Managing a decision-making polarity

There are two mistakes frequently made in parishes involving how we manage one polarity of decision making. 

One error we make is by airing every idea that floats about in the parish with everyone else in the parish. This is likely to produce anxiety and confusion which are enemies of real transparency and inclusion. At the moment we seem to be experiencing that approach at the highest levels of government.

The second mistake we make is to hold the formation of projects and ideas too tightly among the rector and vestry.  This approach usually involves the almost complete development of a project before bringing it to the attention of the parish community. This is likely to reduce trust, generate defensiveness, especially on the part of those who have now developed an investment and ownership of the project,  and cause unnecessary agitation and conflict among parishioners. 

Both mistakes tend to produce a less owned and less successful project. They are also likely to draw the attention of members away from their primary baptismal ministry into the institutional workings of the parish.

Our Benedictine roots can help us here

We might follow Benedict's advice to consult with the whole community about important matters and have smaller groups for other acts of consultation.

Whenever anything important is to be done in the monastery, the abbot shall call the whole community together and explain what the business is; and after hearing the advice of the brothers, let him ponder it and follow what he judges the wiser course. (Rule of Saint Benedict Chapter 3:1-2)

Structures and processes that rise from a Benedictine spirit and are sound acts of oversight.

• Post the minutes of the vestry meeting quickly 
• Have open vestry meetings and reinforce the message of openness
• Accept that in a healthy parish few people from the broader parish will attend the meetings or read the minutes
• As rectors have the responsibility and authority to launch initiatives apart from the vestry, wise rectors will find ways to share their thinking as ideas take shape and before they are fully formed.
• Rectors and vestries are wise to draw on individuals with expertise in various fields related to issues and initiatives being developed. Think about expertise both in terms of content and process.
• Rectors are wise to have a very small “council of advice” apart from the vestry. Use people that bring special skills and knowledge related to parish dynamics and ministry. They may have special training and experience or simply be among the wise ones of the parish.
• Learn how to use testing processes early in the decision-making process – use both with the congregation at large and members of the vestry. For more on testing processes and other means of facilitating transparency and inclusion 

How much consultation?

Have the vestry explore what it considers to be the needed degree of consultation with the larger parish community                  Here’s a resource on that.

 

A process

Here's an example of a process that balances transparency with maintaining appropriate lines of authority and accountability ;and broad inclusion with expertise and responsibility. We are trying to avoid sharing ideas that are colorless and dull while also avoiding being opaque and muddy. Think -- straightforward, direct, and lucid; timely, trusting and engaged.

1.  Every six months or so have a process within the vestry in which it generates and discusses all the current ideas members have about improving parish life and ministry. Have the vestry establish priorities among all the ideas. This allows us to keep control over how use our time and gives us a sense of priority among those various offerings. 

2.   Once there is a sense of initial prioritization, the  vestry and rector can decide which of those items is likely to be of interest to the broader parish community. These should carefully selected. If we select too many items that is usually a way of avoiding our responsibility to lead.  We don’t want to draw the attention of most parishioners away from their own primary ministry and into the institutional life of the parish.

3.   Engage in a testing process with the broader parish.  This calls for some judgment about whether the issue at stake can be dealt with by online and quick survey methods or more effectively by face-to-face gatherings, probably at the coffee hour of each congregation within the parish. The testing could be as simple as a spectrum or involve more by asking people to use likes wishes and concerns 

4.  It’s important to report the overall results of the testing back to the whole parish and make a clear statement about next steps. Let people know when something additional might be brought to the attention of the parish community. 

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Related resources

Benedictine Spirituality 

Benedictine spirituality and the parish church

A life, not a program

Caesura: Parish life lacking any sort of contemplative focus

Caesura: Levels of consulting in the parish

Caesura: Methods for “taking counsel” ..... Part One

Caesura: Grumbling and taking counsel in the parish community

Managing paradox, contradictions and all the good ideas

Look on in wonder and silence

All the good ideas

Esther de Waal's Living with Contradiction.   It's her exploration of Benediction spirituality and how it is used by some to live with stability and integrity in a complex world. A world that is loaded with contradictions and often bad choices. 

Polarity images are from this site

I felt as if he knew me—and I felt He liked me

I've just returned home from Evening Prayer. Four of us tonight; Bob K officiating, Mother Sara and Abbot Basil in the congregation. I read from John -- "I know my own and my own know me." Words about the ways of the Divine Charity. Maybe also about leadership in any sphere.

