Congregations die for lots of reasons. The most insidious cause, perhaps, and the most common is death by a thousand cuts.
I love how Wikipedia defines the phrase: “Creeping normalcy, the way a major negative change, which happens slowly in many unnoticed increments, is not perceived as objectionable.”
We probably all have experience in this form of torture: A job that keeps getting duties added to it until you feel crushed under the weight or a relationship defined by snark with each comment eating away at trust and confidence.
In the congregation, the instrument of torture too often is nitpicking negativity.
A common inclination (maybe even part of our human condition) is to dwell on what’s not working. The typo in an otherwise perfect bulletin. A Facebook post that not everyone thought was appropriate. A sermon that didn’t hit the mark or a hymn that no one could sing.
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I figure the joys of managing change land somewhere between trying to hold onto a block of Jello and being thigh-high in quicksand.
I’m in the midst of leading a project – an annual event for our diocese that has been carried out in similar ways for, well, ever. The bishop asked me to take over and to look at the event with fresh eyes. With new leadership, we figured this was a good time to implement some changes.
As you might imagine, we’ve encountered some pushback, internally from other staff and from diocesan participants.
I have learned a few things about how we managed (and are managing) the changes. I should have done a better job identifying all the stakeholders – and sought input from more of them. I thought more about how the internal process of change would need to be carried out than I did about how the changes would impact users.
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My husband doesn’t’ t like compromise: He prefers to collaborate.
His reasoning? Compromise is giving something up. Collaboration is working together to create something new.
Semantics? I used to think so. I’ve since come around to his way of thinking.
When we met, each of us had been single for a long time. We’d been managing our lives in ways that worked for each of us. Getting married and sharing a household meant having to rethink many established ways of doing things.
We quickly learned if we each stubbornly clung to our own ‘right’ way of doing things or grudgingly went along with the other’s, life could be unpleasant. We didn’t want that: We loved each other and wanted to find a way to be together that worked for both of us. We recognized that we needed to create something new.
How might this apply to congregations?
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Many of you have probably read the recent articles in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times about General Convention and about the future of the Episcopal Church. While I think these articles are flawed and problematic, they have generated many thoughtful responses from Episcopal bloggers and leaders. It is a reminder that if we are prepared to ask ourselves difficult questions, then any criticism, even poorly thought out criticism, is an opportunity to clarify, engage and grow.
Occasionally, someone will read something I’ve written and give me a less than enthusiastic response. “I think you missed this point,” they’ll say, or “This paragraph is confusing.” My inclination is often to get defensive, or write them off because they just don’t get it. Most of the time this is not a useful or fair way to respond. Their criticism is a signal that I need to find some way to communicate more clearly.
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My church is in the midst of making some big decisions about governance, and a member of our advisory committee gave us some helpful advice. He pointed out that individuals who are not fully committed to the community sometimes can have an inordinate amount of sway. Perhaps they threaten to leave if we change the music, for example. We, as a community, want to grow and be a place where all are welcome, so we may be inclined to bend over backwards to keep them around. This isn’t always the best course of action.
We all know someone who has gotten angry about a particular decision the church has made. Sometimes we are that person. It could be the choice of hymns, the new vestments, or the decision to replace pews with chairs. Much of theology is intuitive and personal, and what may be a small matter to some may have deep personal and theological significance to another. How do we proceed?
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This article is also available in English here.
Todos hemos estado en una de esas reuniones: una reunión interminable en la que la gente dice lo mismo que dijeron otros, en que algunos hablan con el único propósito de oírse hablar o en la que las emociones fuertes impiden que se tomen decisiones. Yo estaba hablando con una amiga que integra la junta parroquial de una gran iglesia episcopal urbana. Me dijo que las reuniones a veces eran desagradables, no a causa de las decisiones difíciles que tenían que tomar de tanto en tanto, sino a causa de la cantidad de conversación innecesaria e improductiva.
Al igual que en cualquier otra organización, los egos a menudo se interponen en la habilidad de la junta parroquial de tomar una decisión. Si se une eso a la profunda conexión de los miembros con la iglesia hasta con los detalles ínfimos de la vida eclesiástica, como el color de la pintura en el salón de actos de la parroquia, es fácil olvidar nuestro verdadero cometido.
¿Cómo tomamos decisiones en medio de todo eso y evitamos quedar empantanados en egos y emociones?
Es un ejercicio útil repasar ocasionalmente la dinámica y los procesos del grupo. La conversación, ¿ayuda o entorpece la toma de decisiones? ¿Dominan todas las discusiones un puñado de personalidades fuertes? ¿Es una junta parroquial o un grupo pequeño o una feligresía que trabajan unidos para cumplir con su misión de traer el amor de Cristo al mundo? ¿O la gente está demasiado apegada a la manera en que son las cosas o al sonido de sus propias voces en una iglesia cada vez menos llena? Idealmente, la conversación debería servir a la iglesia y a su misión, no a los que están teniendo la conversación.
