The following interview is summarized below. If you would like to listen to the interview or download it for future listening click HERE.
I asked Dr. Willimon to comment on church leadership from his perspective as a Bishop. Here are excerpts from this interview:
FOUNDATIONS
Ballou: I teach leadership and have my 4 pillars of leadership. The first one is foundations which is about vision mission and personal skills. As you work with the churches in the conference you lead and with churches around the country where you interact with leaders, what perspective can you give our readers leading in many types of churches about this area of foundations?
Willimon: An important foundation for a leader in the church is a sense of being called to do it. I am impressed that pastors get into a situation where we are really convinced that God really wants us to do it. In a broad sense we feel that we are here because I have been sent here. Methodists practice what we call a sent ministry, that is that you can’t be hired to do it you have to be sent to do it is one of our beliefs. This is a very Methodist thing for me to say. At key moments that becomes very important to a pastoral leader to believe that God is in this and that I am here because God means for it to be this way.
Ballou: I work also with leadership in the business work that have their own idea of how it should be. In the context of church leadership, we are implementing God’s vision with a sense of calling. It this your sense?
Willimon: Yes, that’s a good statement. I think the Calvinists, the Presbyterian, the Reformed person might say, Hey, everybody wherever they are is supposed to work with that understanding” and that’s fine with me. I’m just speaking of what I know, namely the pastoral ministry. I think we are talking of a kind of transcendent sense of why I’m here. That I’m not here simply managing the moment, but I’m here from some larger panorama that is being worked out through my little faithfulness right here.
Ballou: As you know I served the church for over 40 years. You knew me when I served a church in North Alabama. I am actually a recovering Presbyterian service the United Methodist Church. Since I served the Presbyterian Church for 30 years, I understand both of these paradigms. That enrich my perspective on leadership. One of the things I have observed is that on a Myers-Briggs scale, both pastors and musicians have a dominant profile of introvert. How does this effect leadership?
Willimon: I remember reading where you observe that tendency toward introversion. The first thing is – acknowledge it and also acknowledge it as a real challenge. I remember reading somewhere that actors tend to be introverts. Which is counter intuitive – people on stage projecting, playing a role, communicating, which says to me that this is one thing that attracted them to the role. They like cultivating and developing a kind of “unnatural” aspect of their personalities. I would say, it’s hard for me, (maybe it’s because I’m an extrovert, although I don’t remember how I score on the Myers-Briggs) but I do think that the parish ministry is essentially extroverted activity. You’re in a politically charged situation. You’re a public leader. You’re up on view. You’ve got to find a way to work that. I am thinking of some pastors who are very shy, but they get over that shyness when they are leading their church or they work their shyness in a very positive way.
I got into some difficulty with some people in my book, Pastor, where I just said that I thought it was problematic if one was introverted and a pastor because , the word I think of is political, in how public is the leadership role, but most of my seminarians, confirming what you said, are introverted people. They like to think about ideas, they like to think about God, and they like to be alone with a book, or in meditation. That’s great, except, at some point, they have to be comfortable with standing up in front of a group and saying, “Hey gang, I’ve got a vision of this, let’s go with it. Who wants to go with me? What can I do to talk you in to this?” It’s helpful to acknowledge it and to work with it.
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RELATIONSHIPS
Ballou: As you know, I teach Transformational Leadership. One important part of this style of leadership is being the champion of the vision. I worked with some really strong pastors that I learned a lot from. I also had the most conflict with some of these pastors. In this area of relationships, the pastor and musician is and area where you have two people used to having a strong place in leadership authority in their respective areas. Speak to the staff relationship area and how important that is to ministry and then, ministry overall is about relationship, with those whom you lead. Share about these two aspects of relationship in ministry leadership.
Willimon: I suppose that there was a time in my ministry that I would have said that it’s all relationships and you have the opportunity to develop some deep, meaningful relationships. A pastor can only lead as far as people trust you and that you can talk into things. While affirming that relationships are key and that they are absolutely essential, I think along with that is got to be a vivid sense and commitment to the vision, to the results, to what we are all here together producing – how do we know when we have succeeded. What is the fruit of this ministry. I mention this because, it seems like in Methodism, I think this is the result of pietism running out, relationships are everything. I go to meetings where it’s a two-hour meeting. We send the first 30 minutes on the hospital list reporting who we know’s in the hospital and we have prayer for them. Or we go to a meeting and spend the first 30 minutes of a one-hour meeting going around the room and introducing ourselves and telling where we are from and all. I know it’s better to do hard work with people you really know. I don’t knowing people’s name and that knowing where people are from contributes a huge amount to the output of the meeting.
