Notes and Observations on Clergy Leadership & Family
by Larry Foster
1. The context of the church today signals profound challenges for leadership. Markers include speed in change, information explosion, limited resources, population pressure, instant communication, family disruption, and other factors influencing possible regressive conditions. No one factor is determinative. The confluence of societal and family issues affects our institutions, particularly the church.
2. The church is positioned between the family and society. Clergy are leaders in this position. Clergy represent and serve their traditions. They function humanly as theological and emotional leaders.
3. Church leaders and seminary faculty have expressed concern about the functional maturity of seminarians and parish clergy. It appears all denominational leaders are unified in dealing with growing conflicts and relationship dilemmas of their clergy. Bishops and judicatory heads currently spend a good deal of energy "matching and mending" congregations and clergy.
4. Clergy as leaders of congregations appear to be distributed on a continuum from long term effectiveness to repeated conflict and shifting from congregation to congregation. Congregations can also be seen on a continuum of variation in their ability to work with clergy leaders. In this matrix many observers claim that stressors are increased due to increased complexity of demands, diversity of forces in the environment, and those factors mentioned above.
5. Many of the consulting resources available for clergy are mostly based on managerial, technical, administrative, and other conventional models. For example, some publishers have rich and responsive catalogs of books, papers, and programs to help clergy and congregations. Much of this is excellent and relevant. However, a systems perspective offers another way of thinking about leadership and family emotional process. Names associated with what can be called "family process and natural systems" are Murray Bowen, M.D., Edwin Friedman, D.D., Michael Kerr, M.D., and others.
6. Many clergy (and seminary faculty) are drawn to family systems thinking particularly as it is applied to clergy leadership. A postgraduate clergy leadership seminar in the past sixteen years in the upper Midwest has been offered in which theory and practice are addressed. Clergy meet once a month in a "nonpolitical" setting where theory is represented along with participant cases taken from their congregation or work system, a family under their charge, or their own family.
7. The process of bringing theory, theology, and practice into sharper alignment requires an ongoing commitment over time. It is a low-key format where clergy may step aside to exchange experiences and reflect on their own functioning within the congregation's emotional system.