[Poster's Notes:
This document was received in an e-mail, and was edited as follows:
Mike.]
The Rev. Stephan Jonasson, Coordinator of Services for Large Congregations in the Unitarian Universalist Association, first contacted me. He informed me of a crisis in the Fairfax UU Congregation precipitated by an e-mail incident, and asked me to work with the congregation.
I then contacted Susan Blasko, Acting President and met with the Board briefly on March 20 to agree on process. On April 1,2,and 3 I interviewed 25 people individually in addition to an evening with the Board. Most interviewees included previous Board presidents and vice presidents, present board members, staff including the Minister, Minister's wife, Associate Minister, Administrator, and Music Director as well as the principals in the e-mail incident. I have since interviewed by phone several other former Presidents, Lay Ministers and other leaders.
In addition I have read a variety of printed materials including the "UUCF Board responses to the Ombudsman Committee Recommendations", and the "November 28, 2000 Report to the Board from Stefan Jonasson and Richard Speck." I have also read a variety of other communications provided by lay leaders and staff including some relevant Board Minutes and worship attendance statistics for the past 13 years. Several of the interviewees also expressed their concerns in writing.
I have also received a copy of a letter to the Minister, Jim Nelson, and dated April 8,2003. The letter recalls some of the accomplishments of Jim Nelson's ministry but notes "a recurrent - and worsening - alienation of UUCF members who have volunteered their time and talents to serve in lay leadership positions, particularly on the Board of Trustees."
After elaborating on difficulties of the last several years the letter concludes by asking Jim to resign together with the commitment to support a graceful transition process.
The letter is signed by 47 members, most of who have been Board members or Lay Ministers. Eight past Presidents have signed the letter including five of the seven who have served since Jim became pastor. The other two resigned from the congregation due to problems in dealing with Jim.
In the light of all of the above I offer the following report and recommendations:
A majority of the laity that I interviewed, including current Board members expressed varying degrees of disillusionment with the Senior Minister. A frequent refrain was words to the effect that "I first came on the Board to support Jim because I was enthusiastic about his ministry. He is a wonderful teacher. However, after I got on the board it became an adversarial relationship."
Even Jim's critics are clear about his strengths. He is consistently perceived as an excellent teacher and preacher. Among the comments...
"Jim's sermons are thoughtful, intellectually rich and spiritually provocative. He's more God centered than I am."
"A gifted teacher ... should be a college professor."
"Jim is a visionary... he promotes growth. At first people were appalled. Later many became supportive of the idea."
"Jim has helped the congregation make the transition to becoming a large church."
However, most of the interviewees felt that there are serious concerns about Jim's leadership that have been recurring for a long time. One leader said, "We have lurched from one crisis to another. The common denominator has been Jim."
The key issues that were identified by many included:
The triggering incident was an e-mail written by Jim that informed one person about the tribulations of another. The tragic mistake is that the message that was intended for one person was inadvertently sent to a whole mailing list. The wrong "send" button was pushed by mistake. Needless to say Jim was mortified and he tried belatedly to send a message asking people to delete the message without reading it. He immediately asked the forgiveness of the two principals involved. They both understood what had happened and forgave Jim promptly. Nevertheless the incident was perceived as a breach of confidence by the Board, which felt compelled to act.
In this particular case I am not convinced that there was a willful breach of confidence. Certainly confidentiality was destroyed when the message went out to an entire mailing list. That error, however, was clearly not intended. The two principals in the case have a sufficiently close relationship that they felt Jim's e-mail was appropriate apart from the fact that he pressed the wrong button.
My perception is that this unfortunate incident evoked an intense reaction because it happened in the wake of a long series of experiences on the part of many interviewees where they reported Jim saying things that raised in their minds serious questions about boundaries and about confidentiality. Among the comments:
"Jim makes unprofessional cracks about people..."
"He revealed the names of big contributors which is supposed to be confidential."
"He makes cutting and degrading comments about people..."
"He told me things about other members that I didn't think I should be hearing."
"I would not feel comfortable sharing my vulnerabilities with Jim."
"I would not feel safe going to Jim as my pastor."
For many people who reported these kinds of experiences the e-mail incident became what they refer to as "the last straw." If the relationship between the minister and the congregation is to be fruitful the first issue that must be addressed is that of trust in his capacity to honor the boundaries of confidentiality.
Many interviewees said that they had first come onto the Board because they were enthusiastic about Jim's leadership and wanted to support him. After coming on the Board they experienced an adversarial relationship which some felt cost them their relationship with their minister. Two Board members and a President have left within the last eighteen months. Among the comments:
"I feel that Jim marginalizes people who disagree with him."
