How to Have a Better Conversation

Board leaders long for meaningful meetings. Instead, many participate in mind-numbing meetings that repetitively chase topics, with little forward momentum. Agendas are rigidly structured around the receipt of reports, with little work that actually impacts the future of the congregation. What would it take to foster more fruitful board conversations?

Recently, I observed a board conversation about declining worship attendance. The decline followed three years of slow, but steady growth. The topic appeared on the agenda as “worship attendance.” The conversation was introduced by the pastor as part of her regular monthly report. The pastor pointed out that every other indicator of church health looked positive; membership was up, the budget was growing, more people were serving in volunteer positions, and new programs were well attended. The pastor wondered aloud what the dip in attendance meant, and whether or not the dip was a foreboding indicator of future decline.

Immediately, the gathered leaders plunged into frenzied dialogue with a lot of “worrying about” attendance numbers. There was some brainstorming about cause, some speculation about how to solve “the problem”, and lots of worrying about long term budget implications. The conversation lasted twenty minutes, without any clear consensus as to whether the congregation actually had a problem, and no plan of approach as to what should happen next. Leaders agreed to watch the situation, and the conversation was tabled until the following month, where it was re-introduced again, with much the same outcome.

During my visit with the board, I asked the leaders if they would humor me in an experiment. The leaders agreed and I introduced the language of Richard Chait, et al., in their book Governance as Leadership. We discussed the differences between fiduciary, strategic and generative modes of governance, all of which must be nurtured within the life of a board. I introduced the following distinctions.

The fiduciary mode of governance focuses on the effective use of assets. It concerns itself with preventing theft, waste or misuse. It explores issues related to budgets, assets, compensation, facilities, fundraising and staff team performance. It considers the ethics of a situation, the safety of the constituency, the legality of things and appropriate boundary setting.

I asked the board to talk about the dip in worship attendance, purely through the lens of fiduciary governance. They talked about possible budgetary impact, and the long term correlation between attendance and giving patterns. They engaged in some worrying behaviors, but their overall conversation was directed towards specific asset areas. They asked themselves if giving patterns were historically correlated with attendance patterns. They wondered what a plateau in growth would mean for long overdue salary increases anticipated at the end of the year. They asked themselves what percentage of the operating budget was actually allocated to the production of the Sunday worship service. If people were changing the way that they participated in the life of the congregation (by worshiping less), should the assets devoted to worship attendance be re-allocated?

Next, I introduced the language of strategic governance. A board is operating in strategic mode when it explores the long-term impact on identity and future of the congregation. It examines the topic for its intersection with the questions: Who are we? Who are we here to serve? What is God calling us to do or become? Strategic governance builds authority, responsibility and accountability into the system by empowering others to act in pursuit of an agreed upon strategy.

I invited the board to wade into the conversation about attendance again, this time purely through the lens of strategic governance.

They had a rich conversation about the link between worship attendance and their identity as a disciple-making congregation. The wondered if less face time in worship actually reduced spiritual growth and relationship building within the congregation. They explored whether or not their mission suggested a particular sized worshiping community. They wondered aloud how they would know if they were being successful in worship, and whether or not worship attendance was an appropriate indicator of discipleship success.

The group decided that they needed better information to determine if the dip was problematic or not. Had some people dropped out of worship entirely, and if so, who were they? Or, was the dip reflective of a stable but growing body of worshippers that were attending with less frequency. The board decided to assign the research of these questions to the Director of Membership and asked for a more complete reporting, by demographic group, at the next scheduled meeting.

Finally, I introduced the mode of generative governance. This mode of governance seeks to unleash the power of creative thinking. Generative thinking invites meaning making about the knowledge, information and data. It involves re-framing problems/challenges so that the congregation can understand and approach them in new ways, by introducing paradigm shifts. Generative thinking typically requires noticing cues and clues, choosing and using new frames of reference, and intentionally constructing a dominant narrative.

Board leaders began their conversation again, this time adopting the generative lens. They began with open brainstorming about all of the challenges, problems and opportunities that might contribute to worship decline. They discussed the busy lifestyles of the congregants, the increase in competing activities on Sunday mornings, and the presence of a new mega-church across town. Someone suggested that members might be experiencing more authentic Sabbath by staying home on Sunday mornings. They talked about a recent article from ABPnews/Herald on national trends in reported worship attendance, and they explored whether or not the article had anything to do with this congregation. They brainstormed possible ways to infuse more energy into the existing worship experience, and they suggested potential new worship venues to better meet the needs of congregants. They wondered what qualified as meaningful worship. Ultimately, they decided that they weren’t ready to create a narrative about worship attendance. They wanted to see more information first.

