Contemporary Churches: a review

What attracted me to getting hold of this book and reading it was the prospectus that it would help '"to apply the insights of contemplative spirituality and spiritual direction to entire faith communities"

For me this is a really of the moment prospectus. Partly because for some time now I've been thinking that we should be discerning the way forward for churches by really listening to the vocations in formation of our members -a sort of corporate guidance exercise. And of course this means that we should be actually living our church lives, for want of a better way of describing it, contemplatively. Part of this is that I have been challenged in the past by the Quaker discernment process as a way of trying to take spiritual accompaniment to the next level which is corporate, congregational discernment. But I have also wanted to take seriously my Charismatic movement roots and the evangelical referencing to Scripture, not to mention taking seriously what we learn (positively and otherwise) from church history about how we do or don't discern good ways forward, or God's ways forward, in relation to our context and cultural milieu. So ... a few implicit expectations on this book; would it be as helpful, insightful and even exciting as I would hope? Was I going to find a book on my wavelength that pushed my thinking forward a bit or even a lot?

Well, yes to varying degrees. One of the unexpected things for me from this book was catching a glimpse of just how rapid and alarming is the decline of USAmerican institutional Christianity. However, this is good for reading in a British context as the stories of dealing with decline and institutional death are helpful. "At a time in Amerecan culture when more peolpe than ever are interested in spiritual practices and young people have a renewed interest in ussues of social justice, institutional religion is proving itself to be ill-equipped to respond." -quite so, it looks similar in Britain too.

In respect of decline and death, I found it particularly helpful to have a case-study of a church's good death and of the institutionally problematic but kingdom-serving resurrection. In relation to that case it was also helpful to have the author's (psychologically well -informed) psycho-spiritual reflection on the tasks ("stages") of grief and how these are important to be honoured in processes of reflection, church direction-setting and pastoral and missional work. It was good to see, too, the complexities of this named and recognised along with a basic strategy for approaching them. For example, "Some people are in denial, some are moving to acceptance; some are angry; others try to bargain for solutions. That is the state of the institutional church today." I particularly liked the way the tasks of grieving were seen also in Jesus' passion; "Even though he saw it coming, even though he spoke about it to his disciples, Jesus continued to wrestle with his fate and bargain for a different future in the garden of Gethsemane." I think that this is a very important permission-given thing to notice and draw into consideration. And a little further on, "Jesus himself worked through the denial, expressing anger at the religious authorities, bargaining in prayer for another way before accepting his fate." There is some useful reflection following that in how we do this corporately.

It was encouraging too to read of approaches to church life where a spiritual-accompaniment approach has been taken. Encouraging because this is what I think I'm finding myself increasingly drawn to. "Council meetings were transformed with the presence of a spiritual director whose function was to call the council together in prayer and reflect back on the process of the meeting from a spiritual perspective. Meetings became times of active discernment marked by the exploration of what it meant to live out the congregation's sense of mission."

And also to my liking, because it named where I've got to in my own reflections is this: "As Christians, it is the teachings of Jesus and the way of life he modeled for us that should be the center (sic) of our lives and not an institution. Churches are places where we gather, learn, share faith, and celebrate our way of life and beliefs. But the institution is not a substitute for the experience of leading a spiritual life which is primarily informed by the teachings of Jesus and the experience of God in our midst." And A few pages later we are helped o see the implications of this kind of approach for leadership: "In this model, the role of leadership is to equip people to respond in authentic ways to the stirrings of God's Spirit, to be always open to new possibilities and to use the resources of the church to translate the understanding of one's call into something tangible. To that end, leadership must be committed to ongoing prayer and discernment."

