Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

My colleague’s questions flabbergasted me.

The conversation had begun innocently enough. She and I had just finished a series of ten lengthy meetings that had gone, in my estimation, very well. We’d begun on time. We’d ended on time. Our conversations were productive and we’d achieved our goals. So when she asked me to offer her feedback on our times working together, I said what I always say in those situations: “You did great!”

Normally when I say this, though, people smile, sigh a sigh of relief and move on. So why was my colleague looking so skeptically at me?

“No feedback whatsoever, huh? So you found it to be a perfect process?”

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For the first time in my life I have my own office. In the past I’ve shared offices, sat at the receptionist’s desk, which was basically in a glass box, and had a desk in the office lobby, where I never knew when my boss would pop out of his office or the doorbell would ring. Now, I have my own space with a door I can shut if I need some uninterrupted time to work.

There’s been a movement in recent years at various organizations to do away with walls and cubicles to make it easy to collaborate, and we’ve all sat in brainstorming meetings, gathered around a conference table while someone stands at a whiteboard with a marker in hand.

We’re beginning to learn, however, that these methods don’t work, at least not for everyone. Recent articles in the New Yorker and The New York Times point out that brainstorming meetings actually produce fewer (and weaker) ideas than when individuals come up with ideas on their own. And, as I have been finally realized while I sit in my office occasionally with the door closed: many of us need our own space.

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I like to know how things work. From an early age, I learned if I had a basic understanding of this, I made better decisions.

This practice led me to my first – and only – computer-programming course. It was in the early 80s, computers were becoming an office staple and ‘computer error’ was a common refrain when something didn’t go as expected. I wasn’t buying this excuse, so enrolled in a course to learn how a computer worked – and where the likely source of these errors lay.

Flash forward to 2003 and my first General Convention of the Episcopal Church. I had press credentials, responsibility to set up media opportunities for representatives from Episcopal Divinity School, and no clue about how our church was governed. Working at a seminary, there was a course I could take. It made such a difference: it was my first General Convention and I was able to explain the what, why, and how not only to secular media, but also other Episcopal media.

As congregational leaders you have responsibility related to the governance. And, while governance – or polity as it is often referred to within the Church – may not make your ‘top 10’ list of the most interesting topics, a working knowledge of how the Episcopal Church works may prove to be helpful, especially in understanding how decisions are made at the diocesan and denominational level – sometimes described as a cumbersome and messy process.

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There’s a lot of advice out there about how faith communities can work together and get things done. One of the best pieces of advice that I’ve heard has to do with the three factors that folks need to be mindful of in the midst of leading: results, process, and relationships.

I’ve recently written extensively about the first two parts of this framework, results and process. Regarding results, I explored the difference between organizational goals and impacts; I also explored why many organizations, big and small, are helping their leaders to become more effective coaches, capable of offering constructive feedback to their staff and volunteers. As for process, I looked at different kinds of stakeholder groups and reflected on who needs to be brought into the decision-making process.

As for the third factor, relationships, I must admit that I haven’t felt a lot of pressure to write about this topic. After all, what could I possibly add that hasn’t already been said? Relationships are the Church’s thing. Not only do we conceive of God as triune, but many have pointed out the fact that our sacred texts, worship, and congregational life are an extended meditation on God’s constant willingness to be in relationship with us. Our herculean efforts at welcome, neighborliness, and love of enemy find their grounding in story after story of God’s extended offer of intimacy.

So do we really need a reminder about the importance of relationships? Of course we do.

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In March 2011, the New York Times ran a lengthy piece about Google’s 8-Point Plan to Build A Better Boss. Based on massive amounts of data culled from employee evaluations, the plan sought to do two things: first, it sought to name the top eight characteristics of their team leaders; secondly, and more interestingly, it sought to rank these characteristics according to importance.

The final list yielded a few surprises.

For one thing, technical expertise was ranked dead last among the characteristics. The article describes how this upended many of Google’s long-held beliefs about leadership in their company. Instead, skill sets related to the human touch were much further up on the list. Topping the list was the ability to be a good coach.

