Transitions Coaching for Churches and Clergy
Working Principles
Goals for transition counseling for churches and clergy
All churches and clergy are in transition. We live in a changing culture. Cultural diversity, an information explosion, global communications, and even a pandemic expose us to new ways of seeing and previously unknown experiences. Traditional ways of expressing the Gospel are irrelevant to many who have choices to see the world differently. The standard narrative is fragmented, creating crisis and opportunity in the church. Transitions coaching for churches and clergy seek to navigate crisis and identify “new things” that God may be doing to enrich us and bring purpose and direction to our wilderness journey and joy into our anxious places.
Help leaders to be faithful to the journey:
Help leaders to be faithful to the journey:
Personal and congregational anxiety represents unmet expectations and fear of the unknown. There is anger in our society and impatience in the church. Most good therapists will tell you that anger is a manifestation of fear. We feel out of control and confused and need direction. With the challenges of a global pandemic, pastors and churches are forced into an unfamiliar and often unwelcome wilderness. When this happened to the Israelites, they became anxious, desired to return to normality in Egypt, and usually blamed Moses and Aaron for the hardships of this new journey. When the Exodus began, they were full of hope for a new life. Anything was better than slavery in a foreign land. Yet, as the journey presented unique challenges, the people lost hope and sight of the Promised Land. The journey through the pandemic has clergy and congregations running in circles, trying to recreate pre-pandemic ministry norms instead of trusting that God is charting a new path appropriate to the post-pandemic journey.
Ronald Heifetz, Senior Faculty at the Kennedy School of Management and Nobel Prize Lecturer, says, “People don’t fear change, per se, but loss.” The greatest danger to Christ’s church is not that its leaders fear change but loss. We live in a new normal on the other side of the pandemic. It is not the Promised Land, but this is where we are on the journey. Today, churches and clergy are transitioning more than ever in our lifetime. We must grieve the loss yet regain our focus, hope, and trust in the One who guides this journey. There are no easy answers; we only have the gifts of God’s Spirit and each neighbor God has given us in this journey together.
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Identify core values:
In times of disruption, we often forget what values drive our behavior. Dr. Ronald Heifetz says, “Your behavior reflects your actual purpose.” In the stress of these times, churches, leadership, and clergy often act out in ways that reveal the need to reexamine our essential values. We say we love God and one another, but our actions frequently betray this value, signaling a need for repentance. The Israelites kept going in circles in the wilderness, and it took 40 years to get to the Promised Land. It would have taken about 11 days if they had gone in a straight line. Again, Heifetz says, “If you find what you do each day seems to have no link to any higher purpose, you probably want to rethink what you’re doing.” How long it takes to adapt to a new journey stage depends on our willingness to revisit the values that guide us in the straightest line of faithful discipleship through the new geographies we traverse.
Identify Gifts for Ministry:
One of the things that I regularly hear from pastors and church leaders is that the church calls us to accept positions on governing boards and oversee ministries we know nothing about – Christian Education, Stewardship, Administration, and Finance. Pastors who are great preachers may lack administrative, staff management, or pastoral care skills. In contrast, other pastors are great executives, caregivers, or counselors but mediocre preachers and worship leaders. The truth is that most churches are small, and even in larger churches, 20% of the people do 100% of the ministry. That means all churches have trouble identifying people with the right gifts for all the ministry needs. It is a recipe for burnout. Almost all churches have fewer clergy than they need for the number of members they have. Churches often try to do more than the gifts the congregation offers will sustain, and clergy are frequently forced to do more than one person can do. Add to that the personal and cultural challenges in our path and the expectations from a previous phase of church life, and what you get is anxiety, fear, and conflict.
Churches and pastors should identify their gifts and give according to what is given. Church leaders and pastors need to work together to clarify how they are gifted for this moment, giving up idealistic illusions rooted in the past or someone’s image of what the church should be. Good stewardship also requires identifying and encouraging gifts the church needs but has not yet found. We desperately need to right-size our expectations. A church with 1000 members in the 50s, may be 300 today. Yet, it continues to expect the church program and ministry it once had with 1000 members. Right-sizing expectations with gifts offered is critical to success and joy in ministry.
Develop Networks:
Today, churches only identify as local congregations. Clergy persons often identify as the pastor of a particular church. This is true even of churches in mainline denominations. Methodists, Lutherans, UCCs, and Presbyterians have connectional relationships with other congregations expressing a larger denominational identity. Yet, few members and pastors identify as closely with their denominational connection as they do with the life of the local congregation. Isolation is a common problem that leads to low self-esteem for pastors and congregations. When we are in this alone, it feels like the snowball is rolling down the hill toward us, and we must face it alone. Today’s challenges require novel approaches and non-traditional alliances. Developing networks of congregations, non-profits, and other community partners who share our core values is essential to vital congregational life today. When anxious, it is helpful to have insights and support from others who hold shared core values and whose behavior, together with ours, promotes a common good. One of the goals of coaching for churches and clergy is to facilitate the development of such networks and companions for the journey.
Develop communication skills that work for the common good:
What you say and don’t say produces fertile ground for others to create individual narratives. When the purpose of communication is only to persuade rather than include, our communication is an incubator for rumors and conflicting narratives in the church. Some leaders think communication is saying everything on their minds and hoping others see the world similarly. Some leaders say too little to manipulate outcomes. We believe, “If only we can get certain decisions and circumstances in place, the rest of the puzzle will fall into order.” Most of us do both when we feel it suits our agenda. This paradigm of communication does not serve the church. The church is a body, and we hold membership not based on our roles, achievements, status, or financial capacity but by God’s grace, known in Jesus’ sacrificial love story.
Our culture has done an excellent job teaching individuality but needs to improve the teaching of community. When someone thinks communication is about setting the agenda and getting people to follow, we often use communication to persuade, sell, and manipulate. On the other hand, in a community, we use communication to contribute. In humility, we contribute not to convince others that our narrative is correct but to dialogue, creating a shared narrative. In a community, communication builds relationships. In a marriage, a family, a business, or a church, the leaders and members contribute to the narrative rather than control it. Leaders weave contributions into a common story. Contributing takes both speaking and listening. Pastors don’t have the right to shape the church’s vision alone. It is not the leadership team but the whole congregation that shares in writing a particular church’s narrative, guided by the Spirit of Christ’s story. Our story is not Christ’s story! But it is inspired by his story. This means Christ’s Spirit becomes a dialogue partner with neighbors, church brothers, and sisters as we seek to create a shared narrative inspired by Christ. Learning to contribute, listen, collaborate, and weave are essential skills for church leaders and members.