On Economy and Church: Part I

Here are some of my observations:

1.  The economy is still on shaky ground.  I am far from alone in questioning whether the economy is sustainable.  I still find the following link really interesting, even if I don't agree with a lot of what is on the website, and I hope others will as well (it is over 3 hours, but soooo worth the time and extremely thought-provoking): http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse.  I especially find it interesting that I watched these videos long before the election of President Obama, and I am witnessing the predictions of his actions, as our next president, come to fruition, as I now believe they would have with either a democrat or republican in the White House.

2.  If the above is true, that there is a fair chance that the economy is not sustainable, then our churches need to prepare to see our communities through some rough seas ahead.  Many of our churches as they exist now could not survive those seas themselves. 

3.  Currently, environmental activists and fiscal conservatives are seen as warring parties.  Bridges need to be built between the reality that economic resources as we currently know them are not going to be available forever, and perhaps not even in the near future, and the reality that our use of those resources to date has been tremendously destructive to our shared home, the earth, and that this also is a threat to us and our children.

4.  One advantage of the economic difficulties of the last several years is that many actions toward sustainability became more mainstream.  I don't have research to back it up, but I have a good feeling waste levels on the individual plane have been reduced.  At the same time, however, because sustainability is currently a largely individual or small group action, in order to survive, many families had to resort to environmentally harmful and economically unsustainable action. 

For example, Americans benefit from what is seen as a highly efficient agricultural system and food manufacturing and shipping system.  The prices we pay for food do not reflect the food's ultimate cost, to the environment, our health, and so forth.  However, our entire sense of the cost of living is built around the availability of this system.  People own the houses that they can afford because of this system. 

The shaky foundation underneath it all, as the environmental and health costs are more and more visible, however, is also contributing to initial signs of breakdown.  Food prices have been driven up and up from what was comfortable for the majority five or six years ago.  Those of us who own homes or pay rent based on what we can afford because of a lower cost of food, especially in a time of job loss and jobs at risk, aren't able to keep it all balanced.

Because of the higher cost of food, for instance, my family can't afford to eat anymore except to the extent we shop for the vast majority of what we eat at places like Pricerite (discount grocer shipping food in from all over just like BJs, Costco, or Walmart).   With the exception of organic milk, no organics are available.  We've thus reduced the organics we eat to "occasional foods" when we can afford local.  With the exception of locally prepared pita breads, this is not local food.  We've thus reduced our locally grown and prepared food (we couldn't afford even a half share at a CSA this summer) to "occasional foods" (though to our credit, we buy very, very little pre-prepared foods, and cook nearly entirely from scratch).  On the individual level we can't afford the sustainable practices that will ultimately save our community.

5.  While questioning sustainability is more accepted now than it was even a few years ago, questioning sustainability is not yet seen as mainstream.  Those who question sustainability are largely still seen still as alarmists and millenialists.  Those who are preparing for a major economic shift are marginalized as if they are preparing for "the end of the world."  Even within "green churches," we have not yet reached a tipping point of preparation for a new economic era.

6.  The status quo has been maintained just enough that as communities, we have largely been settling back into a place of comfort about things.  Economic distress is still high, but the stress levels have been reduced just enough that we aren't questioning the entire system.  Even as recently as a few weeks ago, I was still functioning under the illusion that I can hold onto my house that I really need to sell in order to move into a position more sustainable on the individual and community level.  I was still thinking I could get a renter and downsize to a small apartment, and that everything might still be okay. 

7.  One tension: in what might turn out to be a major shift in the entire world economic system, the things that are good for us in the long-run do not feel attainable in the short-run.  Just as in my example above regarding the cost of food and the way my own family is surviving on the cheap stuff from the discount grocery outlet, our churches are also finding it difficult or impossible to choose a way of being in the world that is best for the long-run.  Our churches have staff people and ministers who need these jobs in an economy where jobs are scarce.  These jobs serve an important function for the things that churches do currently, even though those things may not be what is needed to help our communities through the rough seas ahead in the next 10, 20, 30...years. 

