Do as I say not as I do: Brochure Review

Out this spring from the Presbyterian Board of Pensions brochure series "Conversations on the Church," is a good piece of work by two leaders of contemporary Presbyterianism. "Presbyterian Leadership: Reflections on Leadership Renewal in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)" available online, see link below, by Linda Valentine, Executive Director of the General Assembly Council, and Clifton Kirkpatrick, recently retired Stated Clerk and currently President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and Visiting Professor here at Louisville Seminary, is a 21 page summary of current and helpful thinking about what the authors call a deep hunger for renewal of leadership in the church.

Drawing principles from the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition such as servanthood and the last shall be first, and weakness-trumps-power, and following excellent contemporary managerial theorists from Burns to Heifetz and Linsky, the authors propose five characteristics of Presbyterian leadership that are visionary and hopeful. As an inspirational and motivational piece, this is excellent work.

At the same time, the work is significant by what it reveals about the actual practice of Presbyterian leadership. Shining a light often casts a shadow. In this case, the words of the brochure are in stark contrast to the top-down, command and control practices of the General Assembly Council, the thoroughly inequitable treatment of personnel, and the lack of a strong, courageous vision in the face of antagonistic factions in our national governance.

We should do what our leaders say, not what they do, when it comes to organizational leadership!

http://http//web.pensions.org/Publications/pensions/Home/Forms%20%26%20Publications/Booklets%20%26%20Brochures/pub-505.pdf

The Subordinant's Lament

For several years in different positions I have reflected, only around the edges, about what one does when the boss does not appear to be as effective as the organization needs.

In the last years of the 20th century, for example, I sensed that one organization was going to have trouble when the new leader was drawing inspiration from the writings of leaders of the organization from the 1890's. In another situation, I watched the collective leadership of an organization I loved behaving in such unhelpful ways that I imagined myself in "Gorillas in the Mist," saying "they look like us, they have so many of the same characteristics, but THEY'RE DIFFERENT!"

Now I ready to offer some more constructive suggestions for those in subordinant positions who have higher hopes for their organization than those in the dominant positions. (Note: I'm following Carol Pierce and her colleagues from New Dynamics Partnerships and their work on multicultural, gender and ethnic relationships in using "subordinant" and "dominant" to avoid the cliched organizational terms here.)

1. Nurture your own spirit. When tempted to spend time moaning or griping, exchange that time for quiet reflection on yourself, your place in the universe--a broader perspective than just your organization or church, and your calling and your principles. Keep track of your own integrity and don't let it get lost in your discouragement and cynicism.
2. Keep your own creativity going. The organization needs creativity, adaptability, and connection with fresh ideas even more when the folks at the top are less in touch. The musician and coach Harry Pickens reminded me several years ago that a person could have more influence on an organization from the margins than from the center. You can keep tabs on creativity by asking if you are increasing your sense of knowledge and truth, if you are growing in respect for differences, if you are building community, and if positive work can still be done (a distillation of the thought of the philosopher of the creative spirit, Henry Nelson Wieman).
3. Find partners or allies for the journey through this time in your organization. There is strength also in collaboration and alliance. You are better with others than alone. A caution about this, however, is to avoid a secretive and oppositional coalition. As I define it, a coalition is two or more members of a system, often at different levels of authority (a member and a staff member, or a member and a member of a governing board), who join together expressly to oppose or exclude another person or group. A coalition usually involves secretiveness, and it is likely to be denied if someone asks about it. By contrast an alliance is defined as two or more members of a system who agree to work together on an issue of common interest, without intentionally excluding or opposing others. An alliance is not usually secretive. Open and transparent relationships formed for the benefit of the organization and for its members are usually welcome.
4. Look for ways to adapt to the new realities of the organization, for ways to act out transformational leadership in your area of work, to help the organization keep learning and growing. Assuming that an organization is a holistic organism, any part that can be healthy and creative can leaven the whole.

So do not lament, faithful subordinants. Free yourselves to be the best you can be in the circumstances and it will pay off.

Change, Learning and the Lifelong Learning Professional

OK, it's time for confession. Three weeks ago, the Lifelong Learning office at Louisville Seminary received the news that it was being cut in half. My job as Director of Lifelong Learning and Advanced Degrees was intact, but my colleague, the Programs Manager, was to be laid off in a reduction in force.

My first reaction was just that--a reaction. I was hurt and angry. I felt totally helpless to assist my colleague and hopeless about how I would continue these programs for which I have so much passion without a full time colleague. I felt my "position" was diminished by this move. I stayed angry and hurt for a couple of weeks, including a week of vacation--well timed for rest and reflection.

The turnaround did not come for me until last week with my prayer and support partners. We do a day long retreat together nine or ten times a year and last week was perfect timing. They worked me over pretty good and as they helped me get clear and straight about the situation, here's what I realized. I have to practice what I preach.

I'm the one who proposes that those engaged in lifelong learning need to ask themselves four questions:

1. What has changed or what needs to change in ministry?
2. What do I need to learn to meet the changing situation?
3. How can I promote my own health and growth in a changing situation?
4. Where can I find help or partners to get what I need?

Don't you hate it when your own words come back to haunt you!

