly how healthy ones can empower us, and bad habits can hinder us as leaders in our effectiveness. And as a bonus, you will learn why it is so hard to help clergy become more effective after the age of 55!