Tod Bolsinger

Clergy Burnout: What’s really causing it?

A recent blog post  by Philip Wagner on "The Secret Pain of Pastors" has created some good--and really necessary--conversation about the challenge of pastoral leadership today.  I'll add my two cents with a few re-posts  of blogs I wrote after the NY Times ran a similar article in 2010. These posts were written right at the time that I started coaching pastors and working on a book on leadership development.  Today, after 200 conversations with pastors, I'm more convinced than ever that there is a clergy leadership crisis that is only increasing. 

"The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness."  David Whyte

A recent article in the New York Times on clergy burnout has been getting lots of attention amongst my pastor friends (and some kind church members who are concerned about me).  The article suggests (I think, accurately) that the cause is in large part the unhealthy professional boundaries between pastors and their congregations.  It also points to the reality that in our highly connected technological world, it is extremely difficult for a pastor to ever truly “vacation” from the congregation (Indeed, recently, I received word of the death of an infant in our congregation while I was at 30,000 feet winging my way to Italy on a family vacation.)  The article wisely encourages pastors to get better and more regular rest and offers some good resources.  And I wholeheartedly agree.

But, all the while affirming the need for regular days off, vacations, and sabbaticals (indeed: I enjoyed a glorious one four years ago), I want to ask my colleagues: Is that really what’s causing the burnout?  

The fact is that clergy and congregations have always had bad boundaries.  In previous generations, being eager to work all-hours and having one’s ego fed by the need to be needed was practically a pre-requisite to a call from God to ordination (not that I am affirming that!)  The truth is that most of us LOVE a good pastoral care crisis. It is the place where we are most competent and add the most value.  We pastors thrive on people being spiritual open to the presence of God in life and love nothing better than walking with searching souls in a journey of genuine authenticity.   Most Pastors will never admit this publicly but most of us would rather being officiating funerals than weddings.  (At a funeral people are far more open to spiritual things; at a wedding everybody wants to get on to the reception as quickly as possible.) 

So is the cause of burnout really too many souls in need of care?

A follow up article by a minister suggested that the cause of burnout is congregational consumerism.  People now demand that their pastors be part shrewd cultural commentator and part comic.  We must entertain, inspire and instruct a little, all the while never really challenging the worldview or tribal instincts that make us Christians seem little different than anyone else.  Mostly, people come to church to be affirmed, encouraged and given some tips to get God on their side in their self-improvement strivings for the good life.  We pastors, as my friend Charlie says, are expected to be Tony Robbins with prayer.

Again, I agree and this unhealthy expectation on the part of church-goers is undeniably part of the problem.   But is that the root cause?   Or are pastors and congregations not only suffering from bad boundaries, but also colluding to alleviate a deeper anxiety that plagues us all?

Here is my hunch:

Poet David Whyte famously wrote, “The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness.”
We clergy are burning out because we have lost our wholeheartedness about pastoral ministry. 

By this, I DON’T mean our passion for the gospel or our commitment to the Kingdom of heaven (though that may be true for some).  I also DON’T mean our sense of call to serve people, to preach, teach, counsel, or care (though again, that may be true for some).  What I mean is that most of us are now asked to do a job that we didn’t sign up for, in circumstances that are far different than we expected.  The culture is changing and the church is in crisis and most of us were not trained for this.  And so we are less wholehearted than we once were and are unsure if we are up for the task that has been thrust upon us.

A couple of years ago I spoke for a group of Methodist Christian Educators in Maine.  After three lectures on the Kingdom of God and the Community of Faith, I was asked to do a “speaker talk-back” where anyone could come and ask me questions.  Of the 200 attenders of the conference, 60 came to my talk-back session.  I polled the room to ask what kind of questions they came to ask and soon found that one question was being asked by virtually everyone in the room.  It wasn’t a topic I had raised in my lectures.  It wasn’t a subject that the organizers had even planned to address.  But for the pastors, lay leaders and teachers in the room it was the only one they wanted to talk about:  “How can we keep our churches from dying?”   You could practically see the discouragement written on their faces.  We pastors are working harder than ever and not seeing results.  It’s like we are stuck in an aerobics class from hell.  We just keep running in place.

We pastors are exhausted because we are ambivalent.  We are ambivalent because we are sincerely called by God, deeply committed to minister to souls and eager to speak to the spiritual condition of life and, at the same time, we know that we are rapidly becoming irrelevant to many.  

Most of us were unprepared for how rapidly and demonstrably our culture was changing. Most churches (with a few obvious exceptions) are dying.  We pastors wanted to be at the helms of ships that would head bravely into the adventure of an open sea and a beautiful distant land.  Nobody told us that we were training to become captains of ships that are all slowly going down or being abandoned.  We are ambivalent because this isn’t the ministry or the context that we signed up for and we are burning out because we just don’t know what to do. 

