The Village Elders

All congregations are faced with decisions that can be made by a small leadership body (the governing board, the staff team, a committee) and decisions that must be taken on by the collective body. In the small to medium sized congregation, when full congregational decision making is required, a church-wide meeting is scheduled and a significant percentage of total membership shows up.  In the large congregation, leaders are continually frustrated by the small percentage of members that turn out for a “y’all come” meeting. It’s not unusual for a congregation with membership exceeding 2000 to have only 120 people show up for a congregational meeting where important decisions are being made.  Why is this? I believe that the answer has something to do with group threshold limits, and the number of people who identify themselves as the “village elders” at any point in time. Let me explain.

The full leadership body of the church is a self identified group of leaders who feel “responsible” for the overall well being of the congregation.  This typically includes members of the staff team and board members. It also includes an inner ring of leaders who are not currently serving in either of those capacities, but still feel a strong sense of leadership responsibility for the church. This group informally functions as the “village elder” body, keeping a watchful eye on the direction of the congregation.  It’s not an officially appointed body, and membership seems to self adjust over time. However, the size of the group always remains rather constant; somewhere between 75-150 people.  This seems to hold true regardless of the size of the total membership body.

Why doesn’t the informal leadership group ever grow larger than this number, even in the very large congregation?  Humans are known to have a cognitive upper limit to the average number of individuals with whom they can form cohesive personal relationships. That limit, known as Dunbar’s Number, is around 150 people.  Having enough memory space to remember people’s names and faces is not enough to manage 150 relationships. It is about integrating and managing information about the constantly changing relationships between individuals within a group.  When a group grows larger than 150 people, members of the group lose their ability to track relationships, and the group loses its capacity to function well as a community.

I would argue that in the large congregation the leadership body is always subconsciously reforming itself around the Dunbar limit. The leadership body must be able to think of itself in some cogent way as members of a single community. This requires that people know one another well enough to communicate around important congregational issues.  In response to this natural group dynamic, leaders are continually stepping into the informal village elder group and removing themselves from the village elder group, based on life circumstances.

In a medium sized congregation, if 150 people show up for a congregational gathering it represents a significant percentage of the membership body. In the large church it may represent less than 10% of membership.  The small percentage may be interpreted as a sign of apathy, but it’s really just the village elder system organizing itself to fulfill an important leadership role on behalf of the congregation.

How does this compare to your lived experience?

Photo Credit:  The Earth Tribe

Large Church, Small Board

I’ve heard this question recently from several of you.

Q:  I’ve always heard that the governing board of a congregation should grow smaller as the church becomes larger. Why is that? Is there an ideal size?

 A:  Effective boards in every size congregation must tend to three types of work: fiduciary (tending to the stewardship of tangible assets), strategic (working to set the congregation’s priorities and seeing that resources are being deployed in accordance with those priorities) and generative (problem framing and sense making about the shifting environment of the congregation). See Chait, Ryan and Taylor,  “ Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards” for more about these definitions.

In the large congregation many of the fiduciary responsibilities of the board are better delegated to others. The board can never abdicate its responsibility for fiduciary oversight, but it can rely on board committees and the staff team to do much of the fiduciary work on its behalf. As congregations grow larger governing boards must increasingly focus their time on the strategic and generative work of the congregation, if the congregation is going to thrive. This type of work is best accomplished by smaller decision making bodies, with specific skill sets in strategic leadership.

The board of the multi-celled congregation (200-400 in weekend worship attendance) is often consumed by fiduciary work. The staff team is not yet large enough to assume the full managerial responsibilities of the church, and lay leadership is still actively involved in the management of ministry. Governing bodies in this size congregation are often representational in nature, consisting of the people who are doers and managers of the ministry alongside the staff team. Much of the monthly board meeting is wrapped up in planning for and reporting on ministry management. This board often needs to make special provisions for strategic planning work, outside of the context of their monthly meetings.

The governing board in the Professional sized congregation (400-800 in weekend worship attendance) is intuitively drawn towards a more balanced focus between fiduciary and strategic work. The largest struggle of the board is figuring out how to be more strategic and generative on a regular basis. The staff team is becoming highly specialized and is better able than the board to tend to operational management. The board must avoid micro-managing the staff.  Congregations in this size category feel the need to reduce the size of the board in order to move away from reporting out/operational management and into more strategic and generative work.

