by Clair Woodbury & Joyce Madsen, Centre Staff
We are finding that making the transition from Old Style to New Style Leadership is the number one block for congregations who want to move ahead.
Seminaries traditionally taught and more or less modeled Old Style Leadership. The task of the parish priest or professional minister was to conduct the worship, visit the congregation, attract and integrate new people into the congregation, keep an eye on the budget, and conduct the sacred six: communion, baptism, weddings, funerals, confirmation and counseling.
The task of the laity operating under Old Style Leadership was to staff the Board/Vestry/Council, staff the designated committees, provide program leadership as laid out in denominational material, but most important of all contribute sufficient funds to balance the congregation’s budget.
On the plus side, this is a familiar pattern which most leadership over 50 feels very comfortable with.
On the minus side, it has been a recipe for burnout, on the part of staff as well as lay leadership. Lay leaderships are much better educated than the average lay person 50 years ago, and want to play a more participatory role. They are also busier, and have less volunteer time for the church. Clergy too find they have less time and more bases to cover. If clergy try to fill in where lay people can’t be found, burnout comes quickly.
The task of clergy in the New Style Leadership is to enable each lay person to become more effective in their ministries.
The task of laity in the New Style Leadership is be become as effective as possible in whatever ministries they sense God is calling them. It is just that simple.
Burnout? Not a problem when the success of ordered ministry is not being measured by balanced budgets, numbers of visits, or worship attendance. Lay burnout? Not a problem, when the issue is not how well they are supporting the church institution, but how effectively the institution is preparing them for a ministry that spiritually feeds and emotionally energizes them.
Here are the five practical guides to moving from an Old Style to a New Style leadership model in your parish or congregation.
1. Find Colleagues
If you are truly interested in having your congregation develop a New Style Leadership model, find a group of three or so people to work with through the transition. It is one thing to have the finest intentions, but working them out in a practical way is a challenge.
It is a simple case of two heads are better than one.
We are joggers. When you jog alone, the tendency is to quit early. Jogging with a group or in pairs, we push each other, keep going a little longer, make the time count.
When we are tired, or feeling frustrated, we fall back into the old patterns. A group of colleagues who hold each other accountable for modeling the new way, keeps the objective firmly in view.
2. Be Prepared to Let Go
The phrase “let go and let God” has become almost trite. In his book Spiritual Awakening, (Alban Institute, 1994) John Ackerman puts a new twist on that old saying, connecting it to the word “spirituality”:
Spirituality consists not in becoming more and more responsible in the fulfillment of a duty, but in becoming more and more faithful in a love relationship. ... Not so much a question of running up a steep hill ... as it is a letting go, ... falling backward in trust, believing that we will be caught up in loving, protecting arms.
Spirituality is the in-word today. Letting go does not mean walking away. It means staying loose, listening for new insights, remaining open to new directions.
Most important, it means stepping back and letting others learn by doing. Too many “experienced hands” think they can do it themselves faster than they can explain how to do it to someone new. Wrong. Once, perhaps. Preparing someone for a ministry that could launch a lifetime of service is not a time saver, it is a time multiplier.
Often we have been in a congregation doing a consultation and heard the words, “We just can’t get anyone to do it.” The “it” being referred to is a task where the person speaking has served — coordinating the spring tea, serving on the property committee, chairing the Finance Committee.
The truth is that new people bring new ministries. Let some of the old ministries go. If God intends a ministry to happen, someone who has a talent and a passion to do that ministry will receive a call.
We remember fondly our visit to the congregation at Quispamsis, just outside St. John, New Brunswick. They told us abut the contributions each generation had made, before handing over the reins to the next generation. The older people saw their contribution as a gift to the next generation, who needed to be free to make their contribution the way they felt called.
3. Watch for Skills, Talent and Passion
The task of Old Style Leadership when visiting new people was to look for candidates to fill positions in the parish organization. It was a matter of pushing pegs into holes, and sometimes the holes and the pegs had radically different shapes.
New Style Leadership asks one question: what ministry does this person have the skill, talent, and most important of all, passion for. It may not be a ministry that the congregation is currently actively pursuing, but that does not matter.
Many people, of course, are involved in ministries that are not connected with the congregation; reading to children in school, volunteering in a half-way house, serving on a day care board, looking after children, looking after grandchildren, visiting a friend in the hospital. For many, their paid so-called secular employment is a ministry. Thank God for them all. The task of New Style Leadership is to encourage, support, and celebrate all these ministries that do so much to enrich people’s lives.
4. Locate Resources for Ministry
What people often need is resources. There are no shortage of places to look; bookstores, Internet, video clips, libraries, denominational catalogues. The real resources are often the people who have lived through one of life’s teaching moments and are willing to share their experience.
New Style Leadership is always on the lookout for new resources. Books, Internet sites, records, video clips — these are collected and kept on hand.
Jesus once said “Give without expecting anything in return.” Resources need to be in people’s hands and homes, not on church book-shelves. Give people the resources they need, and let them make the book or whatever their own.
5. Give Permission to Go
All too often a new idea is met with the caution; “Have you asked the Rector? Have you checked with the Vestry/Board/Council?” The “stop until we say go” approach can quickly stifle an initiative, before anyone has an opportunity to discover whether it will work or not.
The important attitude of the New Leadership Style is “go until we say stop”. The congregation that is moving ahead gives points for trying things, whether they work or not. Their first response is “give it a try.” That is followed quickly by “What do you need to really make it work?” That kind of encouragement builds a congregational culture that is permeated with permission.
That is our understanding of New Style Leadership. Have you some reflections of your own? Drop us an e-mail with your comments.
Congregational Life Newsletter Vol. 5 No. 4. August 1999