“What are y’all talking about?”

“What does that mean?”

“What road is this?”

“Is that the Taj Mahal?”

My 4-year-old son is learning to satisfy his irrepressible curiosity by asking questions. He practices a lot. Sometimes I won’t be finished responding to one query before he lobs another. My husband and I counted approximately 541,092 questions on the 3.5-hour trip from our home to Atlanta last week. Actually, double that, because almost every unique inquiry was followed up by his request to repeat the answer.“What’d you just say?” (Yes, we’ve had his hearing checked.)

His questions get tedious, but I do my best not to discourage them. My parents always made time for mine. I knew I’d found a church home as a teenager when my Sunday School teachers and youth minister let me challenge what they told me. And I make a living asking coaching questions of clergy who want to make positive changes in their personal and professional lives.

My brain, my faith, and my livelihood run on questions. That is why it really pains me when people preface their wonderings with, “Maybe this is a dumb question, but…” or worse yet, not feel comfortable making their inquiry at all.

If you’re wondering whether your question is worth asking – without any qualifying – here is an assessment:

• Are you genuinely curious?

• Does your question invite rather than shut down discussion?

• Are the time and venue right, to the best of your understanding, for your question?

(Note that right time and venue don’t necessarily have to do with making your hearer(s) comfortable. Sometimes it’s important to ask well-planned questions that raise anxiety.)

If you responded to these bullet points in the affirmative, then go forth and ask boldly!

Last week I had a front-table speech for Brian McLaren’s early-morning keynote to a room full of clergy cohort conveners. When he dove into his very meaty content, I was glad I was already 2/3 of the way through my coffee. He had some challenging words for faith leaders who are very concerned with the direction of our congregations, denominations, and/or country. In these chaotic, divisive times, McLaren said, we must be intentional and honest about our pastoral approach. In choosing our tack, we have four choices:

Offend no one. We can limit our preaching and teaching to “safe” topics. (I imagine this list of subjects is pretty short!) McLaren noted that we will nevertheless discover new ways to offend people every week, because the Gospel is political.

Go where the wind blows. We can listen to what the people in our care want to hear, then echo it from the pulpit. McLaren warned that there is grave danger in this approach, as our constituents are being tugged by opposing forces, not all of which are in line with the Gospel. We might find ourselves espousing – or at least leaving unchallenged – convictions that are contrary to the core of who we are and what we believe.

Push the congregation. We can prod our parishioners on the core issues of the dignity of all people, stewardship of the planet, caring for the poor, and ushering in peace – what McLaren considers the four core issues of faith. This is a bold move for those of us who pastor purple churches and/or who worry about making ends meet if our congregations can’t tolerate our stances.

Lead by anxiety. We can share our concerns about the fissures in our culture from a personal perspective, such as “I am worried about the normalization of bullying in our country.” (This is permission-giving for people to acknowledge their own concerns in a safe container, not a handing-off of our own worries.) After we have surfaced the tensions, we can discuss with our members what a faithful, corporate response might look like.

I have talked with many ministers who are mulling how to navigate our charged climate. What does it look like to be faithful both to our personal beliefs and to our call to the setting we serve? How do we exercise our prophetic voices in ways that our people can hear? How do we model ways of listening deeply to one another? How do we balance our desire to be engaged – even activist – citizens with our responsibilities as pastors?

I have struggled with these same questions as a guest preacher and a clergy spouse in a more-red-than-purple congregation. I found Brian McLaren’s framework helpful for making a more conscious decision about my own approach. Maybe there’s a nugget in there for you too.

Last week I shared my positive experience with a congregation that worked with me so that I could live into my dual calling as pastor and parent. Since then I have heard from several clergy: those whose churches who have made similar efforts and those who have left congregational ministry or are considering doing so because their churches want them to compartmentalize their pastoring and parenting selves.

Sometimes congregations simply don’t know how to support the pastor-parent. Below I have shared a few ways a church can reduce parenting stress so that the pastor can better focus on ministry. For the unconvinced, I have thrown in some notes on how these actions benefit the congregation as a whole – beyond having a grateful and less frazzled leader.

If your church has a daycare or preschool, offer a reduced rate to the minister. Side benefit: the minister will undoubtedly be more involved in the school and will be a more informed and enthusiastic evangelist for it in the community.

Allow flexibility in work arrangements, such as permitting the minister to work from home or bring a child to work as needed. Side benefit: though it may seem counterintuitive, ministers will likely be more available and productive if they are not spending time and mental and emotional energies on arranging emergency childcare.

Set up a rotation of church parents/grandparents to help the minister’s child(ren) participate in worship – or to care for young children during worship, if there’s no formal nursery. Side benefit: the church will develop more cross-generational communication and investment.

Provide childcare for evening and weekend meetings that the minister must attend. Side benefit: other parents with young children will now be able to participate in those meetings when childcare is a given.

Help the minister manage the congregation’s expectations of the minister’s family. Side benefit: the graciousness extended to the pastor’s children and significant other can reinforce or help establish a church atmosphere in which everyone feels safe to be their true selves before one another and God.

What would you add to this list?

In summary, congregations need not be afraid to call pastor-parents. In addition to their many gifts, these ministers bring a deepened investment in the church as their child(ren)’s faith community, an instant means of connection with parents and grandparents in the church, and a unique perspective on hospitality toward and the spiritual formation of young families. For pastor-parents to call upon these “extras,” though, the congregation must demonstrate its willingness to welcome both aspects of the minister’s identity.

