Tod Bolsinger

Burned out or Soul-Starved?

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. 

In the Greek myth, Narcissus dies of starvation.  Cursed to fall in love with the next face he sees because he cruelly hurts another, he sees his reflection in a pond, falls in love with his own image and can’t pull himself away—even to eat or drink.  Continually ‘feeding’ the adoration of the image, he never eats and dies.

Today, the debate over what “causes” narcissism is filled with as many varied voices as there are experts.  But almost everyone agrees on this: Pastoral ministry is rampant with narcissistically wounded people.  We clergy join politicians, entertainers, and business leaders in this category.  And I want to suggest yet another cause for the “burnout” we see amongst clergy:  We are actually soul-starved. 

The projection of others onto our roles, the requirement of being constantly “on”, the necessity “wooing” people who are growing more disinterested and resistant to our messages, and the stress of living professionally and personally in the “family-system” environment that is the church feeds our images and starves our true, whole, authentic-to-God selves.

To be clear, the popular description of the narcissist as the self-absorbed, “me-centered person” actually misses the deeper, more painful reality.  Most narcissists are themselves wounded souls, who for whatever reason need to defend against our insecurity or fear of abandonment. As Peter Steinke describes it, “Outwardly vain, the narcissist is inwardly impaired. “

We gravitate to the limelight, because that is where we have found that we get the affirmation and affection that we all need.  Whatever the complex circumstances, (and every one of us has a different story with differing degrees of woundedness), most of us grew up in environments where we were praised and affirmed when we were “on” and felt ignored or rejected at least in part for our true selves.  We pastors, as Henri Nouwen said, are all “wounded healers” and that in one way, this is how God works in our lives to redeem our brokenness—by letting us use our pain to minister to others.  

But when this broken place in our lives is denied or rejected; when we stay stuck in our lack of self-awareness, (some think the word “Narcissus” comes from the Greek word for “slumber” or “numbness”) we create and continue a pattern that feeds our images but ignores the needs of our true, wounded, selves.

For Steinke, when unexamined and unacknowledged, this creates a cyclical pattern of relationship between a pastor and congregation  The narcissistically wounded pastor requires the congregation to ‘supply’ affirmation, and the congregation, enthralled by the giftedness, insight and spiritual magnetism of the leader feel themselves to be ‘special’ and so keep supplying the pastor's ego needs.The dynamics of narcissism revolve around the lack of self-knowledge.

Steinke again:

So one person remains intoxicated with all the praise and adulation he manipulates from others, and the others are enthralled to be associated with someone larger than life. Those who function narcissistically do well so long as they have people who adore them. But some can be so insecure inside that they must ensure their specialness with more and more admirers. They thrive on the ecstasy of numbers.

As a pastor, I have spent the better part of the last twenty-five years figuring out what really feeds me, what really nourishes my soul and what is little more than “swooning” over my image.  When I raise my hands in worship, all stand and give me attention; when I speak they listen in rapt silence, when I finish a good sermon, people line up to tell me that they LOVE me.  (When was the last time you told your plumber, lawyer or financial advisor that you LOVED them for doing their jobs.)  But if I spend my life getting nothing more than the love that is projected on my role, I will not just burn out and fade away, I will die vocationally.

Even worse, the problem with the language of “burnout” is that it actually feeds the image we need to resist.  We live in a world where people admire those who “give their all”, who “leave it out on the field”, who give a “110%”.  But if we could become more aware that we actually starving ourselves we can choose to take responsibility for our own soul-nourishment.

To that end,  let me offer some steps and some resources that I use and suggest for my pastor friends that I partner with, mentor or coach.

First, admit that, if you are feeling soul-starved, very likely you have fallen into the trap of trying to get the love and affirmation you need from your image or role rather than for your deepest, most authentic self.  It will be easier to do this if you know that you are not the only wounded soul in the pulpit, so, start by doing a little reading.  Read Susan Howatch’s Glittering Images, or Henri Nouwen’s Wounded Healer and embrace that at least in some small way, our issues soul starvation are really about our feeding a real need in the wrong way. 