I also found helpful the insight about how communities of faith might approach things in our new spiritual context. "...communities of faith which are primarily spiritual centers don't limit spirituality to a program. Instead, spirituality, the experience of the Divine, the animation of the human spirit by the Divine Spirit, becomes the foundation upon with the church gathers ... the lesson of the sermon is put into practice more directly..." The kind of approach recommended is much like the principle that 'Sanctuary' in Bradford was constructed in the years of the early 2000s. Here there was a clear drive to build collective worship around responses in real time to the issues raised and discussed: acts of forgiveness, signing petitions, planning for actions. The founding insight in that case was seeing liturgy as repentance: a turning of ourselves to follow Christ -which meant embodying as best we could at that moment what it was we were sensing a call to. In both cases this involved "not viewing themselves as the hub or center of life in the community, members of post-modern congregations live out their faith and spiritual practice with others as equal partners to bring positive change in the world." In reading that I caught a resonance of the thinking in Raymond Fung's 'The Isaiah Vision' and Ann Morissey's 'Beyond the Good Samaritan'.

One of the other things I found myself reflecting on in reading this book is how useful the role if interim ministers can be. I think that this book could also be usefully added to interim ministers' reading lists.

Link-Love: 
Rev. Louis F. Kavar Ph.D. Website
Contemporary Churches on Amazon
Rev. Louis F. Kavar Ph.D. on Facebook

Please tag #ContemporaryChurchesSpeakeasy

Disclaimer: yes I got my e-copy of this book as a freebie in return for a promise to write a review of it. But that's as far as the deal went: I am not obliged to post a favourable review or to pull any punches. But I tend to be a generous sort and my way of appreciating a book is usually to find things that I have enjoyed thinking about or at least that have provoked my thinking further. Only after some thinking do I tend to get negatively critical. 

The Green report: grammar schools for CofE clergy

 I have just in the last couple of days identified why it is that what  I think I know about the Green Report is bugging me. I should say, at the outset, that temperamentally I'm a reformer: I tend to think that things we have inherited are likely to have come to serve vested interests and to have succombed to Lord Acton's dictum about the corrupting potential of power else they become outflanked by human corruption. Therefore most human institutions are likely to need reform on a regular basis. The churches are not exceptions. The training and selection of church leaders is not exempted. That said, not all reform is good reform: sometimes reform further exacerbates problems or is itself illustrative of Lord Acton's Dictum.

So, I do not doubt that the Church of England's selection and training of so-called senior leaders needs to be looked at. Heck, I've even written about things that imply just that suggestion.

What I find myself concerned about is that what is proposed is a kind of grammar school system. The grammar school system selected a small number of children at age 11 to be sent for a more academic (potentially university facing) education, while the rest were assumed to be fit only for trades and educated accordingly. Now the problems with this system were many. One was that the number of places at a grammar school did not necessarily reflect the number of kids who might genuinely be university-capable leading to a situation where the talent pool might be bigger than the places offered -or potentially (but I suspect rarely) vice versa. So capable people were left behind. Sometimes these were people who, in the fulness of time, actually could have greater 'promise' than those selected at the relatively arbitrary age of 11.

Which brings on a second problem: differential development. That is to say that a number of children /young people don't develop intellectually in step with chronological age. A third and related issue is that many do not do well with the way that the test attempts to measure potential or may not be all rounders or may not be temperamentally suited to the kind of environment that the schools are. However, they may be people who are very well suited to all kinds of demanding roles requiring insight and intelligence.

And it looks to me like the Green report is inventing, in a sense, grammar schools for clergy with just these sorts of difficulties translated into an ecclesiastical key. The assumption of the kind of role wanted creates a narrower than necessary 'test' for entry. The restriction doesn't allow for the development of the whole population (of church leaders) in fair ways that recognise differences in development or even contextual wisdom.

To put it more practically: the system could end up selecting people who turn out not to be suitable but whose selection would then deprive others of the opportunities. It could end up missing people who should be serving by that kind of wider leadership but who don't appear to fit the criteria but in fact are the right sort of people for what God is trying to do with the church next. It might ignore people who mature into potential for the role later (but who won't be spotted because when they were 'taking their 11plus' they didn't look promising).

