Tod Bolsinger

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.

The Leader as Biggest Loser

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 my last 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 centralized institution.  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.

Learning how to be both a good leader and a good loser is where I will pick this up next.

Canoeing the Mountains: A Sneak Peek

Here is a clip that can serve as a "Sneak Peak" to the presentations that I will be making on October 28 for the San Diego Presbytery Pastors and Leaders Retreat Day.

How do we "canoe" mountains?

How do we lead our churches into uncharted territory? 

How do we lead when the way in front of us is completely different than the terrain we were trained for?

What does this changing world require of us as leaders?  

If this is true about Baptists, how much more true is it about Presbyterians?

The Reformer | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

"As Southern Baptists struggle to evangelize post-Christian America and rev up missions worldwide, they are finding that the denomination cannot face the future until they agree on what constitutes true Southern Baptist history and identity."