Recreating the Church

Leadership for the Postmodern Age

Richard L Hamm

• Publisher: TCP Books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780827232631
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Mainline denominations in the United States are in crisis. These institutions - created in and for modernity - are now facing a changed, postmodern culture. Hamm faces the crisis, examining its origins, and offers sound advice on how to lead to church to make the adaptive changes needed to thrive in postmodern times. A TCP Leadership Series title.

1

Why Is Leadership in the Mainline Church So Difficult?

“We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ…”

Romans 12:5–6)

In 1993, I was in Dallas, Texas, for a final meeting with the search committee for general minister and president. I arrived the night before the mid-afternoon interview so I would be well rested. Some friends in town, Michael and Sarah, invited me to lunch. Grateful for the opportunity to relax, I met them at a local restaurant.

In the course of our conversation, Sarah asked me if I had experienced any dreams the night before. As one who seldom paid any attention to dreams, I had to think about it. I realized that, yes, I had had a dream the night before, and as it came back to me I reported it to Sarah. “I dreamed I was in a big house. All the doors and windows were locked for some reason and I smelled the strong odor of natural gas! I kept trying to get out, but I couldn’t. It seemed the place was going to explode! That’s when I woke up.”

As the imagery sank in, the three of us together laughed uncontrollably for two minutes!

Why is leadership in all the expressions of mainline churches so difficult?

There are several possible answers to this question. Some of these answers may have to do with our individual inadequacies as leaders. We may not be very skilled; we may not adequately understand the organization we are serving; or we may have personal pathologies that “out” through our leadership in unhealthy ways and thus sabotage our work. These are all possibilities we must take very seriously and for which we must be on the lookout constantly.

However, another answer that seldom gets examined by either the leader or the system is possible, and it is time for all of us who love these institutions to take a hard look at this one. The modern paradigms, which are the underpinning of our mainline systems, no longer work. Yet these systems and we who comprise these systems are loath to change much of anything about them.

Most of us in ordained ministry feel or felt called to change things: to change the world in ways that will make it more just and loving, to change the church in ways that will make it more faithful and effective. Even as we take our ordination vows in a setting of celebration and hope, most of us assume the world will be resistant, but few of us suspect how resistant the church itself will be to change.

The modern paradigms, which are the underpinning of our mainline systems, no longer work. Yet these systems and we who comprise these systems are loath to change much of anything about them.

Perhaps our first clue comes as we are “installed” in a role in the life of a congregation.

Installed?

Dishwashers are installed. Parts are installed. But should ministers be installed?”

As a former church executive, I have participated in a myriad of installation services for congregational ministers, and for middle judicatory and denominational executives. These occasions nearly always feature a “charge” or a covenant of some kind between the person being installed and the people he or she has been called to lead (though serve is a more frequently used word than lead, which should be our second clue that the church will, itself, be resistant to change). They also include lots of language about “office” and about the “institution” being served.

As always, our language both betrays and shapes our assumptions. Doesn’t an “installation service” sound an awful lot like what happens when we call service people to install a new appliance?

The underlying assumption, a modern assumption, is that the church is a big machine that requires certain parts in order to function effectively. Thus a minister is installed to play his or her part in the ecclesial machine. A minister is not installed to change anything, at least nothing important to the essence of the machine itself. The minister is installed to make the machine work properly as it was designed, to fill a place that was left vacant by the previous occupant’s departure. It is something like exchanging a new fan belt for one that has worn out or broken. And as the guy in the commercial used to say, “Parts is parts!”

It is partly a throwback to the modern era when it was assumed that we could “organize evil out of the universe,” or, to put it another way, “We can successfully do God’s work of redeeming the universe if we just get properly organized.” We inherited these modern institutions, as they currently exist, mostly from the World War II generation. Along with these institutions, we inherited the assumption that these institutions are, indeed, properly organized and therefore need little more than an occasional “tweaking.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I recognize and appreciate the power of institutions for accomplishing good things and helping hold us accountable to the good work to which we collectively commit ourselves as the church. The church does express itself institutionally, but it is more than just an institution. The church is called to be the “body of the living Christ,” an organism, not a mere machine.

A living body has identifiable “parts,” certainly. Yet those parts are not static objects that are installed like a belt, a pulley, or even a computer chip. The parts of a living body grow and develop out of the very DNA of the body. If a part dies or is “removed,” a new part is grown by the body or is “transplanted” from another body. The difference is not merely semantic. An installed part is “bolted on,” but a regenerated or transplanted part is, or becomes, one with the body. This means that as the body itself grows and changes in response to its environment, the transplanted part changes along with it and actually becomes a part of the whole organism.

Of course, it is important for ministers and other church leaders to stay appropriately differentiated. We need to know the difference between ourselves and the institutions we serve or we lose our ability to lead. We should neither “disappear into the whole” nor allow ourselves merely to be “bolted on” to an institution like a new water pump.

So how might a celebration of the beginning of a new ministry become a call to service rather than a mere service call? Even if you have long since been installed, you can use the occasion of the beginning of the service of new lay officers and leaders each year, as well as that of new staff people, to help educate the church to what leadership means.

