Caesura: Levels of consulting in the parish

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)

I’m assuming that our parish churches would benefit if the rector and vestry did more face-to-face consultation with the whole community?

Some of the Benefits

• The community gets to hear it’s own voice. It’s empowering. It enhances human dignity.
• Leaders hear what others are thinking and feeling. There is wisdom in the community.
• If the conversation is about testing a direction the leaders are thinking of taking – the leaders can act with a better understanding of the degree of support they will have in the community.
• Conversations that are structured and face-to-face tend to reduce destructive grumbling.
• The parish community will more fully “own” decisions in which they have had the opportunity to explore the information and respond to the options. Decisions will hold over time and under pressure. There will be more adaptability when the time comes to revise the decision. (see The Intervention Theory) 

A scale

What comes closest to describing the situation in your parish?

1. Almost no consultation - The parish community meets once/year at the annual meeting. The process is formal. There’s some discussion. The tone is often either flat or argumentative. 

2. Little consultation - The parish community meets once/year at the annual meeting. The process is carefully designed to facilitate open, useful, and safe conversation.

3. Some consultation; poorly managed - The parish community meets several times most years but there is no reliability in scheduling. People are never sure it will happen. The process may be poorly designed and facilitated (little use of effective methods, too much or too little control).

4. Some consultation; well managed - The parish community meets 3 times per year for conversation 1 ½ to 2 hours each time. The dates are on the parish calendar well in advance of the gathering. There are occasional and brief processes of testing more limited issues at coffee hour

5. High degree of consultation - The parish community meets 4 – 5 times per year for conversation for 1 ½ to 2 hours each time. The dates are on the parish calendar well in advance of the gathering. There are occasional and brief processes of testing more limited issues at coffee hour. The leaders know how to use survey feedback methods effectively.

6. Excessive consultation - Not really “consultation.” The members gathered make the decisions. The rector and vestry have abdicated. [Note there are some parishes where this is workable -- small congregation; willing to meet 5 – 6 times/year; vestry exists but doesn’t meet apart from the congregation unless there is an emergency; work gets done in a number of self managing teams; priest has skills in facilitating groups and self managing teams.]  

Most parishes would be healthier and less prone to conflict if they were at 4 or 5. Currently almost all parishes are at 1 except for when conversation processes are required in transition processes and ministry assessment processes.

Rectors and vestries need to be clear in themselves that consultation processes with the whole parish community are not usually decision making in nature. The decisions belong to the rector and/or vestry. The assumption here is that those decision will be better decisions if there are listening and conversation processes being used.

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A PDF of the model

For methods to use in structuring conversation see:

Fill All Things: The Dynamics of Spirituality in the Parish Church – See chapter on the “Benedictine Promise” 

In Your Holy Spirit, Michelle Heyne – see the chapter on “Community”

In Your Holy Spirit, Robert Gallagher – see the methods in the chapters on “Reflection” and on “Community”

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Caesura    The web page
A program for parish churches
Vaccinating against conflict
Nurturing healthy relationships

Caesura: Keeping conflict at 1 & 2

Severe parish conflicts tie up the time and energy of bishops and their staffs while destabilizing the life and ministry of parishes. Bishops learn of a parish conflict too late in the process. By the time someone calls the diocesan office the relationships in the parish have been badly damaged.  The conflict is now at a stage requiring substantial resources of time and money. Worse yet our first attempts to help the situation usually involve methods that are doomed to fail.  We send in consultants and staff people. We try to get the parties to talk and take steps to rebuild their relationship. It usually flops. It’s unsuccessful not because the methods are wrong in themselves or people are unwilling to try. It fails because the conflict is too far down the road for these methods. We are too late.

How can we change that pattern? How can we keep conflicts at the lower levels? How can we allow the new hopes and dreams as well as the emerging frustrations and disappointments, to be sources of energy in shaping the parish instead of sources of strife?

Speed Leas – Levels of conflict

Many parish leaders are familiar with Speed Leas  Levels of Conflict model.  There are five levels ranging from a “problem to solve” to “Intractable.” In other words from a situation that most of us don’t even see as a conflict to a conflict that requires separating the parties; from a situation in which the difficulties we face are sources of productive energy to a situation in which some people must leave the parish.

                        The model

Parish leaders usually call the bishop’s office when the conflict is already at levels 3, 4, or 5.  That’s reasonable behavior. Why would you call if the level were lower?

