Yet the ministry was still built around me-- my energy and thinking constantly feeding the system. And this is absolutely needed and what the new guy failed at doing. My energy and thinking unleashed others' energies and ideas. The new guy's failure to take the reigns served as a way of putting all of these leaders at arm's length.
My other thought was that even though good volunteers were developed, parents group formed, and intergenerational collaboration created, perhaps always creating an "understudy"-- someone you raise up to take over when you are finished-- is needed. However, this seems to be somewhat problematic because I am probably not going to attract someone with a similar skill set that I possess. My volunteers and interns were not people who the congregation of UPC would choose to serve as Director but served as great volunteers.
Second, I continually wish that there would be more "pastors" in churches today-- individuals who take the task of 1:1 pastoral care, visitation, and spiritual direction seriously.
The pastor-scholar is also needed-- pastors who can truly handle Scripture and theology in effective ways that address the issues of our times.
So, I think we have three areas that need to be addressed in today's churches-- pastor as systems thinker and structural manager, pastor as care-provider and priest-comforter, and pastor as scholar-teacher and prophet-challenger. These are all really important and perhaps provide us three areas that we can address in our consulting practice.
I really like your three-point categorization of pastors. That kind of breakdown helps me to see the bigger picture when I get lost in all of my detail thinking.
ReplyDeleteIn a way, these three needs are answered in today's church by three different roles: executive pastor (systems), pastoral care pastor (care provider), and senior pastor (teacher). So then the question is, are you talking about combining these three roles into one or are you speaking specifically of youth ministry where these three roles are rarely, if ever, fulfilled?
At my time in Middlebury, I took more of the systems thinker and teacher roles, but mostly neglected the pastoral care part because...well, let's face it - that sort of thing is a glaring weakness of mine. My intent was that the volunteers would handle the bulk of the pastoral care role; however, without a proper model (myself), that never came to fruition.
I do think it'd be tough to find any one person who could fulfill all three roles. This is why I believe so heavily in building systems of leadership. I definitely think there should be some kind of succession plan in place, though like you, I'm not sure what that might look like. I wouldn't have hired anyone in my church for my position, let alone any of my volunteers.
I think that this can be worked around though with a clear system of assimilation and discipleship processes, distributed leadership (as opposed to a centralized model dependent on the youth pastor), a long-term teaching plan, and a solid volunteer recruiting and development system. With such a model in place, a leader with any kind of gift set could take over and excel by utilizing the distributed leadership to cover areas where he/she is weak.
Now, this assumes a large enough volunteer and intern staff to cover multiple facets of the ministry. I assume this is easier in larger churches very simply because there's a much larger recruiting pool from which to build an initial team of high quality volunteers. In smaller congregations, however, it may take a longer period of time to develop a team that is skilled enough to fully entrust to them a model of distributed leadership. Though, a smaller church will have different needs and again simply due to numbers, there will not need to be as wide or deep of a network of leaders.
Some follow-up thoughts:
ReplyDeleteHow do you see this three-point categorization playing into what we do? (sorry, I'm a "what does that look like?" kind of person - if that bothers you, just ignore me :)
I'm thinking this sounds like great article fodder to get publish somewhere...anywhere really. You already do a lot of writing, so maybe that's down the line a bit yet.
I think this further demonstrates part of what makes us a good team. You certainly have the pastoral passions that I can lack with my very heavy business-mindset systems approach. Plus, your focus on the spirituality helps keep me grounded into why I personally want to do church consulting.