A Profile in Church Leadership

We hear a lot about leadership these days, particularly during a presidential campaign season.  Many thoughtful people have sifted through secular profiles of leadership and assessed their appropriateness for the church. 

Paul David Lawson, in his book Old Wine in New Wine Skins—Centering Prayer and Systems Theory, gives some guidance as to what qualities we need in our church leaders.  He writes that churches need leaders who are relational. Leaders and members mutually affect one another; they co-create one another in a way.  Therefore, relational skills are more important than great powers of speech or reservoirs of information.  Good leaders take responsibility for their influential role in the community and encourage members to do the same.  I think this is what the Apostle Paul is getting at when he describes the church as a body of inter-related parts (1 Cor. 12:12ff.).  

Drawing upon the work of Edwin Friedman, Lawson catalogues some characteristics of good church leaders.  (1) They stay in touch with all the members of the congregation, not just the ones they enjoy or agree with or support them.  (2) Good leaders try to be nonreactive.  They act out of principle with a clear purpose.  Their reactions to others are thought based and not emotional venting.  I think of this as keeping in mind the “long game.” Good leaders ask:
       In what direction will my response push us? 
      What is our organizing goal and how am I contributing to this in a constructive way? 
      How will my action incrementally move us along to where we want to be? 
(3) Good leaders tolerate disagreements and stay focused on the merits of people’s positions and not on the person who takes these positions.

Finally, good leaders need to be prepared for sabotage and handle it in a nonreactive manner while staying in touch with the saboteur.  Good leaders know they will meet with resistance, and they do not take this personally.  They know that resistance is evidence that they are working with a living organization where people care about things.  Good leaders are able to adapt, to negotiate, to bend without breaking.  Lawson gives the following ministry tip:

Don’t care about the results.  [The good leader] can work with a number of different outcomes in any given situation and does not need to be emotionally invested in any particular result. Success ought not to be measured by winning or losing in any particular situation, but rather by the ability [the leader] has to work with any outcome (p. 53).

So why do we find it difficult, especially for pastors, to have this type of flexibility?  It has to do with what is called self-differentiation.  A self-differentiated person is one who knows who they are and maintains their self-image based upon their own assessment of themselves.  They certainly listen to others and process feedback, but finally their self-image is not simply a reflection how others see them.  Leaders need to be self-differentiated from their congregations as well.  They listen, and they process feedback.  But their sense of who they are is not an echo of what others think or say about them.

The scripture is clear: Jesus knew who he was.  In other words, he was well self-differentiated. Therefore he acted deliberately and purposefully and  was not reactive as he made his way through the world.  This gave to him the freedom to lead in a racially different way.

Jesus, knowing that the father had given all things into his hands, and that the had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.  Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him (John 13:3-5).

Our congregations need good leaders.  A good leader is not one who has all the answers or can fix everything.  A good leader is one who moves among us in a way that we grow into the people and congregations God wants us to be.  This type of leadership has more to do with who we are than with any portfolio of competencies we might have.

Jim Kelsey
Executive Minister-American Baptist Churches of New York State

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Recognizing Ourselves

When we start shooting one another or even vilifying one another by categories, it is time to go back to original things. The creation account in Genesis asserts that every human being is made in the image of God.  We are all kin to one another; there should be a deep resonance among us. If we don’t recognize ourselves in others—however different they might be, then we are not seeing other people as God sees them.

I arrived at a community meeting about rehabbing a block of vacant houses and found that I was an hour early.  I was walking back to my car to listen to the radio and wait.  I was preoccupied contemplating the amount of time I had wasted, how I could have enjoyed a more leisurely dinner if I had paid better attention to the phone message.

Just as I walked under the light of a street lamp, a young black man stepped out of the shadows of the building.  He startled me, and I yelped.  He too drew back a bit, not expecting me to be there.  We stood there face to face, less than two feet apart, looking into one another’s eyes.  He blurted out:  “It’s O.K., I was just lighting a cigarette out of the wind.”  I responded:  “No problem, you just startled me.”  We stood there with our eyes locked continuing to assure one another that all was good.

A whole other conversation took place through our faces.  This was not a block to be avoided at night, but there were blocks close by that were not so peaceful.  Considerations of safety and harmony were always on people’s minds. We both lived in a society that said I, as a white guy, should be a bit leery young black urban males; he was certainly aware of this.  Society often told him that I did not have his best interest at heart.  It was within this context that we stood face to face under a pool of light on a dark city street.

