It’s happening. The wave of people leaving pastoral ministry is gathering momentum. For some it’s because they are so dang tired. For others it’s because they’re being nudged to use their gifts and energy in other spaces, whether that’s a different kind of ministry, another field altogether, or unpaid-yet-no-less valuable labor (e.g., caring for young children or aging parents). I think that underneath all of these faithful responses to leaving a congregation, though, is a question that is both practical and existential:

Does my ministry matter?

Pastors are asking this because as they were preaching God’s command to care for one another these past two years, God’s people were fighting about whether they had to wear masks and acknowledge - much less address - systemic racism.

Pastors are asking this because they have taken on more than ever, yet some in their churches are asking them to do more.

Pastors are asking this because their congregants are citing Covid caution as their reason for not coming back to worship while their social media feeds tell a different story.

Pastors are asking this because the world is on fire, and they feel increasingly less able to identify where and how to make an impact.

Pastors are asking this because the pandemic made them re-examine everything about their ministries.

Pastors are asking this because some members are eager to go back to the way things were, while clergy know there is no going back.

In other words, this crisis of vocation and identity is totally understandable.

And, what you do matters so much, pastors.

You love us like Jesus does, even when we aren’t very easy to love.

You tell us that God made us and called us good, no matter what others might call us.

You invite us into communities of belonging, and what could be more sacred than that?

You nurture our spirits, challenge us, and offer us hope, whatever is happening around us.

You sensitize us to God’s invitations.

You celebrate life’s highlights alongside us.

You accompany us through the deepest of difficulties.

You prophesy, speaking on God’s behalf even when we want to put our hands over our ears.

You urge us to be better, to be the good God breathed into life.

You remind us that we have all we need as long as we share.

You provide stability when everything - including the Church - is changing.

You send us out, inspired to be Christ’s hands and feet and to bring a little more of God’s reign right here to Earth.

You do the behind-the-scenes work that few ever know about that makes all of the above possible.

Everything is hard now. It’s not just you, and it’s not your imagination. If you need a break, please take one. If you need to live out your calling in a new context, look for that outlet. God wants good for you too. But know that who you are and how you show up and what you do - it’s so faithful, and it’s valuable beyond what anyone can pinpoint.

Blessings on you, pastors, beloved bearers of God’s love and abundance.

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash.

Often the B plot (sometimes even the A plot) of a coaching conversation is centered on the dynamics of working with someone on the church staff who is also a congregation member. It’s tricky. Usually it’s unadvisable. But you might inherit such a situation when you start a new call, or you might even have a church member who is both very self-aware and a great fit for an open staff position. This piece I wrote for the CBF blog breaks down the pluses and minuses of having a member in a dual role and gives some guidance for how to navigate the circumstances well. Click through to read.

Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash.

Coaching is not just for individuals! Did you know that I also coach church staffs, teams of lay leaders, and entire congregations? Anytime there is a gap between where you (as an individual or as a collective) are and where you want to be, there is fertile soil for coaching. A coach approach to meeting benchmarks and overcoming challenges can provide structure, tools, and encouragement to groups as they strategize in ways that make sense in their context and utilize their specific gifts. Coaching also builds ownership of new insights and plans among coachees, because it does not result in a solution handed down by an outside “expert.” In coaching the people doing the work in a particular space are understood as the true experts, and they are the ones who map the way forward.

And guess what? This time of year tends to be one of the best seasons for coaching. Summer vacations are tapering off, so it’s easier for groups seeking coaching to meet consistently. Fall programming is mostly settled. There’s some breathing room in the liturgical calendar before Advent, when the focus (rightfully) shifts to the journey to Bethlehem.

Coaching doesn’t have to break your church’s budget, either. Now that we are all very familiar with video conferencing, you only need to plan for an hourly coaching rate. No longer do you have to worry about travel and other expenses that can add up quickly.

If you sense that your congregation (or some segment of it) needs the kind of nudge that coaching could provide, here are some areas in which I specialize:

Congregational self-study during pastoral transitions. In the time between settled pastors, it’s important to do this good work to undergird the search for a great-fit minister. Who is our church apart from the personality and passions of our former leader?

Figuring out church after(ish) Covid-19. In pre-post-pandemic, many questions remain in order not just to do church but to be church. What is our role in the world after a big shift in people’s priorities and ways of life? How do we rebuild relationships and establish new ones both within our congregation and in the larger community based on what we’ve learned about ourselves and our neighbors over the past couple of years?