Second, try to become more self-reflective, more “awake” and pay attention to how often we go into a numb ‘soul-trance’ when we are in our roles.  Specifically, try to become aware that every time that you get a “charge” from serving in your role, you are very likely at that moment, being drained, not filled. What you really need in order to serve the congregation and the people in your life in a healthy, enduring way,  can only come out of the limelight, in the moments when you are most authentic, real and vulnerable, open to God in truth and to those who see beyond your role to your self.  In order to lead, you need allies and partners in the church, but in order to thrive most pastors need friends who don’t need them to be “the pastor.”  Read Ruth Hailey Barton’s Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, or Leighton Ford’s The Attentive Life. And then...

Third, intentionally build in structures and relationships that attend to your whole self.  If the soul, as it is best understood biblically, is the ‘enfleshed spirit’ of a person, then what we need is MORE attention to ourselves, not less. That is our real selves and not our roles. I have found, that I don’t just need vacations to get a break, I need them to get out of the spotlight and enjoy the restoration that comes from being with a family who loves me and old friends who have no investment in my role.  I need to hike and ski and run and engage my body in ways that both challenge me and for which I get no “public” affirmation (I am NEVER going to win my age group in a marathon, I am not exactly built like a Kenyan.)  When I spend time in nature, I get reconnected to the reality of a world that is much bigger than me and in which I am a very small part.  When I travel I become more aware that the world really doesn’t revolve around me and that is not only very good news, but a genuine relief.  In addition, I have spent the better part of twenty years off and on in therapy and why even as I coach pastors, I have my own coaching group and covenant group to continually pay attention to the ways that I can fall back into numb, soul-starving patterns of feeding my image and not my self. 

If we re-frame burn out as soul starvation, then we realize that with the right fuel, we can probably keep doing ministry for a long time.  Unlike a withered branch that burns up, we are actually capable of being re-nourished and re-fueled.  If we can continually attend to our souls, then maybe the flame that consumes us can actually be for us and for many, a good flame that lights the way for a good long life of ministry.

Worn Out from Wearing the Collar

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. 

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a priest drinking a beer. 

It was at my grandmother’s house and I was maybe five years old.  The local priest had stopped in for a visit and he was enjoying a late afternoon refreshment with my grandmother and my uncle.  His collar was slightly askew and his top button of his cassock was undone and he smiled when he saw me. But I think it was an awkward moment for both of us.

I’m a Presbyterian in a pretty informal beach town.  So, although I am a “man of the cloth” I rarely wear anything that distinguishes me as clergy.  I don’t wear a clerical collar (although some Presbyterians do), I don’t even wear a clergy robe or hoods or even a stole while leading worship (though I have some pretty great robes with stripes that I trot out for ordinations and such)  The truth is that I barely ever wear a suit and tie.  In fact, there is very little that distinguishes me outwardly as a pastor.  And I like it that way.  I like looking and feeling like a “regular” guy who is just like everyone else.  Honestly, I take pride when people meet me and are surprised that I am a pastor. (“You don’t seem like a pastor,” one person said to me, “you seem normal.”)

But sometimes, that is part of the problem.  Because I look and even feel like I am just like everyone else, I forget that, really in most people’s eyes, I am not.  No matter how much I might want to escape being seen in my role, I am always “on.”  After thirteen years pastoring at the same church and the same small town, most everybody knows that I am “the pastor”.  It’s the way I am introduced to friends, it’s the reason I am the biggest party-killer in town.  It’s also the reason why my neighbors were all nervous when we first moved in (“What if the pastor hears my wife and me arguing?”) It’s the reason why kids who have been Facebook friends with me for years “unfriend” me when they go to college.  Even my wife and kids know that others look at them differently and that’s because of me too.  (“They are ‘the pastor’s wife’ or the “P.Ks”.)