Hearing the Good Shepherd passage caused me to recall something I read yesterday. 

I've been reading Frances Perkins' The Roosevelt I Knew. She tells a story about the night FDR died and an encounter with a soldier --

On the night he died, a young soldier stood in the silent group which clustered for comfort around the White House where he had lived. The young soldier sighed as I nodded to him and, still looking at the house, he said: “I felt as if I knew him.” (A pause.) “I felt as if he knew me—and I felt He liked me. 

One of the factors in our recent election was the sense among so many citizens that they were not known and not liked by those wanting to lead them.

I'm not going to offer any thoughts about what that says about our fractured nation. I will offer a thought for the Church.

Maybe one thing that priests with pastoral responsibility for parish churches might do is invest their energies to knowing and liking the people of the parish. We would each face having to do that in a manner that fit our personality and gifts. It might be more difficult for some than others. 

I'm not suggesting it is easy to do. My guess is that most parish clergy do try. Some parishioners are easier to know and like than others. But think how we'd grow in making the effort. Think how people would appreciate the very effort. 

If the longing to be known and understood isn't going to be addressed in the social and political arenas, this may be one thing, among others, that the church can do for the next four years.

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Look on in wonder and silence

How are we to shape parish communities to live in the face of paradox and contradiction? How might we help people consider the current political world along with the day-by-day decisions and actions of their individual and family lives?

There are two pieces of reading I've been doing in recent weeks. One is Esther de Waal's Living with Contradiction. It's her exploration of Benediction spirituality and how it is used by some to live with stability and integrity in a complex world. A world that is loaded with contradictions and often bad choices. The second is by General Anthony Zinni, USMC (ret.). Before the First Shots are Fired looks at his experience and understanding of how our country gets itself into wars. He notes that from WW II to 1973 we engaged in 19 military deployments (combat and humanitarian) and from 1973 - 2013 we engaged in 144 such acts.

Zinni thinks we get into all this because as a people we carry a contradiction in our soul. Our values about freedom and democracy have moved in two different directions -- at times we just want to be a beacon for other nations and at other times we want to crusade for those values -- beacon vs. crusader. The first is a desire to keep to ourselves and not get entangled with the rest of the world; be the best we can be and hope that influences others. The second is a desire to be a responsible nation among other nations and to assist others. 

Zinni thinks that we need to learn how to learn from what we do, including our mistakes. We need to be more reflective and open.

de Waal writes about our need to stand firm and yet also to move forward. She sees Saint Benedict having great confidence in our ability to use our natural gifts and free will in service and that we can't do anything good unless God fills us with grace (a rather Christmas season thought). She writes -

if I can enter into this paradox and incorporate these elements into my life I shall escape that passivity that encourages me to do nothing at all and hand everything over to God, or that terrifying compulsion of over-activity that come from reliance upon my unaided self.

I think this is a season of political certainty (on both sides). I know I'm caught within my own Democratic impulses to find things about the President elect to be annoyed by and to make fun of. And yet, I can't help but hope that along the way he'll get a few thing right. It's impossible for any of us to get it right all the time. I deeply appreciate President Obama's capacity for steadiness and reflection. And, at times I've wished he would just get on with it, take action. Mr. Trump doesn't seem like a very reflective man (an understatement). So, I'll hope he'll listen to James Mattis and John Kelly.       

I think my task in all this is to be a citizen -- to pray for the nation and its leaders, for justice and truth; to stay informed; and to vote in each and every election. 

For me it's all wrapped up in the best paradox of all -- the fully divine, fully human baby in a manger and man upon a cross. And what I get to do, before I do anything else, is look on in wonder and silence. 

All Saints

Today's post is the All Saints Day message to the Professed Members of the Order of the Ascension by Michelle Heyne, OA. Michelle is the Presiding Officer of OA.

I was saying Morning Prayer and reading the Litany of the Saints a bit ago.  This entry particularly grabbed my attention:  Dag Hammarskjold the bureaucrat; all who made governance an act of faith... (I've included a quote from him at the end of this message.)

It's rare that a person in an explicitly secular role is held up as an example of holiness (Frances Perkins also comes to mind). I particularly loved the juxtaposition of the words "bureaucrat" and "governance" with "act of faith."  It is exactly this sort of plain, day-to-day action that the vast majority of us find ourselves in and it takes a well-developed capacity for reflection to recognize our daily work as a primary way in which we are the light of Christ.

