As of October 1, 2023, my weekly articles will be posted only on Substack. I have been playing around with Substack, cross-posting articles there and here on my website for the past couple of months. I’ve found that I really like it over at Substack because 1) it is even more flexible and user-friendly than Squarespace and 2) there’s a greater potential to build community. Here’s what you need to know:

• I will still update the rest of laurastephensreed.com regularly.

• Entries on my laurastephensreed.com blog will remain here. I will not migrate or delete them.

• If you are a subscriber to my laurastephensreed.com blog, I have switched your subscription to Substack for you.

• If you are a subscriber to my monthly Mailchimp newsletter, I will not automatically add you to my Substack. (You are certainly invited to join me over there, though!) I will continue to send out a monthly newsletter, because I think that’s a better place for announcements than Substack is.

• There will be free and paid subscription options on Substack. With your free subscription you’ll get new content every Tuesday like I’ve offered here. With a paid subscription you’ll get an additional article, resource, or giveaway once a month that is exclusive to those who opt for a monthly ($7) or annual ($60) plan.

Questions? You’re always welcome to contact me!

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash.

As the notion that church should be a family thankfully (hopefully?) fades into the ether, we need a new metaphor for the kind of belonging we hope to experience ourselves and to extend to others.* I think community could be that idea, but the word is so overused that it’s in danger of being meaningless. I’d like to share two experiences of community I’ve had as a way of drawing out what it could mean for congregations.

Karaoke night at the bar

My best friends and I decided to mark the end of our first year of seminary by going to karaoke at a nearby dive bar. I had never been to a karaoke night, much less performed at one. But there was something about this place that immediately drew me in. The bar was full, which gave it a certain energy. There was lots of support for those brave enough to sing. Rather than keeping to their own groups, people circulated and enthusiastically greeted newcomers. When I returned to school in the fall, Trackside became my regular Wednesday night spot. It didn’t matter if I had an 8:00 class on Thursday (that’s what naps are for) or of I wasn’t feeling my best (that’s what ginger ale is for). I was there - and I was singing. Now, I’m not a good singer, but I had so much fun getting up in front of others and putting on a show. I tapped into a different part of my personality than my front-facing introvert/seminary student, and everyone in the place cheered me on, just like they did for everyone else. I took my mom once, and she recalls everyone shouting my name as I came through the door. I took my mentoring committee for ordination, and that night is still what some people on that committee remember most about that process.

The comic shop

Currently, the place where I see community best embodied is at the local comic book store. I don’t really read comics, but from the first time I accompanied my husband and son, I was warmly welcomed. So is everyone else, even on event days (Free Comic Book Day, Wonder Woman Day, Batman Day) when the store is JAMMED with customers and local artists selling their creations. Those special days are usually fundraisers for local organizations like the domestic violence shelter and the animal shelter, so the store is keen on supporting the local community. More important than the welcome I have experienced, though, is the hospitality I have observed. The Comic Strip is a safe harbor for the LGTBQIA+ community. My own kid was greeted like a hero returning from war when we moved back to the area, and the shop runners and local artists still talk about the characters he has developed and cosplayed over the years.

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that my two examples of community are in no way church-related. That’s not to say that I have never felt like part of a church community. It is to say, though, that I think most congregations have work to do. I want church to be a place where everyone, from newcomers to long-timers and from kids to adults, feels that they are wanted and that they would be missed if they didn’t show up. I want church to be a meeting spot for cross-pollination of different ideas and people who wouldn’t otherwise interact with one another. I want church to be a laboratory where people can use their gifts and try new things while getting a lot of support for those efforts. I want church to be a space where everyone can be their truest, most beloved selves. I want church to be sacrificially and intimately tied to the world around it, being the good and highlighting the good that others are doing. These are the aspects of church that are sometimes lacking, and through the travail that was the pandemic, they have also become my non-negotiables. This is what community is for me; this is the church to which I want to give my time, talents, and treasure.

*I could create a whole other post about the problems with calling church a family. I’ll just share a couple of points here, though. Families are often insular, looking out for their own and making it hard, though often unwittingly, for others to join in. And some families tend to harbor dysfunction that is very harmful to those most affected by it.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash.

Note: the blog is moving to Substack! I will cross-post articles here and there in September, then post only on Substack from October onward. You can find me here on Substack.

Recently one of my coachees made an incredibly wise observation, which she has graciously permitted me to share. She was mulling how she wants to approach her resignation letter to her congregation, and she had requested samples from colleagues. Some of them, she noted, seemed to be geared toward preserving the church’s goodwill toward the departing pastor. The messages boiled down to, “Don’t blame me for leaving. If it were up to me, I’d stay with you forever!” Even though these ministers would need to step away from relationships with congregants for ministerial ethics reasons, they still wanted to maintain the emotional attachment. That might make everyone feel better in the short term, but it can breed discontent and stuckness in the long term.

It’s really difficult to write a good resignation letter. First, this is a point at which big changes for you and congregation become real and irreversible and pick up steam quickly. Second, people will have big feelings upon reading or hearing your resignation announcement. (However uncomfortable these feelings are, they are better than your congregants responding to your exit plan with, “Meh.”) Third, these letters come after months of discernment on your part, during which you might already have felt like you are betraying her congregation by contemplating leaving. You might have a lot of guilt - or anger, depending on the circumstances surrounding your exit, which adds its own challenges to composition. Fourth, there are also things you can’t, or at least probably shouldn’t, say in a resignation letter. (That doesn’t mean there won’t be other, more appropriate venues such as an exit interview for sharing some frank thoughts.) All of these realities make it very tempting to resort to hyperbole or half-truths.

