Tag Archives: discernment

Discernment Doctor Workshop

13 Wednesday Mar 2013

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The Massachusetts Episcopal Clergy Association is sponsoring a Discernment Doctor Workshop on May 1 at Trinity Church in Stoughton, MA, a suburb southwest of Boston, easily accessible from I-95 and Route 24. See the attached flyer for registration information. Clergy from outside of the Diocese of Massachusetts are welcome.

The workshop is entitled, “Preparing your Portfolio” and will delve into the mysteries of the OTM Portfolio. My question for you, good readers, is what other topics would you like to see covered in a discernment workshop that runs five hours, including lunch and coffee breaks? I cannot cover all the topics covered in this blog in that period. What parts of the discernment process would you like help with?

workshop-flyer-6.pdf

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Differences Across the Pond

27 Wednesday Feb 2013

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A blog follower from Great Britain recently wrote:

Your website and blogs have been a great help, given my ignorance of the transition process in the Episcopal Church. Even for a senior appointment here, it usually only takes about seven weeks from the application deadline to a decision!

Seven weeks!  A full rector search stateside lasts from twelve to eighteen months.  I wonder which process yields the better results.

I wonder how the English church fares without a lengthy interim process.  We Yanks, particularly in the most brilliant Commonwealth of Massachusetts, assume that our way is the best way.  Has anyone thought of comparing deployment systems?  How about some rigorous field testing of the elaborate interim ministry theory that has evolved over the last thirty years?

BTW, I’ll be leading a workshop on the OTM Portfolio on May 1 from 10 until 3 at Trinity Church, Stoughton, MA.   While MECA is sponsoring the workshop, I am sure they will welcome clergy from other dioceses.  More information to follow.

Chocolate and discernment

16 Friday Nov 2012

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I am blogging from the annual meeting of the Colonial Chocolate Society in Williamsburg this week.  As much as some of us believe that chocolate should be another sacrament that is not why I am here.  This is one of the fun events I attend as the overseer of an historic site.  Several colonial members of Old North were in the chocolate business and we are expanding our interpretive program on the topic.

The conference, sponsored by Mars Chocolate, is focused on brand marketing this year.  One of our speakers, from the advertising giant, BBDO, asserted that marketing had three basic goals.  What she said about historic sites and chocolate, applies well to our marketing task in the discernment process.  What then are the three goals of presenting ourselves to search committees according to this speaker?

  1. Get noticed – We need to stand out among the many candidates for a specific opening.  What is the unique blend of skills and values that makes us stand out among all candidates?  For example, M&M’s are colorful, fun chocolates.  Ms. Brown and Ms. Red are the cartoon characters that reinforce colorful and fun.  What makes you special?  How can you communicate that quickly?
  2. Be remembered – We need to make an emotional connection with search committees.  The intellectual connection, i.e. these are my skills and successes, will only get us so far.  Ultimately, the decision to call a specific priest is emotional (and often irrational in the best sense).  Search committee members are asking, do I want the next number of years of my spiritual journey with this person?
  3. Be understood – We need to communicate a sense of purpose and a sense of personality.  Search committees want to know what makes us tick.  Another speaker asserted that understanding is a two-way form of communication.  Her example was a dinner table companion who spent the evening talking about themselves.  At the end of such a one-way conversation, the listener is reduced to saying “uh huh” and “yes” while their mind has gone someplace else.  True understanding requires dialog, which is often hard for us as candidates to remember when in an interview.

The other point the marketing experts made several times was the importance of stories for conveying meaning.  Stories are easier for our minds to capture and retain than, for example, lists of facts.  Try this biblical exercise: remember these two biblical passages: the Beatitudes and the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  Which image is clearer and more expansive in your mind?  Can you cite all the Beatitudes from memory?  Do they evoke emotion?  Can you envision the characters in the Parable of the Prodigal Son?  Do they evoke an emotional response?

What are the stories that will help you get noticed, be remembered and be understood?  Are those the stories you tell in your essays and interviews?

Chocolate is a food that evokes a strong emotional response, which is why historic sites are including chocolate stories in their educational programs.  Given its power, I wonder if we could find the stories to justify making chocolate into a sacracment?

Discernment Doctor Workshop

09 Tuesday Oct 2012

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Dear readers,

Sorry to be away from the blog for a while, but we have been dealing with a terribly sad and unnecessary tragedy at Old North in the last few weeks that led to the untimely death of one of my colleagues.  I cannot comment publicly on the situation other than to say do not believe what you read in the press.   I can also commend my congregation as a wonderful, caring group of Episcopalians who are pastoring to each other and to me in the kindest and most creative ways imaginable.

