Church Planting Central

For all of our sakes, would you please sit?

Stephen Pressfield writes the following:

"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write."

Stephen is describing resistance - the same "resistance" that many of us encounter when we try offering our corresponding art forms, like ministry, leadership, mentoring, innovating and even "companioning." Such a high holy art form that is - that of companioning each other into courageous acts of compassion and generosity. Oftentimes, this shows up as mentoring leaders but sometimes it's just about companioning our partners, spouses, children or better yet, ourselves!

Often, rather than deal with my own resistance to producing that relationship art - that hard work of co-creating new possibiities, I'd rather blog about it, or read books on it, or theorize about why the changing context of "companioning ministries" is calling for new paradigms or models or theories in action. (At this point, I remember an episode of "arrested development" that featured an attorney by the name of Bob Loblaw! Feels like that, at this point! I mean, how many books and blogs and speakers tours and conventions do we need before we explode with the profundity of it all?)

I really like Pressfield's scoop on "resistance." Rather than moralize or totalize, he just "presents a rogue's gallery of the many manifestations of Resistance (as found in the Preface). "You will recognize each and every one, for this force lives within us all—self-sabotage, self-deception, self-corruption. We writers know it as "block," a paralysis whose symptoms can bring on appalling behavior."

Ellen deGeneres does a fantastic bit on procrastination (or the mismanagement of resistance) in one of her DVD releases of stand-up routines. Seth Godin walks us through managing resistance in "Linchpin" - a provocative primer on releasing the art you are here to produce.

After re-reading Pressfield's work on the the WAR of ART, I am provoked. The provocation is to be clear about when I am giving in to the resistance and when I am courageously offering the best I have to "ship out" in that moment. It's like I need the Zen Master to sneak up behind me and thunk me with the reed to wake me up out of my stupor - languoring in tasks that don't match my strengths, don't embody my recent "Yes's" to Spirit, don't leave me motivated to try on even more courage.

Here is what I would ask you! What is your equivalent to sitting down to write? I'm not asking, "What is your equivalent to writing?" The question really is, "What is your equivalent to sitting?" What does it take for you to show up, pen/brush/knife/scalpel/trowel/text/pastel in hand, fully awake and present to the future that may be longing to be birthed in you?

For all of our sakes, would you please sit?

There!

Kindly, gently sitting here, as well . . . may I ask, "Would you please share with

us the art you were born to create?"

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.

(from Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing by Jalal al-Din Rumi translated by Coleman Barks)

With high hopes for the future of the Diocese of Washington!

My address to the Clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington

The parable of the crude little life-saving station, known to few even after 57 years of circulation, is a remarkably adept appraisal of the tendency of faith communities to turn insular and artificial. The reasons I find it so appealing (as the Episcopal Church Center’s Officer for Church Planting and Ministry Redevelopment) are as follows:

 

1.)    It was written by one of our own, the past president of the House of Deputies to General Convention.

2.)    It uses “parable” format to explore what is, as well as what might be.

3.)    It skillfully critiques the tendency of religious communities to move toward a “Club” mentality.

4.)    It asks us to evaluate the “real time” contribution of faith communities by the actual difference they make in the lives of their surrounding community.

 

In the parable, there is a moment when what was a life-saving station turns into a Club. From there forward, the primary reason for joining that club was the benefit of membership. Previously, the primary motivation was that of serving the souls who normally would have been lost to shipwreck on that rocky seacoast. The impact of that shift is that, eventually, those rescued (now by independent contractors) were no longer welcomed into the Clubhouse. They first had to be cleaned up and made respectable!

 

 

Painful as that sounds, it is a remarkable depiction of the challenge facing religious leaders in the Christian movement today. That “Club” identity has been to known to society for so long that many of our finer churches are viewed by the large community as “a sort of club.” I personally want that to change, and in my lifetime!

 Apparently, that challenge is not the exclusive domain of the Episcopal Church. Leaders in our Mother Church (the Church of England) have been naming this as their reality for years. On page 11 of Mission-shaped church, Reverend Gordon Bates (then Bishop of Whitby in the Church of England) is quoted (from the Church Army News, April 1998) as claiming the following for his Church:

The consequences for a national church, used to operating among people and institutions on the assumptions of Christendom, are acute. The Church of England bases a significant part of its identity on its physical presence in every community, and on a ‘come to us’ strategy. But as community becomes more complex, mere geographical presence is no longer a guarantee that we can connect. The reality is that mainstream culture no longer brings people to the church door. We can no longer assume that we can automatically reproduce ourselves, because the pool of people who regard church as relevant or important is decreasing with every generation.

 The Church has got to realize its missionary responsibilities. We live in a society, whether that be urban or rural, which is now basically second or even third generation pagan once again; and we cannot simply work on the premise that all we have to do to bring people to Christ is to ask them to remember their long-held, but dormant faith. Very many people have no residue of Christian faith at all; it’s not just dormant, it’s nonexistent; in so many instances we have to go back to basics; we are in a critical missionary situation. (The text may be found, in its entirety, here: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/mission_shaped_church.pdf)

 I think the irony of Bishop Bates’ words is primarily lost on the Insider and the members of our exclusive Clubs! To the rest of the world, that irony is crystal clear: “We live in a society . . . which is now basically second or even third generation pagan once again” and that shift took place during centuries when we had a church in every neighborhood, offering Church-approved sermons and teachings and ministries every week.

We often hear sociologists and religious pundits proclaim the woes of postmodernity and their impact on congregational vitality. I have recently realized that my heart is hardened to such explanations. I’m convinced that the real problem is not the relativism of postmodernity. Nope, it’s much simpler than that. We have a near Pagan culture today primarily because we clergy have, for generations, managed clubs, not life-saving stations! Their sermons have reinforced the public’s growing sense of the church’s irrelevance. We have developed “club theology” that makes reverencing of the liturgical lifeboat a matter of personal and corporate piety. We have created high standards for membership which have little to do with the original values of the crude little life-saving station. We have placed burdens upon those recently rescued which we ourselves could not bear (to quote that crazy Rabbi from Nazareth). We have hired independent contractors to do the life-saving work and we wonder why the surrounding community would rather give to UNICEF than to support their local parish!

How did we come to the place where, both here and abroad, Church has become so irrelevant that families and couples and singles of all ages and orientations are more attracted to Yoga, “Sweat your Prayers” and Reading Rooms than to the somber tones of the local cleric proclaiming the glories of years past and the moral virtues of the privileged?

Bad theology and vending machine meals, I say. First, bad theology.

For a long time we've known that conformity is the obsession of religious institutions. It is the impulse behind credal confessions and our present rites of initiation, as well as our “Holy Orders process.” Institutions lose their power (or so they believe) when they give it away. They have less authority if they make it too easy to join the ranks of the elite – the clerics and insiders that manage ritual practice. (For more on that, read Peter Berger’s Noise of solemn assemblies.)

 The insistence on Conformity is also the impulse behind our fascination with orthodoxy. The institutional battles faced by each of our American Christian denominations are not concerned with how best to feed the poor or alleviate suffering or how to bring the greatest amount of hope and joy into “pagan” communities as Bishop Bates referencess them. Instead, we fight to retain franchise rights – who’s “in” and who’s “out” of the franchise – the One True Church. In reality, to misquote Forrest Gump, “orthodoxy is as orthodoxy does.” To whom does it make the greater difference whether or not a community member believes correctly regarding the “of one substance” controversy? Is it the rescue worker “hanging ten” on the rocky seacoast, poised to pull one more shipwrecked soul out of the storm? Or is it the Club manager concerned to maintain the purity of the membership’s rolls?

In reality, theology is relationship language that needs to be rescued from the grip of academia and philosophy. The formation of theology is, at its best, indigenous – that is, locally formed and tested in relationship. It cannot be reified any more than manna could have been stockpiled for peoples of another culture, or another time. It cannot be “fixed” or established or codified. Jesus must have known this since we have no record of his having turned to a scribe (anywhere or anytime in his ministry) to ask that he correctly record his teachings so that the movement would get started on the right theological footing. We also have no record that Jesus ever baptized any of his followers into the right movement!

Now to my point on vending machine meals. There is nothing more dull than going forward to receive “a crisp and a shot” from robed holy people, in my humble opinion, though we have made it desirable and “holy” through many years of tradition and back-pedaled theology. Those of you Insiders who love the Eucharistic celebration as it is, please block your ears and bear with me! The Liturgical Lifeboat is still a means of grace for you and I honor that.

 

In reality, most of the outsiders who might come to our Eucharistic Celebrations are actually looking for the Johannine “Feeding of the 5000” rather than the “Last Supper.” And, if you show up longing to share meals around a new family table because your life is spinning out of control or because you just found out that your birth family isn’t the family you always thought it was or because you don’t have the resources to buy your own next meal, a “crisp and a shot” just doesn’t quite do it. Instead, it feels sort of like punching a button on a machine owned by a Pepsi distributing franchise.

 

Based on all of that, I ask myself constantly, “What would it take for these ‘pagans” to try out a community of faith, once again?” Before I can even get to that question, I have to ask, “Why would a community of faith want to reconnect with the ‘pagans’ in their community?” (I have well-earned misgivings about clubhouse Christianity’s tendency to mimic Procrustes’ bait and switch hospitality!)

  

That was the very question that Jesus addresses when, against his followers’ better judgment, he feeds everybody present, not just the true confessing followers! He offers them a meal so exuberantly generous that there are 12 baskets left over! There’s no vending machine mentality here! There’s a sense of Divine wastefulness that draws even the most curmudgeonly among us to give of our best, and freely!

 

What might Jesus have been offering his followers? A Divine call to repentance, I’d say! Repent, not of sins that the “holy” fuss and fume about, from their pulpits! Those are symptoms of brokenness, not the cause! Repent of the cause – that of living a life based on Fear – the human dynamic most diametrically opposed to love. Fear that they  would run out. Fear of dying. Fear of failure. Fear that would keep us from trusting the Spirit so totally that we too might give up our lives for the sake of finding Life.

 

Now here is the hard part. I serve an anxious institution – the Episcopal Church. It is being served and led by some really remarkable people who struggle to address these questions, faithfully, these days. It is not an easy calling or vocation to offer, mostly because it is really hard to sort out the Club practices and values from those of the crude little life-saving station. Much of the time, we live in the gray realm between those two. But I, and others, constantly ask, “How would we behave and what would we do differently if we really got over our fear and moved to a deep and passionate love for the world that the Spirit loves so dearly?”

 

Here are my quick answers. I welcome yours.

 

1.)    Invest our material resources (our buildings and property and bank accounts) in developing new communities of faith that are contemporary embodiments of the crude little life-saving stations described in the parable.

2.)    Give up our need to define and control orthodoxy. Get rid of club membership rolls.

3.)    Bless (whether you call it “ordination” or not) all those offering ministry of any kind.

4.)    Start conducting ourselves as if we really believed that “we are the stories that we tell.” Start trusting the indigenous nature of “doing theology” and better develop the capacity to “sense” the Spirit at work.

