Church Growth & Parish Clergy, Part Two (eCrozier #288)

On February 5, 2016, in congregational development, Laity, leadership, by bishopbenhase

Last week, I made this point about parish clergy’s role in growing the church: The initial experience of visitors is overwhelmingly determined by their emotional connection to the clergy. Clergy need to put more time into preparation of not only their sermons, but also into how they preside, how they make announcements, indeed into their entire interaction with “the public” on Sunday. Rather than be trapped in the sacristy corralling acolytes before the liturgy or chatting with parishioners after the liturgy about a committee meeting, clergy must be out front greeting everyone, especially visitors, welcoming them, asking their names, and then making a point of following up with them after the liturgy.

This week I’m addressing how lay leaders are important partners in effective connection with visitors. The first significant role they play is to liberate clergy from much of the liturgical and logistical housekeeping chores on Sundays. And they may have to do this without the complete cooperation of the clergy. You see, we clergy sometimes are control freaks. Ok, more than sometimes. And since we can’t control the outcome of someone’s visit to church, we tend to focus on what we can control: Things like the order of acolytes for the procession or who’ll hand out bulletins to worshippers before the liturgy. Needless to say, this is the worst way clergy can steward their time on Sundays. And lay leaders are often co-dependent with clergy in this, leaving clergy to handle these “housekeeping” details and not insisting that everyone, clergy and laity alike, play their important role in welcoming visitors helping them make a connection with the clergy.

Another significant role lay leaders play in growing the church is their work of personal invitation to friends, co-workers, neighbors, and others to join the church in worship. Experience tells us that the invitation shouldn’t be impersonal, offered off-handedly or in a nonchalant way. The invitation must be highly personal, including an offer to bring them to church, sit with them during the Eucharist (helping them navigate the liturgy), and then personally introducing them to the parish clergy. The invitation also should include taking the clergy and visitor to lunch or coffee in the coming week (the vestry ought to set aside some money in the annual budget to pay for such “extravagances.”) If evangelism is as Martin Luther said: “one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread,” then growing the church is one person inviting another person to be a part of our common life in the church.

What if every baptized member of our respective congregations saw it as their calling to bring one person into the life of the church each year? Just one person over 52 weeks. Our membership would double. A social media presence is important and so is a good website that’s visitor-friendly. I’m sure radio spots, online advertising, and the like have a place in drawing folk to our congregations. The data shows, however, that 3 out of 4 people join a church because somebody they knew (and trusted) personally invited them. Such personal invitations don’t cost much money (lunch, coffee?). Engaging in personal, one on one, connections is, however, costly of our time and energy. Important things are always costly. Need I remind us about the costliness of God’s grace?

+Scott

 
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Church Growth & Parish Clergy, Part One (eCrozier #287)

On January 29, 2016, in congregational development, leadership, by bishopbenhase

A clear proclamation of God’s redemption by our Lord Jesus grounds the growth of any church in its particular context. Yet, we must also be aware of the stance we take in such proclamation. It should be based an astute understanding of how people connect to and stay in a particular community. To do this, we have to avoid any wishful thinking or by clinging to certain sentimentalities we thought were true. Both stances are unhelpful.

One of the things we now know about human behavior and how we connect with others is that it’s not rational at the beginning. Our emotions, as David Brooks points out in The Social Animal, determine our first reactions to anything new. As much as we’d like to see ourselves as purely rational, we actually respond to new experiences emotionally. Only later might we reflect rationally. This means when people visit our churches, they need to make an emotional connection. And such emotional connections aren’t made to a new group of people as a whole. They are focused on the leader. In our case, the one up front wearing the unusual dress. If visitors can’t make an emotional connection with the clergy, then they likely won’t return. This doesn’t mean they must experience total adoration or that they must be swept off their feet by the clergy’s homiletical brilliance, but it does mean that visitors have to “connect” emotionally with the clergy. They have to be able to imagine the clergy as someone they could come to trust and relate to.

Now, we might think that it should be different; that visitors should connect with everyone in the liturgy and the pews, but what we know about human behavior doesn’t bear that out. The inconvenient truth is that the initial experience of visitors will be overwhelmingly determined by their emotional connection to the clergy. This reality should change the way we connect with visitors to church. Clergy need to put more time into preparation of not only their sermon, but also in how they preside, how they make announcements, indeed their entire interaction with “the public” on Sunday. Rather than be trapped in the sacristy corralling acolytes before the liturgy or chatting with parishioners after the liturgy about an upcoming committee meeting, the clergy ought to be out front greeting everyone, especially visitors, welcoming them, asking their names, and then making a point of following up with them after the liturgy to arrange to take them to lunch or to meet them for coffee in the next few days.

