wfn.org | [ENS] 'Ministry of transition' captures Church Deployment Office

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Daybook from Episcopal News Service
Monday, January 30, 2006

'Ministry of transition' captures Church Deployment Office focus for
future
Changes will make CDO more open and flexible; Daybook

By Mary Frances Schjonberg

ENS013006-01

[Episcopal News Service] At the Church Deployment Office, the Rev.
Rebecca
McClain, along with deployment officers across the Episcopal Church, is
writing - not the next chapter - but a whole new volume in the history
of
deployment in the Episcopal Church.

The CDO is charged with helping communities of faith, clergy and lay
professionals discern their next call in ministry.

Among the plotlines of this next part of the CDO's story are how to
change
the language of deployment, create a more open and relational system for
connecting congregations and institutions with clergy and lay
professionals,
value people more than process, and change the belief that "technology
alone
will save us."

"The process should always be relational," McClain said, enabling people
and
communities to tell the story of their ministries and skills, their
dreams
and yearnings.

"The system had previously become, in some ways, very mechanical," she
said.

The CDO system, which most Episcopal congregations and other entities
use to
search for their next clergy and lay staff members, doesn't need to be
"tedious and hard when it ought to be a time of joy," said McClain.

Stories about change

When the Episcopal Church's deployment officers gathered in November,
they
told each other their own stories about life and career changes. They
talked
about how they knew a change was beginning, what the change felt like
and
how they knew they were settled again.

Comparing the stories of their experiences, they found common themes,
and
out of those themes came a statement of their purpose as professionals
who
help congregations and clergy and lay professionals through their own
traditions. They agreed that they were "called by faith to lead the
church
through the waters of change into the land of promise where all shall
flourish."

The group articulated its core values as well. They include: truth
telling,
respect for everyone involved in the processes of transition,
hospitality,
and humor. McClain said the group hopes that its purpose statement and
stated values will help create an environment that reduces the anxiety
inherent in transitions, builds trust and helps people and communities
be
honest with each other.

Technology a tool, not a replacement for intuition

Somewhere along the way, McClain said, a sense of intuition was lost in
the
CDO process and was exchanged for many layers of process that took lots
of
time, as if both layers and time made for a good "match" in the end.

Using computerized personal and congregational profiles assumed that
technology could replace intuition. McClain illustrated the perils of
relying completely so completely with the story of researching the
effectiveness of eHarmony.com, a popular online matchmaking service.

The service's computerized questionnaire, which McClain filled out, asks
about 450 questions and asks participants to pick 10 characteristics
each
from a must-have list and a can't-stand list. It also solicits factual,
verifiable data about a person, she said.

In the end, the service tells prospective participants that it can't
guarantee a perfect match. It promises only that it can create an
environment of choices in which a match might happen.

"How can we develop any kind of instrument that would ever be able to
measure all of the richness and complexity of a clergyperson and then
match
it to a community of faith?" she said. "What it reminds us is that
technology is a tool but it cannot save us."

A metaphor too far?

The connection with eHarmony is an apt one on another level. Often
congregations and people involved in a search process will talk about
the
desire to "fall in love" with each other and thus knowing they are meant
to
be together. It may be a metaphor too far.

"We've even gone so far as to talk about it as like a marriage," McClain
said. "I think the language sets us up for disappointment and
disillusionment early on. It asks of us something we really cannot
give."

While there is an often-unconscious assumption of a certain permanence
to a
rector's time with a congregation, it is more and more rare that a call
will
last 30 to 40 years, as used to be the case, McClain said. Such
expectations
lead to great sadness even when a rector and a congregation part company
on
good terms.

" 'Grief' is too severe a word when there isn't a real death involved,"
McClain said.

She prefers the Portuguese term "saudades," which she translates as
loss,
longing, tenderness toward the missing one, joy over the experience of
that
relationship and an acceptance of separation.

The experience of a parish without a rector has become pathologized, she
said. A heavy reliance on family-systems theory for analyzing the health
of
such parishes is one way this has happened. Another is to assume that if
relationships in such a parish get "scratchy" during the transition,
"our
tendency is to diagnose dysfunction."

Instead, some research has shown that children who experience major
changes
in their lives often regress behaviorally but, if they have support,
resources, a sense of hope and the basic necessities of life, they will
often emerge from the transition at a higher level of functioning. If
such
insight were applied to congregations, "we might ask different questions
of
each other," McClain said.

That might include developing tools to define and assess more clearly a
congregation's health and to help it navigate times of transition. Those
tools would include appreciative-inquiry methods to uncover what is
working
well and what can be taken along for the next part of the journey.

Such a change of language might help communities and clergy and lay
professionals "learn to speak and think in ways that allow us to live a
little more lightly" in the midst of change and transition.

Language of pilgrimage

"Transition" is a better way to describe what McClain hopes her office
will
be able to help congregations and clergy and lay professionals go
through,
rather than "deployment."

"I am more comfortable with the language of pilgrimage and journey," she
added.

Using that vocabulary, the questions become ones about how to help a
community go where it believes God is calling it to go and about how to
help
connect the community with someone who has skills and passions that will
help the community and ensured the person's continued growth and
flourishing.

"I think that it is the intention of God that we flourish" even in the
midst
of change and loss, McClain said.

Rectorships would not be "vacant." Congregations would not be "waiting
for
our new rector." They would be considering themselves ministers of the
Gospel by way of the Baptismal Covenant who seek to find out where God
is
calling them to next and who God might be bringing to them to help them
achieve their dreams.

Such a stance would still require some tools to help communities and
clergy
and lay professionals understand and articulate their skills and their
dreams.

And rather than lengthen the process, McClain sees just the opposite. We
have come to believe that decision making dragged out over along period
of
time is better decision making, she said.

"I really believe that this process should not take as long as it does,"
she
said.

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the
Episcopal News Service.

[SIDEBAR]  More flexible models needed for deployment process

This year will be one of big and small changes at the Church Deployment
Office (CDO), said the Rev. Rebecca McClain, executive director.

She hopes the changes with help the CDO be flexible, adaptable, artful
and
technically savvy. The world and the church is changing, and the CDO
must
adapt, McClain said. One monolithic system cannot be replaced by
another.

"We need more flexible models," she said.

Six strategy groups have been developed to consider the congregational
profile, the clergy profile, interim ministry, training needs and
leadership
development.

While this work goes on to "break open" the CDO's approach, McClain
said,
the office will offer incremental improvements in the current system for
helping congregations and other church institutions find clergy and lay
professionals. She hopes to create an open system that is based on
information sharing rather than one that must manage access to
information.

For instance, as part of that effort, the job listing known as the
Positions
Open Bulletin, will soon be available on the CDO's website
(www.episcopalchurch.org/cdo/) without needing a password. Currently it
is
password-protected and available only by paid subscription.

Throughout all the changes to come, McClain said, it will be important
to
remember the work of the "creative adventurers" who found the office and
build systems that fit their times.

"We couldn't be doing this if they hadn't done what they did," she said.
"We
always build on the shoulders of those who came before us."

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