Of course things change! Unfortunately they do not always change in directions we hoped. Certainly I'm not in charge of the changes in my life and work!

So instead of a reaction to the new situation --"I'm hurt and angry," I've moved with my friends' help to a response--"I'm learning." A learning mode is helping me be less helpless and more creative.

leadership style and the future

In difficult financial times, organizations tend to fall back on default leadership styles, drawing on old, autocratic and authoritarian methods to make hard decisions. We may wonder "what's wrong with that?"

My colleague Scott Williamson has discovered a fine new book by a couple of educators that helps make sense of this dilemma.

Stephen Preskill and Stephen Brookfield in Learning as a Way of Leading: Lessons from the Struggle for Social Justice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009) have gathered stories from leaders of social justice movements and teased out the kinds of leadership that have been effective.

I found most helpful their image of conventional leadership from the work of Joseph Raelin ("Leaderful Organizations"). The value of directive, commanding styles of leadership assumes leadership to be "serial (exercised by one person at a time...), individual (only ever exercised by a single individual), controlling (fiercely pursuing the leader's vision of how others should live and how a community or organization should function), and dispassionate (viewing as necessary 'collateral damage,' the wrecked lives of those individuals, cultures or communities that are uprooted, excluded, or disenfranchised in the pursuit of desired goals)." [Preskill and Brookfield, p.3.]

It's so evident to me that this kind of leadership is well designed to defend and protect the status-quo. It works in a stable environment with a homogeneous constituency. The problem with this style is that we no longer have either a stable environment nor a homogeneous constituency! Change is rapid and comprehensive. Diversity is becoming the norm rather than the ideal. Organizations, and this includes churches and theological seminaries, that hope to survive the first quarter of the 21st century need to take change and diversity into account, and ignore the emerging of the future to their immediate peril.

Preskill and Brookfield suggest that learners make the best leaders when the future is at stake. Learning is about changing the learner as well as the context of learning. Learning is an investment in the future, not the past. Learning is translating the faith and traditions of the past into the parlance of the presence so we can move together into the future.

Comment on Comment

Dave's comments posted here in response to my "heaven can wait" posting serve to show the vast gulf between world views here. In their presentations here at Louisville Seminary, McLaren and Borg both made strong Biblical cases for a service-oriented "God's will be done on earth" perspective, based on a faith-relationship with God in Jesus Christ. Dave makes his case from a propositional-doctrinal position, quite possibly based on the modernist apology for faith found in a set of doctrines known as fundamentalism. I appreciate Dave's comment because it makes me work hard, and not yet very satisfactorily, to find common ground between our divergent perspectives. I assume Dave is a faithful person with a different take on Christian life than mine. I hope Dave would be able to grant that my take is also worthy of respect.

Making Heaven Wait

This year's Festival of Theology at Louisville Seminary, featuring Diana Butler Bass, Brian McLaren and Marcus Borg, stirred up lots of good thoughts and feelings, and prompted many fine reflections.

One reflection came in the intersection of one of Brian McClaren's concepts and a newspaper article printed in the New York Times last week.

Brian was critiquing the American cultural religious notion that the main point of Christian faith is to get each person to heaven. In two power point slides, he made his point graphically (see www.slideshare.net/brianmclaren/christian-faith-as-a-way-of-life). In the first, slide # 13, faith is imagined as "self enhancement in this life and the next" with a tiny circle representing the world, a middle side circle representing the church, and a huge circle representing the self on its way to heaven. His preferred image is showed in slide 14, with concentric circles. An arrow from heaven shows God's investment in the self and the church, with the smallest circle being the self, the next size the church, both of which moving into and serving and transforming the world, making God's "kingdom come, on earth as in heaven."

The article in the Times (I've lost the date and citation) reported a study that showed that the "very religious" are the most likely to request extraordinary procedures in hospitals and emergency rooms, postponing death even at the cost of comfort and dignity. When I saw the headline, I said to myself, "That's just crazy!" After I thought about it awhile, I realized the connection. The devoted Christians come from that "self oriented" perspective which wants what "I" want, not what heaven wants, so I can selfishly hold on to life, even with the promise of "heaven" waiting for me.

The contrast between the self-oriented faith and the service-to-the-world oriented faith could not be more stark. I'd rather be putting God's will to work here and now, not making heaven wait for justice and equity and peace, than making heaven wait while I get everything that's coming to me!

Cones of Hope

Watching the weather news about a recent hurricane, I heard the term "the cone of uncertainty" to describe the possible but unpredictable trajectory of a storm. I was reminded of it with a quote in my prayer book on the hope that all things will be brought to God in the end. That is an older world-view that projects a "cone of certainty" in which everything will work out according to God's "goal"--a teleology of seeing how everything comes together in the end.

A perspective more understandable to the contemporary mind might be to refer to the "cone of indeterminacy" -- it may sound better than "uncertainty" and it rings true with quantum physics. Rather than seeing all things coming to a pre-determined end, even God's end, we see trajectories of freedom and choice with lives evolving and changing as they go along. The picture of fractals, lovely and complex patterns of developing reality, but not predictable in their outcomes. This is a "process theology" approach, it seems to me.

We can found our hope, as Christians, not in certainty but in the sense that God is luring us all, including the whole cosmos, into newer and more whole ways of being.