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

 

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

 

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

 

When a Pew is Not a Pew (eCrozier #193)

I recently read there are currently lawsuits in the British courts concerning churches that are seeking to replace their pews with chairs. Some parishioners are suing the churchwardens to keep the chairs out and the pews in. As The Godfather might say: they’re “going to the mattresses” to keep the pews. While not as prevalent, there are similar struggles on this side of the pond. One church in the U.S. had to delay its building program for two years, not because they were underfunded or couldn’t get a loan, but because the congregation was deeply and emotionally divided over the choice between pews and chairs in the nave. They eventually went with the chairs and nobody died…to my knowledge.

What’s going on? We could make sense of a church struggle over which neighborhood a church should evangelize or which particular way they were going to serve the poor in their community or how they might use their property to be good neighbors to their neighbors. Those are worthy church struggles. But pews vs. chairs? Really? It does seem petty. Is it worth paralyzing the church so God’s mission is impeded? Clearly, however, it isn’t petty to those in the fight. Something deeper is going on here and the “pews vs. chairs fight” is just the presenting issue. We see similar paralysis elsewhere. For example: Boards of education unable to agree on textbooks for their students because of science being politicized; museum trustees closing down their institution because they are unable to agree on which art to display; and, members of Congress shutting down the federal government when some of the members don’t get their way.

What I believe is going on here is a deep grief people are experiencing. It’s kind of a kind of death for them. And because grief is such a confusing, unpleasant, and difficult emotion for many people, rather than owning their grief, they manifest it outwardly as anger toward those proposing a change. From my experience it does no good to tell grieving people: “Just get over it.” That just makes them angrier. Nor does it do much good to tell them that their grieving is holding back the church’s mission. They simply get stuck deeper in their grief and cut off future dialogue. What has a chance to work for church leaders is this: Take them and their grief seriously. Acknowledge that what they perceive as a loss matters to them. Then work toward a future that takes them and their concerns seriously. But that doesn’t mean, for example, the pews will stay.

In a former parish, I had parishioner at the annual parish meeting loudly scream against our proposed plans to redesign our worship space so it could be expanded to hold more, yes, chairs. I thought he was going to have a stroke. We didn’t halt the plans because he acted out, but we did listen to him (after he calmed down), tried to understand what he perceived he would be losing in the change, and asked him to help us work toward a redesign that would take his concerns seriously. He didn’t get everything he wanted in that redesign, but he had some good ideas that helped retain some of the previous affect of the worship space. And we incorporated those ideas to everyone’s delight. Most importantly, we honored a brother in Christ by taking him seriously. And he turned out to be the biggest giver in the fundraising effort that followed.

+Scott

 

Leadership is NOT a heresy (eCrozier #185)

Justin Lewis-Anthony’s new book, You are the Messiah and I should know: Why Leadership is a Myth (And probably a heresy), wins my award for the longest book title of the year. His previous book was entitled: If You Meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him. He’s got the provocative title thing down cold. In that previous book he challenged readers to redefine how clergy should lead their congregations (the title gave away his thesis that we should not lead as George Herbert led). In this book, he creates a straw man of leadership as defined in western culture (a whole chapter on John Wayne alone, oh my!) and then he proceeds to tear down that straw man. OK, we get it.

Lewis-Anthony suffers from the same problem with leadership that the Occupy Wall Street movement did, to wit, it is by definition a bad thing (or in Lewis-Anthony’s case, a heresy). I’m the first one to agree that many leadership practices, past and present, in the church and in the world, are wrong-headed and don’t reflect the virtues of God’s Kingdom as declared in Jesus’ Gospel, but the reason the Occupy Wall Street movement fizzled and the reason many of our congregations are not thriving is not because leadership is a heresy. Rather, it is because our clergy and congregational leaders are not equipped with the requisite skills to lead effectively in a post-Christian context; a context that requires them to jettison their role as a chaplain to a declining church.

Our Church’s seminaries are still training clergy to serve congregations (See: Lake Wobegone Episcopal Church) that rarely exist anymore. So, new clergy aren’t sufficiently prepared to serve most of our congregations. Most seminary professors have little experience in leading congregations and they serve up an academic/theory based approach rather than an experiential/action one where those in training must actually develop the capability to do what they are primarily called to do: lead people in God’s mission of making disciples and making a difference in the world. Our seminaries have absolutely no accountability in our system for the clergy they produce. Until there is accountability there’ll be no change. We simply can’t have another generation of clergy who are trained to be congregational chaplains and grief managers for further decline.