Healthy congregations in the Strategic size category (800-1,200 in weekend worship attendance) have generally learned some things about delegating the fiduciary work of the board, in service to more time spent on strategic and generative work. The governing body in this congregation has typically been downsized to create a more nimble decision making body. The voice of the staff team is represented by the senior clergy leader and the executive pastor. Other professional staff members attend board meetings only when invited, to evaluate or reflect upon a particular aspect of ministry that rests within the staff member’s sphere of influence. 

What size is the right size?  A group trying to engage in effective strategic decision making faces two key challenges. The first is the management of communication. The second is decision making accuracy.  Generally having more people in a group will increase the likelihood that someone will have the information needed to make the decision and someone will propose a correct choice or solution. However, more people produce more opinions that have to be communicated and discussed. This makes the management of communication process more difficult, which ultimately ends up reducing decision making effectiveness.

The difficulty of managing communication within a small group is roughly proportional to the number of possible social interactions within the group. With two people there is only one possible social interaction.  With three people there are three possible two-person interactions and one three way interaction for a total of four possible interactions. The number of possible social interactions begins to explode in groups with more than five people. 

Most of us cannot imagine reducing our governing bodies down to 5 individuals, but the closer we can get to that number, the more effective our problem solving will be.  Larger groups require skillful leadership and formal structures in order to function effectively. Formal structures, such as parliamentary procedures, work by deliberately stifling many of the possible social interactions.  Unfortunately, this can also stifle creativity which is critical for strategic and generative work, and it also insures that most decision making will be dominated by the most politically influential individuals in the room, whether or not they have the best ideas.

Executive Assistance

Many of the senior clergy leaders I encounter are overburdened with administrative detail that they can’t figure out how to delegate. The common battle cry is, “It’s just easier to do it myself.” Many administrative assistants report having excess time on their hands, but they can’t get their clergy leaders to give them more meaningful work to do. What’s going on here? I suspect that many clergy leaders can’t figure out how to effectively work with an executive assistant (EA) because no one has ever taught them how to do so. When I encounter a high functioning clergy/admin team I often ask them what the key is to their good working relationship. More often than not, the clergy leader tells me that the executive assistant trained him in how to work effectively with an assistant. Let’s face it. This is not one of the skill sets that we learn in seminary.  And it’s not necessarily intuitive.

The good EA often knows how to diplomatically wrestle work away from the senior clergy leader that could more effectively be done by the EA. A good assistant is fierce, but appropriate, in guarding access to the senior clergy leader. A good working relationship between the senior clergy leader and her executive assistant saves the clergy leader valuable time. But the relationship can be so much more than that.

The effective EA functions as an extension of the senior clergy leader.  People will often regard a conversation with the EA as a point of contact with the pastor. Good EA’s provide an invaluable pastoral care function, listening compassionately and making careful decisions about who needs to see the senior clergy leader and who can be directed elsewhere.  Through the use of basic listening skills the EA often communicates the presence of the pastor, without the pastor actually having to be present.  A good EA is invaluable at triaging situations and figuring out when to intercept someone who is simply looking for help and doesn’t know where to find it. People learn to respect the fact that a message delivered to the EA is as good as a message delivered to the pastor (maybe even more reliable!)

Here are some of practices that seem to contribute to an effective working relationship between clergy and their executive assistants:

• Be absolutely clear about the lines of responsibility and authority. What responsibilities can the EA assume without needing any involvement from you? In what situations do you need to be consulted before a decision is made? In what situations can the EA make a decision and simply inform you after the fact?
• Meet daily to review your calendar, review your to do lists, establish priorities and communicate around deadlines. Make your wishes clear about how you would like him to handle situations anticipated on that day.
• Have your assistant attend all staff meetings so that she understands key issues, workflow and the expected timing of things.
• Give your assistant authority to process your inbox and your email inbox.  Your assistant should be able to go through your physical and your email inbox to cull out the garbage, identify and process the routine stuff and forward only those things that need your personal attention.
• Train your assistant to handle all routine correspondence. An assistant armed with the knowledge of your policies, your preferences, your style and a few good templates can handle routine items. You can maintain control, if needed, by personally signing everything before it goes out.
• Listen to your assistant. A high functioning assistant will often have a better feel for the pulse of the congregation than you do. He will know who needs attention, a personal contact, or how to best approach a potential conflict scenario.

Think of your executive assistant as a manager, not as clerical support.  The EA in the large congregation is a powerful position with lots of decision making authority. Your EA should function as an invaluable member of your team.

