Getting the Frogs Into the Wheelbarrow

If leading a UU church is a lot like pushing frogs in a wheelbarrow, progress comes only if the frogs stay put as we move forward. If we are constantly trying to get the frogs back into the wheelbarrow, we are doomed to frustration and burnout. However, if they stay in the wheelbarrow on their own, then the entire enterprise works. In short, for a church to develop, the frogs have to see some wisdom in being in the wheelbarrow.* Like the -little guys in our picture, some UUs are a bit suspicious of the wheelbarrow and we have to use some skillful means to get them to hop on board and stay there.

As mentioned in the first article of this series, Bullfrogs in Wheelbarrows, UU churches tend to be chaordic organizations. Such organizations are largely self-organizing and self-governing. They do not operate best through hierarchies of authority but through networks of individuals. What makes them work is a clear shared purpose, ethical operating principles and responsibility distributed through nodes. The organizations are powered from the periphery and unified from the core.

What Type of Church.

The first issue in managing our wheelbarrow is identifying the stage of the church's development. Is your community a Family, Pastoral, Program or Corporate sized church? (See Why Size Matters.) Sometimes the conclusion is obvious. Sometimes, particularly for pastoral sized churches that want to be program churches, it can be remarkably difficult to honestly assess. However, if we are going to get all the frogs to stay in the right wheelbarrow, we have to identify the right wheelbarrow. One reason congregational leadership is difficult is because one group is building one kind of an organization and another is building another. For example, you might have people who are continually concerned about procedures, but until you get to a corporate sized church, the overdoing of procedures is typically a sign of the breakdowns of relationships between individuals or cells within the church. Once people understand that a pastoral and program sized church is largely about maintaining right relationships, you can begin to focus on the real issue and hopefully begin to dissipate the conflict while building a healthy church.

Implications for Strategic Planning.

Once the church leadership is in agreement about its size it knows what to focus on. The strum and drang around strategic planning becomes much less painful, the clouds part and you know what you as a church need to be focused on. The key strategic tasks of the church will center around the developmental work of the church at that stage. For example, a pastoral sized church requires a solid leadership team that is happy, effective and personally fulfilled by their work. These people are often in personal relationship with the minister who acts as part mentor, part pastor and part teacher. Another key to the pastoral sized church is healthy communication among leaders and with the congregation with a minimum of drama and crisis. Creating pathways for newcomers into the community is another key issue.

Since these are a few of the key developmental issues of a church this size, the strategic plan absolutely and unequivocally has to address these issue as matters of primary focus. This is not to say that the church is limited to these goals, but that the strategic plan has to address these and they must be a center of focus for the work of the church.

Thus, the goals of a pastoral sized church would include at least: creating and sustaining a committed and joyful group of leaders, having excellent communication within the church, and creating ways to help newcomers enter and continue on their spiral of engagement. These would be fleshed out with particulars appropriate to the church in that situation.

In putting together the particulars, the church leadership would first have to assess how the church is doing in each of these key areas. This "assessment" should not be drawn out or involve surveys and studies. Usually the leaders of the church know the realities of the church in these key areas and it is simply a matter of saying what is to create a common base. The way to surface this in the discussion is to explore what is working in the area being examined, what isn't and whether everyone agrees with the general assessment. So, taking leadership development, the questions would be "What are we doing well with leadership development?" "What isn't going so well?" "Does anyone have a major disagreement with the picture we just painted?"

Conclusion.

If this work is being done properly then the frogs are much more likely to stay put. Everyone in the church has a common language about the size of the church and what a church of that size is "supposed" to be doing to develop in a healthy way. All of this makes leadership much easier and allows the leaders to work with wayward frogs in a that honor their independence but keep the focus on the work that the community has to be doing. For the frogs who are happy to be in the wheelbarrow, there is an increased sense of purpose and real accomplishment as the deepest needs of the church are met.

Once the frogs are in the wheelbarrow and we have a grasp of the issues, we are ready to go to work. In our next article we will look at the topic of Unruly Organizations.
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* For those who feel that the references to frogs in this article are demeaning to people or to frogs please don't get your knickers in a knot until you read the upcoming post on the perils of pluralism in our UU churches.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.