A few weeks ago I shared my takeaways from Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving Without Full-Time Clergy, which assures its readers that having a part-time pastoral leader can be a nudge toward greater vitality. I experienced a bit of whiplash when I followed up that read with The Last Pastor: Faithfully Steering a Closing Church. In it retired Episcopal priest Gail Cafferata shares her own experiences along with those of other mainline ministers upon realizing their congregations no longer had the resources to sustain themselves. Some of these clergy knew upon entering these contexts that their primary task was to bring the church to a good end. Most did not, making their journey toward closing more personally difficult.

This is a useful read for any pastor whose church is teetering on the edge of viability. But I think the audience that most needs to internalize the lessons in this book is judicatory leaders. The ministers Cafferata interviewed note time and again how the work of closing the church was made much easier or more difficult based on the posture of the judicatory and the information the judicatory was willing to share. On the negative side of the equation, some judicatory leaders take a “not on my watch” approach that denies churches’ situations until they are too dire or conflicted to end well. (This often results in installing first-call pastors whose enthusiasm for ministry quickly fades with the hard road toward closing and women who find themselves toeing the edge of the glass cliff.) Others pull the rug out, closing churches with little to no input from the pastor or parishioners. A few mock or blame the clergy who are faithfully attempting to lead their congregations through a grief process. All of this abandonment can prompt ministers to question their effectiveness and possibly their call to vocational ministry.

The ministers referenced in the book make it clear that pastors need honesty, partnership, spiritual support from the people charged with the care of districts or regions of churches and their leaders. Clergy also benefit from focused help and positive references from their judicatory leader as they search for their next call, because pastor search teams are sometimes unable to look beyond the fact that the candidate’s last church closed. When congregations and their clergy feel respected and seen, closing is much more likely to be more meaningful for all involved and result in those church members seeking out new faith homes.

Ministers in smaller churches, read this book. More importantly, get it in the hands of those with influence in your judicatory.

In his book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, positive psychologist Adam Grant offers his thoughts on how to champion new ideas. (If you haven’t read the book, I recommend it. He backs up his suggestions with engaging stories and with hard data.) In one of his illustrations, he talks about one CEO’s approach to helping his company get unstuck: telling his executives to brainstorm ideas for putting the company out of business. For two hours these leaders named all the paths to shuttering the doors, their energy building all the while. And when the executives were out of ways to kill the company, the CEO turned the tables and asked the gathered body to come up with ways to insure against these realities. Now understanding that it would be lethal not to take risks, the executives felt the urgency of innovation.

I wonder if congregational leaders would benefit from a similar exercise: “how could we kill this church?” Get all the options out on the table. (Maybe even think about which ones the church is already – or has considered – doing and what the loss would be to the community if your congregation closed.) Then consider what the opposite approach to each might be.

The goal would not necessarily be to take on all of those opposite approaches – they would need to be weighed against the energy and purpose of the congregation – but to move from a mindset of “we can’t afford to change” to “we can’t afford not to change, and we have some ways forward.” This exercise could help communicate the need for urgency to the participants’ minds and hearts and could illuminate some of the opportunities in challenge, two of John Kotter’s strategies for moving people out of complacency.

Consider using this approach, then, next time a visioning process for an individual ministry or the congregation as a whole yields the standard answers. I’d love to hear what ideas are gleaned and what shifts are made.

Two-plus weeks into the new school year, our family is slowly getting into a groove. One big adjustment has been the loooooong afternoons. (My son got home from preschool around 4:00. At the end of his pre-K day, we’re pulling into the driveway by 2:20.) One of the gifts this “found” time offers is an opportunity to read. While L watches an episode of Nature Cat – the four-year-old’s equivalent of an evening at a NYC comedy club, judging by his laughter – I sit beside him and knock out a chapter in a book on systems theory, business, leadership, or practical theology.

