Inquisitor: Paul, I have heard you talk about a Benedictine approach to group decision making, and I know that you have used this in intentional interim processes. Can you walk us through it?

Paul: Yes, the first time I used this particular model of consensus decision-making was at a church in Canberra. We went through a two year journey of healing – not an intentional interim process by name. But in retrospect that is really what it was. Because conflict and relational breakdown had been part of the previous chapter at great cost to the minister and to the congregation, I was very deliberate about leading with a consensus approach, and Benedict’s is the best I know.

Inquistor: Where did you learn it? Did you see it modeled by other pastors?

Paul: No. No, the pastors I worked with in my early days in the ministry were…of a generation shaped by different management practices. I guess top-down management was just beginning to expire in the culture of the churches I was among in the UK – and I could see the non benefits of their approaches for upcoming generations of believers and colleagues. When a top-down leader intersects with democratic church polity it is a difficult clash of dynamics to negotiate – and more than once I saw that mismatch of expectations lead to unhealthily autocratic patterns. So my early experience made me hungry for an effective alternative.

I am on the cusp of two generations – Boomers and Gen X and so I was probably predisposed to seeing a need for a model that honors both the unique contribution of a leader and the work of the Holy Spirit among peers. I couldn’t help noticing that in Acts Luke says “We concluded” – that’s plural; or again “It seemed good to us and the Holy Spirit” – plural again. So I was eager to find a leadership model that held these things together in a healthier way.

Inquisitor: So do you think it was a cultural shift or was it the Bible that clued you to another way?

Paul: I actually first encountered this particular consensus model in print in 1997 – when I spent an extended season in study. I was researching fruitful spiritual movements through church history. So through the magic of print it was Benedict of Norcia who I “saw” modeling this form of leadership in Italy in the 500s AD – when I was much younger!!

Inquisitor: Consensus decision making sounds to a lot of people like non-leadership. It can sound like anarchy?

Paul: Well I reckon there’s more to be said for anarchy than often gets said. Anarchy as a model for leadership began to get some serious traction in leadership-training in the 90’s. True anarchy is not chaos. It is sometimes called the “wisdom of crowds.” And in a leadership training context the way it was used was that a task would be given to a group of people, with no further instructions. Almost invariably the group would agree teams, point persons, and processes with the consensus of the group as part of the process and part of the goal.

Anarchy as a process tool can work supremely well. It can produce relevant leadership and achieve healthy outcomes. Given a creative task, anarchy generally will move towards something like the Benedictine model and it will produce and recognize leadership! I was privilegd to observed this model at close quarters in the context of intentional interim ministry, facilitated by a superb exponent of it, Revd Dr Chris Simon, This was in an Anglican/Episcopal context. The challenge of ithis approach is that the facilitator has to have great patience and faith, and inwards of of steel to allow the process to shape itself. The facilitator has to project as a non-anxious presence in the middle of irresolution, in order to give the people involved the necessary confidence in what can look like an invisible process, and then the lightness of touch to know when to nudge or inspire this or that direction of exploration. I think it takes a mature and seasoned hand to do that. Personally, I learned a great deal from watching Revd Dr Simon lead a process using that methodology. Its great advantage is the level of buy-in and the shared sense of responsibility it leaves behind in  creating the platform for happy relations moving forward.

 The picture above is of me in my Archdeacon’s role, reading the licence of a new leadership team after a wonderful intentional interim process led by Revd Dr Simon

For further reading on anarchy as a process tool, let me recommend “The Wisdom of Crowds” by New York columnist, James Surowecki

Inquisitor: It’s interesting that you speak about the “wisdom of the crowd” as something positive. Most of the time when people use the phrase “group-think” they mean it in a derogatory way – as if group-thinking is automatically poor thinking.

Paul: Well of course it can be! I think what the phrase “group-think” usually refers to is a pattern where a group has a conversation in which every contribution is hemmed in from the outset with a dynamic of “Is this what the group thinks?” or “I think what we are saying is…” – in which no-one wants to stand out from the pack. The problem is that unity of mind is being sought without first allowing the individual minds to speak for themselves from their own respective points of view.

A Benedictine-style leader will ensure that all the individuals’ honest, initial perspectives are on the table before any patterns or unity of mind are looked for. If you leapfrog the first step that then you will not tap the aggregate wisdom of the crowd. Instead you will quickly arrive at a lowest common denominator outcome. For the wisdom of the crowd to come into play, though, there has to be an exchange of views.

Inquisitor – So you all have to disagree first? You have to disagree before you come to an agreement?

Paul: I love how you put that. You have to disagree first. Yes!That’s when the energy of the crowd engages – and it is why leadership is still needed – a leadership which facilitates and draws out first the contributions and then identifies the synergies.