5.)    Learn what it means to become “Birthing Centers” for the midwifing of new ministry.

6.)    Get comfortable with recycling clubs back into life saving stations, where the focus is on the outsider, more than on the needs of the insider.

 

Let me offer, in closing, that I feel quite vulnerable in sharing this publicly. I know that it may not be seen as in keeping with the Scripture, Tradition and Reason stool that we pride ourselves in as Episcopalians. But, as a friend of mine recently asked, “What are we supporting with that stool we love so much?” My motivation is not to critique our denomination and its traditions so much as it is to provoke us to get back to the mission and practices of the crude little life-saving station. My dream is that we (presently, members of clubs) might long for the rewriting of the parable. My dream is that, in my lifetime, or in my daughter’s lifetime, a new leader would reflect on this Kairos moment and rewrite the parable, “History continued to repeat itself, but if you visit that sea coast today, you will find a number of crude little life-saving stations as well as clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people are pulled to safety. Oh Happy Day!

 

 

Let us pray: “Oh God, open our eyes to see Your hand at work in the world about us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” Amen

 

(from Eucharistic Prayer C, in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer)

Spirit Spotting and role-playing the emergent . . .

For those of us committed to midwifing the Spirit's future that is longing to be birthed in this moment . . .

Lately I've noticed that those who innovate for the sake of discovering God's new life actually practice at it. In fact, it is their "practice!"

As I've observed ...

they experiment (while getting more and more comfortable with failure);

they explore learnings from other "sectors" (Scharmer calls this "deep dive" exploration);

they learn to use humor and playfulness to stay open to new possibilities and counteract our rigid and anxious environments;

they spend alot of time "harvesting conversations" and noticing potential learnings;

they tease themselves (and those around them) out of the periodic "stuckness" that overtakes us all, and...

they "try it on" -- Wellman calls this "role-playing the emergent."

Of course, the motivation to take this on depends on one's faith in the idea that God's Future IS longing to be birthed in this moment. It also helps to wake up remembering that the Spirit has made herself vulnerable to my "Yes's" and "No's" in Her invitation for me to partner. Otherwise, it's a whole lot of extra work, right?!

Wilber and Fowler convincingly made the case that, now more than ever, faith communities are incredibly important to the future of our life together on this planet.

Here is what I am wondering . . .

Which part of God's future are you called to midwife?

How we can we support you in that creative endeavor?

Would you join us this Friday at 4 as we connect with innovative leaders? Ist Friday Videoconference

What is your "Yes!" in this moment?

Would you let me know?

 

Tom Brackett

646-203-6266

tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org

Why bother?

There is growing in me a compassionate response to the enjoinder we frequently hear in mainline Christianity. It goes something like, "We need to be better evangelists!" or, "We need to do a better job of sharing the good news and the unique gifts of the Episcopal Church!"

Lately, when I've asked around (in the most Columbo-esque manner I can muster), "How have you recently experienced the Good News of God as we know it in Jesus Christ?" I am surprised to discover how many leaders in our religious institutions have no encounters to report. Not now, not lately -- not ever.

Instead, they will talk at length about soteriology, hamartiology, eschatology or ecclesiology, but not the personal encounter kind of stories that light up a person's eyes in the telling, as well as in the hearing. They may talk about theological abstracts and doctrinal certainties or universalizing claims of God's goodness but nothing about heart to heart encounters with the kind of breakthrough realization that God cares.

About you.

Personally.

Intimately.

Passionately - about all and every one of us.

OK, so, in the absence of such an experience of news that is that good, what would you expect? Not much of a story, right? So, how are we to compassionately ask a person who has no stories of encounter to practice the kind of Evangelism that transforms lives and gathers faith communities?

We don't. That IS the compassionate response!

OK, here's the back story for my post. I was with a remarkable group of Episcopalian and Lutheran clergy last month, for three whole days. (These are professional religious leaders with amazing education under their belts.) We used up the whole schedule to talk about personal encounters with Good News that we had experienced as transformative. (Thank God that each person present had something to share, right?!)

During our debriefing, fully one third of the 23 clergy present explained that no one had ever asked them for their experience(s) with Good News - not in their home parish, not in their seminary experience, not in their Holy Orders discernment process, not in preparation for their ordination, not in their curacy, not in their present ministry. In fact, several of the clergy remarked on the surprising awkwardness they felt in sharing their personal stories of Encounter; it was something they were not used to doing.

That got me wondering . . . if this whole "Church thing" is not about encounters with the Divine that transform us from the inside out, then let's not even ask for the Good News stories! But ... if it is, then surely we have an incredible treasure in human containers that is worth even (a respectable amount of) Episcopalian urgency!

Otherwise, why bother?

Right?

 

Tom (still glowing from all those stories . . .)

646-203-6266

tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org

Shuffling deck chairs . . . ?

 

Critics of organized religion seem to observe a perennial return to the sinking of the HMS Titanic 98 years ago as metaphor for the failing of American denominationalism. The conversation where this pops up is usually about some seemingly banal aspect of the organized part of organized religion. The retort often goes like this, “They’re shuffling deck chairs on the fantail.”[1] The lore says that, right up until the last second (before the Great Ship went under), the band was playing and the revelers were moving deck chairs around for a better view. In other words, the implication is that the leaders of organized religion are so oblivious to the realities evident to everyone else that they are still shuffling deck chairs instead of heading over to the lifeboats, along with the rest of the band.

Lately, I’ve been rethinking the slur, but in a surprising way. What’s dawned on me is the question, “Why would we compare ourselves to the Titanic in the first place?” Certainly no expression of faith communities would intentionally compare themselves to a luxury liner whose privileged passengers rode nearly 75 feet above the realities of the ocean. Or, maybe it is the myth of the invincible Titanic that encourages the comparison – I don’t know. In any case, I’m pretty sure that the comparison between the Titanic and institutional church are not helpful.

But . . . followers of the Rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth have never ridden (for long) in any luxury liner unassailable by the realities of the average person. Those committed to rescuing the drowning certainly would not attempt to offer help from ten stories up! I’ve come to think that it’s actually these images of faith communities (and their hierarchies) that need to hit the iceberg of our current realities. By the way, if you’re into nautical metaphors, you might try on a far more helpful metaphor known as the “Parable of the Crude Little Life-saving Station.” You’ll find that right here. 

 

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[1] Actually means: actions taken solely for the feeling (or the appearance) of doing something about an unavoidable situation; actions that not only accomplish nothing but *blatantly* accomplish nothing. (Found at the Urban Dictionary online on October 18^th, 2010 at http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=it's%20like%20shuffling%20deck%20chairs%20on%20the%20titanic)

fait accompli ?

In Diffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers defines diffusion as "the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system." I know that sounds kind of heady, but recently I’ve wondered if Dr. Rogers was noticing variations of giftedness that each of us possesses. Maybe the “diffusions” are understood best as a range of personal responses to innovation, based on faith capacity to embrace change or innovation. Might our ability to see, recognize and then “try on” innovative responses to a changing world depend on the level of faith that each of us innately possesses?

Lately, it’s occurred to me that Jesus of Nazareth was about as innovative an innovator as one might find for his time. He took what were common beliefs and practices and tipped them over on their collective ears just far enough that his followers could hardly turn back to their former ways. They had seen the Light – a new Realm – beyond anything they could have imagined on their own.

So to borrow from Roger’s “Diffusion” idea, why was it that Simeon and Anna could immediately recognize the God Child and say, “The time has come!” and yet it took Peter 3+ years of being with Jesus before he can finally recognize the One asking him, “Do you love me?” Simeon recognized not only Jesus but also the beginning of a new era (see Luke 2:29–32 for the rest of the story). Stepping back a little in the Hebrew Scriptures, why was it that Moses could lead a tribe through Wilderness for forty years and yet he could not cross over one little river into the Promised Land? Rogers’ categories of adopters are: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards (Rogers 1962, p. 150). Which one of these do you think Moses was?

Also, what was it that Simeon was announcing so distinctively? He says, “Let me go . . . in peace.” If Everett Rogers were to apply Diffusion of Innovation to Simeon and Ana’s response in the Temple, as well as to Peter, as well as to Jesus’ step-brother Thomas, where would they fit on the continuum of responses to the radicalizing life and teachings of Jesus? Where would I fit?

Last week, I was with a group of thoughtful leaders who were mapping the new roles for authority in emerging systems. The expected role for authority in dying “systems” or organisms is to support safe and incremental innovation and to resist anything that upsets the sacred apple carts. Lately, I’ve sensed that it doesn’t have to be so. At this retreat, we had mapped the life cycle of a dying organization and next to it (and slightly overlapping) we mapped the life force of an emerging and lively system, full of hopeful responses to a changing environment. We invited participants to find their place on the two arcs and then talk to each other. At one really insightful moment, the dying system’s primary leader faced the emerging organization’s leader and their eyes locked. There was a brief silence – it was pregnant! (Those watching later remarked that the “role play” aspect disappeared for a moment and all of us were waiting on the real future longing to be birthed in that moment.) From the middle of that silence, a voice came out of the depths of the person acting as seasoned leader in the dying system. He dropped to one knee and with total abandon he cried out, “I beg of you . . . stand in the authority that is yours and let me release my need for control . . . !” The role play stopped there – we had what we’d been looking for.

Abraham negotiated with God to save a city for the sake of one. He actually bargained with the Divine to change the expression of Divine justice all the way from what was to be expected down to an absurd token of municipal commitment – one person! (Yup, those are some serious negotiating skills!) And yet . . . Moses was told that he could not enter the Promised Land and, as far as we know, he accepted the decision as fait accompli. He did not have Abraham’s grasp of God’s compassion and, shall we say, “negotiability.” Still, I wonder, if he had really wanted to, could Moses have entered the Promised Land, a couple of steps behind Joshua in their “Crossing over?” I wonder … what would it have been like for a wizened Moses to freely support the upstart Joshua? Did he really have to go down with the old system and die a sort of Hero’s death? I am not so sure.

Just imagine! What if more and more of the leaders in our dying systems accepted the call to stay in the game but hold open space for new leadership, new expressions of faith and life, and even new understandings of power and authority? Imagine that!

As always, I welcome your responses and ideas.

Tom

tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org

Hanging by a paradoxical thread with Ken Howard . . .

OK, let me be straight up with you. Ken Howard is a friend of mine (I like him and he seems to like me). I’ve enjoyed Ken ever since our first encounter on a New Orleans sidewalk in 2008 after eating Beignets together at Café du Monde. When we connect, we tend toward the nitty gritty issues of being fathers, husbands and sons, as well as the lofty theological abstractions of professional religious leadership. We also joke about the way that some of us take ourselves and our organized religion too seriously. (In fact, my wife is grateful for Ken’s mischievous influence on my life!)

Not long ago, Ken asked me to review Chapter 4 of his newly-released book, Paradoxy: Creating Christian Community Beyond Us and Them. I dug in immediately and discovered that, once again, Ken is offering his best, from his heart, from his passion for lively communities of faith and from his own vulnerability as a leader and pilgrim among us. I decided that I would take my time and offer this longer-than-usual post, just to do justice to all the accumulated thoughtfulness that Ken offers here. (If you are new to this Blog tour of reviews, here is where you go to see the reviews of Chapters 1-3.)

