Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

The gift came in a reused grocery bag.

“We don’t have a lot of extra money this year,” she said, smiling weakly.

I met her a couple of years ago. She works in the service industry, and I come every six weeks or so for my regular appointment. Almost immediately, we noticed an ease in conversation, even though our worlds are far apart. She grew up poor, the single-mom-working-two-jobs poor, and I lived in a cushy suburb with a stay-at-home mom and a father in a successful career. I went to college on a full scholarship and got a car as a graduation gift; she scraped to finish her GED after she got pregnant. She’s in a good marriage now, but the first was scary, and her daughter no longer speaks to the family. She’s older than me and often weary.

It doesn’t make sense but somehow we’ve carved out a friendship. We both look forward to our meetings. Maybe because there’s no overlap in the rest of our lives, the conversations are candid, with lots of listening and encouragement.

Yet I was still shocked by the gift. Not because I didn’t think we might exchange small tokens for Christmas but because hers was an offering of the heart. 

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I was intrigued by the Lutheran blog that asked “Do we have Nadia problem?” reposted in part on Episcopal Cafe. Episcopal responses included an amusing retort: Would that we had a Nadia problem! We don’t even have a Nadia.

The Nadia in question is Nadia Bolz-Weber, possibly the only celebrity pastor out there from mainline/liberal Christianity these days. She’s tattooed, foul-mouthed, in recovery, and pastors a congregation that was founded to serve people disaffected and abused by more traditional forms of church. She’s a strong writer, inspiring preacher, and seemingly effective pastor. She’s also a bit of a rock star these days.

I’m skeptical enough of our culture’s love of making rock stars that I’m not sure we need an Episcopal rock star. I’m also a little tired of hearing about how excited certain staid Episcopalians get every time they hear about a young green-haired priest out there stirring things up. I’d love to have dozens of Nadias: gifted writers, pastors, theologians, preachers. By that definition there are arguably a number of Episcopal Nadias, just not the rock star variety. But in none of those cases (including that of the original Nadia) is the hair color or the skin decoration the substance of the ministry.

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I recently came across an article in the Harvard Business Review on Twitter. The article is about the differences between management and leadership. “Management is about coping with complexity,” it explains. Leadership, on the other hand, is about coping with change. 

There’s been some talk about the distinction between management and leadership, I gather, after Bishop Sean Rowe, at a meeting of the Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church, said that he believes the Episcopal Church is over-led and under-managed. I’m not sufficiently involved in the national church to have strong opinions about this at that level of governance, but I have experienced local churches that were under-managed and others that were under-led. 

A manager, according to the article, deals with planning, budgeting, staffing, controlling, and problem-solving. A leader, on the other hand, deals with setting a direction, aligning people, and inspiring people.

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At some point or another, we’re all drinking from the firehose. We have way too much to do, coming at us too fast.   

For me lately, and I suspect for many of us, the hose has been less a source of water for growth and more a way to put out fires.   

As leaders in our churches, our communities, and our workplaces, part of our job is to put out fires. The Internet connection dies; we fix it (or call the right people to fix it). The wrong date for the spaghetti supper is in the church bulletin; we make an announcement and send out an update. Someone is sick, and we cancel long-standing lunch plans to stop by the hospital.
Fires happen, and we need to be ready to extinguish them.   

But what happens when all the water goes to the fires and none to new growth and nurturing? We’ve put out the fires but to what end?   

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The change in seasons always comes as a bit of a surprise. I know it happens every year, but having lived in Texas for so long where fall isn’t all that different from summer, I never really expect the weather to actually change. But then it does.

“Leadership is for a season,” I heard a priest say recently. I’ve been thinking about this topic since I decided to step off my church’s leadership team. I enjoyed being part of it for two years, but now I want to focus on other things. I’m feeling a little over-churched (having a job in the church, too).

At various times I have been under the illusion that something that works should work forever. I’m always surprised when a to-do app that was really helpful suddenly ceases to meet my needs, or something I used to enjoy becomes a chore.

This shouldn’t be surprising. As the seasons of life change—you get a new job, you get married, you simply get older—some of the things that once worked don’t seem to work anymore.

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I'd like to start this post with a joke.

Q: How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Change!?! Why should we change? We like the old light bulb. The Edison family donated it in 1886. See the wall plaque beneath the old bulb?