This, of course, places a significant burden on the clergy to make emotional connections. And that time meeting for lunch or coffee is when the connection can be solidified, not through a “sales job” on visitors, but by listening with genuine interest to their life story and their spiritual longings. That’s when the clergy can connect the visitors’ lives and their spiritual longings to the congregation’s ministry, helping them see how the church can be their partner on their spiritual pilgrimage.

Next week, in Part Two, I’ll address how lay leaders can be important companions in effective connection to visitors mainly by liberating their clergy from much of the liturgical and logistical housekeeping chores on Sundays. Stay tuned!

+Scott

 
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Grace & Forbearance Between Priest & People (eCrozier #279)

On November 5, 2015, in congregational development, grace, leadership, by bishopbenhase

My friends and colleagues, Bob Gallagher & Michelle Heyne, are currently writing a series of excellent blog posts on clergy transitions in congregations. You can find them here. The basic premise on which their posts are based is that there’s a natural, unavoidable process as a new priest arrives and begins his ministry with the congregation. There are three stages: Honeymoon, Disappointment, and then, if given time, Realistic Love & Reasonable Expectations. Let me explore each of these stages a bit from my own perspective and experience, but please do read their wonderfully insightful posts.

During the Honeymoon, as one might expect, everything is great. People love their new priest. One might hear things like: “Her sermons are great. She’s so personable and accessible, etc.” For the priest, she might be saying: “What great people! I’m so thankful to be here, etc.” But this is really a time of inflated and unreasonable expectations by everyone. Just like in a marriage, the honeymoon inevitably comes to an end. If it’s falsely extended, then fantasy and self-delusion rule the day. It has to end so that a more realistic and mature relationship can be born in the future.

The next stage is Disappointment. It has a door that swings both ways. Eventually, people learn their new priest isn’t perfect. An incident occurs or an interaction happens and they’re disappointed. The spiritually mature will accept this because they know the priest is human and won’t always live up to their expectations, but the less spiritually mature will murmur, gripe, and gossip (often in the parking lot) about what’s lacking in the new priest. The priest also must face his own disappointment when he, in due course, realizes the parish isn’t all he hoped for, that the people aren’t everything he wanted them to be. This is a crucial time for all. If it can be navigated with perspective, grace, and forbearance, then the fruit produced in the future can be glorious.

The third stage is a time of Realistic Love & Reasonable Expectations where the parish comes to love the priest for who he is, warts and all, and form reasonable expectations for the leadership he brings. And for the priest, it’s a time where she can fully accept the “mixed-bag” her parishioners are (aren’t we all?) and can love them as they are and not as she fantasizes them to be. She can even love those less spiritually mature folk who can’t accept her humanity, failures, and faults. This can be a time of great fruitfulness in the parish. Most often this happens sometime in the third year of the priest’s tenure (although it may be somewhat earlier or later) and it can last many years as long as together they remain focused on the spiritual practices of grace and forbearance.

Of course, sometimes a priest and people never make it to stage three. And occasionally, the stages can be quite short. I once had a honeymoon of about 20 minutes (a long story). If the priest and people don’t work together through the first two stages, they can get stuck, resentment can set in, and often either can emotionally and/or spiritually “check out” even while staying in place. They must commit to work through the Honeymoon and Disappointment to reap the fruit of the shared love that will come.

+Scott

 
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Empathetic Leadership in Times of Conflict (eCrozier #269)

On August 28, 2015, in conflict management, congregational development, leadership, by bishopbenhase

One of the most important spiritual gifts for church leaders is the gift of empathy for others, particularly those whom we lead. It’s important for leaders to be able to place themselves in other people’s shoes, so to speak, and to try to understand what they’re experiencing from their perspective. But having the gift of empathy for others is not all that is needed to lead a church (or any group) to become collectively more spiritually vital and healthy. Such leadership requires both a good knowledge of how change happens as well as the gift of patient determination.  