When I take a political stand or I post a status update on Facebook, it reflects on my church and even some would say on God.  I am the host of every gathering making sure that others are included.  I have to break the ice and remember names and be cordial or someone will tell someone that “those  Presbyterians” sure are  (fill in the blank with favorite derogatory remark spoken when feeling slighted.) 

I’m not complaining. I really do know that I signed up for this.  It comes along with everybody in my church knowing my salary and me knowing that someday I will have to leave this community after I leave the church.  But bluntly, there are some pretty great things that go along with this role too.  We pastors are really significant to people’s lives.  We get invited into holy moments where others are asked to stay out. We can walk into emergency rooms and bedsides and family gatherings.  We are handed babies to bless and are told family secrets.

And pastoring comes with some great perks, too.  I have enjoyed wonderful dinners, great bottles of wine, thoughtful gifts and some amazing opportunities to meet people because I am someone’s pastor.  I have met ambassadors, CEOs, celebrities, political figures and college presidents.  I sat at the head table of a gala event with a presidential cabinet member just because I was giving a prayer before dinner.  (A pastor friend of mine was whisked away to a Caribbean Island to perform a wedding for a big movie star.)  On top of that I am prayed for by literally dozens of people every day, I am always greeted warmly when I arrive at church, I am introduced to everyone’s friends and family members, I have a key to every room in the church.  I can walk into any meeting in our church, any conversation on our patio and interrupt whatever they are doing to say something…and they thank me for doing so. 

Now let’s be clear here.  And this is the thing most of us forget.  Tod Bolsinger cannot do any of this.  Tod Bolsinger, the person, isn’t all that interesting and really wouldn’t be invited to much of this.  Tod Bolsinger, the person, can’t interrupt anyone without being a rude, inconsiderate boob.  (If I try that at home, my 13 year old daughter says, “Daddy, you are interrupting.” ) But “THE PASTOR” can.  The Pastor is invited into all those places given all those perks and treated with such respect because of our ROLE and NOT our self.  While in order to be authentic I have to bring myself to my role, I can never forget that I am not my role.  When I confuse my role and my self, I inevitably take too much too personally and bear burdens that are meant for God and not any human. 

When people get angry or hurt, either mad at God or mad at the church, who do they focus their rage upon?  The Pastor.  When as Pastor of the church I have had to fire staff members, work with Session to cut budgets of key ministries, make decisions that others didn’t like or implement change others didn’t want, who gets the brunt of the attack? The Pastor.  Only when I am clear about the difference between my self and my role can I protect myself from taking the disappointment, anger, awkwardness, projections, and distance of others personally.

We pastors are only going to develop the staying power to stay in our positions if we first admit that this is really OUR problem.  Not only our congregants and the public-at-large, but WE continually confuse our “self” with our “role.”  And until we get clear that “I am more than my role” nobody else will either.

 

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.

Clergy Burnout: And Why I am Taking on MORE work.

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. 

I didn't need to read the Facebook posts on the recent NY Times article, I had received an email this morning from a friend.  He told me that he is taking a leave of absence from his church. 

The irony of the timing is both sad and palpable.  I just returned from my 8th trip to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park with a group of high school seniors from my church (including my own son). I also, spent two days with 110 of our church's youth at our annual summer camp. They are a happy, fun bunch who shout out "P-Tod" (for "Pastor Tod") whenever I enter the room.  They not only did usual camp stuff like games, and music and rock-climbing and banana boating, but also spent half a day in a silent retreat practicing spiritual disciplines and reflecting on their life with God.  I have an amazing youth ministry team on my staff.  I had to choke back tears when I talked about the church members who volunteered to be counselors and service corp for this week with the kids.

One of my very best friends is my associate pastor.  We get to plan worship together every week.  I get to study and teach the Bible every day. I lead communion. I work with a great staff team, and I support really committed lay-leaders who are doing things like building houses in Baja California, ministering to the poor in Malawi, Africa, offering care for the sick and shut in, teaching children the faith and sharing the gospel in both English and Spanish language services.