Setting new touchstones and metrics. The pandemic shook many markers loose. What is it that is consistently grounding for and true about our congregation? What are helpful benchmarks that let us know our impact in partnership with God?

Visioning and discerning next steps. We might only see half-steps forward right now, but we can figure out how to recognize them. How do we listen for invitations from God? How do we engage in a continuous cycle of experimentation, assessment, and learning in a way that brings excitement and delight instead of a sense of failure and shame?

Pastor searches. Teams of laypeople (appropriately) have a lot of questions about how to find someone for a role they themselves have never held. What do we need a pastor to do? Where do we look for people who can do these things? How do we invite candidates to consider our ministry opportunity out of a spirit of welcome and generosity?

I would love the chance to talk with you about any of these congregational coaching possibilities, as well as potential coaching topics that are not mentioned above. Please schedule a free exploratory call here. If you don’t see a time that works for you, contact me so that we can figure out a window that will.

When I coach pastors who are searching for a solo or senior pastor position, they sometimes say, “This church is looking for a visionary leader, a vision caster. That’s not me.”

The clergy claiming that they are not visionaries are gifted, imaginative, and dedicated. They have started new ministries. They have led people through all kinds of challenge. They have developed leaders who work alongside them. I can see how they don’t see themselves in the mold of the stereotypical charismatic pastor who alone develops a direction and proclaims, “This way. Follow me!” I reject, however, the idea that these ministers don’t have the ability to be a visionary leader. It’s simply a different model.

I didn’t have good words for this until I listened to an episode of Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast. The guest was Dr. Linda Hill, a professor at Harvard Business School and chair of the Leadership Initiative. Dr. Hill is an expert on managing for collective creativity. On the podcast she makes these key distinctions:

“So management was about dealing with complexity, leadership was about dealing with change…when you’re trying to lead change you have a vision, you communicate that vision, and you try to inspire people to want to follow you, if you will, to the future….And the other thing about when you look at leading innovation, it’s really about the fact that it’s not about individuals having aha moments, it’s about collaborations amongst people who have very different perspectives and you know how to do discovery-driven learning, so really what innovation or leading innovation is about is how do you get people to co-create the future with you, not follow you to the future. So that is a very different process.”

One more time for the people in the back: leading innovation is about getting people to co-create the future with you. This kind of approach is warranted when your purpose is clear but the future is not. Is there any better descriptor of - any greater need in - this time in the Church, in the world?

This is the kind of leadership that the people I coach are made for, that they have already been doing. Whether they have been called into glass cliff situations or had to step up in times of major transition or seen possibilities where others did not, they have invited others into dreaming of and planning for and experimenting with the way forward.

You were made for such a time as this. Step into your authentic leadership, invite others to do the same, and watch what God will do.

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash.

Back in January I had the opportunity to interview several pastors for one of my Doctor of Ministry papers. The topic was technology shifts during the pandemic and the resulting impact on congregations and their leaders. One conversation in particular fascinated me. This interviewee’s church had long established play as one of its values. The pastor helped congregants draw on this value in new ways during Covid, thus allowing individual members to retain their connections with one another and helping the church as a whole weather the challenges of lockdown. In the latest edition of Fellowship Magazine, I write about the many ways that play makes congregations more connected and adaptable. Click here to read the article, which can be found on page 31.

Photo by Nik Korba on Unsplash.

Many of you have so many demands on your time that it is hard to know where to put your focus and energy. Often you are choosing between opportunities that are in themselves good or that bring about good, which makes the decision so much harder. That is the case for Rev. Suzanne Miller, Executive Director of Pastors for North Carolina Children (check out her organization and her good work!), who is constantly presented with invitations to work with individuals, churches, judicatories, organizations, and legislators on issues that make a difference to children and families. In a recent coaching call we worked on a flow to help her decide when to say yes and when to say no. She generously offered to share here the template she designed as a result of our session. Click here to download it.

When I was in college, my dad would mail me motivational photos cut out of business publications. You know the kind - a person standing on a mountain peak, with a quote underneath about giving it your all. The encouragement, the time spent finding and mailing the pictures, and the willingness to dissect his magazines were all expressions of my dad’s love. Hopefully we’ve all had someone in our lives who has pushed us to dream big, to work hard. There are times when we really need that kind of support.

This is not that time.

