UMR Communications is offering the latest headlines in the RSS format.
Commentary
WESLEYAN WISDOM: Moving? Here’s how to get off to a good start Donald W. Haynes, Jul 8, 2010
Donald W. Haynes
By Donald W. Haynes UMR Columnist
As thousands of United Methodist clergy move to new parishes, we have two choices: We can begin as we always begin working in a new congregation or we can think a bit outside the box.
The Scripture lesson for moving day is Isaiah 43:19: “God says, ‘I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth; do you perceive it?’” With each appointment, God is calling us to some new dimension of ministry. We are called to create a redemptive dialogue between the people and God.
Lovett Weems, director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary, believes that within the local church, “the greatest variable from one church to another is the pastor and the quality of the pastor’s leadership.”
“The decline of effective leadership is one of the key factors behind the malaise and decline . . . in the last generation,” Dr. Weems writes. “One reason for the rise of conservative and fundamentalist churches in this era is . . . lack of leadership. We have not presented compelling and appealing alternatives [to fundamentalism].”
Bishop Larry Goodpaster, president of the Council of Bishops, has challenged clergy to either develop an effective ministry or expect ineffectiveness to affect their career path!
We are not talking about leadership that glorifies the leader or makes the church revolve around her or his personality. What the church needs is dynamic leadership that is rooted in Christian servanthood and casts a new vision as we live out the message of the gospel within the context of our denominational brand.
We United Methodists have allowed our message to become either tedious or tasteless. We must recover the passion of our ancestral torchbearers.
Dr. Weems insists that leadership is more an art than a science. It’s more than a to-do list. We can be a beloved pastor who is “busy here and there” (I Kings 20:40) as a chaplain to the status quo. We also can have our own agenda that quickly sets up an adversarial relationship with our new congregation.
We must overcome a major shortcoming in our itineracy: the lack of time to grieve, recover from wounds and process the root causes of congregational dysfunction. Other denominations survive for months or years between pastors. The logistics would be challenging, but all moving pastors should have a three-month paid sabbatical before arriving at the new appointment.
Farewells should be processed before the welcome party begins. It is painfully difficult to want a red-carpet reception while laity are still wiping tears or venting anger. Interim pastors should be used more often. We need to allow congregations time to breathe, heal and transition into a new era.
Our goal as pastor in a new parish should be to mesh with the mood of the parish. Both of us must dream again, but leadership is not imposing our own dream on people. Rather it is to be a player-coach who helps them discover God’s dream for this congregation in this culture at this time in history.
Each move represents a dream that is dying, followed by a new dream that comes to birth.
Start on right foot
John Wesley itemized his “means of grace” as spiritual disciplines of perfecting grace, but they also work well as ways to begin a new pastor-parish relationship. There can be no better curriculum than to begin with the following on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon through mid-evening:
• holy conferencing with the Church Council and the entire Administrative Committees and Program Teams;
• searching the Scriptures and defining Romans 12 as a “constitution for Christian living”;
• engaging the laity in a prayer covenant, teaching the familiar Psalm 23 as a daily mantra, reminding them that through all the paths of life we have the assurance that we never walk alone;
• Holy Communion and perhaps washing their feet.
What a marvelous contrast that day is to a Church Council meeting, where the focus is on lack of funds or an old business item that was tabled until we arrived!
Sit where they sit
Following the day apart, immediately visit the former pillars of the church who can no longer be in church or who no longer hold office. You’ll hear a lot about “the way we used to do it” but you are affirming their continuing role in the congregation and demonstrating an appreciation for those who have “brought us safe thus far.”
Lyle Schaller, one of the most widely read authors on congregational life today, used to call this the AAOELC—the “angry, alienated, older ex-leader club.” He also taught us that these folks often do not insist on their way as much as they need to feel heard. Take them to a restaurant, pick up the tab and thank them for their time, and it’s amazing how many will become your supporters!
Follow this by visiting your current leadership team in one-on-one breakfasts, lunches and workplace visits. Ask them what they see as the church’s three major strengths and what their three concerns are. Ask them how much they feel led by the Lord to lead. Let them see you writing these down.
A tea at the parsonage the first month with the Staff-Parish Relations Committee members and spouses will be remembered for years. This builds a great bridge, as both pastor and spouse serve as hosts, regardless of which gender the pastor might be. It turns the tables on the tradition of new pastor and spouse always being the honored guests for get-acquainted settings.
The young, inexperienced prophet Ezekiel was the “pastor” of exiled people whose last vision of home was seeing smoke rising from their burning temple. Many of us are pastors of churches whose communities have changed so much that they see themselves as “refugees.” The Bible says Ezekiel “sat where his people sat” (Ezekiel 3:15). He assured them he saw the “Shekinah Glory” rising from the temple ruins and accompanying them into exile.
God calls us as shepherds to also “sit where our people sit.” Wesley’s question is still asked of us at ordination—regardless of whether our neighborhoods have gated communities and high-rise apartments: “Will you visit from house to house?”
Author Kennon Callahan tried to tell us 20 years ago that “the age of the local pastor is over; the age of the missionary pastor has come.” Yet we pastors have seldom felt the need for the training that orients missionaries to the indigenous culture. Jesus knew to meet people where they were; we don’t have his insight without doing some homework!
Focused preaching
When God stops inspiring new sermons, we should sit down. Churches are not all the same, the world has changed and hopefully we have grown.
One of the books that informed my early ministry was by Morgan Edwards who taught at what is now Claremont School of Theology. I underlined these words of his in 1961, when I was but 26: “The twentieth century had several revolutions, all of them drenching the earth with blood. We need a constructive revolution to restore moral significance and meaning to life.
“If civilization is to be renewed in our time, the moral and spiritual revolution will have to take root in our uncommitted youth, the secular man who is largely on the defensive, and the church members who have scarcely gone deep enough.”
I never moved to a new parish without reading again those profound words. My priorities became the uncommitted, the defensive carping critics and the nominal members whose faith was a mile wide and an inch deep. As I prepare each sermon, I still ask what God is calling me to say to God’s daughters and sons, persons at these junctures in their journey over whom I am now called to be the shepherd.
Self care
Leonard Sweet’s book 11 is a much-needed sequel to Carlyle Marney’s 1974 volume, Priests to Each Other. Clergy are a profession of loners, and we pay a terrible price for it. Dr. Sweet calls for us to establish 11 relationships that mirror biblical characters, each of which fills a much-needed role in our journey. Among these are an “encourager,” a “back-coverer,” a “Lydia,” a true friend and the Paraclete.
He also calls for “a Jerusalem,” a sacred place where the cacophony of voices can be replaced with the sounds of silence, where the darkness gives way to the dawn and the mourning of the night is followed by the joy that comes with new mornings.
My suggestions could go on and on, but underlying all of them is the plea for a servant-leader style that is not wimpy, but rather respectful of where others stand. Our profession has a reputation as talkers; we need to be seen also as creative listeners.
Dr. Haynes is a retired member of the Western North Carolina Conference, an adjunct professor at Hood Theological Seminary and current interim pastor of Kallam Grove Christian Church. e-mail: dhaynes11@triad.rr.com.
Donald W. Haynes
