Passing the Baton

Lately my phone has been ringing off of the hook with people who want to talk about pastoral succession: denominational leaders who want to prepare for the impending onslaught of baby boomers about to retire; senior pastors wanting to think about exiting their congregations well; and lay leaders wondering how to talk with their pastors about this without making everyone nervous. Most of these callers want to talk about a process for managing a change in pastors. I’ve been trying to re-frame the conversation.

Managing change, and managing the transitions that accompany a change, are not one and the same (Bridges, 1991). Change happens in an instant; the pastor departs, a new pastor arrives, and change has occurred. The transitions associated with change are much more subtle and occur over a broader expanse of time. Transition management addresses the cultural, behavioral, and spiritual adaptive learning that must occur for a congregation to fully prepare for new leadership. During pastoral succession, most congregational leaders are so invested in managing the change elements of succession that they fail to adequately tend the important work of managing the transition. We need to be talking about the transition work.

Congregational leaders invest enormous angst and energy in managing the change mechanics of pastoral succession, because they know what is at stake. They zealously manage and protect the process of search. They maintain control by keeping secrets about progress. They work to preserve the status quo among congregants while the transition is underway. As a result little actually transitions in the congregation during the succession period. It is up to the search committee to identify a candidate who “gets us”. And then it is up to the new clergy leader to figure out how to adapt to an entrenched system as they enter it.

As we seek to better understand failed pastoral succession we often discover that the failure has less to do with the attributes of the specific candidate, and more to do with the candidate’s inability to survive the transition into the congregation. “They just weren’t a good fit for us”. “They just couldn’t seem to adjust to how we do things here.” “Our leaders just weren’t ready to let go of the reigns and let them actually lead.”

One clergy leader described his entry journey in this way. “It was a full five years before I could exert any kind of meaningful leadership. For the first several years I was negotiating my way through fog. There were unexpressed standards of performance that I was being evaluated against, that everyone knew but me, and no one was able to articulate.” This particular candidate was eventually able to claim a leadership voice and went on to have a successful eighteen year pastorate. Others are not so fortunate.

Today’s large congregations are asking new and provocative questions about the real nature of transition in this important leadership season. Are interim pastorates really helpful in negotiating transitions in the large congregation? Can the congregation transition directly from one senior pastor to the next without creating an arbitrary space between leaders? Should internal candidates be considered for the job, to minimize the risks of transition? If so, what process is appropriate for considering internal candidates? If the congregation is kept in the dark about pending pastoral transitions, can they really do their adaptive work? Can retiring senior ministers retain some kind of role in the faith communities which they have shepherded for many years?

Is your congregation in conversation about this? What’s the nature of your dialogue?

When the Decision to Fire Has Been Made

I was not surprised by the call. I knew that this pastor had been struggling for some time with a problem employee that he could not bring himself to fire. The employee was at times brilliant in her work, fulfilling most of the essential functions and duties of her job with polish and excellence. However, she demonstrated an ongoing inability to work well with others, alternating between passive-aggressive and bullying tactics with leaders in the congregation. She had her champions in the church, but she had more than her share of foes.

The pastor had given her ample warning that things were not going well. He had followed personnel policies and had documented the problems carefully. He had kept the personnel committee in the loop and they had his back and were ready to act. There were no strong political camps in the congregation that would stand in the way of her dismissal, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to pull the plug. That is, until the morning of the call. On that morning, yet another incident of staff team disruption had occurred around this employee’s behavior. The pastor suddenly knew in his heart that redemption was no longer possible, and that he had to make the hard call.

He called the employee into his office to begin preparing her for the inevitable. She pulled out all of her best “victim” behaviors and the pastor was hooked. He decided to give her a little more time to get used to the idea of moving on. He knew that she wasn’t going to be able to stay, but he thought that another week or two might help her adjust to the idea of leaving. And then he called me, looking for affirmation that he had done the right thing.

This particular pastor is a strong leader, greatly admired and respected by his congregation. However, nothing is more painful to the pastoral heart than having to fire someone who has been personally loyal to you, who still believes that they can turn things around, and expresses a willingness to try. We spoke for an hour, going through the history, the steps and the logic of the decision. We talked through his feelings. Here is the gist of what I said on my side of the conversation:

• First and foremost, no one else can function as the head of staff in this situation, but you. Others can serve as a pastoral care provider to the troubled employee, others can tend the wounds that she will endure during this process, but only you can make the call as head of staff, about whether or not to let her go.

