Centred Leaders, Healthier Churches
We shared a post over the summer - Transitions in Church Ministry - and received a fantastic response that we wanted to share with our Ministry Forum community.
Here it is - the author wanted to remain anonymous - respect!
I believe you would probably agree with me on this, but, I want to point out how it is always an assumption we make about grads or anyone in ministry when it comes to ‘first things’ in the life of ministry. We assume that people have a prayer life and scripture study life when they start ministry, but, I don’t think that’s been true for a long time. So, to say that the very first thing in a transition is to pay attention to people, for me, misses a big boat. I just reread the introduction to Eugene Peterson’s ‘Working the Angles’, and I would say it is still incredibly relevant almost forty years on. He, obviously, says that the three basic pastoral acts are prayer, scripture, and spiritual direction. Maybe it’s problematic to establish any kind of hierarchy with respect to what a minister should do ‘first’, because surely we believe that the Spirit may lead one to something surprising if we are paying attention. In any case, I would say ‘God is our priority over everything else’ if pressed. Obviously that doesn’t exclude people, in fact, it’s probably most often worked out amongst people, I think Eugene would agree. Yet, I think we are afraid of sounding pietistic or out of step somehow if we name those things as our priorities.
Well, in any case, I don’t mean to be critical as much as dialogical, after all, this is a forum!!
Dialogical indeed! This is EXACTLY the kind of engagement we are dreaming of through Ministry Forum.
Here was my reply - for what it is worth:
Your comments are exactly where my heart has been for some time now. I'm currently enrolled in an e-course from Columbia Theological Seminary on Contemplative Spirituality and Centering Prayer. As I was stepping out of congregational ministry, my own priorities for the life of a congregation was to focus on the essentials - prayer and Bible study. These are something we are working on at Ministry Forum.
You may have read it already but Clyde Irvine's book, Respecting Congregations touches on this in his own way.
I love Peterson's work and would agree that it stands the test of time. I'd also say that where Andy Root and Blair Bertrand landed with When Church Stops Working points to this area as well. I'd say much more now - as goes the interior spiritual vitality of the pastor so goes the congregation (or the community around that individual). I'd also be open to saying where a gathering of Jesus followers puts Jesus at the centre and the practice of prayer, scripture, and seeking the Spirit - that is an abundant life place to be in ministry. It might not hit the markers of sustainable / growing , etc... but it is what we are supposed to be about. We've gotten distracted too long. - John.
Since then, I read The Rev. Dr. Stuart Macdonald’s new book, Tradition and Tension. Here’s what I might add now…. I suppose I have to confess that arguing that we need to get back to the basics isn't a new contribution to the ongoing'tension' of what we are supposed to be up to as people who follow Jesus within the structure of Church. Others have said the very same time and again throughout our relatively short history as a denomination. If you want to learn more about Dr. Macdonald’s book, it is featured on our Ministry Forum Podcast this week.
Then this article from Ruth Haley Barton came in… “How the Spiritual Formation of the Pastor Affects Spiritual Formation in the Congregation” and I want to expand this from simply the pastor to whomever is offering leadership in a ministry context. This brought up for me something that has stuck with me for a long time related to my work in the area of conflict management - “The interior condition of a leader has a direct impact on the health of a system.”
So I did a little digging on that statement and discovered it may have come from the work of Otto Scharmer who was actually quoting the late CEO of Hanover Insurance, Bill O’Brien. Scharmer’s work around Theory U speaks of moving from an ego-system awareness to an eco-system awareness.
As Scharmer defines it, “Ego-system awareness means paying attention to the well-being of oneself. Eco-system awareness means focusing on the well-being of oneself and of the whole (all the stakeholders and the system, including nature).”
It reminds us that it isn’t all about the leader - but it seeks to focus on the well-being of both. But the fact remains that the well-being of the leadership will have a significant impact on the well-being of the eco-system and it all comes down to not what leaders do or how they do it - it is the inner place from which they operate… the quality of awareness and consciousness that they bring to a situation.
And wouldn’t you know it… then I read an article talking about a recent study from the Clergy Health Initiative suggests that improving one’s quality of life may rest on first improving one’s mental health habits.
Published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, the research takes up a classic chicken or the egg question: Does our mental health drive our quality of life? Or does our quality of life drive our mental health? Using three waves of data across six years from the Statewide Clergy Health Survey, they found that clergy who reported positive mental health were much more likely to report good quality of life in the future. But, interestingly, the inverse wasn’t true. Good quality of life in one wave did not predict future mental health flourishing in another.
The takeaway? Cultivating contentment within, rather than external circumstances, is the best strategy for improving our satisfaction in life and ministry. Perhaps this is what Jesus was getting at, too, when he said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Quality of life is a by-product of the quality of our discipleship—and discipleship that begins by trusting our “enoughness” in light of God’s goodness.
Rev. Amanda Rigby, an associate pastor at Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh, NC, says these findings reinforce what she sees among ministry colleagues. “On the whole, the realities of clergy working in part- or full-time ministry continue to be incredibly challenging here in the United States: shrinking churches, smaller budgets, increasingly polarized congregations, fraught politics both denominationally and certainly nationally.” In this climate, she reflects, contentment has to come from within or else it’s too easy to lose heart.
(Keep reading the full article for three simple habits you can start practicing now.)
I’d love to know what these ruminations bring up for you in your context. Are we focusing on our interior conditions or overwhelmed by the external crises? Is that easy to say and hard to live out? I hear you. I guess that’s why it’s called practice!