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The large whiteboard in my office is full of goals. 
At some point in January, my colleagues and I thought it would be a great idea to write down in large scrawl ECF's yearly goals on that whiteboard. As the months have gone by, we've been able to check off a few of the easier ones. They were low hanging fruit. Now that we are in the middle of April, it's getting harder to add checkmarks to the list. 
Yesterday I realized that it's going to take a lot of time, energy, and perhaps a bit of luck to achieve every goal on that list. There are one or two that are just plain tough. Thinking about this, I found myself wondering about the difference those goals will actually make.

Goals are important. As individuals and as organizations, they help us stretch toward new heights. But there's a real difference between “goals” and “impacts.”

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There are many tables within an Episcopal Church. There is, of course, the altar. This table is at the center of our liturgical life and serves as a reminder of the table around which Jesus and his disciples shared a final meal.

But in most churches there are other tables too. For instance, there’s oftentimes at least one large meeting table around which key decisions about the life of the congregation are made. Who should be present there?

In every church there are major decisions that require input from the wider congregation. Those who help to facilitate these major decisions will have to make hard decisions about who should be present at those meetings and who shouldn’t. This can be a fraught task. We all know of instances where people have been hurt and projects have been derailed because no one thought to get input from a key stakeholder.

Who needs to be at the table?

While there’s no hard and fast rule for this sort of decision, collaborative leaders keep key stakeholders in mind. Generally speaking, the following categories of people need to be brought into the decision-making process in some form or fashion, whether through in-person meetings, surveys, or other feedback mechanisms.*

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“Perhaps this week, more than others, we remember our rightful place as servants of the one who came not to be served but to serve and those he loved to the end, especially the poor, the oppressed, the needy.”
                                      - Stacy Sauls

This Holy Week, ECF Vital Practices continues its exploration of death and resurrection with articles designed to challenge our acceptance of the status quo. During Lent, we are asked to prayerfully consider our baptismal vows and reflect on how we honor God’s love through service and sacrifice. Easter brings with it an invitation to explore new life and resurrection in our lives, our congregations and communities, as well as the wider world of which we are a part.

For April, we invited our contributors to share stories related to change; specifically tackling established beliefs or practices. With each article, questions are raised relating to our understanding of how well our congregational, diocesan, or organizational practices are working in relation to what God is calling us to do in the world today:

“Remembering about God” by Stacy Sauls asks us to consider whether a long-ago decision to institutionalize the Church might in fact be contributing to what is widely seen as decline and if we instead, go back to our earliest roots as Christians, we might find the tools we need for Christianity to thrive. “Of Dinosaurs & Discernment,” by Lisa Towle begins the story of how the Episcopal Church Women in the Diocese of North Carolina are taking a serious look at their organization with an eye towards the future. Thomas Brackett’s retelling of the “Parable of the Lifesaving Station” (offered in both English and Español) challenges us to take an honest look at our ministries and ask if we’ve adopted a “Club” mentality. En "Cortejados por los Presbiterianos," Cam Miller describe cómo una iglesia episcopal y una iglesia presbiteriana están explorando la posibilidad de un campus compartido en Buffalo, Nueva York.

We invite you to explore the questions raised by our April contributors with your congregational leadership team.

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Last week, my colleagues and I began compiling “the stack,” a sizeable tower of completed applications to ECF’s Fellowship Partners Program. As the stack rose higher and higher, it quickly became clear that this year we’d had a bumper crop.

We have received more than twice the number of applications this year than last, a fact which leads me to believe that the Holy Spirit has been particularly active over these last few months, inspiring individuals from across the Episcopal Church to dream big, take risks, and frame innovative projects for the future of the Church.

I’ve since had a chance to read every one of those applications, and I’ve come away from this task genuinely inspired, reinvigorated, and hopeful. I also know that it will be very difficult for our selection committee to choose just three.

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I dreaded the meeting.

Negative, sometimes brutal messages on listservs, blogs, and other forums had drained my energy, twisting and dampening my anticipation of connecting with colleagues.

If it ends up being three days of more of the same, then that’s it. I’m done, I told myself.

On the night before the meeting, the dark place bubbled up, and I bared my frustrations to a small group. For someone who rarely cries, the tears came unbidden.

They were shocked. They expressed their support. And mostly, they listened. 

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One of my favorite stage devices is the unseen character, the person who has a significant role in plot and play but is never seen by the audience.

