Yesterday was the installation service at the church I serve. I’ve been there since February, but now I’m officially installed as the Associate Pastor for Youth. The service was an apt illustration of the ways in which a new pastoral relationship simultaneously represents discontinuity and continuity, both for the congregation and the pastor. 

Discontinuity: in the Presbyterian Church, installing a pastor is an act of the presbytery, which is represented by a commission of people from other churches. Continuity: it’s a worship service. In yesterday’s case, it was a regular Lord’s Day worship service with a liturgy and sermon that would have been the same if the installation hadn’t been happening.

Discontinuity: the pastor is charged to carry out his or her work well, most often by someone chosen by the pastor for that role (I scored big time here). Continuity: installations happen weeks, even months, after that work has begun. Also, the one doing the charging probably isn’t going to stop urging the pastor toward good work once the service ends. 

Discontinuity: everything centers for a short time on one particular pastor/congregation relationship, with constitutional questions for both, charges for both, and prayers for both. Continuity: the congregation has done this before and will again. So, too, the pastor. 

Discontinuity: the pastor’s brother in-law, a conservative evangelical Bible scholar with whom the pastor has had fewer than five civil conversations about religion or politics during their 20 year relationship, reads Scripture and asks one of the constitutional questions in a moment marking a massive personal transition. Continuity: dinner the night before; lunch after; swimming with the kids tomorrow. 

Discontinuity: a new chapter. A new pastor. A new congregation. Continuity: the same call, the same grace, the same God. 

Here’s the last piece of my professional development trifecta. In addition to cohorts and networks, I’m also into coaches these days. In my limited work with new worshiping communities I noticed that many of those leaders employ coaches to great effect, but I’ve also known heads of large church staffs to have them too. I don’t have a coach presently, but I’d gladly take one; the cohort I did involved coaching, and I found my coach so valuable that I routinely call him up for advice even today, four years on. 

We all have more to learn. A good coach aids learning not only by sharing their expertise, but also by paying attention to your tendencies and your instincts, asking probing questions about where those come from, and encouraging incremental changes. I’ve seen this reap measurable short term rewards with colleagues, and I don’t doubt that the long term payoff will be exponential. 

Don’t mistake a coach for a mentor. The mentor relationship is valuable in its own way, as a path to wisdom and insight accompanied by a seasoned pro. The coaching relationship implies more programmed work around explicit goals. Both are important. 

Do you have a coach? 

Yesterday I wrote of my love for networks. I’m also falling in love with cohorts.

Cohorts are the professional development tool du jour. Typically comprised of between eight and 12 people from a discipline or field of work, cohorts are structured around peer learning and utilize skilled facilitation. Cohort gatherings I have been part of make time for group study of a subject, review and feedback on cases and issues presented by participants, and even personal sharing. They can do whatever participants need them to do, in fact. 

Things a cohort needs to work: commitment to clearly communicated expectations for participation (for example: monthly meetings for a year; everybody presents a case; presentations are limited to 20 minutes), comfortable space for meeting, and a skilled facilitator. That’s it. 

Are you in a cohort? Better yet, are you leading one?

Why not?

I like building networks. Networking is usually my first impulse. Give me a job to do, and I will immediately start looking for others who are doing the same job and try to build a network with them. I’m extroverted and generally feel less smart than my peers, so a network connects me with people and knowledge at the same time. 

I’m not talking about networking for advancement or self promotion. I mean networking for collaborative problem solving, ongoing learning and experimentation, and mutual support. I mean networking as a team of youth ministers from various churches inventing things to do together that none of them were doing very well on their own. 

Not everyone is looking to network, though, because networking makes you vulnerable. Maybe the network is smarter than you. Maybe it wants to steal your ideas. It wants your time and attention, and those only go so far. 
So my question is whether a network is ever not useful.Is it ever harmful? Like any tool, a network is good at some things and bad at others. Is the impulse for networking ever counterproductive?
 