I just finished A Sense of Urgency by John P. Kotter, a quick read that defines urgency and why it’s so important to organizational life. Urgency is an awareness in the head and heart that something must soon change for our church/business/institution to keep moving forward and that I have a role to play in creating that change. Urgency is the foil to complacency, which convinces us that things are fine as they are. True urgency is different from false urgency, which is driven by anxiety and characterized by busywork that has little to no impact.

I probably don’t have to convince you that a sense of urgency is very much needed right now in the church and in the world. Complacency keeps us from fulfilling our mission until that purpose is out of reach – or at least requires digging ourselves out of a sizeable hole. False urgency makes us think we’re doing something until we realize that all our busywork has actually been guzzling our energy and distracting us from moving toward our goals.

How, then, do we create real urgency as pastoral leaders? Here are Kotter’s tactics, reinterpreted for clergy.

First, feel a sense of urgency yourself and act out of it.

• Focus on your specific call to ministry and on the mission of your congregation. Run everything you do through those filters.

• Look for ways to shift or eliminate tasks and meetings that don’t relate to  personal or congregational mission. Unrelated “doing” likely falls into the false urgency category.

• Tell others what you are doing and why. “Here’s how I’m spending my day. Here’s how those actions move us closer to our vision.”

• Leave no open/loose ends. At the end of meetings, get clarity about who is doing what and by when.

[Note: much of ministry is “soft,” such as making pastoral care visits and dealing with contrarians. That doesn’t mean these tasks are not urgent. It is important, though, to connect these undertakings to the bigger picture.]

Second, communicate facts about the need for urgency in ways that speak to others’ heads and hearts.

• Create spaces for storytelling. Data is important, but narrative is convincing.

• Get an outsider’s perspective. Talk to the church’s neighbors. What are their gifts? Needs? Views of the church? Or bring in a panel of people who serve the community. In what areas do their needs for partners and the church’s resources meet?

Third, seize opportunities that come with challenges.

• Reframe problems. Don’t deny the issue, but also note how it creates new possibilities.

• Do things you can’t do during times of stability. Stability breeds complacency. Challenges shake up our perspectives and force us to act.

Fourth, deal with naysayers.

• This is a huge issue in churches that merits a blog post on its own. Stay tuned for part 2 on creating urgency, coming next week.

I’d had pretty much the same hairstyle for twenty years. Somewhere between chin and shoulders in length, with long layers. This look suited me well enough, I guess. There was no complicated styling involved. I didn’t have to buy any product. I could throw my hair in a ponytail when I wanted. Still, I was craving something different.

I researched short hairstyles, asking friends with cute hair to send me pictures and details on what it took to get their coiffures to look that way. I set aside some money for a cut in a real! salon! because it seemed too risky to make a big change for $7.99 at Great Clips. I asked around for stylist recommendations. I was ready…or was I? I kept putting off making the appointment. No time for a haircut this week…I don’t want to still be figuring out how to tame my new ‘do when X event rolls around…I remember being confused when I was in preschool and my mom made a drastic hair change, and I don’t want to do that to my son.

And then said son began protesting whenever I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, which was most of my at-home hours. “No! Take it out!” He even became quite adept at pulling out my ponytail holder before I even realized what was happening. It was time for the haircut.

So I did it. I went to the grown-up salon and had all the hair that had been weighing me down whacked off. I had been wanting and plotting for a while, but I had to feel a pinch to get myself in gear.

This is the state that many of our churches find themselves in. They want to follow their evolving call from God. Often they already have the resources and have even made some concrete plans for how to move forward. Something, however, is holding them back. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s comfort. These congregations need to feel the pinch before they’re willing to make the leap.  

Sometimes the pinch happens naturally. A staff transition necessitates re-evaluation of leadership needs. The property next to the church goes up for sale. A local service agency invites the congregation into a partnership that would benefit both entities and the community as a whole. A shrinking budget prompts discussion about the best use of resources.

Sometimes, however, leaders who have latched onto God’s dream for the congregation need to help their constituents feel the pinch. How might you help the people you minister alongside discover both the opportunity in and urgency for potential change?