TRANSITIONAL EXECUTIVE PRESBYTER REPORT

Transcription

1 TRANSITIONAL EXECUTIVE PRESBYTER REPORT Next Steps: Priorities for the PTCA When you elected me to the position of transitional executive presbyter a year ago, you handed me a job description with this overall purpose: To provide strategic executive and entrepreneurial leadership, oversight, and communication in order to encourage and build up the ministry of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area and its congregations, while also implementing significant changes in its operational style and staffing design. I have reported to you at each presbytery and weekly through E-Merge on what I have been seeing, thinking, and doing, toward this purpose. The report which follows is my attempt to provide you with my best insights and recommendation, as developed in close consultation with the Presbytery Leadership Team. Our recommendations can be summarized in this way: Develop and Implement a Clear Strategy for Congregational Support and Sustainability with a specific focus on partnering, between congregations and with the presbytery, toward the strengthening of congregational worship, witness, and advocacy. Develop and Implement a Strategy for Clergy Engagement and Excellence with a specific focus on building relationships, developing leadership skills, and deepening the spiritual life of our teaching elders. Those two strategic directions sustainability and engagement may not strike you exactly as rocket science. They re not. They re pretty basic, actually. But neither was it rocket science to say we would go to the moon. Finding the means to do so, and the will? That was. Realizing the impact of these goals for our churches will require intentional focus, commitment, and resources, and will ask us to consider different practices and strategies going forward. Naming them clearly, however, is the only way to address them directly. I sense something special happening in our midst. God isn t done with us yet. I welcome your feedback and your participation in how we move forward in ministry together

2 A year ago, at the May 2015 meeting of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area, I stood before many of you not as your transitional executive presbyter, but as the candidate for the position. Much has changed over the past year, including my status, but one thing clearly has not: the responsibility I have to live out what you have asked me to do. And that means I can begin my comments in one place only: with my thanks, for the way in which you have welcomed me to this Presbytery and to this role; invited me into your churches and committees; challenged me to do my job; and offered your viewpoints and opinions. We don t always see things the same way in this Presbytery, but we clearly care an awful lot, and often passionately, about our beliefs and commitments, both to our faith and to our ministries. I d rather engage disagreement than apathy. I think it important to remind you what you have asked me to do as I ve joined you here: PURPOSE: To provide strategic executive and entrepreneurial leadership, oversight, and communication in order to encourage and build up the ministry of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area and its congregations, while also implementing significant changes in its operational style and staffing design. To exemplify a commitment to Jesus Christ that honors the healthy relationships upon which the mission of the Presbytery and its congregations can move forward. RESPONSIBILITIES: To provide bold leadership in assisting the Presbytery to sharpen its emerging vision: Lead the Presbytery in exploring alternative models for its structure, operating style and staffing Enhance relationships among pastors, sessions, and persons providing leadership in the Presbytery and its congregations Boost participation in the life of the Presbytery by building networks of mutual ministry Encourage the vitality of each congregation and help ensure pastoral and theological support to those in transition or crisis Oversee communication strategies of the Presbytery Keep the Presbytery connected to the PC (USA) and to ecumenical and interfaith partners. To manage the Presbytery's operational responsibilities, including: Supervise the Presbytery's staff, contracted employees and New Church Development pastors Implement the Presbytery's decisions in matters of strategy, program, resources and personnel Provide administrative support for any Presbytery Administrative Commissions Resource the work of the Presbytery and key committees, e.g. Presbytery