Worst of all, the selection process seems to be likely to produce a self-replicating 'elite'. It puts the cart before the horse: the process should be driven by a process of discerning the vocations of the whole people of God in order to get a sense of God's call to us as a whole church. We are then in a position to recognise and support the development of appropriate leadership (and evolution of structures, btw) which may well not be just like what has gone before or even what we think using a overly secular mindset (1). I think that the CofE already has a bias problem in discernment (towards certain kinds of educational and class backgrounds (and I don't actually expect women bishops to change this dimension of bias), this seems set to further institutionalise the bias to the prominent, the well-connected and the fortunately-circumstanced. I fear that all too often the apparent impression of a safe pair of hands in upper class social occasions is the main determiner of prima facie suitability.

We need the equivalent of a comprehensive school: where there is a much more fluid approach to setting, context, development and, yes, vocation. As we start to look to develop training more contextually, so that should apply to so-called senior appointments: we should expect that they would have a ministry development process which equips them as they go. Perhaps the most important quality would be a humility to learn and to work in teams. Everything else should be open to all church leaders according to inclination and need. And who knows, some God-borne surprises my result.

An open letter to advocates of the Green Report | Theore0
I think that some of the comments in the Church Times letters page support my concerns, though none of them use the image of grammar schools to tie together the concerns.

(1) I actually think that God sometimes speaks through the secular, but that there are some things where secular approaches can mislead us. I fear this may be one.

Church Engagement and its discontents

I have to confess that in the past, enthralled by leadership teaching and church growth and management insights and still not having fully and properly co-ordinated the secular management insights with theological reflection, I recall having similar niggles to those mentioned in this insightful article:

 weary of such teaching as we realised that it didn’t really resonate with the picture we see in Jesus who would not only ‘lay down his life’ for his sheep but would willingly leave the ninety-nine in order to find the individual who had become lost.

 This was a propos of teaching about leaving behind those in a church who weren't buying into the leaders' vision. This, of course, comes out of reifying the vision into, in effect, the very word of the Lord. Yet what had always troubled me was the way the there was so little in Scripture about vision casting. About the only text is the Proverbs verse 'Where there is no vision the people perish' -which only works in the AV 'translation' and seems to actually yield very little backing for vision casting. in fact, the Pauline and Johanine exhortations to unity  would seem to count against 'leaving behind' or, in effect, excluding those who don't 'catch' the vision. And, of course. the parable of the lost sheep is rightly brought to the bar above.



What this piece does rather well is to pick up and explain in churchly terms the basic three stages of church engagement -drawn from observation of organisational life (and which I'm adding to my reflections on being part of a university which is morphing into a self-aware business). The suggestion is also that expecting an ever upward engagement is cutting against the grain of a natural human engagement entropy:

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpu

... there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person's engegement to a group, community or vision. ... a three-phase journey experienced within a community:

1) Enthusiastic

2)Realistic

3) Apathetic

In each of these phases there are not only normal and expected patterns and psychodynamics of engagement (all of which are perfectly recognisable and understandable from our own experiences) but also tend to be exploited or drawn on by leaders in certain ways. We can also see these phase at work when people buy new products -and we may be aware of how the company that supplies it is really keen to get us to give re-usable feedback in the first few days of ownership -when we're still enthusiastic about it and before 'reality' sets in in the form of us having found that it doesn't actually change our life as much for the better as we thought it might or its downsides start to become apparent and a certain disillusion sets in. And of course it may only be a matter of time before we become non-users -apathetic, looking for something better or at least simply instrumental about it. Similarly with churches -doubly so if they are 'marketed' with visions, missions and vibe. So people drop out or move on from one church to another.



Accordingly, we need to teach leadership skills not just to do the first phase stuff but to pastor through phases 2 and 3. Informally this already happens, of course, we all know churches that do phase 1 stuff really well but have open back doors as well as front doors. Many of us are also aware of churches which tend to 'receive' at least some of the refugees from phase 1 churches, and some of us know people who don't reconnect with church. I'm also aware of some people who don't connect with phase 1 churches at all because they at a subliminal level understand only too well the marketing dynamic of the vibe and vision thing and shy away from the 'machine' that threatens to eat them.



