This simple five stage process can be used on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon or an evening. It is a way of bringing together the reflections of individuals and considering or discerning them in community.
Set this up by asking people to journal their hopes. vision, dreams for the church or several weeks. These may be collected on a vision wall in the church. Ask people to prepare their hearts for this time together.
Killing the Clergy Softly – Congregational conflict, job loss and depression
An interesting article by David Briggs.
Before any church can appoint a pastor it needs to have a clear sense of vision; i.e. who it is and where it is going. Without this sense of vision, clarified and articulated by the community of God’s people, the church is not in a position to discern the right person to lead them towards it. The work of reflecting, discerning and articulating the vision of the church really belongs to the lay leadership in their capacity as representatives of the whole body. This is collective work and work for the long term. The vision of a congregation is broader and longer term than the tenure of any one pastor. It is the basis for selecting, empowering and reviewing the pastor.
Many of us received the sad new of the unexpected passing of John Mallison this past week. John was a key leader in Australia in training small group leaders and mentors. In fact he pioneered the way for many years. His life influenced many including my own.
An interview with him on mentoring is recorded here:
http://www.johnmallison.com/videoint.html
Teamwork is a key part of Christian leadership. The skills and practices to be an effective and considerate team member and a wise and inclusive team leader need to be consciously cultivated. The team also needs to be formed through an intentional process. Some teams just happen, but it is more common for good teams to be shaped and formed by intentional processes of team development.
There are several key steps to action in conflict scenarios.
Create Space
After a conflict has erupted the first thing to do is to create space to deal with it well. Negotiate a cease-fire. In this space spend some time agreeing to how to proceed. We call this ‘negotiating process’. Agreement can be around the use of ground rules, covenant commitments, or a shared set of core values to honour in conflict. It may be a good time to do some teaching if the situation is not too volatile and tense. Although if the pastor is personally involved, it cannot be the pastor who teaches this. The second key element of creating space is reconciling hurt relationships. It is essential to make sure relationships are put right if there were hurtful events in the initial flare up. This reconciliation doesn’t solve the conflict, but it does create the spiritual and psychological space in which the conflict can be worked on.
At a recent leadership meeting we spent some time reflecting on the nature of Spiritual Gifts and how to assist church members identify and use these in the family of God and the wider community. We looked at the Biblical basis for gifts and discussed how these might have looked and worked in the early Christian communities Paul in particular was writing about. We then examined several of the New Testament lists of gifts and discussed whether this was a complete catalogue or a kind of sample list of the phenomena Paul was talking about. Finally we spent some time on the body life metaphor and a discussion about the place of love in relation to the gifts. A presentation and some notes are linked below.
This simple five step process is designed to allow for three sources of spiritual discernment to work in harmony with each other. These are; God-given human insight, the wisdom of reflecting in community, and intentional times of listening to God.
This idea has been adapted from an original scheme shared on a retreat my wife Merran attended in the UK, facilitated by Gerard Hughes the author of God of Surprises .
The relationship between pastor and church is profoundly important and often transformational for both. The role in relation to any one church however, is never permanent. Discerning whether to stay or leave revolves around spiritual reflection on several key questions. Ideally these should be part of every pastor’s annual reflection.
Do I discern any changes or unsettledness in my sense of call to lead this group of people at this time? What are these changes? What is my reflection on why this is occurring?
While travelling interstate this last week, I met with a pastor who was seeking to facilitate a time of healing in his church which had been through a difficult time. Conflict and hurt can be profoundly painful for Christian communities for many reasons. The opportunity to bring some of these situations honestly and openly before God to ask for healing is important. Here are a couple of resources I have collected over the years which can be adapted and used in services of healing.