Ken Howard’s new book “Paradoxy” has a whole lot to offer, especially to those of us concerned with offering fresh forms of ministry or new wineskins for the Spirit’s outpouring in our times. His commitment to start each chapter with definitions is exemplary – he takes his time, lays a solid foundation for the conversation and then repeatedly invites the reader to engage reflectively – not so much on purely theological concepts as much as on practical applications. I’ll get to those in a minute, but first some of my own reflections . . .

I find it ironic that the first definition Ken offers in Chapter 4 “Hanging by a Thread: Christianity as Religion” is the definition of “religion.” I mean to say “ironic” because the primary definition of the term starts with the words, “a set of beliefs …” and only later does the definition circle around to land on “practices.” It seems to me that Christendom has taught dictionary makers well over the last two thousand years!

In my experience, most of those recovering from one dogmatic expression of religion tend to gravitate toward religious expressions more focused on the practices, rather than the dogma. The longings for certainty persist but the pain of being rejected for nonconformist beliefs is usually greater! As a case in point, consider how many retired clergy and seminary professors show up in Quaker (or Quaker style) gatherings the first Sunday after their retirement party!

Ken then goes on to demonstrate the ways that Religion has used dogma to “other” both insiders and outsiders not in close agreement. He shows how that this “othering” tendency is not in keeping with the origins of the Jesus Movement – one focused primarily on the practices of a Rogue Rabbi who had developed Holy Teasing into an art form. But, in so many words, Ken asks how it is that we morphed from a movement into an organized religion. I mean, as Ken points out, even the word “church” originally pointed to public gatherings of those trying on a “Yes!” response to the Spirit’s call. It was only two centuries later that an organizing government decided to co-opt the energy of the Jesus Movement by making it a State Religion, simultaneously overreacting to the abstruse claims of the original Gnostics. Finally, Ken points out that, in keeping with a long-standing Judeo-Christian tradition, we took what was a mistake and “made it holy.”

Like Phyllis Tickle, Brian McLaren, Len Sweet, Ken Wilbur and many other seers of our times, Ken Howard points to Emergence Christianity as a sign of hope – the latest iteration of a recurring movement that shifts its center of gravity from dogma to practice. In its best moments, that recurrent movement tends to include a commitment to cease and desist from “othering” those not in agreement with its sensibilities – hence the “generous” part. Ken then goes on to draw out the practical distinctions between organizations and organisms. He offers one more strand to the thread by claiming that, as our religious organizations fail, we might consider moving to an “organism” model of interdependency and fluid adaptability. Ken believes we can “get there” if we remember that Creeds are best when received as descriptive (rather than definitive) markers of our beliefs. Thus, the full continuum described by the Creeds must necessarily be paradoxical, since continua tend to map expanding ranges of possibilities. For example, the present Conservative/Liberal debates are part of a “dead end” tradition of false conflict because the two terms represent not polarities but markers on a continuum – a continuum of developmental stages and their public/private expressions.[1] After urging the reader to reclaim Jesus’ humble confidence, Ken offers a three circle description of the relationships of Dogma to Doctrine to Didache – a description worth reading for yourself – remarkably helpful! With this graphic summary, the chapter concludes with the claim that a commitment to honestly abide by the paradoxical nature of our very existence is the antidote to the restrictive elements and urges of Orthodoxy.

So, how much of Ken’s Chapter 4 applies to Church Planting, Ministry Redevelopment and Fresh Expressions of Church (my areas of responsibility as the Missioner for such in the Episcopal Church Center)? I believe that all of it does! In fact, to turn the question around, I would ask, “Who would more readily appropriate Ken’s proposition than those leading new ministries from within organized religion?” When one is leading an established ministry, where there are clearly insiders and outsiders (members and non-members), it is easy to overlook the subtle ways by which we screen potential new members for their “set of beliefs.” It is (usually) an unspoken expectation that “the Church” has a handle on correct beliefs and that, over time, the newly assimilated member will, as well. In fact, when one compares the amount of time we traditionally spend certifying, teaching and affirming right belief, versus mentoring each other in right practice, the thread by which the Christian religion hangs is, in deed, a thin one!

So how might those leading new ministries respond to Ken’s claims, especially in Chapter 4, entitled “Hanging by a Thread: Christianity as Religion.” I offer my suggestions here but I hope you’ll soon read this lively text and offer your own!

Let us acknowledge the paradoxical nature of our own internal beliefs – those places where my heart is divided against itself.

Let us offer a counter-cultural witness to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ by refusing the seduction of orthodoxical “either-or thinking.”

Let us practice publicly embracing those who publicly and privately oppose us.

Let us humbly admit that our insistence on uniformity is the obsession of a religious franchising impulse and not so much the concern of those who would follow the Rogue Rabbi we call Jesus of Nazareth.

Finally, to quote Ken, let us “break free of the grip of these old ways of viewing the world.” I would add, “Let’s lay aside the weight of our religious addictions to being right and claim the joy that is set before us!” (OK, maybe we do need a new creed for that one!)

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[1] a link between two things, or a continuous series of things, that blend into each other so gradually and seamlessly that it is impossible to say where one becomes the next. (from the online Encarta Dictionary)

New videoconference support and training groups that focus on skills development

As you may have heard, over the last 24 months, I’ve called many of our Bishops in the Episcopal Church to ask how I might be most helpful to them in my new role as the Episcopal CHurch Center's Missioner for Church Planting, Ministry Redevelopment and Fresh Expressions of Church. Making those calls and conducting those interviews have been well worth the time and energy required. So many of our Diocesan leaders have told me that they specifically need help in supporting leaders who are offering remarkable ministry but would benefit from a little extra support. In response to those suggestions, I am now leading 8 unique videoconference support and training groups that focus on skills development in three areas. The three areas are New Ministry Development, Ministry Redevelopment and Fresh Expressions of Ministry (sometimes referred to as “emergent” ministries).

 

Each of these groups has from 12 to 15 participants. The groups meet for 90 minutes every two weeks. We ask for a 12 session commitment and then we take a break for a month or so. At that point, participants are given the option to continue on to the next level of engagement with each other or with a new group.

 

As of August 2010, I have been blessed to work intensively with 589 clergy across our Episcopal Church in this way. I’ve learned so much from these encounters and it seems like this is the time to cast the net even farther. That’s where I’d like your help! But first, let me share a little of what I’ve learned from these groups!

 

Each of these groups has high standards for confidentiality, truthfulness and mutual accountability. Each group forms unique ground rules and maintains commitment to the process, on its own. For example, we start on time and we end at 90 minutes. We start and finish with prayer. We work through focused skills development processes and we hold to high standards of engagement. We also practice getting comfortable with silence, when needed.

 

Each session has a co-facilitator (chosen from the participants on a rotating basis) that is charged with helping me present the session’s skill and relevant readings. They also present a scenario where they’ve recently used that skill, successfully or unsuccessfully. We then move to group question and sharing time and close with prayer for each other.

 

One of the factors that contributes to the uniqueness of this venture is that each person comes to these groups on his or her own motivation. In other words, though each participant came to his/her group by referral or recommendation (or by my own recruiting), they made the commitment because they were ready to. That level of motivation has led to a 92% “show up” rate!

 

Early on, I was dismayed at how long it took to form community via these webinar or teleconference (and now videoconferencing) media. Today, after working with 23 groups, I advise the newly formed group members that they can pretty much count on finding their “groove” after 6-8 sessions. Great things happen during those first 4 months but it starts to feel like community right about 10 weeks in. I’ve also learned a few things about accelerating that bonding process from the beginning.

 

Regarding content . . . So much of what I’ve learned from these groups has to do with the realization that the leader’s greatest gift is their own sense of Presence. We spend a substantial amount of time in the first sessions working through personal skills, conflict management, visioning, learning to minister from our Strengths instead of weaknesses and getting back in touch with the joy of our respective callings. From there, we move into Skills development – especially those skills relevant to the focus of the group (whether New Ministry Development, Redevelopment or Emergent Ministries Leadership).

 

As you might imagine, the process that has evolved is pretty nuanced. The groups are comprised of educated, thoughtful leaders who know to a.) ask for help and b.) learn to listen for the leading of the Spirit, both privately and publicly. I’ve recently completed extra coursework in the areas of group facilitation, coaching and process consulting. I feel like I still have much to learn, but most of that will probably come from participants in these groups.

 

The feedback I receive from participants is that, once they’ve bonded with a group, they want to continue with the process. I take that as real encouragement to continue starting new groups and taking the training to a new level. Words cannot convey how much I appreciate this incredible opportunity, at this time in our Church’s life together.

 

So, dear partner in ministry, here’s how I’d like your help. Would you think about those leaders in your corner of our church who would appreciate the support of like-minded and similarly engaged peers from around our church? These groups are most relevant for those developing new ministries and those intentionally redeveloping ministries that have been in decline. I would welcome any suggestions from you and I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about this outreach, as well. A member’s participation is kept confidential and so is everything that the individual shares. I have found that to be an essential element in developing soul to soul community in this venture.

 

 If you have someone in mind, or if you have questions, please feel free to contact me at your convenience. You can find the complete listing of public calls that are open to newcomers (both lay and ordained) right here:  http://bit.ly/9kHYTz I conduct local groups that are assembled from leaders within a particular diocese or province. Let me know if you’d like to work with me to tailor a training group for your unique ministry context. In the meantime, please be assured of my commitment to support you and your ministry to all of us.

 

With growing hopes and perennial gratitude,

 

 

Tom Brackett

646-203-6266

Come join us this Thursday at 3 (Eastern) !

As you may have heard, we had a great VideoConference call last month as we explored the core elements and practices of “Gathering and nurturing your core team.” We look forward to continuing this conversation (Part 2) and we hope that you will join us in two days – same time and same place – this Thursday at 3!

Here is where you find the sign up instructions: http://plantingcentral.typepad.com/bench/monthly-gathering-for-church-planters-and-new-ministry-developers-in-the-episcopal-church.html

On that note, if you have a group of leaders (lay and/or ordained) in your diocese that would like some focused training around new ministry development, or ministry redevelopment, or leading new forms of ministry (emergent or Fresh Expressions), please let me know. I’ll gladly coordinate the platform, training and great content from leaders around the church, as we discern what might be helpful ­for you! And, as always, please feel free to contact me with any questions at 646-203-6266. I also welcome your feedback and suggestions at tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org.

Tom

How do we move to a Strengths-based approach to vocational discernment? (Part 1)

As I polled Bishops and Diocesan leaders during my first two years in my present position at the Episcopal Church Center, I asked them to name their growing edges. The way that many of our leaders named one of the top three went something like this, "Help us learn together how to move away from screening people out for Holy Orders and instead empower the people of God for their respective calls to vocation."

