Bishop 8 (Bishops Teaching)

I'll be so glad to finish this book!  Just two more chapters after this one.  Today it's chapter 8 of William Willimon's Bishop, "Bishops Preaching."  Previous chapters were:

1. Methodists, Alabama Conference in Motion
2. Summoned to be Bishop
3. Bishops Sending Pastors
4. Bishops Cultivating Fruitfulness
5. Bishops as Change Agents
6. Bishops Body Building
7. Bishops Proclaiming

Now, highlights of chapter 8:

• Like Willimon, I have a short attention span, but I frankly have a hard time seeing how his chapters hold together.  Let's just call every chapter, "Willimon's Proverbs," and leave it at that.  Here is a proverb that is true and faithful: "Stories create world. The one who would change people must offer better stories" (131).  Hear, hear.
• Adaptive leadership (following Heifetz and Linsky) is 1) about change that enables thriving, 2) build on the past rather than jettisoning it, 3) occurs through experimentation, 4) relies on diversity, 5) requires significant displacement, reregulation, and rearrangement of old DNA, and 6) takes time.
• The distinction between leadership and management is an important one.  "'Management is about coping with complexity,' while 'leadership is about coping with change'" (134).  By the way, administration is yet another category.  Administrator types can actually create unnecessary complexity if left to their own devices.  In my opinion, IWU needs a new president who can facilitate good management that pulls out a lot of unnecessary wires and good leadership that will turn around our declining traditional enrollment.
• Five characteristics of adaptive organizations are 1) elephants in the room are named, 2) responsibility for the future is shared, 3) independent judgment is expected, 4) leadership capacity is developed, and 5) reflection and continuous learning is institutionalized.
• Interesting slam at the World Methodist Council as a waste of time and resources. Of course Wesleyans, including the seminary, participate in that.  
• Willimon talks about a "culture of niceness" in the UM church that avoids conflict and sees conflict resolution as a primary task.  Given his personality, you would suspect that Willimon doesn't care much about whether there is conflict or not :-)  But he is quite right that some conflict almost seems necessary for there to be progress.  I personally also think that conflict can happen nicely :-)
• I chuckled at Willimon's comments about the need for decisions to be made after data collection, that data collection can't go on indefinitely.  I knew a leader whose advice to new leaders below was not to let people push you into making a decision until you had all the data.  Some of those receiving this advice would just smile and wave... you never have all the data.  Being an insightful leader means having an intuitive sense of where the data is headed even before it is all in. And being a good leader inevitably involves some risk taking. 
• Some advice from Heifetz on how to bear the responsibility of leadership: 1) get on the balcony, 2) distinguish yourself from your role, 3) externalize the conflict, 4) use partners, 5) invite outsiders' points of view, 6) find a sanctuary, and 7) maintain a sense of purpose.

Bishop 7 (Bishops Proclaiming)

Some highlights from chapter 7 of William Willimon's Bishop, "Bishops Preaching."  Previous chapters were:

1. Methodists, Alabama Conference in Motion
2. Summoned to be Bishop
3. Bishops Sending Pastors
4. Bishops Cultivating Fruitfulness
5. Bishops as Change Agents
6. Bishops Body Building

Highlights of chapter 7:

