job qualifications
How would you describe the most important skills or qualifications that you bring to the position of leadership that you hold in the church? What immediately leaps to my mind are those lists of adjectives that have masqueraded as qualifications for many jobs in the church I have held over the years. Help Wanted: experienced, responsible, reliable, organized, competent, skilled, likeable, supportive, flexible, collaborative, knowledgeable, proficient person to ….
There’s a sort of implied threat in such lists — no one need apply who is in-experienced, ir-responsible, un-reliable, dis-organized, in-competent …. you get my drift. It’s what the dis-abled face all the time — and if you’ve ever faced a seemingly interminable job search, you know what it’s like to suspect that the one thing that dis-qualifies you in many people’s eyes is precisely that you’re un-employed. You get to the bottom of so many of those lists of job qualifications and suspect that Mother Teresa wouldn’t get a second interview.
So you can imagine that I found it very refreshing to discover through a colleague, Marty Davis of the Congregational Resource Guide, a group of “entrepreneurial innovators in ministry communications” meeting in Chicago today who value a whole other set of job qualifications for the work they do. You can see it in the fact that they invited facilitators who describe themselves as including a brand strategist, visual storyteller, Twitter addict, strategy orchestrator, wooer, futurist, ideator, brand innovator, lifehacker, textologist, compulsive networker, and experience engineer — among other things.
It made me wonder what all religious congregations would be like if we could advertise job openings in our communities without the dis-qualifications looming so large, and instead could say just what it is that we really need the most. Wanted: A compulsive networker and incorrigibly hopeful futurist and wooer of the straying, a lifehacker full of tips and tricks for getting things done among people who often seem to have given up already, a visual storyteller and verbal artist — strategy orchestrator, textologist, and Experience Engineer, to serve as ….
O.k., fair enough — Mother Teresa might not get that job, either — but she might just apply! If only we’d ask–and if we’d list some of the real things that make each of us the most interesting, and helpful, and faithful in our lives as congregational leaders.
What qualities do you think make you the right fit for the job your currently hold? And what qualifications do you find yourself longing to discover some day, in an advertisement saying, Help Wanted: …. ?
This is an excellent article. By getting clearer on expectations, we are more likely to get exactly what we wanted!
focus
goal oriented
work independently AND in groups AND to lead groups
ability to synthesize complex insights and find the point –the center; “distilled essence”
ability to write clearly and persuasively
web savvy; MS Office knowledgable –particularly PPT
loud voice;
public speaker and presenter
reasonably large contacts list
creative
business world experience >> greater confidence in many situations
Don’t forget EXCITING!
Do judicatories of “mainline” “denominations” want anyone with ANY of those qualities? If so, it is a deep secret. Selection processes really have not changed in 100 years, as many cling to the life rafts of familiarity while weeping over dwindling numbers.
Love the idea of being clear and creative in the posting process. Best predictor of future performance is past behavior. Post, recruit and interview for the behaviors that are necessary for success as a wooer/futurist/ideator. The next step, however, is to name/identify what the descriptors “look like”. Answer the question; If someone was/is demonstrating being a wooer, futurist, ideator, what can you SEE them do or HEAR them say or EXPERIENCE them doing.(experience = results of their actions) Change the wooer/futurist/ideator descriptors into observable behaviors or “looks like.” In the interview process you’re asking for successful past performance in the demonstration of wooing/futuristic/ideator BEHAVIORS. Name it, define it, measure it and then interview using the “looks like” criteria. It’s a new day in the arena of job hunting
Yes! And we help ministers and lay people learn to describe themselves in authentic ways (using descriptors that actually mean something!).
Job Seekers:
It appears to me that part of the qualifications of those of us who want to lead is an ability to lead from behind, unattached to our toys and ego-glitter. The classic leader always shows up easily — as in flash-and-dash — but the leader who will live, learn and lead into the coming decades of institutional decline is probably more like Mother Teresa before her one-blanket-placement in Calcutta: An obscure Albanian nun willing to give it all away in a risky environment.
Or perhaps the pack of the post-modern leaders got ahead of me?
Bob
A person of prayer who will bring the earthly world to the heavenly, stir well and bake in the light of God. Serve up what comes out, to the world. Then get more ingredients from the lay people out of their skills and insights, and do it all again.
Here is a reflection I had after our son died and I flt like a failure as a parent. It was published in the Canada Lutheran in 2007, I think, during lent. Perhaps you can use it.
MEDITATIONS ON FAILURE
Our world holds the greatest sin to be failure. I have heard it said that a
greater sin than failure is not to get up and try again. Of course that is just another
way of saying that the greatest sin is failure.
We all like to be successful. We are proud of our successes and we are
ashamed of our failures. We do have successes. Some of us are quite successful.
Some of us are quite smart. We may graduate from high school with honours and
awards. Some of us may get an advanced degree or certificate and be honoured in
our field. Some can make beautiful music and become quite famous. We may make
the team and get a letter. We may be a gifted athlete, an Olympian, a wealthy
professional athlete. We may be successful in business and earn a fortune. We
may have a spouse and a loving family. Some of us may do several of the
above. Yes, some of us are very successful.
Some of us on the other hand do not make the team. Some of us may fail
our courses. Some of us lose fortunes and fail in business. Some of us become burnt
out. Some of our families break down and break apart. Some of us are not honoured or
honourable. We may be addicted to many things. We may be seen as complete
failures. We may see ourselves as failures. We are ashamed of our failures.
We think we are alone in this because everyone else looks successful.
People hide their failures too. That is the enemy’s greatest success; to keep us
apart and ashamed.
What about the church’s greatest success story. That would be Jesus. He was
successful in the end wasn’t he?