Youth club sports is considered by most parents to be more important for forming the character of our children than the church.  Spirituality has become wildly popular but so deeply individualistic that the fastest growing “religious affiliations” amongst college students are “none” and “spiritual-not-religious”.  We pastors who were trained to teach those who show up, to care for those who call for help, to lead those who will volunteer and to administer the resources of those who willingly give are now called upon to minister to a passing parade of people who treat us like we are but one option in their personal salad-bar of spirituality. 

We are in uncharted terrain trying to lead mostly dying churches into a post-Christian culture that now considers the church as an optional, out of touch and irrelevant relic of the past.  Most people think of pastors not as experts of the soul for the big questions of life, but as curators of the flat earth society or pawns for a political action committee.  To make matters worse, we pastors who used to be held in such high-esteem are now just assumed to be charlatans or pedophiles or widow-fleecing fundraisers. When masses of ordinary people want spiritual insight they turn to Oprah, not the church.  And committed church goers and church leaders are panicked about it. 

Burnout comes from not only bad boundaries and trying to meet unhealthy expectations, but also from an ambivalence born of uncertainty about our own competence and relevance. 

Most of us got into this because of the Bible and people.  We wanted to teach the Bible and care for people.  We felt called to nurture the souls of people and communities of faith.  So when we are doing those things (even with some not-so-good boundaries) we are mostly fine.  Most of us also understand and acknowledge that there is a difference between felt needs and real needs and that there is always a degree of work involved in reaching often distracted people with our messages. (Isn’t that why we work so hard on getting good illustrations, jokes, even videos for our sermons?) 

But, most of us weren’t called and don’t feel equipped to be change-leaders in a rapidly changing world.  But that is the reality and that is our call.  Until we wholeheartedly dedicate ourselves to that reality and that call and all the ways that we pastors are going to need to learn, and grow and change ourselves (grieve our own losses along the way) to be relevant in that changing world, we will just continue to live on the verge of burning out and giving up.

Learning to Lead All Over Again

I spent the past few days speaking on adaptive leadership to church leaders of Fellowship of Presbyterians.  After being asked a lot of questions, I decided to repost this piece from October 11, 2011, to give some context for my own journey into learning to lead differently. For those who attended my Fellowship Meeting plenary or my workshop (or those who missed it) the slides are here: 

Download Canoeing the Mountains_Leading Through Adaptive Change_Tee up_FOP  

Download Adapt and_or die_Toward adaptive capacity

At the end of our 2006-2007 fiscal year, our church had a $100,000 general fund surplus. In twenty years of church work, I had never seen anything like it.  By all common measures, we were doing as well as a church as we could ever hope.

We were in our tenth consecutive year of growth in worship attendance and membership. We had faced all the obvious and not-so-obvious challenges before us.  We had unified around a vision, we had applied disciplined thinking and acting to most of our ministries, we had even rebuilt our entire campus around our vision to be an intergenerational “Community for the community.”

 And then we noticed something. It was subtle, but there was no mistaking that it was there.  A kind of malaise, a growing sense of discouragement. Leaders were talking about being burned out and others were hesitant to step up.  Even more, we noticed that some families were beginning to slip away.  While the usual "markers" of bucks in the plate and buns in the pew were still pretty good, we began to notice the early signs of disengagement and disconnection.  As the pastor, I was confused.  How could we be doing so well and yet "feel" like "something" was so wrong?

We brought in TAG Consulting to take a good look under the hood.  They led us through their Transforming Church Index process.  It was both easy and comprehensive.  They reported back that our scores were really strong; we were among the healthiest churches in the nation.  But they also told us that there were some disturbing "early warning signs", that could all be traced to an unintended consequence to our “win-win” strategy.

 In another post I wrote about the importance of getting beyond “win-win” thinking when trying to bring a truly adaptive or transformational change.  Indeed, as I found out personally, the definition of an adaptive challenge is one where someone is going to “lose” something.

The reality of loss is the very reason why these truly transformational challenges are so difficult and enduring. Even more complicated, the “problem” you face to today is very often the result of the “solution” from the past. While “win-wins” feel great, the bad news is that a "win-win" strategy often only perpetuates the gridlock of competing values that keeps the organization stuck.

In our case, the success of a unified vision had given birth to an overly centralizedinstitution.  The very unity, discipline and alignment that had been needed to bring the church together to rebuild the campus around our vision were now stifling creativity, passion and energy.  In an entrepreneurial culture like south Orange County, we had become way too "corporate." 

Our lay people reported that while they trusted the leadership and appreciated the ministry, the most common response of most people was “this is a good church, but they don't need me here." Our church members told us, "We love the preaching, worship and programs, but there is no way for ME to make a difference, express my gifts or fulfill my own sense of calling here."

When our consultant Kevin Ford, laid this out before me, I grimaced.  "So what's causing this?  What's at the heart of the problem?  What do we need to change?" I asked in almost rapid-fire questioning.  He looked at me and said.  "You." 

I gulped. 

