Peering into Peer Groups: Study Needs Your Help
The heart of much of the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence program, peer groups come in all shapes and sizes. Some, for example, have trained facilitators; others don’t. Some only include pastors and lay people from a particular denomination; others have an ecumenical interfaith membership. Some have a defined curriculum set by the program sponsor; others are free to set their agendas.
Ever wonder which type of program would most benefit a given pastor? Or how important it might be to have a facilitator? Or what relationship, if any, the group’s funding has with participant satisfaction?
Now’s your chance to help find out.
A major study of SPE clergy peer groups gets underway next month, when researchers begin mailing a survey to participants nationwide. They’re hoping to send the survey to everyone who has ever been part of a SPE peer group—which would be about 6,000 people.
“No one is exactly sure how many people there are in the SPE universe, so we are relying on the project leaders to help us,” said Janet Maykus, one of the study leaders and principal of the College of Pastoral Leaders at Austin Seminary in Austin, Tex. Maykus and Penny Long Marler of Samford University have asked all SPE projects that sponsor peer groups to send them the names and addresses of all their peer group participants, past and present.
As of mid-November, the participant mailing lists had begun trickling in from the various SPE projects. The target date for sending the lists was December 1, so if you’re a project director and haven’t sent your list yet, please send it soon, said Maykus. You can email the list to Maykus.
Maykus said the participant names and addresses will be kept confidential. The mailing list will be used only to address the survey mailing and will then be destroyed.
Groundwork for the study, which is being funded by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., began several months ago. To help prepare the participant survey questions, the researchers conducted seven focus group meetings with SPE project staff and participants at last summer’s Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Forum in Indianapolis.
The survey results will be used to identify discrete types of clergy peer groups. Based on those types, eight representative peer groups will then be identified from SPE projects around the country and followed in-depth for a year-long evaluation.
“We’re not looking for what’s the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to have a peer group, but what happens in each of these types of groups,” said Maykus. “We want to know what types of ministers are best served by which groups.”
The study is expected to generate research reports on the effects of clergy peer groups, “how to” booklets for developing and evaluating different kinds of peer groups, and other practical information for SPE project directors and staff. The study is also planning a clergy workshop and conference for SPE participants in June 2010 to discuss the study findings.
Such information is critically needed by SPE projects, said Maykus.
“We’re all working to be self-sustaining,” she said. “We all want to have some sophisticated information and hard data that will help us design and operate our programs so that they are effective and sustainable. We need information that we can share with others who might be interested in funding or endowing programs. This kind of information can help us be even better stewards.”
Other study leaders include Marler, grant and research coordinator with the Resource Center for Pastoral Excellence, Samford University; Bob Reber, former dean of Auburn Theological Seminary; and Bruce Roberts, a consultant on clergy peer learning.