On these occasions, use language that affirms the church as the body of the living Christ. Avoid using reductionist language that implies we are merely “throwing open the hood” so the new part can be inserted. Use language about leaders and leadership that recognizes that leading is a corporate activity, not something one person does to or for the whole. The rest of the members have a responsibility to support and to hold accountable all the other members, including identified leaders. Use language that recognizes that leadership is about empowering others to discover, develop, and use their gifts as well. Think about the language of the governance of the body you serve. Do phrases such as “functional committee” and “chair” appear? You may want to consider using different language that reinforces relational qualities of leadership rather than functional qualities only. For example, the word “moderator” is more relational than a word like “chair.” “Spiritual oversight” is a more dynamic phrase than “supervision.”

Nevertheless, changing the language alone will not transform the church. Simply changing the word “committees” to “ministries” doesn’t make them ministries, but it is a beginning. Having a “service of commissioning” or “blessing” rather than an “installation” won’t by itself transform an institution into an organism, but it is a beginning. The words we use to name and describe do help shape and reshape our assumptions and our way of being.

Back to the original question: why is leadership in the mainline churches so difficult? Even in spite of the eloquent language of transformation that may be employed in services of installation, my experience suggests that the system neither expects nor really wants the minister to transform anything. The minister is expected to engage in technical change only: change that fixes day-to-day problems in the system as it is. The system does not want the minister to engage in adaptive change: change that adjusts the design or function of the system so that the system is itself changed.

Thus, in modern church systems, a minister is installed to be a sort of governor: a governor is a mechanical device that regulates the speed of an engine to be certain that it goes along at a steady pace no matter what kind of a load is put on the engine. Said another way, the purpose of a governor is to maintain homeostasis in the engine, but a governor cannot change the engine in its design or its function (even if the function is no longer relevant to the work that needs to be done).

What if ministers were sent instead of installed? What if they were commissioned? To be “commissioned” means to be sent to serve the mission (not just the institution) and to be given the authority to do so.

In the midst of a basketball game, a team’s strategy and lineup are constantly adjusted in order to meet the changing conditions on the court created by the opposing team’s strategy and deployment of players. When a change is made in the lineup, a coach does not install a new player. The coach sends in a new player who is authorized to make a difference and who is expected to significantly transform what is happening on the floor through leadership and teamwork.

Does this mean that ministers should be given carte blanche to do whatever they want to do, without regard for any authority beyond themselves? Of course not. We remember that all of us, lay and clergy alike, are subject to the human condition. Clergy are subject to the authority of God and to the authority of the church that commissions them, in part to be a check on potential abuses of the authority granted them. Thus, decisions about how the church relates to the world and how it functions in fulfilling its mission must be made in ways that are rooted in community, not autocracy. The community must confirm the individual’s discernment of God’s desires for the church. This too must be done in a discerning way and not merely by simple democracy (more will be said about this). This is why mainline denominations ordain individuals only after the wider community of faith confirms their personal sense of call as legitimate.

What does it mean for a minister to be “commissioned” or “blessed”? It means that he or she is given the authority (and the responsibility) to help the community of faith discern what constitutes faithfulness and effectiveness now and to shepherd the community into that faithfulness and effectiveness. This is different from being installed to keep the machinery running smoothly, to keep the boat from rocking, to stay the course, to be certain that nothing and no one has to change in any deeper, more significant, and adaptive way. Yet it is my experience that the church in all its expressions usually means what it says when it says it is installing a new leader. This locks down the possibility of creative partnership, reducing leadership to a mechanical function only.

At this point, the reader may be thinking, “Hamm sounds pretty cynical.”

Let me set the record straight. I am not an angry, disgruntled former leader of a mainline denomination who has no hope for these eight denominations that are struggling to find a new way of understanding their mission and new ways to carry out that mission effectively. On the contrary, I have great hope for this part of Christ’s church, because God is still God, and I believe God continues to work for the redemption and transformation of these mainline churches.

I am, however, disillusioned. And this is a good thing!

Who wants to live an illusion? How could faithfulness and illusion ever live together? It is only as we are dis-illusioned that effective mission and ministry become possible.

I confess that I entered the role of minister with many illusions, probably including the illusion that I knew what was best for the church and the illusion that I was going to single-handedly change both the church and the world. Some of these illusions had to do with youthful enthusiasm and some had to do with arrogance. These are illusions with which we all have to struggle in the process of maturing as Christians and as spiritual leaders.

However, the illusion I wish to address in this conversation is the illusion that the church calls us to change the church. Ironically, it is an illusion created by idealism about the church and ministry, idealism that is held by both laypeople and ministers. It is an idealism that is often overtaken by individual and collective anxiety about change, anxiety that turns the illusion into delusion. As the word itself implies, delusion has an evil connotation, an insidious quality that threatens to sabotage worthy ideals and ultimately sabotages needed change itself.

Now we are at the heart of the matter: anxiety. The faithfulness and effectiveness of the church is undercut, ideals become illusions, and illusions become delusions, through the ubiquitous presence and power of anxiety. In the individual minister and layperson, it is the fear of death (what Paul Tillich called “ontological anxiety”: the fear of being). In the system we call “church” (or in any system for that matter), it is the fear of change, change being one of the faces of death, change requiring at least partial death.¹

Am I cynical? No, I am not cynical (though I confess I have my cynical moments about the church and about myself as well). To be truly cynical wou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editor’s Foreword
• Preface
• Historical Background
• Modern versus Postmodern
• Chapter 1 - Why Is Leadership in the Mainline Church So Difficult?
• Chapter 2 - Technical and Adaptive Change
• Part I - How Did It Come to This?
• Part II - Challenges Confronting Mainline Churches Today
• Part III - Leading a Journey of Transformation
• Appendix: Questions to Use in Exploring a Context
• Notes
• Bibliography