The more I talk with pastors and lay leaders, the more I think that this is a season to go small, to ease off the gas. Clergy are crispy-fried, even the ones who are not in the midst of vocational crisis. Laypeople are exhausted too, whether it is from stepping up even more at church during the pandemic, worrying about and caring for their kids or parents, or wondering what the future holds for their work lives or their retirement account balances. Even so, the capitalistic heartbeat that powers our culture intones, “Do more.” Thump thump. “Be more.” Thump thump. “Count numbers.” Thump thump. “Go back (to the way things were pre-Covid.)” Thump thump. This is an anxious response and an unrealistic approach to the profound ways in which our world and the Church are changing.

I want to suggest an opposite approach: going small. Yes, we need to do some things differently, because our burnout and our scarcity tunnel vision won’t magically resolve themselves. So look for a small tweak that might make a large impact. Spend one minute outside after you’ve finished your lunch, soaking in Vitamin D and deepening your breaths. Or end each day with a single reflection question, such as, “When did I experience joy today?” Or read one page of a book (for fun) that has been gathering dust on your nightstand.

Thinking small goes for congregations too. This is likely not the time for long-range planning. With energy so low, it might not even be the season for discerning or re-examining shared values. So name a hymn or a long-practiced ritual that says something about your congregation’s identity and use it as a touchstone for considering unexpected invitations from God. When starting new things (or even re-starting former initiatives), be clear about what the “yes” involves and what “no” is needed to counterbalance.

We all want to be faithful. We strive to minister to those in need. To do both for the long haul, we need to recalibrate for sustainability. Going small offers us a way to build momentum and muscle, growing our capacity and impact in the process.

In the meantime, instead of a motivational poster of someone reaching a mountain peak, imagine a kitty poster that encourages you to “hang in there.”

Photo by Igor Kyryliuk on Unsplash.

I recently wrote that I think the traditional committee structure is on its way out. If your leadership infrastructure isn’t working for your congregation, it is essential that the meetings you do have are meaningful spiritually as well as practically. Over on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog, I have a piece up about how to make your meetings worshipful work. Click here to read the post.

Photo by PJ Gal-Szabo on Unsplash.

Hopefully we are now nearing the end of Covid-19 as a defining reality of our lives. The effects of the pandemic are likely to be long lasting, though. Finances (personal and institutional), politics (since Covid became such a wedge issue), and relationships (deepening or stretching, sometimes to the breaking point) are a few of the areas in which we will all continue to deal with fallout.

In my work I talk with a lot of clergy who are having a crisis of vocation either brought on or amplified by the pandemic. But I’m noticing that in general the repercussions vary according to when each pastor entered the system:

Those who were already contemplating retirement or a change in contexts. These pastors tried to hang on for a bit to get their congregations through the pandemic. When it became clear that the end of Covid was not imminent, many (understandably) decided to make their exits rather than persist under the stress of pastoring during a pandemic.

Those who were serving in their context for more than a year pre-Covid. These pastors got a full cycle of firsts under their belts before the pandemic arrived and put everything familiar in disarray. They had had some time to understand their contexts, build trust, and inhabit the role of leader. (They also had had enough exposure that they had begun to develop detractors, as happens in any pastorate.)

Those who had served less than a year but had at least led during a major liturgical season (e.g., Advent) pre-Covid. Going through major observances and signature events together often serves to bond pastor and people in mutual ministry. The relationships were still new and fragile, though.

Those who started their roles in January, February, or early March 2020. Many of these pastors are really struggling. They started a position and didn’t even get their feet underneath them before the floor dropped out. With varying degrees of success they have cobbled together their understanding of congregational culture and their ever-altering place in it.

Those who changed churches mid-pandemic. Some of these leaders are only just now getting to know their people in person after lots of time together online. They had to try to build relationships in less traditional ways, and sometimes they had to launch experiments and make decisions without all of the information that in-person community offers.

Those who are coming into new-to-them churches in this pre-post-Covid time. The Covid fog seems to be clearing, and now a new phase of the work begins. Pastors in new-to-them churches are, then, jumping into big questions without the benefit of the honeymoon period that many ministers enjoyed in The Before. How do we right-size our infrastructure? Are these people we haven’t seen in a long time gone for good? Do we keep up hybrid worship or switch back to fully in-person? What will the polarization of the last election and the partisanship around Covid mean for relationships among church members? What work around anti-racism is more possible and pressing now that we have physically re-gathered?

I make these distinctions to highlight that the pandemic has been challenging to all pastors (and all people!) and that there are nuances to the issues. I hope that lining out the obstacles to thriving for each group helps leaders locate themselves and begin to see why varying aspects of Covid have been harder or easier depending on each pastor’s level of rootedness in the context. Naming the barriers is the first step toward strategizing ways to minimize or maneuver around them.