More troublesome is that the stress on relationships is a way of avoiding more threatening questions of productivity and fruit. Jesus Christ, the Gospels just say the by your fruits you shall know them. When Jesus is asked, “Are you the Messiah?” “Are you God’s way of loving us?” Jesus says, “You go and tell John the following four fruits of my ministry.” - end of discussion. As a Bishop, I am in the middle of moving pastors now for the coming year. Every time I hear from a church that says, “Why are you moving our pastor? We love this pastor. She’s the most loving pastor we’ve ever had. She sees my family when they were in the hospital We’ve never gotten along better with a pastor. Everybody loves her. Nobody criticizes her and she loves us. Why would you disrupt that? We’re better off than we’re ever been.” And I say, “Looking at the numbers, you’ll be closed in about 8 to 10 years. You are basically moving out of the business of being a church judging by how many people you have attending on Sunday, your finances and all that.” The response is, “You don’t care about anything but numbers.” I am saying that relationship can have a darker side. We need to keep telling ourselves that we are in the business of relationships as Christians because the mission Jesus Christ gives us.
One of my Cabinet members, a District Superintendent who is retired military, brings a perspective from the military. If while we do our work, I can like you, great. If while we are doing our work, I can respect you, great. But, we’re all clear, none of that is as important as getting them mission accomplished.
Ballou: Absolutely! It supports the first piece we were talking about, clarity in the vision.
Willimon: I was just thinking about that. I love your stress on clarity. This week, this is my thing – clarity. I’ve just read a good book by Bill Brosen, The Preaching of Jesus: Gospel Proclamation, Then and Now. And Bill says there, that when he listens to sermons, the biggest problem is clarity, just simple clarity. You can’t figure our what the preacher is talking about. Bill says that it’s a kind of theological problem and a sense of decision not being able to say, “I’m going to go with this, I’m not going to go with that.” Expanding that to leadership in the church, I’d say that one of the problems we have in the church is that we have these ridiculous broad, multi-faceted expectations - ‘increase of love of God and neighbor, we want to have a loving, caring congregation, you can just feel the love, we want to welcome newcomers who may threaten that, but we also want to change the world and transform America into a Christian society, we also want to challenge sin when we see it…” It’s a receipt for never accomplishing anything and never feeling that God has done something good through us. So, therefore, clarity becomes a huge thing – what is it that you most want to do. My complaint about relationships is that I feel that I am often in settings where you ask what is the main thing you want to do and the group could truthfully say, “The main thing we want to do is to spend an hour and a half together with no conflict and no uncomfortableness and then we want to go home and we don’t want anybody to ask ‘why are we meeting, why is it important, what is expected of this gathering?’ And we want to get as many people to the table from as many places as we can and have a long a discussion as we can. That’s our goal. Period.” That kind of mentality is killing us.
Ballou: Absolutely! A couple of years ago, I interviewed you for an article for Creator Magazine about staff conflict and you said that if there is no conflict, it’s a sign of a dead church – there’s no energy. As a Pastoral Church Musician, I consider it my job to support scripture in the music. To exegete scripture not only exists in the sermon, but can be through the music as well. Sometimes my vision of how that would work were not accepted like I though they would be. Now, you’ve worked with church musicians. We’re passionate about what we do, but not ultimately in charge. So, looking at this vision piece, can you give us church musicians to not take criticism personally?
Willimon: First of all, I want to give thanks for the church musicians I’ve worked with. One reason that we pastors are so uncomfortable around church musicians, is that you are the only person in the church some days that has a vision of the mission. “What I want to do is to honor the gift of Bach in this anthem. I want to give of our best to the master in this anthem.” And I say, “That is not going to happen because you’ve got dear sweet Ms. Jones who maybe had a voice 30 years ago, but it’s gone now and she’s off key. “ And you say, “I’ve got to talk to her about getting out of the choir.” And I say, “Wait, you could hurt her feelings!” And there’s a pastor that has no vision of the larger good. There’s a pastor, that, under the guise of relationships…” I would say to that pastor, “ How about being concerned about your relationship with the congregation at worship.” I want to acknowledge that musicians, because of their clarity (the very fact you mentioned earlier) about what it is that my job is and what I want to do, that’s good. In fact, I’ve seen people who are not that great a Christian commitment in their own hearts gravitate toward a music program and offer their gifts there because it’s the only place in the church where anybody has any standards about anything.