3 Leadership Team, Board of Trustees, Committee on Ministry, Church Development Team, Advocates for Integrity in Ministry Coordinate all other functions of the Presbytery and assist their efforts upon request Provide strategic oversight of the Presbytery's budgets and their development The Presbytery s Personnel Committee will provide for you a mandated annual performance review in July. That process is already underway; I am grateful for it and welcome its guidance. My goal tonight is to summarize: what I ve observed over the past year; how I ve interpreted those observations; and the directions they suggest to me as focused priorities and next steps for the Presbytery. Just a word about the language framework I ve just used. What is very apparent to me, having stepped into this system as an outsider, is how differently individual persons interpret what they are observing in the Presbytery. Use our attendance tonight as a simple example. Less than half of our Teaching Elders are likely to be present, and less than half of our congregations are likely to have sent Ruling Elder commissioners. That s data; an observation. What I usually hear, however, is your interpretation of the data: less than half our teaching elders are here because our members lack commitment; because our meetings are flawed; because the weather is too good, or too bad; because presbyteries are 20 th century dinosaurs. Each response provides an important piece of information. But none holds the full truth. Part of strategic leadership is to sort and sift and prioritize. That s what I ll try to do for the next few minutes sift and sort what I ve observed among you, and then attempt some prioritization. The shortest line between two people is a story. And so my purpose this past year has not been to advise or fix or save, but to see and hear your witness. I ve worshipped in our churches and talked with our teaching elders and ruling elders and sat with many of our committees and task forces. I haven t made it to all of you yet, and I will fix that. But it s been most of you, and what I ve seen has borne the gifts of grace, energy, intelligence, imagination, and love. That includes remarkable ministry and struggling ministry, congregationally and at the Presbytery level. There s uncertainty about what to do next, to be sure. Fear. Confusion. Exhaustion. In some cases, growing resignation to an assumed outcome. People pulled in too many directions. Church is hard these days, and harder still for those of us with long memories of full sanctuaries and beloved traditions. Yet I see a Presbytery and its churches following the Holy Spirit in a changing world, whether they like those words or not. (Honestly, I really don t care whether some of you are doing it fearlessly and others with fear and trembling.) I see urban and rural churches struggling with similar challenges of ministry, even where a geographic metro-southern line divides us. I see sixty-plus churches with Presbyterian in their name or charter, and at times, nearly that many silos. I see declining participation in institutional structures and initiatives, and enormous questions of bandwidth the inability to do all that we, individually and corporately, think we should be doing. And that starts right here, with me: when I lay awake nights, it s all about wondering how I how we can do all we want to do, all you ve asked me to do, and do so while all staying physically and emotionally

4 healthy. And, of course, we wrestle with dollars. The math doesn t always work. These problems may or may not be resolvable. What we control is our commitment to prayer, to unity, to relationship, to mission, to care and compassion, to the welcome and acceptance of all people that s who we are as the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area. There is a powerful institutional memory in the PTCA it is often individual, oral, and inconsistently applied. I ve been told and hear this with my sincere thanks for your honesty, which is one of the greatest privileges you can offer I ve been told stories of Presbytery actions 25 years ago that remain present and raw, and in many ways determinative of current perceptions. There s a broad undercurrent of distrust of the Presbytery, one I m told, at least by some of you, has been well-earned over decades. I ve been asked why the Presbytery isn t doing what it did a decade ago, or why it can t do more now. I ve been told we ll never be able to retro-fit this rust-bucket of a boat we call Presbytery; that this institution s day has come and gone. And I ve been asked for Presbytery s help on numerous occasions, and seen the results of Presbytery s work in important and positive ways. These are all realities we need to acknowledge, own, and sort out. In watching and observing all of this, I ve let two prominent writers help guide my subsequent reflections. Practical theologian Richard Osmer invites us to ask four questions: What is going on? Why is this going on? What ought to be going on? How might we respond? Business consultant Patrick Lencioni describes a quest for clarity of purpose in organizations with four questions of his own, similar in dynamic but unique in language: Why do we exist? How do we behave? What do we do? How will we succeed? Since the turn of this calendar year, I ve been talking with the Presbytery Leadership Team about what these observations, and what we might do in response, trading ideas with them as they carry out their own key responsibility: to (i)dentify strategic directions in the Presbytery s mission and ministry for the next several years and to recommend to Presbytery new policies, programs and organizational structures to support that strategic direction. We have choices and we have options, and in answer to a direct question I got a couple of weeks ago, yes, we have a future. Unquestionably. But it can t look like the past; doing church in the 21 st century will and must look different. We cannot thrive simply by doing what we ve always done just a little harder; nor will we save ourselves simply by whittling away at our capability step-by-financially-driven-step. The sooner we acknowledge that, the better off we ll all be. And it starts with the primary shared task of the Presbytery: to support our congregations and their leadership in the ministry they are called to do in the places they are called to do it. So what does that mean? I ll tell you first what I don t think it means. I don t think it means we need to spend the next two years on a carefully scripted strategic planning process that would yield lots of talk and perhaps even new mission-statement language. I think we know what we need to do, even if we still quibble about this adverb or that tense. Nor is it solving structural challenges; we could have a healthy structure humming right along without ever effectively do