Photo Credit: kogakure

Admin Staff & Mission Ownership

Most of us expect our clergy staff to demonstrate a strong sense of commitment to the mission of the congregation. We use the language of “called, not hired” to describe the over the top commitment we seek. We also expect our non-ordained program staff to embrace the mission of the congregation.  Most program staff are members of their congregations, and consequently are called upon to demonstrate some passion for the congregation’s purpose and identity. 

What kind of expectations do we carry about missional ownership among our administrative support staff? Many congregations are very intentional about not hiring church members to serve in administrative support roles. They believe that the relationship is neater and cleaner if the people serving the church administratively have a pure employment relationship with the congregation. That way it will be easier to fire people that aren’t working out (or so we tell ourselves). That way it’s always possible to determine which part of time spent on church activity is paid activity versus volunteer work. That way it’s easier to prevent members from knowing things that could get dicey, like the giving patterns of other members. That way we can keep relationships with administrative staff purely professional and avoid the unpleasant triangulation that can occur when staff wears employment and membership hats simultaneously.  

Unfortunately, an unintended consequence of separating the employment and membership relationship is that our administrative staff often fails to embrace the mission of the congregation. When working with staff teams I frequently ask members of the team to evaluate the extent to which the following statements describe their team:

• As a staff, we have a compelling vision of the future for the church, and our place in that future.
•  We have a clearly defined and well communicated statement of purpose as a staff team.

I am surprised by the frequency of negative responses that administrative staff members provide in response to these two statements. Administrative staff will often tell me that they don’t think the mission of the congregation, or the staff team, has anything to do with them. After all, they are employees, not members. They believe that missional commitment is something that belongs to the clergy and program staff, not to them. Their job is simply to keep the members of the congregation happy.

Is this really the mindset that we want to promote among our administrative staff members? I can appreciate that our employees who are not members will have less of an attachment to the mission of the congregation. But can they ever really remain detached from the mission and still be effective employees? Doesn’t an administrative staff member need to embrace the mission of the congregation on some very basic level in order to serve as a member of the team? Have we gone overboard in trying to protect ourselves from the potential downsides of combining membership and employment?

I believe that every member of the staff team should have an awareness of the congregations’ mission and strategic direction. They should be able to articulate an ownership of that mission in a way that feels genuine to them personally, and in a way that clarifies their relationship to the mission. That doesn’t mean that our employees need to share our theological, religious or polity orientations. They do need to support the basic work that the congregation is engaging, and they do need to understand how their role functions in support of that work. One of our jobs as heads of staff, and as supervisors, is to help our employees articulate how their role connects to mission, vision and values. Are you doing that with your employees?

Photo Credit: darwinbell

A Word of Thanks

I began this blog a year and a half ago, in part to help give birth to a book I had in mind about the large congregation. My hope was that the blog would allow me to actively try out ideas and find my voice about life in the large congregation. This week I finished the manuscript and sent it along to my editor (Phew!). The working title of the book bears the same name as this blog, “Inside the Large Congregation”, (although any of you who have published a book can appreciate that the title will change numerous times between now and publication).

The book is about five leadership systems that remain in motion in the large congregation, and how those leadership systems must be right sized to accommodate different threshold limits of complexity.  The book defines four new large church size categories. For each of the new size categories it explores: clergy leadership roles, staff team function and design, governance and board function, acculturation and the role of laity, and the formation and execution of strategy. I expect that the book will be published through Alban sometime in the fall of 2011.

I want to mark this moment by stopping to thank you, my readers, for your part in helping me get this manuscript written. The discipline of crafting weekly entries for the blog has kept me on task, forcing me to articulate what I am learning. Many of you, and you know who you are, have contributed to the birth of this book by presenting me with interesting case scenarios, by challenging me to think and talk about things that weren’t being addressed elsewhere, and by encouraging me in my consulting, teaching and writing. Thank you.

I fully intend to continue the blog, even though the manuscript is done. I have discovered that the discipline of noticing what my clients are struggling with, and translating those observations into written commentary, is invaluable to my own learning process. I hope you’ll stay with me and continue to challenge me with your ideas and observations.

I also want to invite you to consider joining me, in person, this fall to explore the collective learning that came with writing the book.  I’ll be facilitating an Alban sponsored seminar, “Inside the Large Congregation” on October 25-27, 2011 in Norcross Georgia.  You can read more about the event and register online at http://alban.org.  I hope to see you there!

