Honeymoon: Part III

Sharing ourselves – TMI and TLI; personalness and openness

The parish community’s ability to develop trust in the new rector will in large part depend on how the priest shares his or her stories, feelings and thoughts.  

In Part II I suggested that 90% of how the priest and congregation come to know one another is in two ways. First, how we manage the initial difficulties that arise in the relationship? And secondly, how we share ourselves, our stories, our feelings and thoughts? Here are a couple of ways of thinking about it.

TMI or TLI

One of the issues the priest faces is how much to share. That’s the TMI, TLI issue. Both are in the mind of the listener. If too many people, or key leaders, in the parish experience it as too much or too little – there’s a parish problem. If just a few have that experience – it’s an intra-personal or interpersonal problem.

Sharing “too much information” (TMI) is when what’s being offered is boring, alarming, repulsive, and/or simply too much (an overload). The connection between those engaged in the conversation becomes awkward. Sharing “too little information” (TLI) can suggest secretiveness, deception, and concealment. The connection can become mistrustful.

Personalness and openness

Some years ago Helen Oswald wrote a one-page handout on self disclosure. It was used in human interaction and group development training programs. She suggested that trust developed between and among people as they shared themselves with one another. She then described two ways in which we do that sharing. Personalness was defined as “revealing intimate, personal details of your private life.” Openness was defined as “revealing how you perceive and react to the present situation; sharing what you are feeling or thinking or wanting at that moment; telling another person how his/her behavior is affecting you.”

Oswald saw both as useful in developing trust. She wrote, “Sharing intimate details of one’s private or past life may be appropriate to help someone understand your current behavior.” However, she saw such sharing as best coming after the relationship had experienced a good bit of openness.  She wrote, “Openness requires a willingness to risk rejection. However, being open also carries the potential for being recognized as authentic, for gaining respect, and for establishing a norm of integrity in the relationship.”

Virtues and Emotional intelligence

Our ability and willingness to make productive decisions about sharing ourselves is a matter of virtue and emotional intelligence. Virtues of courage, perseverance, self understanding, self control, and practical judgment are all in play. How we manage the sins of pride, envy, avarice and anger are also in play. Our self awareness, self management, empathy, and ability to manage relationships are the emotional intelligence way of describing what’s needed.

All these things can be learned and developed—over time.

     A PDF on Emotional Intelligence 

What if we know that what we have available within us now is inadequate to the need? And that is of course always a safe bet. Benedict might suggest this – “take counsel.” Time to gather together a few people we believe to have the competence and wisdom. Time to listen.

rag+

The Office: Daily, the Hours

A few thoughts about the formation of people in using the Office.

It can be useful for people to hear that there are two broad ways of considering the tradition.

Day by day

One is by placing an emphasis on "daily."  Each day we take time to offer the Daily Prayers of the Church. At a time that works in relation to the flow of our day we pray with the psalms, scriptures and the common prayers of the church. We join ourselves to the church's ceaseless act of worship.

We can affirm a person's desire and ability to join on the Divine Office each day. The person makes a decision to routinely do that in the morning or at noon or in the evening or at the close of day.

Hour by hour

The other possibility for the person is to pray "the hours." That's to place the emphasis on an offering made at several times in the course of each day. The historical Anglican approach has been twice a day - Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, the current Book of Common Prayer provides four offices (adding noon and close of day), some monastic houses continue to offer more offices each day. 

In either case we offer the person a way of: 1) avoiding the trap of basing their spiritual life on their feelings and 2) connecting themselves to the prayers of the communion of saints. 

The value of the Office is its objectivity. It is a means by which we pray with the whole church, uniting our prayer with that of millions of other Christians living and dead. This is true whether one is alone or in a group, for the Office is essentially a corporate act. It is objective too in that it does not depend on our feelings, but gives our prayer life a regularity and a disciplined framework. Ken Leech, True Prayer

The stability and adaptability of the believer's spiritual life can be nurtured by grounding it in 1) the ancient tradition of the church and 2) useful information and free choice.  The tradition offers roots. Useful information and free choice provides ownership. 

rag+

The Honeymoon: Part II

The tentacles of disappointment

I thought about how those thirteen priests and parishes were entering into the honeymoon. The honeymoon is not a time of deep trust. You can destroy the honeymoon within weeks. You can also attempt to manipulate the system to extend the honeymoon beyond its natural life. The phase of inflated hopes is necessary and will in most parishes unfold event by event. We don’t really know one another.

