Galatians 5:16-21
Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

A friend of mine who was in a good marriage with a wonderful wife who loved him, adorable children lost it all because of his sexual obsession with a co-worker.  Now, I won’t lie to you.  His coworker was quite attractive.  But what impurity did was cause him to let go of reason about who he was and the gifts of life he had and he pursued this co-worker based only on his physical gratification.  The interesting thing about this dynamic is that in his mind he tried to construct a new reality for himself where all the great things about his life and his wife and his kids would be made a reality with this new person.  All of the things in his life he didn’t like…well, he thought a relationship with this co-worker would make all those things go away.  He began to rationalize and justify everything in his life.  He began to overly highlight the negatives in his current relationship – “my wife nags me too much, or she’s not providing for my physical needs sufficiently.”  The truth was his reality was skewed and his vision blurred.  That’s what the passions do to us…they blind us to love of God, love of others, and love of self.

The sad story of my friend ended in divorce, separation from his wonderful children, and yes he ended up with his co-worker and they got married, but as more “reality” was introduced into his life with this new person, the more he realized that all his dreaming of what life would be with her was based on a dream…it was a creation in his mind.  Their relationship dissolved within two years.

The passion of impurity caused him to abandon commitment to his family.  The early Christian monastics would define impurity as abandoning hope and faith merely for physical gratification.  We are higher beings than that, they would tell us.  And not only they, but God himself calls us to more than just giving into our selfishness at the expense of love.

What can help us most is to understand that the earliest Christian believed that giving in to impurity, which we also call lust, was an abandonment of hope for the sake of physical gratification.  Lust is the physical desire for another based on upon only gratification and leads to a distortion of the healthy way God created us to relate to and love one another.  Lust is not love.  Lust does not foster commitment.  Love builds up, lust tears down.

How can we overcome this passion?  First, we need to acknowledge that it is an issue in us and we need to be in prayer honestly with God about it.  Sometimes we don’t really feel its right to pray about such things to God.  The other thing is to do exactly what the ancient Christian monastics did…put yourself under an Abba or Amma – a mentor if you will that can help you keep your desires in check.

Proverbs 15:27 – Those who are greedy for unjust gain make trouble for their households, but those who hate bribes will live.

Some passions we will find we struggle with – they have a foothold in us and are difficult for us to overcome.  They can really limit us.  Other passions don’t hold as much control over us.  The key here is to be self-aware enough to see which ones blind us more than others.

In Luke 12, a young man in the crowd near Jesus yelled out, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me!”  This seems to be an adequate, legal request, but rather than judge the dispute, Jesus turns the attention back the motives of the man’s heart saying, “Take care and be on guard against all kinds of greed.”  Jesus then shares a parable of a rich man who produced abundantly.  He produced so much that he ran out of room to store his abundance.  So, he tore down all his barns to build bigger barns.  These bigger barns will allow us to be safe, secure, happy, and comfortable for the rest of our future.  But God came that night and his time on this earth was up. Jesus ends by saying, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Avarice is simply defined by the early Christians as being unwilling to share your resources with others.  Evagrius, who first wrote of the eight passions in the 4th century AD, said avarice stems first from a fear of the future – which is really a lack of trust in God: if I give away what I have now, what will happen to me later?

Avarice is the unwillingness to share our resources because we are afraid there will not be enough for our future.  This is a lack of trust and a lack of faith.  Can we see ourselves honestly?  Are we generous?  Are we sharing?  And do we have enough trust in God for the future so that we can see the need of others?

Roberta Bondi in her book, To Love as God Loves, writes, “Avarice at its very root is to believe that possessions actually provide far more security than they do, a very common misconception in our materialistic culture.”

Evagrius said there is one more aspect to AVARICE that blinds us.  This other element of avarice for the early Christians was shame at receiving charity. Not only does our culture make a virtue of never being in need; it tends to be contemptuous of those who are in need, materially or emotionally.

