Church huddle
As a Presiding Elder of a district in the new Global Methodist Church, I find myself in the position of “coach” for a new team, or maybe several established teams playing in a new league. I spend some time everywhere I go diagramming the new plays, and I find most players are excited about learning the new plays. But I also have to spend some time - more in some places than others - teaching the values of teamwork and sportsmanship, as well as skills.
To belong to an organization of any sort, there are two things the members or constituent parts have to learn: there’s a way we do things; and there’s a way we treat people. The first is filed under “policy” or “practices.” The second is culture.
We came out of a denomination with a rather poor organizational culture. There was conflict over many things, yes, but conflict is inevitable in any endeavor. There was also much dishonesty and manipulation. Power was the dominant paradigm of all institutional relationships. These are not unique to our former church home - all human institutions tend to default to these failings. But our former denom did a really poor job of holding people accountable for promised performance - including performance values. Most of us now in the new denom were formed in a dysfunctional culture. We knew how we were to do things, but in too many cases, we didn’t know how to treat people. To continue with the sporting metaphor, we didn’t emphasize sportsmanship and teamwork, we just diagrammed more plays. In the end, we often sucked at the plays, too, because people - clergy and lay - didn’t know how to play together; so, their individual brilliance was of no avail. We were an unhappy team that never had a winning season in the fifty or so years of our existence.
We didn't leave our former league and join our current one just because we got tired of losing, though. If we're honest, we'll admit that the game wasn't much fun anymore, and the problem wasn't just them, it was us, too. We now face the necessity of re-learning how to play the game so we don't import bad old habits into the new league. If we do, then that's not on the people we used to play with, but on us.
The Great Lakes Provisional Annual Conference leadership spent several months writing a culture statement to describe what good church culture looks like at every level of church life. Each of us in leadership is charged, first of all, with modeling that culture. And we are charged with teaching that culture to our congregations and clergy and holding them accountable to that culture. We are not just concerned with diagramming the new plays. We are teaching people how to play the game again.
To belong to an organization of any sort, there are two things the members or constituent parts have to learn: there’s a way we do things; and there’s a way we treat people. The first is filed under “policy” or “practices.” The second is culture.
We came out of a denomination with a rather poor organizational culture. There was conflict over many things, yes, but conflict is inevitable in any endeavor. There was also much dishonesty and manipulation. Power was the dominant paradigm of all institutional relationships. These are not unique to our former church home - all human institutions tend to default to these failings. But our former denom did a really poor job of holding people accountable for promised performance - including performance values. Most of us now in the new denom were formed in a dysfunctional culture. We knew how we were to do things, but in too many cases, we didn’t know how to treat people. To continue with the sporting metaphor, we didn’t emphasize sportsmanship and teamwork, we just diagrammed more plays. In the end, we often sucked at the plays, too, because people - clergy and lay - didn’t know how to play together; so, their individual brilliance was of no avail. We were an unhappy team that never had a winning season in the fifty or so years of our existence.
We didn't leave our former league and join our current one just because we got tired of losing, though. If we're honest, we'll admit that the game wasn't much fun anymore, and the problem wasn't just them, it was us, too. We now face the necessity of re-learning how to play the game so we don't import bad old habits into the new league. If we do, then that's not on the people we used to play with, but on us.
The Great Lakes Provisional Annual Conference leadership spent several months writing a culture statement to describe what good church culture looks like at every level of church life. Each of us in leadership is charged, first of all, with modeling that culture. And we are charged with teaching that culture to our congregations and clergy and holding them accountable to that culture. We are not just concerned with diagramming the new plays. We are teaching people how to play the game again.