The eCrozier

I really commend to you the April 8 commentary by David Brooks in the New York Times. Here is the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/opinion/09brooks.html. Brooks offers you and me, without intending to, good advice about how to lead in our church today.

Brooks notes that most leaders in our culture are admired for their self-confidence and ability to project certainty about the future. But these leaders have a short shelf life. They tend to burn themselves and others out quickly. In contrast, Brooks quotes Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great” and “How the Mighty Fall.” Collins writes that excellent businesses become excellent because they celebrate a different sort of leader ; one who combines “extreme personal humility with intense professional will.”

How might such insight translate to how you and I lead in the church? I think it means that we need to spend less time in the spotlight of our parishes and more time praying and strategizing with other leaders on how we might be more faithful and effective in sharing the Gospel in our communities. Rather than “the sage on the stage” we need to be “the guide on the side,” if you’ll pardon the rhyme. Are we intensely focused on sharing the Gospel and inviting others to do the same? And, at the same time, do we do so with an extreme sense of humility where we truthfully recognize that we do not have all the answers about the next step the church should take?

The cock-sure leader, Brooks argues, gets things done and makes things happen, but such a leader is ultimately destructive to the health of the organization because eventually others are not drawn into and invested in the success of the organization. They do not share the same stake. They are just following the orders of the one who gets things done and makes them happen.

Brooks refers to Collins again when he talks about the seductions that mark failing organizations: “the belief that one magic move will change everything; the faith in perpetual restructuring; the tendency to replace questions with statements at meetings.” In contrast, if leaders can stay true to their calling and remain open to the future, then they can avoid the power of that seduction.

The humble, yet focused leader is whom Brooks is calling for. It seems to me that is the kind of leadership you and I need to practice in our congregations.

Brooks ends his commentary with this: “If this leadership style were more widely admired, the country could have spared itself a ton of grief.”

I agree.

+Scott

The Feast of the Epiphany, 2010

This is the first in what will become a regular communication with the clergy of the diocese. I am calling it (at least right now) “ecrozier.” We’ll see if the name sticks.

My Sisters & Brothers

Greetings in the name of Jesus on this Feast of the Epiphany. Over the weekend I moved into my apartment here in Savannah and began to unpack. As I sit in my new office now, I am surrounded by stacks of books that need shelving, pictures that must be hung, and files waiting to be organized. That will take time. In fact, everything, if we wish to do it right and faithfully, takes time. It will take time for us to get to know one another. It will take time for us to collaborate on our future together. It will take time for us to make mistakes together and learn from them (well, maybe that will take less time, at least the mistakes part).

I am looking forward to taking the time necessary because it is an important preface to our work together as leaders of God’s redemptive work in the world. But even as leaders, we are not in control of that work. When God’s completion of that redemptive work occurs in the Parousia, we are called to be on Welcoming Committee, not the Program Committee. You and I are called to be active leaders in that ongoing narrative of redemption while remembering that it is Jesus who saves us and not we ourselves. We really must find that easy to learn because we seem to have to relearn it anew everyday!

Below is an article by my friend Graham Standish. Graham is a Presbyterian Pastor in Pennsylvania. I commend it to you. It is on Narrative Leadership. Graham reminds us that we lead at our best when we understand our role in God’s story and when we are able to tell that story in a way that is compelling and intelligible to our people. Graham also has a wonderful book out (from the Alban Institute) on humble leadership that I commend to you.

Peace in Christ,

Scott+

The Pastor as Narrative Leader
by N. Graham Standish

Humans are living stories of experience. Our lives can be scripted like a narrative. In fact, when we think of individual lives in this way, what we discover is that those who live what seem to be successful lives have a generally compelling life narrative of overcoming obstacles in order to achieve. Those who seem to have dysfunctional lives often have life stories that read like disconnected or stuck narratives in which the main character struggles to overcome obstacles. Instead of overcoming obstacles, these obstacles overwhelm her or his life. Understanding the role of story is crucial to understanding the role narrative plays in leadership.

