A Volley from the Canon, #85

A Volley from the Canon, Number 85
MUTUAL MINISTRY
The phone rings or the email alert dings: I have a message from a Senior Warden.
“It’s time for us to evaluate our rector, according to his/her contract,” he tells me. “Can you come out and facilitate a job performance review?”
The quick answer, just here among us friends, is ‘NO.” That is not what we do, and it is not what the clergy-vestry Letter of Agreement calls for. What we do is called a Mutual Ministry Review, and it involves an assessment of what is working best among the whole congregation, particularly its leadership, lay and ordained.
It’s easy to see where the request was coming from: a traditional business model of employer-employee relations. In an environment in which laborers are a commodity to be used up, chewed up, and spat out, to be easily replaced by other fresh units in abundant supply, that is a tempting, albeit unappealing model. It is not a Christian model, and it holds no attraction for the church.
First, clergy are not expendable or easily replaced. Even under the best conditions, a change in clergy leadership is costly, time-consuming, and disruptive to the life of a congregation. When a congregation is fractious, intractable, adversarial, and blame-projecting, and after it has burned through a couple of rectors in short, contentious order, it renders itself unattractive to future clergy leadership—especially the ones with more gifts, who are in higher demand elsewhere. By its own behavior, the congregation can send itself into a downward spiral, even a death spiral, of conflict and judgment. The whole congregation would do well to pay close attention to the care and feeding of its ministry leadership, both lay and ordained.
Second, as important as strong clergy leadership is to a congregation, clergy do not have all the power to attract or repel either present or future members. The best and brightest rector cannot build a congregation where the folks in the pews are shooing them out the back door as fast as the clergy can lure them in the front. Nor can the clumsy and inept pastor run everyone off where the congregation is warm, supportive, and spiritually committed. Many a congregation has stalled under competent clergy leadership and many a congregation has thrived under inept clergy leadership. It is simply not fair or honest to place all responsibility, and especially all blame, on the clergy leader.
And it doesn’t work. Next week, in a follow-up, I will explain the Appreciative Inquiry process, which is much more effective than a negative critique in producing positive change in the behavior of congregational leaders. Part three of this trilogy will be “What congregational leaders need to know about the Episcopal Church.”