• The Shrinking Church: Reversing the Course to Demise

  • De: Hugh Ballou
  • Podcast

The Shrinking Church: Reversing the Course to Demise Por arte de portada

The Shrinking Church: Reversing the Course to Demise

De: Hugh Ballou
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  • Resumen

  • The Christian church continues to lose members weekly, yet there's little to no substantial change in leadership. It's time to look at what leadership could be in the church.
    2022
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Episodios
  • The Shrinking Church #6: Got Conflict? By the Way, Did You Cause It?

    The Shrinking Church #6: Got Conflict? By the Way, Did You Cause It?
    May 23 2022
    The Shrinking Church #6: Got Conflict? By the Way, Did You Cause It? Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success. – Henry Ford We are called into service as individuals, but we work in community in teams–both formal and informal. Whether we work on large teams, small teams, or on short-term projects or ongoing programs, does not matter. The tension between creative energy and routine is a balance that effective leaders must manage. Each team member has a responsibility to the rest of the team. The team leader must know and maintain the best group processes. I spend my time working with leaders building energized teams that reach decisions through synergy and consensus. The journey plays out differently in each situation. However, the basic routine consists of exploration, discussion, refinement, debate, reflection, listening, and consenting to the best decision for the group’s needs. These steps are more difficult for some team members than others. There are many reasons why this is true. Diagnostic: How to see potential conflict Look for early warning signals that relationships are about to get into trouble. Do not wait. Do not go into denial. Conflict appears for many reasons. Basically, it is a disruption that comes as a result of broken expectations and creates a disruption in stable relationships. The dictionary description is as follows: Conflict – a disagreement or clash between ideas, principles, or people’s psychological state resulting from the often unconscious opposition between simultaneous but incompatible desires, needs, drives, or impulses. Broken expectation is a principle that is at the root of much staff conflict. If we do not receive what we expected, there is a level of disappointment. When these expectations are not met, there is conflict. When expectations are not clearly articulated in advance, trouble is ahead. Putting off addressing expectations makes the situation worse. Letting the situation continue increases the stress. When something is wrong, pay the “upfront cost” by dealing with it promptly. The “cost,” in terms of loss of relationship and difficulty in dealing with the situation, will only increase exponentially. Act on the earliest signal that something is not right. Layers Underneath Conflict The layers underneath conflict are as follows: Behavior – how we act toward each other, both intentionally and unintentionallyPatterns – ways a conflict repeats can create an identifiable pattern–look for how the conflict shows up and with whom. Find identifiable patterns – define how long it has been going on and with whomValues – ways individual rights and values can be violated or compromisedBelief System – what we have been taught is our internal belief system, which guides our actions. Define from where the learned style of dealing with conflict comes (parents, boss, peer group, etc.). Learned systems can be the cause of unintentional actions. Leaders often set up conflict unintentionally. Here are some of the causes I observe: Expectations – When expectations are assumed but not clearly articulated in writing, then this is a formula for conflict. We might have a general idea of the desired outcomes when creating a verbal agreement; however, seeing the written outcomes helps to validate that each person has heard and understood the facts the same way. We also might forget the exact terms of the verbal agreement or the terms might get confused over time.Accountabilities – Not having mechanisms for accountability weaken any agreement and ultimately make the agreement worth nothing. When accountabilities are missing, the leader is at fault.Micromanagement – Delegation is assigning a task and getting out of the way. When the leader asks a team member to manage a task, then there’s a transfer of authority to that person. Assigning a task and then managing all the details is not delegation. Improper and incomplete delegation is a top cause of dissatisfaction and anxiety.Follow-Up – Assigning a task and then not having any interaction until the due date is risky. The effective leader assigns tasks and then defines touchpoints along the way for a check-in. This is mentoring and not micromanaging. Falling to have a system for mentoring leaves too much room for the team member to go astray, and then there’s a potential course correction that could be severe enough to cause friction. Preventative: Ways to build relationships and reduce conflict Develop Team “Norms” A very helpful and effective way to prevent unnecessary conflict is to establish a “Team Covenant” for a formal team that works together for the long term. Define Your Roles Another essential tool is the Role Renegotiation Model, defined and taught by John J. Sherwood and John C. Glidewell in their time-proven methods included in the 1971 article, “Planned Renegotiation: A Norm-Setting OD ...
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    14 m
  • The Shrinking Church 05 - Dumbing Down: How Church Leadership Has Set Up the Exodus

    The Shrinking Church 05 - Dumbing Down: How Church Leadership Has Set Up the Exodus
    May 11 2022

    The Shrinking Church 05 - Dumbing Down: How Church Leadership Has Set Up the Exodus

    The Shrinking Church 05 - 
    Dumbing Down: How Church Leadership Has Set Up the Exodus

    The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism. - Reinhold Niebuhr

    Is the massive exodus from the church due to the dumbing down over the years? What are ways we have dumbed down, and is the trend reversible?

    The statistics show that all the major denominations are losing members at an alarming rate. There’s little if any connection with Millennials. The choirs are aging without the infusion of younger voices. Members are separated into fragments divided by opinion, and not unified by faith, tradition, or spiritual focus.