Photo Credit: maher berro

The Ultimatum

Put yourself in this senior pastor’s shoes. You’ve had some supervisory challenges with your Minister of Music over the past two years, but she’s a person that you value having on your team. Let’s call this employee Connie.  Connie is a brilliantly gifted musician and widely respected within the local musical community. She is liked and admired by the congregation. She is not a good team player. She repeatedly fails to show up for staff meetings and she doesn’t work well with you or others in the planning of worship. The choir members respect her, but she hasn’t been effective at creating a sense of community within the choirs.  You’ve had several conversations with her about her lack of team orientation, but she doesn’t seem to be improving.

Yesterday Connie asked to meet with you after staff meeting. She began the meeting by saying that the stress of the job is doing her in. Specifically, she can’t take “the continual hounding about being a team player”. She wants to be left alone to run the choirs the way that she sees fit; after all she is the musical expert on the staff team.  After talking about her frustrations Connie issues this ultimatum. “I will not participate in staff meetings any more. They are a waste of my time. I also want to be able to make all musical choices, including hymn selection, without the oversight or input of any other members on the team, including you. Finally, I want you to quit bugging me about approaching the development of the choir from a community perspective. We are musicians plain and simple, and the community building stuff is just getting in the way.  You have thirty days to think about this request. If you do not agree to these conditions of my employment, I am finished here.”   

What is your response?  Would your response change if I told you that Connie is an African American and 58 years old?  (You are Anglo-American; your congregation is 90% white and seeking to become more diverse). Does it make a difference that you’ve also had two other really difficult staff terminations in the past year?

Dealing with a staff ultimatum is easy if the staff member is a problem employee that you’ve been trying to figure out how to terminate. In fact, it’s a gift. You simple thank the employee for their service and show them the door.  But when the ultimatum is issued by someone like Connie, it’s more difficult. You don’t want the employee to leave, but she does have certain shortcomings that can’t be ignored. You don’t want the risk of a bad departure, particularly one that is skirting around the issues of ageism and racism.  

Situations like this one make me grateful to be a consultant. I admire those of you on the frontline, trying to deal with real life, while I sit on the sidelines and offer commentary.  For what it’s worth, here’s my take on the general approach to a situation like this one.

1. Yielding to an ultimatum is almost always a bad idea. It’s a set up for subsequent manipulation and hostage holding. General rule of thumb: don’t ever accept the demands of an ultimatum as presented (unless you are blatantly wrong about the situation and the employee’s demands are entirely justified.)
2. If the employment situation is one that you want to maintain, find a creative way to invite the employee away from the line they have drawn in the sand. You can do this with a few good techniques:

• Invite the employee back into conversation and seek first to listen and truly understand; see if you can identify the root cause of the frustration that caused them to become positional in the first place.
• Affirm their value in the congregation in a way that is genuine and honest.
• Unpack the various elements of their ultimatum. Identify: what is this about, what is this not about, which parts of the situation can be changed, which parts of the situation cannot be changed?
• Make distinctions between what the employee is able to do (skill), willing to do (motivation) and has the opportunity to do (environment).
• Invite the employee to join with you in thinking creatively about alternatives other than resignation. What other solutions exist that don’t involve the ultimatum?
• Emphasize the mutuality of what you are both seeking to preserve. What do you mutually value in the situation that ought to be preserved?

    3.   At the end of the day, if they will not back away from the ultimatum, prepare for letting them go and prepare for the damage control that you’re going to need to do in the congregation as they depart.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one. Weigh in.

Photo Credit: war.tix

Waiting for Staff to Retire

I often find myself in conversations like this one with a senior pastor.

Pastor: “I need help thinking about the configuration of my staff team. I’m currently trying to work around 2 key positions that aren’t appropriately staffed right now. There isn’t much I can do in the moment because I’m waiting for these 2 people to retire, but I want to be ready to do the right thing once these two individuals do decide to retire.”

Me: “How are you engaging the dialogue with these two individuals around their retirement decision?”

Pastor: “I’m not. I’m waiting for them to decide what they are going to do.”

The problem with the “wait and see” approach to the retirement of others is that it places the overall effectiveness of the staff team in the hands of a few individuals. In most of the situations that pastors bring to me for discussion, the individual that is deciding the fate of the staff team through their retirement decision is not performing effectively.  The head of staff stands by and does nothing out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, or out of a fear of creating division or risking a law suit. It seems easier to wait it out than it does to engage in conversations that have the potential to go very badly.