En un nivel diario y práctico, aquí hay cinco guías para la conversación empleadas en el Seminario de la Calle, una comunidad de Oakland, California:
Hable según su propia experiencia y evite generalizar.
Sea lo más honesto y auto reflexivo posible. Note cuando esté tratando de manejar lo que piensa la gente de usted diciendo las cosas “correctas”. Nótelo y después deje de emitir juicios sobre los demás.
Suponga que hay buenas intenciones.
Adopte una actitud que permita verdades múltiples y complejas.
Evite el impulso de planificar lo que va a decir mientras que otro esté hablando. Confíe en que tendrá las palabras adecuadas cuando llegue el momento.
Es importante que nos hagamos preguntas constantemente sobre lo que vamos a decir y por qué lo diremos, así como sobre cómo estamos sirviendo a la iglesia y a su misión. Cuando nuestras palabras están dirigidas al servicio del prójimo y al amor de Dios, la iglesia puede crecer con fuerza.
Over the past ten years of working on various committees and church groups, there have been a few critical moments when I've found myself thinking “I didn’t sign up for this.” Please note: I’m not proud of this fact. For me, this is a boiling point comment; it’s what I mutter to myself when all my alarm bells are going off and all my instincts are telling me to run away.
Chances are that you have your own versions of this phrase. Moreover, chances are that at some point in the next year or so you’ll have an occasion to mutter something similar. Off the top of my head and with absolutely no (none, zero, zip, zilch) relation to things I’ve experienced, here are some examples of moments that may leave you thinking “I didn’t sign up for this.”
After much pushing and prodding, the true financial state of your church is revealed to be far worse than anyone expected.
Your favorite projects are shelved as the leadership team’s time and energy becomes consumed by a conflict.
A phone call alerts you to financial improprieties taking place at church.
An action is taken that offends your core values.
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So it begins. I am on sabbatical for the first time and returning to Africa after 25 years. My time begins with a formal visit to our sister church in Uganda, St. Stephen’s Anglican Church in Nakiwogo near Entebbe.
In 1987 I traveled to Nigeria for 14 weeks as an exchange priest in a program sponsored by Midwestern Episcopal Dioceses and all the dioceses of Nigeria. It was a time when the Episcopal Church was trying to live into the principles of Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence that had been the hallmark of global Anglican relations since its adoption in 1963 at the Anglican Congress in Toronto under the leadership of Stephen Bayne, former bishop of Olympia. It called for deep listening on the part of the First World in its relationship with the Developing World. My exchange was part of that listening.
Much has changed in the Anglican communion in these past 25 years. Nigeria emerged as the nemesis of a newly gay friendly church in the United States. Uganda has broken communion with the Episcopal Church. Rwanda supports missionary bishops to proselytize what they view as an apostate nation in America, though that relationship isn’t working out so well.
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Whether this has happened in your congregation or not, all of us have seen disagreements escalate. It’s a familiar pattern: a disagreement takes a turn for the worse; accusations heat up and nuances are thrown out the window; someone, feeling particularly insulted or insulting, draws a line in the sand and members of the wider group are forced to take sides. Within moments, a disagreement has escalated to a full-on conflict and participants find themselves “entrenched” - that is, dug in, occasionally firing insults at the other side, but generally waiting for their opponents to surrender or apologize or just go away.
And many do. Go away, that is.
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With the start of 2012, many people - including myself - are considering ways to improve their health and well-being. Resolutions will be made and,
if research on New Year’s resolutions is any indication, nearly 80 percent will be broken by Valentine’s Day.
Change is hard. And not just for the Church.
Having made (and broken) many New Year’s resolutions year after year, I am now focusing on those few small changes which have an outsized impact. The above video, a popular piece on the health benefits of walking 30 minutes a day, illustrates this idea beautifully.
In the same vein, I believe that there are small changes we church folks can do which will make a significant impact on the tone and vitality of our congregations. As someone who chairs a few committees in Episcopal organizations, here are the changes/projects I’m resolving to do in 2012:
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Triangulation. It’s the classic killer of many ministries. Person A tells something to Person B, and Person B takes it to Person C. The problem is exponentially exacerbated when Person C actually holds court in the first place with Person B. There are many different forms of Triangulation, but it’s even scarier when the main culprit adding fuel to the fire is your rector.
The best way to avoid triangulation is to simply adopt the biblical principle in Matthew 18. If you have an issue with another person, don’t go behind that person’s back and stir up trouble. Rather, go to that person one on one. If the conflict cannot be resolved, then, and only then, do you take a group of people as witnesses to help mediate. The verse also mentions seeking a spiritual leader as the third course of action. Though many pastors are excellent at sniffing out potential triangulators and refuse to hold court with such persons, I know many ministers get sucked into it—sometimes even unintentionally.
