Plums and Pills

(This post originally appeared on The Mayward Blog)

I was recently chatting with a great ministry friend about an upcoming transition for him into a new pastoral role. He's headed to a church where my wife and I are quite familiar with the church's history, and he found it fascinating and enlightening to hear the stories of leadership transitions and cultural dynamics of the church. I remember having similar conversations with leaders of my church, learning about the history behind programs and roles and values.

The past is always present. 

I'm learning this truth both from a personal and leadership perspective. History matters. You see this in families as generational habits, health, and dysfunctions are passed down from grandparents to parents to children. Every individual person is a chronicle, a composition of events and encounters and experiences and moments in time, captured in memory.

So it is with church systems.

Every church system's history has shaped its present ethos, culture, habits, and practices. You and I recognize the impact a person's past has had on an individual, but often overlooked is the long-term impact of a organization's past, going beyond the immediately previous generation of leadership. Our connections to the past are long and deep, and institutions don't change easily. Roots can run deep, for good or ill. Organizations have personalities, too.

In his exemplary book on leadership, A Failure of Nerve, Edwin Friedman identified two types of systems present in clergy:

1. Churches that maintain the same happily content pastors/leaders for 20+ years are plums. 
2. Churches that churn out (and burn out) leaders every few years (or months) are pills.

Friedman claims that every church leader who stays around long enough in the area or denomination knows which churches are which. Plum means "a highly desireable attainment, accomplishment," something marvelous and first-class. Pill refers to something tedious or unpleasant, particularly a painful necessity.

Friedman writes: "I know of no hierarchical executive (bishop, district supervisor, executive, placement coordinator) who has ever succeeded in changing a pill into a plum." He continues: "The leadership lesson for a new clergyperson or executive is that without well-differentiated leadership, the past dysfunctions of a 'pill' congregation can make a newly arrived leader ineffective as well."

Whether serving at a plum or a pill, any new leader in an organization must grow in self-differentiation to have a deep sense of self in the midst of a swirling organizational history. Your successes and failures may have less to do with your own leadership capacity and more about the organizational history of your church system. If you're currently leading in a "pill" church, knowing where your identity begins and ends is vital to staying in long-term ministry, particularly when everything feels like an uphill battle.

Here are a few conversations you can have to grow in understanding the history of your church:

• Ask the lead pastor, elder or deacon board chairman: what have been three significant positive moments in our church from the past 10 years? Three significant negative moments?
• Ask the person who formerly had your job: what was most life-giving and most life-draining about being in this role? Describe two or three stories that capture a snapshot of your experience in the role.
• Ask volunteers in your particular arena or department: if you describe our ministry as a human being, what characteristics, traits, and values would they have? Create a personification of our ministry.
• Ask two or three local ministry leaders outside of your church: describe your perception of [your church] in three words, positive or negative.
• Ask two or three local business/school/community leaders outside of your church: describe your perception of [your church] in three words, positive or negative.

Do you know your church's history from the past 5-10 years? Are you aware of past leadership struggles and successes? Do you  the origin of prominent programs and sacred cows? What are the pills and plums in your context?

Growing in Spiritual Cycles

The Christian life isn't linear. Our spiritual growth doesn't move in a straight line, like a steady arrow aimed in an upward trajectory from "less mature" to "more mature." Sure, most of our youth ministry programs and discipleship methodologies are set in a linear or funnel-like fashion (come, grow, go). But real life doesn't work this way. It's more like a long hike up a mountain, filled with turns and switchbacks, flat plains and steep climbs. Sometimes it looks like we're moving downward or away from our destination, when the path is leading us away from an impending danger. It's an individual journey, and rarely do linear one-size-fits-all spiritual growth models foster the kind of discipleship we long for.

Our spiritual growth moves less in straight lines and more in cycles. Walter Brueggemann's insightful little book, Spirituality of the Psalms, offers a framework for how this cyclical spiritual formation works through the lens of the Psalms:

Orientation: This is a sense of peace and contentment with God. Spiritual growth and practice almost feels easy--prayer works, reading the Bible feels alive, worship is passionate, there is unity with fellow believers, an eagerness to follow Christ. Many brand new believers or students at the end of a summer camp or missions trip experience this elated orientation. Christianity feels like a new and exciting endeavour. For the Israelites, these orientation Psalms reflect experiencing the blessings of the promised land, of being right where God wants them. Yet lingering in orientation for too long can lead to a sort of spiritual apathy; we begin to take God's blessings and presence for granted, and the cycle moves to a new stage.

Disorientation: All is not well in disorientation. There is the introduction of pain, trials, doubts, and frustrations. This is the letdown after the summer camp is over, the onset of a season of suffering. Prayer is tedious, reading the Bible is a chore (if it even happens), worship is lifeless, and one feels isolated and alone. God feels distant and aloof, even unjust in His actions. This causes us to lament, to cry out to God in anger and sorrow. Disorientation tends to be an inner response to an external circumstance--a loss of status, a broken relationship, financial difficulty, the weightiness of ministry, death or disease, etc. This is being led out of the promised land into exile; we feel far away from the security of home. Thankfully, God is present with us throughout this painful season, though it doesn't feel like it. He is walking with us in the valley of the shadow of death.

New Orientation: At some point, one emerges from the valley into the light, coming out of the pain and isolation with a renewed sense of peace, gratitude, and trust in the Lord. This feels like returning home after a long journey, only one's heart and mind will never be the same after one's harrowing experience of disorientation. It is like Israel coming back to rebuild Jerusalem after being in exile for so long. This new orientation only stays "new" for awhile. Then it slips into the comfort and security of orientation, which lasts only until the next doubt or trial or emotional turmoil fosters disorientation once again. And so the cycle continues.

When I first heard about this framework from a spiritual director, it was in the middle of a personal season of orientation. Unbeknownst to me, I was on the brink of disorientation--broken relationships, physical pain and struggles, culminating with the near-loss of my infant son. God led me through the pain--not around it, not away from it, but through it--to draw me into a deeper relationship with Himself. It turns out He's been doing this since the beginning--read the stories of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Jonah, and even Jesus, and you'll see this spiritual cycle.

There are two paradoxical struggles which arise in the cycle: first, we don't like the shifts, the "arrows," the changes from orientation to disorientation or from disorientation to new orientation. We don't like change. Yet we also struggle with being present in our current season--if we're in disorientation, we want to get out of the pain; if we're in orientation, we're worrying about when the season of disorientation is coming for us. We don't like being present. Paradox, I know.

The key is to recognizing the season you are currently experiencing and embracing it as God shapes your heart through this journey.

Where are you right now? Where are your students, your children, your spouse? How can you be fully present in the season God has you in?

Joel Mayward is a pastor, writer, husband, and father living in Langley, British Columbia. He’s been serving in youth ministry since 2003, and is currently the Pastor of Youth and Young Adult Ministries at North Langley Community Church. A writer for numerous youth ministry publications and author of Leading Up: Finding Influence in the Church Beyond Role and Experience, Joel writes about youth ministry, film, theology, and leadership at his blog, joelmayward.blogspot.ca.