Soon enough we begin to know one another. Some of that will be done by the new vicar having meals and coffee with members. Early sermons may include parts of the priest’s story. There will be passing conversations at coffee hour and after weekday Offices and Masses. That’s all necessary. But it’s 10% of what will matter.

The other 90% comes in two ways.

First, how we manage the initial difficulties that arise in the relationship? And secondly, how we share ourselves, our stories, our feelings and thoughts?

The early encounters we have with one another in which there is an element of disagreement--possibly the initial feelings of confusion about intentions, or some discomfort in actions taken--is the place where real life begins. It is in these situations that we have the opportunity to show courage, perseverance, kindness. Our authenticity is tested. Our character shows in a mix of emotional intelligence, virtue and spiritual practice.

It is a common mistake of new clergy to want people to trust them beyond what they have earned.  In that early phase of the relationship trust is offered by giving one another space, by offering the benefit of the doubt, and by assuming one another's good intentions.  Long term trust develops based on the reliability, responsiveness, reciprocity and congruence of the priest and parish leaders (formal and informal). This isn’t just an interpersonal issue. The priest and parish leaders can increase trust in one another and with the larger parish by creating structures, processes and behavioral norms of reliability, responsiveness, reciprocity and congruence - that increases inclusion and acceptance, the open flow of information, a shared direction established from options, internal commitment, self management and collaborative relationships.

The initial bonding of priest and parish community will be shaped by how often there are significant disappointments in the relationship and how we respond to those disappointments. Too many early disappointments can leave people discouraged and anxious. The cumulative effect can establish a parish climate that we never move beyond. It sets the stage for the next few years.

Some disappointments are inevitable, even useful. If they are dealt with graciously and effectively that experience will tell us that we have the ability to work through difficulties sand disagreements. A foundation of trust may be built that will serve us all in the coming years.

For example, when as a “kid priest” in charge of a very small congregation I decided to institute the Easter Vigil and drop having an Easter morning Mass, I generated a bit of disappointment (you think!!). It made perfect sense – the Vigil is beautiful and ancient, people would love it, and we didn’t have enough people to make both liturgies “work.”

Sadly, my feelings were not their feelings and my thoughts were not their thoughts. So, Ed our parish musician approached me at coffee hour, “Father, people are very upset about the Easter decision (my Easter decision not God’s).”  Fortunately, I had enough training and common sense to know that I didn’t want Ed in between me and the congregation. I said, “Ed, tell people to come to me and we can talk.”  They came to talk at coffee hour the following Sunday. We cut a deal. I’d have both liturgies and they (this faithful core) would come to both. So, we would do the Vigil at 10:30 pm and have a 10:00 am Mass on Easter Sunday. As the after Vigil party was winding down most of the “faithful core” came up to me to say good night. They also wanted to say something and ask something, “This was so wonderful. Really beautiful. We don’t know why another priest didn’t introduce it years ago. And, would you mind if we don’t come tomorrow morning?”

Please note, the story isn’t just about the new vicar and how well he responded to what might have become a very bad beginning. It is also about the openness of a congregation to the new vicar, the offering of space to make mistakes, and a willingness to try something new. Trust is a two-way enterprise. The bonding of priest and people develops in the circumstances and events of those first months.

The tentacles of disappointment will be present in that first year. The early disappointments might be sorted in two ways. There are big things and small things. There are issues we thought had been resolved before the new priest arrived and are now being re-raised and there are new or unanticipated rubs that appear. We do need to strive to keep the disappointments few in both number and size. Even at that, there will be disappointments. How we respond to those disappointments and to one another will shape our future together. Personal and group competence will matter – seeing the choices before you, communication skills, the ability and willingness to listen to one another and shape collaborative solutions. Maybe more important will be our sense of perspective, our good humor, and our humility.

rag+

The Honeymoon: Part I

She didn’t survive the honeymoon

There was an article in the NY Times yesterday about Carly Fiorina’s work at Hewlett-Packard. My take on it goes this way – she didn’t survive the honeymoon.