So the question is not only how do we train priests to be leaders for all three phases, but how do we disciple Christians to work through them maturely (and are 'sabbaticals' part of this)? And that latter question morphs into a question about how we build church life so as not to be using up the first-phasers?



The fact is, I suspect, that churches that do phase one stuff well are doing so parasitically on the rest of the body of Christ: using up people's enthusiasm and 'letting them go' when they realise that all is not as shiney as it first seemed: then other churches pick them up and sometimes help put them back together. Sometimes, of course, no church is trusted thereafter. We badly need phase-ecumenism in order to cope with this natural life staging under our current 'system' -but it would be hard for many leaders to do this as it would mean admitting a certain relativity or contingency to their self-perceptions of ministry, theology and mission. Meanwhile the mission of the whole church is compromised.



I hope I'm wrong, but I fear i'm not.

there
exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s engagement
to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the models that I have seen
explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a picture of an
onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am not sure that
this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable. - See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

there
exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s engagement
to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the models that I have seen
explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a picture of an
onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am not sure that
this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable. - See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest
that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s
engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the models that I
have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a
picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am
not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic




- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision.  Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.


I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:


1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

 The Three Phases of Church Engagement | Alan Molineaux | Red Letter Christians:

When Worship is not really and what worship leaders' responsibilities are

I've been aware for a while that there's something similar between the way that the emotional impact of a football match or a music concert (rock or similar) has huge similarities to some forms of liturgy in some churches. And I remember George Verwer saying how it is possible to organise the crowd dynamics of a service or meeting to produce certain emotional effects.

A University of Washington study has found that megachurch worship experiences actually trigger an “oxytocin cocktail” in the brain that can become chemically addictive. The same has been found at large sporting events and concerts, but attenders to these gatherings don’t usually attribute the “high” to God.

Thing is how we assess this. I'm not against the idea that we might use good and culturally-relevant music in worship -it seems to have gone on for most of Christian history. But I am concerned when it is found to be chemically addictive. The point of worship together is to enable us to encourage each other to draw near to God and to be transformed by God. Some of that encouragement can be through the cultural media we employ. But it is really concerning when hiddenly the medium becomes the actual focus rather than God.

And my worry is that for the oxytocin junkies, faith struggles to survive the discovery that the worship 'high' is not necessarily the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Spirit can affect us that way, but that doesn't mean that there cannot be other things that can do that nor does it mean that the effect must always imply the presence of the Spirit.

Worship leaders who are involved in the 'high-producing' forms of liturgy, I would say, have a responsibility to be aware, in broad terms, of the bio-chemical ramifications of corporate worship. And, having taken cognisance of that, to plan worship to enable/encourage people to connect with God aside from the music-driven emotional roller-coastal. I wonder too, whether, we don't also have a responsibility to inform people of this and, in a sense, to gain informed consent.

The implication of George Verwer's perspective is that, if we know these effects, we are culpable if we don't take seriously our responsibility to our fellow worshippers not to mislead them or, in fact, to use them. This research ups the ante for church leadership; to ignore would be to abuse our congregants.

Out of Ur: When Worship is Wrong:

Practical intelligence a factor in entrepreneurial success

I have to say that this is no surprise, really, in that it confirms my naive preconceptions. Of course, it does all depend on what, precisely, we mean by "practical intelligence". My interest is in wondering how training people who are or need to be entrepreneurial to varying degrees is affected. So what does 'entrepreneurial intelligence' look like? Well, the report I've picked this up from holds its cards close to its chest, the clearest statement seems to be this:

"entrepreneurs typically have confidence in what they are undertaking and have the ability to make quick decisions and take action. They are also willing to use their knowledge or what they have learned to experiment and try new approaches to improve the process or product."