"If we disagree I feel a payback coming on."
"I have held back a lot... afraid of being frozen out if I cross Jim." "I think that he can't deal with criticism ... becomes defensive ... always has to be right."
"In my view, when Jim doesn't like something, he becomes passive/aggressive... fails to participate."
"I experience Jim as controlling and protective of his privileges and power."
"I think Jim sees the Board as window dressing. I see him getting very angry when things don't go his way."
As an outside observer I would have to say that the frustration in this relationship is mutual and that Jim and the Board have felt mutually disempowered by each other. Jim feels that there is resistance to strong leadership on his part. Sometimes in confrontations it appears that the Board backs down and then becomes increasingly resentful afterwards. In such a situation Jim wins the battle and loses the war. He gets his way on the immediate issue but loses the relationship with his partner in leadership, namely, the Board.
Robert Greenleaf was for many years in charge of developing the senior executive leadership for the Bell Telephone Company. In 1977 he wrote a seminal book entitled Servant Leadership. Greenleaf believed that a healthy institution must have two parallel columns of leadership, the trustee function and the executive function. These two columns of leadership must exist in a creative tension in order to do together what neither can do separately, namely, to provide effective leadership to the institution whether that institution be a congregation, a university or a business.
Leadership is a partnership between trustees and executive. Both must be strong and have a healthy level of trust in the relationship in order to be partners in leading the institution. An institution with a strong executive and a weak board OR with a weak executive and a strong board will be vulnerable. It is essential for both partners to be strong and for their relationship to be healthy.
The present relationship between Jim and the Board is clearly unhealthy. I perceive Jim to be depressed and the Board to be discouraged. The past several years have been an unhappy journey for both. Blaming and counter blaming can only deepen the chasm. A gentleman named Lincoln once said that "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
One person observed, "Both Jim and the Board seem to have an either/or mentality. When it comes to power they both see a fixed pie rather than an expandable pie. It is not productive to think in terms of winners and losers. How can we learn to speak the truth in love without blame or judgment? We can't seem to reach closure on anything ... there's lots of festering and stewing and nursing of grudges."
It is unfortunate that some have pictured the minister of a large congregation as a "CEO". Even in the business world, the old model of the CEO as one sitting on top of the organizational pyramid giving out orders has largely fallen into disfavor. The truly creative CEQ's such as Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines are noted for their capacity to ask the right questions rather than to have all the right answers.
A wise old Episcopal priest once said to me, "Every leader has to make a choice: do you want to be in control or do you want to be taken seriously?"
Being in control is power. Being taken seriously is authority. I believe that all of us who aspire to lead would do well to worry more about our authority and less about being in control. Authority has to do with credibility, trustworthiness, and believability. This is true for both clergy and lay leaders. Turf battles drain the energy and morale of a congregation.
High control ministers tend to create passive or rebellious congregations. The passive response is "OK Reverend, if you want to run the church you go right ahead, I'll sit back and watch."
The result is a congregation of spectators. Finally people get tired of being controlled and rebel.
Leadership is first and foremost a spiritual task. Our effectiveness as a leader depends upon the attention that we pay to our own inner journey. This is more important than "know how" or expertise.
Appendix A attached to this report is called a "Soul inventory". It was inspired by an essay entitled "Leading From Within", written by Parker Palmer, a Quaker.
During the 21 years that I served the Presbytery in Washington I became painfully aware of how frequently relationships between ministers and congregations ended unhappily. During those years I witnessed 91 such unhappy endings. In doing research and reflection on those 91 stories I discovered that almost always, one or more of the seven questions on the "Soul Inventory" was at issue. I believe that our fruitfulness as leaders depends on the manner in which we come to terms with these seven questions.
How can there be accountability throughout the congregation? How can there be mutual accountability between Minister and Board?
Some who have served on the Board feel that Jim has resisted any kind of meaningful accountability. They point to his opposition to having a Committee on Ministry as recommended in the Jonasson/Speck report. Jim says that he has been "asking for an evaluation ever since I came here." He feels that his accountability is ultimately to the congregation but that the Board is responsible for monitoring and evaluation on behalf of the congregation.
The relationship between a minister and a congregation is a covenant relationship, in some ways analogous to a marriage covenant. Like a marriage it is a MUTUAL covenant. Although the congregation pays the minister's salary, the "employer - employee" image does not adequately describe the nature of the relationship. A typical employer - employee contract is fulfilled if the employee does what he/she has agreed to do and the employer pays what he/she agrees to pay. There is nothing in the contract that says that the employer and employee must love each other.
