Speaking of church, speaking of strategy; speaking of leadership

O to be a strategist, o to be a leader.

Strategy and leadership rank highly as status goods. Old fashioned words and phrases like management and business administration are so last year. The M.B.A. (I have one – with distinction too -and I have taught on one) has been repurposed. Strategy and leadership are what they have become all about. The good (and they were good) courses that focused on ‘boring’ subjects such as operations, governance, law, and management have been marginalised. Leadership, strategy, and to an extent finance is where it is at. The message is clear: if you want to be a saviour, a corporate messiah, then you need, above all else, to be a leader and strategist. As a brief aside let me pose a question: do you think most corporate and institutional crisis are the result of poor management or poor leadership?

My hunch is that we have become so focussed on ‘leadership’ that we have lost the harder art of management.

Let’s pause and reflect (because that is what we do in the church!) for a second or two and ask ourselves a simple question: how many companies, or charities, or causes, can we name that have been utterly transformed as the result of a top down strategy, delivered without glitch or modification by a cadre of culturally aligned operatives, where the strategy is the fruit of a leader’s intellect and influence? I will start…….

And yet the myth pervades that strategy and leadership, or strategic leadership, is the very thing that is needed to save not only institutions, but the world itself! The myth just keeps on growing (as all good myths do) and is well and truly present in the church, or at least The Church of England.

The trouble with the myth is that is it is credible. It is credible for two reasons; the first is that is desirable. It plays, as all good myths do, with our hearts and minds. The myth invites us to believe certain things about ourselves and others. It invites us to believe that there are saviours (strategic leaders) and the saved (those who place their faith in the strategic leader).

The myth therefore creates a culture of dependency. In some ways it infantilizes both the narrator and the listener. When strategy and leadership, strategic leadership, is elevated to the highest of all status goods the very character of the organisation becomes irreparably changed (and in my view for the worse). The second reason that the myth pervades is that it speaks loudly and clearly to our anxieties; our anxiety that unless we do something everything is going to collapse around us.

Anxiety, collective neurosis, is the fertile fallacy, the very, ground in which the myth of the strategic leader is best sown. Like all good and sustaining myths its roots run very deep and are hard to remove.

Another question: is it fair to our senior leaders to impose on them the mantle of strategy? Why, for instance, would anyone expect a bishop or an archdeacon to be a strategist, or strategic leader? I know we have – through the myth – been conditioned to expect strategic brilliance from our leaders, but is it fair? Fair to them, and fair to us? Do we want our bishops and other senior leaders to be the Jack Welch’s of the ‘church sector’, with all that this would entail? (And post Jack Welch GE got into all sorts of strategic bother. A lesson to all ‘strategic leaders’ is this: choose the timing of your exit well).

Tragically, and it really is a tragedy, turning up for an interview (almost any interview these days), and failing to persuade the panel that what you have to offer is ‘strategic leadership’ is very probably the quickest way back to the car park or railway station and yet another feedback session. The myth can very quickly descend into both farce and tragedy.

Now I have a sneaky perspective to offer: I don’t think many bishops and archdeacons do, in fact, regard themselves as strategists. They are wise enough to know that there really aren’t that many strategic leaders out there and humble enough to know that they probably don’t count amongst them. And yet, and yet, they also know they need to play the game; to pretend in other words, to fake it, so they can make it. So, they come up with ‘strategies,’ strategies that aren’t in reality strategic in any meaningful sense of the term, but are nonetheless moderately persuasive; persuasive enough to get the job and then the money.

And, so, the myth is reinforced and perpetuates. O, and it is financed too! Strategy, leadership, and finance, become beautifully aligned, in support of the myth! I am sure that some ‘senior clergy’ have bought the myth lock, stock, and barrel, after all the myth has a truly psycho-seductive quality to it, but I hope and believe that they are in the minority. The tragedy is that when ‘their’ strategies fail it will always be someone else’s fault.

Another question: how many of our central and diocesan strategies do we expect to materialise (or in the strategic jargon to become ‘realised strategy’?) Let’s be honest on this one, all of us. My answer would be simply this: not many!