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Here’s a set of numbers that should give us pause.
According to the
2010 Faith Communities Today Survey conducted by the Episcopal Church’s Office of Research, we are a conflictive church. In that survey 61% of Episcopal churches reported that they’d experienced serious conflict in the past five years, with 93% of that group saying that these serious conflicts had resulted in a decline in Average Sunday Attendance.
But it isn’t the high-profile conflicts over human sexuality that tend to lead to congregational decline. As Ward Richards puts it in his article
Elephants in the Sanctuary, it’s more often the “day-to-day experiences, rather than ‘hot button’ issues, that are the cause of conflict in parish life, with new buildings and leadership styles leading the charge.” Indeed, in his summary of results from the Faith Communities Today Survey, researcher Kirk Hadaway notes that while human sexuality was the most frequently cited source of conflict, it is “conflict over leadership and conflict over finances that were most strongly related to decline in average Sunday attendance.”
As lay and clergy leaders, it is vital that we become better at addressing conflicts over leadership and finances in our congregations. While it isn’t easy to prepare for the next hot-button issue on the horizon, we can prepare for the conflicts that erupt over budgets, buildings, and poor leadership that are a recurring part of congregational life.
Here is a collection of articles to help us along the way:
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We should send a thank you letter to Netflix.
After all, the company is providing a great example of what happens when there’s no communication plan.
To catch you up: Basically Netflix, a mail-order DVD rental company, made huge changes in what it offered to customers – asking for more money and delivering less – without a thoughtful communication plan.
Faced with declining resources, denominational judicatories -- and parishes – could take some lessons from Netflix’ public fall and half-hearted mea culpa, dubbed by the Washington Post as the “World’s Worst Apology Letter.”
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Every diocesan office, every church staff has some superstars.
They are creative thinkers – and doers – with boundless optimism and energy. Their job is a ministry, a calling, and they pour both their ability and heart into the work. And it shows.
But, I wonder, how often do we praise this good work? Or do we more often let it pass without comment?
In an article in Newsweek about winning strategies, Jack and Suzy Welch make the point that too often organizations and leaders focus their attention on the bottom third, troubled employees who are having a hard time meeting expectations. The middle are left to flounder, without encouragement or mentoring that might enable them to rise to the top. And the superstars? Well, eventually, they “become disaffected and leave seeking more appreciation, either in the soul or the wallet, or both,” according to the article.
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So you've posted a link to your sermon on Facebook and now the comments section reads like the bathroom graffiti in a college bar. What do you do? First, relax. This kind of blowback has been going on since Luther posted his 95 Theses on the doors of a Wittenberg church and started the first Social Media firestorm. Still, you need to be prepared to deal with it. You need to know when to respond, how to respond, and sometimes, when to hit delete.
Step 1: Identify the Type of Feedback
The first step, according to Mashable’s Josh Catone, is to identify the type of feedback you’re dealing with. Then you can determine the best response. Catone lists four types:
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The air conditioner repair guys were lazy.
They took the shortest distance to install the exhaust pipes – straight from the basement to the outside wall, right beside the entrance.
Don’t be alarmed: this is being fixed. Today. The National Historic Register and the people of the parish wouldn’t have it any other way.
But still, I think there’s some interesting commentary about how we clean up our messes in the church. Do we take the easy way out – avoiding conflict or perhaps more often, letting off steam in the sidewalk or parking lot conversations? Or are we willing to do the much more difficult work of rooting out the problem, talking with each other, and finding some solutions that may require sacrifice?
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Why are we so uncomfortable with people who disagree with us? How and when do we learn to ‘shut out’ voices whose opinions are different than our own? And, why are we so sure that we are ‘right?’
These questions are on my mind as I’ve been dealing with my private discomfort with some recent postings on a listserv I frequent. As I struggled with whether or not to post a response, I discovered that people began to voice a variety of opinions – agreeing and disagreeing with some of the original posts - and I was heartened that people felt safe to do so.
At the same time, I received some private emails, indicating that not everyone felt ‘safe’ to enter the conversation.
So, how do we, as congregational leaders, create a safe space for people to disagree?
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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…
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The parishioner just couldn’t accept the word “mass.”
In a long, terse letter to the rector, he decried the use of the term Mass. It’s a worship service, he said. We’re not Roman Catholic. We shouldn’t be using their terminology. "Service" is more specific and reflects the Protestant aspect of our Anglican tradition.
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I’m always surprised.
I’m referring to the discussion that takes place at my monthly book club meeting. Each month our group of 12 selects and reads a book, then meets to discuss it. And, each time, I am surprised both by the different ways people understand and interpret the text, and by how our experience of the book relates to our lives today.
This regular experience of ‘listening across difference’ keeps me mindful that there is more than one ‘right’ way to interpret not only the books that I read, but also almost every aspect of life, including our common life as people of faith.
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