• When you cannot simultaneously honor your dual role as her pastor and as her supervisor, you must tend to your role as supervisor, because no one else has the authority to play that role. When you get to this point with an employee, it is time to take off your pastoral hat and let others fill that function.

• The payroll dollars of the church exist to pursue the mission of the congregation, not to care for employees whose personal needs and wounds prevent them from effectively leading the congregation in pursuit of its mission. We should never use payroll dollars to take care for staff that can’t function well. This is poor stewardship. We use benevolence funds to care for the wounded.

• The personal needs of any one employee cannot trump the collective needs of the staff team. Do not underestimate the damage that is done to the morale of the collective team, when the head of staff fails to address the bad behavior or poor performance of a single member. To not act is to dismiss the pain that they experience from their interaction with the problem employee.

• The readiness of the employee to be fired is not a relevant criterion in making a firing decision. Regardless of how well we communicate our dissatisfaction, some employees are unable or unwilling to get it. They will never “be ready” for firing and no amount of additional time is likely to help.

• The employee that you let go is not going to like you or be happy about the situation. That is okay. It is not your job to be liked in this moment.

• No employee is served well by being in a situation in which his or her presence produces conflict, angst and dissonance among others. She will eventually be better served by finding a new employment home where she has a chance to begin anew, hopefully having learned some things from this experience.

At the end of the day, this pastor called the employee back into his office and did the deed. He let her know that her employment with the congregation was ending. I imagine that most of the congregation breathed a sigh of relief that this chapter has come to a close. And, the pastor felt very, very sad.

Tending the Soul of the Organization

Does an institution have a soul? For many years I assumed not. I work with congregations, denominations and faith based non-profits in the areas of organizational and leadership development. I know these institutions as living and breathing organisms, with active cultures and vibrant spiritualties. However, I admit to regarding institutions as soul free entities, believing that soul tending needed to be done with the leaders of the institutions, not with the institutions themselves. My work at the institutional level has focused on strengthening systems and organizational cultures, and enhancing spirituality-not soul tending.

Recently, I have come into the presence of institutional soul. I have witnessed transcendent experiences, within leadership bodies, that seem to unite the divine with something deep in the bedrock of the institution itself. First there was the planning team that had many ideas about how to craft a next chapter in congregational life, but no consensus about how to proceed. After much debate and angst the group stopped to prayerfully consider what the soul of the congregation needed. A totally new direction emerged that had not been considered to date and consensus immediately centered on that alternative. Then there was the search committee that stood strongly divided over the choice of the best pastoral candidate. Fifteen minutes of prayerful silence, followed by a guided meditation on what the soul of the institution needed, yielded a consensus that felt divinely led. These experiences compel me to rethink my assumptions and to reexamine my approach and methodology. This “something” goes deeper than either organizational culture or spirituality.

For the past two years I have participated in the Spiritual Guidance program at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. Prompted by this experience I have come to see that the soul of the institution benefits from spiritual companioning and guidance, much as the soul of the leader benefits from spiritual direction. The tending of institutional soul requires something beyond skills traditionally employed in pastoring, consulting, coaching or individual spiritual direction. It begins with contemplative awareness and a stance of not knowing. It requires an attending orientation, and the unbinding of institutional wounds and unfreedoms that prevent leadership connection with soul. It favors a discerning mindset over a decision making mindset and it invites integrating work between the values of the institution and its leaders.

In this era of massive decline in many of our religious institutions, it behooves us to wake up and reconsider the ways in which we are approaching institutional change. The best of our efforts in organizational and leadership development are doing little to stem the tide of decline. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that the souls of these institutions are deeply wounded and in need of soul tending. Perhaps it is time to shed the mantel of knowing and expertise and assume a new way of being relative to the souls of these institutions that we hold so dear.

During 2014, the growing edge of my practice will focus on Tending the Soul of the Institution. I hope you will join me on the journey and in the dialogue.