I love my job. Which is why I was saddened by the article that has been posted and re-posted by so many of my pastor friends this morning on Facebook. According to the NY Times headline , most clergy don't.  (Saddened, but not surprised, however.)

Clergy are fat, stressed and depressed.  We take more anti-depressants than the people in our pews.  We aren't expected to live as long either.  The Times only confirms what most didn't want to say out loud: "Many (pastors) would change jobs if they could." 

The Times article quotes health care experts who are wisely cautious about suggesting quick fixes, but mostly it rightly focuses on the "boundary issues" between pastors and congregations that keep many of us feeling as if we don't have a life beyond the pulpit. It's a good article.  It should be read by both clergy and lay leaders who work alongside us.  It's really important.  (If nothing else, the article points to some really helpful resources--one of which, the Lilly Endowment's The National Clergy Renewal Program funded my sabbatical in 2006.)    

But, for me, there is an affirmation of a call in all of this. When I first came to San Clemente, Al Sloan, one of the elders who had been on the nominating committee, came to me and said, "Tod, my wife Enid and I are committed to seeing that you and your family have a great ministry and a great life.  Whatever you need from us, we'll do."  And they did. 

Through the years, Al's promise to me has become my promise to my staff  team and my colleague: To have a great ministry and a great life.  To serve God without losing your soul.  To minister to others without mistreating our families.  To nurture a community of faith that nurtures the abundant life for all. To lead a church that is both healthy and faithful, every family--including pastors' families--experience a way of living and leading that is truly fruitful.

So, this morning, fresh off an experience that reminds me of why I love being a pastor; deeply aware of how many of my colleagues don't; and with a sense that "where much is given, much is required" (the verse that my pastor Lloyd Ogilvie used in my ordination charge), I feel more called than ever to work alongside churches and pastors to help us all have a great ministry and a great life.

For the past two months, I have been preparing to start working as a church consultant and executive coach for pastors with TAG Consulting's Transforming Church Team.  Starting this month, I will be spending a couple of days each month working alongside pastors and church leadership teams helping them to look at the ways they need to grow as leaders in order to be both healthy and fruitful in a changing and demanding world.  I'll be able to share what I have been learning and I'll be able to keep growing as a pastor and leader, too. And everything I learn, I'll share here. 

 

Related articles

Mind the Gap: The Practices of Adaptive Leadership

Mind the Gap: The Practices of Adaptive Leadership

 

I spent the past week in the beauty of Mount Hermon Christian Conference Center at the West Coast Presbyterian Pastors Conference.   

I am uploading my speaking notes here for the attendees and others who want to follow along. 

Download 1-Canoeing the Mountains_Leading Through Adaptive Change_WCPP

Download 1_Change or Die_understanding adaptive leadership_Leading into uncharted territory #2

  Download Back to the Pass_Core Capacities

"Adaptive Leadership consists of the learning required to address conflicts in the values people hold, or to diminish the gap between the values people stand for and the reality they face.”   

Ronald Heifetz

Anybody who has ever been to London has seen the ubiquitous “Mind the Gap” signs in the underground.  They warn train travelers to watch their step because of the small chasm created between the train and the platform.

For leaders of organizational change, we face our own chasms, or our own gaps. Indeed, leadership is exercised in helping our charges “mind the gap” between our aspired values and our actions, between our values and the reality we face. 

So here is a quick list of how leaders Mind the Gap and enter into adaptive work.

1. Get up on the balcony (while listening from the floor).  This is exhausting work, but it is the primary work.  Leaders must be listeners and people who have the vision to see the deeper systemic realities at work in the organization. What is the ‘music’ that keeps our organization, our church, our family ‘dancing’?
    
2. Give the work back to the people most effected by the challenge.  Are you the only one who is losing sleep over the challenges that you face?  What can we do as leaders to ‘escape the expert expectation’?  First thing: transition from being the “great answer giver” to a “great question asker." Raise the issues for others to deal with and get them wrestling with you. 
    