The resignation letter, though, is a pastoral missive. The writing of it is an act of ministry, and ministry must always be in service to the congregation’s vocation as an iteration of Christ’s body. So while the letter is personal, it is not ultimately about the pastor. It is about the church. When you are writing your letter, then, consider what it is that your congregation needs as you share your news in order to move forward in hope. Is it gratitude for what you have experienced together? Is it reassurance that there are lay leaders or staff ready to pick up responsibilities, that the judicatory is on standby to lend support, or that a process for calling a new pastor is ready to be activated? Is it a reminder that the congregation, not the pastor, is the church?

To be sure, the resignation letter must thread a needle with a very small eye. As you write, continually ask yourself, what do I want the readers to know and to feel by the time they reach my signature, and why? How can I be a pastor in the way that I write? How do I both look backward and forward so that I can work toward a positive sense of closure with my people and prepare them to love a new minister?

This letter and leaving in general are hard, holy work. You can be a pastor to those in your care just as much in your departure as in all the good ministry you have done to that point. This worthy goal can be an orienting point for your approach to your exit.

Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash.

Note: the blog is moving to Substack! I will cross-post articles here and there in September, then post only on Substack from October onward. You can find me here on Substack.

I have occasionally coached pastors who serve in such traumatizing settings that I’ve wanted to scream, “RUN OUT OF THERE LIKE YOUR HAIR IS ON FIRE!” I do not say that, though. It’s not my job as a coach to tell a coachee what to do. (It is my job to unearth what coachees know and value and hope and feel and to help them strategize accordingly.)

Here are some signs your congregations might be toxic:

People regularly do not take responsibility for their intended or unintended hurtful words or actions. We all mess up sometimes. That is the nature of being human. Healthy people recognize and apologize when they’ve hurt others. Unhealthy people don’t.

People regularly tell you that you didn’t experience what you know you experienced. The term “gaslighting” has become common parlance these days, and for good reason. Sometimes people will question your reality in order to make you question it.

People who blame and gaslight have substantial power in your context. Every church has some unhealthy people. If they aren’t in staff or lay leadership, their voices don’t ring as loudly in your head. If they are in a position to exert a lot of control, though, that’s when there’s big trouble.

There’s no accountability for people who act in harmful ways. No one has - or will exercise - the ability to apply consequences to unrepentant powermongers.

There’s no clarity about congregational processes, or processes work differently than stated. This keeps the system in constant upheaval and allows the biggest influences to get their way.

The spirituality of those with power generally remains very surface. There is no desire to wrestle with what the gospel means for our lives. Instead, leaders are guided by personal preference at every turn.

I admire the tenacity of pastors who hold on in the midst of abusive circumstances. I know there are sometimes legitimate reasons (e.g., financial concerns) that pastors stick it out, no matter how bad things get. And, there may be a minister out there who needs to hear these truths:

You are loved, gifted, and called by God. And you know what? Sometimes the trajectory of that call changes over time. Your evolving call might nudge you to a new ministerial role or context. It might take you out of vocational ministry for a season or forever. Whatever the case, God’s care for and investment in you doesn’t change.

You don’t deserve mistreatment. You don’t deserve to be called names, to have your worth questioned, to be overworked to the detriment of your health and relationships, to be paid at less than a living wage, to be objectified, or to endure any other kinds of disrespectful behavior. No one does.

The future of your church doesn’t rest solely on your decision to stay or go. You are a minister - one minister - in Christ’s church. That doesn’t mean you can’t and don’t make an impact. (Even in the worst of circumstances, you are planting good seed that will eventually flourish in ways you’ll never know.) It does mean that you don’t have to carry your church or The Church on your back.

You are not a lesser minister if you leave a church for the sake of your wellbeing, no matter how long your tenure has been. I have had a church tenure that was less than a year. (Many people have.) I left because of the toxicity. It was not the end of me or of my vocation. In some ways, it was the real beginning. A short stint is not indicative of your faithfulness or your talent. It does show that you love yourself, which is a key part of Jesus’ two greatest commandments.

At the end of the day, you serve God, not the institution of the Church. These are not the same. It might take leaving your church or even the ministry to be able to continue serving God. If so, that is the better way.

I hold out hope for the Church. On its best days it draws us together in authentic community, helps us live more like Jesus, and connects us to God and our neighbors and the created world in a web of interdependence. And, it is an institution run by humans. It comes up short, sometimes waaaaaaaaaay short. There are consequences to that, and ministers often bear the brunt of them.

Anecdotally, it seems like a lot more pastors lately have been contemplating self-harm, and some have followed through. There might be a range of reasons for this, not just the terrific stress of church work. If you are thinking about ending your life, though, and the strain of your ministry is a contributing factor, I have no qualms about telling you to run from that congregation like your hair is on fire and begging you to reach out to a mental health provider and your loved ones. I promise that they all want you to hang around and that they want to help you through whatever trauma you have endured.

Photo by Nagesh Badu on Unsplash.

Note: the blog is moving to Substack! I will cross-post articles here and there in September, then post only on Substack from October onward. You can find me here on Substack.

