Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Ever learned to swim by being pushed into the deep end of the pool? It isn’t pretty and can be downright terrifying, but there’s a strong incentive to figure out what works!

In the past two years, I have served as the chair of two committees in two separate organizations. While this has been an immense privilege, I must also say that chairing these committees has been very difficult for me. In fact, I’ve sometimes felt that it is one of the hardest, most humbling things I’ve ever had to do.

For me, anyway, learning to lead a committee of volunteers has been a trial by fire. My learning curve has been steep and I’ve relied heavily on the gracious guidance of many mentors along the way. Finally, two years and many sleepless nights in, it feels like I’m starting to get a hang of this. We’ve still got a long way to go, but I’m finding that the committees are more focused and we’re increasingly able to accomplish our goals.

Here are a few of the things that have made all the difference:
Effective Training 
As part of my work with ECF, I participated in the Organizing for Mission training in the Diocese of Spokane, an initiative led by Devon Anderson and Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation. Even as an outsider to this training event, I was able to glean a great deal about how to 1) recognize the assets of one’s community and 2) strategically use those assets to accomplish measurable goals. My colleague Anne Ditzler wrote more about this training here. 

What is our purpose? Whom do we serve? What are our priorities? 
You may be shocked to discover the different responses you receive when you ask committee members these basic questions. For me, I’d allotted about 30 minutes on the agenda of our first meeting to confirm we were all “on the same page.” We weren’t even in the same book! It ultimately took us about three meetings to identify common purpose, community, and goals. I now begin meetings by calling us back to these three points over and over again. 

It’s not me. It’s you! 
Perhaps the hardest thing I’ve had to learn is how to stop being a dutiful worker bee and start being a team leader. For me, this has meant learning how to stop taking on the shared responsibilities of the group (my unstated assumption being, of course, that I can do everything faster and better than everyone else). Instead, I’m spending a lot more time recruiting talented committee members, assigning responsibilities rather than tasks, and following up with team members to see what they need to get them through the next stage of their work. All in all, I’ve come to see this aspect as a spiritual practice - a way of loosening the grip of egocentrism. 

Meetings Matter 
I don’t like meetings so it pains me to say this - meetings really matter. As a committee chair, I’ve started to pay a lot of attention to the structure of meetings, because this is the structure by which we make decisions. Again, my colleague Anne Ditzler’s blog post on this topic is helpful here, but my main takeaway has been that a good meeting requires a significant investment of time. I’d suggest a 2:1 or even 3:1 rule - that is, for every hour that you will be leading a meeting, schedule two to three times that amount of time in preparation.