The Massachusetts Episcopal Clergy Association is sponsoring a day long workshop, featuring your truly, at Christ Church, Plymouth, MA, on Thursday, December 13 from 9:00 until 3:00.   The workshop is entitled, “Preparing your Portfolio; a workshop to help you navigate your way through the “new” discernment process”  The fee, including lunch, is $25.  I am sure clergy from other dioceses will be welcome.  For more information contact: the Rev. Robert Hensley, Grace Episcopal Church, P.O. Box 1197, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568.

I am available, from time to time, to lead workshops like this for travel expenses and a small honorarium.  If you would like to bring me to your diocese or seminary, please e-mail me at: stephentayres@gmail.com.

I am trying to find the time to write a blog in honor of the Red Sox by asking the question, “If you were to blow up the discernment process and start afresh, what parts would you trade to Los Angeles, what parts would you keep, and what new players would your seek?”  Your comments are welcome.

Transition and Discernment Issues at General Convention

20 Monday Aug 2012

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Confession:  With all due respect to the great state of Indiana, I’d go to Indianapolis in July only if I wanted a foretaste of my possible eternal reward for being too snarky about the church’s most holy transition ministry system.  The following comments are based solely on my reading of published documents.  I was not there and have no inside information.

I only see three GC resolutions that have a direct bearing on the transition ministry system.  All three, A143, A144, and DO31, call for greater affirmative actions efforts on behalf of women and other minorities.  Clearly, the church perceives an ongoing problem.  The question is, will these particular resolutions help address our affirmative action challenges, and if not, what other policies might we try to implement?

I’ve worked on affirmative actions solutions for more than twenty years in Massachusetts.  In the early 1990s, I authored a diocesan convention resolution calling for the appointment of women and minorities as interims and priests-in-charge.  Once the resolution passed, I pressured the then reluctant bishop to enforce the resolution.  The policy is still in place and fairly effective.  About ten years ago, I served on a task force to update our diocesan deployment policy manual.  A convention resolution had called for the task force to beef up the affirmative action component.  We ended up writing sixty page bureaucratic search committee manual, which I am sure most search committee glance at briefly.  I doubt we had much impact on affirmative action.

A143 calls for the national church through the Office of Transition Ministries, the Office of Pastoral Development, and the Committee on the Status of Women to develop a “Search Tool Kit” with two purposes.  The first would be to give helpful information about the search process to women applicants.  The second would be to give information to search committees about the nature and impact of discriminatory hiring practices.

IMHO, Discernment Doctor comes close to fulfilling the first purpose of the proposed search tool kit.  Useful information about resume writing, OTM writing, interview preparation, etc., can all be found on this blog.  I would be happy to post an article or two that addresses discernment specifically from women’s and or minority points of view.  Send me your contributions and comments.

From my experience in Massachusetts, giving search committees reading material on affirmative action has little impact on their behavior.  Rather than relying on written material, DioMass policy is to monitor the search process and intervene if the list of candidates is not sufficiently diverse: The Diocesan Office will engage in conversation with the Search Committee throughout the process and reserves the right to add names if the slate does not reflect the Diocesan commitment to diversity.

A144 focuses on Episcopal offices and calls on the Office of Pastoral Development to monitor the ratio of female and minority candidates to white, male candidates in Episcopal nominations and elections, make recommendations on how to improve the ratio, and advise bishop search committees about affirmative action practices.  The explanation notes that while the number of female finalists has been steadily rising, the number actually elected to the episcopate still falls far short of where we could be.

Research is helpful, but I would expand the scope of this survey far beyond the activities in episcopal elections.  What systems do we have in place to mentor younger female and minority clergy so they grow into good candidates for the episcopate?

DO31 calls on bishops to require search committees and vestries to attend an affirmative action workshop as part of the discernment process.

Could we build those workshops around case studies of parishes/dioceses that have experienced female or minority leadership as a blessing?  I have been to far too many church workshops that focus on what is bad about racism, sexism, gender bias, etc. but fail to give my leadership team positive images about the blessings of operating in a non-sexist, non racist fashion.  My gut sense is search committees, vestries, and electing conventions make traditional decisions because we are “playing it safe” in these challenging times.  Telling us that is wrong is not as likely to change our behavior as giving us successful case studies of women or minority clergy in leadership positions.