Artificial intelligence is here, and someday the robots might come for us just as Sam Waterston warned. In the meantime, we need to figure out what AI can do and shouldn’t do for us.

This is true in the church world as well, so on a lark, I randomly chose an AI generator from a web search. This particular site produces mission and vision statements for a range of industries. All I had to type in was “church,” then choose a tone (inspirational), then select “generate.” Here’s what came back:

Vision:
To create a welcoming and inclusive community where individuals can find hope, inspiration, and spiritual growth, empowering them to make a positive impact in the world.

Mission:
Our mission is to spread love, compassion, and faith by providing a place of worship, guidance, and support for all individuals seeking spiritual fulfillment. Through inspirational teachings, uplifting music, and meaningful connections, we aim to inspire and empower our congregation to live a life of purpose, kindness, and service to others. Together, we strive to create a world filled with love, peace, and harmony, guided by the teachings of Jesus Christ.

It’s truth-telling time. How different do these statements sound from your church’s mission and vision statements? Probably not much. Most guiding statements tend to be aspirational and vague. And that’s why I’m becoming more convinced that they are not the most helpful touchstones for congregations. Leaders expend vast amounts of energy and time (and sometimes big money on a consultant) coming up with a vision and mission…and then the robots instantly manufacture something almost as good. This is one way AI is useful: it’s telling us we’re not putting our resources into efforts with the biggest impact.

Here’s what I’d like to see churches work toward instead:

A helpful story of our congregation. A church can have many narratives about how it arrived at the present moment, and they all might ring true to varying degrees. Not all of them will be useful in terms of seeing the congregation as part of Christ’s body and God’s ongoing work in the world, though. Often we need to be more thoughtful about how we understand and share about our church.

Core values. These can be lived or aspirational, as long as there is clarity about which is which. Brene Brown’s values exercise is a useful one for both individuals and organizations. Naming a church’s story can also illuminate what it is about. What are our non-negotiable commitments that without them, we wouldn’t be us? What ways of being are we trying to incarnate with God’s help?

Seasonal plans based on these values. Covid obliterated what little confidence I had left in 5-10 year strategic planning. Churches need to be more nimble and responsive. (Exceptions include such initiatives as capital campaigns. These too, though, must be deeply rooted in values.) What is God inviting our congregation’s focus to be for the next 6-18 months?

Another kind of AI: appreciative inquiry. Congregations and their surrounding communities are full of individual and collective blessings from God, some tapped and others untapped, that could be put to very positive use in the name of living out values and focus. These gifts change as people come and go and as circumstances change, so they need to be inventoried on an ongoing basis.

Means to assess whether the congregation is being faithful to its core values. This is everything from whole-ministry assessments to individual event debriefs to mutual ministry reviews with staff. How are we stewarding our gifts well in service to the nudges from God we’ve discerned? What adjustments do we need to make?

A congregational covenant. We are people of relationship, because our Trinitarian God embodies connection and also seeks kinship with us. How we interact with one another needs to reflect this, but as mere mortals we benefit from reminders of what healthy bonds look like. We can name and agree to intentional behaviors and attitudes, then establish regular opportunities to recommit to them.

All of these tools are more practical and customized than mission and vision statements, and we shouldn’t trust them to artificial intelligence. Consider how you might stock your congregation’s toolkit with them.

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash.

Note: the blog is moving to Substack! I will cross-post articles here and there in September, then post only on Substack from October onward. You can find me here on Substack.

I have been playing around with Substack, cross-posting articles there and here on my website for the past month. I’ve found that I really like it over at Substack because 1) it is even more flexible and user-friendly than Squarespace and 2) there’s a greater potential to build community. Over the course of September, then, I will begin migrating my current writing to Substack. Here’s what you need to know:

• I will continue cross-posting articles for September. Starting in October I will post new writing only on Substack. (I will still update the rest of laurastephensreed.com regularly.)

• Entries on my laurastephensreed.com blog will remain here. I will not migrate or delete them.

• If you are a subscriber to my laurastephensreed.com blog, I will switch your subscription to Substack for you.

• If you are a subscriber to my monthly Mailchimp newsletter, I will not automatically add you to my Substack. (You are certainly invited to join me over there, though!) I will continue to send out a monthly newsletter, because I think that’s a better place for announcements than Substack is.

• There will be free and paid subscription options on Substack. With your free subscription you’ll get new content every Tuesday like I’ve offered here. With a paid subscription you’ll get an additional article, resource, or giveaway once a month that is exclusive to those who opt for a monthly ($7) or annual ($60) plan.

Questions? You’re always welcome to contact me!

Photo by Erda Estremera on Unsplash.

Most pastors enter ministry expecting to do the frontline work of preaching, teaching, and providing pastoral care, with a side of meetings. But once they are in their contexts, they realize that they have significant responsibilities for other full-time or part-time staff. Not all seminaries prepare ministers-in-training to perform those responsibilities well. I can help pastors address the questions that will allow them to develop a supervision strategy that fits their leadership style and their context. This package includes a free introductory call, 6 one-hour coaching sessions, and the Core Values Index (a short assessment to help coachees gain awareness of decision-making and conflict styles among other leadership tendencies).

Here are coaching questions we can tailor to help you formulate your approach to supervision:

How do I want to show up as a supervisor? What makes that possible?

• What is my pastoral leadership style?

• How do I want and need to show up as a supervisor?

• What is my conflict style, and how does it affect my approach to supervision?