The slide from level three to four and five

The behaviors at level three include -- threatening, resistance to peace overtures, hanging back waiting for others to show weakness, personal attacks, emotional appeals, limited social contact; language is distorted - overgeneralized (“you always..”, “everyone..”), exaggerated, parties making a case, some are expecting magic or rapid change, others are expecting people to read their mind, it feels extreme, there are only two sides, we lose the shading and gray, it’s becoming black and white.

By the time conditions reach level three the likelihood is that things are about to spiral out of control.  We have lost our ability to head off people leaving and long term damage to the parish’s emotional and spiritual life. In other words things move rapidly from three to five.

Leas’ model does have suggestions about what might be done at level three to manage the conflict—structure a clear process and carefully manage it, use an external consultant, meet with the conflicting parties separately and built toward a time when they can again talk face-to-face. There are two problems we seem to have:

1)   We tend to use methods that fit level two instead of what fits level three. We bring people together for face-to-face discussion. We ask them to use communication methods and follow ground rules. It seems like “the Christian thing to do.” The face-to-face encounter is likely to enflame matters and the attempt to make use of communication skills with people you now dislike may be experienced as manipulative and a waste of time.

2)   Parishes don’t do well at hanging in with the tension. Once we hit level three in a parish church something has been violated. The psychological contract has been broken. That “contract” may be one that is generally healthy and faithful (the parish will have enough stability in worship and relationships that the person can be nurtured and develop some proficiency in the Christian life) or it may be particularized yet tolerated (allowing us to understand the parish, at least sub consciencely, as something more familiar to a secular mindset—as a voluntary associate, a club, a historic society, social change group or social service agency) or it may be an expression of childish or unformed faith and practice (the priest will always be kind to me)

Once the psychological contact is experienced as broken we face profound issues of trust and hope. It’s all too easy to slide downhill from there.

The need

Our need is to keep conflicts at low levels. We want the tensions to be at levels that permit the parish to better generate and harness productive energy arising from the parish’s hopes, expectations, new ideas and existing challenges.  This involves helping leaders establish processes, structures and a climate that allow these normal and inevitable sources of tension and energy to enrich the life and ministry of the parish instead of moving into depression or destructive conflict.

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Caesura    The web page
A program for parish churches
Vaccinating against conflict
Nurturing healthy relationships

Caesura: Bringing Eucharistic harmony to the American workplace

“In every interaction, you have a choice: Do you want to lift people up or hold them down?”  This is the last sentence of a recent article on incivility in the workplace by Christine Porath.  Porath cites research showing the cost—illness, mistakes in the workplace including in patient care in hospitals, an inability to think clearly, and damage to the human dignity of people.

In “No Time to Be Nice at Work” Porath writes, 

Rudeness and bad behavior have all grown over the last decades, particularly at work. For nearly 20 years I’ve been studying, consulting and collaborating with organizations around the world to learn more about the costs of this incivility. How we treat one another at work matters. Insensitive interactions have a way of whittling away at people’s health, performance and souls.   NY Times June 21, 2015, on the web June 19   The article 

She draws on a Harvard Business Review article from 2013

Rudeness at work is rampant, and it’s on the rise. Over the past 14 years we’ve polled thousands of workers about how they’re treated on the job, and 98% have reported experiencing uncivil behavior. In 2011 half said they were treated rudely at least once a week—up from a quarter in 1998.   The Price of Incivility  HBR Jan-Feb 2013  The article

Porath’s case is a moral and economic one. Make the workplace more civil because it’s the right thing to do and because it will increase productivity. 

The apostolate of the baptized in the workplace 

You can make a case for both of Poath’s arguments being part of what the baptized person is to be about in the workplace. 

Below is a list of some of the connections between the laity’s experience in the workplace and their apostolate.  These are ways in which people participate in Christ’s service, evangelization and stewardship of the world. 

· Being.  By being people that have become more and more “in Christ,” light, salt, leaven.  Christians serve, evangelize and act as stewards just by being present in the workplace. There is an organic influence from people who are in the process of falling and rising and living in the journey of stability, conversion and obedience.

· Participating responsibly.  We are part of the economy of God’s world by our participation in the human drama of creating, serving, and producing. There is faithfulness in the process of earning our own living and, for some, in contributing to the well being of a family.

· Building community.  Holy joy can be experienced in relationship with other workers and being part of a workplace community. Every day offers opportunities for compassion, fun, and shared experience.