Now to be clear, I believe in strategy (after all I am a MBA!), but I don’t believe in top down, generic, strategies. I also don’t believe in the toxic myth of the ‘strategic leader,’ aka the institutional messiah. There are too many case studies out which testify (narrative strategy) to the ability of the ‘strategic leader to reap havoc and accelerate decline even and especially after an initial period of ‘apparent’ growth. I am sure you can name many of them! There are also strategic tools that, when badly used, facilitate the myth.

One such tool is the BCG – Boston Consulting Group – Matrix which asks strategic leaders to categorise products, or even subsidiary companies, as either Stars, Cash Cows, Question Marks, of Dogs. Now I am not suggesting that somewhere in Church House Westminster, or in diocesan offices, a BCG Matrix actually exists (I am not that cynical), but I am gently suggesting that a BCG mindset has penetrated much of our ecclesial and missional thinking. I am suggesting that bishops and ‘their’ priests are endlessly encouraged, through the myth, to look for myriad new and shiny star projects, projects that will just keep growing (until they don’t) whilst regarding the inherited, essentially parish, church as the proverbial cash cow.

The thing about the BCG Matrix is this: the categorisation needs to be bang on the money, the result of hours and hours of detailed and painstaking analysis. It should never be used as a quick rough and ready tool completed on the basis of intuition. It has absolutely no place on a flip chart and should never be used in break out groups. If it is not used well and with ‘strategic skill’ the results will be disastrous: the stars end up not being stars at all, but dogs or question marks, and the cash cows end up as being fit for nothing but the slaughter house. A BCG mindset can lead to very costly mistakes. Its visual simplicity invites sloppy use. It should never be used to support a myth. User beware.

Those ‘stars’ that do rise end up as lone stars, disconnected from any meaningful and wider system, or forced to create their own eco system. The ‘stars’ that fail to rise, that for some reason don’t conform to the model, end up being forgotten about, not counted, because they fail to give credence to the myth. Success is therefore seen ‘through a glass darkly.’ Not counting the failures makes it very easy to turn a question mark into a star.

I think that this is a very real risk for the Church of England. I can see a situation where we end up with a portfolio of apparently successful projects, but not a lot else. And of course if this happens, the blame game starts up with a vengeance (‘if only you had been more like the stars…’), and what is lost can never be replaced. When the cash cow has been milked, but not fed, the slaughter house really is the only place for it to go.

I believe in strategies that emerge over time (Mintzberg) and are the fruit of local initiatives and experimentation (J.B. Quinn); ‘logical incrementalism’ in the jargon. I believe that the institution can play an important part in encouraging and funding local initiatives, backing parish churches, because strategy is normatively best developed from the ground upwards. Harsh as it sounds I cannot think of a single reason for believing in the bishop or archdeacon as a strategic leader. I can think of them as a strategic enabler or encourager but that’s a very different thing.

In simple terms I believe in the parish, not as the subsidiary company there to deliver on a top down strategy, but as the place where (mission) strategy is best developed, and where experimentation and incrementalism, are owned. I believe in the parish first, and the diocese (and national church) second. The diocese and the national church exist to animate and serve. These two, service and animation, should be the marks of national and diocesan leadership, that is if the national church and the dioceses wish to be (arch) diaconal in their approach. Thankfully some dioceses, my own for instance, have in places structures and budgets which encourage experiential and incremental strategies; the sort of strategies that can help revitalise the parish.

Finally, I also believe in the aspiration to be a ‘humbler’ church:

A church which refuses to acknowledge the myth of the strategic leader or institutional messiah as a mark of, and requirement for, office.

A church which steadfastly refuses to place the mantle of failure around the necks of its bishops, by constantly asking them to come up with some shiny new star product, approach, or game changing strategy, in order to be SDF funded.

A church where you no longer have to fake it to make it.

A church which places diaconal rather than ‘strategic’ leadership at the heart of things.

A church that believes that strategy and mission is best worked out at the parochial level and that the job of the ‘centre’ is to remain resolutely at the periphery animating and serving; in a very real and paradoxical sense leading by not leading and strategizing by not strategizing.

Speaking of planning permission: 10,000 reasons to decline

In the July 2019 General Synod group of sessions I spoke in the debate on Fresh Expressions. I was glad to vote in favour of a continued endorsement and support for the Fresh Expressions movement twenty years on. It is true that I expressed some reservations, particularly in regard to sacramentality (or more specifically the Sacrament of the Eucharist), in relation to the Fresh Expressions movement, but I did vote in favour of continued support for the ongoing development of a mixed economy (or is it ecology).

