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January 4 - April 4, 2021
Congregations today need to surrender to the realities of decline and stagnation. We need to quit fighting our liminal reality, as if this is something that we can ward off by striving harder at what we know how to do. By saying yes to what is, we can align ourselves with a future that needs and wants to emerge through us.
Claus Otto Scharmer, “The Blind Spot of Leadership: Presencing as a Social Technology of Freedom,” April 2003. http://www.ottoscharmer.com/publications/articles.
Claus Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges
Tilden Edwards, Embracing the Call to Spiritual Depth: Gifts for Contemplative Living
There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. —Thomas Merton
A leader working with the soul of the institution is listening for resonance between a proposed course of action and the true self of the organization.
If an organization or institution (I am using these two terms interchangeably throughout this chapter) has a soul, then it behooves us to learn how to regard it, respect it, and work with it. We cannot presume to strengthen an organization, its culture, its processes, its structures without engaging its soulfulness. The remainder of this book is about doing just that—learning to regard and engage the soul of the institution.
The soul is an agent of the divine spark in the institution. The soul is the authentic and truest self of the institution; the source of its divine calling, character, and destiny; the protector of institutional integrity.
Sometimes, what appears to be a remarkable spirit-led opportunity really isn’t in the best interest of soul. What
taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”
Schein’s definition reminds us that culture is formed in response to something else. Culture is not the source of anything.
In a healthy congregation, culture will mirror the divine essence.
Corrine Ware, professor of theology at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest, names four styles of spirituality: thinking, feeling, being, doing. She applies these styles to individuals as well as congregations.
Most congregations express a strong preference for one or two types of spirituality and a lesser attachment to the other styles.
By now, you may very well be asking, “What difference do all of these distinctions make?” For the last several decades, I don’t think these distinctions made much of a difference in faith-based institutions. In the past, we built organizations that were spiritually open, relationally healthy, and organizationally strong, and the soul of the institution simply thrived. It wasn’t important to name the distinctions between soul, culture, spirit, and spirituality. It was all part of a functioning whole and the soul quietly did its work. Today, the Church and the institutions that make up the
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Middle judicatory bodies[10] search for fresh programs, new worship styles, and innovative discipleship approaches that seem to be working somewhere in some context. They repackage these approaches and advocate or impose them universally on all congregations under their jurisdiction. Frantic local leaders latch on to generic programs and implement them without first considering context and soul. If it doesn’t work here, at least I won’t appear to be standing idly by, fiddling while Rome burns.
The church is failing. Act busy.
The chapter that follows a liminal season is often marked by a greater sense of purpose and direction, with clearer access to the divine essence.
I committed to arriving early, or creating space early in my work schedule, to simply sit in the sanctuary or public meeting space to pray. I asked God to reveal something to me about the soul of the organization that I was about to engage. Absolutely nothing happened.
bodies of soulful organizational work that I find helpful in liminal seasons: deepening group discernment (chapter 4), shaping institutional memory (chapter 5), clarifying purpose (chapter 6), and engaging emergence (chapter 7).
One of the greatest barriers to soul-tending work is a false dualism we perpetuate, the separation of organizational leadership and spiritual leadership. We put our best spiritual leaders in deacon-type roles and ask them to tend the spiritual, educational, and pastoral life of the organization. We put our best fiduciary and strategic thinkers in the role of board leaders or trustees, and we ask them to take care of the organization. In doing this, we create a dualistic leadership system. You are either an organizational type or a spiritual type.
We must select leaders for our governing boards that have some capacity for soul-tending work. We must nurture their abilities by developing the disciplines of discernment. We must select facilitation tools and meeting management techniques that foster open mind, heart, and spirit.
Corrine Ware, Discover Your Spiritual Type (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014),
John H. Mostyn, “Transforming Institutions: God’s Call—A Director’s Response,”
God does not exist to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God. —Oswald Chambers
“I’m rather embarrassed to ask this,” he said, “but what exactly is discernment? I have heard this word my whole life in the church and we used it all day here, but no one has ever explained discernment to me in a way that I understand. What am I doing when I discern, especially when I do so on behalf of the congregation?”
As the Church, we have forgotten our discernment tradition. Our centuries-old practices of discernment feel foreign and out of place in our religious institutions. We have replaced discernment with rational decision-making. Those who practice discernment are often viewed suspiciously as “new age” touchy-feely types.
It’s not that they don’t trust God to speak; they simply don’t trust themselves to hear.
the leader in my opening story brought into our gathering. He couldn’t imagine discernment as anything other than well-facilitated group decision-making, with a prayer thrown in on the side for good measure.
Ruth Haley Barton defines discernment as an ever-increasing capacity to “see” the work of God in the midst of the human situation, so that we can align ourselves with whatever God is doing.
If we believe that God is an active agent in the world, then we need practices for attending to God’s agency.
Decision-making assumes that we have the capacity to understand and solve our own problems and that this works best by maximizing available resources and maintaining order.
Decision-Making versus Discernment
Too binary for reality
It takes a lot of preparation and intentionality to shift a community from the practice of decision-making to the practice of discernment.
Preparing leaders for group discernment involves helping them explore their assumptions about God’s agency—and this may take a substantial amount of time.
God gives us choice, and the choices we make matter to God.
Discernment is a gift from God, mediated through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Discernment is a discipline
The truths of God are revealed and tested within community.
Discernment unfolds in God’s time.
we must exercise patience and forbearance with one another and God, as we wait for clarity to emerge.
Exploring the theological assumptions of the group is the first stage in building readiness for group discernment.
Two-thirds of the group could not tolerate five minutes of silence—they couldn’t find their way to stillness!
We need both organizational savvy and spiritual maturity within the leadership body.
There is often a lowest common denominator at work in groups gathered for collective discernment. The quality of the work in the room degenerates to the level of the least spiritually mature person in the room.
Leaders must be taught how to approach stillness. It doesn’t work well to simply dump people into silence, because they don’t know what to do with their own internal chatter.
slow and repetitive reading of scripture,
The typical devotional prayer that precedes many of our board and committee meetings is not helpful to group discernment.
A group that grounds its work in wordless prayer is more likely to open itself to the mystery and movement of God when considering alternatives and making choices.
Marge shows up to the church council meeting, excited about a revelation she believes she received during her personal prayer time. When given the opportunity to speak, Marge clutches her Bible to her chest, declaring that God told her the congregation needs to buy new carpeting for the sanctuary.
Distinguishing between the true and false selves of the institution makes us feel unsettled.
