By James C. Dekker
(First appeared in the January 10, 2005 issue of the Christian Courier)
Recognizing the Need for Pastoral Leadership Development
Over the last two decades books and magazine articles on leadership in- and outside of churchland have accounted for the deaths of many trees. The continuing popularity of Leadership and the many articles in denominational periodicals and clergy journals testify to the boundless appetite in church circles for nourishment on the subject. At one point in my ministry eight of the eleven pastors in a monthly book-discussion group subscribed to Leadership. Today, ten years later, recent graduates of Calvin Theological Seminary among current colleagues witness to course assignments and discussions fed by articles from Leadership and such places as Alban Institute.
Thus the long tilling and planting of the leadership soil has been complex and stimulating. Still it is difficult to measure the harvest in either quality or quantity. In fact, if we pastors step outside our collegial groups, it is easy to find skeptics who are not convinced of the necessity, applicability or even appropriateness of this conversation within Christian Reformed Church (CRC) circles.
Doubters range from the stodgily cynical to the theologically thoughtful. On one extreme, I hear, “There’s no need to study leadership. We need pastors who stick to their knitting of leading worship, preaching, teaching and visiting.” On the other end, more reflective but still dubious observers remark, “The world is complex and leading churches is more difficult than ever. We certainly need good leaders in our churches; pastors are part of that mix. Yet the leadership training and models we hear most about come from the corporate world, where profits, not people and certainly not God’s glory run the show.”
As a pastor-preacher-missionary working in churches and missions for 26 years, I see validity in both comments. Yet leadership themes and actions are not exhausted within the narrow boundaries of those remarks. To that end in this article I will describe related situations to make a case for developing a common perspective about leadership in Christian Reformed Churches. That is the field I know best, but believe these outlines apply to other bodies as well.
Symptoms of Need in Christian Reformed Pastorates
All pastors and elders I know consider it a privilege and honor to attend synods of the CRC. At synods and classis meetings delegates, visitors and advisers mix, meet, learn, study, pray and praise. Though it seems odd to some, I fully agree with the pastor who after six days of synod, still bounced up joyfully to proclaim, “Synods ought to be fun and this one really was. Most people worked seriously without taking themselves too seriously.” Synods provide a public microcosm to see CRC leadership development in action. They are places where leaders are tested and informally evaluated for potential service in congregations and agency ministries. Most synods I have attended have shown humble servants at their God-pleasing best.
Yet the low-point for all synods occurs during the last hours when delegates receive reports from our denomination’s Synodical Deputies. Among other duties, those pastors attend classis meetings to adjudicate between pastors and congregations in crisis. Every year the list of pastors leaving congregations under difficult circumstances grows. Some pastors leave a present ministry because of intolerable situations with council or congregation. Most eventually find pastorates elsewhere, even in other denominations. Others are deposed from office because of scandal or abuse. Delegates do not learn details, but personal reports often testify to intense, insoluble tensions resulting in friction and open conflict. All contribute to casualties among pastors and in congregations. Too frequently, former colleagues have found inappropriate escape in moral failures or addictions. When the reports of the deputies end, year after year the same sad hand-wringing speeches and prayers lament the personal and communal agony behind these lists and names, begging members and God for solutions.
Thus we see the acute need for pastoral leadership development and maintenance in these annual back door exits to which those statistics testify. Sadly, our denomination is not alone. In a paper presented in 2001 at a forum to strengthen congregational leadership, Dr. Craig Dykstra of the Lilly Endowment, cited studies among North American denominations: “Thirty percent of the pastors...are engaged in their ministries in joyous, fruitful, happy ways...A larger group, about 40%, are considerably more perplexed and at least somewhat unhappy.... Finally, about 30% are in despair about their work, their situations, their lives, their ministries. And the bottom third of these are actively on their way out.” (“The Significance of Pastoral Ministry and the Idea of the Pastoral Imagination,” p. 8).
Year by year a closely related need grows within our denomination at the front door as well. Calvin Theological Seminary is teaching more students than ever for more varied and broader ministry capacities. Yet those graduating to enter pastoral ministry have shrunk for a number of years, thus increasing annually the number of churches without pastors. Currently, around 130 of 1025 Christian Reformed congregations have no pastors. In Classis Niagara where I serve, five of thirteen congregations are without a pastor. Such situations stretch congregational needs and add more stress to pastors serving as counselors and occasional preachers to pastor-less churches. Unless more persons answer God’s call to parish ministry, some estimate that by 2020, one-quarter of Christian Reformed churches could be without pastors. (For related reflections, see Bruce Ballast, “Where Have All the Pastors Gone?”, The Banner, December, 2004, pp. 44-47.)
Attempting a Diagnosis
Why are so many pastors leaving the parish, disillusioned with the ministry or abandoning what they believed was a life calling? Why are fewer candidates entering pastoral ministry? Why are too many congregations losing their pastors, some serially, to less casualty-prone ministries such as teaching or institutional chaplaincy?
One general answer, applicable to all three questions, is that if pastors expect to lead, they often face congregations and councils that supposedly ask them to lead, but do not know how to support leadership or to model “followership.” Conflict and separation often follow. No matter how strong God’s call is personally to a given pastor, unless congregational lay leaders understand that leading requires a leader to encourage a ministry plan that the congregation is committed to implementing, wreckage will continue to mount in separated and deposed pastors and frustrated congregations with shrinking membership. Somehow, lay leaders, congregations and pastors have to work harder at this part of the “Charge to Elders” in the CRC’s form for “Ordination of Elders and Deacons”: “Be wise counselors who support and strengthen the pastor.”
Looking for Communally Workable Remedies
While not pleasant, those scenarios are realistic and necessary to consider in order to engage the issue. Happily, within the CRCNA several existing programs and processes give opportunities for pastoral and lay leadership development. To open the front door further, for seven years Calvin Seminary has offered “Facing Your Future” for high school students who are willing seriously to consider ministry. In order to help close the back door, “Sustaining Pastoral Excellence” offers grants to pastors to organize peer learning groups. I am pleased to belong to one such regional group that will begin meeting in January, 2005 to read, study and pray to maintain and further develop communal and personal spiritual disciplines and intellectual habits.
Finally, over the last year and a half an officially sponsored Leadership Development Team of the CRCNA has met often and produced a significant and far-reaching paper called, “Leadership: A Working Definition.” In future articles I propose to explore four distinct categories found in that paper and informed by a rich conversation among those lay and ordained leaders from the CRCNA and some denominational agencies who wrote it.
