I was sitting across on a sofa across from a ministry leader with light streaming in the window next to us. It was one of those rare mostly-sunny days in the Pacific Northwest, so much so that you could see the soaring Olympic Peninsula across the Puget Sound. It is a space where landscapes speak, where natural beauty invokes a sense of awe, wonder, and spirituality.
Reflecting on his ministry in this moment, this particular leader shared: “This is that in-between stage …. We’re on maybe a one hundred or a two-hundred-year curve, and we may never see what may evolve out of this, but we are in the place of figuring it out.”
I thought of other leaders who described the challenge of working “without templates,” and how “creativity is just normal” right now. More recently, I recall the many communities I’ve worked with or supported in the wake of the pandemic: they know the organizational landscape that surrounds them is changing, but they are not always sure how to take the first step. Like these ministry leaders, they know that there is a need to lead and serve their community in a new way, but they are not sure how to do it, or where to go.
These faith leaders often find themselves serving and leading alone.
A Relational Paradigm
In support of these and similar leaders who are looking for a more excellent way, I want to suggest six different modes of leading collaborative change. Rather than a single expression of leadership, these modes of “being with” are connected by virtuous patterns of connection and possibility. Some of you have read about this in Adaptive Church, but I’ll describe each of these here.
The caretaker: The Caretaker holds the hopes, dreams, and pains of a community, seeking to create the conditions where they may be transformed through an encounter with God and community. This mode of being with emerges from a profound care for individuals and their collective wellbeing and affirms the abundance of the resources that exist within a given community. The two organizing practices for this mode of being are presence and setting the table. This individual serves their community much like an organizational midwife, creating space for new possibilities to come into being.
The Catalyst: The Catalyst is an entrepreneur who may inhabit the edges of organizations and institutions. An innovator in a position or organization, she is a catalyst for the change that may redound to impact the broader ecclesial ecology. These individuals are starters, but not necessarily sustainers. The Catalyst’s organizing practices are innovating and ideating. Significantly, Catalysts pursue the practice of innovating in order to alter the conditions that support a life of faith. An ecclesial entrepreneur provides an apt metaphor to describe this individual.
The Champion: The Champion’s mode of leadership energizes and elevates the change that is taking place at diverse points across a surrounding community. Champions are not possessive of resources or potential, they leverage their position and privilege for the sake of others. Two organizing practices characterize the Champion’s work: elevating others and telling stories. The metaphor of a player-coach expresses the Champion’s mode of leadership: a player-coach combines wisdom that comes from lived experience with the ability to encourage and inspire at critical junctures.
Connector-conveners: The Connector-Convener pursues being with individuals and communities by tending the connective sinews of the community they serve. These individuals, who are acutely aware of pervasive disconnection, understand the importance of shared texts and context, and they work to provide mediums for individuals to meet and connect. Like the upstroke and downstroke of bikes on a pedal, the work of connecting and convening are twin movements of their hope for a more connect common life. The practices of asking questions and listening express the Connector-Convener’s distinct mode of leadership. The metaphor of a conductor clarifies the practical wisdom that directs the Connector-Convener’s distinct mode of being with individuals and communities: like a conductor directing an orchestra, the Connector-Convener has know-how that enables her to gather and coordinate diverse voices, experiences, and perspectives.
Surveyors: The Surveyor pursues a mode of being with that first attends to the system of connections and ideas that comprise a community of faith. The Surveyor then seeks to translate insights for the good of the community. Surveyors may have some academic training, but this posture is not exclusively expressed by academics. This mode of being with is expressed in two practices: investigation and translation. Like a community librarian, the Surveyor trades in concepts and texts; thinkers and ideas are like friends to them, assuming a life of their own and filling the Surveyor’s idle thoughts. Further, they know the texts of varying bodies of knowledge, and have the ability to guide others as they explore the relevance of texts and concepts in the face of a challenge.
The Guide: The final form of being with, the Guide, reflects a posture of coming alongside individuals and communities amid the uncertainty that characterizes adaptive work. Mentors, spiritual directors, and life coaches express certain aspects of this form of being with. However, the Guide’s mode of being with bears something more. Guides have a perspective that enables them to see the whole and well-worn wisdom about the conditions for and activities that can start and sustain adaptive change. A Guide’s posture reflects two organizing practices: coming alongside and discerning the next step. Virgil from Dante’s The Divine Comedy provides a guiding metaphor for the guide (someone in a recent presentation suggested Obi Wan Kenobi serves a similar role, but that’s another story). Much like Virgil who journeys alongside Dante through hell and purgatory, the Guide is a patient presence that invites those they are with to discern the next step.
My broader research and writing describes several forms of relationship between these six forms of leadership. The image below depicts some of the relationships I have in mind. My book, Adaptive Church: Collaboration and Community in a Changing World, explores about the importance of leadership teams, the types of meaningful collaborations that work across difference, four central values that bind these modes of leadership together, and how partnership reflects a distinct form of Christian practical wisdom.
A Collaborative Church
We need to learn how to cultivate what Glenn Packiam calls a “collaborative church” in order to serve the shifting needs of people in our communities and through our ministries. However, 70% of the ministry leaders Packiam and Barna interviewed for The Resilient Pastor reported not collaborating with another congregation less than monthly during the crises surrounding COVID-19. Even in times of crisis, we do not always know how to partner with others.
When new templates are needed, we can turn to others. We need to draw wisdom from a history of collaborative practice, from others, and from the friendships that carry us. As one ministry leader shared: “We’re better together.” However, the type of collaborative ministry that is needed cannot be reduced to a strategy to promote growth and stability, it is distinguished is a particular way of life. This way of life that seeks out collaboration does not reduce partnership to a pragmatic outcome; instead, it recognizes the value and delight that simple comes from friendship and God’s call on our lives and communities.
The work of ministry has always required connection and collaboration, but the work of this moment requires new templates to support the kind of collaboration ministry requires. Our work together, when guided by wisdom, nourished by the Spirit of God, and cultivated in the company of friends, can support the imagination and connections that can support, resource, and enable our present and future ministries.
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Writing is a practice of thinking with and as part of a broader community. Here are some of the people I’m thinking with while writing “An Invitation to Collaboration”:
Bass, Dorothy, Kathleen Cahalan, Bonnie Miller-McLemore, James Nieman, and Christian Scharen. Christian Practical Wisdom: What It Is, Why It Matters. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016.
Packiam, Glenn. The Resilient Pastor: Leading Your Church in a Rapidly Changing World. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2022.
Sparks, Paul, Tim Soerens, and Dwight Friesen. The New Parish: How the Neighborhood is Transforming Mission, Discipleship and Community. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2014.