What Kind of Staff Person Should You Hire?

Skills and competency are essential, but before you hire someone there may be a more important question to ask yourself

If you are the Rector of a program size church, one critical issue you face is the hiring of new staff members.  Of course, smaller churches have staff too, but these are different from the staff of larger churches.  Large churches often have staff members that have responsibility for significant areas of congregational program and ministry. 

Over the years, I have hired staff and assisted other clergy in this task.  Of course, there are critical issues such as position description, compensation, expectations and the like that are important, however I think there is a much more fundamental question that the Rector should has herself before starting the search process.  “Do I want to hire the best and brightest person for this work, or would I rather have a competent person who can carry out responsibilities, but who will remember that I am the best and brightest person in this organization?”  Let me explain.

I have noticed that there is a fundamental attitude in leaders about how they see themselves in relationship to the people they hire.  For people like Bishop Claude Payne, my boss for over nine years, the critical issue was hiring people who shine out in their work. (Let us call this kind of person, the A Type Leader.)  People like Bishop Payne operate with a broad sense of delegation, delegating authority as well as responsibility.  They expect staff to perform to high standards and to take the initiative when needed.  They believe that compliments and achievements of their staff reflect positively on them.

For other leaders, the attitude is quite different.  They are very concerned that they are seen as the center or primary person of their organization.  (I will call this person, the B Type Leader.) They also delegate, but mainly responsibility, not much authority.  Personally and emotionally, they are uncomfortable when members of their staff act independently or take the initiative.  They can be uncomfortable when staff members are complimented or shine forth. 

Now, I want to be clear.  I have known very effective leaders of both kinds, but what I am suggesting here is that it is best to know which kind of leader you are.  Otherwise, hiring becomes more difficult, and expectations are often unclear or miss-communicated.  When such things happen conflict results.  Conflict with staff is often the most difficult and costly things that can happen in a larger congregation. 

Further, not all potential staff members are comfortable with both these kinds of leaders.  Some, like me, function best with high autonomy.  I work best with an A Leader.  Others like a greater sense of security and direction.  These people prefer a B Leader.

Unfortunately, both A and B Leaders tend to think that they want the best and brightest staff and want them to shine forth.  On three occasions, a B Leader asked me to help prepare a short list of candidates for a parish position.  He told me that he wanted the “best possible” person and I assumed this meant an outstanding person in the area of ministry.  I was confused when the leader chose the person that I felt was least able on the list.  On the other occasion, the leader passed over my recommendations and chose a person that he felt was just better suited for that congregation.  It took me a while to figure out that I had a B leader. 

I can take this further to say that this B Leader had and continues to have conflict with staff members.  He tends to hire people perceived as the best in their field and then becomes unhappy when they are perceived by the B leader to be either insubordinate or disloyal. 

However, I have also known A Leaders that got into conflict with staff members, particularly staff members who were correctly perceived as highly competent, but who wanted clearer direction or were low risk takers. 

I may have said enough in this blog to help you understand which type leader best describes you and how you prefer to operate.  Unfortunately, experience has shown me that some leaders, even quite successful ones, do not necessarily have insight about their own behavior or expectations.  If you are a leader who is unsure about which of these two descriptions best suit you, there are at least three ways to get meaningful feedback on this.

First, give a copy of this blog to your spouse and ask them which type best describes how you operate.

Second, give a copy of this blog to a trusted and competent lay leader, and then ask her which best describes you.

Third, and perhaps the most insightful, give a copy of this blog to a former staff person and ask him which best describes you. 

Did I mention that feedback can sometimes be difficult?  Unfortunately, it is often the best road to insight.   

Advice Two

What is the best advice you have received as a church leader?  I continue with my second piece of advice given to me that I now pass along to you. 

“Give yourself to the dedicated few.”

When I consult with churches on stewardship, I often get a common question from the new stewardship chair, “What can we do to effectively reach all the people in the church who give so little?”  I know exactly why this question is asked.

The chair person has looked at the data and discovered that 70 to 80% of the income of the church comes from 20 to 30% of the members.  Looking at the large percentage of parish givers who give a very small amount, it is natural to start thinking about how well the church would do if all the people giving little stepped up to the challenge of the primary supporters.   My advice?  “Aim your principle efforts are the dedicated few!”

I have heard a number of different leaders give this advice in one way or another from John Maxwell to Bill Bright.  The most direct was told me by John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard Church Movement.  When I told him that I was having trouble getting everyone in my parish to deepen their commitment, he pointed out to me that in scripture we constantly see God working by calling first the most committed to deeper commitment. 