For example, most clergy I know have a pretty good idea of what a healthy Christian community looks like and acts like. But many of those same clergy are reluctant to lead the congregation to incarnate such communal practices and norms. Why is that? They’re rightly concerned that they might run afoul of individuals or groups within the parish who have a stake in maintaining an unhealthy status quo. In other words, people don’t want their turf messed with even if what they are doing is failing or ineffective. So, unhealthy practices around, for example, children’s Christian formation, or music in the liturgy, or a particular community ministry continue because attempts to change them are seen as attempts to take away the authority of the Sunday School teacher or the organist or community ministry coordinator.

Some of this leadership reluctance is based on a natural desire to avoid conflict. Conflict can be hard and unpleasant. Another part of the reluctance of leaders to make changes that would bring greater spiritual health to the congregation has to do with a misunderstanding about the nature of change. We often mistakenly think people don’t like change. That’s not true most of the time. People don’t dislike change, per se, but they will probably dislike any change they don’t understand or a change they had no say in. Also, if they cannot see the blessing the change could produce, they aren’t likely to even consider embracing it.

And that’s where the leader’s gift for empathy comes in. If the leader exercises genuine empathy for the people who are being asked to accept some change, then the change has a good chance of succeeding. But if those folk are treated as obstructionists, or saboteurs, or “standing in the way of the Gospel,” then they’re likely to dig in their heals and become real obstructionists or saboteurs. The one leading the change must consistently stay in the role as leader and not withdraw, listen to all the voices in the congregation, and retain empathy for the people who oppose or question the proposed change. And the leader must do all that while not allowing those folk to take over the agenda or control the emotional climate. That’s a lot for the leader to handle and it takes real skill and training to negotiate it all well.

This is why we in the Diocese of Georgia have put so much time, energy, and resources into training programs like the Church Development Institute, Emotional Intelligence, Human Relations, and Conflict Management training, and peer coaching. Church leaders today more than ever need these practical skills to lead effectively.

+Scott

 
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Bishop’s Address at 193rd Convention of the Diocese of Georgia November 2014

On November 7, 2014, in Body of Christ, capital campaign, congregational development, Convention, culture, Diocese of Georgia, Episcopal Church, Evangelistic Witness, gospel, grace, Laity, leadership, mission, by bishopbenhase

Some of you know I’m a huge fan of the singer-songwriter John Prine. And it’s a testament to my love and devotion to the Church and to this Diocese that I’ll be present at this evening’s Convention Eucharist because John Prine is performing tonight at the Savannah Civic Center. Prine’s lyrics are magical and almost always funny while also plumbing the depths of the human condition. A song he sings as a duet with Iris Dement evokes an affect that I want to share in my Bishop’s Address this year. The song is entitled “We’re not the Jet Set,” and part of it goes like this:

No, We’re not the jet set. We’re the old Chevro-let set
Our steak and martinis, Is draft beer with weenies
Our Bach and Tchaikovsky, Is Haggard and Husky
No, we’re not the jet set, We’re the old Chevro-let set. But ain’t we got love

In this Diocese, we’re not the jet set. Most of us are more comfortable with draft beer and weenies than we are with steak and martinis. Haggard and Husky are more likely to be on our play list than Bach and Tchaikovsky. Here in the Diocese we don’t have what a lot of dioceses have in terms of financial resources. We don’t have many large metropolitan areas that provide amenities that would draw people to move to them. With a few exceptions, the counties in our state that are projected to have significant growth are all in that certain diocese to the north, just above the gnat line.

So the demographics aren’t very favorable to us. Demographics, however, aren’t destiny and dwelling on them isn’t faithful. We trust in a providential destiny only God provides. Plus, as John Prine sings, “ain’t we got love.” We have God’s love for us incarnated in Jesus and we have our love for one another. And we have hope, hope that God is moving in our midst working out through us God’s plan of salvation.

Our call, then, isn’t to bemoan what we don’t have or what’s not favorable to us. It’s to celebrate and be thankful for what we do have and the favor God has shown us, and then to put all that we have and all that we are into the coming of God’s Kingdom on this earth, as it already is in heaven.

No, we’re not the jet set. We’re the old Chevro-let set. But this Chevy has many great miles to go and we’re fueled by the hope of what God will do through us to bring about the Kingdom.  And I want us to dwell on that sure and certain hope for these next few minutes. For as the Scriptures say: such hope will not disappoint us.

Now, we’re schooled by cable news and through social media to be afraid of just about everything from Ebola to the dirty ring around our bathtubs. If that were all the news we had, then it would be prudent to be afraid and to feel hopeless. Yet, if we have eyes to see, there are hopeful signs all around us.

1. While as a whole our diocesan Sunday attendance is basically flat, we now have more congregations that are significantly growing than are declining.

