Toolbox For Faith

A while back, I got a phone call from another Lutheran congregation in our area asking if they could have a copy of my job description. After I explained that I had a letter of call which outlined the ministry I was called to do, but not a job description detailing specific tasks, I offered to write down a few reflections on the role of a pastor. What follows is the reflection that I shared. You can download a pdf of the reflection here.

I do not have a job description. I have a Letter of Call which offers a general description of the ministry that the congregation has called me to do. The Letter of Call focuses on areas like preaching, sacramental leadership, worship leadership, pastoral care, lifting up the concerns of those in need, equipping others for service and sharing God’s love through word and deed.

One of the joys and challenges of being a pastor is that each day presents new opportunities for ministry and quite often, no two days or two weeks are the same. My week normally has a pattern. Typically, I lead worship and teach an adult class on Sunday mornings. I lead a Bible study and go to choir practice on Tuesdays. I write a sermon and prepare to teach my Sunday School class on Thursdays and Fridays. During the week, I make visits in the afternoons, go to ministry meetings in the evenings, oversee the business of the congregation in the mornings, coordinate with paid and volunteer staff at times convenient for them and engage in my own personal devotion and study. Add a funeral, hospital visitation, service project, a member or family experiencing a crisis, and/or synod event into the mix, and the entire structure of my week changes significantly. Seasons of the church year such as Lent and Christmas, require extra time for planning, preparation and services.

No pastor or congregation can be all things to all people, but thankfully as the Apostle Paul reminds us, “there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:4-7). Pastoral ministry, at its best, is a partnership between God, God’s people in a particular place and a pastor. Each pastor has a unique set of gifts, competencies and passions and each congregation has an equally unique set of gifts, competencies, passions and mission opportunities. I believe that the key to creating a whole, healthy ministry is discovering and focusing on the ministries about which the pastor and the congregation are passionate and gifted. If you have a pastor who loves senior adults and a congregation full of seniors, then don’t try to start a youth group. Build a healthy senior adult ministry. If you invest time discovering your gifts, strengths and competencies, you will be able to begin to describe the ministry both the congregation and the pastor hope to accomplish and together you can then create a matrix by which to measure progress.

A word of caution about realistic expectations

Each person in a congregation has a set of expectations for their pastor. Many times, the congregations expectations are a compilation of all of these expectations added together, The result is that congregations expect pastors to be skilled worship leaders with inspiring sermons each Sunday, expert educators, compassionate caregivers, proficient small business administrators, fund-raisers, youth ministry specialists even when no youth are in the congregation, and public relations professionals while at the same time pleasing everyone. Pastors can be just as unrealistic. They expect members in congregations to be at least as pious as he or she is. They think that members should be keenly interested in reaching the unchurched, amazingly generous, conflict free and totally devoted to the church.

Neither set of expectations is realistic. Most pastors will bring a high degree of competency in one or two areas of ministry, a reasonable degree of competency in one to two other areas of ministry and very little competency in some areas of ministry. Most congregations are filled with ordinary people who come to church looking to share and receive community, compassion and hope. One way of looking at realistic and unrealistic expectations is to divide a sheet of paper into two columns. In one column put the expectations of what a pastor or congregation is to do and in the other column put the expectations of what the pastor or congregation is not to do. This can provide a concrete way for all parties involved to get a handle on the expectations. To me, a better way forward is to develop a shared vision for mission and then agree upon one or two ministry goals to be accomplished over the next year. I believe this approach is the healthiest and most effective way to undertake the ministry God is calling pastors and congregations to do.

When starting a call process, invest time in discovering the gifts of your congregation. An honest assessment of the ministry those gifts will allow you to accomplish will help you grow forward as a congregation. Don’t worry about what you think you are ‘supposed’ to do as a church, discover what God has gifted you to do, then look for a pastoral leader who has the gifts to help you build on your strengths and develop new strengths in the years to come.

Standing committees are designed for ongoing programs that have already been developed but new ideas require a champion or a task team led by a champion to develop. Committees have their hands full doing what they have accepted as responsibilities which means that when a new idea is presented, most often the new idea is put on the back burner.

A new idea prospers when one person or a small group of people take responsibility for making sure that the new idea becomes reality. The next step is to form a task team that has a specific responsibility and a shorter, limited term of service. The limited term of service is especially important since around 85% of all people do not want to be involved in a long term commitment of time which is how most committees function. The same people who do not want the long term committee will volunteer for a short term project in which they are interested.