Of course, we also have the example of our Lord himself.  He had many admirers, but he gave most of his energy and time to “the twelve.”  This inner circle became the first leaders of the Christian Movement after the Resurrection.  It helps to remember that Jesus ministered to “the crowd.”  He also taught his disciples. However, he chose the twelve to lead.  I have often noticed clergy who aim their energy and efforts only at the congregation in general (the crowd?)  Lasting and deep change seem to me to come when a leader gives herself or himself to an inner circle of more dedicated people.

As a student of history, I have also noticed that movements that have had long lasting effect usually have a leader who created and disciple an inner circle of dedicated people.   

Over the years, I have constantly rediscovered this principle.  If I want to get something done, or move the congregation forward, I start with the most committed.  This is also true for me.  When faced with a costly or sacrificial decision in my congregation, I first have to deepen my own commitment.  

Here is Some Advice

Last year, the Golf Channel started a new series called “School of Golf.”  For each of the first 12 weeks they interviewed some of the most famous golfers such as Palmer, Nicklaus, Player, Norman, etc.  Each week, the host asked each professional the same question,   “What is the best advice you ever got as a player?”  The answers ranged from technique to strategy to philosophy and even character formation.  It was very insightful.  

Over the years, I have learned a lot from other clergy leaders.  This blog starts a series on “The Best Advice I Have Been Given” as a clergy leader.   My hope is that each of these blogs will help you in your ministry, and I also hope that they will provoke some reflection on your own leadership.  Let me make this clear.  This is not my wisdom.  None of this is original with me.  This is the wisdom and advice passed on to me by both mentors and fellow clergy.  They are not presented in any particular order, but I want to start with this one.

“As a leader, eliminate the word ‘failure’ from your vocabulary.” 

I have heard and read this expressed in several different ways, but the most helpful came from Pastor Bruce Larson when he was Senior Pastor of University Presbyterian in Seattle and I served St. Luke’s Parish there.  Here is the story he told me that lead up to this advice.

When he was called to become the Pastor of this large and prestigious congregation, he was intimidated by the call.  He was known as an author and teacher for his work in pioneering the small group movement.  However, he had never served as pastor of a large church and worried that he just was not up to the challenge.  One morning at breakfast, he was continuing to discuss this call with his wife and his reluctance to receive it when his teenage daughter looked up from her breakfast and surprised him with a question.  “Dad,” she asked, “What are you afraid of?” 

He asked what she meant, and she went on to ask him what he thought was worst thing that could happen if he took the call.  After thinking about it for a while, he responded with how he could mess up badly, fail, and be asked  to leave.  “So, then what would you do?”  She went on. 

He thought for a while and then said that probably he would find something else to do and life would go on.  Then she finished the surprising comments by observing that “Then you would write a book about what you learned so you wouldn’t really be a failure after all would you?” 

He told me that she started off to school leaving him pondering the wisdom of what had just come from his daughter.  “I have since learned to eliminate failure from my vocabulary as a leader.  Leadership is about being effective and the best way to become more effective is to see your work not about success or failure, but about effectiveness.  If I see all my experiences as an opportunity to learn, then no matter what I face, or what happens, if I learn from it, I will grow as God’s intended leader.”

I took his words to heart.  This does not mean that I haven’t had my share of failures in life both professionally and personally.  I am, after all, a sinner in need of God’s grace.  But as a leader, I have learned that whatever God puts before me is an opportunity to learn and grow. 

Of course, we often learn most from our failures, but I think this an overstated principle.  I know plenty of clergy leaders who seem to have learned nothing from moments of failure but to think badly about themselves.  The problem is that this does nothing to enhance one’s effectiveness, and low self-esteem undermines the essentials of good leadership.  I do know this, being a leader who is willing to learn from whatever comes my way has given me freedom and moments of grace. 

When something doesn’t seem to work, when the challenges seem overwhelming, when I hit another wall, or when my best and most creative ideas seem to go nowhere, I try to stop and ask myself, “Well, what did I learn from this?”  Take my advice, stop seeing your calling and vocation as a matter of success or failure, and you will grow more effective as a leader!  Besides, in a community whose leader ended his ministry on a cross, success may not be the goal. 

Tiger's Achilles Heel

            Sometimes what a leader sees as a strength is really a weakness that needs change.

Actually, as it turns out, Tiger Woods’ Achilles heel is not his heel, but his knee.  He has had four surgeries to repair damage done to his left knee because at impact in his 120 mile an hour swing, he violently kicks his left knee strait.  This means his left knee has to absorb the full impact of his champion swing.  What does all this have to say about congregational leadership?  It says a lot if you stay with me.