2. The core leadership training we’ve offered for clergy and laity through the Church Development Institute (CDI), Emotional Intelligence training, and peer coaching has now begun to bear fruit in many places. Clergy and lay leaders in many congregations are now better equipped to lead growing, vital congregations in the 21st century.

3. Our support for and focus on community ministries has led many congregations to reach out in real, concrete ways into their neighborhoods developing signature ministries that serve to transform people’s lives. We must remember that Jesus did not leave people stuck in their hunger or their sickness or their sin. He fed, He healed, and He liberated them. That’s what our community, signature ministries are all about. From Thomasville to Augusta, from Cordele to Darien, our congregations are embracing a vision of vitality through engagement with their communities.

4. Honey Creek, as you will see this afternoon, is being reborn into a more strategic missionary asset of the Diocese. In the last year, 70% of its ministry directly supported the mission of the Diocese. And 93% of its ministry was church-related. That didn’t happen by accident. We consciously renewed Honey Creek’s mission to be all about supporting God’s mission in and through this Diocese. And, I should add, we’re doing all this operating in the black for the 3rd straight year. When you see Honey Creek’s Director, Dade Brantley, this afternoon, please give him a big hug and a thank you.

So, there are many things we’re doing to help our congregations thrive. And thriving congregations must be our goal if we’re to accomplish God’s mission.

In this last year, while I was on retreat with the Sisters of St John the Baptist, I spent long periods of time praying for you. I did. I spent hours of time praying just for you and for each of our congregations.

There on retreat, thanks to Canon Logue, I brought with me the Field Guide to the Diocese. With that objective data and with my own direct experience with each of our congregations over the last four years, I placed each congregation in three, separate categories: Those that were thriving, those that were treading water, and those that were in decline.

I had some assumptions ahead of time about what congregations in each of those categories had in common that would tell me why they were in the category they were in. I discovered that my assumptions were mostly wrong (it’s good to have our assumptions challenged on a regular basis). It wasn’t the congregation’s location, or its size, or the amount of financial resources it had that defined whether it was thriving. The thriving congregations were of all sizes, in vastly different locations, and had widely differing resources.

There’s only one variable that all the thriving congregations have in common and it’s this: they’re all focused beyond their own doors and their own property lines. They’re concerned with that co-worker who had given up on God saying that if Jesus were real, then he must not love him. They’re focused on that hungry child down the street who won’t have enough to eat tomorrow. They’re alarmed to learn about that senior citizen who was all alone in the nursing home across town. Those are the topics dominating coffee hour conversations and discernment at vestry meetings. How might we reach them with the Good News of Jesus? How might we love them? How might we humbly serve them? Those are the questions being asked and discerned in our thriving congregations.

In contrast, what about the congregations in the two other categories? They’re anxious about their inward issues and talk mainly about surviving and protecting what they now have. Rather than be open to their community, they may feel that they have to struggle against it. While not always the case, this may lead to an unhealthy focus on things like the color of the new carpet in the narthex, or the rector’s recent haircut, or the choir’s lack of musical range. Or more dangerously, they may become focused on finding someone to blame for why their church isn’t thriving. And that blaming, often of the clergy, becomes what fuels the congregation’s life.

So my epiphany while I was on retreat is really quite simple: if we want thriving congregations and thus the transformation of our Diocese, then that’ll only happen when, as Bishop Lesslie Newbigin wrote, local congregations renounce an introverted concern for their own life, and recognize that they exist for the sake of those who are not members, as a sign, an instrument, and a foretaste of God’s redeeming grace for the whole life of society. (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society)

Now, it would be wonderful if the Diocese had the financial resources to help congregations engage the Gospel in their communities. We’re trying to raise those financial resources. We’re working to get every ounce of mission out of the limited resources we have in the Diocese. We have one of the smallest diocesan staffs in the Episcopal Church for a diocese our size. Frank, Mary, Elizabeth, Rudy, Vicki, Gayle, and Libby, not only put up with me on a daily basis, they’re committed to help all our congregations thrive. I’m blessed to serve with these amazing people.

Yes, it would be wonderful if we had more money and as I said, through the Capital Campaign, we’re working on finding those financial resources.

But, you know, we don’t need money to love our neighbor. We don’t need deep pockets to care about what happens to kids in the school next door or the overwhelmed single mother across the street or the lonely man in the nursing home around the corner. Each of our congregations can make a Gospel difference in their communities without having a dime to do it. All we need is the will to set aside our inward focus and embrace our neighbors with the Good News of God’s redeeming grace in Jesus.