I wanted to communicate to him that he had simply surprised me.  I reacted without thinking or even clearly seeing who he was.  I wanted him to know that I did not see him as my enemy.  I sensed from his eyes that he wanted to communicate to me that he was not threat.  There was nothing I had that he wanted.  He was just trying to light a cigarette on a windy street.  This is what I sensed passing between us, both of us feeling awkward.  I was aware of our common humanity and vulnerability in that moment.  I felt our shared need to be understood and accepted.  Both of us were simply trying live our lives in peace.

There is so much in our society that tries to set us against one another, to say for one group to get ahead another group must be diminished.  The creation account denies this lie.  It teaches that we are all kin to one another.  For any of us to live fully into God’s plan for our life, our neighbor must have that same opportunity.  At the core of our being we are kin to one another.

White folks and black folks, protestors and police officers, Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Libertarians, we are all in this together. If we choose sides and build walls, we are each damaging a piece of who were created by God to be; we are less than whole human beings.  Human beings are not the natural enemies of other human beings.  This is an aberration we introduce into creation because we fail to see the image of God in that other person.  Sometimes that image is, admittedly, buried pretty deeply and a bit malformed; but it is there.  The Bible says so.

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister-American Baptist Churches of New York State

Trust Must be Built

She sat in my office, clearly having something to say; I had been at the church about six months.  She said:  “Dr. Kelsey, I will support you.  I will follow you, but I will never trust.” Life had taught her that ministers were not trustworthy; too often she had felt disappointed and betrayed.  I determined that day that I would earn her trust.

A part of my job is listening to churches and pastors talk about their relationship with one another.  Sometimes it is going very well, other times—not so well.  I have come to believe that the critical element in a healthy productive partnership between pastor and people is trust.

If there is trust, then failures and disagreements, challenges and setbacks, poor sermons and belt tightening can all be endured.  If there is not trust, then even the smallest issue can escalate into a major problem.

This is why pastoral misconduct is so devastating to a congregation. It undermines that most basic foundation of a shared ministry: trust.  We see ministers as “safe” people, people who will care for us and advocate for us.  So we open ourselves up to them.  Then when they betray our trust, the wounds are deep; and we find it difficult to trust the next one.

Trust that is destroyed must be deliberately rebuilt through a candid facing of what has happened and discussion with those affected.  Burying it simply magnifies the power of the hurt.

Trust can be built through honest conversations about sometimes uncomfortable topics.  Trust is built by making sure the other person understands us.  It is often forged less by the words we speak than by the tone and what it reveals about us and our intentions.  Transparency and vulnerability and goodwill speak louder than any words we might say.

Pastors must often earn trust from congregants, and sometimes congregations must earn the trust of a pastor.  Congregants are not the only ones who have been hurt.  This process is moved along by living honestly, patiently, and transparently before one another.  Yes, that can be risky; but it is the path to wholeness.

I did earn that woman’s trust.  I finally walked with her through a devastating personal tragedy; that tipped the scales in my favor.  It was not easy, but it was deliberate.

Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State

 

 

Fear and Death in Orlando

The writer of the creation story in Genesis gives a highly-nuanced account.  The author writes:  “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness [1:3-4].”  God does not eliminate the darkness, rather God places boundaries on the darkness.

Watching the news of the slaughter in Orlando Sunday night, I again wished that God had simply eliminated the darkness, but that is not what the text says.  The wording acknowledges that there is still darkness in the world.  The image of darkness in the Bible carries a lot of baggage.  Darkness represents what is not of God, what opposes God’s will, what is contrary to God’s purpose in creation.  This careful choice of words makes clear what we already knew:  there is an element of creation that is in full scale rebellion against God.  The killings in Orlando makes clear anew that evil is alive and on the move in our world.

The Genesis writer makes clear that the darkness is contained; boundaries have been imposed upon it.  God is preeminently the ruler of creation; evil does not and will not have the last word.  The writer makes clear who has imposed limitations on whom.  But for now, evil is afoot in God’s good creation.  The Genesis account recognizes this unsettling reality.

Believers must name these killings for what they really are: evil.  There is some discussion as to whether this was an act of terrorism or a hate crime.  This is a distinction without difference.  Acts of terrorism are grounded in the hatred of those who are different, others who are not like us.  Hate crimes are designed to terrorize groups of people, to make then afraid and anxious in their own land.  This killing was born of a hatred of the LGBT folks.  The killer targeted a particular LGBT club in order to terrorize this broader community of people.  Hate and terrorism are inextricably linked.

To call these killings evil does not necessary point out a path to a safer and more loving world.  Naming this slaughter as evil could lead to a passive resignation, to saying there is nothing we can do.  It does not have to lead to this.  We can see these killings as a vivid outbreak of a broader cloth of hatred and fear in the human community.  I say fear because I think that a good bit of hatred is born of fear.  We are afraid of that which unsettles us and makes us uncomfortable, and that fear spawns hatred as a coping mechanism.