I was in congregational ministry for over ten years before my child came into the world. During that decade it was sometimes necessary for my husband (a pastor in another denomination) and me to negotiate conflicts between our calendars, but we were both free for the most part to work odd hours, commit to all ministry-related trips we wanted, and sleep off church-induced stress and exhaustion.

That freedom came to a full stop when our son was born four years ago. Suddenly I had to become much more thoughtful about my time and energy usage. While my call to ministry was (and is) as strong as ever, I now had a calling to parenthood as well, and my baby’s dependence meant that I had to figure out how to operate pastorally in a new way.

I was between church positions during my pregnancy, but I was ready to begin looking again soon after L was born. I was extended a call to a part-time ministry in a congregation that was a great theological fit when L was two or three months old. After much hand-wringing, I turned it down because there were big red flags about the position’s flexibility. Not long thereafter I accepted an offer to a congregation that went out of its way to work with me on my office hours, provide me with reduced-price daycare, and set up Sunday evening childcare. This church got the best I had to offer as an experienced minister/new parent because of this extra effort.

While it is true that caring for wee ones consumes a lot of time and focus, parents can be great pastors. And congregations can promote excellence in ministry (and in parenting) by understanding the following:

Some (many? most?) pastor-parents see ministry and child-rearing as dual callings. They are committed to doing both well. A church can make living toward both purposes much easier…or much harder.

Pastor-parents are better able to focus on ministry if they aren’t always worried about their child(ren) or about how congregants view their parenting. The childcare arrangement that works best for the pastor’s family – whatever it looks like – is usually best for the congregation, even if it’s not what the church members would have chosen for themselves or for their minister.

Every minister will have a different pastor-parent style. Some will want or need to bring their child(ren) on pastoral care visits or to evening meetings. Others might choose to build in more separation between pastoring and parenting.

Pastor-parents typically welcome the congregation’s help and parenting wisdom. We can’t do it all, and we don’t know it all! Criticism of the minister’s child-rearing style and especially of the child(ren) is never welcome, however, and can harm the pastor-parishioner relationship.

The church is not just a pastor-parent’s workplace, it is also the PK’s faith community. Just like with any other family in the pews, pastor-parents will invest more in the church if the church invests in their children.

Congregational ministry is one of the only callings in which the leader is evaluated primarily on a weekly take-your-child-to-work day. Bear that in mind when a minister’s kid has a meltdown on the front row during the sermon, and respond with compassion both to the child and to the concerned/embarrassed pastor-parent.

Next week I will offer a part two to this post, noting some ways your church can support the pastor-parent, thereby deepening the pastor-parish relationship and giving the minister opportunity to lead with a full heart.

Your [insert committee here] chair has just suggested that a survey be sent out to take the congregation’s temperature around that committee’s area of ministry. You groan inwardly, because your experience with surveys is that they tend to solicit personal preferences more than information that can be used to shape the ministry’s direction.

It’s true that surveys can muddy the waters if they are not executed well. But surveys can help clarify the church’s needs because they ask the same questions of everyone, yield responses from a range of congregants, and collect a lot of written information. Here, then, are some tips for making your survey as useful as possible.

Identify the goal(s) of the survey. What does the committee hope to gain from this exercise?

Ask questions that elicit the most helpful responses. How will the questions focus respondents on the church’s needs rather than the survey-taker’s preferences? What information will be most useful to the committee? What kinds of survey questions will draw out that information?

Decide on the right number of questions. What survey length will be comprehensive enough to get needed information but not so long as to discourage people from taking it? What is the proper balance between multiple choice/rating questions and free-response questions?

Provide multiple means for taking the survey. Utilizing electronic and hard copy options will allow church members to complete the survey no matter what their comfort level with/access to technology and attendance patterns are.

Determine the best window for survey distribution. Don’t send out the survey in the midst of active conflict or while everyone is on vacation. Do send it out so that the committee has ample time to process the returns before making important decisions. Ensure that the survey is available for a long enough time that everyone will see it and have a chance to respond, but not so long that people will put off filling it out.

Be clear about who will see the survey responses and how the responses will be used. Transparency about the handling of the survey will build trust in the committee and send the message that the congregation’s input is important.

Use the survey in tandem with – not in place of – congregational conversations. Surveys can be conducted before churchwide discussions, and the survey responses can help shape those events. Surveys can also be used as follow-up after congregational conversations.

What wisdom about surveys would you add to this list?

The day you sit down in your desk chair for the first time, plotting how you will arrange your vast theological library and hang your credentials, is an exciting one. It can also be an incapacitating one. What do I do first? Who are these people? How do they operate? Why in the world do they operate that way?

Listening to staff and the people in the pews is an important step toward answering these questions. You don’t have to wait for cottage meetings or scheduled conversations with influencers to start putting your ear to the ground, however. You can ask for the following information before you even show up the first day. These documents will help you pick up on patterns, pinpoint whom to contact first, and refine your questions so that you can get off to the quickest possible start.

• Most recent church directory

• Staff list and position descriptions

• Pastoral care list (including homebound, critically ill, and anniversaries of deaths)

• Church calendar

• Budget for the past three years

• Constitution and by-laws

• Board/committee information (including chair, chair’s contact information, meeting schedule and location, and recent meeting notes)

• Special events and traditions (including when they occur, contact person, and the history of the event or tradition)

• Locations of hospitals and other key places

• Names and contact information for partner churches and organizations

• Judicatory calendar

• Notes left by previous or interim minister (if applicable)

Not every church will have all of this information at the ready. (What information is available and how current it is might, in itself, be telling.) But the documents you can get your hands on will give you a better sense of the church’s immediate needs and your pastoral priorities.

What else would you add to this list?