I voted in favour because I believed, and continue to believe, that a mono culture isn’t the best way forward. I also believe that New Congregations and New Churches have an important role to play. If we consider cities such as Milton Keynes, my closest city, it is clear that New Churches need to be established. It is, as they say, a no- brainer. But, this time around, unless some considerable concessions are made, I won’t be speaking in favour of, or endorsing, the Vision and Strategy Report.

For me this is a no brainer because what is being put before General Synod is nothing other than a complete redesign of the Church of England, not just structurally, but ecclesiologically and doctrinally. We are being asked to move beyond an essentially complementarian approach in favour of a complete rebuild. To endorse the report is akin to giving planning permission to a whole series of low cost rebuilds without undertaking structural surveys. And I am not prepared to do that.

I think I am right in saying that there are currently something like 12,000 parish churches in the Church of England. The vision and strategy paper suggests that over the next nine years 10,000 New Christian Communities / Churches (what is the essential difference between a distinctively Christian community and a church? ) are established; so, approximately speaking, a 1:1 ratio. These new churches / Christian Communities are apparently going to be predominantly lay led.

The Church of England has always insisted, for good foundational reasons, that those charged with leading churches (Christian Communities) are appropriately trained. In fact, historically, we have also always insisted that church leadership is a vocation that should be tested by an external body, advising the bishop. There are good foundational reasons why the church has always sought to discern vocation.

The way the model works at present, where church leadership remains an essentially clergy responsibility, is that vocations are raised in a local context and tested / discerned by an independent body. There is, therefore, a clear separation between the ‘architect’ and the ‘surveyor.’ Candidates, if ‘successful,’ must then undergo training and formation through a course or a college. The course or college is analogous to the ‘builder.’ This level of separation between church, assessment panel, and training institution (or between architect, surveyor, and builder) is designed to ensure the strength and stability of the structure, or in church language, the body.

The building process is for sure slow, painfully slow at times, but on the whole it gives the best chance of a good outcome. Fast tracking, building in a hurry, building on the cheap, will, I suspect, lead to cracks, underpinning, and perhaps even demolition. If we are to build new churches, lay led churches, we need to make sure that we do so well.

But identifying, training, forming, and equipping 10,000 new church / congregational / community leaders, through a simplified and hurried process, isn’t my biggest structural (ecclesiological) concern.

Just imagine for a second or two that we manage to build or establish 10,000 shiny new lay led churches (I know its difficult!), we will probably need to start off by seeking to build many more, say 40,000 (One for the Mouse, One for the Crow, One to Rot, and One to Grow, or Matthew 13, 1-23). That’s an awful lot of lay leaders who we will have led to fail. We could, of course, be even more pessimistic and draw on the story of the Healing of the Ten Lepers (Luke 17, 12-19). So how are we going to equip those hurriedly trained leaders when the likelihood is that they will fail; that their chances of ‘success’ are somewhere between one in four and one in ten? I am only asking based on ‘biblical numbers.’

It doesn’t look like a very humane strategy, does it? As a church could it be that we are going to have to spend an awful lot of time ‘underpinning’ the faith of those who, because we have tried to build things in a hurry, we have led down the garden path?

But, how we ‘underpin’ the faith of those who we may well be leading to fail isn’t my biggest structural concern. My biggest structural concern is simply this, that if we are successful (which I find really hard to imagine) in establishing 10,000 New Churches / Christian Communities, they will be under a completely new set of building regs. What we end up building will, in fact, bear literally no resemblance to the Church of England as inherited.

The Church of England is a church in the reformed catholic tradition. This means that we take things like orders, sacraments, and liturgy seriously. In fact these three are central to our understanding of what it means to be a church, or Christian community; reformed and catholic. We can’t get away from this, and neither should we try to do so. This doesn’t, of course, mean that the laity aren’t valued, honoured, and necessary. Nor does it mitigate against lay leadership in the Church of England. But it does mean that if approximately half of Church England Churches / Communities are under lay leadership, and as a consequence the Sacrament of Holy Communion or Eucharist isn’t a defining characteristic of congregational life then then whole character of the Church of England, a character that is enshrined in both canon law and the liturgy, will have changed; in my view for the worse and, to the detriment of mission and evangelism. I don’t think we are free to jettison Holy Communion or the Eucharist as one of the defining characteristics of week-by-week communal (community) life; not if we are serious about remaining a church both reformed and catholic.