The next General Convention could see more resolutions impacting transition ministry as the church restructures herself for the 21st century (one can always hope.)  My hope is that transition ministry will be treated as piece of a larger human resource management system that is focused on recruiting and sustaining the best team of clergy to serve the church.  Such a system would include ordination, seminary (or other) education, mentoring, transition/discernment, clergy health, insurance, pensions, etc.   To my knowledge, the last time General Convention took a comprehensive look at transition ministry was back in the early 1970s, when the Clergy Deployment Office was first established.  Lets get a conversation going.

 

Interim Ministry in Transition

02 Monday Jul 2012

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The Alban Institute’s Dan Hotchkiss just published an article on the evolution of interim ministry theory and practice.  Given that the Alban Institute wrote the book on interim ministry, it is interesting to hear a senior staff member reflect on increasing criticism of the practice.

http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=9964

Hotchkiss writes:  Over the last decade, the consensus in support of interim ministry has softened somewhat. 

 Carolyn Weese and Russell Crabtree, in The Elephant in the Boardroom (Jossey-Bass 2004), complain that the “prevailing stream of thinking about leadership transitions tends to be illness- based. A pastoral transition is treated like a terminal diagnosis….” (p. 19) Ouch!  

Hotchkiss cites a recent article by Norman Bendroth, a long time interim ministry practitioner who surveyed current thinking about the interim system:

http://macucc.s3.amazonaws.com/71BBE2C7B9B049B0883D51809D9A1E82_Rethinking%20Transitional%20Ministry.pdf

Bendroth writes: Anthony B. Robinson, a seasoned United Church of Christ pastor, author and consultant has recommended that “Tall Steeple” churches, in particular, might consider a “succession” model where the newly called pastor overlaps the outgoing pastor so the church does not lose momentum.

How effective is transitional ministry? There is a crying need for longitudinal studies to be done across denominational lines that will provide quantitative results. To date that has not been done,

Here in the Diocese of Massachusetts, a recent transition in our transition ministry office led to a lively discussion among our bishop and area deans about the future of transition ministry.  Bishop Shaw cited statistics that show that interims often slow down a congregation’s momentum, that attendance and pledges often drop during the interim period.  He noted that, given the unpredictability of many transitions, it is difficult to find good interim ministers in a timely fashion.  He expressed openness to trying the planned succession model mentioned by Weese and Crabtree and Anthony Robinson.  Our largest inner city church used the succession model several years ago and is flourishing.  The deans noted that another model – appointment of a priest in charge as a prelude to calling that priest as rector, was increasingly popular.

Here at Old North, we are developing a long-range plan focused on our three hundredth birthday in eleven years.  The wardens approached me about including succession planning as I will probably retire within that timeframe.  They are intrigued with the idea of bringing an associate on who would be eligible to become rector.

The practice of interim ministry will continue to evolve as the church restructures herself for effective ministry in the 21st century.  The articles cited above are useful introductory reflections.  I agree with Norman Bendroth that we need some serious independent studies on what has or has not worked well in the church as well as studies of best practices in other business and non-profit organizations.

 

 

 

 

Demographics, Discernment, and a Summer Reading Recommendation

20 Wednesday Jun 2012

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In my role as the Discernment Doctor, I try to focus like a hawk on issues affecting clergy career development.  But as our careers are developing (or coming to a conclusion) in an institution that is struggling now, I occasionally feel the need to look at the big picture.  Discerning our own futures is interwoven with discerning the future of the church we love and serve.

I have just started reading Jill Lepore’s new book, The Mansion of Happiness, A History of Life and Death.  If you like non-fiction, I strongly recommend that you add this to your summer reading list.  It will get my vote for a future reading for my church book club.

The book title and introduction explore American perceptions of the meaning of life as expressed in Milton Bradley’s phenomenally successful board game, Life.  The first version of the game was developed by the original Milton Bradley on the eve of the Civil War.  That game, played on a checkerboard, was a mixture of morality and materialism.  When Milton Bradley, the company, reissued Life in 1960, the game was all materialism.  He who retires with the most money wins.

Lepore made a sociological observation about how changing demographics impacts our view of history and of questions about the meaning of life.  Around 1800, the average American family had seven children and the average American lifespan was around forty years.  In 2010 the average American family has less than two children and the average lifespan approached eighty years.