What does that sound like to you? In my understanding of the discernment process used by most dioceses, the "discernment of vocation" presently starts with the question, "Are you, or are you not, suited for ordained ministry?" If you are, then here is the 34 step algorithmic discernment process you will follow, through to ordination (I know because I still have the chart of those steps used in my process within the Episcopal Church)! Here is the hard part -- any further discernment processes are usually ancillary! So, if you make it into the Holy Orders process, great. If you do not, well, that's another matter.

I'd like to respond to the "Help us learn together how to move away from screening people out for Holy Orders and instead empower the people of God for their respective calls to vocation" request in a couple of ways. The first is to offer a cluster of assessment tools that originate from a Strengths-based approach to vocational discernment. In my view, the tools we consider need to be accessible to the average user and the results need to be readily interpretable.

The second response I would offer via this platform is to eventually outline a different process -- a "both / and" approach that invites us to discover our unique giftedness and then go use our strengths.

So, back to number one. What are the skills inventories that you have employed to discern your own unique strengths? Let me start by offering an introduction to the Gallup SkillsFinder 2.0. (the following description is from Gallup's website)

The Gallup StrengthsFinder 2.0

Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? Chances are, you don't. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths. To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, StrengthsFinder, in the 2001 management book Now, Discover Your Strengths. The book spent more than five years on the bestseller lists and ignited a global conversation, while StrengthsFinder helped millions to discover their Top 5 talents. In StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more. While you can read this book in one sitting, you'll use it as a reference for decades. Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself -- and the world around you -- forever. For more information on the StrengthsFinder 2.0, click on this link: http://strengths.gallup.com/110440/About-StrengthsFinder-20.aspx

As always, please let me know how I can help. Call me at 646-203-6266 or e-mail me at tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org

With high hopes,  Tom

 

Does this describe your ministry? Then let's talk!

Over here is a working definition of Fresh Expressions, as offered by Bishop Graham Cray: http://www.freshexpressions.org.uk/about/introduction

"A fresh expression is a form of church for our changing culture established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church.

• It will come into being through principles of listening, service, incarnational mission and making disciples.
• It will have the potential to become a mature expression of church shaped by the gospel and the enduring marks of the church and for its cultural context."

Would you help me out by letting me know of ministries that you think are living into this definition? I often receive inquiries from folks around the Episcopal Church (and increasingly from other denominations!) -- folks wondering where they might find evidence of new hope in our churches.

Here is what I promise.

This will not turn into a "Who's in" and "Who is out" directory.

This is not about finding the perfect "Fresh Expression."

It is about highlighting our neighborhood churches committed to ministry that benefits those who are not yet members of any church. It is also a way of gathering together the pieces of a US conversation that might lead to a culture shift in our ministry conversations.

Questions? Call me at 646-203-6266 or e-mail me at tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org

In the meantime, if you are leading one of these Mission-shaped ministries and you'd like to connect with others leading Mission-Shaped ministries, come join us on first Fridays on our Monthly VideoConference call. It's casual and it's free. Here are the directions for joining us: http://plantingcentral.typepad.com/bench/1st-fridays-at-4-a-gathering-for-those-leading-fresh-expressions-or-emergent-ministries.html

Tom

Reflections on our "3rd Thursday @ 3" gathering with the Presiding Bishop

July 17, 2010

Dear Leaders of new ministries (as well as those of you who support them),

Thank you for participating in our VideoConference call with Presiding Bishop Schori this last Thursday at 3:00 PM via WebEx. Frank Logue and I agree that it was great to see you on our list of participants, even though we could not interact with you personally. This was a great call and we hope that you will join us next month – same time and same place. http://plantingcentral.typepad.com/bench/monthly-gathering-for-church-planters-and-new-ministry-developers-in-the-episcopal-church.html

This Gathering focused on our Presiding Bishop's vision and hopes for new ministry development in the Episcopal Church. We also worked our way through topics like financing the new ministry, growing acceptance of innovative practices, future models of self-sustaining ministry and learnings from elsewhere in our Communion. We also took several technical learnings away from this experience and we’d like to share those with you (in the hopes that you might benefit from these in your own conferencing practices).

 We learned that it takes time to get used to this new technology and that it’s good to be patient with the process.

 We also learned to . . .

Turn off the announcement that rings out every time someone joins the conference or leaves it.

Post “Joining via audio or video” instructions on the front page so that participants can follow those as soon as they sign on.

Find a way to offer streaming video from WebEx for the participants who cannot sign on because WebEx has reached its limit. (We had almost 70 people who could not join in because this E-venue was limited in size.)

 Keep the conversation going, both on a church-wide basis, as well as on the local level.

 On that note, if you have a group of leaders (lay and/or ordained) in your diocese that would like some focused training around new ministry development, or ministry redevelopment, or leading new forms of ministry (emergent or Fresh Expressions), please let me know. I’ll gladly coordinate the platform, training and great content from leaders around the church, as we discern what might be helpful ­for you!

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions at 646-203-6266. I also welcome your feedback and suggestions at tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org.

With grateful heart,

Tom

I invite you to look over my shoulder at this exchange ...

... because it typifies the ambivalence we struggle with regarding the fresh leadership we seek. With permission (and considerable "Scrubbing"), I am excerpting from an exchange between an Episcopal institution and a soon to be ordained transitional deacon. The institution is clearly looking for an entrepreneurial leader who will boldly go where most cannot yet imagine and they see that this Candidate is clearly qualified for the work, but there is that "2 years' experience" piece.

I invite you to witness the interplay here between traditional protocol and new possibilities. What do you imagine might be the "third way?" Here goes . . .

An email dialogue between a soon-to-be-ordained ‘transitional’ deacon and the search committee chair for a campus chaplaincy

APPLICANT:  I noted that that one of the things you’re seeking is someone with 2+ years of ordained ministry experience.  While I can’t offer that yet (I’m being ordained to the ‘transitional’ diaconate in June), I do bring a strong array of Episcopal Church leadership, ministry, and pastoral experience (parish, diocesan, and national); university student affairs experience (including at a large, prestigious university like XYZ) complemented by directly relevant professional experience in high-profile program/forum development; and broad life experience having lived and worked in a number of interesting places in my forty years on the planet.  If we mutually discern a good fit otherwise for this role at your university, I bet that with the help of our bishops, we can arrange for a timely ordination to the priesthood (God willing and people consenting, of course).  Perhaps this is a matter of kairos and chronos needing to dance together creatively (grin).

CHAIR: As you saw, we are asking that applicants have 2+ years or ordained experience, and we do take that seriously.  We put that there because we believe that the chaplain will need to work independently right off the bat, and that most new priests strongly benefit from a first call in which there is an on-site mentor of some kind.  While this position has several supportive colleagues, its work flow isn't designed for the learning curve that most new priests experience. However, all that said, if you feel that God is calling you to be the next Episcopal chaplain at our university, then you certainly need to apply.  If that is indeed how you feel, we are happy to review your materials as we would any other candidate's.  As to ordination status, again, while it is important to us that our chaplain would be able to celebrate the Eucharist upon beginning his or her ministry here, if our committee believes strongly that you are called to serve here, then indeed perhaps our sense of chronos will have to adjust.

APPLICANT:   The shorter-term challenges of coming into this role without benefit of two years of ‘ordained’ experience are outweighed by confidence in the strength of the leadership experience that I do bring and the longer-term vision of a mutually rewarding ministry opportunity for years to come.  I do appreciate the wisdom in and rationale for seeking a candidate with 2+ years of ordained experience.  And, I realize that this position lacks the mentored guidance and support that curates and associates sometimes have (when things work well).  Some of the other emergent and mission type work that I’ve been considering also present a similar challenge – immediately serving as the primarily liturgical and pastoral authority without having a more senior priest immediately at-hand. I also acknowledge that dynamics (expectations people have of you, your own self-perception, need to maintain different boundaries, etc.) are different once you begin ‘ordained’ ministry – one can only come to know this by experience with it.  Given all these realities, I’m reminded of biblical stories of leaders being called before they appeared to be totally ‘ready.’  Sometimes, such situations that appeared irrational initially, with time, begin to reveal the beauty of God’s work unfolding in ways that surprise and delight.  Without minimizing the real challenge here, let me offer some thoughts about how I will approach this:   

1. I’ll approach this with a humble heart, beginner’s mind, and a faithful disposition.  While I will be often working independently (and long hours, I expect), I also know that I don’t labor alone - God is at work with us, there is a network of others (peers and mentors) who I can call upon for advice and guidance on occasion, and there are colleagues there on your campus with whom I’ll be collaborating.  Also, I do possess the basic skills we need in order to celebrate study of the Word and worship at Christ’s table.
2. I’ll leverage the unique blend of study and practice through which I’ve been formed - practical preparation for ordained leadership received in my recent seminary program as well as real-life experience over the last couple of years in a parish in which I’ve supported both a retiring rector, and now a new interim, in ways that would otherwise have been fulfilled by a deacon or associate had we had them on our team.
3. Because I’ve faced steep learning curves before when taking on high-profile leadership roles, and because I’ve worked before in demanding and sometimes unpredictable student services positions (including at a similarly large and prestigious university), I’m not as anxious about those aspects of this opportunity and can therefore redirect constructive anxiety toward additional preparation for and practice around the ‘ordained’ responsibilities.  
4. Lastly, my intuition is that the XYZ University community is predisposed to utilitarian practicality and experimental, iterative learning.  So perhaps, initially, my being just a few critical steps ahead of the group with regard to providing helpful structure and information as Chaplain, rather than presumptions about my possessing everything we need from the beginning, might be a helpful platform from which to invite and build mutual trust and the collective sense that we’re really “in this thing” (read: church, body of Christ, etc.) together.  My institutional knowledge and priestly know-how will increase year after year to the benefit of our chaplaincy presence at XYZ University.  And, it will be important for me to continually rekindle the originally heightened awareness and potentiality of my beginner’s mindset when cultivating fellowship and leadership through the program there with each new entering class of students.  I.e., memories and stories from the challenges of my first year as Chaplain at XYZ University can be used creatively with each new generation of student leaders and seekers.

CHAIR:  Thanks for your email and your reflections on how you might approach this ministry as your first ordained call.  I find that very helpful, and we will share this email with the committee as we review your file.

CHAIR (two weeks later):  On behalf of the entire discernment committee, I want to thank you again most warmly for your willingness to participate in this process with us.  We've been blessed by the interest of many talented, dedicated clergy people in the future of our ministry here, including yourself.  Through your materials, it has been a pleasure to come to know a little bit about who you are and the gifts you have to offer in ministry to the people of God. At this point, though, our discernment process has led us in another direction, and we do not expect you to be among those we will be calling for an interview.  Once again, we are very grateful to you for entering into this conversation with us, and we wish you every blessing in your future ministry.  Please keep our discernment committee in your prayers, as we do you. Warm regards.

Can we learn from this -- might this be relevant for us in communities of faith?