At first sight, this might seem to be inimical to the kinds of skills that theological colleges have traditionally been most into. Our training systems have tended to encourage people to be cautious (that's 'scholarly') and modest (that's humility) which tends to discourage quick decisions and precipitous action. I would also say that experiment and new approaches are not encouraged; rather (through the traditional attitudes and structures) somewhat discouraged.

In fact, in view of that I'm inclined to wonder whether it's not so much about 'practical intelligence' as character (a researcher said: "personal characteristics are important as well in venture creation and growth"). It seems to me that it is possible to be cautious and entrepreneurial: the point is to be cautious about the right things. Modesty is not necessarily something that rules out confidence; it's just a sense of proper perspective: confidence can be well founded. I'm suspecting that it is our cultural interpretations that are at fault. And isn't some of this what is said about Brits and business often? We have an education system that seems still to be set up to train people to be civil servants and our theological formation seems to have aped it in an ecclesiastical key.

This relates to an earlier post on failure (and also here): because the concomitant of some of this is also a willingness to fail, and this is helped or hindered by attitudes in our 'communities of formation'. I have to say that I do find the unwillingness sometimes in college to recognise that people will make mistakes or not do things perfectly, stultifying. We should value 'having a go and learning from it', but we seem to communicate "don't have a go unless you're pretty sure you've got everything tied down". Actually, the two shouldn't be opposites, and it should be a case of both having a go and also having taken due care. But in the latter case; sometimes you don't know until you try, and we need to both let people try and also let them know that we know that entrepreneurial success is borne on the back of a raft of failures. The issue is how well we encourage people to reflect on what happened -and for that to happen they have to 'feel free to fail'. When I was doing my PGCE the tutors were very keen to convey to us that we would learn the most from our failures; that we would fail and that the best thing was to accept it would happen and develop skills to make the best of it. That's good advice for developing practical intelligence.

I suspect that we all do have practical intelligence (whatever the definition). Probably some people excell in it and others really don't but most of us are somewhere in-between. However, we can hone it and make the best of it. And perhaps here too an ounce of perspective may be worth a pound of genius -and perspective comes from reflection.

Via: High level of practical intelligence a factor in entrepreneurial success.

Another article gives a quick overview of what brain research can or can't say about the 'self'. Some of it may be relevant here: ""Ego doesn't exist in the brain," says Kagan. What does exist, he explains, is a brain circuit that controls the intrusiveness of feelings of self-doubt and anxiety, which can modulate self-confidence."
And this is probably something that can be fine-tuned: I'm guessing that there's enough plasticity in our brains that (in normal conditions, all other things being equal) we can learn to adjust things. I'm also guessing that where CBT, for example, succeeds in helping people is going to turn out to be in this vicinity. It would mean that the issues I mentioned above about confidence and humility is something that we can genuinely, I think, expect to learn further.

3 Cultural Trends Impacting Church Leadership

Intriguing reading mes ami(e)s: 3 Cultural Trends Impacting Church Leadership | TonyMorganLive.com
Here's the barebones, the flesh is in the article:

In: Influence Out: Power Way Out: Board Meetings ...
In: Creativity Out: Corporate Way Out: Red Power Ties ...
In: Networks Out: E-mail Way Out: Meet-Ups

I muse: apart from the last one, this list pretty much characterises my leadership style for about the last 10-15 years. WRT the email thing; I've actually, in the last 2 years been finding that my initial love affair with email (at its height between about 1997 and 2005) is palling: I'm finding that I'm almost instinctively going for eyeball-meetings because I'm getting fed up with the way that emails seem to be adding to the emotional miscegenation in the workplace. I think that email has become the new memo!

I also muse that there seem to be some facets of organisational life with which I am acquainted that seem to be latching onto the 'out' column stuff just as others are abandoning it ...

 

Wisdom 'is the brain slowing down in old age'

This seems to be telling us that getting older does have some perks. First off; you can teach an old dog new tricks: its just that it takes a little bit longer, but not learning them is more to do with attitude than ability:

Scans of elderly people's brains also found that their ability to learn new skills was undiminished despite their advancing age.