• Willimon's style is to give lots of snapshots from different angles, none of which is the whole picture but that provide a collage of sorts.  The main motif of this chapter would seem to be that bishops need to proclaim the main thing over and over.
• I suppose different readers will take away different senses of what that main thing is.  Some will no doubt hear that the main message is to make Christians, evangelism.  They will hear Willimon dismissing all those voices in the UM church on all sides preoccupied with issues of sex and sexuality. He sure seems to think that adding believers to the UM church should be pretty high on the list right now in terms of focus.
• Other readers may lock on to his comments on how we need less "nonbiblical drivel" and more biblical preaching (121). The church needs to hear more of its old message and unlearn some of its new. Of course how a fundamentalist hears these words will almost certainly be different from how he means them. He absolutely doesn't mean preaching more against gay marriage.
• Perhaps he means "clear articulation of the faith" (123). He doesn't like the shift to calling ministers "pastors." He prefers to call them "preachers."
• The leader who guards the direction of an organization “must be a big talker, relentlessly reiterating our core values” (118).  In Made to Stick, Heath says, “If you say three things, you don’t say anything” (126. 
• Truly original ideas rarely stick. An idea “needs communicated at least seven times, seven different ways, before the idea is received” (126, Blanchard). •  
• “A spirit of experimentation is more needed than one of care, causing, and planning” (122). “Over-planning is often the result of an over-cautious ethos that is afraid to fail” (123). 
• But “good decisions require good information” (115).  There's the balance.  An organization will probably start to decline if it is averse to risk, but risks should be made with due diligence.
• “Most of a good manager’s time should be spent with the organization’s best people” (116). But, then again, he emphasizes listening to everyone and the fact that he used to spend two hours a day on email. 
• UM church does not need more good ideas but “more insights on what we ought to do next” (128). That's instructive for an organization that is stuck in a rut.  It's not innovation in itself that is needed in that case, but innovation that brings results.

What I enjoyed most in the chapter was the four modes of decision making:

• authoritative - the "my way or the highway" leader.  Worked good in the early Middle Ages.  Not so much now
• voting - suffice it to say, those with exceptional insight are, by definition, not the majority
• consensus - ideal, but almost impossible to achieve on hard decisions
• contributive - it comes last so it must be what he likes (Willimon didn't actually come up with this list).  This is when a leader or appropriate leaders listen to all the voices and then make an informed decision.

Bishop 6 (Institutions, Connecting)

Now chapter 6 of William Willimon's Bishop, "Bishops Body Building."  Previous chapters were:

1. Methodists, Alabama Conference in Motion
2. Summoned to be Bishop
3. Bishops Sending Pastors
4. Bishops Cultivating Fruitfulness
5. Bishops as Change Agents

Highlights of chapter 6:

1. "I want to say a word for anxiety" (91).  This book just hammers home over and over again Willimon's sense that the status quo of the UM church is the death, death, death of the church. He clearly doesn't want to put anyone at ease.  He wants any Methodist reading his book to become very anxious.  "It is more important to prod and empower than to pacify" (96).

2. He considers retired bishops and clergy some of his biggest opponents.  This is simply another form of "those who had the most invested in what you are trying to change will often most oppose change."  After all, to admit that Willimon is right is to admit that a generation of bishops were angels of death for the UM church.  The years of decline are on record: 1969-present.

3. "A bishop without enemies must not be showing up to the office" (92).  Of course I think any reader with a healthy EQ by this point of the book will infer that Willimon has a bit of a caustic personality. "The conference leaders whom a bishop inherits will not be the leaders a bishop needs" (94). Ouch.  Very optimistic.

4. Asking lots of questions, listening, admitting failure, etc.  Good stuff

5. More complaints.  Seniority system killing the church and it's not even official policy.  "Equitable compensation" is killing the UM church financially to prop up churches that can't support themselves because they are dying.

6. In 1987, Bishop Earl Hunt suggested that one of the key responsibilities of the UM church was to guarantee the survival of the small membership church.  Oops. Most Christians attend churches of 200 or more. The top 25 Methodist churches have more people attending than everyone in 54 of the UM's 62 conferences. Most people are currently not attracted to small churches.

7. Willimon ended the chapter by discussing the UM colleges and seminaries.  I guess a retired bishop can tell all about the failures of "hotshot" college presidents in recent memory.  It reminds us all how important a transition in presidency is (hint, hint).  The instance he mentions took Birmingham-Southern College down the drain in a very short amount of time.  Hopefully IWU will pick someone who is financially wise and has an eye for opportunity.

8. Willimon says that at least 3 UM seminaries ought to merge or close. I like that the UM church now dispenses funds to its seminaries on the basis of how many UM students they have. Let's just say that a number of UM seminaries have the reputation of not being very Methodist (or even Christian).  I have nothing at all against non-Christians teaching Bible--it just seems a little questionable at a seminary that trains Christian ministers for a specific denomination.

