Time to Think Different?

Confronted by the big problems of the real world, let alone the arcana of church politics, it is easy to reach sticking points where people simply dig in. In 1914 the fusion of spades, agricultural barbed wire and machine guns gave the world Trench warfare. The men who dug in thought it would all be over by Christmas, but they were wrong. Accidentally they had invented an all but unwinnable form of warfare.

The sober fact for all sides to contemplate is that, to quote Saint Albert himself, You cannot solve a problem on the level it was created. For everyone except the few lunatics who actualy enjoy warfare (boy, this is what I call Vahalla!) the formulation of impossible opposites is an invitation, not to dig in, but to start up the little grey cells. It’s time for fresh thinking, not trench warfare! So the question of the day becomes, reversing a slogan of 1914, Do you know a man digging trenches, when he should be digging your garden?

Whether you’re running the Lambeth conference, pathfinding for the Anglican Communion, getting life expectancy in Zimbabwe higher than it was in England in the 11th century, or finding how to be radically inclusive in a fully traditional church, the only method is not Power Play, Militant Entryism and Dumb-Boy Thuggery, but FAITH! And here is the perfect illustration of this principle, courtesy of Scott Gunn:

Clergy Bullying 102

Valuable personal time yesterday exploring the issues around Bullying in the Church with Anne Lee, social psychologist from Oxford University, who has written and is working on it. There are interesting resources out there, and those of us at the coalface need to develop stronger definitions and models to support better working practice. The Church is meant to be a delivery system for freedom and wholeness. This issue strikes at the heart of what we are about.

1. When a group of human beings interact there is a scale of behaviour between pacific and agressive, and somewhere along that line lies a personal and social acceptability marker. Any context involving the use of power raises the stakes radically. Violence and the Sacred are always interesting bedfellows, especially in bourgeois, implicit cultures. Religious contexts easily become toxic and dangerous when people kid themselves they don’t have power. Back in the 90’s when I was helping lead workshops for training incumbents I met someone whose colleagues were utterly terrified of him. He thought because he was a vicar he didn’t have any power, so there wasn't a problem. When you talked to his colleagues, what spooked them was his inconsistency. He was terribly informal and chummy 99% of the time, with occasional completely unpredictable flashes of rage which humiliated and terrified his colleagues, for which he never took responsibility, but tried to smooth over by being chummy again. It was the classic pattern of the Young Offender who beats his girlfriend up on Friday night and buys her a dozen red roses and a box of chocs on Saturday morning. Responsibility needs to be taken for the exercise of power and authority. Just because many professional guardians of the sacred feel powerless, it doesn’t mean they are!
2. The meaning of our behaviours has to be discerned from who we are in context, but they also create the context in which we act next. The more extreme behaviour becomes, the more it can be seen as a problem and clinicalised. Everyone has repetetive patterns of response we call “Personality” that seem almost absolute, but, paradoxically, people have far greater capacity than the patterns indicate to reinvent themselves in different contexts. How do we measure behaviour in context? What are the routes to personal reinvention, and how do we take them? We all have it in us to assert ourselves inappropriately. Only with agreed norms does it become possible to say where lines have been crossed. That’s where basic rules of procedure and natural justice defend the less assertive against the more assertive, People always need to be listened to and perceived problems dealt with on an evidential basis. That only catches the tip of the iceberg, however, in the same way that whatever we do to try and raise conviction rates for rape and domestic violence, they remain shockingly low. More than blame and breast-beating, we need to promote actively cultures of dignity and mutual respect. How? Let’s begin with the Church of England’s new formal guidelines, to be published in June. The English gentleman amateur thing helps prevent senior staff and others seeking professional help about this, as about other workplace issues. Rigorous training to sharpen personal awareness and skills, like the Integrative Complexity course I have been doing this year, needs to become the norm.
   
3. This whole problem is part of a larger world of stress. For me the guv’nor on this subject remains, even after six years, Affirmation and Accountability. This was produced a few years ago by the Society of Mary and Martha, which helps decompress clergy and church workers. A&A is based on their experiences of the negative forces that bear down on working vicars. We studied it extensively in the diocese when it came out, and I believe it has yet to be bettered as a practical manual for establihsing wellbeing in the UK context. As well as following up the academic leads Anne gave me, that’s where I’m going next, to see how I think we’re getting on practically with the agenda I embraced theoretically as an area dean in 2002 — am I doing it as a bishop? how does it stack up against the new guidelines, coming out in June? Watch this space...
   

Sue! Sue! I might even sue you!

Over the pond, from shore to shining shore, various legal eagles are engaging in top gun dogfights about church matters, and it ain’t a pretty sight. I suppose a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, and everyone, of course, is right from their own point of view. “What else were we to do?” I hear everybody saying...

We Brits are good at ignoring sounds of breaking glass from our neighbours, but we still belong to each other, by baptism. If Dustin & Meryl next door lock horns acrimoniously, what kind of idiot do I have to be to stand at the bottom of the garden egging them on or, worse still, join in? But in all humility it strikes me...

I once wrote a thesis about Victorians suing the pants off each other for ritualism, so I want to say that, historically, there is life after litigation (as well as a pile of pants). However litigation, right or wrong, incurs spiritual debt. Here’s this morning’s second lesson from Morning Payer:

Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and through it many become defiled.