I led the Diocese of New York's Clergy Day a couple of weeks ago. The topic was ostensibly "dealing with difficult people." It was really about how to reorient the parish around a shared understanding of purpose: the worship of God and the spiritual formation of God's people.  

We talked about the ways that difficult behavior can be transformed by (1) effectively using the power of the clergy to shape a community of faith in specific ways grounded in our tradition; and (2) helping the community develop its capacity to listen and respond to the realities of the world we are in, both corporately and in daily life.

This seems to me a central offering of the church to its members, but one we don't seem to engage very well: Helping parishioners understand the connection between worship and community life, and their own decisions and actions.  

How do we vote in a way that takes our faith seriously and considers complex dependencies and consequences?  How do we effectively use our individual power and influence to support justice and mercy in the society at large, not only through interpersonal kindness?  How do we each foster humane and effective workplaces while being realistic about the roles from which we actually come?  

These actions are truly the saints at work and our parishes can and must get much better at creating space for reflection and other applicable skills, while continuing to ground parish life even more purposefully in prayer and the community of the Trinity. 

The unifying of the personality, the integration of mind and heart into one center.

Kenneth Leech

Here's a quote from Hammarskjöld, that strikes me as deeply individualistic (perhaps troubling so) and sees faith as secular life as inseparable:

In 1953, soon after his appointment as United Nations Secretary-General, Hammarskjöld was interviewed on radio by Edward R. Murrow. In this talk Hammarskjöld declared:

But the explanation of how man should live a life of active social service in full harmony with himself as a member of the community of spirit, I found in the writings of those great medieval mystics [Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruysbroek] for whom 'self-surrender' had been the way to self-realization, and who in 'singleness of mind' and 'inwardness' had found strength to say yes to every demand which the needs of their neighbours made them face, and to say yes also to every fate life had in store for them when they followed the call of duty as they understood it.^[20]

Michelle Heyne, OA

All the good ideas

Most rectors and vicars experience it – people in line to greet you as they are coming out of church, they lean in and offer an idea to improve the parish, or someone we really need to visit, or a “small complaint” about the liturgy. During the week we receive emails, text messages, and informal conversations with ideas, suggestions, questions, concerns, advice, complaints, and wonderments.  It's all overwhelming. And it's easy to feel resentful toward those offering these things.

I've heard some clergy use the phrase "I'll ask when I want advice." That's bringing into the conversation a logic that is appropriate in a limited situation faced by couples. It's completely inappropriate in the relationship between clergy and those who worship together in the parish. In most situations it's probably wise for spouses to not attempt to offer advise about one another's work life. Even if asked for there's some tendency for it to end up in a bad emotional place. However, in the parish it is part of the priest's work to create a listening climate and to have enough humility to learn from the wisdom of others.

Having such openness doesn't mean allowing oneself to be emotionally overwhelmed. It does mean: 1) accepting the reality that people will offer their thoughts and feelings and 2) that it is the priest's job to provide an effective way in which those thoughts and feelings can be offered and taken into account.

The first step: focus on where we can influence things

The trick is to turn our attention away from all those people and our feelings of frustration. We need to check our resentment. The task is to turn to ourselves -- what can we do to manage the situation better than what we are doing now?

There’s an exercise that has been used in training and coaching leaders, it's called “The Circles of Influence.”  The first thing to do for ourselves is to acknowledge that 1) we can’t stop people from offering their thoughts and feelings and 2) it would be bad for the parish if they do stop. Watch the energy drain out of a system in which people come to believe that the vicar doesn’t want to listen to them.

  

We have no control or influence over whether people have thoughts and feelings. None! We can influence how we and the parish community engage those thoughts and feelings. Shutting them down is a violation of human dignity and the well-being of the Eucharistic community. Allowing them to overwhelm us is self-destructive.

This is about our emotional intelligence and spiritual life.  We need to manage ourselves. Manage our own emotions. We need to let them become energy for improvement instead of a sense of personal failure and frustration.

Things to do

It helps to have a few very specific things we can do to make all the ideas, complaints and visions manageable for ourselves and the parish as a whole. Here are a few ideas.

We need structured, face-to-face, listening processes that allow us to create productive conversations.  These are ways of taking all those ideas and suggestions coming at us as the priest and make them part of the community’s common life.