9. On the other hand, Willimon is inconsistent when he celebrates that the UM church has increasingly been cutting off training at non-UM seminaries.  To be consistent, he should celebrate training at seminaries that will equip UM ministers to do the mission he is saying it needs to survive, and that doesn't look to be Methodist seminaries. If a Wesley Seminary at IWU or an Asbury does it as well or better than the official ones, then the UM church should be embracing us.

I've heard that Asbury Seminary trains more UM ministers than all the other Methodist schools combined.  I would venture to say that they are also the more missional Methodist pastors Willimon is looking for. Yet I haven't a doubt that the UM church would cut off Asbury in a blink if it could (it's not officially UM). It's probably the fact that Asbury's alumni fill the church that keeps them from doing so.

Let's face it, the UM church is not going to survive on the ministers coming out of its own seminaries.  Too few ministers coming out of most of them, a preponderance of good theologians who won't grow any church coming out of the others.  Duke you will always have with you... just don't look for it to rescue its denomination.

I might give a shout out to my friends at United, which looks to be about the only innovative UM seminary of the lot.  I also have a sense that sometimes they feel like the black sheep of the family... for actually doing the kinds of things Willimon says the church must do if it is to survive.  Meanwhile, an Ashland is cut off the list in a failing attempt to keep that other Methodist school in Ohio on life support.  Ashland is another example of a school that fits well with the Wesleyan tradition and trains the kind of minister that will grow churches, even though it is not UM.

Bishop 5 (Bishops as Change Agents)

Now chapter 5 of William Willimon's Bishop, "Bishops Leading Change."  Previous chapters were:

1. Methodists, Alabama Conference in Motion
2. Summoned to be Bishop
3. Bishops Sending Pastors
4. Bishops Cultivating Fruitfulness

Highlights of chapter 5:

1. I suspect that tact isn't Willimon's strong suit.  There is certainly a time to use power to force change that a group of leaders believes needs to happen.  I don't doubt that the UM church needs a good slap in the face, but it sure feels like Willimon is a guy that enjoys slapping just a little too much. This sentence jumped out at me the most in this chapter, "I lamented to a DS that the  episcopacy committee seemed so willing for me to retire" (86).

Beware the cocky change agent, often with far less up top than Willimon.  At least Willimon is wicked smart and mostly right, annoying but probably moving in the right direction.

2. "After the storms I discovered that those who disbelieve in change for the sake of change are wrong, particularly in a moribund institution with so many means of self-protection" (71).  I suspect he is more right than wrong when it comes to the UM church.  When not to change means to die, you have to change.

I caught a few minutes of the remake movie, Poseidon the other day.  There's a scene where a group of people in an overturned ship can either stay where they are and die, or they can go through a narrow vent and at least live a little longer.  In that situation, there's no promise that change will allow you to survive, but you know that no change means certain death. That is the condition the UM church is in, according to Willimon and many others.

"Disruption is an essential component of organizational innovation" (72).  He speaks of how Martin Luther King, Jr. saw no way for change to happen without creating "a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation" (73).  Of course this is the philosophy of Hamas and the IRA as well.  King and Ghandi by contrast insisted on non-violent protest.

I think these things call for great wisdom.  Change isn't always positive or helpful.  And if it isn't done at the right time, it can hurt your cause or set it back.  "For everything there is a season." You can grow without shock therapy.

3. Willimon draws on Bridge's book Transitions.  "Change begins with ending" (76). Then there is a neutral zone between old and new when there is lots of complaining. Hopefully that resolves with new beginnings.

4. Here's a fun quote about the UM church: "Our church is full of people who think of themselves as theological liberals but who are organizational reactionaries" (81). :-)

5. More controversial quotes: "The most important task for a district superintendent is to overcome the clerical propensity toward empathy" (82). "Empathy causes clergy to go limp." Empathy "is an enemy of transformative leadership" (81).

Again, he puts things in the extreme to get things moving but I know what he is saying. I had an academic friend who didn't want to go on to do a doctorate. He was then shocked when his superior gave him an ultimatum. Enroll in a doctoral program or lose your job.  He was shocked because he thought the superior was his "friend."

It's great if a leader can be friends with those who work under him or her, but good leadership sometimes will require hard decisions that don't go the way others want.  Leadership can create a distance, which is what I believe Willimon is talking about.  However, I don't see this as a lack of empathy on the part of a leader.  I don't like the way Willimon frames it.