How do I build a staff team, especially if my staff is part time?

• What must we covenant around?

• What is our shared vision?

• How do we communicate most effectively?

• Who does what?

• How can we collaborate well?

• How do we show care for one another?

• How do we make decisions as a staff?

• How do we address conflict effectively?

What help or resourcing do my staff members need, and how do I make sure they have it?

• How clear are staff members clarity about their roles and their contributions to the larger vision?

• What level of supervision does each staff member need?

• What information does each staff member need to do their job well?

• What person power (e.g., volunteer help) does each staff member need to do their job well, and how do they get it?

• What tangible resources does each staff member need to do their job well, and how do they get it?

• What training does each staff member need to do their job well, and how do they get it?

• What boundaries need to be established if staff members are also church members? For example, which hat is the staff member wearing when relating to other church members? When am I wearing my pastor hat and when am I wearing my supervisor hat with my staff member? What are the limits of information sharing beyond the staff for all staff members?

How do I help my staff members do their best work?

• How often does each staff member need a check-in from me?

• How and when do mutual ministry reviews happen?

• How do I help establish clear expectations and outcomes for staff members? What can staff members expect from me as a supervisor?

• How do I help establish positive working conditions (including adequate pay) for all staff members?

• How and when do I advocate on staff members’ behalf? What additional avenues of advocacy for staff members are appropriate and useful?

• How do I provide gentle challenge and room for staff members to grow?

• What accommodations do staff members need to feel fully part of the staff and to do their jobs well?

• To what personal/interpersonal/structural dynamics do I need to be sensitive in order to be a good colleague and supervisor to my staff members?

How do I hire new (non-ministerial) staff?

• How and where does the church advertise?

• Does the church hire members? Why or why not?

• What does the church need this staff person to do toward the shared vision, and which candidates are capable and compatible based on these needs? How do we determine that?

• Who else should be involved in hiring? What do our personnel policies say?

What do I do when staff members aren't pulling their weight?

• How do I approach staff members compassionately to get a sense of the situation?

• How do I determine what help staff members need in order to improve their work, then look for ways to provide it (within reason)? 

• How do I determine if expectations placed upon staff members are unrealistic (and if so, why)?

• How do I/does the church create a performance improvement plan with clear dates and benchmarks?

• How do I/does the church terminate as needed, with compassion and fairness to all involved and in accordance with polity, personnel policies, and/or the church’s organization chart?

The base rate for this package is $975, with a discount for members/alumnae of Young Clergy Women International. Contact me for more details, or schedule a free exploratory call to talk through the possibilities.

Photo by Dawn Kim on Unsplash.

I am 45 years old as I write this, which puts me squarely at mid-career. I turned 25 the summer I graduated from seminary, and 65 is the age at which I will theoretically retire, though that’s hard to imagine for multiple reasons.

My peers have started to use this midway point to evaluate their ministries and the trajectory of their lives, which I think is a great idea. Here are some of the questions that I think those of us in our 40s need to be considering:

Vocational

How has my call to ministry evolved over time? I went to seminary to prepare for youth ministry, partly because I had never seen a woman in a lead or associate pastor role. I have worked with youth, but most of my ministry has been as a solo or associate pastor and now as a coach. The essentials haven’t changed, just the shape of how I have lived them out. It can both unleash our imaginations and give us an appreciation of what we have done and learned and survived to look back at the twists, turns, and constants in our vocational journey.

How do I fit with where the Church is heading? The Church is - rightfully so - in a big shift. For some of us that is really good news, and we’re excited to see what comes of this transformation. For others of us this reality is daunting, because the Church of today and tomorrow is very different than the Church we were trained to lead. We need to consider where we want to locate ourselves in relationship to where the Church is now and where it might be headed.

What knowledge have I gained in the first half of my vocational life, and how do I want to use it for good? We don’t go through 20 years of ministry without learning a whole lot - about ourselves, about the God we serve and the Jesus we follow, and about the Church and world. Let’s use that hard-wrought wisdom!

What new challenges do I want to take on in the second half of my vocational life, and what skills will I need to develop? This isn’t necessarily about looking for a new context or role, although it could be. It’s more about considering how we want to grow. What tools do I want to add to my toolkit that would benefit my congregation and me, or even that would just bring delight to them and me?

What legacy do I want to leave in my congregation, larger community, and the Church at large? Maybe this relates to the wellbeing we foster in our communities. Maybe it’s creating pathways of welcome for those who need it most. Maybe it’s naming the gifts in others that they can’t see without help. We can’t control what others say about us once we are gone, but we can do what we’re able to infuse our environments with love and hope.

Personal

How do I navigate the realities of being in the Sandwich Generation? I have a child who is 10 and still wants to be close to his mom most of the time (though that could change at any moment). I have a mom who is 70, hangs out with friends multiple times a week, volunteers in her community, and goes on trips by herself (though that could change at any moment). I feel the tug to be with both my son and my mom. I am not alone, as many of my peers - having gotten into the parenting game late like me - have young children and parents who need increasing amounts of help. How do we roll with this, even as we also serve in a vocation that is physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and sometimes financially taxing?