Harvard Business Review Magazine, April 2010

 

Column: Why Businesses Don’t Experiment (by Dan Ariely)

 

A few years ago, a marketing team from a major consumer goods company came to my lab eager to test some new pricing mechanisms using principles of behavioral economics. We decided to start by testing the allure of “free,” a subject my students and I had been studying. I was excited: The company would gain insights into its customers’ decision making, and we’d get useful data for our academic work. The team agreed to create multiple websites with different offers and pricing and then observe how each worked out in terms of appeal, orders, and revenue.

 

Several months later, right before we were due to go live, we had a meeting about the final details of the experiment—this time with a bigger entourage from marketing. One of the new members noted that because we were extending differing offers, some customers might buy a product that was not ideal for them, spend too much money, or get a worse deal overall than others. He was correct, of course. In any experiment, someone gets the short end of the stick. Take clinical medical trials, I said to the team. When testing chemotherapy treatments, some patients suffer more so that, down the road, others might suffer less. I hoped this put it in perspective. Fortunately, I said, price testing household products requires far less suffering than chemo trials.

 

But I could tell I was losing them. In a sense, I was impressed. It was a beautiful human sentiment they were conveying: We care about all customers and don’t want to treat any one of them unfairly. A debate ensued among the group: Are we willing to sacrifice some customers “just” to learn how the new pricing approaches work?

 

They hedged. They asked me what I thought the best approach was. I told them that I was willing to share my intuition but that intuition is a remarkably bad thing to rely on. Only an experiment gives you the evidence you need. In the end, it wasn’t enough to convince them, and they called off the project.

 

This is a typical case, I’ve found. I’ve often tried to help companies do experiments, and usually I fail spectacularly. I remember one company that was having trouble getting its bonuses right. I suggested they do some experiments, or at least a survey. The HR staff said no, it was a miserable time in the company. Everyone was unhappy, and management didn’t want to add to the trouble by messing with people’s bonuses merely for the sake of learning. But the employees are already unhappy, I thought, and the experiments would have provided evidence for how to make them less so in the years to come. How is that a bad idea?

 

Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants with overdeveloped confidence in their own intuition. Managers rely on focus groups—a dozen people riffing on something they know little about—to set strategies. And yet, companies won’t experiment to find evidence of the right way forward.

 

I think this irrational behavior stems from two sources. One is the nature of experiments themselves. As the people at the consumer goods firm pointed out, experiments require short-term losses for long-term gains. Companies (and people) are notoriously bad at making those trade-offs. Second, there’s the false sense of security that heeding experts provides. When we pay consultants, we get an answer from them and not a list of experiments to conduct. We tend to value answers over questions because answers allow us to take action, while questions mean that we need to keep thinking. Never mind that asking good questions and gathering evidence usually guides us to better answers.

 

Despite the fact that it goes against how business works, experimentation is making headway at some companies. Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit, tells me he’s trying to create a culture of experimentation in which failing is perfectly fine. Whatever happens, he tells his staff, you’re doing right because you’ve created evidence, which is better than anyone’s intuition. He says the organization is buzzing with experiments.

 

And so is that consumer goods company. A group there is studying consumer psychology and behavioral economics and is amassing evidence that’s impressive by any academic standard. Years after our false start, they’re recognizing the dangers of relying on intuition.

 

http://hbr.org/2010/04/column-why-businesses-dont-experiment/ar/pr

 

 

Copyright © 2010 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

 

Written By

Dan Ariely (dandan@duke.edu) is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and the author of Predictably Irrational (HarperCollins, 2008).

Some brief observations regarding Spirit-led Innovation . . .

Note: In this series you will note that  I mix the the language of "New Ministry Development" with "Ministry Redevelopment," because in the Episcopal Church, both are offered within Hospice Ward settings. (For more on that, you might read this post.)

 

 

Spirit-led innovation – what is it?

 

In my recent experiences I’ve determined that this is not just a concept borrowed from the business equivalent – “continuous process improvement” – in which you make a lot of little improvements in issues of liturgical style and taste, or maybe shared leadership. It is also not just “product or service innovation,” in which you create new offerings to attract new parishioners, but leave the existing ministry model in place. From what I’m learning from vital ministries around our church, “Spirit-led innovation” may include both of these, but at its best, involves tracking the work of the Spirit out in the world through uncharted territory.

 

I find it helpful to keep in mind that ministries can experiment with Spirit-led innovations without changing much of their present ministry, initially. However, in the Episcopal Church, because we come from such a staid culture (one that often prides itself in staidness) to follow the Spirit through change is to challenge the traditional misunderstanding of tradere.

 

To understand the scales of ministry innovation, envision a spectrum of safety traded for the sake of predictability. Put hymnal revisions and visitor welcome programs on the left end. Maybe put sermon seminars and public church in the middle. Put Spirit-led innovation on the right end. At the left end, changes are small, cheap and quick; results are fairly predictable. At the other end of this imaginary continuum, change can take an unknown amount of time and money, and then those initial innovations may not work, at least not initially. However, strategic innovations led by the Spirit (hopefully!!) offer greater potential for growth, especially the “nonlinear growth” that transforms ministries. Unfortunately, leaders with experience on this end of the continuum are sort of scarce in many of our religious institutions. I’ve been interviewing several here in our Episcopal Church and I’d like to offer the following observations.

 

Some observations regarding Spirit-led Innovation

1. In all vibrant ministries, the original vision or the original Idea is merely a starting place – a hunch. You’ve probably heard a Bishop announce that, from now on, things are going to be different in the Diocese of Utopia. She’s got a God-given Holy Spirit-inspired and world-changing idea.  She studies, plans and organizes (maybe even calls in a consultant) and then, almost imperceptibly shifts her focus away to other matters. Everything withers because she’s bought one of the great myths about innovation – that it is all about the great idea. It’s not – a great idea is only the start. Unsupported, even the best idea will die. For innovation to succeed, at least one Leader must protect the idea by generating funding, resources and support without a lot of managerial involvement, and by helping the Church or the Diocese learn quickly from the trial steps in developing the idea.

 

2. To lead Spirit-led innovation within established (or inherited) Church, it is imperative to remember that organizational memory springs from powerful sources. What are they? Songs, Rituals, Architecture, Vestments, Smells, Signage. If you would redeem them, recognize the challenges involved.

 

When you lead an Episcopalian ministry that looks unlike anything previously Episcopalian, expect an internal “auto-immune” response.[1] For many of our leaders in traditional settings, it is actually much safer to repeat the behaviors with which we are already comfortable and just put a fresh face on them. That isn’t Spirit-led innovation. When you commit yourself to following the Spirit, you cannot follow some prescribed process. Instead, we read and reread John 3 and ask, “Where is the Spirit blowing today? That’s what will shape us in this moment!”

 

You might consider trying on the following four questions as a way of getting at some new practices and the accompanying fresh awareness.

1.)    How do you smell the Spirit at work?

2.)    What are the principles by which you allow your encounters to shape the music and ritual offered to the gathered community?

3.)    What are the theological “starting places” for these principles and practices?

4.)    Are the “Fruits of the Spirit” enough evidence that it is God at work and not an overactive imagination?

 

Eventually, once it gains momentum, new ministries gather to themselves a fresh sense of identity, but from the beginning, the leaders are helped to recognize that they are called to the work of co-creating a new future. In fact, Otto Scharmer would assert that the new ministry’s primary responsibility is to allow the Spirit to birth the future that is longing to emerge.[2] To engage this process probably means shifting our focus slightly away from the way that the Episcopal Church has historically defined itself, its core competencies and even its ministry model. At the same time, this new ministry wants to “borrow” expertise from Inherited Church, and to design itself so that it is constantly learning. To consciously set Inherited Church habits aside, start fresh with new systems. Gather new people (creators, not implementation experts), organize them differently (a flatter structure, not a hierarchy), and breed an independent culture that is open to risk, and that emphasizes fresh experimentation and Holy learning. To maintain a balance between revering what was and focusing on what is emerging, you might consider exploring the practical and theoretical implications of what the Church of England refers to as the “Mixed Economy” approach to a “both and” way of offering ministry. You can learn more on that, here.

 

3. In our present context, starting new ministry with Diocesan support can make matters much easier or much harder. Usually it’s both.

 

4. Strategic experiments face critical unknowns. It has to be that way. The way through the Wilderness of Zin was a two week journey. It just took forty years for Israel to get comfortable with this point. They had to “relearn” the nature of God from their cultic roots.

 

Primary focus? Learning!

To survive, emphasize learning. Your greatest learning task is to address these unknowns through better predicting and functioning, even though an innovative ministry can’t use formal prediction tools or intuitive rules of thumb. Instead, you must learn through “trial-and-error” as you engage in repeated experiments. Make your experiments clear, repetitious and speedy (as soon after one another as possible, so they stay fresh in your memory). Determine what you think will happen. Plan, execute, measure your results.

 

5a. New ministries in new contexts are best if started with as few assumptions as possible.

 

5b. New ministries in existing settings are best when built from scratch, with new choices in staffing, structure, systems and culture.

 

Forget, Borrow and Learn

The three core challenges in establishing new ministry within the Episcopal Church are:

forgetting, borrowing and learning.

 

Forget: Try to purge the spirit of your ministry from the Institution’s anxiety and tendency toward self-preservation – forget about it. Diffuse it.

 

Borrow: Which “areas of expertise” does this new ministry need to borrow, and in what proportions? Where can you use predictions and where do you have to deal with uncertainty? How should you evaluate leadership performance in a project that requires risk or could even collapse? Institutional memory might lend you the core beliefs that let your new ministry react quickly to challenges, but if you don’t forget the old responses, you are doomed to fail. Borrowing Tangible and Intangible Resources only when they support the innovation. Do not borrow culture. Invent culture as needed. You want to forget Mother Church’s constraints and staid culture, but you also want to borrow resources from Her, as needed. This often creates tension, turf wars and divided loyalties. Such tensions accompany any new project, because as the new ministry succeeds, it may seem to consume Inherited Church’s resources and depict it as seemingly obsolete.

 

To lead redevelopment of an existing ministry in severe decline, gather a mix of experienced and inexperienced individuals for your core team. Set up new behavior models of mutual learning, especially in accountability and emerging relationships to authority. One tough challenge is deciding when the new ministry needs to show itself as self-sustaining. Balance that pressure by pointing out how many of our ministries in big buildings and downtown properties are reliant on diocesan subsidies and they offer no new learnings, whatsoever. Too often new ministries are held to arbitrary demands that they demonstrate sustainability, when, in reality, we need to expect them to require support at first (they are experimental, after all) and give them grace periods.

 

6. Managing tensions between the new and the old is “Job One” for the leadership of a ministry redevelopment.

 

7. “Competing interests, outside influence, internal competition and Diocesan politics are the enemies of community learning.”

 

8. Contract with Diocesan Leaders for an accountability around learning as well as results measured in attendance and pledging numbers.

 

9. Ministries find their connection to that which the Spirit is birthing via strategic

Innovation (Lots of intentional Trial and Error).

 

To innovate strategically, we seek not so much to do things differently, as much as to accurately track the birthing of the Spirit’s new life. We start with very different questions and hoped-for outcomes.