Are you willing to share with those in need?  Are you willing to receive charity when you are in need?

“If you try to be all things to all people, you will never exceed at anything.” – Dave Ulrich

The first and most important aspect of becoming a more contemplative leader is learning to cultivate the ability to ask the right questions. Unfortunately, many of us never learn to ask the right questions. We have become so reactive in our responses and actions due to dealing with day to day struggles and problems that we never take the time to reflect on why it is that we are here leading in the first place. This leads to a variety of problems, the biggest of which is short-sighted leadership. When we are overly reactive, we are spontaneous and emotional. When we are overly reactive we lack strategic direction and we rarely reflect on our actions at all. When we are overly reactive, we have no goals and we have no effective way to measure the success of our goals. How do we move from reactive response to a more strategic and goal oriented way of leading? We must begin with ourselves. We need more contemplative leaders – leaders who are willing to begin with their own motives, fears, and desires.

What questions do contemplative leaders begin with?

At the beginning, I would answer this question with another question. What question are you afraid to ask? Usually this is not a question regarding how to lead our organization or congregation. This is usually a question that has something to do with our understanding of self, or lack thereof. This is why the contemplative component of leadership is so vital. If we don’t have an adequate understanding of self, motives, fears, and passions, we cannot lead effectively.

What are the questions we should begin with?

What is the meaning of life?

How do I fulfill my calling/vocation?

How do I live a full and complete life?

How do we find meaning in our vocation?

What is our destiny?

Am I capable, worthy, useful?

Whether you consider yourself a religious person or not, you are a spiritual being. Define it as you will, we all must have meaning in life, but meaning is hard to nail down and can often escape us. There are moments for all of us when we stop and “smell the roses” lifting our eyes up from the ordinary reactive responses we face every day. During these times, we begin to question ourselves and what we do. The contemplative leader learns to foster reflection on the big questions in ways that are productive and life-giving. The contemplative leader thinks about the bigger questions and issues regularly. These thoughts guide their decision making and their relationships. The process of living, growing up, finding meaning, and increasing awareness of who we are and why we are here is something contemplative leaders strive toward. While it may be a difficult task, this is really the only work a contemplative leader can accomplish themselves. Unfortunately, too many leaders rely on others to tell them who they are and how they should lead. Too many leaders find their self-worth in what they can produce. The reality is that you can never be the best and most effective leader you can be by seeking affirmation from the outside. Others cannot tell you who you really are. That is something that you can only discover within.

It is not easy to lead change in any organization, but it is especially hard in a church. Churches are formed around community and one of the key elements we long for in community is stability. Therefore, it is understandable why congregations naturally resist change. But churches and denominational bodies must fight this resistance to change and our leaders must be remarkably self-aware in order to lead us through difficult times. Change is a reality. Congregations can lock into a “no-change” mindset, but they will find it will only lead to decline and ineffectiveness.

Leadership is key in managing change. Making hard decisions in the face of difficulties are not the requisite of a strong leader; a leader’s greatest gift is enabling and teaching their organization to learn. Jesus was the greatest example of this. Jesus modeled the kind of life he desired his followers to live, but Jesus also enabled his followers to learn and grow. They were able to carry on his mission and calling after he was gone. They became leaders in his absence. The great failing of any leader is to live under the haughty assumption that the organization, or church in our discussion, can’t get it right without them. If one of the key aspects of leadership and change management is creating learners, then we must first and foremost be learners. A leader is at his or her best when they are able to engage in the learning process with others, recognizing the mismatches they themselves contribute to in the organization. How can a leader expect followers to learn if the leader refuses to learn?

Chris Argyris, in his book Knowledge in Action: A Guide for Overcoming Obstacles to Organizational Change, states, “Learning occurs when we detect and correct error. Error is any mismatch between what we intend an action to produce and what actually happens when we implement that action. It is a mismatch between intentions and results. Learning also occurs when we produce a match between intentions and results for the first time.”