I see hopeful signs of this in so many of you and in our congregations. We must not lose heart or believe we’re incapable of changing our local mission strategy. As a church, we’re facing nothing short of an avalanche of social and cultural change. I don’t need to list all those changes for you. You’ve read about them and you see them every day in your community.

When I was first ordained in 1983 to serve Lake Wobegone Episcopal Church, all we needed for what we understood to be “success” back then was a nice church building in a semi-decent location with passable worship and acceptable music. It didn’t hurt if the priest’s sermons were mildly entertaining, but not too challenging. If we added a clean, safe Church school, then we had a congregation sizable enough to pay all the bills.

But those days are gone and they’re not coming back. Please hear me when I say this: Those days are gone and they’re not coming back. Nostalgia for the past is hindering us from embracing our present mission.

The old road maps for “success” in our congregations are no longer applicable. We can’t just show up anymore, say we’re the church, and people will pay attention. We must take the Gospel into the public life of our communities with a passion and a commitment we’ve not had before. The people of our society are suffering from a lack of grace and compassion in their lives. They’re living in the “mean time” in both senses of that term. Mercy and empathy for one another is in short supply. Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to renew and redeem us and our neighbors.

As Bishop Newbigin wrote: If the gospel is to challenge the public life of our society…it will only be by movements that begin with the local congregation in which the reality of the new creation is present, known, and experienced, and from which men and women will go into every sector of public life to claim it for Christ, to unmask the illusions which have remained hidden and to expose all areas of public life to the illumination of the gospel. (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society)

Many of you are realizing that. That’s why I see so many hopeful signs of God’s redeeming grace in our congregations. You and I need to see more of these hopeful signs from one another, so we can encourage each another to live into the changes we must make locally in order to grasp the new mission God is placing before us.

The congregations that recognize what time it is will be the congregations that will thrive in the future. Those congregations who don’t, who insist on making the church’s mission only about those who show up, or only about what’s good for me and mine, those congregations will die a slow and banal death. That’s simply the truth.

So, can we let go of our inward focus and embrace our neighbors with Jesus and his Gospel in new and creative ways? Can we take the Gospel out of our churches and into the public square, not to nag or cajole, not to finger point or to blame, but to love and to serve and to bring hope to those who, as St Paul so aptly described, are literally perishing without the Gospel?

Can we do this? I know we can.

It’s true. “We’re not the jet set. We’re the old Chevro-let set. But ain’t we got love.” We sure do have love. We have the love of Jesus for us and for this wonderful and beautiful, yet sinful and broken world in which we live. And the love of Jesus is all we truly need.

 
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Leading with Learning Anxiety (eCrozier #216)

On April 11, 2014, in Anxiety, congregational development, Evangelistic Witness, leadership, by bishopbenhase

The organizational theorist, Edgar Schein, has studied for decades how organizations function, particularly around their specific culture’s capacity to adapt to new learning in a changing context. His work with the Harvard Business School on these issues has gained him lots of attention among chief executives. He argues that there’s a built in contradiction in organizations: anxiety hinders the ability to learn, but anxiety is absolutely necessary if any kind of learning is going to occur. Anxiety about the way things are motivates one to learn something new. But anxiety has a negative cognitive affect on our ability to learn. In other words, we don’t learn well when we’re anxious.

Schein goes on to argue that there are two kinds of anxiety associated with anything new: learning anxiety and survival anxiety. Learning anxiety is associated with the fear that we’ll fail at the new thing we’re trying to do, or that it’ll be beyond our abilities, or we’ll appear foolish to others, or that we’ll have to jettison our old patterns that used to work for us. Survival anxiety is the fear that if we’re going to make it, to literally survive the context we’re in, then we’re going to have to change behaviors. In his studies of how businesses operate, Schein contends that most of the time learning anxiety is more powerful than survival anxiety. So, most people will opt to not learn new ways of business even though they know their professional survival depends upon it.

How might we see Schein’s insights applying to the leadership of our congregations? In a post-Christian context, we need to learn new ways of engaging God’s mission to bring others to Christ and to serve people in our communities. We know we must do this, but we experience the learning anxieties that come from fearing that we might fail, or that we might not be gifted enough to do it, or that we might appear foolish to others, or that we might have to give up some of our old ways of doing things. So, what happens? Many congregations are choosing to die rather than learn new missionary skills.

