Tod Bolsinger

Travels with Charlie...I'm off the grid for a week of backpacking... Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem - "Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even." (Horace)

One more from Gus and Hal when I return: Gus and Hal plant a church.

Gus and Hal Get out into the World: Living Beyond Limitations

Last post I introduced you to two widowers at my church, Gus and Hal.  Gus can’t walk, Hal is blind.  Either one of those disabilities is enough to discourage most of us, let alone a couple of 80 year old widowers who are feeling the effects of age and loss.  You wouldn’t begrudge either one if they decided to stay home and watch SportsCenter (well, Gus anyway) or listen to books on tape.  Oftentimes losses lead to a lesser experience of life.  We become more aware of our limitations and we, well, limit ourselves.  And indeed, in time that will be the case with all of us.

But Gus and Hal together don’t let limitations limit them quite so much.  And the key word is “together”.  When they come to church, they come together.  Gus sits in his wheelchair and guides Hal, who pushes the wheelchair and lets Gus give direction.  Gus can see, Hal can move and together they get out into the world.

The secret to their partnership is both simple and profound. 

1. They are keenly aware of their limitations, but they focus on their strengths. 
2. They have partnered together around their strengths. 

And you don’t have to have a degenerative eye disease or be an amputee to know that what is true of Gus and Hal is true for all of us.  We all have limitations and we all have strengths.  The accepted wisdom is that in order to be successful in life, one needs to continually focus on improving one’s weaknesses.  The assumption being that a truly good life is a life of self-contained, self-reliant independence. 

Gus and Hal challenge that assumption and demonstrate the difference of what partnership can do.  If Gus tried to get around on his own, he wouldn’t get very far.  He could likely push his own wheelchair for a while but when his arms gave out he’d be done.  If Hal wanted to get out and about into the world, he’d be limited also, but by focusing on Gus’ good eyes and Hal’s strong legs and back, together they go further than they ever could alone.

Recently, in my work with TAG Consulting, I was trained in CoreClarity.  CoreClarity is a tool that builds upon Strengthfinders to help people know and maximize their innate talents.  It’s an interesting and helpful tool that is being used by corporations, non-profits, international ministries and churches (like I am doing with my staff) to help people focus more on their strengths and less on trying to improve on their weaknesses.

The studies done on focusing on turning talents into strengths are pretty clear.  If people can honestly accept the truth about their strengths and weaknesses, those who put most of their energy into using and developing their strengths (instead of overcoming their weaknesses) are far more successful, energized and passionate about life.  Partnerships that build around a diversity of strengths create more successful teams AND allow each person to function in the areas where they are most talented, animated and have the most to contribute. 

They key to living beyond limitations:  Awareness of limitations, developing strengths and collaborating with others.

So, where do you put most of your energy?  Overcoming your own weaknesses in search of an elusive (and lonely) self-sufficiency?  Or enjoying and developing your talents into strengths in partnership with others? 

Gus and Hal Go to Church: Possibilities for Burned Out Clerics

Gus and Hal are widowers at my church.  Octogenarians both, they have become friends since their wives passed.  It's getting harder for both of them to come to church on Sundays, but to be sure when they are there, they are there together. 

Hal is blind. Gus is an amputee confined to a wheel chair.  When they come to church, Hal pushes Gus and Gus directs Hal.  They make their way through the parking lot and the patio to their place together in the pew.  And together, and only together, they come to church.  A blind man who can't see giving energy to a man who can't walk.  A lame man who can't move giving direction to a man who lacks vision. But together, they worship, take part in community and offer their gifts, and, well, inspire a whole lot of us.

Amidst the recent posts on clergy burnout, a number of thoughtful contributions have been made to both causes and possible cures, but one possibility is presented in the friendship of these two older men: partnership.  Honest, authentic, mutually interdependent partnership.

I contend that so much of the burden that leaders feel comes from the noble but misguided belief that leadership requires broad shoulders and an ability to stand under pressures alone.  Most of us give lip service to needing colleagues and being collaborative, but when the "buck stops", we really do believe that it stops on one desk only.

Sadly, this is a far piece removed from the New Testament witness where, short of Jesus' own work on the cross, virtually every other expression of the ministry of the Spirit was revealed to the world in pairs or threes (or more).  Jesus sent the 70 two by two.  Peter, James and John healed and preached, Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Silas, Paul and Silas and Timothy, Barnabas and John Mark.  Priscilla and Aquila.  And a host of other examples, of course.

We also forget in all of our ministering that the church is first and foremost an organic relational “system”: a “people”, a “community”, a “family”, where the demands of an "emotional field"  are so complex that they most like the human families we grew up in that are ideally (though obviously not always, not necessarily and not perfectly) led by a partnership called "Mom and Dad."  Instead, churches eagerly organize ourselves into "single-parent families" and wonder why most pastors aren't up to the demands.  (And again make us marvel at actual heads of single parent households who so often do such an amazing job.)

Somewhere along the way, partnerships were considered too unwieldy or unworkable and we started thinking more in hierarchies, where there is one "head".  Today, you'll hear people speak of a kind of military chain of command that is necessary in the battle for the Kingdom of heaven.  Community and collaboration may be good for dividing up tasks in "camp" or when we are "settled" in some place.  Partnership may be good for a family, but not a mission, we think.  On the "front lines" someone needs to be in charge. If we are leading into "hostile" or "uncharted territory", it's best we follow one vision, one voice...so we think.

While I'll save saying more for another post, let me just quickly remind us of the first true explorers in American consciousness.  True heroes who defied all conventions of the day, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark not only were the first Americans to cross the continent, but they did it with it extraordinary success.  And, as Stephen Ambrose reminds us, they are etched in our minds as one relational unit, "Lewisandclark".  They were partners, "equals in all respects," they declared over and over again.  In a world where most still believed in the divine right of kings, where even American presidents were from a different standing and class, in a military culture where there was a clear chain of command, and in the midst of a task that was filled with the unknown and uncertain, the only thing that Lewis and Clark counted on was that "in all respects" they would be "Lewisandclark."  (For a fascinating book on the leadership lessons of Lewis and Clark, including the “principal of productive partnership, see Jack Uldrich’s book on the topic.)

For my own denominational clan, this addiction to individual leadership is a contradiction to our core principles. As much as we Presbyterians live under the constitutional conviction that all leadership is shared between elders and pastors, still most of us function as if the role of elders is either to be a "board of directors" with the pastor being the Executive officer, or the spiritual "counsel" giving advice and offering prayers to the ONE true minister of the church.   Ironically, the phrase repeated over and over again to describe that actual work of pastors, begins with the clause, "Together with..."  Pastors lead the church, "together with..." the Session, the elders, the deacons, and, of course, associate pastors.  But of course, we don't-- at least not enough to really make a difference in our functioning and health.

I believe that our probably is that we haven't taken seriously our limitations when we carry the burden of leadership alone.  Some of us are blind, some of us can't move.  Most  of us don't have the "energy, intelligence, imagination and love" that a congregation needs all by ourselves.  And frankly, the stubbornness to think that we can lead without taking into our accounts our limitations is likely much of what is burning us out.

And in the next post, I'll explore the secret behind both Gus and Hal and Lewisandclark that can help us not only keep from burning out, but actually help us to move forward healthy and well.

The Death of Middle Judicatories

Hamm,_The_Death_of_MIddle_Judicatories,_8.23.10_Edition.pdf (42 KB)

via columbiapartnership.typepad.com

A thought-provoking article by Dick Hamm and a link to the Los Ranchos Presbytery's attempt to move beyond the "spoke and wheel" approach that Dick Hamm wisely critiques.