The relationship between a minister and a congregation is precisely that, a relationship ... a covenant relationship. It does matter whether we love each other. There are contractual concerns that must be addressed but they are secondary. They do not define the relationship. Clergy relate to us at the most vulnerable moments in our lives. They represent the sacred as we struggle with issues of life and death, suffering, strained and broken relationships, times of joy and depression.
Like marriage the covenant relationship between minister and people goes through stages:
Stage 1 - The Honeymoon. - When I first got married I did not marry my wife. I married my fantasy of my wife. And she married her fantasy of me. That's why we had a honeymoon, with our fantasies of each other.Stage 2 - The Disillusionment. - Where we began to discover one another's weaknesses and shortcomings. Very painful!
Stage 3 - Getting Down to Business - where we were able to look each other in the eye and acknowledge the realization that "Hey, I'm not perfect and neither are you, but we're both good enough so let's get serious and make this relationship work."
The relationship between minister and congregation goes through similar stages:
Stage 1 - The Honeymoon - The minister arrives predisposed to believe all the extravagant things the search committee told him about this wonderful congregation. Perhaps it's a slight exaggeration to say that the congregation is predisposed to believe that the new minister is indeed the "messiah" who will make the congregation prosper.Stage 2 - We discover each other's warts
Stage 3 - We acknowledge our respective vulnerabilities and get serious about accepting mutual responsibility for making the relationship work. We develop mutual accountability.
Some Boards have tried to give their minister a "performance" review, which rarely, if ever, proves fruitful. If we are mutual partners, why would one partner unilaterally give the other partner a performance review. Wouldn't it make more sense if the partners engaged in a "mutual self assessment"? Shouldn't the partners together ask the question, "How are we doing?" and if "we aren't doing so well" in some areas, what are the implications for the minister and the board respectively? We build the partnership as we learn how to hold ourselves and one another mutually accountable.
This accountability is primarily about roles and relationships and secondarily about the performance of tasks. Returning to the marriage analogy for a moment, I might do the dishes "spit-spot clean" after dinner every night and my wife might think I was a lousy husband. On the other hand I might never do the dishes and my wife might think I was a great husband. So measuring how well I do the dishes does not get at the heart of it.
Of course there are functions to be performed by the minister, like preaching, teaching and pastoral care. If the minister wants to improve performance in any such areas, I believe that he or she would do well to take the initiative and responsibility for designing and conducting the evaluation that would lead to improvement. For example if I were a minister and wanted to work on improving my preaching I would ask two or three wise and insightful members of the congregation to listen to my next a minister and wanted to work on improving my preaching I would ask two or three wise and insightful members of the congregation to listen to my next sermon and then meet with me afterwards to critique it. I would ask them such questions as:
"Was the sermon coherent? Did it hang together? Was the central, message clear? Could you follow the transitions from one point to another? Did the illustrations illustrate? Did the sermon connect with your life? Did I come across as authentic? Did I communicate at a feeling level as well as an intellectual level? Etc. etc. etc.
Mutual accountability is an art that both creates and is created by partnership. Without such accountability the partnership is unlikely to be fruitful.
I would begin this section by quoting from the report given by Stefan Jonasson and Richard Speck on November 28,2000:
"Our overall impression is that the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax has a history that betrays an ongoing culture of conflict, blame and suspicion, coupled with unresolved tensions stemming from the ambiguous feelings of some members about the size of the congregation .... Our primary reason for describing the conflict at UUCF as systemic is that it became apparent to us that the congregation, as a system, is conflict habituated. Through our interviews with members of long standing, it was suggested to us that UUCF has undergone some significant conflict during the tenure of every one of its ministers."In my brief exposure to the past and current leadership of UUCF I did not get so much data about the past prior to the coming of Jim Nelson. It is clear that a pattern of conflict and distrust has been going on among the leadership of UUCF for the past several years including the eruption at the time of the Ombudsman Committee and more recently two and a half years ago with the visit of the Revs. Jonasson and Speck. Whereas past complaints were coming from some long time members who were unhappy about the congregation becoming larger, the present unhappiness is coming from a large portion of the recent past and present leadership of the congregation,
A refrain that I hear repeated often in many congregations is "If we just get rid of this pastor everything will be all right around here."
I find that seldom to be true. The minister may be part of the problem but rarely in my experience does the congregation become problem free with the departure of the minister.
I believe it would serve the UUCF well to do some basic learning on how to engage in constructive conflict. Conflict does not need to be destructive. People can grow through conflict. Relationships can grow through conflict. Communities can grow through conflict. Conflict is the way in which we work out our differences. It can either be constructive or destructive.