Our clergy need to have the spiritual depth and practical training to resist the chaplaincy role thrust upon them by congregations who just want their priest to take care of them. Religion, across the board, has become utilitarian for more and more of its adherents for the purpose of creating lives of contentment and happiness. So, this demand for chaplaincy will only increase. We need clergy who won’t get sucked into that role. Rather they must train the baptized (who have the spiritual gifts) to be caregivers so the clergy can be freed up to lead the whole congregation in disciple and difference making.

In reading the Gospel, Jesus seems quite unconcerned with his disciples’ contentment and happiness or even if they have the correct doctrinal position. Rather, he’s most concerned that they inculcate in themselves God’s one-way love, which we call grace, and then live sharing that one-way love in their lives. In order to make this crystal clear, Jesus incarnated God’s one-way love on the cross. We need one-way love leadership.

+Scott

 

Kill George Herbert? (eCrozier #150)

This week I reread Justin Lewis-Anthony’s provocative book: If You Meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him, and I remembered why I was delighted the first time I read it. The book is Lewis-Anthony’s argument for why we need to radically rethink the priestly ministry in our 21st Century, post-Christian culture. George Herbert, as you may know, was a 17th Century Anglican Divine, a writer of well known and much loved poetry, and the author of A Priest to the Temple (or The Country Parson), which offered practical advice to clergy. It is from this advice, and from the legend that grew around Herbert, that Lewis-Anthony proposes such Herbertcidal action. Isaak Walton, his first biographer, engaged in great hagiography making Herbert out to be the ideal for all parish priests who would follow.

Somewhat like the fictional Father Tim in Jan Karon’s Mitford books, Herbert has become this ideal to the distress of Lewis-Anthony and to most of the parish clergy I know. Of course, the truth of Herbert’s life is overshadowed by the legend. He was an academic who never quite reached his promise, a member of parliament who could not handle life as a politician, and a parish priest for less than three years (thus unqualified to give advice) before his death of “consumption” just short of his 40th birthday. But, oh my, his poetry! It is masterful. But a masterful poet does not a good parish priest make.

And that is Lewis-Anthony’s central point. Of course, Lewis-Anthony does not want to really kill George Herbert. No need to since he is long dead. What Lewis-Anthony is most concerned about is what he calls Herbertism: the belief that parish priests should be at the church at all times, ready to benignly bless whatever needs blessing and to affirm all things of the church and community. He or she must go from a funeral to a Friday night football game, from a Rotary Club meeting to a confirmation class, and from the bedside of a dying parishioner to the local school play. And he or she is expected to be in all those places all the time. As Lewis-Anthony writes, the parish priest is to be “omni-present, omni-competent, and omni-affirming.” This is Herbertism.

But even if such a life were possible (and we know it killed poor George in less than three years), we have to ask: Is that the vocation God expects and the Church needs of its priests in the present age? Lewis-Anthony does not think so. He suggests five alliterative alternatives to Herbertism: 1) Rule – have a Rule of Life that reminds you who you are and how you will live; 2) Role – know what you are for in the world; 3) Responsibility – discern what your context is, how you oversee it, and lead in it; 4) Reckoning – be savvy enough to make decisions that are collaborative; and, 5) Reconciling – learn the skill of effective conflict management. Herbertism deals with conflict by pretending there is not any (read chapter 18 in A Priest to the Temple).

I commend Lewis-Anthony’s 5 R’s, but I would add that the parish priest is principally the keeper and teller of the Christian story, reminding people of their baptismal identity and purpose in this world and forming them so they are the ones who are present, competent, and affirming of God’s truth in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

+Scott

 

Clergy and lay leaders can have enormous impact on the health and vitality of the congregations they lead. But often the day-to-day “running” of the parish gets so much of their attention that they have little time or energy to work on the practices that lead to such health and vitality. This is the triumph of the urgent over the important. Yet, I believe that grounding people in the spiritual practices of discipleship, practices we have so amply available in our tradition, must be the leader’s main priority.

So, I suggest a refocus. Rather than a prime focus on “running” the parish, let’s place substantial energy and resources toward discipleship formation, which would include: (1) grounding people in the faith and practice of the Church; (2) growing the leadership base and skill of the parish; and, (3) disciplined listening to the Spirit through the people, things, and circumstances of the congregation. Here is what that might look like, broadly speaking, in a congregation.