But here's the kicker:

"The elderly brain is less dopamine-dependent, making people less impulsive and controlled by emotion. Older people also less likely to respond thoughtlessly to negative emotional stimuli because their brains have slowed down compared to younger people. This, in fact is what we call wisdom.
'MRI scans have also identified the four regions of the brain that contribute to wisdom, with older people demonstrating a higher level of activity between these regions than younger people.'"

Now I'm not fully sure that I'd call this 'wisdom', but I am willing to concede that it probably has something to do with it. I'm also reflecting that in the Scriptures, leaders are often called elders. It may be that the age factor was recognised in judging suitability to leadership and perhaps some of it was down to the effects of what this research has laid bare... ?

Wisdom 'is the brain slowing down in old age' - Telegraph:

Leading in a Culture of Change

It's not often I get excited about a bit of change-management literature, but this one named for me a number of things that resonated with a couple of decades of involvement in church leadership. The Alban Institute - 2009-05-04 Leading in a Culture of Change. A bit that seems to give the flavour of the matter is this: "The organic nature of organizations is more apparent in most congregations, however. There is great informality in the way decisions actually get made; there is a reliance on more casual conversation and the building of consensus. Therefore, linear planning processes placed in the hands of a few most often seem alien to congregations, if not an out-and-out imposition. People may go along, because they want to be cooperative or because they do not know what else to do. Most often, though, these step-by-step processes do not produce the desired results. We’ve all heard the stories about the months spent crafting a purpose statement that gets hung on the wall or printed in the Sunday worship bulletin but has no discernable impact on the ministry of the congregation—it’s the kind of thing that happens when congregations rely on a linear process to enable organic change."
I felt vindicated that I have often tried to encourage and 'empower' (and make accountable) more informal decision-making processes. It also helped me to realised that the difficulties I'd experienced trying to follow patterns recommended by CEO-style leaders of big churches were not just down to my incompetence but rather the incompetence was trying to follow an inappropriate model.
The main thing is to realise that non-linear dynamics obtain: it's chaotic but with enough of the right kind of forces and -crucially- feed-back, a strange attractor can form giving a degree of relative stability. Of course, it also means that little perturbations can make big changes to that apparently equilibrial state!

I think this may find its way onto a reading list.

Now, how does this apply to college ... ?

Motivation and creatives

Now this sums up where I'd got to in thinking about this but hadn't yet put into words. I think I instinctively understood this but haven't always been very good at acting on because of lack of experience in the past (as I look back).

... you can only really shout at people a couple of times a season if you want it to be effective — if you do it every week they just get used to it and ignore you. And if you have to shout, encourage and cajole your people to put the effort in every week, then something’s wrong.

And then comes a really nice metaphor/analogy which helps to conceptualise what's going on.

I once went to a seminar with psychotherapy guru Bill O’Hanlon where he talked about motivation in therapy. He drew an analogy with curling, the winter sport in which players take turns to throw a stone across the ice towards a target, while their teammates sweep the ice in front of it with brushes, to reduce friction and help the stone slide further. According to Bill, it’s not the therapist’s job to throw the stone — the impetus for change has to come from the client. The therapist’s role is to sweep the ice and help the client keep going, facilitating rather than pushing. I think the same applies to management — if you’ve got people who put plenty of force and direction into their throw, you can do a fantastic job scrubbing away the ice in front of them. But if there’s no energy coming from them, you can sweep all you like but the stone won’t move.

I thought that it also potentially helps understand the role of a life-coach: a lot of coaching is about motivation but it isn't about creating motivation, ultimately, it's about identifying it and connecting it up with life situations. And, I think that it also relates to spiritual direction: helping people to access the tradition/s in ways that are congruent with their kairos. This includes noting their personality, life-stage, history and motivators, but sweeping the ice before the stone is a good picture. There is the desire a person has to connect and live with God, but there is friction as sin derails and slows. A soul-friend's job is to help brush away the friction and even to help steer the stone (judicious sweeping can help make some pathways more likely) but the hurl is the befriended's job. As the sum up says:

So you can’t ‘motivate’ anybody else. You can show them the target, smooth the way and cheer them along. But motivation is something you draw out rather than put in.