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[1] Social Autoimmunity is the failure of an organization to recognize its own constituent parts as “self” and necessary to the well-being of the whole, thereby blocking the potential healing and direction offered by its own “prophetic” leaders.

[2][2] You might explore Dr Scharmer’s approach by downloading Chapter 21 of his text, Theory U.

How do you “smell” God at work?

 

In the eleven months that have passed since my visit to the UK, I have spent hours and hours interviewing lay and ordained leaders in the Episcopal Church on video. The question I start with is so quirky and I know it! I ask, “How do you ‘smell’ God at work?” which quickly becomes, “How have you learned to recognize when it is God at work that you are witnessing?” (I intentionally use this language to avoid rhetorical and theological pontification.) I have to tell you that, believe it or not, the answers have been breathtaking! It takes only a slight shift in attention to move from our usual church banter to the question on which this essay has focused: “How have you learned to come alongside and bless the new life that the Spirit is birthing in the world around you?” After a few minutes of this heart-to-heart conversation, I often hear these words: “Why can’t I make this midwifing ministry my everyday calling?” That question is music to my ears.

 

As I come to the close on this series of posts, I wonder aloud with you, “Have you heard the Spirit’s call to distance yourself from hospice ministry, incredible and noble calling that it is? Do you wake up in the night with a longing to return to your first love for ministry, to glimpses of God’s daring hopes for all of us?”

 

It may well be time to head to the Spirit’s birthing center, because I believe now, more than ever, God’s dreams are longing to be birthed here in our midst. All that the Spirit quietly asks of you today is that you say “Yes” to God’s hopes emerging. Oh and one more thing, if you’d like to join a monthly gathering of midwives to the Spirit, come on over and join our monthly call. In the meantime, call or e-mail to let me know how we might more effectively support you in your ministry, whatever it may be. You can reach me anytime at 646-203-6266 or via e-mail at tbrackett@episcopalchurch.org

 

“ . . . midwifing the new life of the Spirit in a world longing for reconciliation . . .”

Challenge #4: Let go of our insistence on conformity

 

The idea of midwifing the work of the Spirit may seem more comfortable now. You might even be a church planter starting out on your first walkabout to explore exactly what God might be doing in your new neighborhood. You commit yourself to openness and a genuine sense of curiosity. You pack up your clipboard and camera and head out into your world to spot what it is that you may be called to midwife. As you walk down Main Street in your neighborhood, a question occurs to you: “Might it be that the Spirit arrived here before I did?” After that initial query, others follow: “What kind of work might the Spirit have been doing in this community, prior to the arrival of my church planting initiative? Might it be that God was out here reconciling the world to himself before there were any church-sponsored faith formation classes or evangelism or discipling going on? How, then, might I come alongside and simply be present to and then celebrate the Spirit’s work?”

 

 

    A key step in that direction would be to acknowledge that all theology is, in reality, indigenous. That is, theology springs up from the community in which it is experienced. It is formed in community and tested in relationship. In fact, we might say that theology, outside of philosophical pursuits, is relationship language – language that reflects the relationship of the individual and the community to the divine. If we take that claim to heart, we might loosen our ecclesiastical control mechanisms enough to make space for a community to design and lead worship and construct an organizational life that matches their culture and their theology.

 

 

    Consider the following example of what such a process might look like in practice. Recently, I was contacted by a community organizer who had served on her diocese’s Executive Council for two terms. She and a team of friends had identified a neighborhood with particular unmet needs and had pooled their financial resources to start an after-school drop-in program for Latino and Hispanic children, as well as a weekend club for the Asian youth in the area. They opened their doors two and a half years ago and now have an average of 130 families attending their weekly parenting classes.

 

 

  Recently they asked the parents, one by one, whether there was interest in starting a worship gathering based on the Book of Common Prayer but shaped by the community’s creative responses to the Spirit’s work in their midst. With the exception of two families, the response was an enthusiastic “Yes!” For the last eight months, they have gathered. They start each of their service planning sessions with the sharing of a meal and samples of people’s favorite spiritual music playing in the background. They then share stories of encounters with God at work in the world, and then explore participants’ best experiences with God, identifying common themes that consistently emerge. The evening session ends with prayers offered by the participants, often written for that evening’s gatherings.

 

 

    This team of service planners has named their goal as “the creation of indigenous ritual that honors an Anglican way of being in the world by adhering to the shape of the Book of Common Prayer’s forms for worship.” Everyone has always been welcome to attend and participate in this process. They are now gathering commitments for a “First Sunday in Advent” launch date for this new worshipping community. The community leaders set the goal of having 250 people attend their first service. During the Prayers of the People, they will show video clips of stories from those present – stories of the ways they have encountered God in their everyday lives. They are planning to have translators for three languages in each of their services.

 

 

    But then comes the risk. Recently, the two co-leaders approached their diocesan leaders with a rather novel request. They asked the bishop to help them find a priest who would contract with them to fulfill a priest’s sacerdotal responsibilities in their weekly service, and no more. They specifically requested a priest who would honor the order of service as the community had planned it (and as the bishop had pre-approved it). They will handle all of the other pastoral care responsibilities with lay leaders trained via the Diocesan School of Ministry. The priest will be “called” permanently, though contracted six months at a time and paid weekly for his or her Sunday ministry. The rest of the ministry will be managed by non-ordained leaders, primarily on a volunteer basis. They are still waiting to find that priest.

 

 

    This is one of the more exciting examples of a creative response to a community’s real needs. It also offers a model of ministry midwifery where the priest is a member of the team, but not necessarily the leader. If we can let go of the need for conformity, indigenous ministries like this one could truly flourish.

Challenge #2: Get over the assumption that “emergent” and “fresh” are all about us

    Recently during a church conference, a colleague asked me,” What do you think is emerging, Tom?” At that very moment, the building’s fire alarm went off. While we were shuffling out to the safe zone, I helped a very pregnant woman down the steps. As we reached the parking lot, it occurred to me that, if we were to ask her, “What is emerging, Helen?” she might say, “Are you asking ‘Is my baby going to be a boy or a girl?’ ” In her experience, the word “emerging” refers to a process pointedly different from the way we banter the term about. She is clear that she is not emerging. Her doctor is not emerging. Her midwife is not emerging. In fact, it is the baby that is emerging. Yet, when it comes to our theological conversations, we like to think it is Mother Church that is somehow crowning and emerging. In other words, we would like to think it is all about us.

    When we say emerging or emergent or emergence church, most of us tend to think that what is emerging is a new variation of Christendom or some new expression of church. In fact, based on my recent review of exactly 146 articles and essays in journals concerned with congregational development here in the US, I find an alarming incidence of church leaders and academics writing about “emerging church” as a means of revitalizing congregations in decline. The general outline of their argument goes something like this: We live in a changing world and the way to get young people to come to church is to try out new worship or new outreach (or maybe some combination of vintage worship and e-reach).

The strategy is highly problematic, because once again the inherited church is at the center. Please know that, if I sound critical of Christendom, it is because I am. By and large, Christendom is best at forming self-absorbed groups that foster anxious instincts around institutional self-preservation. We think we already know what it is the world needs from us, and we spend our time creating strategic plans to make that happen. Even Duncan Petty admits, “It is so easy to … run away with your initiatives instead of looking for what the Spirit is up to and going with that. We have, for example, just because we did it in more conventional settings, tried to run basics courses … before people were ready for them, and they duly flopped.”[i]

More and more of us are convinced that the Spirit is calling us to repent of the urge to impose our expectations on the Spirit’s work. The Oaks Church in England may never be self-sustaining and it may never reach parish status or fit limited definitions of a conventional church. At the same time, ministries like this deserve our finest leaders, our generous support and a fresh reverence for its capacity to transform all of us.

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[i] For more information, read Duncan and Ann Petty’s reflections: http://www.sharetheguide.org/comment2.

Midwives, Midwifing and, "What's emerging, anyway?" Challenge #1

Lately, I've come to believe that the Spirit has been birthing aspects of the future that She has longed to make known from before time. I also sense that the Spirit longs for partners in that holy process of making all things new. Our highest calling may be to discover, midwife and then celebrate all that the Spirit is birthing in our midst as well as out there in the world. To take this new model for ministry seriously, though, we must face some daunting challenges.

Challenge #1: Make the transition from leaders prized for institutional expertise to leaders skilled in midwifing new forms of ministry

One trainer of midwives explained to me that, by the very nature of their work, midwives offer a covenant for presence, that is, they commit to being fully present to the one giving birth, to that which is being birthed, as well as to the actual birthing process. This wise woman impressed on me that the midwife cannot offer any guarantees, only a covenant. This is also a covenant for purpose: to offer every resource available for the sake of a complete birthing process. Finally, in her own words, the trainer insisted that this is also a covenant between the midwife and the whole family to fully participate in whatever happens.

Speaking practically, when an experienced midwife walks in to work with a mother about to give birth that day, her initial concerns are around some very specific issues. She asks the mother about the timing of her contractions. Her sensors are discerning the suitability of the environment; the supportiveness of the family, the mother’s mood and whether or not the baby about to come into this world is experiencing distress. In other words, she is pacing the process of this delivery and coming alongside. Unlike some of the busy doctors in our large hospitals, most midwives can afford to let the mother’s process set the pace of their interactions. This is an incredible model for new ministry today. If we were to adopt this way of being in the world – if we were to take on the role of midwife to the Spirit – we might be called to move into unfamiliar environments to sense exactly what it is that the Spirit might be birthing out there.

    Would it not make a tremendous difference if we were to train our church leaders in the art and science of midwifery, as well as everything else we think they need to know? Imagine if we asked our clergy to consider the high calling of midwifing that which the Spirit is birthing in their respective communities? To speak of ourselves as incarnational communities would take on a whole new meaning. Instead of our rice paper communion wafers held up as the ultimate symbol of God’s presence, “that which is being birthed” might call us to prepare a sumptuous meal intentionally shared with strangers-now-guests. We might even hold up the stories of the Spirit’s in-breaking presence outside of church as evidence of Emmanuel, proof that “God is with us.” Such a shift would ask us to consider story-listening as an advanced level of evangelism – listening for evidences that God is at work, that the Spirit is birthing new life, that God is alive and well.

    It is this very sort of evangelism that set up the birthing station known to many around the world as “Common Cathedral.”[i] When Debbie Little-Wyman encountered people of the street loitering around the steps of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston in the 1990s, she eventually sat down next to them and listened deeply for their stories of hope and for signs of grace. Eventually, Debbie realized that not only was there a growing number of homeless people eager to join a community of faith – she also realized that she was being called to midwife that emerging reality.

It was initially a stretch for church leaders to recognize Debbie’s call to the priesthood or to see her gathering at a fountain on Boston Common as a viable congregation. Little did she know it, but Debbie was actually midwifing a ministry that would eventually become the birthing station for dozens more street ministries around the world. Today, when seminarians from various denominations visit her “Come and See” weekends to learn the nuts and bolts of this birthing station ministry, it is common to hear remarks like, “I only wish that this is what I was learning in seminary, right now.”