In response to this dramatic demographic change, Lepore notes that our understanding of life has straightened out.  Where we once observed life as circular, life is now experienced as linear.  Lepore writes:

“In 1800, the fertility rate in the United States was over seven births per woman, the average age of the population was sixteen, and the life expectancy was under forty.  By 2010, the fertility rate had fallen to barely two, the average age of the population had risen to thirty-seven, and the average American could expect to live to nearly eighty….

When life lengthened, all those circles became lines…Meanwhile, the contemplation of life and death moved from the humanities to the sciences,…

When thinking about life and death moved from the library to the laboratory, the light of history dimmed.  The future trumped the past.  Youth vanquished age, and death grew unthinkable”.

Could Lepore’s observation about the dimming of the light of history be made about a dimming of the light of Christ?  I wonder how much the “straightening out of life” accounts for the shrinking popularity of the church and of the Christian message in America.  Churches across the theological spectrum are shrinking.  Yes a few megachurches are growing, but on average, religious affiliation is declining, while polls show “no religion” is increasing.  Even here at Old North, our Sunday attendance dipped a bit last year after several years of steady, if small growth.

Certainly, decreasing family size accounts for some of the decline as the church’s  primary form of evangelism is to baptize children of current members.  The church flourished during the 1950s as post World War Two families gave birth to a baby boom (including me) and launched new suburbs with new churches.  Once the baby boom subsided, so did church growth.

I wonder whether long term demographic changes have had a subtler and deeper impact on how our faith is received. As life lengthens, do individuals confront the same core theological questions our ancestors did?  Birth and death are experienced less frequently in our modern lives than they were two hundred years ago.  Moreover, birth and death tend to be isolated from society.  They occur in hospitals and nursing homes, not at home.  Are we then less likely to ask questions about what happens after death?  Do we postpone asking those questions until our own deaths feel relatively close?

Does the church proclaim the Christian faith in a way that is more attuned to larger families and shorter life spans?   Is John 3:16 (to the end that all who believe in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.) still the most important summary of the Gospel?  Is the primary role of clergy to be pastors to help families through life transitions of birth, illness, and death?  Do we view sin primarily as an obstacle to eternal life, or as an affront to our fellow human beings?  Is the eucharist a sacrifice to bring us closer to eternal life, or a shared meal to bring us closer to each other?  I am not suggesting that we stop believing in eternal life, stop pastoring each other through life challenges, stop repenting our sins, or stop celebrating the eucharist.  Perhaps we need to rethink what each of these theologies and activities mean in the context of lengthened lives.

Different Christian themes have been emphasized in different Christian eras.  These themes are all found in our large and ancient tradition, but they vary in importance from era to era depending on the existential, economic, and political issues faced by the living communities of faith at the time.  What themes are we currently de-emphasizing, and more importantly, what ancient Christian themes can help us address the spiritual challenges of the twenty-first century?

Might we understand recent church battles over sexual identity and family structure as attempts to adjust the church’s theology and practice to changing demographics and to lives less focused on birth and death?  The difference in responses to these issues by the Western church versus the church in the developing world may be a reflection of differing demographic realities between developed and developing worlds.

What are the spiritual questions that seem most pressing in your longer and healthier life?  What stories from our ancient tradition will help you understand the purpose of life as we now live it?  As The Mansion of Happiness, A History of Life and Death points out, our core values are changing in response to changing demographic, technological, economic, and social change.  Where do we find God in that change?  How can our history help us understand the future to which God is calling us and calling our church?

Reflections on the eve of a clergy career development seminar

21 Monday May 2012

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I am preparing to lead a clergy career development seminar this week with Rob Voyle and have been reviewing my notes, which form the basis of the Theologies for the Vocational Journey and Five Steps in the Search Process series in the archives of this blog.  I have been leading longer or shorter versions of this seminar over the past ten years and am always interested to see where my thinking is changing as the deployment/transition ministry system evolves.  Might you be interested as well? Some of these thoughts have been expressed in more recent blogs.  Here is a summary of them as I prepare for a three-day seminar.

On call and discernment theologies:  Traditional longer searches are far more comfortable with a discernment theology that encourages clergy to self nominate, in part because the mechanisms to support a call theology, particularly the OTM Portfolio matching program, do not yield many good results.  On the other hand, the growth of short searches for PiC’s or rectors in smaller parishes leans toward a call theology, as candidates are nominated by TMO’s or bishops.

On personal discernment portfolios (where you put answers to the questions: Who am I? and What do I want to do with my gifts?) I am adding a third question:  How can my gifts help the church in the future?  God knows the church needs help now, so we need to be clear on how we can use our skills to strengthen the gospel, if not the church.