1. Hold a recurring class that cycles about every 6-8 weeks. The class would teach people how to engage the spiritual practices the church. Sessions ought to include: What is the basic Christian narrative, how to pray the office, what does sacramental living look like, how do we keep Sabbath time, what does being a steward of God’s blessings mean, where can we exercise our Christian service in the world, etc. This is not a newcomer’s class, per se. Invite new and existing members. This builds up in everyone the basic skills of living their discipleship in the world. Over time, it develops a critical mass of lay leaders who are mature practicioners of our faith. It also connects new and old members. Nothing is more welcoming to new folk than to help them get proficient at being a disciple.

2. Regularly meet with existing leaders to identify future leaders and then nurture those folks. Done right this does not threaten current leaders, especially if you enlist them as mentors for future leaders. Enroll them in the Church Development Institute or other leadership training programs. Send them to diocesan Saturday workshops for parish leaders. Then, invite them to lead an initiative in the congregation that has a clear beginning and a clear end to it with an opportunity for them re-enlist. Congregations who are constantly developing leaders, and equipping them to be good at what they do, will always have people in place who have the energy and the smarts to lead.

3. Twice a year, in addition to the official Annual Meeting of the parish, have open church-wide meetings. These meetings need to be well-planned and designed to elicit feedback from people for the how the congregation is doing. It is a time where people can share their hopes, raise concerns, and offer their thoughts on ways to make things better. It is human nature to want to be heard. Often times brewing low-grade conflicts can be addressed before they get larger simply by respectful listening and clear response. This also has the benefit for leaders in that they get to see where the energy is in the congregation. What ideas or hopes seem to have the most enthusiasm? Go with those. If there is no energy around the annual (fill in the blank), then let it go.

+Scott

 

Guilt is Good (eCrozier #143)

A recent study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology concluded “that guilt proneness is a critical characteristic of leaders.” The authors explained their findings by postulating that a sense of responsibility for others and to others explains why effective leaders are more guilt-prone than less effective leaders. Makes sense to me. If we see ourselves as “mistake free” or “unburdened about being wrong” or incapable of recognizing our complicity when “things fall apart,” then we are not going to be very effective leaders, especially in the Church.

A crucial part of being a faithful, effective church leader means that we will not only have empathy for others when they fail, but we will also have a real sense of responsibility, and yes, guilt, when we ourselves fail. The former lets those we lead know we have solidarity with them from our own experience and the latter keeps us from having, as blessed Paul the Apostle wrote, “a higher opinion of ourselves than we ought.”

And yet, we live and move in the midst of a culture that sees little positive in guilt. Our culture appears to resolve the universal problem of being human by avoiding any guilt. Guilt seems to be such a terrible thing to so many peo­ple. When was the last time we heard a public figure while in office say, “hey, I’m guilty, I should not have had sex with an intern half my age. It was just plain wrong!” Or, “I never should have allowed the Oil Lobby to write environmental legislation. I’m guilty of an obvious conflict of in­terest.” These leaders all could learn from King Manesseh of Judah. Look up his story in 2 Chronicles 33 and read his prayer in Canticle 14 in the Book of Common Prayer.

What usually happens is just the opposite: the leaders either insist that they have no fault at all, or they speak of wrongs committed in the passive voice, as in “mistakes were made,” so the actor of the wrong is separated from deed itself. Thus, in this, no one assumes responsibility for anything. A society without guilt for wrong-doing (and accepting responsibility for them) is a society that is spiritually stunted. As a reference for this conjecture, follow local and national election campaigns this fall.

I’m aware that there are folk who suffer inappropriately from guilt. In those situations, their guilt is disordered. Such folk are ready to admit to crimes and misdemeanors they did not even commit. So, guilt can be paralyzing for these people. But that is a small percentage of people. The rest of our culture seems bent on becoming sociopathic in its aversion to guilt and responsibility.

That’s why it is all the more important for Church leaders to have a healthy, spiritually-grounded appreciation for, and personal acceptance of, our own faults and failures and the resulting guilt that comes from such an acknowledgement. Being truthful will surely leave us vulnerable and open to attack, give those opposed to our leadership fuel to criticize us, and, among the spiritually immature, leave them convinced we are less than we should be (that should not be a newsflash to any Christian). So be it. The alternative is worse. It means buying into the socio-pathology of our culture.

+Scott

 

eCrozier #142

Dr. Daniel Shapiro directs Harvard’s International Negotiation Program. The program researches issues related to “emotional and identity-based dimensions of regional conflict and terrorism.” When Dr. Shapiro addresses a context that will require some negotiated settlement between conflicting parties, he offers five Core Concerns that participants should take with them into the context every time. These Core Concerns are appropriate whether it be a context as simple as a disagreement between spouses or as complex as a cease-fire in a civil war (truth be told, I’ve never witnessed or experienced a “simple” disagreement between spouses, but I accept Dr. Shapiro’s point here).