A note to congregations: not every pastor is in vocational crisis. Some are even thriving. But all are attending to the challenges that the pandemic has presented to them as clergy and as humans. Please keep this in mind when your hopes for your church or your expectations for your minister’s leadership do not align with what is unfolding.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

Yes, your church will want to speed up the search process to put an end to the discomfort and uncertainty of not having a settled pastor. Over at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog, though, I share what gifts of a search your congregation will miss if you hit the fast forward button. Click here to read the article.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.

Prior to the pandemic many churches were struggling to fill their committee slates. This was due to a host of reasons:

• Many church structures are holdovers from an era when congregations - and thus their leadership needs - were bigger.

• There are so many tugs on congregants’ time, making it hard to make monthly, multi-year commitments.

• Church members who are older or who have children with early bedtimes are less likely to attend evening meetings.

• Recruitment is often geared more toward filling slots than helping people discern how their gifts might help a church live into its purpose.

• Many congregations don’t develop leadership pipelines, which means current leaders tend to be burned out and potential leaders aren’t sure how to contribute.

All of these factors remain, hence the present tense used above. In this pre-post-Covid time, there are now added considerations:

• Some of the former stalwarts in congregations have drifted away to other churches or no church.

• People have connected with the virtual or hybrid manifestations of church and are now engaging in that space rather than coming as often to the church campus.

• Certain segments of the general population are completely wrung out from their pandemic experience (e.g., caregivers of young kids or aging parents and healthcare workers) and unwilling to add on big commitments.

• People’s priorities have shifted under the pressure of long-term crisis.

What all of this is resulting in is a never-ending cycle of nominations for a committee system that isn’t working in many places. So what can you do?

• Send the structure on sabbatical. There must be a mechanism for making key decisions and for extending congregational care. Beyond that, lay leadership can take a proactive break - as opposed to the one forced by the pandemic - for three months. After that time, talk about what that was like. What relief did that pause offer? What did you all miss? What wisdom bubbled up?

• Note where the energy is. After the pause have conversations with leadership and beyond about the hopes they have and the needs they see in and beyond the congregation. How do these align with your church’s values and mission? What does that mean for what you might want to experiment with?

• Consider how shorter-term projects could increase involvement. Standing committees are one way to get things done, but they are not the only way. Some ministry areas lend themselves to seasonal teams. By inviting people to join a group for a one-off event or a certain period of participation (e.g., plan worship for Advent), you increase excitement and the available pool of people (including those who join you online or who have busy seasons in their paid or unpaid jobs they have to work around), decrease the risk of the same few people doing all the things, and bring in new voices on a regular basis.

• Make meetings worth participants’ time. Gather at the times and by the means that work best for those involved. Create a plug-and-play agenda template. Have a spiritual formation/worship piece, a relationship-building piece, a business piece, and a wrap-up piece that ties the other three together. (If your structure is doing to look different, why not make the meetings run differently?) Here’s one shape that closing piece can take:

  • What invitations from God have we sensed in our time together?

  • What does that mean for next steps?

  • To what actions are we committing?

  • What’s left hanging?

  • How are you feeling about how we worked together today?

• Look at the by-laws. If you blow up your committee structure, your documents will need to reflect this change. Accurate documents build trust and transparency in processes and provide a touchstone when there’s confusion or disagreement. Don’t let this step stop you from making needed changes, though. Dotting the Is and crossing the Ts will be a small price to pay for renewed and refocused congregational energy.

So let’s do it. Let’s call time of death on the committee structure, bury it, and see what new life results.

Photo by Mathew MacQuarrie on Unsplash.

A recurring frustration for the pastors I coach is this refrain from church members: “If we could just bring in more young families, our congregation would be vibrant again.” While I have empathy for the grief behind this statement, the idea itself is false. In this piece for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog, I explain why and also give tips for congregations that are willing to put in the work to welcome young families. Click here to read it.

[Note: I wrote this piece a couple of months ago and submitted it to CBF in mid-May. I would now title the article differently, something like “Why bringing in young families is not the cure-all for your congregation.”]

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I’d second that and add that it’s also a killer of calling.

Lots of pastors suffer under the weight of comparison. Sometimes it’s parishioners who are holding up one clergyperson against another, whether in their words or in their thoughts. “Our former minister did it this way.” “If only you could be more like the pastor at the church across town.”