Learning is an integral part of change and leaders (and followers, for that matter) must understand that if we are not learning we are not leading. Effective learning, within our Christian context, does not happen in isolation. We must have advisors, mentors, and even “ruthlessly, compassionate partners” who come alongside us to help us see when we are becoming defensive. If a leader lives in isolation and never receives critical feedback about whether or not their intentions and actions are in line, they do more harm than good in their church or organization.

Argyris goes on to say that learning is an active concept. Learning is not just about ideas or new insights. Learning requires effective action. We must identify and correct the errors. Identifying errors alone is not enough. It is much easier to identify, but much harder to correct errors. This is key in leadership and this is also where most leaders fail. How many times have you heard leaders in our society diagnose our problems? They are easy to identify and there is no innate gift of leadership required to see the problems we face. Correcting problems on the other hand is difficult work and this is where the leader makes their contribution.

The unfortunate problem in our churches is that many of our leaders are leaders in title only. They are unable to correct error and teach others to correct error. The great question to ask of any leader, to determine whether they are effective or not, is this: How do we know that you know what you say you know? When you can produce what it is you claim you know. Claiming to know something is useless. We have untold numbers of blogs and writings from people claiming to know a lot about a lot of things. There is only one problem. Most of these writers have never actually been able to accomplish the things they write about. Most of these writers have never actually corrected the errors they see in their churches or organizations. When they fail, they blame the membership or the culture or the previous administration or the lack of money or the community or whatever other excuse they can find to absolve their ineffectiveness. Do you want to define effectiveness? Effectiveness is the ability to detect error AND correct it. Without the ability to correct the errors, we are simply prophetic blowhards.

Here are three elements from Chris Argyris that are helpful for the leader as they seek to detect and correct error and teach their church/organization to learn and grow.

First, Argyris says, “there will always be a gap between our stored knowledge and the knowledge required to act effectively in a given situation. In order to fill the gap, learning about the new context in the new context is required.” What this simply means is that whatever worked for you in the past in your previous context is not the same thing that will work in your current context. The context is different. The culture is different. The leader must have enough agility in intellect and action to recognize that they cannot bring the same template to a new context. Some elements may come forward, but they are never the same. There is a gap between what you know and what will work where you are. Recognize that and be humbled by it.

Second, “even after the knowledge gap has been relatively closed, it is unlikely that the action we design and implement will be adequate. Most contexts or situations that concern us are constantly changing. We cannot assume that other individuals or groups will react as we had thought they would when we designed our actions. There is a continual need for vigilant monitoring of our and others’ actions.” Even after the leader claims to ‘know’ the context and is ready to lead, they must have enough humility and self-awareness to know that people within this context will not respond as people in other contexts. We need help from others to monitor our actions to help us see what we do not see. It has always amazed me that pastoral counselors and psychotherapists all have their own therapists to help them process things they do not see clearly, yet pastors, district superintendents, and bishops seem to think we don’t need help monitoring our leadership and responses.

Third, and finally, “learning is not only required in order to act effectively; it is also necessary to codify effective action, so that it can be reliably repeated when it is appropriate.” When I came to my new appointment at a large congregation on St. Simons Island, one of the first things I did was spend time on developing an employee policy handbook, wedding policy, and facility usage policy. Our church is an amazingly beautiful sanctuary on a beautiful island on the coast of Georgia. Through the years, they have encountered all sorts of issues with employees, facilities, and weddings and they had dealt with most issues but they had never written any of it down. I hate policies and it wasn’t what I wanted to spend time doing, but the process helped me learn the context and it has saved trmendous amounts of time in the following years because our learning is now being transmitted to new committees and employees causing less stress and strain. We are now better able to make disciples because we spent time on some organizational codification. I never thought that would be the case, but it is true.