I was at a church a while back where there was a nice anthem by the volunteer choir, and then somebody got up to read scripture before I preached. This person had not discernable gifts for the public reading of scripture. When I mentioned it to the pastor, he responded, “Oh, Joe is a wonderful guy and he’s related to many people in the church.” I said, “That’s wonderful, why was he asked to do a ministry for which God has given him no gifts? Talk to your choir director. She has to deal with this all the time. “
Coming back to your stress on relationship, many times when I am dogmatic, when I am dictatorial, it’s a sign that I just don’t want to take the time and the trouble to encounter you, to listen to you, I may not even fully respect you. So, therefore, when you get that kind of stance, many times the dogmatic personality is the personality that is just not going to take the time to risk relationship I must say about introverts, sometimes introverts come across as dogmatic, one way, my way or the highway kind of people because it’s tough to be in a relationship when the other person says, “I don’t like that for the following reasons…” or “I don’t think that’s going to work” or “Could I just challenge that. I think that makes for a wonderful leadership and great organization.
I think relationships are important. Especially when my colleagues can say to me, “That just won’t work. etc.” I was questioning a pastor yesterday about an anthem planned for annual conference worship. I questioned the anthem that was selected. He said, “Don’t worry. I will listen to the anthem on Sunday and if it’s not suitable for this context, I will ask the musician to go back into the music library for another anthem that is more appropriate to this specific service. He doesn’t mind that one bit. We have that kind of relationship.” That’s a beautiful thing to be able to say.
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SYSTEMS
Ballou: Will, have you ever been to a boring, unproductive meeting?
Willimon: Oh, yes! That’s one of the things about being a Bishop.
Ballou: I live to put an end to the boring, unproductive meeting. Pastors run meetings - musicians run meetings. Do you have any advice for us to be more productive?
Willimon: The first thing is to keep your eye on the prize. Focus on fruit, on results, on productivity. Then, form the meeting on the basis of that.
This is a little thing, but it has been transformative for us, and that is 1) have an agenda, but 2) in the minutes, have the secretary put down action items with dates, put the times if you can. And let those be highlighted in red. People complain that we go to these church meetings and we talk about everything (blah, blah, blah) and then it just dies – it goes somewhere. We never hear about it ever again. Action things can be the most important thing. We begin every meeting with my Cabinet by going over the action items from the last meeting. That has really improved morale. People know that if they have debated an idea that it will be responded to and not be left to die for passive aggression. I’d make that suggestion.
BALANCE
Ballou: The last area is the rest – balance. Rests in music are valuable. And they have a very specific function and are not just the absence of anything. God calls us to manage multiple priorities, but also to take care of ourselves: our personal life, our work life, etc. Do you have any advice for pastors and musicians for preventing burnout?
Willimon: Jesus rested, so should we. God rested, so should we. I remember a musician back at Duke Chapel, my choir director, saying to me, “You can tell an experienced preacher by the use of silence in a sermon. Inexperienced preachers tend to not understand the importance of silence as providing a rest point for the listener. I thought it was a brilliant insight. He was absolutely right. I want to affirm it. I did a book on burnout with clergy a few years ago. I interviewed clergy that had called it quits and all. And I began thinking it was a matter of schedule and mainly a matter of self-care. I ended up saying that it’s a kind of theological matter. Do you believe that God is living and active and that God will ultimately triumph? Or not? That’s and important consideration. If we all want to get to together and save the world, well the world has already been saved. I love that image in Hebrews where her talks about the great high priest, and after he had done the great sacrifice at the altar, he sat down. And “What’s Jesus doing now. Well, he’s seated at the altar. He’s already done everything that needs to be done. He’s now resting. He’s seated.“ That’s an interesting image of leadership and also a kind of blessing. God says to us that you not only need to be doing all these good things, but God also says, “I want you to rest. I want you to recoup. I want to spend time with you outside the tug and push of the congregation.“ So, rest is important.
Paul Borden said to my pastors, “An overworked pastor is an incompetent pastor.” Now, that’s not something I might have said. I would have said that an overworked pastor is trying to do ministry with an inadequate theology of providence, an inadequate theology of the trinity:
Ballou: Will, do you have any summary comment?
Willimon: No, I always enjoy talking to you. One of the gifts you have is that ability to focus and to have clarity. I’ve learned that one of my leadership failings is lack of focus and I like to think it’s because of the way my mind works I’m interested in everything, I like to read everything, I like to talk about everything – which is one reason I enjoy ministry. That can be endearing, but in a sermon or in leading a parish, you must be able to know the one thing needful, to discipline your brain and your life and your schedule toward Servant Leadership, which means serving the one thing needful in a congregation.
Conclusion
Arrive at your place of comfort utilizing the best of what you can learn from others. Build your foundation, maintain your relationships, utilize effective systems and keep a healthy balance in your life. Begin today. There's not an arrival point. It's simple a journey.
Grace and Peace to you in your duty and delight as a Christian leader.
May "Leadership Tools" will be an interview with Jim Hart, President, Webber Institute for Worship Studies.
Hugh Ballou
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