Kevin continued, "Tod, don't get me wrong.  These people love you.  They respect you.  They appreciate your preaching and they trust you.  In fact, we have never had a church talk more about a senior pastor than this church talks about you.  And that is the problem.  It's not your problem, at least not yet.  Nobody thinks that you are trying to build the church around you, but that is in fact what is happening.  You could continue on for another ten years and the church will remain healthier than most.  But without even trying to, the culture that you have created here under your leadership will continue to disempower, disengage and finally create disconnection for the most creative and passionate members. Unconsciously, the message that is going out is that everybody here thinks it is their job to support the ministry that YOU are having here.   And that is slowly sapping the passion from the church."

Kevin and I talked about the options open to me at that point:

1. Do nothing. The church would continue to revolve around me and it would likely not become a huge problem until someday after I left the church. 
2.  Resign.  If I was out of the way, then the church members and would-be leaders would be forced to reengage and rediscover its ministry without me and my vision at the center.
3. Learn to lead differently. This would be hard, and it would be a risk.  While the danger signs were evident, the church was still relatively healthy.  There was a significant chance that trying to create a less-centralized and more collaborative culture would be both resisted and resented (especially by those who liked the church the way it was.)  And especially it would mean a big "loss" for me.  I would lose the sense of competence that comes from using a leadership style that I clearly was comfortable with and which had had success. 

Because I love my church and being their pastor, I opted pretty quickly for number 3.  I have been re-learning what it means to lead ever since. 

It wasn't easy.  In fact, it was one of the hardest and yet best things I have ever done.  Today, not only are the "markers" even stronger, but even amidst this great recession, we are still solidly growing.  We have faced hard cutbacks with clear values.  We have maintained unity and have more diverse creative, lay-run ministry than ever.  We are seeing more and more people step into leadership and express faith in missional service.  While I am not as central as I one was, I am still firmly part of a more collaborative ministry. 

Today I consult for TAG and help other pastors learn or re-learn how to lead in this changing world.  And it all began with understanding that for our church mission to "win" I had to "lose".

I had to lose power and control, I had to lose "say" over aspects of the mission, and I had to lose my place at the center in order for our mission and vision to be even more central in our church. I had to lose my status as the expert and learn to lead all over again.  

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Is That a Lion or Not: Another Lesson for Good Disappointing Leadership

Continuing a re-post of the series from 2010.  Many of us in leadership know about the need to attend to our anxiety, we just don't always know why...

In the harsh mid-summer African heat, a herd of impala find an increasingly rare water hole.  They rush to drink, crowding in, fearful of not getting enough water to sustain them.  Suddenly, one impala raises his head in high alert.  Immediately every other Impala stops drinking, and stands at attention.  No impala moves, none utter a sound. But the tension is palpable, there seems to be a crackle of electricity in the air.  Every impala at that moment has a life or death decision to make:  “Is that a lion or not?”

If there is a lion lurking near that whole and they don’t run,  they become lion lunch. If there is NOT a lion lurking near the whole and they DO run, they lose their place at the watering hole and could die of thirst. If there is a lion and they do run, or if there is NOT a lion and they do not run, they live another day.  But all that matters is: “Is that a lion or not?”

And everything in their impala-beings is focused on making that crucial life and death decision.  Just like they do every day. Numerous times a day.

Part of what helps the impala make that decision is the “herd energy”, the “animal anxiety” that permeates the group and that causes them to share listening, hearing, deciding together.  And depending upon how the “system” responds to anxiety is one of the key factors for the health and ability to weather threats and face changes in climate or challenges in terrain for a herd, a family, a church or organization.

In this series, we have been looking at what it takes to be a “good disappointing leader”, that is what it takes to “disappoint your own people at a rate they can absorb” so that they will take on the challenges, make the changes and continue to move toward the goals (or watering holes) that will insure their vitality, longevity and “mission” of the family, church, organization or company.  Over the last few posts we have been examining the leadership mantra:  "Start with a conviction, stay connected, stay calm and stay the course."  In my last post, I discussed the leader as “Crockpot thermostat” regulating the heat of a system so that it will continue toward transformation without scorching and ruining the system.

A significant part of “staying calm” and “regulating heat” specifically, is in understanding that the “heat” that most hinders organizational systems from moving toward their aspirations and goals is anxiety.  Anxiety isn’t a bad thing; it’s a ‘creaturely’ thing. It just is. We feel anxious when we are reacting to a threat that is either real or imagined.  Sometimes the anxiety is a gift that tells us that there is something bad that is threatening the clan (A fire alarm going off, the sixth sense that someone is lying to you, the motivation to lose weight when the doctor tells you that your cholesterol is so high you wont live to see grandchildren.) This is called “acute anxiety.”  It motivates us to do something to get ourselves or our loved ones out of danger (for example, when there is a lion at the watering hole.)