This little humor is to prepare you for the reality that we do the liturgy a little differently at Southside Abbey. Having said that, there is much about our liturgy that will be familiar, even to those who are change-phobic. We follow the four-fold shape of Gathering, Word, Table, and Sending, but we change it up just a little bit.

One of the great gifts we have been given as followers of Jesus is this sacred meal where Christ has promised to be present in, through, and with us. We celebrate this reality with bread, wine, and a meal, but in the Church we have so stylized that meal that many of our guests and sojourners can scarcely recognize the meal aspect of it.

At Southside Abbey, we are trying to reclaim that sense of a true meal in a very real way.

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Sometimes I swear at my computer. When, for example, it freezes up while I am rushing to get something done, I say things to it I would not want anyone else to hear. I don’t feel too bad about this, however (in fact, there is some evidence that swearing can reduce stress).

When is it appropriate to express anger? Anger is a legitimate emotion, and inevitably it will surface from time to time in any community. Anyone who has been a part of a church for a long time or worked with other human beings has experienced this. While I don’t think we should swear at each other, anger is something that must be dealt with. This is something I am learning with my wife. An occasional fight can be painful, but helpful and even necessary. We need to recognize anger when it pops up in our community and deal with it in appropriate ways. Not doing so can lead to resentment, which is a more insidious emotion that can tear relationships apart.

How do we deal with anger?

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Lately I’ve been paying attention to what Jesus asks of us in prayer and relationship. I understand the instructions not just in terms of what we are to do, but also as a sign of what God knows about the formation of human community. Sometimes we imagine that God expects churches (and families) to be perfect, but if that were so, why would we have so much instruction about what to do when things go sour?

Trespasses are my favorite thing about the traditional language version of the Lord’s Prayer. They are more colorful, more descriptive, and less loaded than sins. They encompass the large and the small -- the squashed toe as well as the midnight intruder.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

The more people we have in and around church, and the more varied those people are in their ways of engaging, the more we step on one another. The longer our congregations have gone without incorporating new people, the more sensitive we become to even small incursions into “our” space.

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“I didn’t see you when I came in last week,” I said to my postmaster the other day. “Did you get some time off?”

“No,” she said with a weary look on her face, “I was doing some regional work.” She looked so worn down I asked her what was wrong. She went to tell me that they’ve added two more small local post offices to her oversight, bringing a total of four offices she now manages.

Ever since I moved to southern Maryland – a place where a lot of folks, including me, need a post office box mailing address – I’ve thought a lot about the demands on my postmaster’s time. Her job looks straightforward and might even sound appealing to some people, but I have no earthly idea how she balances everything: hospitality, small-town chit-chat, putting mail in P.O. boxes, overseeing delivery routes, maintaining supplies, handling transactions, taking care of people’s more complicated shipments, and raising and lowering the flag every day! And now due to cutbacks, she’s also handling the staffing and the back-office business work for three other local post offices. You might think she’s pretty close to maximum burnout, although you wouldn’t know that, as she is incredibly pleasant and professional.

Some years ago, I often used the post office as a case-in-point when the Episcopal congregations in St. Mary’s County and southern Maryland started to discuss greater institutional collaboration more seriously. I often observed that similar issues confront both the institutional church and the post office, both financial and generational.

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In the workplace, good leaders need to be effective at managing up—and managing down. The same is true in the congregation, although I’d like to call it managing out.

In an earlier blog, I talked about some techniques for managing up. Just as important is being able to manage out—to communicate clearly and effectively with other members of the congregation, people not on vestry or on not on your committee.   

Even though the vestry is charged with certain decision-making responsibilities, it’s important that significant initiatives have buy-in from the larger congregation. One way is to invite collaboration and feedback. Considering making a change to the worship schedule? Ask folks what they think. Solicit suggestions. Let people know that some changes are being considered. For big decisions, hold a town hall meeting. And when people offer their suggestions, take notes and listen attentively. You might not agree and the decision may be different than what some people want, but a sense of truly being heard and respected will go a long way toward a smooth transition. 

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“Figure out why people give and give people more reasons to give and you will, in time, grow more generous givers.” That’s at least what I remember hearing, some years back, when I went along with my other fellow curates in the Diocese of Chicago to one of Kennon Callahan’s conferences.

Sounds simple, right? Sounds too simple, you may be thinking. Of course it does. In fact, it sounds way too easy and you’re right to think there’s a catch. I thought that, too, and that inherent prejudice might’ve come from my predisposition to simply avoid church growth guru’s and self-styled consultants. At the time I couldn’t understand why we were being asked to go to a golf resort in Georgia for a week (though I didn’t resist too strongly because, after all, it was February and that’s the best possible month to leave Chicago).