Appendix B to this report is a page entitled "Twelve Ground Rules For Managing Conflict". It spells out a basic ethic of self-responsibility for dealing with conflict.
The Mennonites have produced an excellent manual, which I believe could be helpful to UUCF. It is entitled Transforming Conflict In Your Church edited by Marlin E. Thomas. I would be glad to work with the board and/or congregation in using it.
It is not the role of the consultant to determine whether the minister should continue or move on. That is a decision to be worked out between Jim, the Board, and ultimately if necessary the congregation. Hopefully the matter will not come down to a congregational vote because more often than not the result is a congregation divided over the minister. People develop intense feelings about their clergy because they are either there for us or else they fail to be there for us at the times in life when we are most vulnerable. If they are there for us in our time of need then thereafter they can do no wrong as far as we are concerned. If they are not there for us in the way that we expect then thereafter they can do no right. You cannot convince either party that they did not have their experience. Unlike most other issues, which are open to negotiation and compromise, this issue tends tobe intractable and therefore divides congregations. In the Presbyterian tradition, clergy take a vow at ordination to "study the peace and unity of the church" This amounts to a commitment to never become the cause of division in a congregation.
I wish to sketch out what might be involved in the two scenarios, one where Jim continues in place and the other if Jim should leave.
1. If Jim is to remain in place: Clearly things cannot continue as they are. The present relationship between Jim and the Board is mutually debilitating. The four issues identified would need to be addressed together:
a. Confidentiality
b. Partnership
c. Mutual Accountability
d. Managing conflict constructively
A first step in the process might be to work out a covenant between minister and board. Until now I understand that there has been a contract, which primarily addresses terms of employment in some detail, usually spelled out in appropriate legalese.
A covenant describes a spiritual relationship and a mutual commitment as in the covenant of marriage. It does not spell out details but it describes a mutual commitment between two parties that addresses such matters as confidentiality, partnership, accountability and conflict. There is an element of grace in a covenant that is usually not found in contracts. There is also a level of personal commitment on the part of the parties that is not found in contracts; i.e. "for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer."
Usually if a contract is abrogated that is the end of the relationship. In a covenant there is a deeper level of mutual commitment that sees divorce as a last resort not a first option.
A covenant is not an easy way out of the present dilemma. The prospect of rebuilding trust in Jim's capacity to honor the boundaries of confidentiality is likely to be a long and difficult journey. So is the journey to learn how to partner in leadership and to abandon the temptations of manipulation and control that lead to mutual disempowerment. So is the struggle to learn the discipline of mutual accountability and the ethic of self-responsibility that makes constructive conflict possible. The covenant must include effective ways to monitor the development of the relationship and progress in dealing with the four central concerns. A beginning step in such a journey is for all parties to work through the accumulated feelings of anger, distrust and pain that have accumulated over several years. In order for this option to bear fruit the parties involved need to make a long- term commitment. Entrenched habits are not easily overcome as any who have been involved in a 12-step program readily understand. I would be glad to facilitate the development and implementation of such a covenant if there is a decision is to continue the relationship.
2. If Jim is to leave, it makes all the difference in the world how that takes place. The goal is to seek a graceful parting that results in as little injury as possible to both parties. The optimal route is for the congregation to support Jim during a transition time in which he seeks and finds a new opportunity. Then he can leave with the blessing of all and both minister and congregation can do the transitional work needed to make new beginnings in pursuing separate futures.
A second alternative would be a "buyout." I note that the UUA recommends that "in the event of a dismissal, salary, housing allowance, and benefits will continue during the longer of three months or one month per year of service up to twelve months from the date of dismissal, or until the Minister has begun service in another position, if sooner". (Taken from Joint Recommendations Concerning Letters of Agreement between Ministers and Congregations of the UUA)
There will be transitional work. Both minister and congregation need to ask the question "What can we learn from the painful experience we have just been through so that we don't repeat it?" I would be glad to facilitate such transitional work if it becomes appropriate.
In the event that the decision is to part company gracefully I recommend a little book entitled Saying Goodbye, published by the Alban Institute, which addresses the matter of how to have a graceful termination to a ministerial relationship.
The situation at UUCF is painful for everyone. The conflict has festered and escalated over a long period. There are no easy alternatives or "quick fixes". My best hope is that the path chosen will result in spiritual growth for both Jim and the congregation.
Respectfully submitted,
[signature]
Edward A. White
A Soul Inventory: The Inward Journey & Being a Leader
Twelve Ground Rules For Working Through Conflict