Goals have four levels depending on time required to accomplish the aim and the complexity of the objective.

• Quick victories require six to nine weeks to accomplish. Quick victories are usually relatively simple but create an attitude of accomplishment in the congregation. Many times, one or two people can achieve a quick victory usually with a minimum of people and financial resources.
• Short term victories require nine weeks to six months to accomplish. These are usually more complex than the quick victories but can be accomplished in a short period of time. Again, one or two people or a small group can organize a short term victory with a minimum of people or financial resources.
• Simple major victories require six months to a year to accomplish. These can be accomplished only by involving at least a small task team working together. Most simple major victories require financial resources and involvement of many in the congregation.
• Complex major victories require one to three years to accomplish. These victories require a significant involvement of the leadership and members of the congregation as well as financial resources.

When establishing goals, each category must be considered. Unless this happens, planning is incomplete. Most groups tend to concentrate only on the simple or complex major victories and loose the excellent momentum provided by the quick victories and short term victories.

A church can’t do everything

The funeral director and the cemetery personnel were opening the niche in the columbarium to place the cremains of one of my members. They removed the metal covering and noticed something interesting–two urns were already stuffed in the opening. That taught me the importance of finding the correct niche.

None of the churches, even the large ones which I have served, have been able to do everything. What is important is discovering the niche or niches that the Lord calls you to serve in mission and ministry. Remember, God does not call us to do anything that God does not give us the power to do.

Here’s a wonderful example of discovering a niche. I would like to take credit for finding this fantastic niche but it just happened. God worked in a way we did not expect.

Our church ended up adopting the men’s soccer team at the University of South Carolina at Aiken because one of the young men on the team was a Lutheran from Texas and attended our church. We never started out to adopt the team, but through a series of circumstances, it happened. The women’s soccer team heard about what was happening with the men and their coach shared with us that they really wanted to be adopted, also. Before I left, the women’s basketball team thought that it was a good idea and we adopted them. Once a year, they all attended church. The last time they attended when I was pastor, all but one player (who had to work - attended. Several times a year, we had a supper just for them and invited people from the church. Our congregation attended some of their games together and we even had an ad in the programs. I still have my women’s basketball t-shirt that I purchased to wear to the games.

Dr. Kennon Callahan was the one who introduced me many year ago to the 80-20 rule and it has been a wonderful revelation. The way that I understand the rule is that 80% of the effort create 20% of the results while 20% of the effort create 80% of the results.

If you have ever attended a committee meeting, you understand the principal. A great example of an 80 percenter is the worship committee who spent 30 minutes discussing how to deal with the acolytes who were chewing gum in church. They finally agreed with the pastor that the pastor would ask the acolyte to take out the gum before entering to light the candles and not to chew gum during the service. That 80 percenter was important to only the few anti-chewing-gum members of the committee.

At the same church later in the month, the property committee dealt with an important 20 percenter, parking at the church. The town had made a decision to enforce a parking ordinance that would have eliminated 40 parking spaces near the church that were used each Sunday. The committee was looking at every option to replace the spaces because they knew that the lack of parking would impact the Sunday attendance. That was a 20 percenter

When the 80 percenters tend to get just as much attention as the 20 percenters, many opportunities are missed. Look for the 20 percenters.

I always look forward to attending other churches and learning from the experience. For over three years in the congregation I served in Illinois, four council members and I would attend another congregation once a quarter and take the pastor out for lunch and learn from his or her expertise. That was a fantastic experience where I learned many excellent lessons.

That was not the case in my latest episode of sitting in the pew. We were on vacation and went to a nearby Lutheran congregation. The experience painfully taught me some great lessons about what not to do. So that your congregation does not make the same mistakes, I have made a list of “make sures.”

1. Make sure that you have friendly, smiling ushers who speak to the people arriving. The usher gave my wife a bulletin but did not speak. He only spoke to me after I said, “Good morning” but never smiled.

2. Make sure that the announcements are done in an excellent manner with planning, enthusiasm and complete information. The pastor started the announcements by looking around and finally said, “I guess you are wondering what I am doing. I am looking for…” but never said why that was important. He never welcomed guests so my assumption was that he did not expect guests. He rambled on and on. A member made an announcement about a Crop Walk and she had it written out, definitely had practiced it and did an excellent job of explaining the program. The pastor could have learned much from her.

