COMMENTARY: Five things we could live without

(RNS) I chuckled at business consultant Tim Berry’s latest blog about the all-time “Stupidest Management Fads,” “Dumbest Management Concepts” and “Dim-witted Leadership Strategies.” I lived through some of them during my years as a business consultant. We in the church have our own issues, of course. Here is my list of “Five Self-Defeating Practices that […]

(RNS) I chuckled at business consultant Tim Berry’s latest blog about the all-time “Stupidest Management Fads,” “Dumbest Management Concepts” and “Dim-witted Leadership Strategies.”

I lived through some of them during my years as a business consultant. We in the church have our own issues, of course. Here is my list of “Five Self-Defeating Practices that Ought to Be Abandoned”:

Interim Pastorates


I mean no disrespect to those who toil as interim clergy, but I find the common practice of requiring interim pastorates to be unwise. Little can be accomplished in the typical one- to two-year interim except loss of momentum, a near obsession on who the next pastor will be, and a delay in dealing with systemic issues.

Even in toxic situations such as clergy misconduct or terminal conflict, the next pastor will need to rebuild trust and plan to stay a while.

Long search processes create unhealthy expectations of the new pastor, often in a courtship scenario that cannot end well. It is the job of clergy and lay leaders to provide for an orderly and timely transition in top leadership.

Mission Statements

I’ve seen too many leadership cadres sweat bullets over the wording of mission statements, only to produce a generic, lowest-common-denominator paragraph. Usually it serves poorly as a call to action or to focus future energies, or even as an honest statement of actual values and purposes.

Crafting a mission statement gives the illusion of having done something. The harder work is making difficult choices to embrace a changing future and to allocate resources effectively.

Decision by Consensus

Requiring unanimity enables one or two negative voices to dictate the will of a leadership group. Neither the one nor the many should consider themselves uniquely endowed with God’s will.

Groups should make the best decisions they can; measure outcomes; learn from experience; submit humbly to the unexpected; admit poor decisions and make better ones; and move on. Awarding a supernatural imprimatur to a unanimous decision merely makes it difficult to evaluate outcomes.


Weak-Pastor Systems

Some congregations live to keep their clergy anxious, under control, risk-averse and weak. This undermines what congregations actually need — namely, entrepreneurial clergy who imagine a future into being, thrive on risks, learn from failure, and keep pressing onward.

No one wants a return to the tyrannical reign of medieval clergy. But systems that don’t give adequate power to clergy — especially the power to see need, to dream, to take initiative, to recruit fresh leaders, to pursue the untried and unfamiliar — guarantee that little will be done and the future will have no advocate.

Charitable Giving

It’s great fun — and feels sophisticated — to pursue a spreadsheet-based charitable giving approach to stewardship. Name the big givers and put most energy into wooing them; name the second tier and third tier and allocate fund-raising energy accordingly. Then calculate effectiveness based on meeting certain targets.

Charitable giving distorts the nature of real giving. It puts a church on a par with museums and the Red Cross. It says to the donor, “Pay your bills, measure what is left over, and divide it among worthy charities.”

The Bible teaches “harvest giving”: measure the harvest and give the first 10 percent to God. It is giving in grateful recognition of God’s providence. Such giving teaches gratitude and sacrifice.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)


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