In Tiger’s own book on the golf swing, he describes this “violent kick” as a distinctive part of his way of doing things.  Of course, today sports physiologists shake their heads at what he does and the damage it has caused him, but my point is that he told us 10 years ago his rationalization for doing so.  It is a unique characteristic of his swing.  Despite three well publicized coaching changes, he still repeats this action.  As Lee Trevino said recently, “Either he will stop doing this, or his career is over.” 

Often, I have found clergy leaders, even very outstanding leaders, who have a unique habit (dare I say flaw?) that they justify as simply part of their individual style.  In other words, they view, what is really a fault, as strength.  For example, I remember a Bishop with a notoriously bad temper who explained to me that “When I am mad at one of my clergy, I sure let them know it.  It clears the air, and afterward it is over and done as far as I am concerned.”  Of course, it wasn’t over and done as far as many of the clergy persons on the receptive side of the interchange were concerned, but my main point is that this leader saw such behavior as a unique part of his own style that was beneficial in some way. 

I also remember a vestry person in my first congregation that would regularly tell me her frank opinion about most church issues.  She would fire off a broadside followed by her comment that “You may not like it, but you always know where I stand.”  I can tell you that her husband, her children, and her employees also always knew where she stood, and most had long since stopped caring. 

In the long run, such justifications are just that, justifications.  They are used to rationalize behavior that one should change, but many leaders use their strengths to justify such things as a virtuous part of their personal style.  I know that I have done this.  I am a mild introvert on the Myers-Briggs personality index.  One day a clergy friend pointed out to me (painfully, I might add) that I sometimes used this as an excuse for not more positively emotionally engaging people on Sunday mornings.  At first, I thought my friend was unkind for saying so, and that he did not really “understand me.”  After time, I came to realize that I was using my introversion as a justification for not carrying out one of my primary jobs of a leader, namely, showing people that I genuinely care about them.  I cannot say it was easy to change this behavior.  I would say that realizing that it was a problem, and that I needed to address it, rather than justify it as a part of who I was, became an important step in learning to be a more effective leader.

Let’s face it, personal insight and commitment to change is hard.  God grant it to us, and God give us also truthful friends who care enough to give us such feedback.  Recently, a colleague shared with me a remarkable book about just such issues.  It is Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership: How to become an Effective Leader by Confronting Potential Failures by Gary McIntosh and Samuel Rima.  If you are a leader committed to growing as a leader, you may want make this part of your summer reading.  

Good and Bad News for TEC

Statistically there is good news and bad news for the Episcopal Church for the first decade of the 21^st Century.  It should help us as leaders focus on the challenge for the future.

This past week, I attended the national TENS Conference (The Episcopal Network for Stewardship) at Camp Allen.  It was a very good event with keynote speakers and lots of workshops.  I came away with a number of good ideas.  If you are not familiar with TENS, visit their website www.tens.org and check out the resources.

I also attended the pre-conference for diocesan folks (figured that I qualified as Dean) and heard some very good presentations there too.  One of these was by Kirk Hadaway who is the congregational resource person for 815 who keeps up with all those statistics from our parochial reports.  I have known Kirk for many years and I have always found his work helpful.

He shared three pieces of information that specifically relate to our work as parish clergy that I want to share this with you.  The first has to do with the overall health of TEC.  For the first decade of the 21^st Century, we have lost 20% of our pledging units.  This nearly matches the 19.5% loss of attendance during this same period.  What this says is that it is not primarily the economy that is the source of recent financial woes, but the loss of people. 

The second significant number is good news.  About 30% of our congregations show a 10% growth in membership at this time.  This number is up from a few years ago.  Unfortunately, this does not off-set the nearly 50% of our congregations that are showing a 10% decline.  Kirk added, “Many in significant decline,” to underscore his point. 

Kirk, like me, is also concerned about the significant number of Pastoral Size churches that have now declined to Family Size.  Remember that Pastoral Size congregations usually have full time clergy while Family Size ones do not.  This has a number of significant implications for our community as a whole, but this is a matter for future blogs. 

The third piece of statistical information is that after 20 years of increase in pledges by households running ahead of inflation, the past four years show an alarming trend of decline in financial support by current members. 

What does this mean for our congregations?  One thing is for sure.  We will all have to work a lot harder at stewardship in the days ahead.  This is where TENS can be of tangible help to many of us. 

Here is the great quote of the week that I got from another staff member from 815.  It is from Gus Speth, scientist, environmentalist, and former head of the Yale School of forestry and environmental studies.  It was directed to faith leaders.

“I used to think the top environmental problems facing the world were global warming, environmental degradation and eco-system collapse, and that we scientists could fix those problems with enough science. But I was wrong. The real problem is not those three items, but greed, selfishness and apathy. And for that we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that. We need your help."

As we say in my occupation, “That will preach!”

