Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Yesterday started on a good note.

I got two promising leads for new clients and won the drawing at the Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast. Later in the morning I met the woman I’ll be collaborating with on a project for a current client. We hit it off – which doesn’t always happen when team members change mid project; I’m looking forward to working with her.

Around noon the sun came out and the temperature reached over 75 degrees for the first time in days. A good day indeed.

And then…

I learned that an acquaintance was about to be foreclosed on for nonpayment of his mortgage and taxes. He’s a hardworking person, in over his head financially, and instead of reaching out for assistance, kept his head in the sand, hoping that his problem would just go away.

Next, I opened an email with the subject line: “First Step in Restructuring Office and Staff.” Skimming the first sentence, I learned that nine staff positions had been eliminated at the Diocese of Chicago, including an Episcopal Communicators colleague. I felt as if I’d been sucker punched. I can only imagine how the people in Chicago feel: both those who have been let go and those involved in making this painful decision.

Hard times lead to difficult choices. What do we, as congregational leaders, do when the resources aren’t there to keep doing what we’ve been doing the way we’ve been doing it? Where do we look to find the leadership and the courage to see things as they are and the vision to imagine a different way of being? And how, as we contemplate change, do we balance care and respect for the people impacted by our decisions with the difficult and often painful choices that so often need to be made?

In her lecture “Courageous Change” (Part 1, Part 2), delivered last month at Episcopal Divinity School, Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church, offers a theological framework for living into our baptismal covenant when faced with the inevitability of change:

“There are many ways to deal with the kind of rapid societal change we have seen in the last few years. A lot of people deal with change by avoiding it, hoping that it won’t affect them. But if our style is avoidance, eventually change will catch up with us whether we are active participants or passive by-standers. Since we believe in a dynamic God, and by our baptism we participate with God in the quest to reconcile the world.

So we as the baptized, instead of standing by and watching change happen, we are called upon to use the change, even create the change that we believe will bring about a reconciled world.“

What do we do when harsh realities demand our attention? What resources have you drawn on when faced with difficult decisions?