The Church would be a different place if our seminaries taught these skills of community organizing, deep listening, transformational interviewing and action/inquiry. Within a generation, we might value birthing stations like the one Debbie Little-Wyman and Duncan and Ann Petty and many others have created every bit as much as our fine Cathedral ministries!

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[i] For more information, consult Common Cathedral’s website: http://www.ecclesia-ministries.org.

Midwifing the Movement of the Spirit, part 4

Friends of mine who make a living as hospice chaplains tell me that, when a patient dies, the most difficult family member to engage is the one who hid away from most of the patient’s dying process, acting as though their loved one would eventually get better. Though perhaps not in such a morbid way, I believe many of our theologians and church leaders struggle with that same urge. It is simply easier to turn away from the death and dying process in our midst, to pretend we are still at the center of society and that the world still cares deeply about our educated opinion. The alternative – facing the loss of roles that once defined us, loss of control, loss of what might have been – is too much to bear BUT, is that not exactly what we need, at this moment in our life together?

 

For this reason, compassionate, loving and respectful hospice ministry for our churches is essential. In particular, those who care for parishes in long-term decline point out that institutions struggling with their own death and dying process exhibit a strong need for routine, predictability and a controlled environment. It is important to tell the “right” story – to preserve the sacred memories of the parish in its golden days and to maintain their structures. As a result, a key offering of this ecclesiastical hospice ministry is to appreciatively celebrate and preserve memories of the community at its best. In fact, faith communities (and even denominations) in this stage of their life cycle will often choose to carefully archive their memories, rather than creating new high points in their life together. One of the leader’s roles is to graciously and kindly midwife the community from the life they have loved into that community’s next life.

 

One may wonder why I have devoted such attention to this hospice ministry, when ultimately my reflections are offered for those who feel the Spirit’s call to midwife fresh expressions of all that She is birthing into our world. The two ministries often live side by side. In fact, birthing new ministries that emerge from within the inherited church could be likened to setting up a birthing center in the middle of a hospice ward. Some of the more powerful examples of this reality can be found in the homeless ministries sponsored within Episcopal churches. For the lack of funding and their own worship space, many of these fledgling ministries set up their services in the undercrofts of our downtown parishes, where there is public transportation available and accessibility for people with disabilities. As the more formal service upstairs is going out in peace to love and serve the Lord, helpers downstairs are setting up chairs in circles, with a table of fellowship in the center and musicians getting ready to lead worship with music from Africa, the Caribbean and from God-loving musicians who live on the street. Many are surprised to see folks who used to attend the earlier “upstairs” service. They now come to the later downstairs service because they also sense that the Spirit is birthing something new.

 

On any given Sunday, life for these upstairs/downstairs communities can get chaotic. Nicely dressed churchgoers on their way out may encounter musicians rehearsing more earthy and soulful music in the parish garden. Some of those musicians may be homeless; some are professionals grateful for the opportunity to come alongside a ministry that invites them to get real with issues seldom addressed in our more refined Sunday services. It is that sort of “mixing it up” that a birthing center in a hospice ward may require.

 

I was recently asked, “Do you think that it is possible or advisable to open such a birthing clinic in the center of our hospice ward?” My answer is, “It depends.” I think it depends on whether we can take responsibility for our real motives for tackling such a challenge. As many observers can attest, it produces a nasty case of cognitive dissonance when an “emergent” church planter claims to be midwifing new ministries of the Spirit, but their real motivation is to keep our denomination from dying by starting new churches with good form. At that moment our sneaky institutional narcissism emerges from the underbrush of our own marketing. With all my heart I believe that keeping the denomination alive is one ministry and midwifing the emerging work of the Spirit is another. Much of the time, we struggle to stay clear about the difference between the two.

 

Here, then, is the rub. It may be that many of us are trying to offer a midwife’s presence in the Spirit’s birthing clinic (the whole world), even as we are guided by hospice theology and Christendom practices. In other words, we get excited about the new work of the Spirit out there in God’s world, and then we try to bring it back to church so that we can label it, own it and then civilize it to match our culture. As a result, we may be missing the incredible beauty of our call to midwife the work of the Spirit in a world longing for reconciliation with God, humanity and all of creation.

 

I welcome your responses!

Midwifing the Movement of the Spirit, part 3

From Hospice Ward to Birthing Center

On my return to the United States, I immediately gathered a group of leaders in the Episcopal Church, as well as staff at the Episcopal Church Center. The point of our six conversations was to explore practical responses to my learnings in the United Kingdom to our US context. These leaders helped me reflect on my day-to-day encounters with both innovative and declining ministries across the Episcopal Church. I began to notice an awakening of sorts among many of our church’s leaders. There seems to be a new impatience with the old models of church and church leadership passed to us from the “inherited church.”[1]

 

Many of our church leaders are realizing that, for most of their careers, they have been offering a kind of hospice ministry to their congregations and dioceses. It is not just the flagging attendance and the graying of our denomination’s membership that push them to acknowledge the ennui of our beloved institutions. It is also the noted absence of fresh visions and dreams that would normally bubble up from our younger members. There seems to be a fresh hunger for the Spirit’s promise to give above and beyond anything that we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20-21).

At the same time, there are also many leaders who are eager to maintain our structures and habits just a little longer. Many of them left their seminary experiences years ago confident that, if they just offered excellent ministry and relevant preaching, there was hope of reversing the declining trends, at least on a local level. Today, they faithfully and persistently make up for declining offerings and pledges by working harder and longer towards a balanced budget and for their stipends. Their best-attended services seem to be those remembering the good old days – the High Holy Golden Days of the Church of Yesterday. There are others who are convinced that only a return to orthodoxy will secure God’s blessings on our ecclesiastical ventures.

    It is not so difficult to understand how the Church arrived at this state of affairs. Even today, most of our seminarians are trained to coordinate the ministries of churches whose identities were cast in a pre-modern era, the earliest days of Christendom. (By “Christendom” I refer to the offspring produced by the official marriage of the early Christian movement to the Roman Empire.) Furthermore, most of our mainline denominations were assembled on a theological framework cobbled together at a time when the Church’s authority was granted by the state and the Church operated from the center of society. In those halcyon days, the leaders of our churches were seen as the keepers of all that is good and whole and Godly. It was their calling to bring God to the world – to introduce the Christian life to the “lost” out there. The world changed, but the calling has yet to be recast. And so, many leaders find themselves engaged in hospice care for denominations and churches in their latter days.

Rest assured, I am convinced that hospice ministry to declining congregations is desperately needed today. It is a challenging and significant ministry, primarily because it calls us to face our own mortality, as well as our (as yet unredeemed) addictions to certainty and insured outcomes. We all want to think of ourselves as resurrection people. Sadly, many of us are so eager to arrive at Easter morning that we skip over the trauma of Good Friday – primarily because we dare not look into the face of death, especially the death of our church, our diocese or our denomination.

Friends of mine who make a living as hospice chaplains tell me that, when a patient dies, the most difficult family member to engage is the one who hid away from most of the patient’s dying process, acting as though their loved one would eventually get better. Though perhaps not in such a morbid way, I believe many of our theologians and church leaders struggle with that same urge. It is simply easier to turn away from the death and dying process in our midst, to pretend we are still at the center of society and that the world still cares deeply about our educated opinion. The alternative – facing the loss of roles that once defined us, loss of control, loss of what might have been – is too much to bear BUT, is that not exactly what we need, at this moment in our life together?

(to be continued, tomorrow)

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[1] This is a term used in the “Mission-shaped Church” report issued by the Archbishop’s Council in the Church of England. A downloadable version can be found at www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/mission_shaped_church.pdf.

Midwifing the Movement of the Spirit, part 2

One of the gifts of my March 2009 visit to leaders of the Fresh Expressions initiative was the movement back and forth between interviews with remarkable thought leaders and visits to ministries on the ground. One of the first such ministries I witnessed in the Liverpool area was Oaks Church in Tanhouse, Skelmersdale.

 

Early on in my conversations with the remarkable couple serving this new ministry is that, before making any strategic plans, Reverend Duncan Petty and his wife Ann took their time to get to know the community they felt called to serve.[i] Via their commitment to deep listening over many months, they discovered that there was a “need for building small, relational, supportive, stable groups with some sort of security for people whose lives are all over the place.” Instead of planning a traditional new church launch that gathered the community on Sundays, they felt the call to be a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week community center of healing that offers hope to this largely unemployed and emotionally struggling community. In their words, they purchased “through sacrificial giving of … members plus finance from sending church and elsewhere, a community house for blessing the locals through a variety of small groups.” Ministry in this unique neighborhood called for the service of a house manager and a youth and children's worker for 20 hours a week each. The diocese pays the rent on their home in the center of the community, and they are as embedded in this intentional community of outreach as a family can be.

 

My time with Duncan and Ann repeatedly brought me to joy and gratitude – joy over the incarnational presence they are offering and gratitude for the way they called me to reexamine my understanding of what it means to be a sacramental presence in God's world.

What might be happening here with the Pettys? What is so different about the shape of this ministry? In Duncan’s words, they had to “leave behind their stereotypical ideas on what it means to offer ministry in community.” I could see clearly that what they were doing was best likened to a kind of spiritual “midwifing.” Here's what I mean: they went into the grinding poverty of that housing project to search out what the Spirit is birthing – one could say they walked around their new neighborhood as “archeologists of hope.”[ii]And they pledged to be present to that birth, to honor whatever the Spirit might be bringing to life.

 

At this point, some of you will need me to announce that I do recognize the cultural differences between the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, and I am aware that my perspective has been shaped by some very thoughtful leaders both within and outside of our Episcopal Church over the last 20 years. And yet, the Petty’s journey is a unique example of what I believe to be the future of midwifing ministry for all of us. I offer in these brief reflections an urgent invitation to the Church to midwife the work of the Spirit in a world longing for reconciliation.

 

My prayer is that you will respond to the Spirit's call with a hearty "Yes!" and join us!

 

(to be continued, tomorrow)

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Reference

Jürgen Moltmann, 1977, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, London: SCM Press.

Notes

[i] The ministry is referred to as Oaks Church in Tanhouse, Skelmersdale. More information can be found here: https://lccsecure.lancashire.gov.uk/ACS/findExtOrg/view/details.asp?intServiceID=504.

[ii]This is a metaphor used extensively to explain a way of being called for in the practice of Narrative Therapy. For more on this topic, see Gerald Monk, 1997, Narrative Therapy in Practice: The Archaeology of Hope, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Midwifing the Movement of the Spirit, part 1

At 2:00 p.m. on March 23, 2009, I began a journey of discovery with a remarkable group of leaders in the Church of England. It started when Reverend Chris Jones picked me up at the Liverpool Train Station and invited me to join several clergy for an afternoon training. For the next three weeks, I witnessed the Pioneer Ministries sponsored by the Church of England’s Fresh Expressions agency, the Church Missionary Society and the Church Army. Via the hospitality of leaders in three dioceses, I witnessed transformative ministries in five metropolitan areas, as well as several in more rural areas. During this remarkable tour, I plied nearly everyone I met with a question: “If you knew twenty years ago what you know now about the impact of secularization on the relationship of English culture to the Church of England (and vice versa), how might you have prepared the institution differently for those emerging realities?” Most of the leaders I interviewed understood that I was not asking a rhetorical question, that I came to them eager to explore a perspective that might inform our leadership in the Episcopal Church. Of the 76 people I queried, I filled a notebook with the highlights of 42 conversations.