I believe that the most effective way to stay engaged with employees around their retirement decision is to be absolutely clear with them about role expectations. We shouldn’t freeze the expectations around a role to match what the person used to do when they were first hired, or to match what the individual is capable of doing now. We should be absolutely clear with all of our employees about what their current role requires of them, and we should provide clear feedback about how they are performing against those expectations.  This applies to all employees; those who have just begun their careers as well as those that are approaching retirement. Regular conversations about how the role is evolving, what skill sets they are expected to demonstrate, and ongoing feedback about how the employee is performing in the role, will provide the employee with the accurate information needed to make a good retirement decision.

What often happens in place of honest feedback is that the role is gradually diminished over time to accommodate the level of work that the employee seems willing and able to engage effectively. As the role is diminished, others around the employee work extra hard to pick up the slack and overcompensate for the underperforming person.  This isn’t fair for anyone, including the employee who is approaching retirement.

The decision about when to retire should be up to the individual, but only if the employee is effectively engaging the role. If an employee is no longer interested or able to meet the changing needs of the congregation, it is time to get honest. Most people are not interested in staying on in an employment situation once they realize that they have become a burden to the system. We can celebrate years of fruitful ministry and still be honest about what is required in the here and now.

Photo Credit: jimbeauphoto

The Invisible Family

Recently, after speaking to a group of pastors about clergy roles in the large church, I was approached by a senior minister who said, “I’m surprised that you didn’t talk about the unique family dynamics that occur for clergy leaders of very large congregations, you know … the invisibility factor.”  I stood there looking rather dumbstruck for a few moments because frankly, I didn’t know what he was referring to. 

The senior pastor went on to talk about how differently the stress of family life manifests itself in the large church. As he talked I began to recognize the phenomenon that he was describing. I had encountered the issue before in other congregations with other clergy leaders; I just hadn’t heard it referred to under the label of invisibility. I immediately recognized the phenomenon as something real and profound for clergy families in large congregations.

In the small to mid-sized church the pastor and his or her family learn to live in a fishbowl. Everything that the pastor’s spouse and children do is subject to the intense scrutiny of the congregation, which places incredible pressure upon the family system. Most clergy families become oriented to life in the ministry through this fish bowl kind of environment. It becomes a way of life. They are accustomed to being known and watched by everyone in the congregation. The pastor’s spouse learns to view himself or herself as a partner in the ministry and is often treated as the “first spouse” of the church family. Many clergy spouses in the small to mid-sized church are viewed as equal ministry partners alongside their ordained spouse. They function as unpaid clergy leaders. For better or worse, they tend to be vocationally identified with their spouse’s role. Some clergy spouses thrive in the fishbowl and others wilt under the scrutiny and the expectations.

Clergy family life in the large church is a different kind of experience.  In the very large church the pastor’s family assumes a cloak of invisibility. The senior clergy leader who occupies the pulpit in the large church is a persona; everyone knows or feels like they know the preacher. It’s difficult for the primary preacher in the large church to go out in public places without being recognized. He/she is always on display; being watched from a close distance by those who occupy the pews on Sunday morning.

At the same time, the preacher’s family is having a very different kind of experience.  Few people recognize or know the family of the senior clergy leader, unless they appear at the side of the clergy leader. For many clergy families, being able to step out of the fishbowl is a welcome relief. Life feels a little more normal without the close scrutiny that comes from being known as the pastor’s significant others.  In other families, the loss of identity can be devastating. If a clergy spouse has vocationally identified with the role of clergy spouse, the loss of identity can result in the loss of validation. Suddenly, the clergy spouse is not the significant other when attending church functions. The clergy leader may be sharing their experience of church life more intensely and directly with other clergy leaders on the staff team, and not with the spouse at home. The spouse begins to feel unimportant to the ministry and left out. It seems like the ministry has become centered around “the pastor” and not at all about the family.  I’ve even heard some leaders talk about the confusion (and hurt) that takes place within a marriage when newcomers to a congregation assume that the male senior clergy leader is married to the female associate clergy leader, simply because they occupy a shared vocational space.

The fishbowl dilemma and the invisibility dilemma represent polar anchors on the same continuum of clergy family life. Each end of the continuum hosts its own set of problems. What kinds of adaptations have you and your family had to make as clergy leaders in a large church context? Which part of the continuum feels most comfortable to you, to your spouse, and to your children?

Photo Credit: T_Squared

Role of the Executive Team

An ideal sized governing board in the large congregation is 5-7 individuals. A group of this size can effectively engage strategic decision making. Many congregations simply cannot imagine reducing the size of their governing board to 5-7 individuals. Either the operating culture or the congregation’s polity system do not support a streamlined decision making group. Congregation members may be too distrustful of the small board, believing that it couldn’t possibly represent the best interest of an entire congregation. In these congregations an executive team is often formed within the board structure, to facilitate more effective decision making and to help the board maintain a focus that is more strategic and generative in scope.