3. Growth focused.  Leading people to grow so THEY can face their biggest challenge.  Leadership is mostly about learning.  Group learning, corporate and collegial learning.  To lead is to learn and lead the learning.  If learning isn’t necessary, then leadership isn’t really necessary.  The task at hand can be really important, even vital, but it’s likely stewardship—protecting and preserving what is most important—not leadership. 
    
4. Go with the energy. Work with the mature and motivated. Let’s face it, most of our work (especially as pastors) is putting out fires, dealing with the resistant, attending to the cranky and trying to appease the complainers. These are part of our work and indeed, the people to whom we are called. But when it is time to lead on, more and more of your energy must be invested in those who are motivated to grow and taking responsibility for themselves. Go with the energetic and you’ll have more energy for the others.
    
5. Grief work: Leading means dealing with loss. “Growing up means giving up.”  Adaptive work is about the helping people raise and make hard decisions about competing values in their lives. Competing values can only be solved through Win-Lose.  (“Win-win is lose-lose.”) This means something must give, something must go, something will be lost.
    
6. Get on with it! Get to work, go into the new uncharted territory. After you make some observations and interpretations, try some PLAYFUL interventions.  Get right into the middle of the muddled mess. Experiment.  (Remember what Thomas Friedman wrote about solving the world’s biggest problems? “We need 100,000 people in 100,000 garages doing 100,000 experiments so that five will work.” ) Don’t wait until you figure out the future, step into and learn along the way.  You’ll make mistakes and take missteps, but lead on! 

 

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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This is a repost of an article that first appeared here in May 2010. Recently I have been working with clients who are struggling with congregations who want the pastor to be a 'chaplain' care-taker of the congregatio, while the leadership recognizes the need for a more transformational leader.  In December 2011, I enjoyed a fruitful exchange of posts with the current editor of Christianity Today, Mark Galli on about the chaplains vs. leaders discussion. Those posts can be found here, Mark's response here, and my response to his response here.   

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.  Here’s the reality as I see it: We all have “hills to take” and all of our churches are filled with ‘grandmas’.

None of us who are in leadership of churches get the luxury of a single-focused call no matter how important we think it is.  No pastor is only a chaplain to a fellowship of saints, a preacher of the gospel, a teacher of the theology, an administrator of a church, or a “leader” of the most fit, trained, and motivated “spiritual warriors”  Pastoral ministry, if done well, is always about a myriad of oftencompeting roles.  Our call is to further the mission of the Kingdom of heaven, to expand the proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel, with the very people whom God has given us.  The church is both a mission AND a family.  It is both something to do and something that has intrinsic value even when nothing is being accomplished.  It is a complex web of paradoxes to manage and competing values to live out.

It’s one thing to imagine being the leader of a mission if you get to personally select, train, and deploy the most able and eager.  It’s another thing to accomplish the same mission with whoever happens to be given you regardless of ability (or even interest) in the task.  It’s one thing to create a church family that loves each person just as they are, and another to try to inspire and equip that people to take on a challenge that will require it to change, grow, and expend resources that it may not even have currently.

We have to love the kindly grandmas and grandpas, cute little children, cranky aunts and uncles, over-committed brothers and sisters, and sometimes-irascible and often-inspiring teenagers with whom God has called us to be “spiritual family” and then we have to try to motivate that group to work, sacrifice, give and take on the responsibilities of furthering the mission of the Kingdom in our local community and beyond.  We are a family that wants to sit cozy by the campfire together that has to get up and charge the hill (at potentially great cost).

To me this is the most demanding aspect of being a pastor: The complexity of it all.  We pastors live in an emotional field filled with competing values.  I often remind my church that in this way, we are like a “family business.”  We love, care, and value each other with a kind of unconditional love and, at the same time, we need to make decisions based on the conditions of what will further the spiritual “bottom line” of furthering our mission as a church. 

This daily dealing in competing values is the tough terrain of pastoral leadership. We are all called to take the hill with grandma.  And we can’t neglect either.  The church is BOTH a mission and a family. And holding that tension and leading a church that is faithful to both mission and family is indeed the challenge for most of us.  