Inquisitor: So if we’re operating with the Benedictine leadership model, can you sum up the leader’s role?

Paul: Initially, to help the group correctly name the problem, then ensure that each member of the group is enabled to speak freely, from their own individual perspective, and be heard.

The leader must then facilitate the conversation until there is a shared understanding of the nature of the problem or decision. The voices of all from the oldest to the youngest and the most senior to the most junior must be given equal respect – Benedict was very strict on that – and that balancing of the conversation is a key part of the leader’s job as chair. The group-mind forms after the individual minds have spoken and pooled their wisdom.

There is stage of individual contributions. Individuals may speak initially as a sectional representative – you know, “Well I speak for the youth!” or “I speak for the women!” However in the second stage, when pooling the shared wisdom and synthesizing an understanding and a response, each group member will be invited to address the issue in a way they see as being true to and beneficial for the congregation as a whole. This is a part of the agreement that needs to be clarified and emphasized right at the beginning of the process.

In the third stage, according to the Benedictine pattern, the leader will then propose a way forward and invite everyone in the group to evaluate the proposal. If the group’s evaluation is positive the leader will then formally make the proposal and invite group members’ approval. It may be finessed to achieve complete support. If it achieves the group’s support, then you have a First Order Agreement.

If agreement is not reached at that point, then in a suitably unpressured timeframe the leader may then table a second solution-scenario for consideration.

In a situation where these steps have not resulted in a First Order Agreement, and where a decision is urgently needed, the leader may then invite a Second Order Agreement. That is to say, the leader will akcnowledge, “I know this wouldn’t be everyone’s first choice, but on the basis of majority agreement, and maximum benefit to the group, would everyone be prepared to support the proposal?” 

If the second order proposal achieves the whole group’s support, then you can move forward with maximum transparency. However if it does not then the group is not ready to make a decision. Either further reflection is needed, or another factor needs to emerge, and the group will have to return to the matter another time. Better to leave it to sit for a couple of days and then come back to it, fresh. I have found that sometimes that couple of days’ grace can work miracles.

Inquisitor: Some would say, that sounds like a model for potentially very slow decision-making!

Paul: Potentially. But in my mind an inentional interim process should have a time frame of two years from start to finish and, in my experience, very, very few things are so important and urgent that you need to steam roller your leadership group. Personally I don’t think I have ever had to delay decisions more than two or three days because of an impasse at the level of second order agreement. No. Actually I did once! But only once!

Inquisitor: Oh you can’t leave us hagning! You have to tell us that one. What happened when you couldn’t even get a second order agreement?

Paul: OK! No names, no pack-drill, but It happened in an appointment process. We stalled when pitching for a Second Order Agreement on a candidate. So I said, “That’s fine. If we’re not in alignment then we have to accept there is  a factor missing. No-one needs to be steam-rolled here. Everyone’s contribution is needed here. (Only one individual was in disagreement with the group as a whole.) So let’s go away and take a couple of days to reflect on what we have heard from each other. If it means we come back again next week, that’s fine.”

When I debriefed the Bishop that evening he was clearly displeased that he didn’t have the outcome he had hoped for and was tempted to guillotine the process. However I invited the Bishop to hold fire and reassured him that if he could hold back for merely a matter of days, I felt confident that within the week he would be receiving more pleasing news. In fact, within 24 hours I received a phone call that gave our group a First Order Agreement for that candidate. The candidate was appointed and over the next five years proved to be absolutely superb – and everyone agreed on that! So that was an outcome more than worth waiting 24 hours for!!

So for me the big picture, once I’ve forgotten the pain of irresolution – the delays and extra meetings – I can say that even where a group has been maximally reluctant to engage in a decision of the kind on the table for them, we have always been able to achieve First Order Agreements i the Intentional Interim assignments I have participated in, with everyone feeling good about the outcome and the process.

I remember another intentional interim process in which I had to significantly downsize the church’s payroll commitments and at the same time address some significant relational pressures between staff and the eldership board. It was a meeting none of us wanted to enter. Yet, because of the process, we came away with a First Order Agreement – and with elders saying the meeting in question had been the “best elders meeting” they could remember! I remember the meeting vividly, years later, and feel very proud of the work we were able to do as a group.

Inquisitor: I find that incredible. How can you possibly do that in a church that is frazzled by pressures and conflicts?

Paul: I think the key in intentional interim is that as best you can you begin by putting on the table all the problems that are going to be addressed through the process. Always other layers of problem and story will emerge some months into the process. But the naming of problems and the outset agreement in-principle to work through them totally alters what is possible for an Intentional Interim as distinct from a regular pastor.

Inquisitor: Paul, can you just unpack that a bit? How is a regular pastor not able to do some of this work?