On the institutional level, we don't know how else to structure ourselves, and we are afraid to make any changes based on predictions of an unknown future because what if those predictions don't turn out to be true?  Won't we then just be irrelevant?  Major change is needed, but every incentive is toward the maintenance of the status quo (to understand this, please, please take the time to check out the link in observation #1).  The chance of popular support for critical changes in our churches seems remote at best.

We look at churches like those of the Rev. Ron Robinson, and we say, "Oh, that looks interesting.  What great stuff.  I want to support what they are doing.  But that is not what my own church's unique identity is all about.  That wouldn't fit us at all.  I wouldn't feel at home in that church.  Here at my own church, we're about Sunday worship..." etc. etc.  It's scary to reimagine ourselves.  And it's scary to reimagine ourselves in a future that seems uncertain.  And it's scary to imagine ourselves taking actions now based on what seem like potentially alarmist predictions, especially when those decisions involve tough issues like the jobs and the position descriptions of good people who have done good, important work and who need jobs in an economically difficult time, and whose current job descriptions make sense to what we feel like we need right now.

RSS Feed

So if you look to the right, above "followers," there is an RSS icon and a way to put this blog site into your RSS feed if that is your preferred way of keeping up with blogs.  If you are not familiar with what RSS can do for you as a blog reader, check it out:



RSS is called such because it is "really simple syndication."  The implication is that anyone can do it, which makes someone like me -- who has not been able to figure it out easily -- feel really silly having so many questions ;-).  If you have questions, you are not alone. 

Edited to add: Fortunately, my questions have been very kindly answered by the very helpful person running UUpdates, so I have deleted the question originally in this post.   

I have given my site address (now that I have done multiple things to try to make sure I have the required RSS capacity) to http://www.uupdates.net/, a great aggregate of UU blogs.  If you are not familiar with that site, I highly recommend it.  You can go there to see who has posted what within the last 24 hours, few days, or weeks, etc. on their UU blogs. 

Edited to add: The helpful person running UUpdates also tells me that if you prefer to use your own RSS feed reader and don't want to have to also go to UUpdates, you can simply subscribe to the recent additions feed of UUpdates and get a list of newly added blogs that way.  Fantastic stuff!

Characteristics of a 21st Century Pastor

While searching for something unrelated, I came across this article from the highly respected Alban Institute. 

I generally like the sound of the twelve listed characteristics for the "21st century pastor" (for much of the list, I'd say more broadly for "21st century professional religious leadership").  But I am curious.   Is this the inspiring list toward which we should aim as 21st century religious leaders?  Is the list complete?  Is it accurate?  Does it seem to encapsulate all that we are moving toward in a new century?  Is it inspiring? 

I'd love to hear what folks think of the list. 

Another Prayer

I want to get in the habit of posting more.  Today's post, however, will simply be a prayer.  I'm worried about my son right now, and it is really all I can think about tonight.  By the way, Lizard Eater wrote yet another great post this weekend, this time about "praying aloud."  Some other UU bloggers have begun to respond (and can I just say that I am so glad to have found the Deep River blog tonight?).
________________
Let us pray together:

Today the sun rose and set.
The air was crisp and autumnal.
God in your greatness, we give our thanks.

Today there were lonely hearts.
There was illness and grief.
There was helplessness and powerlessness.
There was pain and cries unheard.
For those suffering, we pray for relief,
and we offer ourselves as the ears for those cries yet unheard.
God in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Amen.

Staff Management as Open, Innovative Systems Part III

Here are several more organizational management principles for supervising staff teams in the church setting. These are, of course, just some ideas I have, and they are in development...nonetheless, here they are, for whatever they are worth:

3. Our life experiences don't come in boxes, nor should our contributions. First, a necessary preface: certainly I have an area of expertise on my staff team, as does every other member of the team. I am of course only human, and I would probably resent it if another member of the team felt they knew how to do my job better than I did. We all want to be respected for our hard-won expertise.