At other times we take our own measurement against another clergyperson. “I wish I could be the beloved [preacher, pastoral care giver, etc.] this other minister is.” “How does that pastor get it all done? I feel exhausted, and I’ve only accomplished a fraction of what she seems to do.”

Comparison comes from a scarcity mindset. Someone (you, me, or another person) is not enough. Together we do not have enough. It keeps us from fully connecting with one another, because we feel defensive to protect what is ours. As a result, we do not come together in the kind of community that celebrates and inter-weaves the distinctions among us. We do not fully trust God’s intentions or presence, thinking something essential is being withheld from us.

The impact for pastors (for anyone under the microscope of comparison) can be devastating spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and often even physically as our exhaustion from trying too hard adds up. We feel unseen, unheard, not valued. We can’t imagine that God has brought us, with our lack of skills or experience, to serve these people. Or we can’t imagine that God has brought us to serve these people, with their lack of graciousness.

Here’s the deal. In his book Flourishing in Ministry: How to Cultivate Clergy Well-Being, Matt Bloom noted there are more than sixty (!) separate pastoral competencies. And that was before the pandemic, during which many ministers added other skills out of necessity. Here, then, are some things that clergy and congregants need to know:

No minister is great at every pastoral competency. It simply isn’t possible for mere mortals do everything well.

A good-fit leader at another church might be a mismatch for yours. Ministry is highly contextual.

Some gifts are more visible than others. Anyone can hear and see how a pastor preaches (though, it should be noted, not everyone will appreciate the same preaching style). Many aspects of ministry are somewhat invisible. Only particular congregants might know the fullness of a clergyperson’s pastoral care to them. The importance of administrative skills is sometimes only apparent when these gifts are lacking.

Over-functioning is not a virtue. Our culture teaches us that our worth is measured in how much time we put in at work. This is not a biblical value.

Job descriptions matter. Some churches don’t even have them! This is a recipe not just for comparison but also for conflict. Congregations need particular focal points and constellations of gifts in their pastors in different seasons. Job descriptions make it clear what the pastor is responsible for and, by turn, what the congregation’s role is in mutual ministry. This clarity sets appropriate expectations and serves as a touchstone when there are disagreements.

Knowing your skills, values, and purpose is crucial. This goes for clergy and congregations. We will always be rolling a big boulder up a steep hill, the weight of it threatening to crush us, if we aren’t clear-eyed about who we are and what we’re about.

As Christians all of us have only one person truly worth comparing ourselves to - Jesus - and we will always come up short as we are continually redeemed and remade. So instead of measuring people against each other, let’s lean into who we have been created to be and how we’ve been equipped. If we can do this, we can bring our distinctiveness together in unity toward helping bring about God’s reign.

Photo by Dietmar Becker on Unsplash.

Recently I published an article on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog about “Becoming a hybrid congregation.” It is essentially a part three in the “Is your congregation’s future hybrid?” series. (You can find parts one and two on my blog.) While the pieces on my blog are more about discerning and planning, the CBF post is about big picture thinking about whether and how being a hybrid church aligns with your congregation’s identity. You can find the CBF article here.

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash.

Last week I offered some discussion prompts for congregations that are discerning whether to lean into true hybrid community that creates robust belonging for both online and offline participants. If responses to those questions point to an openness to hybrid church, the reflection cues below begin to get at planning the specifics.

Logistics

• Based on responses to these questions, what might our digital sandbox look like? What’s the container for the sandbox? How big is it? Who might want to play in it? What toys are in it for people to play with? (Sit with this metaphor a bit before moving into practical details below.)

• What platforms would we utilize? What criteria will guide this decision? Which ones are current constituents and those who aren’t yet engaged already using?

• What elements of hybrid church would be synchronous or asynchronous?

• Which elements of hybrid church would be open to anyone and which would be password protected? What community norms would we need to establish for each, consistent with what expectations are for in-person congregational interaction? What would the bar be for obtaining the password?

• What systems and leadership would we need in order to tend the online aspects and to facilitate mutual connection between online and offline participants?

• What training would leaders and participants in hybrid church need?

• How would we actively invite people for whom our hybrid church is good news?

• How could we create space for hybrid participants’ contributions and big questions, indeed for their full participation in creating a faith community characterized by belonging?

• What mechanisms for regular assessment and course-correction would we put into place?

Membership

• What are our formal and informal practices around and beliefs about church membership? In what ways do they serve us well, and in what ways do they not?

• How would the intentional cultivation of hybrid church necessarily affect what membership means and who can become a member? What changes do we need to make as a result?