The OTM portfolio is no longer a significant factor in getting you name before a search committee, because the program for matching clergy gifts and skills to parish desired gifts and skills is widely perceived to be ineffective.  However, the narrative section of the OTM portfolio is valued as a brief writing sample that covers a number of topics relevant to most church searches.

Search committees are experimenting with emerging internet technologies.  I’ve been solicited for a job via a LinkedIn search and recently saw an ad for a rector’s job on my Facebook page.  Skype interviews are replacing phone interviews, though I am not sure how much additional information participants get from trying to read the body language of images that are three inches high on a computer screen.

Interviewing skills are best learned through practice.  You can read all sorts of tips for interviewing, but every bit of that advice will flee your brain when you are seated before a panel of fifteen to thirty interviewers.

Next post I’ll share with you what I learned from participants in the seminar.

Discernment During Institutional Depression

14 Monday May 2012

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Is anyone else concerned about our church’s impassioned embrace of depression as we look toward General Convention and a challenging future?  The Episcopal blogosphere is full of articles underscoring our grim institutional trajectory.  A couple of the best are from Episcopal Journey of Hope – Where Have All the Rectors Gone? – a stark appraisal of declining job opportunities in the Midwest, and from The Crusty Old Dean –  Guns, Germs and the Episcopal Church, a challenge to the church to radically restructure or collapse.

A few observations:

  1.  Our church is struggling with the same set of social and economic issues that our culture and nation are facing, so it comes as no surprise that our church leaders are exhibiting similar behavior to our national political leaders.  It is just disappointing.
  2. When looking at ways to restructure the church, we should not overlook our discernment/transition/deployment system.  It is inefficient and could do a much better job of nurturing clergy needed to lead the church out of the current morass.
  3. A basic discernment question clergy are asking is: “Should I seek a secular job?”  In the last two reported years, 2009 and 2010, paying positions shrank by around three percent a year.  Many holding paid clerical jobs see compensation frozen or squeezed at the same time as their workload increases.
  4. I am trying to locate some clear statistics on the impact of the church’s decline on clergy jobs, but have yet to find a single clear source of facts.  I’ll piece together some stats from multiple sources in my next post.
  5. Rather than talking solely about cost cutting and restructuring, I’d like to talk more about where we still find joy and hope in the work we are doing.

Quiet and Interviewing Introverts

30 Monday Apr 2012

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I’ve just finished reading Quiet, by Susan Cain.  The book, which is riding high on the best seller lists, is a defense of introverts, by an introvert.  As the majority of clergy are introverts, you may, like me, enjoy reading this.  Cain writes in her introduction (p.6):

As adults, many of us work for organizations that insist we work in team, in offices without walls, for supervisors who value people skills above all. To advance our careers, we’re expected to promote ourselves unabashedly.

Quiet helped me think about the many clergy colleagues who are reticent to enter search process.  For many clergy the essence of a search process is to open our lives to review and judgment by a large number of people.  This is not an activity that comes naturally to introverts.

The early steps of a search process, reading and reflecting on parish profiles, and writing responses to questionnaires, play to introverts strengths.  The very first step, getting your foot in the door and introducing yourself to a search committee, may be daunting for introverts.  That is an area I have been most helpful to clergy.

The face to face interviews at the end of a search process may be the most daunting part of a search process for introverts.  I know I have a hard time reading social cues from a panel of ten or more interviewers.  I like to think before answering questions.  From my perspective, large group interviews test skills that are more associated with extroverts than introverts.

I wonder what the impact of using large group interviews as the penultimate test in search processes has on discernment.  I don’t think it is a matter of extroverts faring better in the deployment system than introverts.  My unscientific survey of the clergy leadership in my own diocese senses that introverts fill a majority of the prestige positions.   

My question is whether group interviews, which may be biased toward extroverts, can help identify the best introvert for a position.  Are we testing to see who might be least weak in skills associated with extroverts, rather than testing to see who might be strongest in skills associated with introverts?

Several recent bishop searches have tried to move away from the large group interview.  In these searches all the semi-final candidate are brought together for a “retreat” where they engage in a series of small group interviews.  I participated in one such process a few years ago.  While I appreciated the small group conversations, I found cramming so many interviews into a short amount of time with little rest so exhausting that I withdrew from the process.

We need to think about how to structure finalinterviews to better test for candidates’ strengths, keeping in mind that the majority of clergy are introverts.