For this reason, no matter what opinions I have, I am not going to go around the staff team telling the Parish Minister how to preach or provide pastoral care, the Music Director how to direct the choir or play a piece of music, the Administrator what database she should use and how, nor the Bookeeper how to keep budget records or work with auditors. On occasion I share my personal experience of something if it seems that it would be a useful part of a conversation, but I have become wise enough to avoid telling people how to do their own jobs, in which they surely have far, far more expertise than I.

Folks who head staff teams are wise to keep this in mind. Ministers are usually responsible for the supervision of church staff and yet are not, as a whole, particularly thoroughly-trained themselves in all  aspects of administration, education, and bookeeping (as I am making my way into seminary, the proof is in the curricula at both the school I am attending this semester and the school I will begin attending next year). There is a reason experts are hired.

When my assistant -- who despite being "just an assistant" (as if there is a "just" in that) has tons of education and life experience in all kinds of areas that enhance our "department" -- asks me what I want her to do, I don't usually tell her how to do it. I simply tell her (1) either the outcome I am shooting for, or (2) the issue at hand. Often, she contributes a way of doing things that is way better than what I would have come up with on my own.

That said, when supervising a staff team, including volunteer staff, I expect everyone to bring their expertise -- that earned both through education and life experience -- to the table.  These don't show up in neat little boxes.  The manifestation of that is not as much that I direct certain questions to certain people (I do that sometimes too, but that isn't what I am talking about here), but that I ask questions designed to provoke collaborative innovation, and then I let the expertise come out in the way people approach the questions. In this manner I don't unnecessarily box people in and prevent good ideas from surfacing because I haven't opened up the system for the input.

Blessed is the Church Administrator I once worked with who was (and I am sure still is) the master of gathering large amounts of information. She read books, magazines, and the internet like crazy, and still found time to get out to the movies! While she could have technically done her job simply by maintaining databases, printing reports, and similar tasks, she didn't limit herself to that. She was a tremendous asset to the staff team by showing up at every staff meeting with an interesting blog or church website she'd stumbled onto, or a clipping of something interesting from "Congregations Magazine" or "UU World" or other similar resources, or a paragraph from a book, or even an idea she got from a tv show. I think she was able to do that because as a staff team we were ever-striving for an open, innovative, collaborative way of working together toward the good of the church.

4. Staff meetings are important. Some of the funniest moments in the tv show "The Office" come from bad staff meetings. I know that there are plenty of awful ways to run a staff meeting out there. I know that a bad staff meeting can be an irritation and time waster for the staff. The solution to that, I think, is not for staff teams to abandon staff meetings altogether, but to learn how to run great staff meetings. Staff need time together that goes beyond visiting one another's offices, bumping into one another at the water cooler, or even eating lunch together every day. Isolation among staff members doesn't cultivate creative, innovative collaboration.

Supervisors should not mistake their own sense of how well they are keeping up with what's going on with staff members as the fulfillment of staff meeting needs. That is, the staff meeting isn't for the supervisor. It is for the team. The more teams meet as teams, the more they will work as teams, so staff meetings should be frequent, regular, and effectively run. Because of the way most Unitarian Universalist churches are structured, it makes sense that there is a need for all-staff meetings as well as meetings just for "program staff."

5. Staff, down to the support staff, should have a part in determining the strategic direction of the congregation. Yes, it's about buy-in.  Chances are, if staff stick around for a while, they will be assisting the congregation through at least a couple iterations of strategic efforts.  While the congregation belongs to its members -- and the strategic direction of the congregation ultimately is a decision of members -- a strategic plan in which the staff have no personal investment will not be properly supported by staff, no matter how much they are willing to bend to congregational desire.

Staff who believe in the strategic mission and goals will work twice as hard to achieve them. In contrast, staff who simply bend to the will of the strategic mission and goals will spend more time trying to keep their head above water in meeting the new goals on top of everything else they do than creatively collaborating.  Creative collaboration requires effective prioritization, which requires some buy-in and a feeling of being an active, empowered part of the process.  The goal is creative collaboration.