    We criticize others who don’t think or act like we do or like we sanction. We are against “others” who are not as we are. Throughout history, there’s been one group after another that we are against giving privileges to.

    Members have become so disagreeable that many have forgotten the source of the disagreement. We’ve disagreed within our congregations and disagreed with the culture to lock out people who “don’t belong.” We’ve gone from the model of grace and love, and judging people on what they do in their private lives.

    Leaders have set up this judgmental culture because we have dumbed down and minimized our vision. We’ve brought in badly conceived and performed “contemporary music” to “attract the young people.” Our “traditional” worship is no longer consistent with our tradition and not relevant to life as experienced by people in the pews.

    Pastors mostly don’t study worship or leadership in seminary and continue to do what they have inherited or have seen modeled, mandating content and bossing church musicians without the skills, knowledge, or understanding of music in worship. Church musicians are petulant and churlish, pushing for their way as music being the end rather than serving the worship.

    The void has been created by ineffective leadership. The system is broken and nobody is naming it. The church consultants are doing more harm than solving problems. They are the “answer men” who give advice…the same kind of advice to each organization…one size, therefore, fits all. The consultant model is broken…as it has been for quite a while.

    When Marva Dawn wrote Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down quite some time ago, she not only traced the past, but she defined the future…where we are now. The first chapter in her book gives painful details of how education has dumbed down over the decades. Alfie Kohn, in different words, describes the dumbing down of standardized testing as an ethnic cleansing of the culture.

    What are the ways we as a church have “Dumbed Down”?
     • Music - style over content
     • Worship - attempting to please rather than listen to God
     • Mission - dumbing to the “No Mission” Mission Statement of the Great Commission
     • Children’s Sermons - what Leith calls “a form of child abuse"
     • Politeness - being polite as a substitute for being honest and kind

    It’s the leader’s duty and delight to set the pace and the tone for the team. The pastor is the spiritual leader of the congregation and not the CEO as commonly practiced. In the United Methodist Book of Discipline, the pastor is charged with ordering the life of the congregation, among other things. How does this pastor order dysfunction? How does this pastor reconcile the conflict between being CEO and being the spiritual leader of the flock? A void in leadership skills only makes things worse.

    How will you step up your leadership?
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    8 m
  • The Shrinking Church 04: Are You Feeling Worthy to Lead?

    The Shrinking Church 04: Are You Feeling Worthy to Lead?
    Apr 27 2022

    The Shrinking Church 04: Are You Feeling Worthy to Lead? Some people live their lives to the level of their dreams, while others live life to the level of their wounds.  - Dr. David Gruder, Organizational Psychologist   Wounded people wound people. – Richard Rohr

     

    In his daily meditation, Richard Rohr refers to our broken vision of God’s grace. "Psychologically, humans tend to operate out of a worldview of fear and scarcity rather than trust and abundance. This stingy, calculating worldview makes both grace and mercy unimaginable and difficult to experience.”* He goes on to talk about how our vision of God matures over time and we move from the early Biblical image of God as punitive and retributive.

     

    Richard Rohr also said, “Transformed people transform people."

     

    In my conversations with my clients and prospective clients, who lead various types of organizations, reveals some negative feelings that they have about themselves. Many even have negative scripts running in their minds telling them things that damage their self confidence and create self-doubt. Knowing that all of us have some level of doubt about our abilities, this might not seem unusual, however, at some point these negative scripts block success. There are many ways that massages are transferred from one person to another, most of which we don’t fully understand or even notice.

     

     

    When I work with clients making capital presentation for investors, donors, sponsors, or some other funding source, I notice that they transmit doubt because they doubt there will be positive results. As James Allen stated in As a Man Thinketh, "we attract what we are and not what we need." If we feel unworthy, does that feeling attract negative results? In addition to the unspoken feelings, I get verbal clues that many leaders lack self confidence and event self esteem. Do we get this only from our family of origin? Or, do we get this from our church experiences? I continue to grow my vision of God and take away the image on putting God into my very small box. As I grow my image of God, I can release some of the limitations I have on myself. Releasing the doubt is not necessarily going straight to pride or arrogance. Being humble is not like self doubt. I am worthy and I don’t have to have all the right answers. Leading is not about having the right answers, It’s mostly about asking there right questions and then establishing a process for getting the right answers. I come to a place of knowing that doubting myself is doubting God. God created me and God didn’t create any junk. I’ve arrived at this point mostly from my studies in Bowen Family Systems over the past 6 years. It’s been a transformative journey of self discovery and personal growth. I recommend Roberta Gilbert's book, The Eight Concepts of Bowen Theory. * 

     

    I am worthy to lead and continuing to grow my abilities. How about you? Hugh Ballou 

     

    The Transformational Leadership Strategist TM 

     

    (c) 2022 Hugh Ballou. All rights reserved. 

    * Affiliate link. Proceeds benefit SynerVision Leadership Foundation.
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    5 m
Ciencias Sociales Relaciones Ministerio y Evangelismo Espiritualidad
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