Over the years I have noticed a definite difference between good leaders and great leaders, a difference that is more than just a matter of great leaders doing certain things better than good leaders. Good leaders lead people toward a goal. They are able to articulate a common aim for an organization, a department, a team, or a congregation. They are able to get people on board enough so that the goals become common goals. And these good leaders are able to motivate people to want to achieve these goals. This is all good stuff.

What seems to make great leaders great is not that they are better at envisioning and articulating goals, as well as being better at uniting and motivating people to achieve these goals. What I notice is that great leaders seem to craft a story, a story that inspires others in the organization, team, or congregation so that they willingly become a part of and live out this story in their work and lives. Great leaders, through their whole style of leadership, tell a story about the organization or congregation that becomes a blueprint for its ongoing growth.

To be a narrative leader means to be something very similar to a novel writer. It means to be able to see not only life in general, but also a congregation’s life, as an unfolding story that to some extent she is the author of. Obviously the pastor is not the author, but then again, most writers of fiction will tell you that they are not truly the authors of their stories either. Listen to how an author describes the writing experience: Often she will say that she gets a general idea of the plot and the characters, but over time the story begins to tell itself. She will say that the characters determine the direction. She will say that it feels as though someone else is writing the story through her. The same is true for pastoral leaders.

Many writers also speak of writing as a process of listening to their muse. In Greek mythology, the muses were nine daughters of Zeus who inspired artists, poets, sculptors, and the likes. Present-day artists speak of their muses as being almost like spiritual voices that inspire them. Pastors also have a muse: Christ. The more open we pastors are to the Spirit as we lead, the more the Spirit guides us not only to craft our own story, or the congregation’s story, but also to make these stories part of the larger story that God is writing about life throughout the universe. The great pastoral leaders write a story discerned through prayer.

As the author listening to his muse, the pastor recognizes when the congregation is or isn’t meshing with God’s story. And he finds a way to bring it back into harmony. At the same time, he still sees pain, crisis, death, birth, divorce, marriage, difficulty, and celebration as crucial elements of the story. He understands that without these elements, the story has no life. As a result, he is always looking for ways to turn the more difficult situations into times of redemption, reconciliation, and resurrection.

While the pastor acts as the author, he also understands that he is something of the main character and narrator of the story. I don’t mean this in some narcissistic way in which the pastor must be the main focus or that everything revolves around him. In fact, that is generally not the case with the best narrative leaders. The best leaders are able to let a congregation’s story unfold. The leader is not the center, but he is the person who bears the most responsibility for attending to the story and ensuring that it follows the narrative. The pastor acts as narrator, sometimes merely observing, monitoring, and articulating what others are doing and sometimes acting as a character involved in the action. The key thing is that as narrator, the pastor is responsible for framing and articulating the events. The pastor provides an interpretation. And that interpretation comes through many avenues. It may be an interpretation of an event told in a sermon. It may be an interpretation of an event given by the pastor to leaders in committee and board meetings. Or it may simply be an interpretation the pastor gives as he talks casually with members. Whatever the means, the pastor recounts an event, and then teaches others through story how to understand it.

The good pastoral leader also seems to find a way to separate herself from the story in order to steer the story in a particular direction. While she may be the narrator, she also is something of the author, and like an author she is able to keep herself from becoming so trapped in the story’s events that she becomes a helpless victim of the story. She does not let herself become trapped in a careening plot that ambles toward dysfunction and meaninglessness. Instead, she is able to see the story both from within and without. She is able to be both a subjective participant in the story and an objective observer of events who leads the story back into God’s story.

Ultimately, being a pastoral, narrative leader means being a leader who is both immersed in the events of a church and, at the same time, an author of the congregation, leading the church to follow the plot that she or he believes God has scripted for the congregation. It means understanding the Christian story well enough to be able to move the congregation to follow the Christian narrative, which is a narrative of life, growth, turmoil, death, resurrection, redemption, and reconciliation.
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Adapted from Living Our Story: Narrative Leadership and Congregational Culture, edited by Larry A. Golemon, copyright © 2010 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.