What is my financial situation? It is generally held that mine is the first generation in a while that has not done better money-wise than previous generations. (This might only be true for demographics that have benefitted from generational wealth.) Many of my peers carry loads of debt from school or mortgages or credit cards. Some denominations offer salary guidelines and generous pensions for ministers, while in others we’re on our own to negotiate pay and choose and invest in retirement funds. Now is a good time to assess our entire money picture, looking both backward and forward to make a plan. Thinking and talking about money is not crass. It is a means of care for ourselves and the people we love.

What support systems have I built for now and for later? In ministry our worlds can become very small. We can mostly know and hang around people in our church and our clergy colleagues. We need bigger circles of care for now and later, including both non-churchy (or at least not our church) friends and professional caregivers such as a primary care doctor we trust and a therapist we can confide in.

Mid-career is a great time for intention-setting. We’re not newbies anymore to ministry or to adulting. We know some things. We probably have some stability, though maybe not as much as we’d like. We want to make our remaining professional years count but not crispy-fry ourselves in the process. I hope these questions can help you in looking forward and backward, and I’d love to hear what questions you’d add to this list.

Photo by Luke van Zyl on Unsplash.

“Ministers have the privilege and responsibility of accompanying people through all kinds of joys and hardships. We can offer a comforting presence and serve as a guide in making meaning of all of life’s events. Sometimes, though, something so devastating happens that we might feel less equipped as we’d like. Sometimes we are struggling as others are reaching out to us for help. Covid-19 certainly gave us layer upon layer of personal difficulties and as ministers assisting church members who were hurting. The pandemic will not be our last encounter with crisis, so we could all benefit from a primer on trauma.” Click here to continue reading on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash.

I love my coaching work with progressive churches. It feels like coming home theologically. It does my soul good to know that there are congregations out there offering safe harbor for people who all too often face rejection in many corners of our culture, including church. I celebrate the changes these congregations are affecting in the world, grounded in their faith in a God that has created each one of us in the divine image.

Many of these churches have fewer than 100 active participants, and some are under 50. (Note: not all progressive churches are small, and not all small churches are progressive.) Maybe these congregations were once larger and have become smaller because of stands they have taken. Maybe they were always this size. Let me be clear that I don’t think attendance and membership numbers are helpful metrics. They do not reflect the impact churches have on their members or on their larger communities, which is often much larger than these numbers suggest. That said, we live in a world that tells us that this hard data is meaningful. As a result, members of progressive churches can wonder why more people haven’t joined them. They know their congregations have something that many people need: a center of welcome, meaning-making, and positive action. So why are these churches often on the small side?

The people for whom your congregation is a good fit have often been wounded by past church experiences. If your church is welcoming and affirming of LGTBQIA+ people, for example, there’s a good chance that those who need your kind of faith community have, unfortunately, been rejected elsewhere. This makes it so hard for them to walk through the doors of any church, even if it’s one that has taken pains to extend hospitality to those who have been marginalized. (And once folks work up the courage to attend church, even those of us with the best of intentions are prone to microaggressions that can be retraumatizing.)

Christianity has been weaponized. I am a Baptist who came of age during the height of the battle for control of the Southern Baptist Convention, which led immediately to the subjugation of women and eventually to other problems such as coverups of widespread abuse. But you don’t have to be Baptist to be affected by twisted religion. Just look at the current tangled mess of fundamentalist Christianity, ultra-Americanism, and white supremacy. The whole Church is blemished by what is essentially a grab for power in the culture wars.

Education about your iteration of church is needed. Because of both of the points above, many people who could find a home in your congregation will first need to know how and why you are different. That will take intentionally and consistently showing up and building relationships in the places these potential constituents occupy, both online and in person.

"Evangelism" is a concept with a lot of baggage. Many people with a more progressive theology hesitate to go out and recruit or even educate about their faith communities. We associate evangelism with strong-arming and condemning, with one-sided conversations and the sinner’s prayer. Let’s take back this term. Let’s think of it as showing up Christ-like in the world: taking a genuine interest in people and their stories, offering them our care and our time, and allowing ourselves to be changed by them just as they might be changed by us. (Yes, I believe Jesus was changed by his relationships. See his interaction with the Syrophoenician woman.)

Small church is an all-hands-on-deck situation. What this means is that there is usually a solo pastor, maybe with some very part-time staff, and a lot of leadership distributed across the laity. Sometimes we foist responsibility onto newcomers too soon, eager to share some of the work. These newcomers might need time to heal from past church experiences first, or they might be so new to church life that there’s a learning curve for stepping into lay leadership. Either way, we must be able to give them space to get to know the congregation, to grow some roots, and to discover organically how they might use their gifts in service to the church’s mission. If your church can’t offer that breathing period, newcomers will likely not stick around.

Small congregations sometimes feel self-conscious or apologetic about their size. What I want you to hear is that your church is very much needed. You are redeeming the Church’s reputation and practices. You are saving the theologies and sometimes the lives of the people in your midst. Small can be very, very mighty. And with the ways that you have expanded your reach during the pandemic, there is no limit to what God can do in and through you. Thanks be to God for who you are.

Photo by Hilda Trinidad on Unsplash.

I have had several conversations with pastors lately about the gifts and challenges of sabbaticals. Here are some of my thoughts after reflecting on those discussions:

Extended time (> 1 month) away for pastors is essential. When ministers take 1-2 week vacations, they are usually just fully relaxing into renewal and replenishment when it’s time to think about re-entering the system. That’s because it takes several days to set aside the heavy mental load that pastors carry all the time.