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If western societies have become post-Christian mission fields, how can traditional churches become then missionary churches? Lesslie Newbigin

An older pastor looked at me with a sigh. He is nearing retirement.  And he remembers well how, not that long ago, life was really different.  “You know, when I began my ministry in a church in the south, I never worried about ‘church growth’ or ‘worship attendance’ or ‘evangelism’.  Back then if a man didn’t come to church on Sunday, his boss asked him about it on Monday.”

It was different “back then”.  Some of us have heard about it.  Others can remember it.  For some of us, those were the “good old days”. For others, those days were anything but good. (Did you see the reference to “man” in the old pastor’s statement?) But it was different.  Really different.

Sociologists and theologians refer to this recently passed period as Christendom, the 1700-year- long experiment with Christianity at the privileged center of western cultural life.  Christendom gave us “blue laws” and the Ten Commandments in school.  It gave us “under God” in the pledge of allegiance and exhortations to Bible reading in the national newspapers. (I have a copy of the Los Angeles Times from December 1963 that has a stories on the Warren Commission, the 9000 member Hollywood Presbyterian Church and a list of Daily Bible Readings for the upcoming week.) It was the day when every “City Father” laid out the town square with the Courthouse, the Library and a First Church all within the very center of the city.

And for most of us, these days are gone.  Long, long gone.  When cities are now  using eminent domain laws to replace churches with tax-revenue generating ‘big box’ stores; when Sundays are more about soccer and Starbucks then they are about Sabbath; when the fastest growing “religious affiliation” amongst young adult is “none”; when there is no real moral consensus built on Christian tradition (even amongst Christians), then Christendom as a marker of society, has clearly passed.

And most of us were not trained for this.

Most pastors were trained in the skills that were necessary for Christendom. When churches functioned primarily as "vendors of religious services" for a “Christian culture” then the primary leadership tool box was teaching (for providing Christian education), liturgics (for leading Christian services) and pastoral care (for offering Christian counsel and support).  Pastors weren’t “missionaries” and churches weren’t “missions” (Indeed, my seminary had a whole separate school for that!).   We were teachers, worship leaders and counselors. We were “chaplains” for a congregation within a Christendom culture.  And for many of us in mid-career, it’s like we woke up one morning and found ourselves ministering in a cross-cultural setting where we don’t understand the customs, the language or the values.  We are now in uncharted territory and needing to “adapt or die.”

One of my life “BHAGS” (ala Jim Collins, “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals”) is to change the way pastors are trained. I don’t have any illusions that this will be easy.  Seminaries are well aware of the urgency and all that is at stake, even if by and large they have been slow to adapt. (See this Commentary from the Chronicle of Higher Education) If traditional churches are going to become missionary churches, then pastors must become truly missional leaders.  And while teaching, liturgics and care will always be needed, the leadership skills for taking a missionary church into uncharted territory (let alone transforming a traditional church into a missionary church) are for most of us as unfamiliar as the very setting we now find ourselves in.  

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Reposting an article on the single biggest leadership obstacle that most of us ever learned.  I spend more time coaching this one "out'" of pastors I work with than almost anything else. 

The first leadership book I ever assigned my staff team was Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Effective People. It was, as my pal Charlie would say, “the right tool for the job.”  My team indeed became more "effective" in lots of meaningful ways.  One of the concepts that helped us the most was Habit #4: “Think Win-Win.”

Coming into a situation where there had been lots of “every ministry for itself” thinking and little teamwork around a unified vision, we needed to learn how to think “Win-Win” in as many situations as possible.  And it worked.  Within a remarkably short time, we became a “Win-Win”-seeking bunch of teammates all working together around a clear vision of what our church could be for our community.

Fast-forward a decade and the same “Win-Win” team finds itself “Stuck-Stuck”.  We had made a lot of good changes, the church had grown and we had re-built our entire campus.  Things were good. Mostly.

