Lessons for Leaders in the New Now
As advances in technology and communication connect people around the globe as never before, the world is becoming flat. We are living in a “New Now.” Although this emerging new world is exciting and filled with possibilities, many greet it with fear and anxiety. But as this new world emerges, it brings with it new lessons for leadership and congregational life.
The poet, Juan Ramon Jimenez, writes:
I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing
and nothing
happens! Nothing. . .Silence. . . Waves. . . .
--Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and we are standing now, quietly, in the new life?
Perhaps we are indeed “standing now, quietly, in the new life.” Perhaps where we are is where we need to be. If so, how do we minister in this new life, this new world? How do we lead others while staying connected to our own spiritual centers? In the New Now, how do we care for ourselves and one another responsibly? In such a world, how do clergy and congregations act and function consistent with what they say they believe?
Fourteen years ago, the Louisiana Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church established the Center for Pastoral Effectiveness to help support and maintain pastors in ministry. Thanks to a Sustaining Pastoral Excellence grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., the Center has been able to expand its ministry and continue to explore how to sustain pastoral and congregational excellence. As director of the center, I have been privileged to work with clergy and congregations in the New Now. In that time, I have been able to find more than a few “nuggets of gold,” both from mining my own stream of experience and from gleaning the wisdom of others. Over the years, I have learned, unlearned, and modified these nuggets into several basic beliefs about pastoral ministry, which are listed below. I welcome your responses, agreements, disagreements, and insights.
- Congregations are self-organizing systems. Self-organization is the natural process by which complex, adaptive systems emerge.
- One of the greatest challenges for pastoral leaders is to relinquish control and trust the living, organic, self-organizing system that emerges and is always emerging. This adaptive complex system, however, is not necessarily the same as “The Formal System” by which congregations are organized. Indeed, it is often something much deeper and other than a congregation’s formal organization. It is much more than the lines on an organizational chart. Put another way, how can pastors get out of the way, open things up, make space for, and listen to the ineffable God (Spirit) who pulsates beneath, within, through, and beyond the systems of which we are part? How can we open things up and trust what Gerard Manley Hopkins calls “the dearest freshness deep down [in] things”? These are critically important questions — especially when we understand that the one sure way to close down a system or interfere with the “deep freshness [in] things,” is to attempt to control (organize) it.
- Leadership has more to do with “being” and “presence” than with “doing” and “action.” As Susan Skjei, a noted organizational consultant and educator, explains, “Presence is about the alignment of heart, mind, and soul. It’s about developing the capacity to use the tools in the right context and for the right reasons.” A calm grounded presence, emanating from a leader, is palpable. It is contagious, moving others to be calm and present. Through cultivated presence, the leader works to be attentive and create safe, nurturing space, holding it both without and within, while remaining a guide on the side.
- In church life today, too much time and energy are spent on matters that are irrelevant to the congregation’s purpose. Much of the pathology we now see in congregations of all sizes stems from the “fact” that we spend a great deal of time doing what doesn’t need to be done — organizing, designing, controlling, and convincing people we can fix them. Meanwhile, we neglect the essential task of nurturing the self-organizing system. In the New Now, pastoral leadership is focused on the spirit, purpose, life and direction of the emerging system, the congregation.
- The congregation has within it the answers to the challenges and opportunities it faces. As pastors, our task is not to give the “correct” answer, even if we think we know it, but to ask difficult questions, to help create a space and to hold that space so the collective wisdom of the group — perhaps even God’s voice — can emerge. God, whose middle name is Surprise, happens between people more often than from a person. As pastoral leaders, how do we make safe, nurturing space for those holy happenings or conversations to occur?
- The leader recognizes that the systemic and adaptive issues he or she faces always have more than one right answer, way, or process. As the cultural anthropologist, Angeles Arrien, has said, leadership is to be “open to outcome, not attached to it.” Consequently, when two or three (or more) are joined in open, honest conversation, the healthy leader’s task is often to facilitate the emergence of creative possibilities. When that happens, Christ is uniquely in their midst.
- Leaders who are creatively involved with others, whether as peers or in some other form of supportive and honest group connection, make wiser decisions. We are not on the journey or in our ministries alone. Creativity, wisdom, and genius are cultivated in relationships. Even Michelangelo worked with a group to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
- Leadership in the New Now involves the art of living with and asking open, honest, and sometimes difficult questions, for questions have the power to start a person or community on a “quest.” In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel wrote about an old teacher who gave the following response when asked by a young student why he prayed: “I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.” Effective leaders live in conversation with the deep Self, or God within, as a source of guidance. There, they hear the soulful questions to ask and receive the courage to raise them in a spirit of compassion.
- Chaos plays an important part not only in the spiritual and emotional development of individuals, but also in the evolution of congregations. Theologically, chaos is not the opposite of God, but another face of the Divine. Therefore, effective leaders accept chaos as part of the journey, knowing it is part of the creative process.
- Spiritual practice, which fosters ongoing growth and grounding, is essential for effective pastoral leadership. In many ways, it is as important as theological knowledge and clarity of thought and expression. Dag Hammarskjold, the second Secretary General of the United Nations, wrote, “The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.” Spiritual practice makes space for the inner conversation and is critical to leadership. For me, meditation is my spiritual practice. Whatever else it does — and it does many beneficial things — it is the way I search for the ever-present God within. The mythologist, Joseph Campbell said, “You must have a room or a certain hour of the day or so, where you do not know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody or what they owe you — but a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. . .” The Psalmist writes, “Be still and know that I am God.” Spiritual practice is the place where our theories and theologies move from intellectual concepts to experiential presence, deep soulful wisdom and acts of compassion.
- Effective pastoral leaders know themselves. They know there is no difference between becoming an effective leader and becoming a fully integrated human being.
- There is one question — the most important question — that must be asked of any leader and to which he or she must soulfully respond. In the words of the poet Mary Oliver, “Tell me, what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?”
The poet, Wendell Berry writes:
It may be when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.
Or as one anonymous writer put it:
The trip becomes “a journey” after you have lost your luggage.
Perhaps, in the New Now, our real journey has begun. Through our deep presence, attentiveness, and intentional action, the wisdom of the collective soul and the voice of God are emerging in new ways, reshaping the landscape and the luggage we carry with us.
What is emerging for you as a pastoral leader in the New Now?
The Rev. W. Craig Gilliam is director of The Center for Pastoral Effectiveness, a ministry of The Louisiana Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church and a component of the Conference’s Sustaining Pastoral Excellence project.