Staff Management as Open, Innovative Systems Part II

Here are two organizational management principles for supervising staff teams in the church setting. These are, of course, just some ideas I have, and they are in development...nonetheless, here they are, for whatever they are worth:

1. Every single week of work together, church staff teams should have at least one opportunity in which they come together to innovate around a common "big picture" issue. It doesn't really matter what the issue is in any given week, but the opportunity must be nourished on a regular basis. The point isn't as much the resulting innovations (some may be quite good, but many will fail to get off the ground or to succeed), but rather the cultivation of a collaborative approach to innovation. Critically, this should not be framed as problems to solve, but rather "themes of innovation."

These themes or issues should also be "big picture" issues because especially in teams not yet accustomed to collaborative innovation, "little picture" stuff is often too easy to break up into individual-sized pieces that are then -- by habit and for ease but at the cost of innovation -- removed from the collaborative environment and taken on as individual pet issues at which to hammer away. That has a role too, but not in this principle. Here, it is all about the collaboration.

2. Relationships should be cultivated on the group level between staff and congregants, particularly lay leaders in the congregation. Individual staff members will naturally make individual partnerships with congregants with whom they work closely out of either necessity or affinity. This is generally good and most of the time quite healthy. It certainly shouldn't be discouraged. However, if you look at your church staff and see that each individual member of the staff has a narrow subset of congregants with whom the staff member works nearly exclusively, you can say with some certainty that your staff work in silos.

An innovative environment, as demonstrated in the TED video, is one in which collaboration is at the center. For this reason, since the Unitarian Universalist church really belongs to its members and not its staff or even its ministers (and thus the most fruitful innovations will come at least in part from the congregation itself), collaborative partnerships between staff and congregants should be nurtured in collaborative formations. Those leading staff teams should assist in nurturing between the teams as a whole relationships with sets of congregants.

I once served a church in which the staff meetings were attended not only by every staff member, but also by one of the older, retired volunteers who, among other things, spent most of her days at the church, serving folks from the congregational food pantry. While certainly she could have done her work in the food pantry without attending the staff meetings, she was a very important volunteer in the church, not to mention a mover and a shaker in the larger community. The staff team was enhanced by every member of the team having a solid relationship with her as a team. When I worked with this volunteer on a project or issue together in partnership with other staff, my relationship with not only the volunteer but my fellow staffer was enhanced. Meanwhile, our sense of "being in it all together" as a congregation was strengthened by this and other relationships with groups of volunteers in the congregation.

Staff members should not only have the opportunity to work with one another as a team, but to include on the team (and those are the operative words) multiple volunteer leaders from within the congregation.

Staff Management As Open, Innovative Systems Part I

One subject about which I am deeply passionate and interested is organizational development and "management" in religious settings.

If it were an option, rather than choosing between Community Minister, Minister of Religious Education, or Parish Minister, I would seriously consider a speciality in Minister of Organizational Development. One of the reasons that many faith communities are in decline in the United States is that religious organizations are not keeping up their development in pace with society's development.

Society is changing at an increasingly rapid rate. Meanwhile, religious organizations are for many good reasons on "glacial time." This serves no small number of important religious purposes (and I firmly believe that many religious leaders can improve their relationships with the folks in their organizations by slowing down on many levels), but in adapting ministries for changing populations, moving so slowly does nothing but hold us back.

For this reason, I think we would be well-served to expand our thinking about types of ministries to include the ministering that goes on at the organizational rather than individual level of any faith community. (That's my percolating argument for adding another type of ministry to the UUA ministry categories, if such categories must remain.)