In developing the approach to ministerial searches that is rooted in hospitality, I put together a meeting structure that weaves together the elements of discernment and the business that teams must attend to. It builds in intentional spaces and means of attending to the Holy Spirit as teams go about the work at hand. This outline can be utilized for a range of congregational processes.

Preparing to perceive God’s guidance

• Create an atmosphere for discernment. Prepare the gathering space in a way that is conducive to worshipful work.

• Set aside distractions. Ask, “What does each of us need to turn over to God before we can focus on the work at hand?”

• Worship together in your gathering space. Invite everyone to name where they have seen God at work this week.

• Refine the question for discernment.

  • Ask each team member to give an overview of progress that has been made on agreed-upon actions.

  • Celebrate this progress and build in support for actions that are incomplete.

  • Identify what the team needs to focus on in this meeting. Parse which pieces are matters for discernment and which can appropriately be accomplished through decisions.

  • Clarify the question(s) for discernment that is/are now before the team.

• Pray for indifference. Pray as Jesus did: “Not my will but Thine be done.”

Listen for the wisdom of God

• Gather relevant data. Invite team members to share the details of work done since the last meeting.

• Discuss the data. Encourage each team member to share what they notice from the data presented. Ask clarifying questions. Name what the team doesn’t yet know but needs to know. Listen deeply to one another.

• Pray for wisdom. Acknowledge that the team has done what it can in terms of collecting and evaluating the data. Ask God to move in that new awareness.

• Make friends with silence. Wait on the Lord. Use spiritual disciplines to tune into what God might be saying.

Consider and commit to what God is inviting the team to do

• Identify the resolution that seems (resolutions that seem) to be emerging. Get every concern on the table. Refine every idea that bubbles up.

• Work toward agreement. Start from points of commonality: “What is it that we all seem to be hearing clearly?” Dig deeper on points of resistance: “Tell me more about your hesitation.” Use your team’s previously agreed-upon means of coming to agreement.

• Test the agreement. Let the resolution rest. If your team isn’t able to sleep on it, take a break and then discuss how team members are feeling in their heads, hearts, and guts about the proposed way forward.

• Take action. Make detailed plans for action steps. Who will do what? How, and by when? What support and/or accountability is needed?

Reflect on how God is at work in the process as a whole

• Before adjourning, check in on how the team felt it worked together today and what adjustments to process need to be made.

• Wonder aloud, “What is God up to?”

Discernment: we talk about it. We encourage the people in our care to engage in it. But even so, sometimes we’re not sure exactly how to define it or how to wade into it. This post offers a starting point.

Decisions are intellectual exercises. People gather information from a number of sources, evaluate it, and create actions and a timetable based on the outcomes of their analysis. When people make decisions, they seek to control the outcome. Discernment is an attentiveness – cultivated in the head, heart, and gut – to God’s work in the world so that we might join God in those efforts. Wisdom about the matter for discernment unfolds in God’s time and through many of the same sources upon which decisions are made, plus some that might be discounted when acting purely on logic. Below are some of the key elements of discernment.

Create an atmosphere for discernment. Consider the location, room arrangement, and touchstones that would make your space most conducive to listening for the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

Set aside distractions. Name and turn over agendas and worries that could keep you from focusing on God’s yearnings.

Worship in your space. Read scripture. Pray. Sing. Remember and acknowledge that God wants good for you.

Refine the question for discernment. You are more likely to get a clear response if your question for God is finely-tuned.

Pray for indifference. Indifference means that, because you trust God’s intentions, you will refrain from nudging the outcome in one direction or another.

Gather relevant data. Use every resource at your disposal, including but not limited to hard data, conversations with others, scripture, individual and collective memories, pro/con lists, imagination, intuition, feelings, and your senses. No data source is off limits in discernment, because God speaks in a number of ways.

Discuss the data. Name what you have discovered through gathering the data – especially the surprises.

Pray for wisdom. Ask God to weave the data together and to help you step back and view the interwoven whole.

Make friends with silence. We are so unaccustomed to silence that when we do experience it, we often feel uncomfortable with it. Start with short spans of silence (30 seconds or so) and build capacity from there. In doing so, you give God a bigger opening. Wait on God to speak.

Identify the resolution that seems to be emerging. What are you hearing?

Test the resolution. Ask God for confirmation that you have discerned correctly. (See criteria for identifying, “is this God?”) Tweak the plan as needed.

Take action. Honor the faithfulness of God by moving forward boldly with the action you have discerned.

While this outline is for individual discernment, you can tweak it at any point to involve others.

Are you a minister engaged in the exhilarating, overwhelming, often frustrating search & call process? I’ve ridden that roller coaster too. I’ve participated in some healthy call processes and in others that left me wondering, “What was that search team thinking? Lordamercy.”

Through all these experiences I have learned that the way a church handles its ministerial search is a big indicator of how the clergy-congregation relationship will go. That means it’s really important to be attentive to red flags in interactions with the search team. Here are ten to be on the lookout for:

Inappropriate questions. Outside of small talk, queries from a search team should stay focused on your call to ministry, qualifications, and capacity to engage fully the responsibilities of the position.

Incomplete information. Particularly if you are a finalist for a position, you have the right to obtain complete answers to your questions about the congregation, to view the church’s key documents., and to meet church leaders.

Lack of space for your questions. You are interviewing the congregation as much as the congregation is interviewing you.

Rushed search. A rush job often indicates high anxiety, which means you could be stepping into a hornet’s nest if you accept the call.

Unresolved conflict in the congregation. A church that has completed the hard work of a transition will have addressed tricky issues – or at least will have an already-activated plan for doing so that is not simply “let the next minister handle it.”