5 our needed work. I first named four strategic priorities for you in January, in broad, general terms, and said a bit more in March. I ll name them here again, fleshed out with goals and priorities not for next year, but for now. Develop and Implement a Clear Strategy for Congregational Support and Sustainability with a specific focus on partnering, between congregations and with the presbytery, toward the strengthening of congregational worship, witness, and advocacy. Please, please, please, please I beg you to hear this fresh, and not through the lens of longheld views of what a Presbytery did, does, or should do, for good or for ill. The challenge of church today is real, and the challenges many of our congregations are experiencing are real. This goal is not one of judgment or condescension; it s one of reality. We need to support each other in our ministries to do everything possible to help our congregations in worshipping God, extending the love of Christ, providing nurture and support to members, extending ourselves into the community. We need to be better together than we can be on our own, and we can be. To do that, however, means focusing our work on where it can have the most positive impact. We re doing this is some particular and effective ways, and we have holes in our structure we desperately need to fill. For example, for churches facing pastoral transitions a crucial time in the life of a congregation the Called Positions subcommittee of COM has quickly become a group providing individual and effective guidance for congregations, and I applaud their work. The shift in structural responsibilities between the Committee on Ministry and the Committee on Congregational Vitality, which you approved last year, is still very much a work in progress. That has left uncertainty among many of you about connections between congregations and the Presbytery. There s work to do here, and it will get done; it must get done, and it especially must get done for churches who would welcome a partner in ministry. That s why I have suggested that PLT name a cross-committee, system-wide team to develop and promote a Presbytery-wide Congregational Sustainability Project, with both funding and clear metrics, that will focus on helping congregations understand their underlying options and opportunities for sustainability and will help the Presbytery direct its resources in ways that will have impact and significance. GOAL: to foster an environment of congregational support and sustainability and in doing so, to become a Presbytery committed to resourcing diverse and faithful expressions of congregational worship, service, and advocacy. To do this will require: Focus. A little bit here, a little bit there, mixed in with all our other wants and needs, won t get us to where we need to go. We need a focused effort. Cross-committee buy-in. This work requires the collaboration of CCV, COM, and Mission & Witness. This does not take away from their work, or involve new, joint meetings, but it does mean they re on-board. This effort would be a focused and largely self-run supplement, much like Called Positions.