Leadership

• What time and attention, and from whom, would hybrid church require?

• How could we make this leadership consistent and sustainable?

• What does this mean for our staffing configuration (and budget) and the roles of lay leaders?

Mutual responsibility

• What kind(s) of commitment are we asking for from online church participants in order to create the mutuality that belonging entails?

• How do we communicate the what and why of these expectations to online community constituents and get their assent?

• How do we engage online community participants in helping to craft mutual expectations?

• How do we make it as inviting as possible to uphold expectations?

Sacraments/ordinances

• What are the most important rituals in the life of our congregation? What meaning do they convey? What role does physical presence play in them?

• What is and isn’t negotiable about being physically present to participate in these rituals?

• Within what is negotiable, how might we get creative – and invite those online to do the same – in order to invite participation and communicate meaning across online and offline spaces?

The questions I’ve offered over the course of these two posts are not the only ones your church would need to address, but they offer a place to start. Your congregation might work through these prompts and decide that your call is not to be a hybrid church. You might not have the capacity or deep desire. That’s ok! But for congregations that are excited for this possibility and have the resources to make it happen, much is possible. In this time of increased polarization, the body of Christ has become loosely connected at the joints, and uniting those with a propensity to go online for church with those who attend in person offers the chance to strengthen the relationships among these parts to the glory of God.

Photo by Dan-Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash.

Two years ago many churches moved the whole of church life online because of the pandemic. Pastors and congregations felt the frustrations associated with physical distancing and tech trial and error. They also, though, found freedom from “the way we’ve always done it,” new outlets for creativity, and broader reach.

At this point in Covid (which I recently heard one colleague aptly refer to as “pre-post-Covid”), a lot of churches are continuing some aspects of online worship and community. For some this is just for now, since not all constituents are yet comfortable returning to the church campus. For others this is an experiment with what will become a permanent supplement to in-person congregational life. And for a few this is a precursor to full-blown hybrid church, a unified online and offline community that offers belonging, space to ask big questions, and opportunities to create and lead to everyone who is involved.

Constructing this hybrid congregation will take a lot of reflection on and intentionality about everything from the core of congregational identity all the way to the nuts and bolts of day-to-day operations. This week and next I will offer some coaching questions to help your church discern whether hybrid is right for you and how to move into this new way of being a faith community.

Congregational identity

• What are our congregation’s core values, the commitments that define who we are and what we do?

• What has this congregation been put on earth to do? To what future is God inviting us?

• For whom are this purpose and future story good news? Among these populations, who is currently not connected to our congregation?

Pandemic gleanings

• What technology attempts during the pandemic have worked well? What did we learn?

• What technology attempts didn’t work as well? What did we learn?

• What surprised us about what did and didn’t work?

• Who engaged with our church online? In what ways, and how frequently? What has their engagement added to our faith community, and how has our faith community enriched their lives?

• What lasting shifts have we made in our understanding as church as a physical place during the pandemic?

• What new gifts among church members were uncovered during the pandemic?

• What extra responsibilities did our pastor take on during the pandemic? What role renegotiation is now needed?

Preparatory self-reflection

• What does belonging look like for us? What will we need to attend to in order to extend that same sense of belonging to those who primarily engage with us online?

• What assumptions do we continue to make about people who connect to church online (indeed, who conduct much of their lives online)?  Offline? How do we dispel the myths?

• How will we respond if someone who has been an in-person participant pre-pandemic decides to engage primarily in the online aspects of church?

• How do we want to respond if people who have engaged primarily online decide to become in-person participants, acknowledging that that person might know more about the church than the church knows about them?

• How can we encourage those who have returned/intend to return to in-person participation to engage with online constituents to the benefit of all?

• What excites us most about the possibilities of hybrid church? What questions or hesitations do we have?

• What are we willing to give up (e.g., power, particular ways of doing church) in order to give hybrid church room to work?

• What are touchstones for our congregation, in addition to values and purpose, that it would be important to educate about and build welcome around for those who never set foot on the church campus? Examples might include rituals or narratives about the church’s history.

• How could a truly hybrid church help us live more fully into our values and purpose? What might be possible that otherwise wouldn’t?

Stay tuned next week for questions about the practical side of planning for hybrid church.

Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash.

Every year the International Coaching Federation observes International Coaching Week, a global celebration that educates about the value of working with a professional coach. One of the ways ICF does this is by encouraging coaches to offer pro bono sessions to those who haven’t yet experienced the power of coaching. I happily participate because I love coaching, I know coaching offers results, and I get to meet new people!