Difficult dynamics within the search team. If you can hardly see the search team members because of the elephant in the room, name the dynamics you notice and ask what’s behind them. These difficulties could be a microcosm of what’s going on in the congregation as a whole.

Inflexibility. If the search team can interview you at X date/Y time and no other options are available, for example, consider what might be behind this rigidity.

Job description that is outdated or “kitchen sink.” If the minister description has not been revised since 1957 or it would take four full-time clergy to fulfill all the duties outlined, the search team doesn’t have a good grasp on what it’s looking for.

Lack of courtesy. The best search teams communicate clearly and in a timely manner, plan for interviews and visits with hospitality in view, and don’t leave you guessing about search expenses.

Focus on hot buttons. When you’re asked where you stand on gay marriage, for example, don’t just dive in. Probe the concern behind the question.

No spiritual component. If the search team could have conducted the exact same interview in a secular hiring process, the search process may not have the requisite spiritual grounding.

If you note one or more of these red flags, don’t panic. These aren’t necessarily indications that the congregation is a train wreck or that you should immediately withdraw your name. (Most people who serve on search teams are participating in this process for the first time, and there’s a steep learning curve for calling a minister.) Do, however, proceed with caution. Do your homework. Leave no question unasked. Parse your search team interactions with a trusted colleague, coach, mentor, or judicatory leader. Mull whether this church’s challenges are a good match for your passions and your skill set.

Above all, enjoy the ride when possible, and hang in there!

Recently the Lewis Center for Church Leadership published a fantastic article about how congregations can welcome and support their female ministers. The piece speaks to some of the fears that search committees have when considering a woman for a ministry position. It also raises awareness about  the small but significant ways that clergywomen are treated differently than clergymen. In doing so, the post names and dispels many of the assumptions about women in ministry. With that slate clear, what can churches expect from their female clergy?

Clergywomen love Jesus. We are not in ministry for the money (most of us are paid less than our male counterparts) or the notoriety (the stained glass ceiling is real). And we definitely have not pursued this vocation because it is the path of least resistance. We’re here because we are drawn to the message and model of Christ.

Clergywomen know their scripture. For many of us, Paul’s epistles have long been used as a barricade to the pulpit. That means we’ve had to steep ourselves in the Bible, studying its words, arcs, and historical/cultural context so that we can be confident we’ve discerned correctly and so that we can be faithful in forming others.

Clergywomen have been vetted, then vetted some more. At every level of examination, someone is looking for a reason not just to exclude each one of us as individuals, but also to use our personal shortcomings (real or imagined) as grounds not to grant pastoral authority to any woman. If we clear these hurdles, you’d better believe we are capable.

Clergywomen have had their mettle tested. Women in ministry are criticized for our hair, age, fashion choices, voice, family situation, and many other variables that are irrelevant to ministry – and that men are rarely evaluated on. And the “acceptable” leadership style for a woman (in any professional field, really) falls in a miniscule range between too soft and too assertive. Experienced in dealing with discouragements around these matters on a regular basis, we are not easily scared off from the legitimate difficulties of church work.

Clergywomen have a deep, DEEP sense of call. Women have their calls to ministry questioned all the time. Sometimes it happens in plain talk (e.g., “I believe women should never teach men”), and on other occasions it manifests by such means as second-guessing, talking to a female pastor as if she is the speaker’s daughter or granddaughter, asking where the “real” pastor is, or using diminutive terms (Miss Laura, Pastorette). As a result, clergywomen check in with God about their calls on a regular basis, asking for guidance and courage to live toward the purpose we’ve been given.

Clergywomen are endlessly creative. When there are so many hurdles not just to serving faithfully, but also finding a place to serve to begin with, women have to call upon all our gifts. We can think beyond our assumed constraints because we must – and the church and her people are the beneficiaries of our innovation.

Many clergywomen are backed by a fierce tribe, which provides its members with wisdom and support. When a congregation calls a female minister, it gets the bonus of a magnificently insightful hive mind. (Note: if you are a woman in ministry who has not yet found her tribe, look for it! Here are two places to start. And as a coach I would be thrilled to be your encourager and thought partner via a coaching relationship.)

Imagine your congregation could find all of these qualities in a minister, plus the particular skills and graces of a ministerial candidate. What great things for God could you do together?

When I was in high school and college, I fancied myself a prophet. I was a young woman discerning a call to ministry in a Southern Baptist context, and I knew in every wrinkle in my brain, beat of my heart, and conviction of my soul both that God calls women to be pastors and that we are up to the challenge. And I wasn’t hesitant to tell anyone exactly what I thought.

I might have said a prophetic word here and there about egalitarianism, but some of my bra-burning rants were more about pushing others’ buttons or reacting when they pushed mine. Fourteen years into ordained ministry I understand something that I didn’t back then: that there’s more to being prophetic than simply saying something edgy.

Sometimes God taps us to say hard things to people who won’t be eager to hear them. But there’s a second task in the prophet’s job description: we have to prepare our intended audience to listen to what we’re saying. Too often we expend our energy yelling into the void because we haven’t cultivated the relationships that prompt our hearers to pay attention, to give credence to our impassioned points. All the wordsmithing and protesting in the world won’t make up for neglecting this responsibility.