Of course, in leadership this can make for a somewhat laid-back style, but outside of military or pay-disciplined environments, that's necessary otherwise the heavy-handedness demotivates. In church terms, I've come across successful clergy-leaders but some of them have had a high attrition rate among those they have brought in to partnership with them; their momentum and 'success' has been bought at the expense of a lot of burnout or collaborator-churn. Of course, there are also potential cultural problems; if leadership is culturally defined, in effect, in Il Duce terms this working-with leadership is always going to seem weak and anaemic. However, it is likely to be longer-term and to grow others better. The one thing that can carry the Duce leadership is a strong ability to envision others so that collectively individual motivations and concerns are firmly connected up in people's minds with organisational or ministry goals. The problem that can arise from that is that rhetorical power frays in contact with realities.

Have a look at the article for further thoughts on how to maintain motivation. Again this can apply to both coaching and spiritual accompaniment by helping to identify actual motivations and realities and vocations and to examine these against the false consciousnesses created by gift-envy, church 'ideologies' and ministry projection.
I'll be watching the further episodes of this...

Five dysfunctions of teams

Anglican Cell Church site has a useful pointer to a management book with a useful-seeming core content.

Each ‘dysfunction’ is caused by a failure to address the previous one.
They are
1. Lack of trust: We’re working together but I don’t share anything vulnerable of myself in the process.
2. Lack of conflict: We don’t genuinely say what we think as issues are discussed, feeling free to disagree vigorously.
3. Lack of ownership: Because I didn’t express my reservations, I don’t fully buy into the process and decisions.
4. Lack of accountability: We don’t hold one another accountable to follow through on the things we are each responsible for.
5. Lack of commitment to team results: To use a football analogy (painfully current!) a player finishes a match elated that he scored a hat-trick even though his team lots 4-3.

In my experience these seem right and it's good to have a one-stop place to see them laid out. I'll have to think further to see whether I think there are more things I'd want to add or whether there is a greater synthesis of these reasons.

Our Flock Mentality

This will be no surprise to anyone who has attended a march where the SWP have been active and seen what they do in order to try to lead a crowd towards their preferred outcomes. The research is mentioned in this article: Sheep In Human Clothing: Scientists Reveal Our Flock Mentality: And "The findings show that in all cases, the ‘informed individuals’ were followed by others in the crowd, forming a self-organising, snake-like structure. “We’ve all been in situations where we get swept along by the crowd,” says Professor Krause. “But what’s interesting about this research is that our participants ended up making a consensus decision despite the fact that they weren’t allowed to talk or gesture to one another. In most cases the participants didn’t realise they were being led by others.”"
The SWP agitators clearly try to achieve a critical mass of people who lead chants and so infiltrate themselves, unobtrusively, as leaders and then up the stakes in terms of participation until they are able to lead off a significant crowd into more disruptive activities. This is, of course, significant for my writing on the Powers and emergence.

Worship artisanship

I had a sense of recognition of a naming of an aspect of my vocation as I read this: DanWilt.com :: Conversations On Emerging Worship: There's a lot more but these words were helpful.

"A Worship Artisan is a vocational (meaning “called”) spiritual leader who evidences his or her primary leadership gifts through the creative arts.
A Worship Artisan is a trained spiritual leader, theologically, biblically, culturally and historically in the realm of worship activity in the wide range of transhistorical communities that have expressed the worship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit throughout history.
A Worship Artisan is an effective leader of corporate worship, understanding the vital role of creative expression (musical art, visual art, physical art, literary art and dramatic art) in renewing a corporate belief system, a corporate communality, and a cohesive and healthy spiritual formation life in a believing group.
A Worship Artisan is not limited in his or her creative expression to corporate worship expressions. A worship artisan is both comfortable with, and able to engage with, varying contexts in which the goal is to encounter God corporately through the vehicle of music and accessible creative expression. However, a worship artisan is also comfortable expressing very unique and possibly obscure forms of art that find their place in bars, pubs, galleries, the street, stages and many other places."