It was at this conference that I met Kennon Callahan, a man who simply stood up at the opening session and addressed us in his lovely and calm way, calling us “friends” as if he really meant it – as if, though we were not yet, we would be. He talked about his family and his wife and their vacations. He talked about the things that mattered to him and he opened his heart and his story in such simple and yet profoundly vulnerable ways. I also thought there was a catch and, I’ll be honest, I was getting a little bored with his simple talk about friends and trips and why he kept going back to the same sailboat rental place he’s been going to for the last twenty years.

I thought that until he got to the punch-line, which really was, for me, a healthy starter: people give of their time and resources for a number of reasons, he said, and people are very generous with the people whom they love and to the places for which they have affection and established relationships. And if your goal is to get more out of people, you’ve got to give more.

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The church is not a business. But we would be foolish to ignore some business concepts that can help us be better ministers in our communities, more effective witnesses for Christ.

We don’t scoff at the importance of audits—clearly a sound business practice. So why not consider other aspects of business and figure out how they might apply to our congregations and communities of faith?

Managing up is an important component to a successful ministry. Why? Well, we all know what happens when a priest is at juggernauts with the vestry—and/or staff. Or when the senior warden and committee members can’t communicate. Or when the bishop and the congregation’s leadership (lay and/or ordained) are at odds. It’s not pretty. Disagreements become distractions, and the focus moves away outreach and discipleship. This isn’t to say that people can’t have different opinions—even strongly held positions. But in many cases, effective “managing up” will mitigate many problems, encouraging ministry, creativity, and comaraderie.

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Part 3 of 4. (Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 4)

You may wish that change would happen like a thunderstorm, arriving quickly, without warning; that it would clang like thunder and awaken everyone to action. You may wish that vibrant lightning would alert the congregation to the spirit's leadings, that massive drops of excitement for change would soak everyone equally and fully in the new way. You may wish the coming changes were obvious and that like a heavy rain, they would, cleanse us of everything blocking the way. And surely we all wish that change would be gone as fast as it came, leaving a cool, clean feeling of newness, of freshness, of life giving beginnings.

This is a rare occurrence.

Sometimes in fact, change happens more like a hurricane, with the force of the spinning vortex scattering people apart from each other, and into destruction, violence and pain. You will start with a cleared space afterwards, but with a greatly reduced congregation, and with years of recovery, clean-up, and healing ahead of you.

The majority of change, in fact, happens like the slow, dreary and monotonous rain of New England. I remember the summer I moved to Vermont: it rained a little bit every day, for forty days, the sun never peeping out, the clouds never releasing a torrent, just one grey day after another. As long as that summer felt, change in church usually takes even longer.

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The kick-off for our fall Christian formation program was the most successful in years. Thirty adults sat in folding chairs to discuss Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s profound question, “What is church?” Another forty children from nursery age to senior high gathered in different classrooms for Sunday school.

Of course, numbers for the first Sunday don’t always hold through the fall, but I’m betting the momentum will build rather than slack. We didn’t change the core of the formation program. It’s still fifty minutes of Bible-based lessons. But the newly formed Christian formation commission made several key tweaks. 

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Part 2 of 4. Read Part 1 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.
When you begin to lead from the side in your church, I have found that people will question your authority, question your power, and question your ability to be a leader. To stand firm in my commitment to lead from the side it has helped me to be able to explain why I am allowed to do this, why I am encouraged to do this, why I am called to do this. You can do this, and while you are at it, you can explain to your fellow congregants that they are called, too.
Calling is a big word, and the authority to lead is a big idea. How can I so broadly claim that you have this authority? Quite simply, baptism is a call to ministry, Church is a gathering of ministers, ministers lead both in the church and in the world. Ordained leadership is a good and powerful thing, but it is not the only thing, nor even the primary thing, that keeps a church gathered together discerning God’s ministry. The primary thing is the people of the church listening for God’s guidance for being in the world. It would be great if every church was developing programs to help you discern your calling, and was empowering you to lead ministries both within your church and in the world. But whether or not your local congregation is helping you with your calling, God is calling all baptized Christians to ministries of leadership. If you wish your congregation would change, you have the authority to be one of the leaders of that change.

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"What do we do with the people who say they want to learn but can’t come to a weekly Bible study, or even Sunday school?"