The executive team may consist of the senior clergy leader, the executive clergy (if such a role exists), the board chair, the treasurer (or other financial office) and one or two other central board figures. Executive teams may meet weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, depending upon the work that they do on behalf of the congregation. Executive teams can promote good governance when they focus their time in the following ways:

• Triage: One of the primary ways that an executive team can promote good governance is by triaging the various topics that are slated to come before a board. The team looks over all of the slated board issues and determines which topics can be effectively delegated to other decision making bodies in the congregation. By keeping an overabundance of fiduciary items off of the agenda the executive team can help the board stay more strategically and generatively focused.

• Framing: Once the ET has determined that an issue does belong on the board’s agenda they can work to frame the issue in a way that will encourage strategic and generative conversations about the topic. They can determine which part of a conversation belongs to the board, and then they can frame the topic in such a way that the board’s time is well used in service to the decisions which must be made. Similarly, the ET may entertain some dialogue around important topics before bringing the issue to the board so that only those elements of the topic that are relevant to the board’s decision making are brought to the board. In other words, the ET strains out irrelevant or misleading data so that the board conversation stays more focused on the truly critical issues at hand.

•Decision-Making: Some congregation’s delegate specific types of decision making to the ET. The most common decision making that occurs within an Executive Team is the time-sensitive issue that must be acted upon in between regularly scheduled board meetings. When the ET makes a decision on behalf of the board it is critical that full disclosure of those decisions be communicated back to board members in a timely manner.

• Deciding what to place in the “consent” agenda: A consent agenda, sometimes called a consent “calendar,” is a component of a meeting agenda that enables the board to group routine items and resolutions under one umbrella. As the name implies, there is a general agreement ahead of time by a board on the use of the procedure. Issues that are packaged together in a consent agenda are distributed to board members ahead of their regularly scheduled meeting for preview purposes. At the meeting, items in the consent agenda do not warrant any discussion before a vote. Unless a board member feels that an item should be discussed and requests the removal of that item ahead of time, the entire package is voted on at once without any additional explanations or comments. Because no questions or comments on these items are allowed during the meeting, this procedure saves time. Those items removed from the consent agenda by a member of the board can be discussed more fully before being acted upon. The Executive team can pre-sort the issues up for inclusion in a board meeting and determine which items can effectively be included within the consent agenda.

Large congregations that make effective use of an Executive Team often find that over time the board needs to meet less frequently. As the ET becomes more effective at triaging, framing and decision making on behalf of the board, board members come to accept and expect strong leadership from the ET. Board members appreciate the need to meet less frequently and appreciate that when they do meet they are engaged in more productive conversations that truly benefit the life of the congregation. Some congregations, after working effectively with an Executive Team over time, come to realize that the ET has become the governing board and that the larger governing body is actually an advisory group to the ET. Once this awareness takes hold, the congregation may be ready to reduce the size of their board to 5-7 individuals and eliminate the Executive Team.

Photo Credit: Zebra Huddle

Too Few Women

In this video Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, talks about why such a small percentage of women make it to the top of their professions.  I believe that the lessons she shares are applicable to, and prophetic for the world of congregations.

The pulpit in the large congregation, for better or worse, represents the top of the vocational ladder for clergy leaders.  We can argue that serving a large congregaton shouldn’t automatically be the ultimate vocational target for clergy leaders, but in many ways it is. And I think that we’d all agree that there are too few women leading our largest congregations.

I am regularly asked to speak at gatherings of senior clergy leaders from large congregations. There are still remarkably few women in the room. I’ve also noticed that the women who are present are seldom as vocal as their male counterparts. Sandberg challenges us to sit at the table and keep our hands up, a metaphorical way of referring to a need for stronger female leadership presence.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing that Sandberg talks about are the studies that have been done on the relationship between success and likeability in leadership. There is a strong positive correlation between success and likeability for men. Unfortunately, success and likeability are negatively correlated for women in our culture. This is particularly discouraging for the future of female leaders at the senior clergy level. How is a woman supposed to endear herself as the beloved pastoral leader of a large congregation, and still be considered a successful organizational leader? If we have to choose between projecting a likeable image or a competent image, we lose as candidates for the large church. The effective large church leader must be perceived as both likeable and successful.

Is this a lost cause? What have you learned about projecting an image that is both likeable and successful?

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