God, not evil, is the author of creation and is preeminent.  Thus there is no need for believers to fear people who make us uncomfortable, who challenge our worldview, whose experiences have been different from ours.  In other words, there is no credible excuse for hatred among God’s followers.  Perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18). .  God does not hate because God does not fear. 

Jim Kelsey
Executive Minister-American Baptist Churches of New York State

The Right Word at the Right Time

It was the autumn of my seventh year of school, my first experience of the wider world of middle school with its changing classrooms and multiple teachers.  It was a time of blessed transition from the strictures of grade school.  The world was a place of broadened opportunities.

I was lying on the living room floor watching our 19” black and white Zenith TV.  A Pepsi commercial came on, and the voice sang “You’ve got a lot to live, and Pepsi’s got a lot to give…because Pepsi helps them come alive.”  I heard that ditty many times, but for the first time I knew what they were singing about; I understood. In that moment a door opened for me.  The world had become a place of endless opportunities. You see, I was in love—as much in love as a 7^th grade boy can be. Her name was Theresa, and she had long hair and was on the cheerleading squad.

My infatuation faded as I realized Theresa was just leading me on for her own gratification. After a month, I found a new girlfriend; Shannon was her name.  She was truer of heart.  But it was not the same, Shannon was not my first love.

In my infatuation I was ready to embrace a new piece of the person I was becoming. The Pepsi commercial spoke to a new capacity in me.  It was the right message at the right time.

Seven years later I was a freshman in college, and life was opening up around me again.  I had left behind the provincialism and tedium of High School.  My professors were opening up to me new vistas of knowledge and giving to me the freedom to think my own thoughts.  I found I was a standout accounting student and already could see a comfortable career as a CPA, a job where I could make a good living and not get dirty or risk debilitating injury.  I could see myself to having everything I could ever want, yet I sensed there had to be more to life. 

I was not attending church anymore.  I come to believe in a God who only instilled guilt and fear, both of which were designed to make us behave.  It seemed to me that all this talk of God’s love for us only served as a pretext for God’s judgment of us when we rejected that love.  Nonetheless, I did believe in God and thought that God had created me.  So I began to read the Bible, thinking I might find something there to make sense of life.

My parents were away on fishing trip, and I was alone in the house; it was a Tuesday night.  I read the story of Nicodemus in my red-letter edition King James Bible that I had received in the fourth grade for memorizing the books of the Bible in order.  The story recorded there stunned me.  The beauty of the Gospel washed over me.  For the first time I got it.  The words in red took on transforming power. I handed myself over to the grace of God without reservation.

I had heard countless sermons, attended endless Vacation Bible Schools, and sat through years of Sunday School.  Yet I had never really gotten the message.  In that brief exchange between Jesus and a Pharisee, it all broke open to me.  It was like waking up from a coma to a sunlit room on a fresh morning.

I was ready in that moment to embrace a new piece of the person I was becoming. That story spoke to a newly-birthed capacity in me.  It was the right message at the right time.

God is always birthing new things in our lives, pushing us to grow, to risk, to rely.  I think this should make us patient, patient with ourselves and with those around us.  We all are on the way to becoming someone we have not yet been.  And, yes, we each are at different places on that journey.  The important thing is to walk through the next door when it opens.

Jim Kelsey
Executive Minster-American Baptist Churches of New York State

 

Speaking the Truth in Love

The 2016 biennial planning committee was discussing the literary context of the theme verse for the gathering, Ephesians 4:16, seeking guidance for our planning process.  We moved to a discussion of 4:15 and the meaning of “speaking the truth in love.”  We discovered that speaking the truth in love is not always a simple and straight forward process.  We asked if there is an inherent tension sometimes between truth and love.

We associate love with supporting others, encouraging and comforting them, easing their pain and hardship.  In other words, we associate love with caregiving; but love and caregiving are not necessarily the same thing in every case.  Love makes demands, has expectations, both opens up new avenues and closes off others.  At times it is difficult to love and to be loved. God’s deep love for us can be probing and unsettling.  It can make us uncomfortable with what we have done and who we have let ourselves become.  Love is not always the same thing as caregiving.

We can speak the truth in many voices, and not all of them are loving.  We can use truth as a weapon to diminish others, to create distance, to gain power, to self-justify, and to wound.  Truth is easily misused in the service of ego and pride.  Both the Pharisee and the tax collector speak essentially the truth in Luke 18:9-14, but God heard in their words very different things.  Truth can reveal more about us than we wish to admit; but it can also liberate, clear the decks, and make room for the future.  It all depends on the voice we use.  Paul admonishes us to use the voice of love as we speak the truth. 