I was blessed before our Diocesan Convention to share some intentional time with the Bishop Search Committee. We spent five hours together under the leadership of Dan Suwyn of Christ Church Episcopal, Savannah. Dan works with people in organizations to help them serve better together. We did a particular exercise that he has done many times with new CEOs so they can get a good grasp of their organization’s history. Dan’s background is brain neuroscience. He pointed out four parts of the brain moving from the back of the neck to the forehead: reptilian, limbic, cerebral cortex, and prefrontal lobes. The reptilian part functions for self-protection and asks: “Am I safe?” The limbic part focuses on tribal belonging and asks: “Am I accepted and included?” The cerebral cortex is the center of rational function where we deal with objective and subjective issues. The prefrontal lobes are our center of creativity.

Now what does this have to do with us as leaders in the Church? It connects with work I have done with clergy and vestries on trust development. There are interestingly enough four layers of trust development in any group. The first is acceptance and inclusion. Group members need to experience this in order for them to function well together. The second is the experience of the free flow of truthful information. If the experience is that this is being withheld, then trust cannot be developed. The third are the tasks or goals the group has at hand. And the fourth is the group’s envisioning of the future. These layers are cumulative. One can’t get to the fourth layer without dealing faithfully with the first three. So, for example, the when a group is stuck trying to accomplish a task it is often because there are trust issues around acceptance and inclusion and/or the free flow of truthful information.

Leaders in the Church often want to jump in and accomplish tasks, set goals, and lay out a vision. But we neglect the necessary work of inclusion and acceptance and then the free flow of truthful information. If you wonder why vestry meetings sometimes don’t accomplish what you hoped or that you are having trouble getting parishioners to stay focused on goals, it might be that you should work the reptilian and limbic layers first. Work on mutual inclusion and acceptance and the sharing of truthful information first and then you will have better success in getting folk to focus on goals and vision.

That is what Jesus did consistently. Remember the woman caught in adultery? She and her accusers were unable to envision and experience God’s grace. Jesus first stopped the stoning so she was safe. He then reached out to her so she would experience acceptance and inclusion. Then he made sure truthful information was shared (“Boys, if any of y’all are without sin, then you’re welcome to cast the first stone”). It was only then that there was a possibility that those gathered could experience God’s grace, which I believe, was Jesus’ goal. The woman, when Jesus tells her that no one was left to condemn her and that she should go and sin no more, was then able to envision a new future for herself through the loving grace of God.

Find yourself stuck in your leadership? Work the reptilian and limbic.

+Scott

Two articles I read recently relate well to our roles as clergy leaders. Neither article is about Christian ministry, per se, but their relevance to who we are and what we do is unmistakable. One is from the Harvard Business Review blog http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/01/three_questions_executives_sho.html. While the article is about executive performance and goal-setting, I think it speaks to how we go about our ministries. The author raises three questions at the end of the blog. I have paraphrased them below to apply to our contexts.

1. If there was only one thing I could do to improve my ministerial leadership, what would it be and how would I make it happen?
2. If there was only one thing I could focus on to improve my ministerial leadership, what would that be and how would I make it happen?
3. What messages am I not listening to or refusing to confront in my ministry and leadership of others and how am I going to overcome that this year?

I think good clergy leadership requires us to challenge ourselves with such questions, especially the third one. I might suggest we all need an “inbox,” what organizational theorists call openness to feedback. Such openness allows us to adapt our leadership style to the context and competency of the people we lead.

The other article is from January issue of the Atlantic Monthly entitled: What Makes a Great Teacher? http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/201001/good-teaching I commend the entire article to you, but I would sum up how the author answered the question in the title with one word: relentlessness. Great teachers have different personalities and skill sets, different approaches to the discipline, but the one variable they all have in common is relentlessness. For how that relates to our ministries, we might refer to St Paul in Romans 5:4. St Paul calls this upomonh, which is often translated endurance, but I prefer stick-to-it-tiveness. Come what may, cost what it will, we remain committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

These two articles indicate for me just how challenging the art of leading congregations truly is. On one hand, we must remain open to feedback and always ready to listen to those we serve if we are going to be effective leaders. On the other hand, we must have what our Eucharistic dismissal calls singleness of heart, the capacity to endure singularly in our commitment to the Gospel of our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ.

No one ever said this was easy! We have one of the most challenging vocations imaginable, what John Snow called The Impossible Vocation. God bless us all!

+Scott