I share all this to say that my interest in organizational development has led to some thinking recently about staff development and management in churches. In particular, I am interested in how staff teams can function in such a way that promotes innovation and outreach. My dad recently posted this TED video on the Facebook page for his coffee house (you'll see why), and somewhere around the six or seven minute mark, my ears started to perk up:



In the church in which I currently work, daily lunch table discussions are important for this reason. The tradition has long been that when folks are around and available, we eat together at noon. At lunch there is talk about everything from politics to the personal, but on occasion we talk a little business, and that serves a healthy purpose. The Director of Music is unfortunately rarely present, as he does not have an office nor "office hours" at the church, and neither myself nor the minister seem to be able to attend lunch on a daily basis, so the administrative staff and "support staff" are the most regular lunch attendees. Nonetheless, there are periodic occasions in which conversations over lunch are particularly fruitful in our work together.

Yet creating an innovative staff team, I have come to believe, takes more intentionality. Just being in the same room is as likely in the church setting to create a culture of camaraderie in the status quo, or even a place to vent and affirm fears about change, as it is to nurture the kind of open, collaborative systems of innovation that Steven Johnson is talking about in the TED video.

People want to have a meaningful part in something meaningful. All too many folks working as staff in churches come to find that they don't have a meaningful place in the life of their churches unless they inextricably link themselves to maintenance of systems. I'd like to see more churches breaking this mold and moving in the direction of properly supporting good, healthy, current, and relevant systems while also giving staff a meaningful place in something beyond the maintenance of those systems.

That's what I want to explore in part II of this (two part?) post series.

Self-Doubt and Religious Leadership

As a leader, there are days when the work has a "buzz" to it.  There is an energy that comes when things you work for pay off, when you strike the right chord for your community, when group dynamics produce generative community, and basically you feel like "you are on a roll."  You know why you've been called.

There are also days like I had today.  You feel off-step.  You work hard but it doesn't show.  Your errors set the tone.  You haven't found the pulse of a new group with whom you are working, and your contributions are "off key."  You fumble.  You stand in front of a group like I did today and miss the mark.  You lose your place.  You can't get a stride.  You start to wonder why on earth you, of all people, have been called.

Self-doubt (especially but not exclusively plaguing women).  There are, of course, all kinds of biblical examples of unexpected people being called.  Why them, of all people?  Were they really equipped?  But as a Unitarian Universalist, the calling to religious leadership ultimately must come from our faith community, so references to odd calls in the Bible aren't always comforting. 

A calling to Unitarian Universalist religious leadership is a largely a mutual exchange of trust.  I've heard folks say, along these lines, that church is "a heartbreaking institution."  We're humans, and we mess up, and we break each other's hearts.  The truth, however, is that my heart is broken less often by the church than by my own foibles as a church leader, my own stumblings, my own desire to offer my church something more than I can at any given moment in time.

What do you do to get your head back in the game when...oh, I don't know...say that overplayed song "Bad Day" runs through your head like a soundtrack? 

Lately, I tell you it's funny, but I seek any book or movie or tv show in which the characters are struggling like me, and I relish it.  I especially like comedic takes on the struggle.  It reminds me of my own humanity, and I am able to treat myself with compassion again.  I've never, ever been able to recover from a stumble by beating myself up over it (and I tend to do too much of that), so the older I get, the more I realize that I learn best when I build on my strengths.  Even on a day like today, there are strengths that I can take, and say, "So when nothing else falls into place, here is what I can draw on to get me through until my stride comes back."

It is dangerous to set ourselves up with unrealistic, inhuman expectations.  This week I wasn't able to spend a whole lot of time with my family because in the cycle of my work, this is the busiest time of my year.  So when yesterday my kids and I both melted down to tears over time lost with one another, it makes sense that I started to stumble, and that this stumbling carried over into my day today.  It is unrealistic to think that when I am missing my family, that this won't impact my work.  But I also was reminded that I have a loving community that brings its goodwill to our relationship, and I have gotten much better at providing opportunities for the community to shine...especially in those moments when I am not.  So today my strength was in my ability to invite others into leadership and to empower others to shine from their own strenths.