3. Make sure that your choir director selects music that is appropriate for the choir. This church had 22 people in the choir but the director had selected a very difficult piece. The anthem had a section where they were unaccompanied during which the harmony resembled, in my wife’s words, “fingernails on a blackboard.” I really felt my wife was being generous. Ironically, I do not feel that the choir was that bad but the selection was much too difficult for their abilities as it would have been for the vast majority of church choirs.

4. Make sure that choir members realize that they are on view for everyone in the congregation to see. I tried to concentrate on the sermon but my thoughts wandered as the pastor rambled so I noticed the choir. Two choir members took a short nap during the sermon, one gazed at the congregation and never the pastor, another looked like she was checking phone messages and no one smiled.

5. Make sure that your ushers do not skip people when taking up an offering. O.K, I admit that should be a given but not in this congregation. I had my contribution ready when the usher came to our pew. I was the third person down but he did not want to let go of the offering plate and motioned to the other end of the pew. Sure enough, an usher came to that side of the pew but never slowed down for my offering even though my arm was extended. The woman who had spoken about the Crop Walk said that she would be in the narthex following the service so I thought I would give it to her but she was not there when I exited the church.

6. Make sure that everyone speaks to guests so they feel welcome. After the service, the woman in front of us turned around and stared—probably because I have great fun in singing hymns—but never said a word even after I smiled and said, “Good morning.” On the way out, the pastor shook our hands and welcomed us. One member who was one of my wife’s former teachers spoke to us but that was it. We definitely did not feel welcomed.

We Christians have the greatest cause in the world and I feel that demands excellence. Make it happen in your congregation. This experience has made me more determined than ever to do a better job in my interim congregation. I am going to “make sure” excellence happens.

We live in a time when people are quick to call in an expert to solve our problems, but Landon Whitsett in his book The Open Source Church, asserts that statistically a group of normal people will outshine an expert every time.    Landon has lots of research to support this assertion in his book, so I won’t cover that ground, but if you accept this idea that a group of normal people has better wisdom than an expert, then I think it is wonderful good news for congregations.   It recognizes the power of the priesthood of all believers.  It affirms the gifts and resources God has given to each of us and to our congregations.  It invites us to use our gifts to share God’s gift of love with the world and to build up the body of Christ.

The key, Landon suggests to making use of these gifts and tapping into the wisdom of the crowd is to have the following four elements in place.

1. Diversity- Everyone brings something unique from their own experience.  The more varied the backgrounds of the people involved, the better wisdom you will garner.

2. Independence of Thought - Everyone must be free to share the specific information they have.  The leader of the group needs to create space for everyone to share their ideas, thus preventing the first or loudest idea from being adopted.

3. Decentralization - As the group is working, people in the group must be free to do what they need to do when they need to do it.  If you have a top-down, centrally controlled environment, you are not going to get the wisdom of the group.

4. Aggregate - A facilitator, team or methodology needs to be in place to gather, analyze, share and use the information and wisdom that is generated.

For me this looks like the volunteers in Micah’s Backpack redesigning the system for packing and distributing food.  As the ministry has continued to grow, volunteers have suggested one improvement after another to streamline and improve the way in which we pack food.  The way we pack today is entirely different than the way we packed when we started.  We didn’t call in a logistics expert to help us figure it out.  We trusted the wisdom and gifts of the people doing the ministry and created an environment where their suggestions could be heard and implemented.

I’m at a conference this week on the Open Source Church, a book by Landon Whitsitt.  As a part of the conversation, the group lifted up a number of practical ideas for inviting people to share their ideas as a part of a discussion.

Here are the ideas that were suggested by the group.

- Mutual Invitation - invite people to speak to a question and when you have said your peace then invite someone else.  Questions of clarification are welcome, but not debating.  Once information is out there from everyone then you can discuss.

- Getting a sense of the meeting, sitting and silence to wait for a sense of the Spirit - Quakers

- Frame discussion in a way that welcomes dissension

- Asking the group to question assumptions

- Ask what are the holes, what are the unintended consequences

- Delay decision where appropriate, not be too quick to make big decisions

- Create time for reflection

- Naming the demon - this is my idea, but I want your ideas and every question is helpful

- What time are you having your meeting?  The proper setting is important.  Helpful sequencing of agendas and possibly limiting time for discussion.

- Make sure that opinions are valued.  Give people time to write down their best ideas and give people the freedom to say “No”.