I had previously played with the term 'liturgical artist' ... more thought needed.

Desmond Morris on women running things

I'm offering this with no comment because I'm still thinking about it but think that I'd like to be able to find it again sometime. "women ran society, men were in the hunting ground. The sad thing for women is that, over a period of time, the hunting grounds became the city centres, and so instead of being on the periphery, men were now in the centre of the cities running things. The cities were the hunting grounds, although now the hunting was metaphorical. Urbanisation favoured the male."

Stephen Moss on Desmond Morris, the man who wrote the groundbreaking book The Naked Ape | By genre | Guardian Unlimited Books:

small is dutiful

Okay, this is a commentabout leading a smaller political party, however, I was struck by the similarity of this remark to reflections I'd had about leading a smaller church.

A smaller-size party and parliamentary membership does not necessarily equate to lesser demands; if anything, the opposite can be the case. The scale involved brings with it assumptions of proximity and availability; delegation can be difficult to achieve, because for many inside and outside the party 'only the leader will do'

Makes you think ...
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Charles Kennedy: There's no harder party to lead than the Lib Dems:

The Duke of Plaza Toro

Gotta say that this pretty much sums up where I'd got to in my thinking about Christian leadership in post-secular late modernity. We need to move from (ie "transition" -as a verb)
"1. lighthouses to rafts (attracting to attaching)
2. diving boards to surfboards (restructuring to reimagining)
3. orchestras to jazz bands (orchestrating to improvising)
4. generals to gardeners (controlling to cultivating)
5. spiders to starfish (retaining to releasing)"
But boy! it's tough sometimes taking a congregation with you: within the referenced article, there's a good example of how the corporate management culture of people can radically affect their approach to 'church'. Reminds me of a former church of mine who have recently advertised for a new vicar, my successor having recently moved on also, and they have put in the advert a reference to my predecessor: clearly they still want the 'successful' command and control approach he instituted. So there's a failure of mine up for view: I failed to convince them that 'the times they are a changing' and a new kind of vision of church is needed, especially at the leadership level. But it's hard to argue against apparent success. It was one of the things that convinced me that I really need to be more involved with pioneering than maintaining.

And in case you are wondering about the title: it's a Gilbert and Sullivan reference: a skit on a general who led from the rear; his bravery in question. I'll leave you to decide on how to apply it -if at all!
Anglican Cell UK:

Whose success, which relationality?

"The reason many of us ignore the formation of our character, says Johnson, is because it will slow us down. Many ministry leaders want success, a big church, or a crowd. But how many of us want a real life? How many of us want a life in God? We can have that, Johnson believes. We can have a character that produces love, peace, patience, kindness…but it will slow us down. It might mean the church won’t grow as big as quickly. It might mean the crowd will get smaller."

Success Covers a Multitude of Sins | Out of Ur | Following God's Call in a New World | Conversations hosted by the editors of Leadership journal:

Churches in the death zone

Over on emerging Kiwi is a reflection which I strongly suspect would apply very much more widely. Steve used this picture to explain organisational development and life-cycle.
Then came the interesting question.

"On the spur of the moment, without really thinking, I asked the group of gathered clergy to self-identify. How many were in a green zone church? A few scattered hands. A blue zone? Again, a few scattered hands.
Red zone?
And the majority of hands went up. I was quite staggered. That represents a huge and very significant leadership challenge for that particular church family. If I was the Bishop, that sea of hands would keep me awake long into the night."

Precisely the question for the UK and I suspect the same sort of answers in similar proportions.
e~mergent kiwi: leadership in a red zone

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