Shaping the Parish™

Q - Any suggestions for handling the normal routine and demands of parish life along with those of the program?

A - The program requires a full commitment of your time and energy. It needs to have some priority. This isn’t so much about the program itself as it is about developing a long-term habit. Improving the parish calls for continuous attention. 

Start with the assumption that your participation in the program means that what has been routine needs to change. One thing you can do is to look for opportunities to integrate things. For example, make some of your developmental initiatives the parish’s programs of education and spiritual or leadership development. Don’t plan all your programs until you have time to look over the list of projects. Do the same with your vestry or leadership retreat.

From In Your Holy Spirit: Shaping the Parish Through Spiritual Practices, Robert A Gallagher: “In organization development there’s an assumption that all organizations have a “demand system.” That demand system is the web of expectations and pressures calling for energy, time and money. The demands may be external or internal. All parishes have the regular flow of work it must attend to. There’s the occasional crisis, problems to solve and deadlines to meet. We also get caught up in work that just isn’t very important to what we exist to do and be. Some meetings, phone calls and e-mail are like that. Most of us also have routines that are in fact either busy-work or time wasters. All those things, the important and the unimportant, consume most parishes and most of our individual lives.

The activities that transform parish and personal life can take a back seat to the routine business that must be done and to the unimportant interruptions and trivia of life. What renews life and develops the parish waits for when there’s time. This means relationships don’t get built, people don’t receive training and coaching in spiritual practices, strategic issues aren’t addressed, and so opportunities are missed and crises not foreseen and prevented.

We can turn all that around by adding elements to the demand system. We need to add activities and resources into parish life that keep the important, transformative matters in front of us.  In congregational development it means things like a yearly leadership retreat that works only on strategic matters; having a skilled external consultant; leaders receiving in-depth leadership training for congregational development, and developing a richer parish life of prayer through the Daily Office and increasing the ability of members for participation in the Eucharist and their own personal devotions.

I think it was Stephen Covey who said something like, ‘Don’t prioritize your schedule; schedule your priorities.’ ”  

Q. What do you mean by emotional and social intelligence?

A.  We are thinking of competencies such as self-awareness and self-management, empathy, our use of influence, communication skills, and our ability to work collaboratively while being self-differentiated. See the paper “The Emotional Competence Framework.”   

Q.  How emotionally demanding is the program?

A.  Exploring new ways of leadership behavior and receiving feedback can be stressful. Much of the workshop time uses experiential education methods - a group experiences an assigned task followed by disciplined reflection on what happened in the group, role play and simulation, and feedback on the impact of your behavior on others.

Q.  What level of congregational development competence does Shaping the Parish prepare me for?

A.  For most people the program can help you develop enough competence to make a significant difference in the life of your parish. 

Becoming professionally competent in the field usually requires the following:

1. Training - A program like Shaping the Parish or the Church Development Institute and at least four weeks of experiential workshops in areas such as human interaction, conflict management, design skills (education and program), consultation skills. An experiential-based degree program in organization development would accomplish most of this. Some additional work in the unique issues and dynamics of congregations would be needed as well. D Min congregational development programs are generally not experiential enough to develop the needed competency; they can, though, be useful as a structure for reading and writing in the field.

2. Interning/Being mentored - Working with someone with more experience in the field. Seeing how someone else leads, trains, or consults. Having someone else help you critique your work.

3. Experience - Having three years experience beyond your training.

4. Reading in the field - During all the above while engaging a course of reading in the field. 

 For more see- Congregational Development Leadership - Consultant Assessment

Q - Is this a continuing education program for clergy?

A - Not really. The program is about the parish’s revitalization. It’s not about the continuing education of the clergy. So, there is no certificate provided, no CEU’s offered. We of course hope clergy will learn a great deal. That learning however is directly about the health of your parish.  

Q - How transferable is this into a secular work setting? If I’m a lay person having to ask my boss for time off to attend - how might I explain it?

A - The program is grounded in organization development and systems thinking.  We are applying to a church setting what we know broadly about the field of organization development, including change methods; coaching and people development; ways to increase buy-in and accountability, thereby improving team functioning; and effective analysis and decision-making.  These areas are critical to the health of any organization and we will be using methods and theories that can be easily transferred to different organizational settings.  Our specific aim is to increase the skills of participants in all of these areas, while building flexibility and depth.

 Areas of focus that are particularly applicable to secular work include:

-Use of the MBTI and FIRO B with individuals and teams to increase leadership competencies and improve emotional and social intelligence.

-Considerations in evaluating whether a proposed goal or change fits strategically with broader organizational goals, and what impediments to the change or goal are likely.

-Ways to effectively implement change, monitor effectiveness based on observable data, and make mid-stream adjustments as needed.

-Methods to overcome learning anxiety to increase the capacity of team members to learn new skills and better support new organizational goals.

-Ways to share information constructively within a team to increase internal commitment.

-Identifying skills needed for a particular project and selecting the right team members to accomplish it.

-Development of a range of leadership styles, and the capacity to move between them to fit the specific needs of the situation (e.g., appropriate and effective use of coaching skills; recognizing when a “democratic” style fits and when a more “authoritative” style is more appropriate). 

-Creating improvement processes and learning plans. 

In Michelle’s secular career, she’s the Chief Compliance Officer for a regional financial services company.  Her training work with the church has led to significant and tangible improvements in her own leadership skills and in her ability to further the organization’s goals.  For many years Bob’s consulting work was primarily with non-profit organizations and a few small businesses. Major contracts were with WomenRising in Jersey City (domestic abuse shelter, social services, affordable housing), the Affordable Housing Network of NJ, and Tom’s of Maine.