But now we faced far more complex challenges.  Challenges that had no clear cut solutions. Challenges that were more systemic in nature.  Challenges that required us to learn what we didn’t know.  Challenges that couldn’t be solved through a conference or a video series or a program.  What Ronald Heifetz calls an “adaptive challenge”.   Adaptive Challenges are the true tests of leadership.  These are the enduring tough problems that require PEOPLE to change in order for problems to get solved.  And, by definition, an “Adaptive Challenge” CANNOT be solved through Win-Win. 

Adaptive Challenges can only be solved through careful, wise, discerning, collaborative decision making that results in someone losing.  Indeed, if the organization or church (or  business or state, or country!) doesn’t face this hard reality and insists on “win-win”, the only real result will be “lose-lose.”

One executive pastor of a large Presbyterian church put it to me this way:  “Until now, we could solve every problem in our church through ‘addition’.  If there was a problem, we simply added another ministry, added more money to the budget, add more staff to the team. But now we can’t afford to add anything more.  Any changes we make now are going to have to come through making hard decisions and ‘subtraction’.” For a church that’s used to addition, ‘subtraction’ is really, really painful.

In our own church, getting beyond “win-win” required me to learn to lead differently.  Specifically, while the first decade of my ministry was built around getting “wins” together as we moved toward our vision, if we were going to truly fulfill our mission, we were going to have to make many more tough choices where someone was going to lose.  Perhaps for me, the most important day in my ministry at SCPC was when I realized that if we were going to move beyond “Win-Win” to bring genuine, missional, faithful, change the first “loser” was… me. 

More next post.

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Reposting this from a couple of years back. This story, sadly, is becoming far too common.  I will use this to kick off a new discussion about the training pastors need in a post-christendom day.

Three. In one day. 

On Monday, I heard of three of my pastor friends who all resigned this week.  No affairs, no scandal, no one is renouncing faith.  But three, really good, experienced, pastors all turned in resignations and walked away.  Two are leaving church ministry all together.

The details are as different as the pastors themselves, but the common thread is that they finally got worn down by trying to bring change to a church system that was stuck.

I have been hearing from more pastors these days.  Some of it is related to my work with TAG Consulting, a lot of it is because I am, well, one of them.  We chat and email and text and the common thread is always the same: “The church is stuck and we don’t know what to do.”

Stuck and declining. Stuck and clinging to the past. Stuck and lurching to quick fixes, trying to find an easy answer for what is clearly a systemic challenge. (“If only you could preach better, pastor!” “If only you were more ‘pastoral’ and caring, pastor!”  “If only our worship was more dynamic, pastor!” “Please, pastor, DO something…That is what we pay you for isn’t it?”)

In some cases, the leaders of the church had turned on the pastor making him the scapegoat.  In others, there was a sense that the church just wanted to stop any change process.  For some, they are early in their tenures and are trying to get at the core issues early and bravely, looking squarely at what Jim Colllins calls “the brutal facts.”  But most of them are so far into their ministry at the church that it seems like whatever they do is too little too late.  After trying so hard, it seems that the church just gave up and hunkered down.  As one of my friends said, “This church has gone deaf to my voice.”  And soon after the finger-pointing begins, immediately followed by a big severance, a disillusioned pastor and a crippled church.

Most of my pastor friends acknowledge that they contributed in some way to the very circumstances that are forcing them out of the calling they love.  All of us acknowledge that seminary didn’t prepare us for this.  But, trying to rise to the occasion, they find themselves facing a wall of resistance that quickly turns into a voice of rejection.  The underlying, unspoken issue seems to be: “If only the pastor would stop trying to lead us and just pastor us, then we’d be fine.” 

Except we are not fine.  The culture is changing, the world is changing and churches are facing change on an unprecedented scale.  We are heading into uncharted territory and pastors and lay leaders need to learn to lead a mission together where there are real obstacles, real challenges and where the future is nothing like the past.

Until we do, we’ll keep bleeding pastors and we will watch our churches wither away.