One last note, leaders are decision makers. Every expert on leadership and organizational culture agrees that leaders should have monitors, advisors, and “ruthlessly, compassionate truth tellers” who can help us identify when we become defensive. One of the greatest problems a leader faces is defensiveness because it keeps the leader from seeing things honestly and clearly. All leaders should encourage trusted advisers to confront them when the advisers see them behaving defensively. I have a few people on staff and in my church that I have encouraged and given permission to be my advisors in my journey. I know they are people who speak freely and honestly and will not spare my feelings but rather share my passion for the good of the church I lead.

It is not easy to lead change, but the church of the next century needs leaders who can teach their churches to learn, grow, and change.

I used to love to plant a tomato garden in the back yard. Every year, I would till the soil, buy the young plants, place them properly in the ground, and nurture them over time waiting for the tomatoes to come. As anyone will tell you, there is nothing better than a tomato ripened on the vine. Those “vine-ripened” tomatoes in the grocery store? I’m not sure what “vine” they were ripened on, but it’s not the same kind of vine I used to grow.

Now, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to answer this question. What would happen if I did all the prep work, prepared the soil, planted the tomatoes, but left them alone once they were in the ground? Let’s just say I didn’t water them, care for them, or pay them any attention at all. I might get a few tomatoes, but the harvest would certainly suffer. Nurturing anything takes a lot of commitment over a long period of time. It’s one thing to put all your time and energy into starting something (is it fair to say many of us are great at starting things?), but it makes all the difference in the world how much time and energy is put into the long term nurturing. This is the essence of disciple making.

What we pay attention to, what we resource, what we value, and what we devote time to all reveal what matters to us. Over the long haul, leaders shape what really matters by what they pay attention to and by what they nurture.

I’ve been in ministry for almost 20 years and I have seen many programs brought to our attention by the United Methodist Church. Some of these programs and emphases were designed for a set period of time, say four or ten years. Any time a new ‘movement’ begins in the church, a lot of energy and effort goes into getting it off the ground. But the true, culture-shaping power of any program/movement comes only if the leaders devote themselves to nurturing it systematically over time.

I remember in the South Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church we engaged in a huge study in 1991-1993 called the Futuring Document. Bishop Marion Edwards chaired a team of leaders in our conference. They met for almost two years revisioning how our conference could do things differently to reach the coming generations. They were ahead of their time on some things, like the role and responsibility of the District Superintendent. They addressed the nature of the Superintendency so superintendents could better help local church make disciples. They sought to connect more closely the local church to the conference and denomination – something the Call to Action report desires in 2011. We voted to adopt the Futuring Document in 1993 and I remember that as one of the most exciting Annual Conferences ever. Things were going to truly be focused on making disciples and changing structures to better allow that to happen. South Georgia Methodists would no longer experience decline – or so I thought.

A funny thing happened between Annual Conference 1993 and Annual Conference 1994. We approved the Futuring Document, put together an ‘implementation’ committee and the next thing we knew, the Futuring Document was never heard from again. A very few items led to change, but not many. For the most part, it just sat there. In 2001, not even a decade later, someone referenced the Futuring Document on the floor of the conference and not only could no one remember what the document said about the particular issue…no one could even put their hands on a copy of the Futuring Document. It was the talk of the town with untold hours and effort put in the front end. It ended up doing very little.

All that said, now the leaders of the United Methodist Church have engaged in a massive study called Call to Action spending over $500,000 to study vitality in congregations and what drives vitality. The leaders (Bishops, Connectional Table) are calling for churches to begin measuring worship attendance, membership, professions of faith and missions giving/engagement in addition to other things. The leaders also desire more focus on the drivers of vitality (dynamic worship, leadership development, etc.) The verdict is out on whether the metrics and initiatives will lead to greater vitality or not, but one thing is certain. If the leaders of the United Methodist Church refuse to consistently and systematically pay attention to these metrics and initiatives over time, they will end up accomplishing very little.