In congregational ministry we tend to believe being a pastor gives us, well, a pulpit for our positions. To some extent it does. Our title and role provide some level of authority. But to be truly, effectively prophetic (read: prompting people to real action based on beliefs they hold themselves), we must first prove ourselves to be our constituents’ priest. We must get to know them, care for them, learn from them, minister alongside them, share our own stories with them, be a trustworthy presence for them, and show our ministerial abilities to them. (Even as public figures we must prove ourselves relatable to hearers we might never meet by finding ways to listen to their concerns and by living with integrity, compassion, competence, and appropriate self-revelation.) Only then will the soil be well-fertilized for the prophecies we share with them to take deep root.

Taking the time to relate to our people is as important – more important? – than ever. In an election cycle that is turning out to be like no other and in a Church that is often held captive by anxieties and outdated expectations, prophets are much needed. And without real bonds, the only people who will care about our messages are the ones who already agree with us. Not only will few hearts and minds be changed, we’ll continue to speak past each other (or worse, talk at one another). So may God equip us in this critical time not just with the words, but also with the courage, empathy, persistence that give the words lasting impact.

Committee 1 gathers monthly – more or less – to maintain one of the church’s ministries. It has a dedicated core group, plus some other participants that drift in and out. The meetings tend to be needlessly long and rehash a lot of the same issues each time. Action items are unevenly distributed, and implementation is hit-or-miss.

Committee 2 gathers monthly to carry out one of the church’s ministries. The members are clear on their task and have spent time agreeing on how to accomplish it. Before beginning their work each time, they revisit the covenant they created that guides how they interact with one another. Sometimes there are differences of opinion during discussion times, but each committee member makes an effort to understand where others are coming from. At the end of each meeting, the chair ensures everyone is on the same page about the action items, point people, and timelines they’ve agreed on.

What’s the difference between the two committees? Committee 1 is a group, a loose collection of individuals who share an orbital pattern. Committee 2, by contrast, is a team. In teams the members share a purpose, a grasp on the process for accomplishing it, and responsibility for seeing it through. Someone has taken up the mantle of leadership (which may be passed among the members) and someone has given this group the authority to move on their plans. There is a cohesiveness among the members that allows them to build on one another’s strengths and hold each other accountable.

There’s nothing wrong with being a group, if that’s what the situation calls for. The people gathered for a class or training, for example, co-exist well as a group. They’re all there for the learning, but there’s no project to require interdependence. However, church leadership teams will be much more effective if they embrace a team identity with all it entails.

To start making the move from being a collection of individuals to a true team, build mutual understanding by discussing together these four questions:

What is our shared purpose?

What is our process for living toward that purpose?

Who will be responsible for which pieces of the process?

How will we know we can trust one another throughout the process?

These aren’t the only considerations for team-building, but they’re a good start.

What groups in your purview need to evolve into teams – or be disbanded and re-formed as teams from the start?

Abraham sat on his front porch, fanning feverishly to break up the thick heat. The sudden appearance in his yard of three men brought him out of his reverie. Spry for a 99-year-old, he hurried over to them. Friendly faces were hard to come by, even around Abraham’s own home. There had, after all, been many an argument with his wife Sarah about his son by another mother. “You must be tired from travel. Please, take a load off, and I’ll bring you a snack.” Abraham didn’t just dump some pretzels on a napkin, though. He raced inside and asked Sarah to make bread. He ran out back and threw a few very fresh steaks on the grill.

As the mystery men devoured their feast under the shade of a tree, they asked, “Where’s your lovely bride? We’ve got some news for you both.” Sarah was stuck in the kitchen, and she had the hearing of an 89-year-old, but she could still make out the conversation over the clanging of pots. When the guests said that they’d be eager to play with Abraham and Sarah’s newborn when they came back this way a year later, she not only received the message, her laughter strained her obliques. The whole visit had an air of mystery, if not absurdity. And yet…in the hospitality Abraham and Sarah offered to three complete strangers, they received a blessing: the confirmation of a divine promise and – finally! – a concrete timetable for its fulfillment.

Hospitality is a central theme in scripture. Because Abraham and Sarah, because Moses and the Hebrew people, because Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were all once strangers in strange lands, we as their theological descendants are responsible for welcoming all who wander. And in a vocational sense, some of the most nomadic people are congregational ministers, looking not just for a job but also a place to fulfill a calling, to label home, and perhaps to nurture a family. Yet I don’t believe that most search committees think to approach their essential work as hosts.

If hospitality is a foundational virtue for Christians, what would it look like for search committees to create space for welcoming fully the gifts and the challenges of ministerial candidates – people who are just names on a page at the outset? What if search committees asked themselves how they could not just give a nod of acknowledgment to the Holy Spirit, but invite the Spirit into their conversations, listen for her wisdom, and wait for a blessing? What if search committees took ample time to build trust among committee members so that they could bring the fullness of their talents and faith and doubts – even their incredulous laughter – to the search process? What if search committees greeted their candidates with outstretched arms – including the ones who seem a bit mysterious, if not downright strange – and asked them questions that really got at their stories, passions, and capabilities? What if search committees engaged their churches and their communities ‘round the tree, giving them appropriate means for input into the process? What if search committees and congregations, instead of handing their candidates of choice a cup of pretzels and some tap water, killed the calf and baked a cake and really celebrated the start of a new relationship?

As Christians we tend to love hospitality as a concept, but putting feet to the ideal is scary because it involves welcoming the unknown. There’s no way to predict what danger awaits. Hospitality in search & call is no different. Maybe the Holy Spirit will prompt us to do something hard or unexpected. Maybe we’ll disagree about whom to call or how to go about it. Maybe we’ll fall in love with a candidate who will really stretch the expectations of our congregation. Maybe our church members will want to unearth skeletons or our community will say they need something from us that we’re not ready to provide. Maybe our minister’s worth and needs will strain our budget.

