I am the pastor of a church of about 200 in the Southwest. I now find myself in a great deal of conflict and would like your opinion. I moved the adult Bible study group to a new location with the agreement of the leader. I made the now vacant room where they had been meeting into a nice, reception area taking the flow of visitors away from the church secretary’s office (so work could be done). I then bought nice comfortable furniture for the new Bible study space to minimize any upsets over the move. I now find that members of the Bible study are truly upset. The church secretary is also very upset, which I don’t understand (I was trying to protect her from all the interruptions).
True, I didn’t get agreement with others, other than staff, and since it was in my contract to do so, I felt it was okay to see a need and correct it. With the exception of a handful of volunteers, the change has also annoyed members of the elder board.
3 comments:
Dear Pastor,
I understand your dismay. People are always perplexed when they have the best of intentions, and find their actions are completely misconstrued. So let’s take a look at what happened, and what now needs to happen.
• You saw a need – to move a group from one part of the church to another.
• You noted that you were completely within your authority to move this group. Up to this point, the whole thing looked purely technical. When an issue is purely technical, it falls within the scope of authority, and action can immediately be taken.
• But even though you had the best of intentions, things went awry. This should alert you to the fact that there are adaptive issues lurking (see other parts of this blog to get the distinctions between technical and adaptive. This is a critical distinction). Adaptive issues have to do with deeply held values and beliefs. This may seem perplexing – How could moving to a new room in the church have to do with deeply held values? What is important is to realize, with the amount of pushback and conflict, these values and beliefs are there and must be addressed.
• At this point, you need to shift out of the authority position (“You must move your class”), and into the adaptive leader position. In this position, it will be important for you to mobilize the community to wrestle with the issues that are critical to them. In this regard, I’d get together the Bible study group, staff, and board members, and have them all sit down together. I’d then say, “I apologize. I thought this was a simple issue of moving the study from one room to another. Obviously I was mistaken. So now I need to hear from you. Tell me what made this move so difficult for you.” Let everyone vent their concerns. You as the leader must work to keep yourself in the blue zone (where you don’t personalize what is said. See other parts of the blog again). You may come under fire – “Pastor, you’re always making arbitrary decisions, and I don’t like it.” Do not defend yourself. The point is to hear what’s on people’s minds and hearts. If you jump in to defend yourself, YOU will become the issue. Your job is to intuit what the real issues are so that they can be appropriately addressed. I would suspect that people are sensing an arbitrary style of leadership which they may 1) take comfort in, and 2)resent. That’s a competing value, and the stuff of double messages of course. But you must be able to see into the process and discern how all of this works. If you like, write some more as this unfolds, and we’ll discuss it more.
• Peace,
• Jim
Dear Pastor,
I understand your dismay. People are always perplexed when they have the best of intentions, and find their actions are completely misconstrued. So let’s take a look at what happened, and what now needs to happen.
• You saw a need – to move a group from one part of the church to another.
• You noted that you were completely within your authority to move this group. Up to this point, the whole thing looked purely technical. When an issue is purely technical, it falls within the scope of authority, and action can immediately be taken.
• But even though you had the best of intentions, things went awry. This should alert you to the fact that there are adaptive issues lurking (see other parts of this blog to get the distinctions between technical and adaptive. This is a critical distinction). Adaptive issues have to do with deeply held values and beliefs. This may seem perplexing – How could moving to a new room in the church have to do with deeply held values? What is important is to realize, with the amount of pushback and conflict, these values and beliefs are there and must be addressed.
• At this point, you need to shift out of the authority position (“You must move your class”), and into the adaptive leader position. In this position, it will be important for you to mobilize the community to wrestle with the issues that are critical to them. In this regard, I’d get together the Bible study group, staff, and board members, and have them all sit down together. I’d then say, “I apologize. I thought this was a simple issue of moving the study from one room to another. Obviously I was mistaken. So now I need to hear from you. Tell me what made this move so difficult for you.” Let everyone vent their concerns. You as the leader must work to keep yourself in the blue zone (where you don’t personalize what is said. See other parts of the blog again). You may come under fire – “Pastor, you’re always making arbitrary decisions, and I don’t like it.” Do not defend yourself. The point is to hear what’s on people’s minds and hearts. If you jump in to defend yourself, YOU will become the issue. Your job is to intuit what the real issues are so that they can be appropriately addressed. I would suspect that people are sensing an arbitrary style of leadership which they may 1) take comfort in, and 2)resent. That’s a competing value, and the stuff of double messages of course. But you must be able to see into the process and discern how all of this works. If you like, write some more as this unfolds, and we’ll discuss it more.
• Peace,
• Jim
I think it's also important to think about your own adaptive issues here. What stood out to me more than anything else in this post was the line "so work could be done," which draws a distinct contrast between greeting visitors and what I assume you mean to be more administrative-related duties.
But herein may lie competing values for you to wrestle through, and perhaps this is what upset the secretary. That is, what is the "work" of the church? Is it to include greeting visitors? Are "all the interruptions" actually the ministry that the secretary thinks the church ought to be doing?
Personally wrestling with competing values of "I value people and being welcoming" and "I want to get (administrative and efficient) work done" is essential in my view as you move ahead here.
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