So, here is an important question. Will leaders in our denomination make this a long term priority? Or, like many other ideas, will they put massive amounts of time and energy into creating it only to let it phase into another level of statistical tables or programs to be included in a Charge Conference report. We may continue to argue ‘what’ the numbers mean and ‘how’ they contribute to vitality, but one thing is certain. If Bishops and other denominational leaders don’t consistently pay attention to and nurture this focus, the culture will not change. What leaders systematically pay attention to communicates their major beliefs – whether they like it or not.

We love the newest and the latest. We love to be early adopters. We love to have our name on the list of pioneers and founders. But what we really need now are healthy tomatoes. What kind of tomatoes we get, and how many, remains to be seen.

So I hear tell that the Kentucky Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church wants its pastors to sign an agreement so the conference can monitor all pastor’s social media (at least they list Facebook and MySpace, but I don’t really know of anyone who uses MySpace anymore.) At first I was very mad about this. After all, can the conference force me to include them as my friends on my Facebook so they can monitor all my posts? What do they actually think I put on Facebook?

A few years ago, I made a motion on the floor of conference to study the organization of districts in the South Georgia Conference. The motion included the focus of restructuring/downsizing to enable our conference to better make disciples, which is our primary mission. A study commission was formed and they came back the next year recommending we keep our current 9 districts. Some good came out of the motion…they did consolidate the accounting practices/procedures of the districts so that all budgeting/accounting now goes through the conference office. (If you are not sure why that is a good thing, we’ll talk later.)

This year, Mrs. Helen Rhea Stumbo made another motion to study the number of district in the South Georgia Conference. She asked the Bishop and the Cabinet to engage in this study and bring back a report in June 2012.

In going through some older files, I came across notes from my motion that were never included in the study commission then and thought I might share some of them with you. Much of this information came from the North Alabama Conference which studied the same thing several years ago. They decided, like the Florida Conference before them, that a reduction of districts was necessary for two primary reasons: 1) it saved the conference a tremendous amount of money, and 2) it forced the conference to think differently about how it functions and carries out its mission of making disciples. Here are a few of the factors that I pulled together, including quotes from Bishop Whitaker in Florida and Bishop Willimon in North Alabama.