Speaking the truth in love is all about how and why we speak.  Do we speak the truth because it is the best thing for the other person or this community to hear?  Will it open a future to them that they cannot now envision?  Will it move them in the path of joy and wholeness?  Is it about their being built up or about our being vindicated and reassured of our own righteousness?  The truth is the truth, and love is love.  Speaking the truth in the voice of love is the challenge.

We sometimes must say difficult things because loving can mean advocating for change.  This is true in our families and in our churches. We all have had conversations that were difficult but necessary, conversations we would have preferred not to have had and for a while avoided.  Our churches sometimes need to have these conversations.  We need to talk truthfully  about who we have become, how our community has changed, and what new things God is wanting to do among us and around us.  We avoid these conversation because they will necessitate change, and change feels a lot like loss.

Maybe speaking the truth in love is about telling one another what time it is when we have lost track of ourselves and the world around us.  When my sons were young and we would be reading together or playing with Legos or lying in front of the fire telling spooky stories, I would have to say “Boys, it is time to go to bed.”  I didn’t want to say it, and they didn’t want to hear it; but it was the truth.  It was the best thing for them.  It laid the foundation for a better tomorrow for them.  Maybe that is speaking the truth in love.

Blessings,
Jim Kelsey
Executive Minister-American Baptist Churches of New York State

Waking Up Hearts

Ministry used to be simpler it seems.  You had your kids, your youth, your adults, and your seniors.  You could tell who was who simply by looking at them.  Then you knew what to do.  Kids? Playdough, cookies, and Bible stories would get the job done.  Youth?  Some pizza, ping pong, and discussion topics got you through it.  Adults?  Go with small groups, a Valentine’s Day banquet, and a marriage enrichment seminar.  Seniors?  A trip to an art museum with a nice lunch, pastoral visits in the home, and Sunday School did nicely.  Those were simpler times.

Ministry is not so simple anymore; you need a program to tell the players.  Boomers were not such a big complication; if someone was not a child, a youth, or a senior, they were likely a boomer.  Now we have Builders, Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, and Generation Z.  David Kinnaman (You Lost Me—Why Young Christians Are Leaving the Church) writes about Nomads and Prodigals and Exiles (pp. 61—86).  Don’t forget about the Nones, as in “none of the above” on surveys about religious devotion.  This increasingly "none of the above" portion of our society has no tethering to any type of faith community and has little feeling for any clearly articulated religious convictions.  In the midst of all this good analytical work, we who care about congregations and faith sometimes feel overwhelmed.  With the growing numbers of Nones, we can live under a cloud of discouragement.  At those times I remind myself of Andries.

I met Andries at De Pelgrim Evangelische Baptistengemeente in Oostende, Flanders; I was interim pastor there for several years.  Flanders is a wonderful place to live. The Flemish are intelligent, caring, hardworking, and masters at baking bread and making chocolate.  The schools are great and the traffic orderly.  The Flemish care well for the elderly, the young, and the poor among them.  Flanders is, however, thoroughly secular.  Religious faith has been eschewed by all but a small minority.  They see the church, historically, as an oppressive institution and are glad it has been pushed to the margin of society.  One man said to me:  “We worked for so long to be free of the church, why would we want it back?”  They consider God, in a practical sense, dead.

Andries was a typical Flemish man:  reserved, private, sober, and thoroughly secular.  He believed God was the main character in a fairy tale that modernity and science had put the lie to.  When I met him was still a pretty sober guy but no longer secular.  He had, some years before, become a Christian convert.  He shared with me that before he became a Christian he felt nothing deeply.  He did not feel fear or hope, sorrow or joy, anxiety or peace.  He was numb in his heart, he said.  When he became a believer, he said that he “became alive in my heart for the first time. “  He began to feel things deeply—joy and sorrow, hope and disappointment, longing and contentment.

I remember Andries when I consider the present trends in our society.  He was the very personification of agnosticism in a deliberately secularized society.  Yet the spirit of God got through to him.  There was a beachhead of vulnerability within his anesthetized heart.  He had a spiritual capacity for responsiveness that he did not know he possessed.  I find that hopeful.

When I encounter people that have no interest in religious faith and no regard for communities of faith, I try not to think of them as bad or pagan or rejecters of God.  Rather, I try to think of them as numb, as people who do not fully appreciate what lies dormant within them.  I believe there is a capacity in each us capable of yielding to God and embracing the beauty of the gospel—even if we do not all yet know it.  When I remember Andries, I feel hopeful, and I try to wake up some things in people.

Blessings,
Jim Kelsey
Executive Minister--American Baptist Churches of New York State