At the end of our experiment, leaders agreed that this conversation had been more meaningful and future focused than previous attempts. The board agreed that they wanted to delegate more of their fiduciary work, so that their future conversations could take on more generative and strategic overtones. They agreed that artificially separating the three modes of governance was an interesting experiment that they would adopt from time to time moving forward.

Most importantly, the board chair and pastor realized that they had important work to do in framing agenda items before bringing them to the board. The framing of an agenda item influences the mode of governance that the board assumes as it enters a conversation. The board chair decided that the agenda item for the following month’s meeting would read, “Changing patterns in worship attendance, by demographic group.”

And the conversation moved forward from there.

Free to Discern

“This is a congregation, not a business.” All too often, right after making this claim, leaders go on to conduct a committee or board meeting exactly as if the church were a business. Oh yes, someone begins by offering up a three minute devotion, followed by a prayer, but then it is business as usual.

We form an agenda. Within the agenda are a variety of problems to be solved, or decisions to be made. In each instance, we frame a problem statement or decision query, name the underlying issues, propose a solution, argue the pros and cons, deal with the outliers, call for a vote, record the outcome and move on. This is decision making.

Increasingly as I work with groups in decision making I ask them what their discernment practices include. I’m usually met with a “deer in the headlights” response to that question. Our leaders have only vague notions of what the differences between decision making and discernment include, and they have no idea how to actually invite discernment in a group context.

Thomas H Green S.J. says, “Many people today express well-grounded misgivings about community discernment, and even feel uncomfortable with the word, ‘discernment.’ It can easily be a polite and pious name for a ‘tyranny of the majority,’ a way of attaching the Lord’s name and authority to what most of the group want, or believe he [sic] must want. If this happens, then, as we have seen, ‘discernment’ becomes a way of manipulating God to agree with our convictions concerning action and decision making.”

Where do we begin to identify the difference between group decision making and authentic communal discernment? We begin with the basic stance of freedom, unknowing, or indifference that underlies group discernment. Group decision making typically involves a cadre of leaders who are each invested in particular outcomes, who come together to iron out and resolve their attachments and differences, to advance the good of the whole. In contrast, authentic communal discernment requires sincere and committed prayers who are unencumbered by preconceived notions and outcomes. To move from deciding to discerning, we must free ourselves from inordinate attachments. We must assume an indifference to anything but the will of God as discovered and named collectively by the group; setting aside matters of ego, politics, personal opinion, and vested interests.

So, how do we invite leaders to adopt a stance of unknowing? We invite them, of course, to attend to their personal prayer lives and to build their personal discernment muscles. But beyond this we must help groups with their organizational detachment process.

Of late, I have been working with some concepts from Otto Scharmer (Theory U.) Scharmer identifies three internal leadership voices that often stand in the way of authentic listening in organizational life. He calls these the Voice of Judgment, the Voice of Fear, and the Voice of Cynicism.

The Voice of Judgment blocks the gate to an open mind. It is the voice inside your head that passes judgment on the people and events surrounding the discussion at hand. When we entertain the voice of judgment we protect ourselves from ideas and thought patterns that might be oppositional to our own point of view. The judgment voice may sound something like this: “This leader doesn’t have any expertise in this subject area, why should I trust her with this important decision?”

The Voice of Cynicism blocks the gate to an open heart. This voice is engaged in the emotional act of distancing. It prevents you from becoming too vulnerable. It sounds something like this: “Nothing will change, we make decisions all of the time that never get implemented. This time will be no different.”

Finally, the Voice of Fear blocks the gate to an open will. It seeks to prevent you from letting go of what you have and who you are. It seeks to protect you from insecurity, from being ostracized, from dying to yourself. It sounds something like this, “Others here are protecting their own best interest. If I don’t look out for my own interests, my area of ministry is likely to get the short end of the stick in the budgeting process.”

I have been experimenting with a journaling process that invites members into prayerful silence, followed by writing from the perspective of each of the three voices. We begin by framing the dialogue topic. Then I invite each participant to adopt the voice of judgment with regard to the topic and to write only from that voice for a period of 5 minutes. We take a momentary rest and then repeat the exercise assuming the voices of cynicism and fear. When the writing exercise is complete I lead the group through a guided meditation, inviting the Divine to help quiet each of the voices. We follow this with a period of silence.

I find that the group has deepened its spiritual maturity having completed this exercise. They are more prayerfully present, and more likely to engage in discernment.

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