I spent last week with 30 teenagers and the Asheville Youth Mission (AYM). AYM is one of several mission trip options in the U.S. that are doing a type of “mission immersion,” combining the service work of a traditional mission project with personal reflection and social analysis. People are running these programs in D.C., Charlotte, Philadelphia, and, through the DOOR Network, Denver, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago (full disclosure: the church I serve in Chicago runs one too).

I love mission immersion programs. They expose participants to life among marginalized populations in a city setting and force them to question why conditions there are the way they are. They don’t have youth build things for needy people. They partner youth with local leaders and organizations that are working on systemic, sometimes intractable, problems.A week at one of these places is eye-opening and challenging. Mission immersion doesn’t allow for the feel good moment of completing a building project, a trouble spot for veterans of mission trips for a sweet spot for me.

The other great thing about mission immersion experiences is that many of them are staffed by young people–college, or even high school, students. They are terrific tools for leadership development for the staffs, and they expose youth participants to peers who are dedicated to social change and transformation.

Mission immersion: I’m a fan.

If you ask too many questions, people may think that you’re unintelligent. Ask them anyway. 

If you ask too many questions, people may get irritated with you. Ask them anyway. 

If you ask too many questions, people may suspect your intentions. Ask them anyway. 

There is still no shorter route between not knowing and knowing than the asking of a question. 

We’ll be back posting then. You can follow our mission trip blog here if you like.

Thanks!

You make a thing to share with the world, and you put it out there. Once, for a season, over the course of a career, you ply your trade and make your art and people consume it. But you don’t get to choose the people who choose you.

I saw the indefatigable college band Guster play the Ravinia Pavilion last night, an outdoor venue on Chicago’s North Shore which draws an older, wealthier crowd, maybe half of which picnics on the lawn beyond the pavilion where they can’t even see the stage (that’s where I was).  It’s not the sort of venue Guster has played a lot over their two decade history, and the scene was clearly jarring for the lead singer, Ryan Miller.

He passive-aggressively chided the audience for not standing. He threatened to send his bandmate into the audience in search of chablis. He bantered with a member of the audience about the martini he was drinking. Then he summarily announced, “Let’s hear it for the one percent!” My wife had the best response: “Dude, this is your audience now. Deal with it.”

We think our audience is a reflection of ourselves, and we fear that if our work appeals mostly to people who are too old, too boring, too (insert pejorative here) then that must mean so are we. But beware. The march to irrelevance starts as a search for a cooler audience.

 

Preparation serves the project you’re working on today–the curriculum, the mission trip, the sermon, the relationship. But there’s more. Your preparation on this project will serve you on the next one too, when maybe you won’t have the same kind of time or energy to prepare. You might get sick. You might be moving. You may have to wing it.

If you’ve made a habit of preparing well, though, on the occasion that you have to wing it you’ll be better positioned than you fear.

It’s true that we default to our training.

I was explaining something I want to try yesterday, a Big Idea, and at one point in the conversation the person to whom I was explaining this Big Idea offered a suggestion for getting it done and I replied, “I don’t just want to get it done. I want to find out first if it will be helpful.”

I’ve kicked that sentiment around for several hours since then, and I’m not arriving at any surefire way to determine if the things we plan will, in fact, be helpful before we have to just launch them. Certainly if someone says, “Don’t do that. It will complicate my life and create more work and accomplish nothing” then we don’t do it. But people don’t really say that, do they? They say, “Yeah, sure. Sounds good,” and then abstain from participating when the flaws they saw in the Big Idea come to light.

Maybe we have to be completely direct. “I’m thinking of moving confirmation from the 11:00 hour on Sundays to the 10:00 hour so that I can lead one of the 11:00 youth groups. Does this add value to your church participation? Does it help you?”

Or, “I’m interested in bringing a group of teenagers to your corner of the world for a mission trip. Would that be helpful to you?”

An honest “No” is so much more valuable than a tepid “Yes.”