“In and of itself, anxiety is neither functional or dysfunctional.  It is a state of readiness to do something or other that may or may not be appropriate in response to a threat that may or may not be accurately perceived.”  (Jeffrey Miller, The Anxious Organization: Why smart companies do dumb things, p. 14)

But the key difference between animals and humans is that with humans real or “acute anxiety” often becomes “chronic anxiety”, lingering in a family or social system even after the threat is gone.  Acute anxiety is a pervasive stance of being that continues even after the threat is gone.  (Soldiers with post-traumatic stress who wake up on high alert even while safe at home in their beds, depression-era senior citizens who stock up on eggs or toilet paper years later, an adult who grew up in an abusive home who winces every time someone raises their voice even the smallest bit.)  Chronic anxiety is present when the threats of the past continue to hold power even though the system is no longer really in danger. 

There have been lots of studies about the affects of stress and anxiety in life today.  We are taught good stress reducing tricks like exercise or deep breathing or taking “mini-vacations” while at our desks, lowering our anxiousness by thinking of a ‘happy place.’  These things are all good for our personal well-being.  But in the midst of leading change, they miss the point.

For leaders, the point of “calming down” is not to feel better; it’s to make better decisions.  And when people are too “hot”, they don’t. The only issue is: Is there a lion or not? Is there really a threat or are we making this up?  Do we really need to run, or should we stay here and get water and then calmly continue our journey? Do we really need to be this angry, fearful, defensive or is there a better decision that we can make that will take us where we want to go? 

For leaders, this is the point to remember about anxiety: People who are overly or chronically anxious don’t make good decisions.  When anxiety spikes we revert to more “primitive” ways of being.  We fight, we flee, we freeze.  We turn on each other instead of working together.  We run from danger and leave others to face the lions alone.  Or we capitulate and allow the herd to be overrun.

Peter Steinke: “To lead means to have some command of our own anxiety and some capacity not to let other people’s anxiety contaminate us; that is, not to allow their anxiety to affect our thinking, actions, and decisions.”

Perhaps the most important task of leadership is to cultivate the ability to make good decisions.  Good, wise, discerning, decisions for the sake of both the health and mission of the herd.  And that will take both “regulating the heat” and thinking well while doing so. 

Both of which are necessary to face the absolutely unexpected threat that is coming to knock you "off course" as you lead your people.  Which is where we will pick this up next...

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Three Leadership Truths: Essential, Functional, Developmental

Leadership is distinct from management because leadership is about transformation—personal and organizational transformation.  While management, like stewardship, cares for what is, leadership is about what can be or what must become for an organization to fulfill its reason for being.  To that end, let me offer three leadership truths that shape my work in leadership development (mostly in church and non-profit circles.)

1. Leadership is essential. By leadership I don’t mean titles or authority necessarily. (Both are helpful, but not essential to leadership.)  Leadership is not measured by corner offices or heavy furniture, higher salaries or august job descriptions. Leadership is a way of being in an organization, family, team, company, church, business, nation (or any other ‘system’) that, in the words of Ronald Heifetz, “enables a group to grow so they can face their toughest challenges.” Since leadership is about transformation and because we are hard-wired to resist change, every living system requires someone in it to live into and lead into the new future we are resisting.  If someone is not functioning as a leader, the system will always default to the status quo. 
   
   Which hints at the second truth:
2. Leadership is expressed in functioning.  Leaders act. Leaders function.  While speaking is a form of functioning, and many leaders are known for their words in times of crisis, leadership is expressed mostly primarily in the actions that “enable a group to grow and face their toughest challenges.”  Leaders lead by example, words, decisions and even silence.  Sometimes a transformative act is to stand in the middle of an anxious storm and say nothing. Just stand and stand there.  Ed Friedman said, “The leader in the system is the one who is not blaming anyone.” Note: Everyone one of those words was chosen deliberately.  The Leader is the one “in the system”.  That is they have stayed in the family, church, organization, company, country, etc.  You can’t lead from outside the system. (You can be a prophet or critic or consultant or supporter, but not a leader).  The leader is “not blaming anyone” or for that matter any circumstance, but solely focusing on personal responsibility, looking to what she can do—how she can function--differently. And that ‘doing’ is not just impulsive acting, but thoughtful, reflective responding. Perhaps the single most transformative moment of all is when a leader says “I don’t know what to do” and then gets about the hard work of leading learning.
   