1. Most conferences have geographical boundaries that were set many, many years ago around old lines that are in some cases, irrelevant;
2. While South Georgia may not have undergone incredible demographic shifts as a whole, some districts lines don’t make a lot of sense. You know as well as I that the Statesboro District lines make little sense to anyone. Why couldn’t it be absorbed by Savannah and Waycross? Don’t argue the current district setup as to drive time for DS’s or number of churches (we have to think differently about when DS’s are present in local churches), rather revisit the boundaries based on missional needs and changes over the past 30 years.
3. Several years ago, I argued that relevancy cries for the South Georgia Conference to relate differently to the local church, especially regarding the potentially transformational role of the district superintendent; the problem with this point is I think I’ve changed my mind. I think larger districts should force the job of the DS into a more supervisory/administrative/visionary creative leadership role for churches that need it rather than “pastor to the pastors” and “visit every church in the district”. The pastoral role should come out of the covenant of elders, deacons, and local pastors. And the truth is, some churches don’t need the DS’s assistance or presence…others desperately need them involved.
4. I think we should reduce districts by 3 to 6 districts in South Georgia, but I believe our focus should not be only financial. There should be careful-purposed alignment of all the resources (all!!!) around the mission of the church of making disciples for Jesus Christ. This would not only pull in Connectional Ministries and NRCD for greater function and responsibility, it could actually financially resource them MORE so they could actually assist in training around disciple making in district work. We also need to recapture a coaching/mentoring mentality where larger/stronger churches partner with smaller/weaker ones.
5. One argument I hear from Bishops is fewer districts means less connectionalism – as if the episcopacy/superintendency of our denomination was the glue of our connectionalism. I don’t believe that has to be the case. Fewer districts can increase connection by including more lay, clergy, and local church leadership in district strategy, leadership, and implementation. We just have to have the right leaders to make it happen.
6. Currently, we have 9 districts and most all of them have part time administrative assistants. If we would reduce South Georgia to 6 districts with full time administrative assistants and possible additional part-time help from retired elders (as the missional work needed) it would cost significantly less and could be much more productive.
7. Another argument revolves around Charge Conferences. How will the DS make it to them all? Charge conferences do not have to be led by a DS. Elders may be assigned by the DS to oversee a charge/church conference, or churches could hold combo charge conferences/rally’s. THIS would increase connectionalism by allowing us to see how we are connected to other local churches in our communities.
8. DS’s should be required to be in districts more and serve on conference committees less. Why can’t we broaden leadership and make more use of a Leadership Forum for leadership representation in various committees and boards.
9. Major changes in the number of districts (such as Florida’s 14 to 9, or North Alabama’s 12 to 8) require fundamental changes at every level. This is why South Georgia doesn’t need to trim one district. We need to be forced to make bigger changes in the way we do our work.
10. Here’s a great testimony for major change in districts from Florida Bishop, Timothy Whitaker, “The Florida Conference approved a plan involving major changes rather than modest adjustments because major changes require an organization to function differently. We could have reduced districts by two and continued with business as usual; we chose instead to develop a new district structure consisting of only nine districts. From the beginning we have known that we could not make such a major change without also reforming the internal structure of the districts and the role of the district superintendent and creating a culture of different expectations in the Conference. Such reform requires thinking through the fundamental purposes of the district, the office of district superintendent and the missional objectives of the Conference. We are now involved in implementing new approaches, and we believe that being intentional about our objectives and our ways of meeting our objectives is having a very salutary affect upon the life of the Florida Conference. We continue to try to figure out how to be effective in every dimension of our work, and this on-going process of evaluating, planning, and changing has lifted us out of an institutional rut and liberated us to discover more effective approaches.”
11. In North Alabama, Bishop Will Willimon related the following points:

• All districts would be reformed to address some of the huge inequities that exist in the Districts that we have inherited from the past. Moving from twelve to eight districts would enable us to decentralize much of the work of the Conference utilizing District Resource Centers in every District, designed to facilitate the work of the churches in each district. We would also utilize clergy and laity to organize churches intoclusters that are based upon shared characteristics of the congregations.
• We would realize significant monetary savings in the downsizing of our Conference administration. We have lost one third of our members in the past two decades without a corresponding downsizing of the costs of our administration. This is poor stewardship. The savings (4 DSs, their housing and offices) could then be used to hire full-time administrative assistants (who could be clergy or laity, depending upon the specific needs and goals of each district) to free the DSs for more mentoring, coaching, and training of churches to grow into the future. Funds would be available for a network of consultants that would be provided to congregations in need.
• Eight DSs would work more efficiently and adaptively than twelve. We must spend more time supporting the work of our pastors and churches and less time in routine management and administration.

I have been in conversation with several Chairs of the Order of Elders from around the denomination. Many conferences are looking at the reduction of districts. While it is true that the money seems to be driving the train here, I truly believe an organizational shake-up is what we need in the United Methodist Church. I believe the Call to Action report is just scratching the surface, but it is giving us permission…permission to act. Let us use the gifts God has given us to come together and construct a viable, powerful, and Spirit led disciple making conference that fits our churches and our personnel. It’s time to start doing things differently.

I just returned from the South Georgia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, our denomination’s annual gathering for worship, business, and fellowship. As with most mainline denominations (Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, American Baptists, Disciples of Christ, etc.), we are experiencing decline in membership. Leaders in the United Methodist Church are seeking ways to stop the losses through a variety of studies. In the United Methodist Church, the Call to Action Report is one study vehicle focused on vitality.