The Movement Now

As a follow up to my last blog on movements, I want to share a few thoughts on what I see as the most significant movement in North American Christianity at this time. 

First, you might be surprised to find that I do not think it is the “Emergent Church.”  I do think that the Emergent Church may be a part of it, or a spin off from the main, but largely, I think the Emergent business is way too small to call it a movement.

For the past 20 years, I believe the movement has been The Discipleship Movement.  I would describe the movement this way.  As Christendom continues to crash, and the Protestant consensus that dominated American Church life until the 60’s ebbs, many church leaders have discovered the need to return to disciple making.  I would further describe this as a movement away from Church membership and toward discipleship. 

Discipleship is more than bible study or small groups, but it incorporates these tools.  This movement is the realization that one of the reasons Christianity is failing here in the U.S. is because nominal Christianity is detrimental to the spread of Christianity and nominal Christianity is the inevitable outcome of Christendom and its implied membership. 

All of this was foreshadowed by Bonheoffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship” and many of the leaders of this movement have been affected by his pivotal work.  The question behind the movement is “How can we help seekers and un-churched in our world move toward wholehearted following after Jesus as his disciples.  In addition, the Post-denominational moment in which we live, allows churches of many different traditions to contribute to discipleship formation across old divisions.

I would define a disciple as a person who has heard the good news of Jesus Christ and has accepted him as savior who has decided to follow him in a discipline way.  Of course, in Lutheran, Anglican and Roman circles, this is often described with the term “Christian Formation.” 

All of this recognizes the need for Christ’s people to go deeper and more fully live out a life of witness “by word and deed” that is counter-cultural to modern secular consumer driven society.

The key question for the local congregation is to think through how we help form people beyond mere membership questions into this deeper relationship.  I like to say that each congregation needs a clear path to discipleship. 

Not everyone who is seeking or even who is attracted to the church is ready for this deeper relationship, but we should continually invite them to it while living out the values of God’s kingdom. 

How will your congregation meet the challenge of moving beyond membership and toward discipleship?  

What is a Movement?

This was the challenging question put to me by the Reverend Clay Lein when he asked me to be the first guest preacher in a series of sermons asking his members to consider the challenge of being a “Movement not a Mega-church.”  Clay is the Rector of St. Philip’s, Frisco, one our largest and fastest growing Episcopal Churches.  In my sermon, I asked the congregation to consider the early church as The Jesus Movement and what that meant for them and means for each of us.

In addition, all this got me to thinking about various movements that have affected my life, and thinking about how these movements have both challenged the Church and brought new life at the same time.  My American Church History professor at Yale used to point out that we could not tell the history of the church in North America by denominational history, as you can in Germany, France and England, but rather you had to tell it by movements and people.  Historically, he could point to the several Great Awakenings, the Sunday School Movement, and The Social Gospel Movement for clear examples. 

Many of these Movements have had an impact on the way we do church, so I think this a fit topic for Kevin on Congregations, and I am asking you to consider this too, and to stimulate your thinking, I am listing the movements that came to my mind. 

The Oxford Movement: as an un-churched person who became a Christian in a new planted congregation of the Diocese of Dallas, I can start with this movement which has consequently changed the whole nature of The Episcopal Church.  I jokingly like to say that I had to go to seminary to discover that I was a high church person.

The Civil Rights Movement:  I was raised in Texas in a segregated school system.  As I came to adulthood in the 60s, I was profoundly touched by the struggle for equal rights. 

The Women’s Movement:  I can say the same regarding this too.  My seminary class at Berkeley/Yale was the first to have a women D.Min student.   

The Liturgical Movement:  By being in seminary during the era of the Prayer Book Studies, and the transition to a new Book of Common Prayer, my ministry has been framed by much of this movement.

The Holy Spirit or Charismatic Movement:  My “post-seminary” renewal through the Holy Spirit still marks my understanding of personal faith and ministry.  Of course, there were sub-Movements in this too such as Cursillo and Marriage Encounter, both of which were movements too.

The 12 Step and Recovery Movement:  I have been significantly touched by those in AA and my participation in Al-Anon and in Adult Children’s groups.  So have many others.

The Men’s Movement:  I’ve greatly appreciated the contribution of authors in this tradition.  The most outstanding aspect of this was Promise Keepers, but it was not the only expression.

The Small Group Movement:  No doubt, this one has deeply affected North American Christianity. 

The 2020 Movement:  Anyone who knows me won’t be surprised to see me list this one especially if you have read my distinction between the 2020 Movement and the 2020 legislation of TEC.

In my next blog, I will list what I consider to be the singular most important movement in the North American Church for the past 20 years and discuss why I think this is so.