Newsletter Articles
Vital Pastoral Leadership Network
David Stark Executive Director of the Changing Church Forum
One of the best lessons I have ever learned about being a transformational leader came from a very unlikely place – my first job out of school, which was managing a Greenhouse Nursery. I was in charge of all the plants under an acre and a half of “glass” as it was known back then. Each day began by inspecting the condition of thousands of plants.
When it came to the variable of water, we generally saw one of three conditions; normal, temporary wilting point, and permanent wilting point. Normal meant the plant showed no strain due to lack of water and therefore leave it alone for another day. Temporary wilting point meant the plant was showing signs of stress due to lack of water, but actually was a good sign because with the proper care it would come back not just to normal condition, but as a stronger plant due to healthy changes that happen in reaction to the stressful conditions. Permanent wilting point, like it sounds, is a condition from which the plant cannot come back to life. It will eventually die because the stress on the system is too much to survive.
By way of analogy, and as a person called to consult with many churches, the signs of temporary wilting point are very prevalent within groups of churches all over the United States today. For many reasons, as you talk with synods, presbyteries, and districts leaders, most of the time they are managing many churches either at temporary wilting point or worse. From a botanical point of view, there is good news and bad news. The good news is those churches that respond to the stressful conditions by transforming themselves have a good chance of coming not just back to normal, but stronger than they have ever been. The bad news is that time is short and we need to pay attention now to leading these churches in transformative ways or permanent wilting point will set into many places.
This allows me to talk about the Vital Pastoral Leadership grant that we are currently involved with. Over the past few years, leadership at the Changing Church forum at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Burnsville, Minnesota teamed up with The Joy Leadership Center at Community Church of Joy in Phoenix, Arizona and the ELCA headquarters to write a grant proposal to Thrivent Financial for Lutherans to test 3 different types of interventions with congregations.
The Changing Church Forum’s part of this grant involves creating clusters of pastors in a region that meet together in Affinity Groups around a trained coach and leader. They have 3 agenda’s together. First of all, these groups become a place of support and encouragement for the personal discipleship of the pastors themselves. Our main text is Mike Foss’s book PoWeRSuRGe, which builds a common language around the marks of discipleship. The second agenda is to choose reading material from books, articles, etc. around transformational leadership and vital congregational life themes.
This puts ideas into the system for pastors to integrate into their thinking. The third agenda is to train one of the members of the Affinity Group as a coach and leader who helps focus the direction of the group, as well as assist individual pastors in becoming the leaders they need to be in their congregational settings. We are early on in this journey, but a few simple but important lessons are surfacing as a result of this process together.
We are learning that transformation is easier and better accomplished with the support of others and is very difficult alone. The 12-step movement taught all of us this important lesson - if you want to successfully take the challenge of deep change, routine and consistent support is needed to help people persevere. We are also learning that important ideas from outside resources (books, speakers, articles, etc.) about different aspects of transformational leadership or vital congregational life, when digested in discussion with others can translate into concrete actions and help change people and systems.
Many great ideas about leadership are surfacing in lots of venues today, but only will translate into action when they are flushed out in interaction with others who can help interpret those ideas into contextualized action steps. Finally, we have learned that risk in leadership is much easier to accomplish when others around you are also risking to lead. A group of others who are also taking new steps spurs you on to make changes or adventure into new directions that you might have shied away from alone.
This brings me to my final thing we are learning. Now is the time when transformational leaders are needed urgently in the church. In many regions, temporary wilting point symptoms are starting to show signs of permanent wilting point conditions. In my particular case, I am interested in talking with pastors who might want to group with others in their region to form these types of Affinity Groups. I know that in many cases, the right moves now could not only bring a church back to life, but over the long haul make it stronger than it was before these stressful times came. (952-435-8107) dstark@princeofpeaceonline.org
More like this one in | Newsletter Articles , Power Tools
Comments on this Entry:
Post a comment