Today I am thinking about the householder in the parable of the talents. Without him, there is no story; the entire parable turns on his absence.

In many ways I feel like we come in on the middle of this story. I find myself wanting more background: Of all his servants, how did he choose these three? How did he decide how many talents he would entrust to each? What further instructions did he provide? How did they know what was expected of them in his absence? Could they be sure he was coming back?

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Este artículo esta disponible en español aquí.

We’ve all been in one of those meetings: a meeting that goes on and on, in which people repeat each other or seem to speak just to hear themselves talk or in which strong emotions inhibit the ability for anyone to make a decision. I was speaking with a friend who is on the vestry in a large, urban Episcopal church. She told me that the meetings are sometimes unpleasant, not because of difficult decisions they must make on occasion, but because of the amount of unnecessary and unhelpful conversation. 

Like any organization, egos often get in the way of a vestry’s ability to make decision. Couple that with the deep emotional connection members have to the church and even the smallest aspect of church life, right down to the color of the paint in the parish hall, and its easy to lose ourselves and forget our purpose.

How in the midst of this do we make decisions and keep ourselves from getting bogged down in ego and emotion?

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Only one hospital served the small community.

In a river town in Appalachia with high unemployment and even higher numbers of uninsured folks, I’m sure it was sometimes hard for the hospital to make a balanced budget, much less a profit.

But my sympathies for its struggles turned into fury when the hospital announced it was closing the pediatric unit. Sick kids would have to make a two-hour drive to the nearest metropolitan hospital. Two hours.

When a community stops valuing its children, the future is bleak.

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An English version of this blog post is available here.

Al igual que muchas feligresías, la Fundación de la Iglesia Episcopal está en medio de muchos cambios. Mi amiga y colega Anne Ditzler se está encaminando a pastizales más verdes tras 14 años de haber estado con la Fundación (literalmente nos deja por una hermosa granja biológica en el oeste de Massachusetts) y yo estoy en medio de una transición a un nuevo papel.

El cambio está en nuestras mentes y no debe sorprender que nuestros artículos más recientes se hayan concentrado en este tema tan importante. La semana pasada, Anne escribió sobre El manejo de cambios complejos, mientras que yo puse de relieve los consejos de dos gurús del liderazgo sobre el ritmo apropiado del cambio.

Sin embargo, esta semana decidimos escribir sobre la resistencia al cambio y yo decidí hacerlo poniendo de relieve las voces de los miembros de la junta parroquial que están lidiando con este tipo de resistencia. Los comentarios a continuación derivan de seis encuestas realizadas por ECF Vital Practices en 2011 y 2012. Si bien estos comentarios se dirigen específicamente al motivo por el que nada cambió desde que empezaron a leer ECF Vital Practices, sus comentarios tocan aspectos del cambio que incluyen la dinámica de grupo, temas de control, estar demasiado ocupados, etc.

Temas de control

¡Mi sacerdote tiene el control absoluto de todo lo que pasa en mi iglesia! Los coadjutores están obstinados en la manera en que se deben hacer las cosas.

Simple aversión al cambio

¡Estoy tratando de convencer a los otros miembros de la junta parroquial! La gente simplemente no quiere cambios.

Dinámica de grupo

Aceptación insuficiente. Hacer que pasen las cosas requiere más que un miembro de la junta parroquial.

Demasiado ocupados

Los artículos eran interesantes, pero no suficientemente específicos como para captar la atención de gente “muy ocupada”. Me gustaría, pero parece ser que nunca hay suficiente tiempo para empezar otro proyecto.

Las cosas van a cambiar

Todavía no, pero lo harán. Todavía filtrándose… Esperando que se presente el tema o la oportunidad.

Lo bueno es que estas encuestas también nos dicen que ECF Vital Practices está resultando en prácticas reales a nivel de feligresía: un promedio del 45% de los lectores dijo que un tema, una idea o un asunto que encontraron resultó en un cambio concreto. Este es un gran comienzo, pero ciertamente deseamos tener un impacto todavía más profundo y eso requiere que se preste atención a todos los motivos por los cuales no ocurren los cambios. ¿Qué añadiría usted a esta lista?

Several years ago, knitting ministries were more novel than ubiquitous.