   Which leads to the third truth…
3. Leadership is developed. I believe that leadership is a skill that can be taught.  I am firmly in the leaders are ‘made, not born’ school.  Just as some have more aptitude for a skill than others, some have more natural abilities and talents that lend themselves to particular leadership in particular circumstances. But any person who is willing to take personal responsibility, convene a group to work on a tough problem and persist in the face of resistance is a leader.  At the same time, the common inference when people want to learn to be leaders is that it is mostly head-knowledge.  If we read books and can repeat phrases (like ‘adaptive challenges’) we think we have ‘learned leadership’ (which is pretty much like learning to fly a plane from watching a video).  But, and this is critical, leadership is learned in the doing and on the reflecting on the doing.  (John Dewey reportedly wrote: “We don’t learn from experience, we learn by reflecting on experience.”) At the same time even reflection is not enough.  Leadership requires developing what Friedman called, “self-regulation.”  Because our brains don’t process information and learn well when we are highly anxious. Leaders must develop in emotional maturity and the ability to persist in complex emotional systems without either distancing or taking resistance personally.  Or as the good folks at the Lombard Peace Center like to say, Leaders must be able to “stay calm, stay connected, and stay the course.”

If we read these truths backward we get a dose of harsh reality. Since we are not developing leaders, there is lack of leadership functioning. Without essential leadership functioning, most organizations are not “growing”, not “transforming” and certainly not “facing their toughest challenges.”  

These truths about leadership being essential, functional and developmental are critical for any organization facing tough challenges.  But I see it even more clearly in the churches with whom I work. The world is changing rapidly. Churches and church leaders are becoming increasingly irrelevant, even marginalized. Shared, corporate faith is viewed with cynicism at best, downright hostility at worst.  The cultural advantage we experience during the 18 centuries of Christendom has almost completely dissipated.  The church and our churches are in an ‘adapt or die’ moment.  And the leadership that has been developed with a Christendom mindset (leadership is a position, a mode of speaking, and is found only in those with natural born gifts) is inadequate to this immensely challenging—transformation-demanding--moment in history. 

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Courage, Failure, & Leadership

Doomed to Fail (...and that’s the good news)

You are tasked with the big problem. You work hard. You learn. You listen. You consult. You think. You scribble. You problem solve.  Then… The muse inspires.  The bolt of lightning strikes.  Clarity comes from the sky and you see the Big Idea. You frame it in a classic Jim Collins-worthy “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”.  You can see the future laid out before you.  You write it up. You create the PowerPoint. You shape the concept into a memorable phrase. You launch the initiative. You make the announcement.  It is met with wild affirmation, appreciation, applause; commendations all around.  You are a star.  The organization rolls out the new plan. The org chart is rearranged.  Teams, plans, goals are renamed.  Objectives are set and all is good. And then… 

Nothing.  Nothing changes. At least nothing really important. Oh, a few cosmetic shifts.  But mostly. Everything defaults back to where it was. Homeostasis rules.  The “persistence of form” as Ed Friedman called it, is really, really persistent.  Cynicism follows.  Resistance becomes more entrenched.  True transformation just got that much harder.

What does it take for the Great Idea to become embedded in the culture of the institution?  Why do so many innovations get sabotaged or stunted before they could even be tried as an experiment? 

This is the demoralizing frustration for so many leaders. We see ourselves as a vigorous President Kennedy laying out the challenge to put a man on the moon.  We believe people will rally to the vision and eagerly sacrifice their personal goals for the higher good. 

But Kennedy had far more than a good speech and a compelling vision.  He was coming off a failure (the Bay of Pigs fiasco) that convinced him that he needed to take a big risk on a big idea. The Russians were already ahead of him in the space race creating a compelling sense of urgency.  He also had at least some tepid support of the Congress.  (Reportedly, on the way back to the White House after the now famous speech, Kennedy turned to speechwriter Ted Sorenson and said, "That didn't go over well, did it?")

And most importantly, he had NASA.  He had a group of really smart, really committed, roll-up-the-sleeves-and get-it-done task masters who were ready to get to work.

As John Kotter and other gurus of deep organizational change will tells us, transformation does not just come from a big idea.  Deep change is more than genius, inspiration and marketing. Transformation requires risk-taking born of urgency, aleadership  ‘holding environment’ that will create enough stability and support in an organizational system to experiment with a big idea, and a “guiding coalition” or a “transformation team” ready to do the work of bringing the idea to reality.  

• Without the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy wouldn’t have been willing to gamble on a risk.
• Without the Russians, there wouldn’t have been the urgency to act.
• Without even the tepid support of Congress there wouldn’t have been the resources to even try.
• But without NASA, nothing would ever have gotten off the ground.

Every architect needs both a bank to fund the project and a construction team to build it. Every visionary leader needs both a group to keep attending to the necessary work and a team to lead the transformation of the organizational culture. And while they may be one and the same in some circumstances, a great idea needs at least TWO groups of people to see it through:  The Maintaining Mission Group and The Transformation Team.

The Maintaining Mission Group has to be committed to giving safety, time, space, protection and resources to the project.  At first, they don’t need to actually do anything except NOT create obstacles and not sabotage the change process (a big task, in itself!).  At best, they actively voice support, they keep a steady hand at the wheel and they monitor the inevitable anxiety.  They provide ‘cover’ for the Transformation Team, while also caring for the organization. They make sure that the community feels ‘safe’ while a few are venturing forth. 