Congregational leaders face huge challenges here. Using Schein’s constructs, how do we help people lower their learning anxiety so it’s less determinative than their survival anxiety? One could argue that we could work from the other end by trying to increase survival anxiety, but that would be through the via negativa, i.e., increasing their fear that if they didn’t learn new ways of mission then the congregation would die or be closed. I find that approach repugnant because it’s based on threats and fear.

That means congregational leaders need to create supportive opportunities for their people to learn new missionary skills working with those in the congregation who have shown some motivation to learn. I think it’s a mistake for leaders to expect everyone to overcome their learning anxiety or even come to recognize that they need to do so. Leaders can work to develop a critical mass of willing learners, people who are ready, even if tentatively, to learn new ways of reaching out in mission. That seems to me be the primary missionary task for leaders: identifying those disciples who are capable of learning new skills and then focusing their energy on working with those disciples.

+Scott

 
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Trust: the Primary Currency of Leaders (eCrozier #207)

On February 7, 2014, in congregational development, leadership, mission, by bishopbenhase

If we refuse to let the subject come into view, it may occasion suspicions, which, though not well founded, may tend to inflame or prejudice the public mind, against our decisions: they may think we are not sincere in our desire to incorporate such amendments in the constitution as will secure those rights, which they consider as not sufficiently guarded. — James Madison to the House of Representatives, 8 June 1789.

As this quote from Mr. Madison indicates, trust has always been an issue between people and the leaders of institutions. But today, such suspicions, as he acknowledged, seem to be on steroids, and not without justification. The government spying on its own citizenry, financial institutions reaping questionable profits on shadowy deals with other people’s money, worker productivity up by 90% in the last forty years while income percentages during that same time only up in the single digits, all lead people to lose trust in public and private sector leadership and the institutions they lead.

In the Church we’ve had our share of behavioral, financial, and other issues that have eroded trust. And it doesn’t really matter if personally we’ve been free of such things or that our congregation hasn’t had some of these issues. We’re all tarred with the same brush. Once someone loses trust in leadership, my experience says there’s a 1 to 10 ratio going on. For every year of mistrust, it takes ten years worth of hard work to recover it. That’s why developing trust is never fully accomplished. It’s always a work in progress.

From the emotional perspective of a new person in a congregation, most bring with them both our historic and current cultural suspicion, if not distrust, of leaders and institutions. So, even after their sense of safety, acceptance, and inclusion (last week’s eCrozier) are reasonably satisfied, congregational leaders still have to earn the basic trust of people and then both develop and maintain it. While clergy leaders set this tone, it has to be a full commitment and partnership of the clergy with the lay leadership.

That’s why clergy and vestry practices such as financial opaqueness, decisions made without input or feedback, or changes that appear to be arbitrary will always undermine people’s trust, especially those people who are relatively new to the congregation. They don’t have a long enough personal relationship with the leaders that might mitigate such distrust. Empathy and the “Golden Rule” are powerful tonics to cure leaders of the above self-destructive behavior. So ask: “If I were new to the congregation, what might help me better understand how we’re stewards of financial resources here, how would I like to be included when leaders make a decision, what processes could we put into place so people wouldn’t perceive a change made by the leaders as merely arbitrary?”

Put simply, such trust development is about maintaining the free flow of truthful information and a feedback loop that listens to the concerns of the congregation. This doesn’t mean that no decision can be made until everyone agrees, but it does mean that we honor and respect everyone enough to be transparent and truthful in how we lead. Trust is the primary currency of every leader.

+Scott

 
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How to NOT Scare Off Folks from Church (eCrozier #206)

On January 31, 2014, in congregational development, leadership, mission, by bishopbenhase

There’s an insightful video on Youtube that asks: “What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church? A Parable.” It’s a devastating critique of a visitor’s first experience of church. I cringed when I viewed it because it rang so true to my observation of how visitors experience church in so many places. Please view the video. It will help you get a feel for what first-time visitors often go through when they come to church.

When visitors come to church I believe there are three core dynamics to which we must be attentive. First, the visitor has to feel safe and accepted. This is common to all people with any new experience of a place. They won’t stay if they don’t feel both safe and accepted. If they have children, then that emotional concern is heightened even more. Often visitors are either completely ignored or they’re almost tackled, hog-tied, and smothered with attention. Neither extreme helps them experience safety and acceptance. What about your church needs to change to meet this basic emotional need of visitors for safety and acceptance?