If You Work With Families

If your role in religious leadership means you work with families that include children, take note:

It looks like I am probably going to start the Parenting on Track program, per the recommendation of my sister.  I am doing it in order to review it and decide whether to bring the program to the parents in my congregation and the larger community via:

1.  A half-day workshop; or
2.  Getting a few congregants trained as Parenting on Track facilitators who can present the program to our families here on a regular basis; or
3.  Getting church library copies of the program or helping some families get the program.

I will definitely let ya'll know if this turns out to be a resource you too should bring to your religious communities.

A Bit More About Generations

I'm writing a sermon this week relating, at least loosely, to Faith Formation 2020, so I am thinking once again about generational aspects of our faith. Coincidentally, today Sara over at the Curriculum of Love wrote a blog review of the book Generations of Faith: A Congregational Atlas.  It's the book Sara recommended to me here in a comment a few posts back. 

It looks like it was published in 2002, so it makes sense that the hypothetical committee meeting Sara recaps from the book did not include Generation Y/The Millennial Generation.  But now in 2010, this generation is entering young adulthood and even the workforce, so let's revisit that.  There are summaries of each generational type here.  (Do you think the depictions of the different generations fit?)

So what does it look like to attend meetings or work on projects with folks in the Generation Y/Millennial Generation?  Here are my initial observations:

• Generation Y is, as a whole, closely bonded with the Baby Boomer Generation.  I find that though Gen Y folks may have more of a "let's pull together" attitude, folks in Generation Y have picked up many of their sensibilities about organizational functioning not from Gen X, but from the boomers.  I also find Gen Y and Baby Boomers great partners to work together on projects, in a way that Baby Boomers and Gen X are not quite as much so (I've noticed that Gen Xers are increasingly interested, as a whole, in the sensibilities of the Silent/Homeland Generation...just as one example, check out some of the blogs among Gen X mothers right now, who are even returning to the hobbies of the Silent Generation...interesting stuff).

• Gen Y folks do not have the same sense of boundaries of space and time that previous generations have had.  A room does not just include those who are in it, but also folks who are available via mobile technology.  A meeting time is not exclusive for meeting business, but is rather another multi-tasked item on the whole day's agenda.

 

• I had read in another source that Gen Y folks will be big on volunteerism and will volunteer more hours than any generation in recent history (is that part of where "civic" came from as a descriptor?).  While I know Gen Y folks who volunteer, and there is still time, I have not as of yet seen the generation, as a whole, surpass previous generations in terms of volunteerism.  In fact, Gen Y folks started coming of age while the "learn to say no" self-care movement was still peaking for the boomers, and I see Gen Y folks mirroring that sensibility.  That is not to say, however, that I think Gen Y folks have abandoned civic responsibility.  Gen Y folks seem to have a fairly decent understanding of corporate accountability, and seem to want to work for and patronize corporations that at least give an impression of being "more responsible."  Members of this generation also tend to be attracted to projects and activities that simultaneously provide a "self-discovery"/quest opportunity and a philanthropic benefit.

• Perhaps related to a differing sense of space and time, Gen Y folks currently seem less apt to meet deadlines and adhere to timelines.  The tradeoff is that they often approach things very creatively, and they are quite forgiving of others who fail to meet deadlines and adhere to timelines (a good thing for Gen Xers and Boomers who tend to carry more guilt in these matters).  Gen Y folks also do not seem to have the same level of self-guilt that previous generations have...at least not yet.

• Perhaps because they are still coming of age, Gen Y folks seem to be looking for opportunities to have their voices heard.  They are insecure in their value, and even though they are a very large generation, do not see themselves as the dominant voice in society.  However, because they tend to think "out of the box" of current generations, they have an entrepreneurial spirit that allows them to innovate without depending on validation from others.  They seem driven toward this innovation, and seem to shy away from more traditionally collaborative opportunities in which they may not feel so heard. 

What are your observations?  Are you in Gen Y?  Have you been in a meeting or worked on a project lately with someone from this generation?  What do you think this means in the church?