If you are a minister and have never been coached by me, I invite you to sign up here for a free 30-minute session by phone or Zoom next week (May 17 & 19). You are welcome to share this link/post with others who might be interested as well.

I look forward to talking with you soon.

Here is the second installment in a new blog series that features clergywomen who are putting fresh expressions of ministry out into the world. My hopes are to amplify their great work, to spark readers’ imaginations, and to encourage pastors who are thinking about new ways of living into their call.

I am excited today for you to learn about Mary Apicella and her fitness business. Mary has served as a pastor and now ministers to bodies and spirits by integrating personal training with the movements of the liturgical calendar. I particularly celebrate her work with pre- and post-natal women and wish I had had someone like Mary to help me tend to my physical recovery from a C-section after my child was born. Mary works with all kinds of clients, and she has a heart for clergy moms, knowing well the stresses and joys of the pastoral life and of parenting. She is credentialed as a personal trainer through the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) and as a Pre/Postnatal Fitness Specialist through PRONatal Fitness. I asked Mary to share about her ministry and the hurdles and helps to it. Check out her responses below.

What is your ministry all about?

Sacred Salt is my integration of faith and fitness. I create workouts and exercise programs that follow the liturgical church calendar, as opposed to the typical January to December calendar year. While I created these workouts with clergy, specifically congregational pastors, in mind, these workouts fit any lay leader or congregational volunteer who also finds themselves busier, even overwhelmed, during certain moments in the church year as they participate in the life and story of the church.

You've created a brand-new ministry, unlike anything else out there. What are the sources of your inspiration, courage, and support?

I initially created this practice just for myself when I was a solo pastor straight out of seminary as a way to maintain the exercise routine I enjoyed as a grad student with constant access to a campus fitness center. I knew spring and late fall/early winter would be busier times because of the extra services and time commitments of Lent and Advent, so I tried to schedule my workouts in a way that would complement, not compete with, the energy and focus I needed to pastor my congregation and do the work of ministry.

The name “Sacred Salt” came out of a sermon I preached on Matthew 5, specifically the 13th verse, where Jesus reminds his hearers that we “are the salt of the earth.” Jesus wasn’t telling the people to go off and figure out how to be salt. Rather, he was reminding them of what they already were: human beings created with two ways of producing salt – sweat and tears.

When Jesus said to be salt for the earth, I believe he meant to be so completely in relationship and community with others that you break a sweat and break into tears – whether they be joy, grief, rage, or laughter. In that way, the salt we’re made with becomes sacred when we share it with others, preserving the earth and the world around us.

In the fall of 2020, I was in the midst of two huge identity shifts: I’d resigned as a congregational pastor in mid-June of that year, and 8 weeks later gave birth via emergency c-section to my daughter. I felt unmoored, and the COVID-19 pandemic was just an added layer of ongoing bewilderment to the chaos I’d been feeling. All those identity questions I thought I’d thoroughly answered reared their heads again: Who am I, now? What do I want to do? How do I want to get there?

In the middle of all this, I received a phone call from a friend who knew I’d been going through some transitions and perhaps suspected some of what I was feeling. She offered me an opportunity to be the physical health and wellness coach for a year-long “Thriving in Ministry” program funded by the Lilly Foundation. The program would be completely virtual, and I would meet with cohorts of pastors as well as offer 1-1 sessions with individuals to talk about health, wellness, and exercise throughout all of 2021. And everything would be funded by the grant for the whole year. I was overjoyed. What had felt like disoriented wandering around a fog-draped maze became a little less foggy as more of the path appeared.

I’m forever thankful for that conversation, the leaders of the Thriving in Ministry program, and the participants who helped me grow, regain my confidence and clarity as a leader, and who trusted me to come alongside them as they made changes to become healthier, stronger, and happier. I’m especially thankful to the 4 pastors who also welcomed me into their lives as a trainer for prenatal and postpartum work, and who have named what I do now, “ministry.”

What obstacles have you faced to launching your ministry, and how are you overcoming or managing them?

As convenient as virtual training is, it is also a challenge since I am not in the same physical space as the people I train. When doing virtual personal training, all of us become our own tech and set crews to adjust lighting, camera angles, and finding the right position to be in to observe form while moving. It’s a mindset shift to find some levity in doing all that work, and it has also made me a better communicator and trainer since I’m relying on verbal feedback from my clients to determine how each movement feels. This is a benefit to my clients as well, since they need to be more in tune with their bodies in order to let me know if something is or isn’t working. When I create the Sacred Salt workout videos, I don’t have any feedback in real time, since folks can do them according to their schedules. That can make it difficult to offer enough variations to make movements challenging but doable, but as I get to know the people receiving these workouts, I ask for requests and do my best to offer what they’d like and enjoy doing.