- Emphasizing servant role of minister and leadership, try not to go to our area of expertise as a way of limiting discussion

- As leader speak last

- Provide a list of options as a starting point for a discussion

- Gather information from the grassroots by working in progressively larger teams (team partner, then several teams) and then Yes voting

- Have people go around to discuss what the idea would look like if it was implemented as a way to help us really see what we are doing

- Affirm characteristics like intellectual integrity in daily interactions with people to create openness and honesty

- Bounce ideas around through email

As I was reading a book called, “Take this Bread” by Sara Miles this week, I came to a section in the story when one individual offered this advice to Sara.  ”Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up.”  It was a very minor point in the book, but the words jumped out at me and stuck with me.  On a very basic level, I found myself resonating with this advice.  I know that I am at my best both in ministry and in life when I make time for respite and Sabbath.  I have spent a week away at a continuing education event nearly every year of my ministry and I have always returned rested and energized.  I try to make time each Tuesday morning to sit at Panera, have a cup of hot tea and read for about an hour and a half.  I feel no guilt when I change the “due date” for an item on my “To Do List” from this week to next week.  Over the last year, however, life seems to be picking up speed.  I have to be more intentional about slowing down or I’ll just keep going.  So this morning, I decided to slow down a little and I did a quick Google search on the phrase “Slow down to Speed up.”  The first three results appear to affirm my belief that that we actually grow stronger and healthier lives and ministries when we make time to slow down and to step away from all the stuff we have to do even if it is just for a few moments.

The first article is from Forbes Magazine Online: “Slow Down to Speed Up: You can’t gain power over events when you are always in a rush“.  It provides a business focused approach to the idea and discusses how individuals can become better leaders by slowing down.  At the beginning of the article, the authors identify a trap many leaders have fallen into today.

“Complexity is the No. 1 issue facing chief executives today, according to a 2010 IBM study of 1,500 chief executives. The problem is that we’ve bought into the complexity conspiracy. We try to match complexity with greater complexity and speed with increased speed. Feeling out of control, we seek more control. Instead of the clarity we crave, we get ambiguity and more uncertainty. There is a way to break the stranglehold of complexity: Slow down to power up. That’s right. Slow down now and you will move faster, further and with greater purpose later–even when, or especially when, you are staring down the triple threat of complexity, speed and uncertainty.”

The second search result yielded a few thoughts that were helpful from an entrepreneurial blog by Brad Feld on feld.com.  In his June 26, 2011 blog post, he wrote:

“Basically, I’m trying to slow down. If I do this right, I believe I’ll be able to cover even more ground. I think this applies to any entrepreneur, or anyone involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. “Being really busy” is seductive – it has nothing to do with getting things done, or actually accomplishing your goals. But there’s something satisfying, or at least addictive, about being so busy that you don’t have time to think or reflect on what is going on around you. This is a big mistake long term as you’ll ultimately make crummy decisions.  Slow down to speed up.”

Since pastors essentially have an entrepreneurial calling - Go and make disciples -  I think there is a temptation to feel like you need to constantly be in motion to ‘prove that you are doing something’ or to be ‘faithful’ to your calling.  Perhaps we should remember that God rested and we need to rest too.

The third search result really was the most amazing of all.  I found a little paper on the topic by the American Academy of Medical Administrators.  I almost didn’t click on the link because I didn’t know anything about the AAMA, but it was number three so I clicked on it and I am so glad that I did.  The authors of the article, Ronald J. Stupak and David S. Greisle,  provide a well reasoned and faith-filled take on why we need to slow down in life that quotes Bill Gates, C.S. Lewis, Arthur Miller and Frederick Buechner.  They provide seven steps to help accomplish the goal of slowing down.  Here’s a link to the article: Slow Down to Speed Up.  It’s only 10 pages and well worth the read.

(The search and all articles access took place on October 5, 2011.)

Back in February, I came across an excellent article from the Alban Institute entitled Tending the Vineyard by Paul E. Hopkins. In the article, Hopkins makes the case that there are four elements which are keys for creating what he calls “enduring pastoral fruitfulness”. I decided to take the four key elements he described (1) a systematic commitment to livelong learning, (2) an intentional connection to communities of shared practice, (3) a careful stewardship of the leader’s own self, and (4) strong roots and active exercise in a growing faith and create a tool for self-evaluation. I used the tool for the first time this week and shared the information with my Mutual Ministry Team. Overall, I found it to be a helpful way for me to evaluate where I have been and to look toward the future. If you would like to see what I developed, I have posted it here: Keys to Long-term Healthy Ministry Tool 2011.