Pastors’ extended time away is good for congregations. It helps churches remember that they - not their ministers - are the church. It also allows congregation members to exercise leadership and creativity muscles that they often don’t when pastors are around.

Many churches require too long a gap between sabbaticals. Some congregations permit sabbaticals every seven years. While seven might be a biblical number, that length of time between sabbaticals sometimes means that pastors are army-crawling their way to that milestone, utterly depleted at that point and wondering if ministry is sustainable over the long term.

Rest is not something any of us - pastors and non-pastors alike - needs to earn. Sabbatical policies, whether they are set up for every seven, five, or even four years, imply that they are a reward for hanging on that long. (There's a big difference between offering sabbatical out of a recognition that ministry is hard work and using it as a carrot.) Rest, though, is part of living into God’s likeness in us. God wove rest into the very design of creation.

The one-year clause keeps ministers locked in and resentful. Most sabbatical policies come with a caveat: the pastor must return for at least a full year of ministry following an extended break away. I think the intention here is to keep ministers from disappearing into the ether during sabbatical. However, this requirement 1) often comes with the every-seven-year sabbatical policy (at which point pastors are burned out), 2) implies that the sabbatical not only is a reward for hard work but also that there are also strings to that “gift,” and 3) suggests that congregations don’t trust their ministers to do right by them.

Sabbaticals aren’t one-size-fits-all (for pastors or churches). Some ministers might want a month off every year instead of a far-off sabbatical, while others might need three months at a stretch for travel. Some churches can tolerate the pastor being gone for longer, while others might have circumstances that make it more necessary for the minister to take more regular breaks for shorter lengths of time.

All of this is to say that sabbaticals are good and necessary, but they can be even better if we rethink them.

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Recently I was talking with a coachee who is leaving her current call. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “No one tells you how tiring it is.” She wasn’t referring to all the mental work of details she’s preparing for her successor or the physical efforts involved in cleaning out the books and files she’s accumulated over a long tenure. (Those are very real too, though.) She meant the grief work - her own and others.’

So let’s talk about it.

It is emotionally taxing to manage the time between when a pastor announces a departure and when the exit actually happens. You are feeling a range of emotions, and so are your parishioners. You might be deeply sad to say goodbye to some people you’ve grown to love. You might feel relieved to leave behind those who have antagonized you or taken up a disproportionate amount of energy. You might be thrilled to go to a new challenge or to take a much-deserved, much-needed break. You might feel scared because you don’t know what is next. You might be miffed that people seem largely unaffected by your news.

On the church members’ end, they might be excited for new opportunities for you. They might feel lost and anxious because they have benefitted so much from your ministry and from your steady presence. They might be angry at you for leaving and even more so for setting boundaries around contact with church folks after you go.

So you have your big emotions and they have theirs. But they are not one-and-done feelings. The process of bringing closure to relationships happens over and over in that pre-departure window. And even with some sense of finality, the tenderness does not go away. So how do you navigate this span of weeks, or even months?

Know that this will be hard. It is hard because you have invested significant periods of time and parts of yourself in this holy work. Thanks be to God for what you have done and who you have been in this context!

Feel the feels. Honor what is going on in you and in others. You are in a thin space, where the buffer between you and God and between you and your people is less substantial than at other times.

Focus on relationships more than details. Yes, it will be good for the next minister to know who the homebound members are and what signature events for the congregation are coming up. But those are notes the new person can get elsewhere, if needed. Your successor cannot bring good closure to your relationships with parishioners.

Take good care of yourself. Don’t fill your last weeks too full. Set up emotional supports such as a video call with a non-church friend or some time with your watercolors so that you can recoup enough energy to do the relational work your soul and others’ must have.

Pray for your people. Pray for them to be ok without you. Pray for them to love their next pastor (and vice versa). Pray for them individually, since you know their specific situations. You will soon no longer be their minister, but you will always care about and want good for them.

I am a firm believer that we do as much ministry in this time between announcing our departure and leaving as we do in all the time leading up to the transition. On behalf of church people everywhere, thank you for wanting to wade through that time thoughtfully and compassionately.

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Recently I wrote about the differences between change, transition, and transformation based on William Bridges’ work. Basically, change is a technical tweak to behavior, and it’s prompted by a shift in circumstances. Transition and transformation, though, nudge us to see and be, not just act, in new ways. They are adaptive challenges, and as such, they are much harder.

There are times when all we need is to do things a little bit differently. I might need to find a different route if there’s road construction on the way to one of my regular destinations. No big deal. But if I decide to stop driving my car altogether because of the environmental impact, that’s trickier. I might say I want to make that change, but then I justify hopping behind the wheel just this one time, which then turns into many times. Something is keeping me from shifting my behavior.

Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and Associate Director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group respectively, have written a great book about why meeting adaptive challenges is so tough. In Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock Potential in Yourself and Your Organization, they introduce an approach to sussing out how we get in our own way. First, we identify the transition or transformation we seek. Second, we name the things we are doing that run against that end. Third, we consider what it would look like to do the opposite of those counter-productive behaviors, which allows us to surface our deeply-held worries and hidden commitments. Fourth, we then articulate the assumptions behind those worries and commitments.