For whom is your ministry really good news? Why?

Sacred Salt is really good news for folks who do their best to love Jesus, love the church, love themselves, and struggle to do all of that consistently without neglecting the latter in service of the two formers. These workouts come from a lived experience of pastoring full-time and wanting to find ways to care for myself physically, which helped keep me healthy mentally, emotionally, and vocationally. Connecting exercise to the story of faith helps the story come to life for me in wonderful and surprising ways. It’s my joy to help others discover that as well.

What's the best way for people to get more information about your ministry? 

My site, www.maryapicellafitness.com, is set up as a pre/postnatal virtual personal training website, but in the Venn diagram of my two passions, pastors and pre/postnatal folks, I am trying my best to weave them together on one website. There is a “Sacred Salt” tab at the top of the menu bar for folks who’d like to learn more, explore the video library of full-length workouts and demonstrations, as well as the extra “workouts with the saints” for various feast days, and try them all for free for 7 days.

Thank you, Mary, for sharing about your ministry and inviting others into it!

Let’s be clear, I am not urging anyone to quit! The question of how to resign well comes up often, though, for my coachees and in clergy groups. Thoughtfulness around your announcement will make your remaining time in your current context more pleasant. It will also allow you to be a leader as much through your leaving as through your pastoring up until this point. Here are some commonly asked questions about submitting a resignation, along with my responses:

Whom do I tell first? Before there’s a congregation-wide announcement, a departing pastor will typically want to tell a few individuals in the church. Most obvious is the person or group to whom you are primarily responsible, such as a personnel committee. If you are not the lead pastor, your supervisor will also need to know. And there might be others who get a heads-up, such as people in your church who have served as references, other staff or lay leaders with whom you’ve worked closely, the chair of the search committee that called you, or the chair of your congregation’s governing board. (Don’t neglect to inform your judicatory leader as well, if that person has not been involved with your search.) Keep in mind that there might be some people who don’t need to know your news before a congregational announcement but who will merit one-on-one conversation afterward, such as church members to whom you’ve become close.

When do I start telling people? Remember that if you are going to another congregation, the folks there will be excited about you. They will start spreading the word as soon as your call is official (and sometimes before, despite requests to the contrary). The people in your current context need to hear your news from you, so cue up conversations or communications so that you’re ready when the call is finalized.

What do I say? This is hard. You’re moving on for a reason, yet you’ve put a lot into this church you’re leaving and the people there. Here’s an outline that can help scaffold your announcement.

• Acknowledge bittersweet nature of news you’re about to share (e.g., “It is with mixed emotions that I tell you…”).

• Tell where you’re going and what your role will be (if applicable).

• Name your last Sunday and last day in the office.

• Give a brief explanation about why you’re leaving (e.g., “I wasn’t looking, but the Holy Spirit nudged…” or “Because of changes to my/our situation, I’ve/we’ve felt the need to…” or “Because of all the ways you have encouraged me and helped me grow in ministry, I now feel ready to…”).

• Identify a couple of things you are grateful for about your current congregation.

• Explain how you are working with others to make sure gaps are addressed in your absence.

• Share how you’ll be spending your remaining time (e.g., “I will be prioritizing…” or “I will be in and out as I try to sort out details here as well as in my new home, but I will be paying attention to [tasks] over the next [time until leaving].”).

What should I expect after my announcement? Well, you and others will feel all the feels. (Read more about this here.) Also, you might feel a frantic energy to tie up every loose end or an utter lack of motivation to get things done. If the former, decide what is most important (hint: it will probably be relationships) and lean into it, knowing you will not get everything done and giving yourself grace for that. If the latter, make sure you have at least transferred passwords and knowledge that lives only in your head to someone else or to a document that your successor can access and offered some sort of opportunity for closure with you.

Giving people news they don’t expect and don’t want is always hard. Plan for self-care afterward and through your remaining time. And if you need help leaving well where you are and starting well where you’re going, contact me or schedule a call to find out how I can coach you through those two important periods of your ministry.

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash.

The title of this posts reflects a growing reality among mainline Protestant churches in North America. So what do we do, especially given that this trend is likely to continue? I’m over at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog today with my thoughts.

Photo by Nolan Kent on Unsplash.