His Core Concerns for people entering such conflict negotiation are:

(1) Appreciation – do you feel appreciated and do you appreciate the others who are in conflict with you?

(2) Autonomy – are you experiencing freedom to make your own choices without feeling coercion and are you respecting such freedom in others and not coercing them?

(3) Affiliation – Even in a conflict situation, the context has brought us together. Like it or not, we are affiliated in the here and now. Can we recognize the mutual stakes we have?

(4) Status – Conflicting parties may experience a power differential in the conflict. If the other’s status is not being respected, then the conflict is almost impossible to resolve.

(5) Role – do you have a feeling of being a part of the solution? Are you creating space for the others in the conflict to have that role as well?

These five Core Concerns strike me as being quite congruent with our own baptismal covenant as disciples of Jesus. “Respecting the dignity” of others, “striving for justice and peace,” and “loving our neighbors as ourselves” are all manifested in Dr. Shapiro’s Core Concerns as is Jesus’ so-called Golden Rule where we are commanded to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Our Church’s congregations are always in some level of conflict. Most of the time it is just minor stuff, but sometimes it gets quite heated with perceptibly high stakes. And, of course, we live in a culture and time where conflict seems to be more and more the currency of exchange. So, the issue is not conflict avoidance. That will not deal with it. It will just send it into dormancy until it pops up even worse.

No, the issue is how are we as ones who follow Jesus going to enter into and walk through conflicted situations together? Are we going to do it in a way that glorifies God and marks as Christ’s own or are we going to resort to the practices du jour that we see modeled in the larger culture?

I strongly urge each of us to take Dr. Shapiro’s Core Concerns to heart whenever we enter into even the smallest of conflicts. Those disagreeing with us, those who we may even call our enemies, must be respected and honored because a resolution to the conflict will not happen without them.

+Scott

 

eCrozier #141

Ron Ashkenas, whose latest book is Simply Effective, says that many organizations over time develop what he calls learned helplessness. This occurs when leaders in the organization slowly create a list of excuses and explanations for why the organization can’t change or improve as it seeks to accomplish its mission. Ashkenas says that rather than finding ways to make things better or generating ideas for how things might be different, leaders instead gradually accept the status quo and blame external forces to explain and then to excuse the “stuckness” of the organization.

Learned helplessness can become viral in any organization and the Church is no exception. As our Church prepares for General Convention next week where we will address major issues of restructuring, I’m aware of how this virus has infected us. In our congregations, I hear regularly how what happens at the national Church level inhibits local mission. This is no doubt true to some extent, which is why we need to radically restructure our Church’s organizational life to focus on the mission of making disciples. But it’s also an excuse for congregational leaders to do little to proclaim the Gospel in their communities by treating themselves as victims of the larger Church’s actions or inactions, as the case may be. This is learned helplessness in its most clear form.

Ashkenas offers two ways to get beyond learned helplessness and I will apply them to our context. He says that organizations should first name clearly what is going on. He suggests making a list of initiatives people say they want, but have not done. Then put together a list of the ten most common excuses for why there has been inaction. Creating dialogue helps everyone become aware of their complicity in learned helplessness. So, in the Church, we hear things like: “We don’t have enough people. We don’t have enough resources. We don’t have enough time. We tried something new before and it didn’t work.” These are all the words of people infected with learned helplessness.

A way to get the organization “unstuck” from the virus of learned helplessness is to find one initiative that, as Ashkenas says, can show even in a small way that the organization can accomplish something. I know this to be true. In a congregation where people have adopted the passive resignation of learned helplessness, too often church leaders try large, bold initiatives. This has the tendency to scare people and make them even less likely to become unstuck. What works is to find one simple thing that the church can do together, that’s likely achievable, and then to do it. Once it’s achieved, celebrate the success. I remember in one of my former parishes where we wanted to grow the Sunday School. We had one child and when we got a second, we celebrated that Sunday School attendance had doubled in just one week!

It is time to give up our excuses for not engaging in God’s mission to make disciples and, by doing so, to make a difference in our communities. No more passive resignation, please. If your congregation has become stuck with the virus of learned helplessness, then call it what is and then find one first thing you can do together for God’s mission. Take that first small step to become unstuck and then celebrate your way to the next.

+Scott