In the church setting that I mostly work in, this is the perfect job for the Session or Board. For a non-profit this is the Board of Directors.  They don’t so much have to make it happen, as ‘buy-in’ to giving the Transformation Team time to make it happen.  They have to understand and ‘own’ the changes, but not necessarily give their time and energy to them.  Or to shift the metaphor, they need to keep the wagon train moving even while the scouts ahead are looking for a new pass through the mountains.  Eventually, this group is the most important.  This is the group that will choose to institutionalize the change or not.  This team protects the culture of the organization and it is the team that can single-handedly thwart

The Transformation Team is akin to what John Kotter calls a “Guiding Coalition”.  This is the group of people who are going to add effort to the inspiration.  They are going to actually do the work of listening, learning, attempting, and yes, failing (Do you remember how many early attempts at building rockets flamed out on the launch pad?).  This team needs to be innovative and persistent, cohesive and communicative.  In many situations, this is the staff executive team, but often it is not.  Indeed, in church settings, I believe it is usually a mistake to assume that the church staff is going to be the Transformation Team. Transformation Teams need to be made up of both staff and lay leaders, both those who have defined roles and those with informal influence.  In short, the Transformation Team must be those with the most creativity, energy, credibility and personal maturity.  They must be both enthusiastic for the idea, determined to see it through, and willing to expend relational capital to bring genuine culture change.  And eventually, they have to give up their power and influence so that the organization itself will embrace and institutionalize the changes.

For most leaders I know, and especially for pastors, this certainly doesn’t sound like good news.  This means that most of the ways we have been taught to lead are indeed ‘doomed to fail.’  We want to believe that if we just give a good speech, then people will rise up and rally to the cause.  We love the idea that a compelling vision, an inspirational goal and maybe creative YouTube video going virally on our Facebook page will bring about a new day in the life of the organization. 

The skills that we have honed most (write sermons, hospital calls, counseling, teach classes) we do independently, even individualistically.  When we work with a committee it is usually as a ‘moderator’ not leader.  We mostly watch over processes that are more about making sure that the conversation is orderly, than courageous or creative.  So most very well-intentioned, even ambitious, attempts for a Session or a Pastor to bring transformation are doomed because of a lack of capacity more than anything else.  A pastor needs to speak like Kennedy, moderate the governance like a Speaker of the House and establish and lead NASA all at the same time.  

The good news in the midst of all this doom and failure, is that our own Christian tradition is filled with examples of “transformation teams” that succeeded in ways far beyond most imagining (Even Jesus had a “Transformation Team” of Twelve).  Our theology affirms that leadership is a shared task and the church is meant to be both a safe environment for protecting the community and a group that is willing to lay down their lives for the vision of God’s Kingdom come to earth.  

For inspired ideas to take root within the culture of an institution there must be series of intentional actions.  Pastors need to learn a new set of skills to go along with our abilities to preach, teach, counsel, and moderate meetings.  When leaders are willing to give up the myth of the inspiring idea and instead learn to build teams of inspired action then the church will begin to see more dreams become reality.

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Beyond the Pulpit: Kingdom Leadership

My presentation at the Ogilvie Institute's Inside Out Conference.

Beyond the Pulpit (Kingdom Leadership) from Brehm Center on Vimeo.

 

 

 

We Need Chaplains...Just not More Of Them...Not Now.

In a recent editorial, Mark Galli offered a thoughtful and provocative defense of the pastor-as-chaplain model vs. the pastor-as-leader model.  Galli criticizes the growing impersonal institutionalism of the church that holds up the model of the megachurch as the only true vision of congregational health and success (and the megachurch “lead pastor” as the only true model of pastoral vitality).  I couldn’t agree with him more. 

Without doubt, there is continual need for women and men with spiritual sensitivity to the souls of people (in the holistic sense that Galli describes so well). Indeed, there is something incredibly important occurring when a pastor accompanies us through a dark night of the soul, a personal trauma, a moment of crisis.  And without doubt there have been far too many churches that have begun to take on the ethos of a corporation that seem to miss these most important moments. I couldn't agree with him more.

Galli wants to raise up the importance of this pastoral presence by challenging our ideas of the "pastor as leader" and--by and large--I agree with his critique.  If leader means "someone who makes the organization grow in numbers, dollars and reputation," it is a deficient definition indeed.

Galli goes on to assert that the model most criticized--that of “chaplain”--is actually the model of Jesus who traveled throughout Galilee as a healer. He  writes, “For centuries, the pastorate was thought to be about "the cure of souls"—souls being understood not as the spiritual part of us, but as the fullness of our humanity. The pastor has traditionally been thought of as one who does ministry in the midst of a people who are sick and dying, and who administers in word and sacrament, in Scripture and in prayer, the healing balm of the Lord. So who told us that the pastor is primarily a leader/entrepreneur/change agent and anything but a curer of souls? And why do we believe them?”

