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.

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.

How many hours a week to you typically work - 40, 50, 60 or more? I am writing this on the 4th of July from my office, so I have to admit upfront that I typically work more than 40 hours per week, but an article I saw on Huffington Post this week got me thinking about why? Historically, I think most people would have said that pastors work long hours because the church is understaffed or because there are always emergencies happening or because the pastor wanted to be involved in everything. According to “Top-Level Professionals View 40-Hour Work Week As Part-Time” (accessed July 4, 2011), 40 hour plus work weeks for pastors may simply be a reflection of the world around us. The article discusses a report by The Center for American Progress which found that “many top-level professionals, lawyers and doctors view the traditional 40 hour work week as a “part-time” job . . . . Many feel, with some justification, that a 40-hour week would be career suicide. This schedule is seen as ‘part time’ in many professional-managerial jobs, and tends to spell a less-prestigious and less upwardly-mobile career path.” (quotation from the Huffington Post article).

Since I believe that most pastors reflect the culture around them, it makes sense that 50 or 60 hour weeks are become the acceptable norm, not an unhealthy habit that we were warned about in seminary. Let’s face it, if key leaders in your congregation are professionals who work long hours, then that’s what they will expect of their pastor. When I interned outside New York City, I wore a dress shirt and tie to the office Monday to Friday, but when I took my first call in Lowcountry South Carolina, the ties went in the closet and now only come out occasionally. Pastors often talk of “being in the world, but not of the world”, however I’m afraid we have become fully “of the world” when it comes to the number of hours pastors need to work or believe that they need to work per week to be faithful.

Since I don’t see that expectation changing anytime soon, the question becomes one of balance. How do you create a balance between work and home? For me, balance comes through flexibility. My internship supervisor, Pastor Roger Spencer, once told me that “some weeks you go home and the church owes you money, but some weeks you go home and you owe the church money. Hopefully over the course of the year, it all works out. The key to finding balance,” he said, “was to recognize the weeks when you could get back an hour or two and go home.” These days, seeking balance often revolves around time when I am in the office. I typically go into the office when I drop my kids off for school around 7:30 AM, but I also typically pick them up when school is over around 2:30 PM. Some days I am back in the office (and so are they) after I pick them up and some days, I am able to head home. Day to day, week to week it changes, but my kids and my congregation have learned my patterns and understand that this is one way that I balance family and church. I’m sure I’ll have to re-balance things as my kids get older, but for now it seems to work for us.

I came across an excellent article last week from the Alban Institute entitled Tending the Vineyard by Paul E. Hopkins. Hopkins makes the case that there are four elements which are keys for creating what he calls “enduring pastoral fruitfulness”.

He suggests that for pastors to have healthy, fruitful lives and ministry, it is imperative that they have (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. While none of these four suggestions is revolutionary or a totally new idea, my own experience in ministry resonates with these suggestions. I am at my best as a pastor and a person, when I am intentional about learning, when I am connected to a group of caring colleagues, when I am seeking balance between family and call and when I am taking time to nurture my connection to God.

In the future, I might use Hopkins four categories as a tool for self-evaluation. I could imagine taking each of his four categories and creating goals in each area to help me maintain pastoral fruitfulness and balance. If I actually put a tool together using these categories, I’ll try to remember to post it.

I get an email newsletter from George Bullard and this morning he sent out a very interesting article about what happens following a major “leave/lose” conflict in a congregation. He discusses healthy steps for moving forward if a pastor is leaving or if a pastor is staying. Obviously, every situation is different, but Bullard offers some good advice for dealing with a very difficult situation. The article is entitled, “Leaving, Staying and Becoming Well Following a Lose/Leave Conflict in a Congregation.”

“How can we have a good Mutual Ministry Committee that works together?” asked the frustrated member of a neighboring congregation as we talked over an accidental meeting at lunch. “I get frustrated each time I attend a meeting because the pastor has one agenda, the chair another. One member of our group works on the personnel committee at his job and feels that we should evaluate the pastor in the same way his company evaluates employees. This upsets another member of the committee who feels our job is totally different. I am left wondering how we can work together and accomplish something. Right now, I am ready to quit.”

I suggested to him this wonderful idea that came from Dr. Phil Whitley, a consultant by occupation and a Godly Leader by the grace of God. After experiencing it, I would recommend it for any Mutual Ministry Committee or Pastor-Parish Relations Committee as it is called in some churches.

Phil’s idea started with the Mutual Ministry Committee he chaired at the church I was serving. He felt that one of the difficulties was the various divergent views evident in the members of the committee about what should be happening at our church in ministry and mission. So he suggested that the committee members read Becoming a Blessed Church by N. Graham Standish, a book Phil had felt was very helpful to him. The book talks about the purpose of a blessed church and what it means in vision for the future. We purchased books for each member of the committee then discussed it in detail at three consecutive meetings. The result was a new understanding by everyone for what had to happen in mission and ministry at our church. In the midst of our book study, we developed a shared overview of what mutual ministry was all about. As one member of the group emailed me, “The book and discussion changed my outlook. I learned from the book but more importantly, I learned from our discussion because we applied the concepts to our church.”

The book study is a delightful and informative way to get a Mutual Ministry Committee/Pastor-Parish Relations Committee on the same page. It made a difference in the way that my church’s Mutual Ministry Committee and I related to each other. Phil had a great idea!