While there’s no way to anticipate the dangers in hospitality – though goodness knows we try – there’s also no way to predict blessing. As Abraham and Sarah found out, in God all things are possible, even a woman of very advanced maternal age giving birth to her long-awaited joy. In God a congregation’s self-study in preparation for a search can help it understand itself anew. In God intensive spiritual work done by the search committee can generate seeds for discernment that are then blown and take root across the whole of the church. In God the arrival of a new minister can breed needed energy and excitement. In God a good pastor-parish match can lay the groundwork for fruitful mutual ministry, one that is focused on living toward a divinely-given vision instead of on playing whack-a-mole with various conflicts.

Blessings beyond that which we dare hope for await those churches who take hospitality seriously. I believe this deep in my bones. Now, I did not start out this project with hospitality as my lens, but as I read and interview and survey all parties involved in searches, the recurring pitfalls keep pointing in that direction. The problems I hear about are rarely intentional; search committees often don’t know how to seek out the Holy Spirit’s counsel throughout the process. How to meet candidates’ disclosures with their own compelling, truthful narrative about their church. How to communicate effectively with candidates and with their own congregation. How to welcome a variety of candidates, then decide well which ones remain friends and which one becomes family. How to ask useful questions of the ministers they interview. How to have hard but needed conversations about the expectations of everyone involved in the process. How to compensate ministers in ways that honor their professionalism and personhood. How to formalize new calls in covenantal language. How to help the called pastor become “one of us.”

Search committees are made up of extremely capable, faithful people. They have the wisdom of judicatory leaders, theological school partners, and parachurch organizations at their disposal. The foundation is there. Here’s the contribution I hope to make. One year from now, I want to be able to offer to search committees and the folks who counsel them an approach to the call process that is grounded in practices of hospitality. I do not envision this approach as do this, then this, then this. My project is an ecumenical one, and call processes vary across denominational lines. And in free church traditions, searches look very different from congregation to congregation.

Instead, this work aims to be a tool for teaching search committee members how to ask each other, their church, their candidates, and the Holy Spirit questions that remove the barriers keeping each party from appropriately sharing with and fully listening to one another. These may be nuts-and-bolts questions like, “what do our by-laws say about how to handle this part of the process?” But more often they will be questions such as, “What does the Spirit have to say about this direction we’re leaning toward?” “What do our candidates need from us?” “What has not yet been said that must be said?” “What’s causing us to feel this way?” When search committee members are able to discuss these deeper-level concerns, hospitality, with all its short- and long-term blessings for congregation and minister, can more fully take root.

A friend talks about you behind your back. Your significant other makes decisions that impact you both without your input. Your supposed advocate throws you under the bus to protect her own reputation, position, or livelihood. We’ve all had our trust broken at one time or another. And put simply, if inelegantly: it sucks.

That’s why it is so tempting to frame trust as predictability. When we can anticipate the actions of others, we can exhale. I can let my guard down a bit at a green light because the Department of Transportation has promised me that crossways traffic will be halted by a red light. If I know what you’re going to do, I can trust you.

But is predictability the full measure of trust? Some of the most relationship-deepening moments I’ve experienced were the result of surprise. Unexpected words of affirmation or acts of care. Sharing a hidden piece of one’s soul. Defending another at great risk to self. Anticipated? No. Trust-building? You’d better believe it.

I may trust that oncoming cars will obey the law, but I’m still going to drive defensively. (I hope others will do the same!) But in the world of relationships, people will know and be known only at a surface level if we stay on our side of the double yellow line. The more foundational level of trust, then, involves risk-taking. Being vulnerable and creating space for others to do the same.

What relationships, either with individuals or groups, need to grow roots down into that lower layer of trust? How can you take the first step by sharing something about yourself that lets the other know it’s safe to return in kind?

Healthy churches are much more likely to have healthy ministers. There’s a chicken-or-egg question involved, but the influence likely goes both ways. Here, then, are some thoughts on what clergy health looks like.

Taking care of self:

• Tends to own discipleship/relationship with God. A spiritual leader must continue to be formed by and connected to God.

• Knows when to call it a day/week. There is always more ministry to be done.

• Takes all vacation/professional development time. Those who can’t go on vacations take staycations. Those who can’t attend conferences plan their own reading or planning weeks.

• Attends to physical and mental health. Sometimes being healthy means tending to literal health by getting regular checkups, seeing a counselor as needed, and taking the advice (and the medicine!) prescribed by healthcare professionals.

• Asks for personal and professional help as needed. Requesting help is a sign of self-awareness and strength, not shortcoming.

• Asks for what he/she needs materially to be able to focus on ministry. Just wages offer freedom from the resentment and financial panic that distract from ministry.

• Has a peer support network. Isolation in ministry is the shortest path to burnout.

• Has a pastor. Many ministers who worry about gossip and politics look outside their denominations for a pastor.

• Has a life outside of church. All work and no play make for a tired, frustrated, dull minister. Make a friend. Find a hobby. Become a regular somewhere.

• Protects his/her family from the fishbowl effect. A less anxious family makes for a happier home.

Leading well: 

• Continues to feel called. Ministry isn’t just a job and a paycheck.

• Enjoys the challenge of ministry, even though not all ministry situations are pleasant. It’s a great feeling when gifts are being well-utilized.

• Doesn’t own issues/initiatives that shouldn’t belong to him/her. The triangle is my least favorite shape.

• Addresses conflict in a timely fashion. Conflict that isn’t addressed festers and then explodes.

• Sees the pastoral needs behind conflict. When people are behaving badly, they are usually acting out of their hurt.