And it is at this very point that I want to offer a nuance that I hope will be received by Mr. Galli (and the hundreds who “liked” this article on Facebook) as an opportunity to continually clarify the complexity of the pastoral task in our day. 

Yes, “for centuries, the pastorate was thought to be about the ‘cure of souls’.”  I agree.  That’s the way it USED to be.  During the centuries of Christendom, this was an appropriate and helpful metaphor.  In a culture where Christianity was in the cultural center, “chaplain” or even “pastor” was a crucial component for keeping powers-that-be attuned to the word of God and the way of Jesus when other cultural forces were present to lead us into temptation and conformity with “the world”. In a Christendom world, pastors were needed to continually bring a word of truth, a touch of healing and a prophetic reminder of what God required of his people, an institution or a nation (which is also true in a theocracy, as Galli points out in his use of Nathan as a “servant” to David).

Indeed in our cultural institutions that still recognize the need for someone to be the embodiment of the spiritual in the corporate life, we celebrate.  We can rejoice that there are institutions like schools, hospitals, the military (even Congress!) that continue to call on individuals to be available to heal, to care, to counsel and yes, speak prophetically in the midst of the complexities of organizational life.  And indeed, this is the model that is still advocated by many of my pastoral heroes like Eugene Peterson, whom Galli holds up as the model (see here for another post where I “Dare to Differ with Eugene Peterson”).

But increasingly, this is not the mission of the church today. In a post-Christendom context, the metaphor of pastor as healer, chaplain, or curer of souls is inadequate to the task and literally killing the church.  Churches that continue to cling to a Christendom context and expectation for pastors (as seen mostly in mainline churches like my own) are dramatically in decline and becoming increasingly irrelevant to the changing cultural contexts that are far more like a mission field in the first century than the cultural contexts of the most recent past centuries for which Galli (and most of us, frankly—even me) pine nostalgically.

But that day is gone. 

The Missional Movement, as originally inspired by the insights of Lesslie Newbigin expressed theologically by Darrell Guder and others, has given rise to an entirely different understanding of a pastor as the leader of a people in mission. 

In this post-Christendom context, the congregation, not the pastor, is the embodiment of Jesus (literally “the body of Christ”).  The congregation, not the pastor, is the true ‘healer of souls’ going into the world to demonstrate and proclaim the reign of God.  The laity (that is the whole people of God), not just the pastor, is the prophetic voice to power in boardrooms, courtrooms, and classrooms.  The Church, not just particular Christians, is the presence of God, the temple of the Spirit and corporately, communally and contextually—the manifold witness of God to the particular locales of God’s world.

To be sure, leadership in a missional context is NOT the model offered by the megachurch either.  The institutional isomorphism that gave rise to the megachurch as the model of a successful church-as-corporation is just as rooted in Christendom as the mental model of “pastor-as-chaplain.”  And megachurches for all of their numbers and name-recognition are also in decline, by the way.  While there are certainly exceptions, most megachurches continue to thrive most in parts of the United States that still hold the most cultural Christianity--the geographic south.  It is right for us to recognize that that model, while still vibrant in some places, is likely not the best model for most of us.

What is needed today in our churches is not to replace “leader” with “servant”, as Galli suggests, but a deeper understanding of the kind of servant-leadership needed in this changing world.  As the world changes, denominations, seminaries, thought-institutions and and voices of influence like Christianity Today need to continually affirm and support a changing paradigm of pastoral leadership.

This pastoral leadership paradigm is not yet clear (and it will likely not be just one ‘model’).  We are more aware of what it is not than what it is and we know that it will look different in every context.

I believe it will be more apostolic than chaplaincy, more about cultivating worshipping missional learning communities (isn’t that what a church of “disciples” really is?), than managing a vender of religious services, or providing private spiritual counsel.  It will be both personal and communal; it will be both liturgical and public.  It will be complex, holistic, rooted in and expressed differently in every particular context.  It will be about organizational leadership that is organic.  And it will be in every way about transformation. 

(See here for more posts where I explore pastors as transformational leaders.)

We need pastors (and frankly leaders in every sector of society) who are continually being transformed who can lead individuals in their own transformation and communities in communal transformation.  We need women and men who are not only gifted in the cure of souls, but also the cultivation of communities of witness and mission. We need more pastors who can teach the faith, cultivate spiritual maturity and equip communities of saints to live and proclaim the reign of God in the mission field that is right past the church parking lot and changing rapidly.  

Leadership is about equipping people to grow so that they can faithfully face the challenges in front of them. We don’t need more chaplains.  We need more leaders. 

We just aren’t sure exactly what they look like yet.

Daring to Differ with Eugene Peterson (and Putting the Organic back in the Organizational)

I love Eugene Peterson. Well, his writings anyway.  But I am going to dare to differ with him on this one. 