6 Development of metrics and indices of health: What does a vital congregation look like? How can congregations self-evaluate? And how can the Presbytery partner with them in this work? Presbytery can t (and shouldn t) go in and solve every problem; it can develop resources to equip congregational leadership to do so. Coordination of financial resources: The Presbytery should not expect congregations to engage this work if we re not willing to support new initiatives financially. We ve got dollars, but we need to better identify, coordinate, and prioritize their use. A climate of partnership, not takeover. Enough said. Maybe, additional staffing (or re-allocation of staffing dollars). For example: do we increase funds (through a raise in per capita) or re-allocate current funds (a lessertime stated clerk, for example) for a part-time staff focused exclusively on this goal? SPECIFIC ACTIONS: To pursue this focus and priority is not benign. It cannot be simply the creation of yet another committee who can think great thoughts and make good suggestions with neither teeth nor funding. Nor can it be the sole responsibility of the transitional executive presbyter. Inevitably, if we as a Presbytery want to make this a priority, we need to put people, energy, and dollars behind it. That would mean: Create a working team NOW to bring initial recommendations for process (vision, values, goals) and implementation (steps and practices) to the September PTCA meeting, if possible (so that it can impact the 2017 budget). Specifically examine implications for staffing, with recommendations. Dialogue with the Budget Task Force on Implications for 2017 PTCA budget. Dialogue with CCV and with M&W, in whose budgets reside virtually all of the PTCA discretionary spending, about vision, mission, availability, and stronger coordination with the overall goals of the Presbytery. Explore educational initiatives and sustainability metrics which the Presbytery could be about in its support of congregations, if warranted. Again, remember our goal: to foster an environment of congregational support and sustainability and in doing so, to become a Presbytery committed to resourcing diverse and faithful expressions of congregational worship, service, and advocacy. Develop and Implement a Strategy for Clergy Support and Excellence with a specific focus on building relationships, developing leadership skills, and deepening the spiritual life of our teaching elders. That the Presbyterian form of church and government is not clergy-centric does not change the reality of study after study: that healthy churches have healthy leaders. The Lilly Foundation, the nation s primary funder of programs to promote lives of Christian churches, says this: The local congregation is the primary place where most Christians gather in community to worship God, to learn what it means to be people of faith, to teach the beliefs and practices of Christian faith to each new generation, and to reach out to others in service

7 and witness. Strong, vital congregations play powerful roles in the lives of those who participate in them as well as to the larger civic communities of which they are a part. The quality of pastoral leadership is critical to the health and vitality of congregations. When well-prepared, thoughtful, imaginative, able and caring pastors lead congregations, they tend to thrive. Two weeks ago, the Omaha Presbyterian Seminary Foundation promised a seed grant to the PTCA to support clergy excellence, in response to a proposal provided by our Committee on Ministry. It s a beginning; an encouragement toward a clear and crucial GOAL: to foster clergy well-being and excellence, and in doing so, to become a Presbytery committed to effective support of its teaching elders. We ve not done well recently in this work. Too often, what we have done has been perceived or implemented as just another item on an over-taxed to-do list, either for the Presbytery or for its teaching elders. We must change that. But again, this cannot simply be a Presbytery program or initiative; if we are going to invest in our teaching elders, our teaching elders must be committed to investing in themselves, and our congregations must sign on as well. If we re ready to do this that is, to commit ourselves to nurturing well-prepared, thoughtful, imaginative, able and caring pastors COM (and, to some extent, CPM) will need to step up. And not just through more careful application of our Book of Order-mandated practices, but in collegial, challenging, creative ways. These first two proposed goals speak to at the core of work and must be received our focused attention. These second two speak to its implementation. Re-think Our Meetings and Gatherings with a specific focus on structuring our meetings around supporting congregations and leadership while still fulfilling our constitutional duties. Presbytery meetings / agendas are shaped and formed by the moderator, and populated in large part by our committees. We call it our business. Shouldn t these meetings which require significant commitments of time and energy also be driven by our mission? We need to ask key questions about the nature, content, and frequency of our Presbytery meetings and how they can better support the ministries of our congregations and the excellence of our leadership. And if we can t do that, then maybe we need to ask about meeting less often for Presbytery business and more often in other ways. GOAL: to convene Presbytery meetings that help shape and support the overall vision and practice of PTCA congregations and leaders. I know that our incoming moderator, Sue Rutford, has a commitment to look hard at how we do our meetings, and how we tie meetings to mission. She will be working with the officers of the Presbytery and the PLT. She has my full support, and frankly, she needs that from all of us. Align Our 2017 Budget, Resources, and Staffing with Narrowed Priorities