I thought the ministry would make an interesting story, so I spent time with a few churches that had knitting groups and wrote a feature for the diocesan newspaper. The article included a how-to-guide for starting a knitting ministry, prayers for blessing the shawls and a link to step-by-step shawl instructions on the diocesan website.

You never know when something you write will spark, but for some reason, this article did. Within six months, half of the congregations in the diocese had launched a knitting ministry. In the years since, the churches have placed this ministry into their local contexts: some river churches knit for barge workers, suburban churches create baby blankets and urban groups work on scarves for the homeless.

Communication is mission. It is about connecting people to each other, about sharing experiences and good ideas and providing tools and encouragement to launch similar, effective ministries.

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While trying to plan a fundraising event several years ago, I learned just how difficult delegating can be. I was working for a small nonprofit, and I was in charge of planning and execution. This included arranging for dinner, silent auction items, a speaker, and a venue. I had some interns and staff members to help, and a tiny budget. At first, I found that I gave either too much or too little instruction. I hadn’t quite worked out my vision for the fundraiser, and so we were all muddling through. The people I delegated to were sometimes frustrated by lack of direction, sometimes dreading their tedious tasks. 

What I was reminded recently by an experienced Episcopal priest is that authority is not about being in charge. Authority is not about control. Authority is the ability to get things done. Yes, people like clear instructions; but it is just as true that “no one likes to coordinate other people’s plans.” Connecting the dots isn’t nearly as satisfying as making your own drawing. In the same way, volunteers, staff and parishioners will feel empowered and invested in their tasks if they are given space to use their own skills and creativity, as well as a clear goals and a vision for the project.   This is in line with Jesus’ leadership. Jesus led by his wisdom and his works. He gave authority to his disciples, which did not diminish his own authority. He sent them out to do his work with little specific instruction, only a clear vision for the Kingdom of God and the commandment to make disciples.

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Over the past several years, the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF) has been advocating for a new type of local congregation - one that serves as a transformational faith community. Its primary purpose is to inspire and empower members to become actively engaged in God’s mission in the world. 

This new idea of congregation requires a very different leadership model. The role of the priest becomes that of a catalyst, facilitator and community organizer who helps to raise up lay leaders as full and equal partners in the mission and ministry of the congregation. Rather than a top-down, hierarchical structure, the congregation organizes itself and operates on the basis of trained and empowered teams of lay people with clearly delineated roles, responsibilities and accountability. While the priest, as leader, may ultimately be responsible for the well-being of the entire congregation, he/she is not expected to do it all by him/herself. 

Under this approach, the congregation gathers around “ministry” and not the “minister.”

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Be mine.

I thought this was simply a sweet if trite sentiment on a candy conversation heart. But an astute wordsmith preacher taught on Valentine's Day that this phrase takes on a dark twist in the word “cupidity.”

Instead of an arrow-wielding, chubby cupid in a diaper, cupidity means possession, a greed that borders on malice.

I spent the day thinking about how these two ideas co-exist in the same root word.

We all need a reminder about how love without self-sacrifice and generosity of spirit can slip into possessiveness and control. This is true not just in our relationships with people but also in our connection to our churches. 

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Apparently I’m in meetings often enough that when I told my son I had meetings the other day, he grunted.

“Meetings. Is that all adults do? Do you ever work in these meetings?”

My honest answer: Sometimes.

Meetings consume a lot of our professional and personal lives. And we’ve been to enough of them to know that all meetings are not equal. So when someone presents an effective, evocative way to begin a meeting, it’s worth sharing.

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I have served on vestries and participated in men’s Bible studies and groups for young adults. All of these groups have defined boundaries – not everyone can join them. There is a part of me that is a bit uncomfortable with a group in which membership is closed. If, in a church we seek to welcome and minister to the stranger and the needy, how and why should the church tell anyone, “You can’t be part of this group?”
Still, it is clear to me that small groups, particularly decision-making bodies, are an important part of building a community. We need these groups to make decisions and pursue projects, of course. These groups can be a safe place where individuals can grow and connect with each other – a small group of working parents, for example, or those who are in partnered relationships, or individuals whose spirituality is informed by art, for example. It can be useful to be in a group with others who are dealing with similar life experiences, or who have similar interests.

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