Let’s be clear: I am huge Eugene Peterson fan. Huge. I read him and quote him and because of him, I have read people like Wendell Berry, for one. One off-hand comment he made when he came to talk at a “Theological Breakfast” at Fuller Theological Seminary changed my whole trajectory of ministry. And I once made a complete fool of myself in order to sit next to him at a conference where we were both speakers

So, when Rhett Smith posted a link on Facebook to a Gabe Lyon’s interview about Peterson’s take on pastoral work, I immediately clicked on it.  Rhett highlighted these two paragraphs and I want to take issue with one word that  I wish he had omitted: “organizational”.

“The way I understood the uniqueness of the pastoral vocation is that it is insistently personal. You cannot do pastoral work in a programmatic or impersonal or organizational way.
You've got to know the names of these people, know their lives, be in their homes. The unique vocation of pastor is to know those people. And at the same time, to know the scriptures, the whole world of scripture, so that stories of those people get integrated to the stories of scripture.”

 To use a kind of parallelism that renders “organizational” synonymous to “programmatic” or even worse “impersonal” is to miss some of the true challenge, the “mess amidst the mystery” (to use a Peterson term) that is pastoral work. 

Pastors, at least, pastors of congregations, need be both “personal” and “organizational”.  If they are not, then they are likely not pastors.  Spiritual directors, certainly. Evangelists, possibly. Prophets, maybe.  But to be a pastor means to pastor both persons and the communities of which those persons are part.  It is to know the people, the scriptures, AND the organizational systems in which the word struggles to take root, grow in the souls and bear fruit in the lives of actual persons in actual towns and cities and cultures.

To use an illustration that I believe Peterson would both approve and understand (he has famously quoted Wendell Berry on the similarities between pastoral work and farm life), it’s the difference between Johnny Appleseed and an apple farmer. 

The farmer has to attend to both the seeds and the soil, and indeed, even more than the soil.  The farmer must be personally connected to the land yes, but also to the fences, the barns, the silos and the livestock. The farmer must pay personal attention to the environment, the weather, the terrain and the seasons.  The farmer must attend to the whole organic system that is the farm.  In the same way, a pastor can be the very best, most personally attentive, loving, caring, engaged and involved “shepherd” attending to the sheep, but if she doesn’t build a safe sheep pen, the wolves come.

And, let's be clear: For most of us pastors, the organizational part is way harder than the personal part.  We became pastors because we love people and we love the word. Most of us wish that we could somehow limit our calling to knowing our people and knowing the scriptures.  But we also know better. The church organizational system needs as much pastoring as any person and this is exactly where most of us are ill-prepared.  We till the soil, we plant the seed, we water and wait for harvest...and then the fences fail, the roof caves in, the well runs dry and the backhoe needs a new battery.  The bank calls our loan, the government changes its policies,the markets fluctuate, and huge cultural forces seem to conspire against us.  (Sounds like a church, huh?)

The root word for organizational is the same as “organic”.  And perhaps that is a better distinction to make.  With a growing dissatisfaction of impersonal organizational models, the answer isn’t to create a false divide between personal and organizational.  It is to re-personalize the organizational; to learn the ways of “organic” organizational pastoring. To reconsider our organizational models around the actual descriptions of health and fruitfulness that the scriptures teach and humans need.  

And I think Eugene Peterson, himself a farmer, could help us all on thinking about this one.

Canoeing the Mountains: Pastors as Leaders into Uncharted Territory

Some thoughts that are beginning to come together in what I think will become my next book...

Canoeing the Mountains: Pastors as Leaders into Uncharted Territory from Fuller Seminary on Vimeo.

Taking the Hill With Grandma: A New Article for PFR

I tend to think of myself as a “Take the Hill” kind of guy.  I like a challenge.  I tend to think of myself as leading “a band of brothers (and sisters)” on an offensive to spread the Kingdom of God.  I get all inspired by “Henry V”-type speeches about charging “once more into the breach.”  I resonate with the idea of a pastor as a “leader of a mission.”

One of my colleagues is really different than I am. Maybe it’s because he’s had enough of “challenging the troops.”  Maybe he’s seen enough pain in lives and congregations to be skeptical of the kinds of ‘charges’ that pastors like me seem to relish. My colleague has been called to minister to a church that is in the middle of a retirement home.  He tells me with a sigh of great satisfaction that he spends his days, “hugging and kissing, teaching and ministering to some of the greatest saints you’ll ever meet.”  Sometimes I am jealous of him and I get the sense that sometimes he thinks he’s supposed to be more like me.

I take the hill, he cares for grandma.  And mostly I think that most of us assume that these are two different types of pastoral ministries.  It is common to hear talk about the differences between “missional” ministry and “chaplaincy”; about “leading” vs. “care-taking”; about “church renewal” vs. “church hospice”.  And in some ways, the distinction is really apt.  But in other ways, I think those distinctions reveal both our own projections about ourselves and a convenient way to avoid what is true about all churches.

To read the rest of the article please visit the PFR website where it is posted for their most recent e-newsletter.