The second core dynamic is inclusion. If visitors have never been to church before or if their prior church experience didn’t have a liturgy similar to ours, then they’ll be a bit lost. When do they stand, sit, or kneel? Some people are crossing themselves, should they do that? Are they welcome at the altar? Which book do they use and when? When they look around and everyone else seems to be negotiating worship with ease, then it’s hard for them to experience inclusion, and consequently they feel incompetent. No one likes feeling that way. It’s why I don’t play golf. I’m incompetent at it. If I could play it better, then I would enjoy it. Helping visitors achieve a basic competence in our worship helps them experience inclusion. Having veteran worshippers sit with visitors to subtly and gracefully assist them with worship helps. Does your church do that?

Another part of inclusion must happen if visitors return for a second visit. Returning means they feel safe and accepted enough to come back. They’ve also crossed the hurdle of inclusion enough to envision themselves possibly being a part of this Christian community. But for that to happen they have to be able to imagine themselves as being able to offer who they are and the gifts they have to the church. Too often, with the best of intentions, we don’t invite new people to offer themselves. We don’t want to pressure them, we think. But this actually undermines the inclusion process. Early on we should ask them questions like: “What do you enjoy doing? What are your interests?” Then we should find a way to invite them into a part of the church’s mission and ministry that matches their enjoyment and interest. All people want to feel they’re contributing and making a difference. How does your church include people in this way? Do new people have to wait a few years before being invited? If so, they might not be there.

The last core dynamic is trust development. Once someone experiences safety and acceptance, and then inclusion they’re beginning to develop trust in the community. But that’s not guaranteed. The church’s leadership must stay focused on developing trust. I’m devoting next week’s entire eCrozier to this core dynamic. Stay tuned.

+Scott

 
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eCrozier #08

On January 29, 2010, in congregational development, by bishopbenhase

My Brothers & Sisters

Attached to this Ecrozier is a draft of what I am calling a Congregational Covenant. This idea is new so I will understand if many of us have lots of questions about it. Let me offer some commentary about the draft now. That may answer some of the questions you will have. But if it does not, I hope you will be in touch with me.

The purpose of the draft covenant is to create an expectation of mutual accountability between lay leaders of a congregation, the clergy of the congregation, and me, so we can all live in a climate of clarity and openness about our mission. The covenant will help us all focus on the essentials of our common mission without making it “cookie cutter,” but rather making it particular to each congregation’s context and life. Too often in the Church we get distracted from our core mission. This covenant is one way for us to keep the main thing, well, “the main thing.” I have made an effort in this draft have it be flexible enough to apply to all possible contexts in which our congregations “live and move and have their being.”

Let me also be clear: This draft covenant is never to be used as a cudgel or way of inappropriately manipulating anyone, be that lay leaders, the clergy, or me. In other words, I have no hidden agenda in offering this. It is simply a way for us mutually to keep our “eyes on the prize.” As you will see when you study it, it is based on mutual accountability between the laity, the clergy, and me.

So, look it over, share it with your wardens, and let’s have a conversation about it. I am open to revisions to it (after all, it is a draft).

See y’all at Convention.

+Scott

 
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eCrozier #07

On January 27, 2010, in congregational development, leadership, by bishopbenhase

This is a long Ecrozier because of the adaptation (below) of a book by Jeffrey D. Jones. I think it is right on. I hope you will read the piece below (maybe even buy the book) and take it to heart for your parish leadership. The leadership skill that Jones addresses in the piece (adaptive leadership in conflict) is one that many of us are not equipped with. I am working on bringing to the Diocese a training workshop on developing such skills in our clergy. Stay tuned for more information on this.

Despite the image of the loving, peaceful congregation in which everyone is happy—an image deeply ingrained in most of us—leaders at times need to encourage conflict. They need to act in ways that make conflict inevitable. They need to enhance, not reduce, conflict. Doing these things is difficult. Few of us enjoy conflict. For many, taking deliberate actions that will lead to conflict runs counter to both personal desire and our imagined role in the congregation. The very thought of it may make our stomachs tighten, our hearts pound, and our palms sweat. And yet, at times inciting conflict is what effective and faithful leadership demands.

The leadership role in facing an adaptive challenge is not to provide answers, because no one knows what answers are needed to address the concerns the church is confronting. The key to discovering the answers is giving the work back to the people, so that the answer can emerge from their experience. What do the people have to offer that enables this answer to emerge? In a word: conflict. The appropriate responses to adaptive challenges most often emerge out of a conflict of values within the church. Sometimes the conflict is between values held by different groups, both professed and lived values. But the answers needed nearly always emerge from a conflict of values. Without the conflict, there can be no answer.