· Finding value.  There is intrinsic meaning in the work we do. Our work is of value to the world.  It matters to the well-being of people that this service or product is available. We may want to be generous and broad in what we are willing to include here. There is often a narrow puritanism that defines the life and work of others as being sub-Christian. Even products and services that seem very superficial and light may bring some of us great joy.

· Bringing change.  Some Christians thoughtfully and quietly take action to influence their organizations toward a more humane and just way of operating.  This may include humanizing the work place for employees and clients or customers. It might also mean finding ways to facilitate the organization in taking a socially responsible stance.  This involves us in a “ministry to structures.”

  From Fill All Things: The Dynamics of Spirituality in the Parish Church

The list could include Porath’s concerns but goes well beyond them. For example, there’s the question of how the baptized might contribute to harmony in the workplace. 

Harmony

Through its baptized members scattered throughout the sectors of society, what role can the parish play in the humanization of the workplace? What might the parish do that contributes to harmony in the workplace?

If what so many experience in the workplace is discord, tension, and anger how can a parish church help the mission of Holy Unity progress in that environment? 

Three things

• Experience of harmony, especially in the Sunday Eucharist
• Learning how to maintain inner harmony
• Competencies that facilitate harmony

Much of the discord in our life has to do with our struggles over human gifts—which gifts are most important, which are even needed, our lack of humility in accepting it when we lack certain gifts, our inner resistance to having to act to develop our own gifts, our hesitation to assist others in the development of their gifts. 

What we seek in the Eucharist and in all of parish life is that the diversity of gifts may be brought into harmony to the glory of God and in fulfillment of God’s purposes. 

Basil Moss offers an image of that harmony rooting it in prayer.

I’m fed up with this ghastly picture of prayer as a private telephone line with or without a voice at the other end. It’s much more like you and me playing our second fiddles in an unending heavenly orchestral symphony of praise and joy. When we pray, we take up our fiddles, and when we stop we put them down again—but the music never stops. -Basil Moss, quoted in Spirituality for Today (London, 1967)

Maybe if we want more harmony the place to begin is: 

• By the parish offering a public daily office
• Training and coaching members to say the Office on their own
• Training members in ways to be more reflective, in contemplation and meditation, how to do Lectio Divina
• And offering a Sunday Eucharist of grace, beauty and rhythm.

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Caesura    The web page
A program for parish churches
Vaccinating against conflict
Nurturing healthy relationships

Caesura: About pausing before speaking

Lowell once told me that I was being pissy. He was thinking of the times he saw me cut someone off at the knees during a training event. Like the time the new priest said, “What the hell is this stuff about stability? Christian faith is all about transformation, it's all about change.” 

I wish I had been more gentle. I wish I had been kinder. Maybe his comment wasn’t as stupid as it sounded. And even if it was, I could have said, “Say more.” I might have wondered if there was something within what he was saying that was worth considering. I could have thanked him for the comment and moved on. I could have engaged him, asked if he’d be willing to consider an alternate view, and offer him a few minutes on the Benedictine Promise. I could have paused before reacting. I wish I had been kinder.

In the not-too-distant past I found myself on the other end of it. I was doing something to serve the parish. Was wrapping up a project that I had set in motion. I didn’t want to dump it on the parish priest (I’ll call him John). Then I received an e-mail from John accusing me of trying to move myself into an unauthorized leadership role. I was told, “do not continue in this vein.”  Oh my!!! I seem to have crossed a line someplace even though I thought I was doing Fr. John and the parish an act of service. Moving myself into a new leadership role wasn’t something I wanted; in fact, it was something I had decided to avoid. 

On the following day at coffee hour another retired priest (I’ll call her Mary) came up to me and introduced herself. She was a few years older than me. I had been sitting near her, and exchanging the Peace with her, for at least the last year. Then she said, “I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut in the parish. They don’t want to hear it.” That set off a flashback as I recalled an event in coffee hour about six months earlier when Fr. John  delivered a curt and harsh response to a suggestion Mother Mary made regarding parish hospitality. I decided to affirm the need for us retired types to guard our tongue instead of doing a, “Yea, listen to what he did to me!!” 

I think there’s value in not going down the resentment road. To step aside from the temptation to grumble. That then drifted into thoughts of how I was tough enough to handle such abuse—I had experienced people with raised fists, guns, and knives; I had an honorable discharge from the Marines; I had stepped between gangs with their weapons in hand, and I had served parishes in South Philadelphia and Trenton; when young I had broken the bones of others and had my own nose busted — I was tough enough. Well … “sticks and stones may …”   You get the idea. I was whining.