• Identifies the line between being someone’s pastor and being someone’s friend. It’s very hard – if not impossible – to be both.

• Is transparent. Vulnerability breeds trust.

• Knows and owns strengths and weaknesses. Weaknesses can’t always be shored up, but strengths can always be built upon.

• Keeps learning and growing. The church is evolving, and so must her ministers.

• Is able to see when good ministry has been done. Even at the end of a hard or seemingly unproductive stretch, it’s helpful to reflect on where God was at work.

• Mentors, supports, and thanks leaders. Ministry is not done in a vacuum.

• Acknowledges when it’s time to move on. An appropriate level of challenge breeds effectiveness.

What would you add or remove from this list? What specific commitments do you need to make to your own health?

Churches are most able to focus on worshiping God and embodying the love of Christ when they are healthy. But what does congregational health look like? Here are some of my thoughts.

Leadership:

• Members trust lay and clergy leadership and vice versa. Mutual ministry is nearly impossible when trust is low.

• There is a balance of stability and turnover in lay leadership. Leaders stay in their positions long enough to get good at them but not so long that they stagnate.

• The leadership understands how the church’s size relates to its mission. The small church gets how its numbers allow it to be agile and responsive to the gifts and needs of the community.

• New lay leaders are identified, mentored, and empowered. Without some sort of process for training and placing new leaders, the face of leadership stays the same indefinitely.

• Leadership needs are revisited on a regular basis. The church assesses whether its structure is serving its mission well.

Mission:

• Everyone who has been attending for at least three months knows the church’s mission. The mission visibly shapes the life of the congregation.

• That mission is primarily about engaging the community beyond the walls. A church that exists primarily for its own sake is not Christ-centered, nor is it built to last.

• The membership claims the mission as its own. Church members know the mission and use it as a tool to evaluate existing ministries and to generate new ideas.

• The congregation revisits its mission on a regular basis. The specific shape of call evolves, not just for individuals, but for whole communities.

Life together: 

• People know how to disagree in healthy ways. The church values unity around decisions, even when there are varying opinions.

• The congregation gathers at least occasionally purely for fellowship. Laughter and play enhance worship and service.

• The different generations are invested in each other. Young and old teach and learn from one another.

• The church has clear processes and lines of communications in place. Everyone knows how to share ideas and address concerns.

• The congregation stewards its resources well – including its people resources. It neither holds them too tightly nor spends them too easily.

Spirituality:

• Everyone is growing in discipleship. People ages 0-99+ are actively learning about God’s love and what it means for their lives.

• People follow the leadings of the Holy Spirit instead of their own desires. There is an emphasis on true discernment: “not my will but thine be done.”

• Worship is part of everything the church does. At lock-ins and committee meetings people name God’s presence and greatness and call upon God’s power.

What would you add to or remove from this list? What are some specific ways you help your congregation attain health?

It always mystifies people that I once played basketball, since my height has not changed since roughly the third grade. (Even then, I was in the front row for class photos.) Part of the fun for me was being part of a team. We worked out together. We pushed each other. We were united in our goal of having the higher number on the scoreboard when the final buzzer sounded.

Contrast that experience with group work in class. That was often the pinnacle of “ugh” for me during my middle and high school years. Inevitably, some group members put in more time and effort than others. One person was passionate about busting the bell curve, while another was happy simply for a passable project to be turned in.

There’s a difference between being an allied force with a goal and being a collection of individuals with an assignment. In Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators, Patrick Lencioni outlines the process of becoming an honest-to-goodness team.

• Build trust. Without creating a safe space for vulnerability, conversation will be surface level.

• Be willing to engage in conflict. When there is trust, participants are willing to put all possibilities on the table.

• Commit. When it’s clear that every option has been explored, a team can make hard decisions with confidence.

• Hold each other accountable. When teams have agreed on a course, the members are invested in making sure everyone does his/her part.

• Pay attention to results. When team members keep one another on track, they are generally able to focus on and meet the objectives they have set.

A significant piece of ministry involves working with committees, boards, and/or task groups. In your work, how many of these groups fulfill the five functions of a team? How might attention to these functions not just make the groups you work with more functional, but also affect a culture change in your faith community? What would it take for your leaders to embrace these functions?

Last week this beautiful post by a Presbyterian minister in California popped up in my Facebook newsfeed several times. It was timely for me. A beloved member of my former congregation had just died, and I was deeply grieving the loss of a man who not only left his fingerprints on virtually every ministry in the church, but who was also a giddy grandfather, a mentor to young children, and a friend to many – including me.

Several people made sure I’d heard this hard news. I very much appreciated their efforts, especially since they were so busy with all the care and the details that fill the days leading up to a memorial service. But this influx of info strained my ability to maintain my boundaries. There were so many people I wanted to check on, pray with, and hear stories from. I didn’t, of course. I am a former minister at that church. I wonder sometimes if keeping this kind of distance seems cold to the people I have loved and served, though, and so today I share a few things I wish my former parishioners knew.

I still care about you. A lot. And I think about and pray for you.

I keep up with what’s going on. I subscribe to the newsletters of most of the churches I’ve served. (And I probably read them more closely than many church members!) If you ever friended me on Facebook, I read your status updates, even though I generally don’t “like” or comment on what I read.

It’s really hard for me to let someone else be your minister ... I want to be the one celebrating milestones with you and offering a listening ear when you’re going through difficulty.

… but the line between friendship and pastor/parishioner is razor thin … As time passes – and as you claim your newer minister as Your Minister – we’ll be better able to see each other simply as friends.