Using my example of no longer using my car, I might change that into a positive statement for the transformation I’m looking for: I want to start walking, using public transportation, or carpooling instead of driving my own car. The counter-productive behavior is that I still use my car. After all, it’s a tough habit to break! If I really think about not ever using my car, I start to worry about how reliable I can be if I only use other modes of transportation. (Reliability is a core value for me.) Will I always be able to be on time? Also, I might spend much more time in transit. What will that mean for my available work windows? And, of course, there’s a comfort factor. It’s 90-100 degrees from May-October in Alabama. I’ll practically need to hook up to an IV to stay hydrated if I’m in the heat that much more because I’m walking or waiting for a bus. These concerns highlight some hidden commitments I haven’t previously thought about. I perhaps lean too hard and too often into presenting a very tailored version of myself. I can put work above justice efforts. I don’t like to sweat. (Ok, I already knew that last one.) These commitments lead me to assumptions that undermine my efforts to make this big shift: if I’m less reliable because I’m more beholden to a bus or carpool schedule, people will trust me less. I don’t believe I’ll have time to get all my work done well. Sweating makes me look and feel gross, which means people might not want to be around me.

Kegan and Lahey propose experiments to test these assumptions that hold us back. We do, in micro-doses, the things our assumptions scream at us not to do, then we collect data on how others react and how we feel about our own functioning. So I might take the bus the next time I need to go somewhere that I’m expected to be at a certain time. I’ll assess whether I’m actually late and what happens if I am. I’ll notice what the impact is on my work time of a longer journey to my destination. If I’m sweaty when I get there, I’ll note how far people stand away from me. As I continue to experiment, the effects of my assumptions will start to erode, and I will build new routines and new neural pathways.

We live in a world of adaptive challenges. The Church is no different. We see shifts we want to make, but we often can’t get there in large part because we are incorrectly assessing the situation as simply requiring a change in what we do. In this time, there are very few situations that call simply for technical solutions. We must be ready to see and be in new ways. Kegan and Lahey offer a framework for digging deep enough to see what’s getting in our path and then to remove that barrier.

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You’ve probably heard of Gary Chapman’s five love languages. We typically think of them in terms of our personal relationships. But what if there are ministry applications as well? Read more here on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

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Recently the Southern Baptist Convention met and expelled two congregations with that have women pastors on staff.

This might be significant, but the SBC isn’t the only Baptist game in town. Below is an excerpt from my college capstone project, written in 1999.

Women were disheartened by the SBC’s public attack on their rights and abilities to serve God in any capacity, but moderates were awakened to action. In 1986 they formed the Southern Baptist Alliance (SBA), a body which chair Henry Crouch hoped would be “a voice of conscience in the Convention.” Though many moderates did not support the SBA because they still had hopes of retaining representation in the SBC, the SBA was the first organization to lend continuing financial support to Southern Baptist Women in Ministry. Nancy Hasting Sehested’s call to the pastorate at Prescott Memorial Baptist Church in 1987 was a landmark in Southern Baptist women’s struggles to become accepted as legitimate members of the ministerial community and showed both Baptist and non-Baptist women that there were places where they could use their God-given gifts. However, when Sehested was nominated in 1988 to deliver the sermon at the Southern Baptist Convention, the nominator was swiftly ruled out of order. In 1989 moderates suffered another setback when the Foreign Missions Board denied the appointments of Greg and Katrina Pennington to the mission field when their local association pointed out that she was ordained. But in 1991 moderates formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), a fringe organization of the SBC which welcomes women to participate in the worship services held when the CBF convenes. Some CBF churches allow their members to show their support for either the SBC or CBF by designating to which body their tithes are sent.

When I wrote about the Alliance of Baptists (formerly the Southern Baptist Alliance) and CBF, I had no personal connection to either body. Now I claim both as my Baptist home, and neither retains any tie to the SBC other than some shared history. The Alliance and CBF both fully welcome the ministerial gifts of women, and the Alliance is also fully committed to the inclusion of the LGTBQIA+ community in ministry. There are, of course, many other expressions of Baptist in addition to SBC, CBF, and the Alliance.

Recently the Southern Baptist Convention met and expelled two congregations with that have women pastors on staff.

This might be significant, but it wasn’t always like this. Below is an excerpt from my college capstone project, written in 1999.

Before the conservative whirlwind swept through the SBC and left its oppressive mark, women were beginning to make very slow but evident advances in the leadership arena. Women’s voice at the national level of the SBC began in 1868 when they first gathered during the annual Convention and raised money to support overseas mission work. Though a request to seat two female messengers (read: voters) at the 1885 Convention was denied (one unnamed delegate was overheard as saying, “I love the ladies, but I dread them worse”) and the SBC constitution was amended to exclude women from acting as messengers, women became an organized and recognized (though independent) voice when they established the Women’s Missionary Union (WMU) in 1888. The WMU raises funds to finance world missions, and its presence in SBC has greatly increased since its inception. Women continued their gains in the twentieth century as four women began attending classes at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1904 and women were granted the right to act as messengers and vote at the annual Convention in 1914. And the 190s brought great victories as a woman was elected to the vice-presidency of the SBC for the first time (1963) and as the SBC broke through the ordination barrier. The occasion did not pass without controversy, but on August 9, 1964, Addie Davis was ordained by Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s conservative repression has discouraged but not stifled women’s efforts to serve in Southern Baptist ministry. In 1983 Nancy Hastings Sehested and thirty-two other women held a conference in Louisville, and in the course of these discussions the groundwork was laid for an organization independent of the SBC that would provide women with a network of Baptists (including both men and women) who support women in ministry. The founders of Southern Baptist Women in Ministry (SBWIM) realized the importance of helping women meet and correspond with people who understand the difficulty of finding staff positions and who encourage women in ministry even as conservatives doubt their abilities. The establishment of SBWIM touched off a conservative reaction which led to the now infamous resolution on ordination and the role of women in ministry at the 1984 Convention. The resolution proposed that since the Bible clearly relegates women to submissive roles and that “man was first in creation and woman was first in the Edenic fall,” women should not become pastors or accept any kind of church leadership role that requires them to be ordained. The motion passed with 58% of the vote. Despite the SBC’s disregard for women spiritual leaders, churches have local autonomy and can call women to ministerial positions and ordain them.