It took me about 36 hours to move on from the exchange. I was aware of feelings of hurt and pain and thoughts about being unjustly accused. Worst yet, when I pointed out to Fr. John that he was misreading things, he didn’t even acknowledge what I said. I recalled a piece of my early behavioral science training regarding how being discounted was much more damaging than being attacked. Resentment was stirring in me. Whining and resentment — this wan’t good.

Then I was preparing to walk to the grocery story and stop for coffee on the way home. I wanted to take a book that would fit in my back pocket. Found one. Set off on my errands. Got to the coffee shop, bought an Americano, sat down and proceeded to read a commentary on Job. 

I’m an introvert so when laughing at myself I do it very quietly. 

The habits

Don’t go on the attack. Don’t get pissy with the other person. Allow your feelings to be what they are and manage them. Put a guard on your tongue. Pray for the person offending you. Forgive before they ask for forgiveness. Don’t seek apologies before being willing to let go. Better yet, don't seek apologies. Find the lightness in yourself. Above all pause. And then pause again. 

Keep your tongue from evil-speaking *

    and your lips from lying words (Ps 34:13)

For Saint Benedict this gets grounded in learning to be silent. 

To nurture in ourselves the habit of silence and stillness is to be ready to listen to God and others. It is to step aside from shallow and bitter talk, from gossip and grumbling. Benedict understands that silence is related to humility. It feeds humility and is also an expression of humility.

None of us always gets this right. We continue in human limitation and sin. But we can develop habits, patterns of behavior, of harmony and peace. We can learn the rhythms of silence and pausing. 

For the health of the parish

We’re all called to the rhythms of silence and pausing. It’s part of what it means to grow in faith and become a more apostolic Christian. If a parish is to nurture a climate of harmony and respect the focus needs to be on the center — the Apostolic core and the institutional center. 

There are four elements to that institutional center. The list is in order of impact on parish climate.

1. The rector (vicar, priest in charge)

2. All the other clergy in the parish —paid associates, deacons, unpaid priest associates, and those retired and bi-vocational clergy who are simply attending.

3. The connectors - lay leaders with responsibilities that have them interacting with others as representatives of the parish. This might include wardens, the treasurer.

4. Parish staff such as office workers and child care workers.

These are the people who have a disproportionate influence on shaping the parish climate. Their listening and kindness or their dismissiveness and harshness has a greater impact. They need to be equipped for that influence by training in listening, silence and pausing; by receiving careful feedback on the impact of their behavior; by being expected to live the church’s rhythms of prayer and reflection; and by being loved. 

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Caesura    The web page
A program for parish churches
Vaccinating against conflict
Nurturing healthy relationships

Conflict: Talk about it/Don’t talk about it

The parish had a major conflict several years ago. People left. The rector resigned. Friends were on opposite sides. It was awful!

Attempts to “talk about it” have generally resulted in a reactivation of all the feelings and positions that existed during the dispute. So, the parish has settled into a norm of not having any conversation about what happened. 

Don’t talk about it

There’s little value in opening old wounds, experiencing the pain anew, having feelings of anger and resentment toward other parishioners — when that’s all there is. No learning, no insight, no forgiveness, just rehashing. What’s the point?

Reestablishing the old battle lines has little value. Of course one way of talking about the conflict and avoiding that is to blame people not currently in the parish — the bishop, the diocese, the former rector, and the people that left. We can always displace responsibility.

Parish’s settle into a habit of not talking about the past conflict for good reasons.

Talk about it

But what if we can learn better ways to manage tensions and disagreements? What if talking about it can help us do better in the future?

A few guidelines. It is generally useful to reflect on the conflict: 

• After time has passed
• In a disciplined, structured process
• Making use of models and theory to assist our understanding
• By dealing with a small piece at a time
• Using an experienced, trained consultant

In a recent consultation it took a vestry 30 minutes to agree to spend another 30 minutes in a disciplined reflection on a past parish conflict. That’s not uncommon. It’s also not a mistaken instinct on the vestry’s part. Sorting out when to talk about a past conflict and when to avoid talking about it is reasonable. What leaders and consultants need to help vestry’s do is see it as  a free choice. It’s not healthy when the discussion is avoided out of habit. If the conditions are right it’s possible for parish leaders to reflect and in that reflection process learn better ways.

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