Over the past eighteen months, I’ve learned a lot about how new ministry models emerge: Collaboratively. In fits and starts. Through a creative combination of need and excitement. With more failures than successes. And by the power of the Spirit of God who never fails to make her presence known when we’re on the right track.

The story of hybrid faith formation began at the 2013 Forma Conference.  My friend and colleague Day Smith Pritchartt had read an article I wrote about “faith formation networks,”  eporting on work by John Roberto as part of the Faith Formation 2020 research project he helped lead.

I was excited because faith formation networks seemed to be a great answer to a question I get by phone, email, and social media inquiry every couple of weeks in my job in the faith formation resource center where I work:

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Can you handle one more ALS ice-bucket challenge video? I promise. There’s a twist.
When my husband was challenged on Facebook, we talked about how to make it fun – and engage the whole congregation. This is what we came up with:

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Post by Richelle Thompson.

It was fun—and funny. Plus, it is, I think, a good example of being relevant and connected. Too often church isn’t a part of the world, but an insulated place of refuge and escape. Too often our priests are on pedestals, in the world but not of it. When we take ourselves too seriously, we often forget to take Jesus serious.

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A few weeks ago, my seven year anniversary as rector at St. George’s, Valley Lee came and went. I was away at summer camp, actually, having a wonderful time and I only remembered the anniversary after our treasurer sent me a congratulations email last week.

Seven years, they say, is a full period of time. At and after seven years, there is supposed to be a transition. The writer of Deuteronomy talks about the end of that period as being the time to forgive all debts, and it’s obvious that something has to change – or, in reality, has already changed – seven years in.

There are clear procedures in some Christian churches for dealing with the seven year transition period. Many of these practices are developed on the basis of secular, managerial practices, and there is some truth in them. My uncle, a faithful Churchman himself, served as an officer in the United States Navy for his entire career. The Navy, he often tells me, regularly and repeatedly turns over its personnel – officers and enlisted folk – some at periodic intervals, but never longer than seven years. (This isn’t actually correct in every situation, but it sounds good as a talking point!) The purpose, my uncle tells me, is larger than the individual and key to organizational growth: it helps keep up energy, helps maintain the essential tension between centralized and decentralized authority. An institution that keeps turning over its people never grows stale. Or so the argument goes.

The issue, for me, is that I still feel called to St. George’s, Valley Lee and to St. Mary’s County, Maryland and the good work we are doing in our Diocese of Washington to plant and, yes, grow The Episcopal Church in St. Mary’s County. Last year our bishop asked me, and I undertook, an intentional process of asking God in prayer whether I am still called to this place at this time. The answer came back, ‘Yes.’

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If I didn’t know better, I’d admire the marks on his calf. Tattoo-like, they resemble a heliocentric solar system, small black planets circling a sun spot in the middle.

But I know this isn’t a mid-life form of self-expression but marks to guide radiation. And I know his wife is deeply grateful because after months of job searching, she was hired at the last minute as a grade-school teacher. For now, at least, the family has a break from the gut punches.

There’s the couple celebrating their anniversary, and the kids in the trees, imagining games beyond the comprehension of adult minds. Around the lunch table, three generations gather, but they’re missing the fourth, the infant that new mom and dad didn’t think was quite ready for cabins and camping.

Two years ago, I didn’t know their stories. To be fair, they didn’t know mine either. But I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, feeling isolated and outside the circle. I still had a lot to learn about community.

I’m just back from our parish weekend retreat, sore from bunk bed sleeping and fighting an allergy headache from three days in the woods with new pollens. But my heart is full. I feel like a part of something bigger than me, bigger than my family.

I’m part of a community.

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Part 1 of 4. Read Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.

Often lay people tell me that they love so many things about their church, and that they hate so many things about their church. They describe how the congregation dreams of change and how change doesn’t happen. These members of churches ask me for advice, they look at their community life critically, they engage in creative thinking, they get excited about ideas that might work, and then they turn to me and say “you should talk to my pastor”. One minute they are full of energy for change, the next minute they are deferring all change to the work of the pastor.

Let me say this clearly: you can change your church; you can make a difference. I know, you are not ordained, you are not the paid, you didn’t study church change, you aren’t an organizational guru, you can’t work on this full time, you have a family and a job, you have a hundred reasons you cannot work on this problem. Yet still I say to you clearly: you can change your church; you can make a difference; you are called to be part of the change.

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