…and I believe strongly both in the ethics of separation and in the abilities of your new minister. If I don’t step out of the way so that the current minister can share big moments with you, he/she will never earn your confidence. And because I trust in her/his competence, if I insert myself into your situation, I will have done so myself primarily to meet my own needs.

If this delineation seems harsh, it’s because I’ve seen – and experienced firsthand – the ill effects of predecessors with poor boundaries. It’s hard enough living in the shadow of the one who has served before. It’s downright frustrating when a former minister actively maintains his/her influence so that the new minister’s care isn’t wanted or needed. So I tend to err on the side of holding the line.

I will always carry with me all the experiences that we shared together and the lessons you taught me. You encouraged me, enlightened me, emboldened me, and ministered alongside and to me.

I am and will be a better minister to others because of having been your minister. Thank you for allowing me into your life, your home, your heart. It is one of the great privileges of my life to point you to the holy, and I have often encountered the sacred in you.

I cried at church on Sunday. It wasn’t the first time, though I’m not a particularly teary person. But I wasn’t reaching for the Kleenex because a parishioner shared a heavy burden or because I was having to say goodbye to a congregation I love or because conflict had flared up on the busiest morning of the week. I cried because I was a grateful mama.

My two-year-old spends his Sunday mornings moving between the nursery and the adjoining one-room Sunday School for the older children. He’s really into vehicles right now, and his first order of business when he gets to church each week is to pull out the three school buses in the baby room. One of the buses is designed to light up and make sounds, though its batteries probably died long before my husband was appointed to pastor this congregation in June. On Sunday morning a fourth grade boy told his parents he needed to take batteries to church so that L could play with a fully-functional bus. I was still in the children’s area when this sweet soul walked in with a Ziploc bag full of different sizes of batteries and headed straight for the nursery to get that bus ready to roll.

It wasn’t just the gesture but also the forethought that made me a little weepy. And yet, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I have seen this child go out of his way to welcome my preschooler. He’s not the only one reaching out, either. There’s a teenage girl who has taken it upon herself to look after L on Sunday mornings. Other kids engage L in games, sing with him, and read to him – without much (or any) prompting from the adults.

These children and youth have been deeply formed in their caring behaviors by the congregation as a whole. The adults check in with and help one another without reminders to do so. They can disagree and still love and minister alongside each other. They tell my son to stop running in the sanctuary with his sucker (thank you!) and follow that gentle instruction up with big hugs. Their prayer lives are deep and broad in scope.

This abundant care that is nurtured by the intimacy of a small congregation overflows into the community. The church works with the local elementary school to help families in need. It takes VBS to a nearby apartment complex. It actively invites neighbors to participate in on-campus fellowship experiences like trunk-or-treat and content events such as special speakers. It brings crocheted blankets to people who are hurting or homeless.

I have loved all of the faith communities I have been part of as a minister and spouse. But this place is definitely the place for us now. As a mama, I would not trade the congregation’s investment in my son’s spiritual and emotional development and the modeling of being responsible for and to other people – not for uber-modern facilities, not for a regular rotation of high-visibility events with bounce houses and snow cone trucks, not for age-divided or super-techie formation experiences.

So take heart, small churches. There’s no need to compare yourself to the big guys. Yes, they have much to offer. But so do you, and there’s no standard metric that can gauge the impact of heart.

It’s tough to get traction for forward movement when there’s no trust in people or process. Instead of focusing on what’s ahead, you’re busy looking over your shoulder to make sure there’s no one with a knife within stabbing distance.

So, unless a compromised relationship is abusive – in which case wariness if not complete separation is called for – it’s generally worth the effort to try to rebuild trust. Here are some thoughts on how to go about it:

If your trust has been broken:

Listen to yourself. Your limbic system has kicked in for a reason. Maybe the situation is harmless and a word or deed triggered some old trauma. Or maybe the red flags are waving to protect you from present danger.

Be kind to yourself. You do not deserve to have your trust violated.

Take a deep breath. It sounds so simple, but a deep, cleansing breath can interrupt a limbic loop. (Limbic loops keep us locked in survival mode, keeping us from learning more about our situation or finding a creative solution.)

Ask for perspective. Talk with people whose counsel you value. Ask them to help you understand the situation more broadly and discern how to move forward.

Be honest. When you’re feeling more brave – or can fake it! – tell the trust violator about the impact of her/his choices. The response will let you know what the immediate possibilities are for saving the relationship.

If you have broken someone else’s trust:

Own up to the breach. Acknowledge – first to yourself and then to others – that you have messed up, and ask for forgiveness. Otherwise the process of rebuilding trust stops before it starts.

Exchange stories. Share a bit about the reasons behind what you said or did, not to make excuses, but to pave the way for understanding. Invite the person whose trust you compromised to tell about how your words or actions have affected him/her.

Change the rules. Decide together what needs to change in your relationship for there to be trust again.

Overcommunicate. Make extra effort to be transparent. Nothing undermines rebuilding trust like guessing games.

Give space. The person(s) who feel violated may not be ready to jump back in to relationship. Pressure will only slow down the process.

Ask for feedback. Check in with the other person about how you’re doing and how s/he is feeling. What course corrections still need to be made?

Be worthy of trust. Enough said.

(Note that I did not include prayer in the steps above because conversation with God – whatever that looks like for you – should be woven throughout the process.)

Rebuilding trust, at its root, requires vulnerability on both sides. The violator must be willing to admit fault and make changes, and the violatee must be willing to try again in a relationship that has brought pain. There is no cheap grace. Be brave, be patient, and be assured that the Holy Spirit will go with you.