8 with a specific focus on using our human and financial resources on the mission and vision that God has clearly placed before the Presbytery and its congregations. Times are tight financially. You didn t need me to tell you that. But we are not broke. We have resources, and who knows the concept of stewardship of resources better than us. To be good stewards, we need to look carefully this summer at every single financial resource this Presbytery has and ask: how much do we have; who is tasked to deploy it, and to what end; and how can it be coordinated more intentionally? The Board of Trustees has already identified this need. There s about $4.5 million in total assets spread over more than a dozen accounts. For some of that money, the future is probably now. We also need to bring this knowledge to bear in transparent ways on our 2017 budget process, and budget and staffing proposals. GOAL: to re-envision the use of Presbytery resources and staff that will help PTCA best support the overall vision and practice of PTCA congregations and leaders. If next year s budget looks exactly like this year s, then next year s prognosis for ministry will also look like this year s, and that doesn t help us. So if this is in some ways an obvious discussion, it is not an easy one. It will require collaborative work. Silos will have to come down. Assumptions have to be challenged. There may be a short sense of dislocation. Not for the sake of change or control or power, but for the sake of coordinated mission. Earlier this year, Presbytery approved a strategic funds document that allocated the bulk of our gracious separation contributions to an endowment fund for congregational initiatives. We must similarly establish clear content, ownership, and use knowledge and policies for all the key Presbytery funds, so that there are no questions about what we have, how it can be spent, and who holds authorization to access the funds. And then we have to start using it. We will also have to ask the question, more broadly than just at the Budget Task Force level, about what per capita should be, given these missional questions. The Presbytery has held per capita level for a number of years now, and for good reason. Should we continue to do that? What are the tradeoffs to raising or lowering per capita, or leaving it stable? These are not questions of how we will pay our bills; they are questions of how we will do our mission. These are not questions of how our congregations can support the work of the Presbytery; but how the Presbytery can best support the ministry of our congregations, and how together we will support these efforts. We can t do everything. Figuring out what we can do may cause some bumps and bruised feelings. But that doesn t mean we do nothing, or only the same things. Summer in Minnesota is for the lakes, not intensive committee work. That s why we need to start asking these questions right now (well, two months ago there s that bandwidth issue again), so that we can bring real recommendations for you to consider already at our September meeting, ahead of any final budget. I admit that I have not always stewarded my own time as well as I could have, sometimes getting caught in the details, because details often scream loudest. I don t regret having done the work I ve done, but choices also have implications. I pledge to you my continuing commitment to try and make the main thing the main thing, every day.

9 Two final notes in a document already too long. That I have not talked about re-vamping our communication practices; committing ourselves to anti-racism or environmental stewardship; or addressing other felt needs, does not mean those initiatives are unimportant. It simply means that they must each serve the broader goals we have in front of us. Finally, this observation, made both from being here with you and from my conversations with colleagues, students, bloggers, and faithful Presbyterians across the country. People, broadly, used to trust the church and clergy until we started giving them a reason not to; too many reasons not to. We ve we lost their trust, and in many ways, we seem to have lost each other s trust, too. In this way, we too much mirror society. Of all the changes affecting today s church, this is the biggest, by far. The good news is, it s also in our hands to change this perception. It s time we start earning trust back. One church at a time. One Christian at a time. One pastor at a time. One act of decency and integrity at a time. Less individualistic and more redemptive. We may never win back a general trust of the institutions of church and clergy. But we can let people see that Jesus is, and always will be, trustworthy. And isn t that what really matters anyway? David Brooks wrote recently about communities that heal those who suffer. It wasn t about us. But it could have been, maybe should have been. God isn t done with us yet. I sense something special happening here; that has everything to do with all of you. It s time to write the next chapter of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area.