 

Here is the gist of what they shared: “Twenty years ago, we were unintentionally pushing our young people out the back doors of our churches – mostly through indifference to the gifts they tried to offer. The long term impact of that benign neglect is that we traded a generation of young leaders and artists and prophets for various attempts to maintain the status quo. Today, we are working on bringing new young leaders into our churches, but that’s not the same as nurturing the prophetic voice in community – training new leaders to cultivate community with a hoe instead of directing with the verger’s mace. That takes time to develop. It’s an art of ‘being in community’ that very few have ever experienced, nonetheless mastered.”

 

I pressed my conversation partners further and asked, “So then, how would you recommend that we Americans might respond to this hard-earned wisdom you’ve offered?” Their answers were straightforward: “Start now – don’t wait until you have this all figured out. Experiment joyfully and publicly with new forms of ministry that match the cultures in which you find your ministries. Fail early and fail often until you learn what works. Learn to trust the young prophets in your midst and don’t be afraid when the visions they share are out beyond your comfort zones. Be daring and be bold!”

 

(to be continued tomorrow . . .)

Loop de Loop Learning

By now it is common knowledge that many of our church leaders are facing huge challenges as they try to learn “what works” elsewhere in organized religion. They find great allure in the “Best Practices” approach to knowledge sharing but getting from “capturing the stories” to “learning new behaviors” is where many of us leaders lose our way. What I’ve discovered is that many of us misunderstand what “corporate learning” is and how to create a learning environment, within our diocesan cultures.

Too often we think that we are hosting a learning community when we are really just problem-solving. It looks like this: a leader knows that her organization isn’t making progress or meeting goals or managing challenges well. The leader then looks up to identify challenges/problems/misbehaviors in her external environment and then sets about to fix them! Problem-solving at its finest, right!? But is that really “organizational learning,” per se? Drs. Friedman and Bowen were on their way to total systems thinking and wrote extensively about the impact of our presence on any social system. Quantum physics has also expanded our understanding of the impact we have on any “system” we are observing. Appreciative Inquiry has made great strides in convincing us that the quality of the questions we ask determines the quality of the answers that emerge. We already know all that, right? Where is the rub, then?

What many of our leaders struggle with in this tremendous time of change is the realization that, if community learning is to become (for example) a diocesan behavior, participants need to be invited into a new self-awareness and interconnectedness. I’m learning that these skills of self-awareness and self-appreciation are pretty counter-cultural and I often struggle awkwardly while dancing with these new shoes!

I often mean to ask folks much wiser than I, “Is it possible to reflect critically on our own behaviors in an appreciative manner?” Can we critically assess whether or not we are working from our strengths and/or how we may be contributing to an organization’s challenges? Can we do that in an appreciative way that recognizes the best of what is and amplifies that for the sake of the future that is longing to emerge? (I still believe we can! I also believe that it will require us to develop some new disciplines not normally covered in our seminaries or even in our D.Min. programs.)

The new Leadership disciplines ask us to identify the personal behaviors that inadvertently contribute to the organization’s problems (especially our own) and then experiment with new behaviors, while noting our impact on the whole system. (As a matter of fact, AI teaches us that the very manner in which we define and solve “problems” can generate even more “problems” than those originally observed.) Greg Mortenson  offers a brilliant example in his recent interview with Bill Moyer where he recalls Army strategists exploring the unique challenges of peace-making in Afghanistan. It was their intent to “discern” the problems and design new responses. The way they “discerned” actually created even greater problems, though. In their discerning, they forgot to seek out the advice of the local community elders. That omission cost them dearly!

Chris Argyris describes the organizational learning we dearly need at this moment as “double loop” learning (as different from “single-loop” learning). Here’s an example of the difference between the two. Your Cruise Control automatically adjusts the fuel intake on your car’s engine to regulate your speed, once set. When the car approaches a steep hill, the cruise control mechanism opens up the fuel injectors and forces more air/fuel mix into your engine. The cruise control’s responses to speed variations is a fine example of single-loop learning. If you had a cruise control that would consult with your GPS and reroute your car to flatter terrain, it would be modeling double-loop learning. It would have considered other options for maintaining an even speed, besides that of increasing or decreasing fuel to the engine, tried them and learned from the results.

The distinction between single-loop learning and double-loop learning is a crucial distinction to be made for leaders of faith communities in these times. So many of us have been taught the former. We have graduate degrees and years of continuing education. We have mastered intellectual disciplines and honed our crafts to new levels of expertise and we’ve even developed reputations as community “problem solvers.” People now bring their problems to us and we pride ourselves in our capacity to “fix” or resolve issues that others cannot. The irony is that, because so many of our leaders are good at this, they are really bad at living with failure.

Let me say that again. Because so many of our church leaders are so successful in their own worlds, they rarely have the opportunity to exercise the core practice of double-loop learning. In reality, when they fail, they do so privately. It is not to be discussed publicly; support staff work hard at “saving face.” Thus, even when the really good professionals fail, they do so out of the public eye and report on the failure in such a way that minimizes the consequences (as well as potential learnings). Intended or not, when many of our single-loop learning strategies backfire, we tend to exhibit defensive behaviors, screen out criticism, and put the “blame” on anyone and everyone but ourselves. Here is the really hard part: the leader’s capacity to learn shuts down in the exact moment when he or she needs it the most!

So what is the lore that has grown up about “good leadership?” It goes something like this: “The good leader is the one who makes the least mistakes and guides others away from making mistakes, as well.” ‘Sound familiar?

It is actually this very tendency among trained and professional clergy that illuminates the second great challenge to creating a learning environment where innovative responses to a changing world are prized. The belief that motivated people tend to learn more – that when people want to learn, when their attitude is right, when they are committed to the corporate goals, learning automatically follows. That belief is what keeps our Human Resources departments in demand and corporate consultants busy! So dioceses tend to focus on creating new organizational structures and compensation plans, mutual ministry reviews and the like. These are all offered in the hopes of creating motivated and committed lay and ordained leaders.

The problem is that we now know that effective double-loop learning is not directly connected to the way that an individual feels about their vocation or their avocation or their ministry! Double-loop learning is a reflection on their internal capacity (or the community’s capacity to make sense of their world’s responses to their behavior. It is a reflection on their capacity to design and implement their actions and then adjust those actions based on the consequences that follow (and not always right away)!

In the 1930’s, the world’s finest buggy whip manufacturer was still perfecting their design, their manufacturing practices and their quality control. They diversified their product line. They advertised and promoted their buggy whips as the sine qua non to buggy whip technology. When sales continued to flag, they moved into other markets and they adjusted their advertising to new cultures. They were persistent in their attempts to expand and opened new factories overseas. Six months after they opened their fifth factory, the whole company declared bankruptcy. What happened? The leaders of Acme Buggy Whips modeled near perfect single-loop learning!

When the United States’ highway system started to grow and the personal automobile became affordable, the ABW leaders became defensive. They even published a history of the development of the buggy whip from medieval times to modern days and created a display of antique buggy whips in their headquarter’s lobby. That defensiveness against encroaching realities governed all of their corporate behavior. It blocked the very learning processes they needed, even though their individual and corporate commitment reached all-time highs, just before bankruptcy! Fortunately and unfortunately, it did not have to end this way for the Acme Buggy Whip Company! They were stuck in what we might call a “learning dilemma.”

To break out of that vicious cycle of single-loop learning (and the longing to revert back to the good old days where everyone needed a buggy whip), they would have had to address the ways that their managers and employees learned from and made sense of their environment’s responses to their overtures. Instead of creating need for their antiquated product, they would have had to ask, “What is it that this world needs right now, and what are the better delivery systems for responding to those needs?” They would have experimented with new offerings and carefully learned from the market’s responses to their experiments. They would have dared to fail in their ventures. They might even have taken those failures public and modeled how to learn from those failures. They would have been practicing Argyris’ “double-loop learning” and they might have found their way to an Action Inquiry community ready for the future that was longing to emerge through them. Would they have switched to manufacturing Global Positioning Satellites for dashboard use? Probably not. But their next venture would have surely emerged from that kind of a learning community! It would have required experimentation (accompanied by both successes and failures) but most of all, attentive participants committed to a double-loop way of learning.

What Innovators (in both ministry and industry) taught me in 2009

Ministry Innovators who thrive are those who are aware of institutional dynamics that inhibit innovation, as well as organizational strengths in the institution on which they can build! Two sources: Orbiting the giant hairball and Kawasaki's Art of the start

 

If you lead (or hope to lead) a ministry within the Episcopal Church that is shaped by a response to the real needs of the local community, create a core group of leaders who understand what it is to “borrow” the best wisdom and practice from the inherited (traditional) church but find ways to minimize tensions between the two. (Look at the Church of England’s fresh perspective on the “Mixed Economy” approach for more on this!)

 

If you’ll be sporting the Episcopal Church brand while innovating new ministry, innovate strategically. Gather to yourself (and your leadership team) strategic thinkers who understand what it means to innovate, as well as what it means to work strategically. Strategic ministry and the discernment processes are often counter-intuitive to leaders expected to maintain the status quo.

 

Fail early and fail often in order to discover what works. Remember that the cost of failure is the sum of two factors: 1.) the probability of failure times 2.) the cost per incident of failure. We want to raise the first and lower the second. (Read, Here comes everybody for more on this.)

 

Get comfortable with the idea that the outcomes of truly innovative ministries in our mainline denominations are hard to predict and budget. Inevitably, they lose money (think “investment”) and few denominational leaders know how to evaluate their merit in the crucial first years. For institutions in decline (like our own Episcopal Church), the value of sponsoring new and innovative ministries is the learning they will offer us about the shape of ministries to come, NOT on the profit they turn or the immediate sustainability issues that tend to dominate these conversations.

 

Engaging strategic innovations usually requires the leader to “make the path by walking.” For leaders, this means “living on the edge.” Most of us are good at taking action; some of us are good inquiring into what is working and what might work better. Doing both simultaneously is not as easy as it sounds. (Read Action inquiry for more on this practice.) Leading such innovation (especially in the assumption-rich world of organized religion) requires emerging clarity shared with fresh language, symbols and stories matched up with nurturing a core team that knows to ask two questions, CONSTANTLY. Question 1: “What did we do well, just then?” Question 2: “What might we do better, next time?”

 

One of the key indicators of vital and ongoing innovation (which includes lots of failures, lots of learnings, lots of adjustments, lots of successes and lots of learnings) is a perennial joy. (That’s right – it’s not a typo – “joy.”) Best advice to the innovator from other innovators: Keep the joy; lose the institutional anxiety!

 

I like that! Keep the joy; lose the anxiety!