The ministry is not just the minister. I want to work in close partnership with a team of committed leaders who support the life of the church. I’ve found RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) a useful tool for having conversations about who does what, when. In some areas, I’ll take the lead, in some areas I’ll be consulted, in some I’ll be informed about the work that goes on. My preference is generally to empower people to do the things that they are committed to and good at.
At First Unitarian, I work hard to bring the Board along in decision making. I work well with lay leaders who operate with a high degree of independence within defined boundaries. I won’t draft a budget, but I will make a very close read line-by-line and partner strategically with other stakeholders to move toward sustainable financial models. The role of the minister varies with congregation size, culture, and staffing. Ultimately it’s a negotiation, a series of conversations that clarify expectations, roles and responsibilities.
I want to cultivate lay leaders to nurture their sense of the mission, vision, and values of the congregation: where we have come from and who we hope to become. My experience is that great lay leaders are grounded in who they are and who they are called to be. I relate to lay leaders first as their minister, not approaching them as extensions of staff, but as congregants with hopes and fears, and joys and anxieties to tend to in worship, in ritual, in conversation, and in our work together. My leadership style is to generally steer with a light touch, and keep focused on being the people and the institution we are called to be. I endeavor to listen and seek to understand before being understood.
I have seen people on all sorts of committees who understood their work not to be drudgery, but see the work of the church as part of their own spiritual development. Where is the intersection of their gift and the need of the church and the world? How can I find opportunities for lay folks to find those roles and for them to develop into even greater leaders? I want to be attentive in connecting people with the work that matters to them.
We should be building a pipeline of leadership in the congregation and asking ourselves how we can best connect lay leaders with the experiences—not just the committee work—that create great leaders.
I hire and collaborate with an independent staff, skilled in their roles, committed to excellence, who are invested in the mission of the church and united by a shared set of staff values. We know together who we are and where we are going. We each hold a sense of what’s possible and what the institution can become.
Part of my role is to remove barriers that keep the team from doing their best work—which also means helping them say no to work they shouldn’t prioritize. I partner with my team to have a great deal of shared clarity in goals and a wide degree of freedom in how to achieve them. I expect my team to do ongoing learning and development and I make sure they have the resources for it. I am my team’s biggest advocate and supporter to the Board and congregation.
I follow and implement best practices for right relations, right conduct, HR policy, pay and benefits, goal-setting, assessing performance, and giving feedback. I define clear roles and responsibilities, coach and develop staff, ensure they have the resources needed to do their job, and shape a fun, engaging, low-drama, spiritually grounded place to work. Building the best team means coaching poor performers, and ultimately managing them out of the organization if needed after other measures are exhausted. I hire great staff and I manage out underperforming staff when needed. Managing staff and developing management systems is critical and not something separate from the “real” ministry.
The heart of leading change is building coalitions and commitments for the future we want to see. I take different roles in leading change depending on the situation. Different cultures have different expectations about how decisions get made, how to communicate feedback or have disagreements, and what the role of the individual is in decision making. My experience is that clear expectations and transparency about decision-making is effective when many people are to be involved.
Sometimes my role is as a coach to leaders in the congregation. When First Unitarian had a decision about allocating proceeds of a property sale, I coached the Board to develop a transparent congregational decision-making process that sought broad input without abdicating their authority.
Sometimes my role is to support and lend my voice to initiatives coming from elsewhere in the congregation. In the early days of the capital campaign at Beverly, the exceptionally strong lay-led team was on a solid track. In worship and communications, I repeatedly situated their work in the larger context of the mission of the congregation and community bonds that connected it.
Sometimes my role is to be the voice of change. For decades, the Christmas Eve music for First Unitarian Church came from the Chicago Children’s Choir, then its alumni. In the first year of settlement, the choir told us they could no longer fulfill that commitment. We needed to make substantial changes to the one service we had been told never to change! I wrote communication to the whole congregation explaining gently but clearly the situation. I identified the stakeholders who would feel most acutely the loss. To some, I sent an informational email explaining the rationale in depth. For others, I had informal conversation, and for one deeply committed individual, I had a private pastoral conversation.
I am an institutionalist and a visible advocate of generous giving, speaking clearly about why financial support matters and what difference it makes to the church. I am a close partner to a canvass or stewardship team, and to teams working on large gifts or capital campaign work. Major gift cultivation comes from relationship: I ask key donors for their gifts, and for legacy gifts, and speak from the pulpit about the importance of contributing to support the church.
Money is a tool and we can do great things with it without shame or avoidance! My approach is forthright and direct. People don’t give because we trick them or guilt them into it, they give because they experience the importance of the congregation and know that it takes money to run an institution that changes their life and their community. We have abundance within our congregations!
Stewardship is more than fundraising; it is also tending to the total church and taking the future seriously. A budget is a statement of our values: what are we investing in? Investment in our people and staff is as important as capital investment in buildings. Good stewardship ensures that the financial commitments of the church are consonant with its mission and vision and values—and that there is a prudent long-term financial strategy to ensure not only the survival of a physical plant, but the mission and message.
In both congregations, I have been involved with every annual pledge drive, helping shape the message and financial priorities. I am comfortable talking about money: I worked doing fundraising for Harvard Divinity School by phone throughout my time there; I led the canvass committee as a lay person at the UU Church of Medford; I contributed to the design and implementation of the pledge drive during both years of my internship; I speak about giving when I do classes for new members.