Let’s think about this. He was born out of wedlock. He was predicted to save his
people. He did not save Israel from the Romans. He called them to repent because the kingdom
was near. The kingdom they expected did not come. He left the family business in his prime.
He raised the dead yet his father died. His hometown people tried to stone him to death. He hid his successes. He told the demons to be quiet when they called him Son of God. Those
whom he healed he told not to say anything but they went everywhere and told everyone. His family did not understand him. He raised everyone’s expectations and let them down in the end.
He died a criminal’s death. He was a failure by all our standards. He was among many
thousands of failures crucified by the Romans.
Yes he raised people from the dead, but they all died later anyway. Yes he fed the
5000, but a week later they were probably hungry again. Yes he healed many but they all died
as well. Yes he cast demons out but sometimes more came back. He talked about love but
his teaching divided families. He lived off the generosity of women. In those days that would
have made him the object of derision. Jesus of Nazareth was a failure. He started out big but
he ended up dead like all of us.
So why do we remember him at the communion table? Because he rose from the
dead? Yes. But we also remember that while we are sometimes secretly failures; he was
openly a failure, and paid for it with his life. He did not hide his failures.
We do identify with Jesus. We do not identify with Jesus because he is King of Kings
and Lord of Lords. You might identify with the King of Kings if you were a king but most of
us are not royalty. We identify with him because like us he has been a failure in the eyes of the
world. He demonstrated to us that he could be the most abject failure in the world and yet God
loved him and raised him from the dead.
But we in the church do not like to remember Jesus the failure. We like to pretend that
we are big successes. We do not like to be seen as failures. We love the world too much. We
hide Jesus’ failures by building beautiful buildings, by singing beautiful music, by wearing fine
clothes. Who wants to be identified with a failure like Jesus. We want to be identified with the
risen Christ, the Creator of the Universe!
Jesus says” depart from me you cursed for I was hungry and you gave me no food…
in Matt Chapter 25. But who wants to be associated with those failures, the hungry, the thirsty,
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the alien, the naked, the sick, the prisoner? Especially if they are not a tax deductible charity
approved by the church and the state. Even in their failures we expect people to be successes.
But Jesus wants to be associated with these failures in fact he says he is these failures
“ If you do it to the least of these my brothers you have done it to me.”!!
So the next time someone sits down next to you who may smell bad or talk funny, don’t
edge away from them. Treat them like a close relative that you love dearly. Talk to them
because you’ll be talking to Jesus. You need to talk to them because they will be ministering to
you. They will be teaching you. They will be healing you of the sin of pride. The next time
someone asks for money, give them what you have, they will be teaching you about the sin of
greed. You need to give it to them because it is an opportunity to learn about the fellowship of failure.
We like to forget that to come to the resurrection we have to declare our worldly failures and suffer the consequences.
Jesus did not protect himself yet in the failure to protect himself, he drew to himself the
failures of this world. That is all of us. We all have failures in our past however carefully
hidden and papered over they are. When we see that we are acceptable with our failures as well
as our successes then we know a little of the eternal life that Jesus demonstrated to us in his
resurrection. While we may be failures in the eyes of the world and even our eyes, we are
acceptable in God’s kingdom for he loves us as he loves his son and as his son loves us.
When we come to the Lord’s table we remember him and his brokeness and our
brokeness. But our failures die with his failure; so that we may know ultimate acceptance
and live with him in his resurrection, forever.
Amen
I appreciate this roundtable on Job Qualifications. However, I find many pastors in OCD re all the essays & books now trying to convince us that there is only one best way to be a “LEADER.” In my years of doing therapy with clergy, I have found that the most competent & relaxed pastors develop a simple but realistic regimen of ABCs that work for both selfcare & inspired leadership. The A stands for AWARENESS; the B for BASICS;& the C for CONNESTIONS. Following & occasionally reviewing this derived regimen allows for both peace & achievement.
Keep it simple & satisfying…
This is the first time I’ve responded to an article because it hits home for me. Doing interim ministry is a new challenge with each congregation and the characteristics of a chameleon come to mind as do the creative descriptors in this article. Kudos for the “out-of-the-box thinking.
More than just being about who one might find in the search, doing it this way would proclaim more vividly who the church is. It seems maybe even more about self definition than about what we want in a leader.
One of the least productive traditions amoung churches that rely predominantly on volunteer services is the tendency to put any willing body in any open position. Any selectivity is abandoned in favor of universal acceptance and the desire to never see any activity abandoned–no matter how outdated it may be. This issue is closely tied to relevance and multi-generational concerns.
To be a leader in the setting of congregations may require more persons who can give of themselves rather than lead and never knowing who they are leading and where they are being led to. In the changing culture of church we may not want to lead as CEO’s do for a different kind of results. We may need to lead people of faith to where they can grasp on to who God is calling them to become rather than get results from leaders who only look at the numbers in worship, sunday school and other ministries and never get to struggle to find what they can become. The leader for the church today will need to truly live among the people.
I am a pastor, but through the years I have had some involvement with politics. I have often wondered about the people who actually run the party behind the scenes. They are often not very attractive, articulate, or friendly to those they do not know well. But they believe in the major messages of their party (some of the time). They are loyal. They are willing to do the work: arranging and attending meetings, supporting other “political hacks,” asking for and contributing money, and just sticking around year after year, and carrying memories of past wins. So the qualities I observe are belief (some), loyalty, work ethic, contribution, memory. Aren’t these also the traits of active church members?
Wanted: a person who believes in what we are doing some or most of the time; one who is loyal to his colleagues and who will do the work required. A person who will stick around and remember the good times.
Larry