Emergent missional living is far more crucial for future Christianity than denominational turf wars. Reading Brian MacLaren, I reckon Anglicans, with our particular instinct for faith in momentum and diversity, can bring special experience to the party. US fresh expressions, like the Common Table, are great laboratories of the Spirit. Whoever’s right and whoever’s wrong about the particular points in dispute, fellow disciples I like and respect a lot there are saying we just can’t be the kind of disciples God needs us to be for as long as we’re hooked on the whole “litigate to accumulate” thang. Hear the warning of Blessed, but Weird, Al Yankovich:

PS Aviation Art by Lou Drendel

Conflict Transformation, Day Three

Conflict Transformation Course, Day Three (Earlier Day One, here and here, Day Two here.) This bagged up information from the other two, with a chance to rework the medical ethics problem from day 1 in the light of all we'd learnt about Integrative Complexity and Relational Contextual Reasoning. I came to the same conclusion, but was rather surprised by how many extra facets about the problem and its various contexts came into play when I applied the IC/ RCR toolboxes. We were each given a personal profile describing how we react to conflict, based on the work we'd handed in. I wish I’d studied this stuff years ago. I don’t think it would have lessened the amount of conflict in my life, but it would have felt more like White Water rafting, and less like falling over Niagara Falls!

Finally, a lot of the course so far rather assumed rational people acting rationally. Whether it's an angry person somewhere under the ceiling, or a sullen manipulative bully, not everybody is sensible all the time. Some people and groups make a living out of being difficult. What about them?

We were introduced to a bit of Game Theory (Robert Axelrod) called, rather unattractively, “Tit for Tat” indicating tactical options in relation to a variably collaborative or defecting protagonist which might be able to get things back on some sort of negotiable track in the face of person or persons behaving badly.

I think this project offered considerable potential for church conflict at all levels. Here's a classic statistic out of the air — 46% of church conflict is more driven by the personal dynamics than the actual bone of contention. We need to grow greater understanding about how we interact and why, along with some practical skills for alternative strategies and tactics. I’m certainly exploring how we might be able to access this resource better in the diocese and wider church. It will be interesting to walk towards Lambeth with this perspective in mind.

Peacemaking Boot Camp 2

Transforming Conflict Session Two (One, here and here). The plot thickens. On the train there, I got out some Integrative Complexity homework I’d done, and suddenly saw another way of mapping the second phase of it, leading to an actual (low wattage ecological) light bulb moment. During the day it got more complicated, and our group is now going to try our hand at working a homework problem with RCR, an 8-phase method which incorporates but transcends IC. Hmm...

These methods certainly provide effective, practical ways to slow down the reptile fight-or-flight bits of the brain whilst the intelligent bit catches up. That’s got to be worth knowing how to do, even more than waggling your ears.Their Achilles Bugbear could be that whilst proven peacemaking techniques infallibly help people who actually want to make peace, they only annoy small-minded thugs who derive their energy from getting into punchups, and stave off their terror of insignificance by terrorizing others. Or do they? More will be revealed in workshop 3, which I'm booked into on 26 February.

Aircrew or Snakes on a plane?

In every area of life Teams draw the best out of people and get the job done better. Sadly, many teams aren’t really teams — just clumps, playing out their inability to get on together, and fouling each other up. That really matters if the Benedictine principle that best discipleship comes through community works. It does.

Linda Gratton and Tamara Erickson have published a helpful (current) HBR article on Eight ways to build Collaborative Teams. Biggest foul ups?

1. Size — too big in business (too small in Church?)
2. Badly managed diversity
   
3. Virtual working: doing most things by email rather than personally
   
4. Herding Cats: High education levels and overactive Egos

With a spiritual twist, these foul-ups can be radically upsetting and intractible. You end up with a team that isn't a team, just the Vicar’s fan club — or, even worse, anti-fan club. So what? Gratton and Erickson suggest eight ways of fighting back and making your team a real team:

1. Investing in an environment to support real teamwork — in business, designing working space appropriately. In Church, taking the pews out (in various senses).
2. Modelling collaborative behaviour — The same issue in any context. Leaders and senior staff have to do what they commend to every one else. Just do it.
   
3. Creating a gift culture — supporting social and professional networks, and mentoring. In Church growing cultures of generosity rather than a demoralising rationing mentality that kills off all joy.
4. Training to raise emotional intelligence. Good news — anyone can acquire people skills if they work at it. Bad news — they have to work at it. Focused learning works infinitely better in this area than happenstance and good intentions.
5. Working to grow a strong sense of community. People often look to churches for community, but it has to be worked at hard, especially in dormitory communities of pressurised people. ‘Christians are people who pray and have parties.’ (Bishop Jack Nicholls)
   
6. Assigning leaders who are task and relationship orientated. Brits tend to be task driven and relationship weak (stand offish and/or implicit).
7. Building on heritage relationships. In business, putting people who know each other together. In Church, bearing in mind the baggage, and using positive baggage to hold luggage that needs transporting. Also, avoiding year zero thinking, and using the (usually abundant) history for blessing and enrichment not cursing and limiting possibilities.
   
8. Role Clarity/ Task ambiguity. With fuzzy generalised idealistic expectations, and the way they load all accountability on to the few, along with their tendency to no agreed metrics and high judgmentalism, churches are almost conspiracies to foster Role ambiguity and Task Clarity!

So, team ministry or ministry team, ask:

• Is our team a team?
  
• How is this so?
• If not, why not?
  
• What's the single thing I can do to make us more what we say we are?