Sometimes a leader just has to make unpleasant decisions for the greater good.  But it can be done with grace.

Bishop 4 (Grow or Die)

Moving on to chapter 4 of William Willimon's Bishop, "Bishops Cultivating Fruitfulness."  Previous chapters were:

1. Methodists, Alabama Conference in Motion
2. Summoned to be Bishop
3. Bishops Sending Pastors

Here were the things that jumped out at me in his fourth chapter:

1. This is a chapter about metrics and accountability.  A line he quotes from Lencioni sums it up: "People who aren't good at their jobs don't want to be measured... Great employees love that kind of accountability.  They crave it. Poor ones run away from it" (54, quoting Three Signs of a Miserable Job, 128).

I think we have to forgive Willimon for what sounds like a "capitalist business mentality" because the United Methodist Church is in the early stages of death. Willimon likens his role as bishop to that of a mortician at this stage of the church's history (46).  In the last five decades, they have lost nearly 3 million members and nearly 10,000 congregations. The median age of its membership is fifty-nine years old.

If he were talking to a healthy church, I would say he overdoes the numbers bit, but he is talking to a decaying flesh that could be saved if someone would just do something other than worry about nice little nest eggs for its career clergy.

2. "Few of our pastors know how to handle a congregation of more than 150 in attendance, shrinking a congregation to a size that is less demanding on pastoral leadership skills" (53). This fits with Lyle Schaller's old gem that different size churches require different styles of leadership. Someone in my own church suggested that most pastors simply weren't equipped to lead a church over 200.  His advice was that we do our best to identify those that can and focus church training energies on them.

There is another alternative, of course, which is for the pastor who doesn't have the gifts to pastor a church over 150 to give birth to other churches.  Church plants that are watched over by a mother church have a better chance of surviving than the stand alone plant.  Also, a church can "internally" plant churches by multiplying venues that more or less run themselves.

2. The Wesleyan Church, my church, doesn't look as bad from the trends of the overall numbers, but if you dig down, you find some interesting statistics about my own church.

• 1 in 20 Wesleyans in North America go to one church, our largest church at 12Stone in Atlanta. 
• 20% of all Wesleyans attend just the top 10 largest Wesleyan churches.
• About 30% of all Wesleyans attend just the top 25 of our largest churches.

What these numbers reflect is the fact that the vast majority of Wesleyan churches are small, anemic congregations at best, growthwise.  The numerical success of a small handful of Wesleyan churches hides a host of congregations that may not be quite as old as the average UM church, but are probably not far behind. It is no surprise that Willimon's book got our attention.

3. So Willimon's focus on metrics is perfectly legitimate.  He is addressing a complete lack of accountability for growth in the UM church.  He reiterates over and over that accountability was central to Wesley's own approach to ministry.  He believes bishops should be accountable for something.  They aren't. Their job description is even somewhat vague.

He rejects appointment by seniority and guaranteed appointment as the bane of the church.  Rather, they should appoint the very best pastoral leadership to fulfill the mission of each congregation.  Obviously he supports women in ministry, but he is clearly sick of subsidiary concerns trumping the focal concern of healthy, growing churches.  "Concerns about an individual pastor's career advancement, familial and marital happiness, gender, ethnic heritage, age, and educational background must be subordinate to the responsibility to appoint the very best pastoral leadership for each church" (55).

4. Willimon finds Methodist seminary education sorely lacking.  Twenty new ministers he hired in Alabama had a collective debt of a million dollars.  Meanwhile, one pastor noted that, "My seminary education gave me complex rationalization for leading decline and called what it gave me, 'theology'" (53).  Methodist seminaries, in his opinion, are producing pastors suited for serving people in their sixties who are upper middle class or better.

5. I of course don't think the parable of the fig tree is really about numerical growth.  The parallel cleansing of the temple implies that Jesus is rather condemning the leadership of Israel's injustice toward the poor and the foreigner.  Nevertheless, there is a time to be slapped in the face for being unproductive and clearly Willimon is doing that to the UM church.