Channeling Process

Parishes require ways to identify and focus on needed conversations and issues. A “channeling process” is possibly the most effective tool for taking the dozens of suggestions and proposals offered and narrowing them down to those with the most investment in the congregation. The process gathers people’s concerns, new ideas, and insights and puts them in a channel, a pathway, toward decisions and action. The process can be done about the totally of parish life or a segment. The key is for the community and its leaders to carefully listen and respond. We don’t want to miss opportunities or to allow issues to fester or become centers of anxiety. 

             A PDF: The Channeling Process

Regular community meetings

The parish community needs regular meetings over the course of the year.  They are a chance for leaders to test things with the community and for the community to hear its own voice. At times the whole parish, at other times a congregation within the parish. That will depend on the issues to be engaged. These meetings need to make use of the methods known to facilitate dialogue and listening. Having three or four such meetings each year provides the opportunity to engage more people in the significant questions of the community’s life. It is important that these not turn into “town meetings” with their image of a contentious and argumentative spirit. It’s also important that they not undercut the responsibility of the rector and vestry for decisions they have to make. Put these meetings on the parish schedule so people know there are opportunities coming in which they can be heard and hear others.
 

Testing Process

A brief process, think 5 – 15 minutes. An issue is identified and a spectrum, scale, is created to reflect the views present in the community. The “testing process” can be done for a few minutes at coffee hour. A rule of thumb might be to use a “testing process” about four times per year with the whole community and possibly ten times with the vestry.

The testing process is a way to find out where the larger community stands on certain questions or issues. It helps both the community and the leadership get a sense of where the group is collectively.  It’s important for parish leaders and the congregation to understand that the testing process is not a way to shift decision-making authority to a vote of the congregation.  

For example:
We need to do less of this
We need to stay with the current amount
We need to do more of this

A PDF: The Testing Process

Leadership Conference or Retreat

Each year have a leadership conference. The idea is for leaders to take the time to get their “heads above water” and to see the parish in broader and deeper ways. This can be at a retreat center or at the parish. It might just be the rector and vestry or could be open to anyone who was willing to participate and help with follow-up work in the three months after. It helps to use an external consultant. A leadership conference needs to include time in prayer and activities that build connections among those present. It’s a time to explore parish dynamics, strengths, and opportunities in relationship to the primary task and core processes.

          PDF: The Leadership Conference

Benedictine – Taking Counsel

All this is easier to the extent the parish is grounded in the basics of a Benedictine spirituality about community life. A reminder:

Chapter Three
1 As often as anything important is to be done in the monastery, the abbot shall call the whole community together and himself explain what the business is; 2 and after hearing the advice of the brothers, let him ponder it and follow what he judges the wiser course. 3 The reason why we have said all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals what is better to the younger. 4 The brothers, for their part, are to express their opinions with all humility, and not presume to defend their own views obstinately. 5 The decision is rather the abbot’s to make, so that when he has determined what is more prudent, all may obey. 6 Nevertheless, just as it is proper for disciples to obey their master, so it is becoming for the master on his part to settle everything with foresight and fairness. … 12 If less important business of the monastery is to be transacted, he shall take counsel with the seniors only, 13 as it is written: Do everything with counsel and you will not be sorry afterward (Sir 32:24).

I’d translate that in this way – Bring the parish community together to discuss important matters. After hearing the voice of the community the rector or the rector and vestry or the appropriate working group – makes a decision.  Be sure that in the process the newer members are included. In expressing ourselves we are to listen with openness and respect to the thoughts and feelings of others. Work with whatever decision gets made. If after a while you believe it to be a mistake, ask the appropriate group to reconsider. On less important matters (issues that don’t get discussed by the whole community) the rector can gather a few of the “wise ones” in a kind of kitchen cabinet. Maybe once a year the vestry might meet with the “wise ones” to reflect on the overall well-being of the parish community. The wise ones are those in whom you can see the coming together of the gifts of the spirit – awe, piety, acceptance of paradox and balance, courage, openness to the Holy Spirit, self-knowledge. Maybe there is a former warden or two, a quiet and thoughtful member regular at the Daily Office, a retired priest with broad experience.

A wonderful side effect of this is that we decentralize parish decision making just a bit. It also allows the vestry and rector to feel more in touch with the whole parish community.

           On the web: Grumbling and taking counsel in the parish community

           On the web: Methods for “taking counsel” 

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