Paul: I wouldn’t be absolutist about it but, to generalize, I have noticed that with the employment of a regular pastor a church will often deny or gloss over endemic issues. Firstly this is because they don’t want to put-off pastoral candidates, and secondly because they tend to purely hope that the energy of the new pastor might be enough on its own to cancel out any underlying issues which really ought to have been addressed before.

So imagine instead, the new pastor arrives and successfully identifies these underlying issues and says, “Wait a minute everybody! Did you not realize you have some serious problems here? And they’re pretty urgent! Elders have you not grasped this? People, have the elders not told you? Forget what you all thought we were going to be doing here. We’re going to have to get to grips with some major problems in this place before we can get far with anything else.” Hopefully the pastor can find a more tactful way of saying all that, but can you imagine how that is going to go down? And picture how that is going to play out relationally!

The congregation – especially the diaconate or eldership board – is going to feel variously shocked, disbelieving and embarrassed. The danger is that the shock can set up a dynamic of deflecting blame. If not called out early, that dynamic will poison relationships – across the organisation. And the poor congregation simply won’t know what in the world is going on.

By contrast, when an Intentional Interim is engaged the pain of these issues is faced squarely at the start point, and an agreement is made to work through these matters determinedly and openly for a limited period. The shared goal is to maximize the prospects of success for the church and the next pastor – together.

Inquisitor: OK But could that be achieved through a consultation or does it really need a full-blown I.I. process to do that each time?

Paul: I believe that in many cases a consultation of two or three visits with congregation and board or eldership can go a long way – particularly where there is already a level of honesty and broad agreement as to what the problems and aspirations are. For instance I find it only takes a couple of consultations to avoid common problems of transference for any new pastor.

RED FLAGS THAT SIGNAL THE NEED FOR AN INTENTIONAL INTERIM PROCESS

Inquisitor: So Paul, you’ve done one-off consults, twice-off consults; you’ve done three six-month contracts, one one year, and two two-year processes. And I know you have closely observed other processes besides. So, just reflecting on those specific cases for minute. Thinking about those, what would be the little red flags that would suggest – to you – that a church needs something more substantial than a couple of sessions, that it should consider hiring an Intention Interim for a longer period?

Paul: Looking at the congregation, some red flags would be if I see

• evidence of taboos or hidden layers to the story and a lack of shared understanding
• conflicts that won’t go away
• continued depression or numerical decline of the congregation
• longstanding patterns that repeat despite turnover of personnel
• high levels of sickness, disordered behaviour or mental ill-health among the people.

Looking at the senior pastors, I would see red flags if the previous 2 (or more) pastors:

• experienced significant conflicts or complaints during their tenure
• were removed from their position due to unprofessional conduct
• concluded their tenures earlier than expected
• concluded their tenures and moved to non-ministry positions
• concluded their tenures without having first secured a new job to go to
• arrived healthy but departed sick, burned out or suffering anxiety
• experienced significant illness or mental illness in the family during their tenure
• died or became seriously ill immediately after resigning their tenure
• suffered from the same sickness
• left “under a cloud”
• died in office

To me these would all signal that a full I.I. process is needed – addressing every one of the 5 layers mentioned in the second post. And to my mind that means committing to a time-frame of 12-24 months. – because it will only be months into that process that the deeper layers and the more disturbing issues will begin to emerge. (For a dramatic case study of red flags and patterns that repeat, you will enjoy my book The New Monastic.)

Inquisitor: We talked earlier about the wisdom of crowds. But are there moments in these longer interim processes – or in a regular pastoral tenure – where the leader will need to make decisions ahead of the consensus in order to move things along?

Paul: Yes. Definitely. But I would say only sparingly. I would really recommend Nelson Mandela’s autobiography “A Long Walk to Freedom.” His book dramatizes amazingly the need for a mix of consensus leadership and individual leader-initiative. Mandela almost always speaks of “we” in the story of the ANC’s emergence from prison to power. However it was only when Mandela acted independently of the ANC’s “we,” with compromise, adjustment and individual initiative, that the story finally changed for the ANC and for South Africa.

There are times when the Intentional Interim may need to leapfrog bodies and gatekeepers and appeal directly to the congregation – for the sake of transparency and to invite solidarity and accountability with regard to core and most challenging parts of the process.

The problem with doing that too much and going too far on your own ticket as the leader is that when you finally move on, if you have not enabled those changes through achieving a genuine consensus, then you are likely to find that things snap back pretty quickly to how they were before you came, so that the new pastor then gets no benefit from all your hard work.

That’s why – especially where it is hard, particularly where there has been long-term conflict – I would want to come back every time to the wisdom of Benedict’s model. You have to give Benedict’s Rule the credit. If it is still being published 1,500 years on, it’s got to have some merit! My experience bears that out.