There's a lot going on today behind the decline of Christianity in the US. I don't think spirituality is the key to numerical growth, although it is essential.  But a lot of small, dying congregations have bags of spirituality... although probably not a lot of the ones Willimon is addressing, which probably are withered fig trees that are destined for Jesus' cursing.  But it will take good leadership and greater relevance for churches to grow in this day and age, in my opinion.

Bishop 3

I move on to Chapter 3 of William Willimon's Bishop, "Bishops Sending Pastors."  Previous chapters were:

1. Methodists, Alabama Conference in Motion
2. Summoned to be Bishop

Here were the things that jumped out at me in his third chapter:

1. Willimon sees three big problems bishops have in appointing pastors: 1) lack of accurate information, 2) lack of creativity, and 3) lack of courage.  He is quite clear about what he sees as the core problems with the UM church.  He sees a tendency for the system simply to watch out for the careers of pastors rather than the needs of local congregations to do the mission.  He sees leadership unwilling to make tough decisions in weeding out unproductive ministers.  He sees a lack of assessment of ministers, lack of consultation of lay leaders, etc.  He sees a lack of help from leadership to make appointments work...

2. He sees the guaranteed appointment of ministers as breaking the bank and thus bringing the UM church to its knees financially. He gave some sobering numbers based on the research of Lovett Weems.  A Methodist church needs to average 125 in worship attendance to sustain what is required to pay a full time UM minister.  60% of UM churches are under 125 in attendance.  

The math is obvious.  The UM church is rushing headlong off its own cataclysmic fiscal cliff.  It tried to make some of the necessary changes at its recent General Conference, tried to do away with guaranteed appointment, only to have its judicial system render the decision unconstitutional--typical UM health/mission-thwarting bureaucracy, from what I hear.

"The mission of the church is more important than the church's clergy" (42).

3. He talked a little about the kind of "First 90 Training" he put in place in Alabama, to try to help pastor and new church get better acquainted with each other.  One of the most entertaining--and sobering--parts of this section was his mention of the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle is the idea that people tend to get promoted beyond their competency and thus tend to get promoted until they fail.

Here was the fun fact. Promoting your top employees will result in a 10 percent drop in efficiency, while randomly advancing your worst employees will result in a 12 percent improvement.

4. UM pastors would no doubt find reason for fear with Willimon as a bishop.  He clearly sees a need to weed out the clergy of the UM church, based on assessment data.  "Multiple, short-term appointments are a sure signal that a pastor is a poor performer" (43).

5. I end with what I consider to be a great nugget in a footnote and something that organizations of all types should take into account when looking for new leaders.  I'm slightly changing the quote by William James, but it goes like this, "Good leadership is the bold willingness to make a decision even before all the facts are known" (172 n.8). After all, you can never have all the facts.

Wow!  I have known some leaders who would become completely paralyzed in fear that they would make a bad decision. They would want more and more data when all the good leaders in the room had already recognized what needed to be done long before.  Of course an equal problem are leaders who don't do their "due diligence" in preparation for a big decision. They can cause long standing institutions to close.  The key is the sweet spot in the middle.

P.S., He paraphrased the Shakespeare quote on p.31.  Here is a full, word for word version: "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Thy Fates open their hands; let thy blood and spirit embrace them."

Bishop 2

This is my second week reading William Willimon's, Bishop.  You'll find last week's post here.   Chapter 2 is called, "Summoned to be Bishop."  Here are just some things that jumped out at me.

1. Ministry is God's idea before it's ours (13).

2. Those who are most reluctant to be bishop should be (15).

3. Wesley and Asbury really tussled over the idea of bishop.  Wesley despised the idea. Asbury thought of it in apostolic terms. Asbury saw itineracy as the heart of being a bishop, moving around giving oversight. Quite interesting.

4. So Methodist episcopacy claims to be different from the Episcopal "monarchical episcopate."  Willimon calls it a "managerial episcopate."  Willimon tries to look at ministry in general as practical rather than "ontological," as if the office of minister or bishop itself makes a person intrinsically different in weight.

5. He mentions "evangelical whiners" who want the bishop to do more but would never give the bishop real power to do it.  You get somewhat of a sense of disempowered bishops, from his perspective. They make ministers and that's about it, you get the impression.