Toward the end of the article is this –

Many employees, however, insisted that they had assumed the best, but over time were disillusioned. …  But Ms. Fazarinc ultimately felt disappointed by Mrs. Fiorina. Old friends kept losing their jobs. HP was becoming a place she no longer recognized.

Mrs. Fiorina, she said, “had people in her hands, ready to help her. But she lost their support.”

But wait! What do you mean “she didn’t survive the honeymoon?”  She was with HP for 5 ½ years.  Yes, that’s right, she was. But the tentacles of disappointment were alive during the honeymoon and she managed those challenges in ways that set the pattern for the coming years. In that sense she didn't survive the honeymoon. 

   The article  

In my diocese

Another part of yesterdays morning reading was a message to clergy from the Canon to the Ordinary on “congregations in transition.”   Thirteen parishes had a new rector, vicar, or long term priest-in-charge – they are beginning the honeymoon.  My own parish was on the list.

What do these thirteen priests and parish face? 

The phases

I think about there being three broad phases in the initial relationship between priest and parish community.

Inflated hopes – Also called “the honeymoon.” The priest tells us how glad he is to be at Saint Mary’s and what a special place it is. We tell the priest we are delighted with his arrival and certain he will provide what we need for this next step on our journey. The focus is on the positive. We give one another the benefit of the doubt. We allow for mistakes. We excuse errors.

Disappointment – The priest discovers what wasn’t acknowledged in the parish profile. The congregation learns what the priest meant when she spoke of an occasional bump in the road in her previous positions.   Both realize what questions they failed to ask in the interviews. Rubs develop in the relationship. The tentacles of those rubs were usually visible in the previous phase.  In some cases the word “disappointment” is too strong for what we experience. Maybe it’s a series of small let downs. But it becomes clear that the honeymoon is over and a state of contentment and fulfillment hasn’t yet arrived.

Realistic Expectations and Relationship – A time of mutual respect and mature stability. We know much more of one another now. We have come to a point of realism about what we expect and acceptance of each other’s human limitations. This phase is the result of hard work around the spiritual and emotional dynamics experienced in the earlier phase. The earlier disappointments were adequately worked through.

       A PDF of Bonding: Priest and Community   

rag+

Episcopal identity and congregational development

I came across the article below exploring Episcopal identity and why we didn't split (as badly as we might have). 

Some of you know that my own read on that has to do with how deeply a parish or diocese was connected to the core elements of Episcopal identity. For example, if you accept Jim Fenhagen's three elements: comprehensiveness, personal holiness, and holy worldliness -- you would be less likely to leave the Episcopal Church as long as you see those characteristics present in the system.   

You get the same result if you look at longer lists such as -- Episcopal Spirituality or John Westerhoff’s descriptions

Evangelical and Anglo Catholic parishes that accepted those marks of identity as central to parish life have stayed in the church. An example coming from the other direction might be -- will those invested in offering communion before baptism stay in the church even though the bishops have now twice given a clear message that baptism comes before communion (and of course, a pastoral assumption that no priest will turn away a person at the altar). My sense if that of course they will. Some in the hope that they will change the minds of the bishops. But others because they have a deeper commitment to the core way of living the Christian faith as an Anglican.

rag+

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Q&A with Professor Mathew Sheep: Why didn’t Episcopal Church split after election of gay bishop?

By Kevin Bersett on October 9, 2015 | 

Business Professor Mathew Sheep

The 2003 election of Rev. Gene Robinson as the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop set off an internal debate that led a number of members within several conservative dioceses and parishes to leave the church.

But in the end the church retained about 90 percent of its membership, including many conservatives who opposed Robinson’s consecration as bishop. How did Episcopalian leaders and members reconcile their church’s identity with such a momentous change?

For the past decade, Illinois State Business Professor Mathew Sheep has worked with four other researchers from across the United States to study how the church viewed itself during this period. Their study has been accepted for publication in the Academy of Management Journal.

What the team found was that, rather than organizational identity being a fixed set of descriptions of the organization, it is instead a set of dialectical tensions that people attempt to balance or navigate every day in the way they talk about identity. In other words, organizations can stretch their identity—a concept the researchers called organizational identity elasticity—to allow for major changes.

The whole article