In many churches, conflicts, especially conflicts related to the church’s mission, are avoided at all costs. Deeply ingrained attitudes and behaviors are transmitted about the way one should behave so as not to provoke disagreement. Avoiding conflict, however, is one way to ensure the slow death of the church, because if disagreements are not faced, there is no possibility of the kind of change that will enable the church to be renewed. In this situation the leader’s role needs to be one that encourages conflict. The leader doesn’t create the conflict. It is already there. What the leader does is bring it to the surface—usually by refusing to engage in conflict-avoidance behaviors. The leader may simply ask questions about the issues or reflect upon what seems to be underlying stress in the organization’s life. Sometimes a more direct approach may be needed, such as deliberately raising issues that everyone else is avoiding, because everyone else fears that any discussion of them will provoke disagreement.

Focused conflict at a controlled level enables the answers needed for positive change to emerge. Unbridled conflict about secondary issues doesn’t help at all. If the role of leaders is to instigate, encourage, and enhance conflict, they need to be prepared to suffer the consequences. The not-very-pleasant reality is that if leaders are instrumental in bringing conflict into the open and increasing stress in an organization, much of the uneasiness, resentment, and anger created will be directed toward them.

Comments and emotional responses directed toward the leader are not personal—they may sound that way, but in truth they are aimed at the leader’s role. If your actions seem to be creating conflict, it’s safe to assume that most people will conclude that you are not meeting their expectations. Negative reactions are likely. Being able to make this distinction between self and role doesn’t automatically eliminate the leader’s feelings about the way others respond, but it enables an individual not to be misled by his emotions into taking statements and events personally that may have little to do with him. Even personal attacks are not really about you. Reacting to them as personal can have the detrimental effect of moving the focus of the work to you and away from the adaptive change needed.

Most leaders in the church do not like conflict. It goes against our nature as caring people. The image we have of the congregation as a community of faith usually does not feature conflict in any significant way. And, those involved in congregations are dealing with conflict in many areas of their lives and neither want nor need more conflict when they come to church. If church is a place of conflict, they might just stop coming.

Part of the reality of the pastor’s life is his or her awareness of the issues that create stress in the lives of people in the congregation. Such an awareness may be present to some extent for all leaders in a congregation, but pastors are often more deeply conscious of these issues than most. Knowing that people you care about are already dealing with the financial stress of being laid off from work or the emotional stress of a troubled teenager or the stress of a difficult marriage—or any number of other life situations that create stress—makes it difficult for a pastor to decide to enhance the stress level within the congregation. More than anything else, it seems, these people you care about need church to be a place in which they can find some measure of escape from the problems they face, some measure of peace.

The difficult reality is that it often seems that to be compassionate means to forego dealing with the issues essential to the vitality of the congregation. Time and again I’ve discovered a close parallel between the issues causing stress in an individual’s life and the issues that need to be addressed in the congregation. The people are the congregation, after all, and the dynamics that shape their personal lives often shape congregational life as well. While surface issues may differ in many cases, the underlying and most significant issues in both personal and congregational life are similar. Working on the issues in one area has a positive impact in the other. Thus raising the level of institutional stress needs to be seen as something more than adding to the stress of already stressed-out people. It may well be that, of course, but it can also provide a setting in which it is possible to address concerns in a way that will have a significant and positive impact in people’s personal lives.

The congregation, for example, may struggle over balancing the budget or venturing into a new ministry to which many believe God is calling them. To bring this issue into the open and to encourage dealing with it will increase stress. But it will also help the congregation deal with important issues related to the balancing of material concerns and God’s will. In doing this it can have a direct impact on the way people in the congregation deal with similar tensions in their own lives.

The relationship is not always clear, but I am coming to believe that an important connection exists between the issues that create stress in our personal lives and those that create stress in the congregation. If the congregation can handle these issues appropriately in its life, this effort will have a significant impact on the lives of members. Yes, it still increases stress, it still means that the congregation won’t be a place of refuge and peace, but it does hold out a real possibility of important growth—growth that offers enough reason to endure the stress.

+Scott
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Adapted from Heart, Mind, and Strength: Theory and Practice for Congregational Leadership, by Jeffrey D. Jones, copyright © 2009 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.

 
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