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 Leadershing 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!