When I presented this paper at a national conference, I had many people come up to me afterward and tell me that they didn’t know that there were or ever had been women ministers in the SBC. It shows how thoroughly the SBC’s efforts at women’s erasure have been. Most Baptist women in ministry have moved on from the SBC to other Baptist denominations or networks. SBWIM, mentioned above, changed its name to Baptist Women in Ministry. It resources women in a range of Baptist denominations, and it will hold a big 40th anniversary celebration in Louisville this fall.

Significantly, because I grew up in the midst of the Baptist battles, I did not see a woman on the chancel for any reason other than singing or making an announcement until my first semester of seminary. (That must have been some kick in the pants from God for me to trust my call, never having seen women in ministry before then.) I found my way to Oakhurst Baptist Church, the congregation that ordained me, because it was in the news for being expelled from the state SBC convention for calling a gay pastor.

Recently the Southern Baptist Convention met and expelled two congregations with that have women pastors on staff.

This might be significant, but it’s not a new development. Below is an excerpt from my college capstone project, written in 1999.

Women’s struggle for respect as church leaders has been a particularly explosive issue representative of the growing rift between moderates and conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention (a divide that has paralleled and been reinforced by the aforementioned culture war and religious realignment along conservative-progressive lines). Coinciding with increasing gender equity in the culture at large in the 1970s, many of the most influential bodies in the SBC such as Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Kentucky) and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (North Carolina) became somewhat progressive in terms of gender equality, and they in fact encouraged women in ministry by holding conferences regarding women in the church and by establishing women’s centers on some campuses. In 1980 a female co-pastor at a church in Richmond baptized new Christians, and women were chairs of deacons at a few churches. However, the beginning of a holy war came in 1979 when the conservatives launched the first offensive in a plan to overtake the SBC and managed to land their candidate, Adrian Rogers, in the SBC presidency. Rogers’ bid for the presidency was successful in large part because conservative leaders had organized meetings across the country to mobilize biblical inerrantists and to encourage them to act as messengers (read: voters) at the annual meeting of the Convention. The president has the power to appoint people to many of the leadership positions in the SBC, and prior to the conservative tidal wave most presidents chose a diverse group of Baptists to represent the varied viewpoints within the SBC. However, Rogers and subsequent presidents abused their appointive powers and replaced more moderate leaders with men who had conservative tendencies. The Sunday School Board and the boards of trustees at Southern Baptist seminaries were just a few of the bodies that became theologically homogeneous.

Conservatives continued their offensive to eradicate the influence of moderates in the 1980s. At the 1980 Convention, a resolution that urged SBC institutions only to hire faculty and staff who would affirm biblical inerrancy was passed. During the same year in his address to a congregation, fundamentalist leader Paul Pressler revealed part of his political plan when he asserted that conservatives “need to go for the jugular - we need to go for the trustees [of Southern Baptist seminaries].” After forcing the inerrancy issue and overtaking many of the key positions in the SBC hierarchy, conservatives extended their agenda so that it became more social and moral in nature. Paige Patterson, who along with Pressler was the key organizer of the conservative coup, intimated in 1986 that conservative planks not only on theology but also on such issues as school prayer, abortion, and federal budget reduction would influence the future hiring policies of the SBC.

This excerpt certainly doesn’t cover everything the SBC has done to marginalize women. (And, of course, it doesn’t even touch the reality that the SBC was founded on white supremacy. I highly recommend Robert P. Jones’ book White Too Long for that history.) It is simply to show that the “issue” of women in ministry has been a live one in the SBC for a long, long time, and I believe it has little to do with theology and almost everything to do with politics and power. I allow the SBC, the denomination of my youth, to take up very little of my brain space these days. I’m called to ministry, and I don’t need the SBC to affirm that. Instead, I’d rather use the privilege that comes with not having to care about what the SBC does to lift up the amazing women in ministry that I know.

“For a long time there has been commonly-held wisdom about church size dynamics and the role of the pastor at each church size….One of the casualties of COVID, though, might be the applicability of these tenets, because churches are starting to realize the limitations of this thinking.” Click here to read more on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog about these limitations - and the opportunities inherent in them.

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“Over the course of their vocational lives, many pastors find themselves charged with leading a church staff.” Click here to read my article on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog that names the challenges and the opportunities of supervision, plus some questions to help you navigate this responsibility.

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“Laypeople might not know this, but many pastors struggle with loneliness. This might seem strange since our work is so people-centered. We are a member of yet isolated from our congregations. There are certain boundaries we must implement to be good ministers. We often must move away from our support systems to find ministry positions. We tend to work long hours, hours unlike other professionals, that make it tough to develop relationships outside of our vocational lives.” Read more about why this loneliness is a problem we must solve and my thoughts on how to do that at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

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