6. He has restorationist tones now and then. So the early church was "connectional" rather than "congregational."  He finds no evidence that it was democratic.

7. He believes the Methodist system is biased to pick ministers who, "follow instructions, preserve rigid rules, keep information sharing to a minimum, and develop a clergy system that privileges experience and credentials over God-given talent and sacrifices creativity for conformity" (25).  At one point he suggests that a bishop is more likely in the UM church to get in trouble for not meeting diversity quotas on boards than for not believing in the Trinity.

Willimon thinks it's a system prejudiced toward "uncreative bean-counters" (26). I had a brief conversation with someone at IWU recently who said bureaucracy was indicative of a declining organization, one that has passed its peak. Someone else told me that policies sometimes are meant to replace good leadership, so a system will run itself and you don't have to count on gifted individuals.

8. Willimon has an interesting take on seminary education, in fact one very similar to Kevin Myers' talk at our Wesleyan general conference.  Willimon believes it is the church conference's job to train ministers at practical tasks.  The job of the seminary, he thinks, is to be a seedbed of biblical interpretation, sermon preparation, theological discernment, biblical languages, etc. Basically, he sees seminaries as giving the theory and the annual conferences teaching the practice.

Kevin Myers said something similar when he said that the local church (or in his case the large church) is the place to train ministers. The implication is then that colleges and such would give the Bible, theology, and theory, but the local church would provide the training.  This is a model that certainly would improve on the predominant models, and Russ Gunsalus at HQ has taken up the offering quite vigorously.  IWU undergrad has been working with the KERN foundation to set up a similar model that would get a students to something like "MDIV equivalency" in competency in 5 years out of high school.

Meanwhile, Wesley Seminary at IWU has reformulated its MDIV around a practical focus and training as well. We try to do a critical mass of both training and classic theological disciplines in an integrated form. The key is that we require a person to be in connection with a local church as they go through our MDIV. Surely there are many ways to get to the goal. All these models agree on the competencies a minister should have. They just try to get there in different ways.

Bishop 1

Since I know a number of others are reading Will Willimon's new book Bishop: The Art of Questioning Authority by an Authority in Question, I thought I might as well.  I don't plan to write extensively, just give a few tidbits and perhaps reflect a little.  For today, I read the Introduction and first chapter.  My numbers are just to keep track of subjects.

1. Willimon is quite proud of the episcopal structure of the UM church.  He in effect calls John Wesley an "ecclesiastical whiner" for discouraging it. (xii)  This is a hint of his somewhat in-your-face style.  Hey, he's a retired bishop. He can say pretty much whatever he wants.

2. He doesn't like idea of it being lonely at the top.  He quotes approvingly a quote by Ron Heifetz that the greatest "myth of leadership is the myth of the lone warrior" (5).  He saw himself as continually surrounded by co-workers and saw the appointment of District Superintendents as the most important appointments a bishop makes.  "Nothing moves in the UMC until a DS commits to leading that change."

3. He likes John Kotter's stuff on Leading Change.  Strong leadership without good management gets an organization nowhere (6).  Yet, "Change cannot be managed; it must be led" (7).  "While DSs need not be great leaders, bishops must perform both management and leadership functions."

4. Obviously he thinks the UMC needs to change or die.  We'll see what he has to say.  He sees a need for risk.  "Management values control and devalues risk" (8).  There may be some here of relevance to IWU as it searches for its next president.

5. The final section of the first chapter has some rather blunt words by Willimon about both the privilege and challenge of being bishop in Alabama.  On the one hand, it is the state of Rosa Parks and Helen Keller.  On the other, it was there in 1921 that a Methodist preacher who was also an active member of the KKK shot a Roman Catholic priest dead for marrying his daughter to a Puerto Rican.  This Methodist was acquitted and went on as a preacher.

It was there that Governor George Wallace physically tried to block black children from going to school with white children.  He later would renounce his earlier attitudes, not wanting to meet his Maker before he had repented. Willimon clearly does not believe that the state has changed entirely, and mentions what he considers some of the most mean-spirited anti-immigration legislation in the nation in recent days.

More perhaps next week...