The liturgy – ‘it is our duty and our joy….’ makes the centrality of the sacrament clear, as do the Canons of the Church of England: Canon B14 mandates that ‘the Holy Communion shall be celebrated in every parish church at least on Sundays and principal Feast Days, and on Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday.’ for sure the canon also provides for dispensations, but what it does is embed (in law!) is that celebration of, and participation in, the Sacrament of Holy Communion is a defining and normative feature of Anglicanism, as embodied through the Church of England, at the local ecclesial and communal level.

Unless, as part of the vision and strategy, lay presidency (which I would strongly resist) is also on the table what we are being asked to support at General Synod is not a vision, or even a strategy, but a complete and utter rebuild of the Church of England. My plea to all General Synod members is to view the debate in these terms. If an ecclesiological and doctrinal rebuild is what you want then, of course, argue in favour of the report, but if it isn’t then please argue against. But, let’s not pretend that this debate is primarily about Vision and Strategy.

My concern is that we are being asked to endorse a way ahead without having undertaken any real form of structural survey and having appointed firms of local builders, who have little or no sensitivity to the ecclesial landscape on which they are building. I have no wish to give planning permission to such a scheme.

I would like to endorse a mixed economy (or ecology) but the nature of the existing planning application means I can’t. If the planning application is revised, or amended, in the light of a thorough and painstaking surveyor’s report, a report that regards the retention of our reformed catholic heritage as sacrosanct, then maybe, in the future, I can.

Talking of vision; talking of strategy

I have no desire to take sides in an ecclesiological culture war, so let me be upfront: I believe in Fresh Expressions, New Congregations, and Church Plants. I really do.

Over the last couple of years my mind has been changed through the patient ministry of my diocesan bishop, diocesan secretary, director of mission, and others. I am sure that I have exasperated them at times, but overall they have perhaps been more right, even as I have been more wrong.

But, here’s the nub I also believe in the parish church. In fact I believe in it passionately. I have been told that I am ‘instinctively a parish priest.’ I am not quite sure, however, how I feel about this: is such a statement, in these times, a compliment or a criticism? Is to be called ‘instinctively a parish priest’ to be ‘damned with faint praise?’

I ask because the reports in the Church Times last Friday (2nd July), ‘Vision and Strategy update for Synod’ and ‘Welby endorses urgent plan for church-planting,’ don’t big up or stress the continuing centrality of the parish churches, as places of mission. Rather the reverse, in fact. The Parish Church is to be ‘reimagined.’

Now let be clear: in saying that I am passionate about the parish church, I am not dewy eyed about the parish church. Of course there are parish churches that are really struggling and, of course, there are parish churches that will not sustain. But, equally, there are many parish churches that are not only sustaining but thriving. For many parish churches the ‘mission strategy’ is built on creativity, adaptability, and imagination.

Overall, net-net, the parish church is both good and necessary, and should be supported, and yes ‘bigged up.’ The Parish Church is able to do things – pastoral things – that the Fresh Expression or New Congregation will struggle to do, for the very straightforward reason that the parish church exists for all. The parish church requires a congregation, a worshipping and discipling community, but its distinctiveness is that it is explicitly and intentionally parochial. The parish church requires a congregation – hopefully a vibrant congregation – but it can never be characterised solely through reference to the congregation.

The parish church is therefore not limited to serving those who attend. For the parish priest ‘church or congregational leadership,’ is a subset of parish ministry, of a much broader leadership role; an important subset for sure, but a subset nonetheless. I do wonder whether the incessant focus on ‘church (or congregational) leadership’ is a good thing? Is it a bit reductive? And, crucially, could it end end up undermining mission and evangelism? I genuinely think that these are a set of questions worth pondering.

The way that the report was presented in the Church Times has left many parish types feeling down and despondent, perhaps for obvious reasons. Now, to be fair this may all be in the reporting, but prima faca, the tone was triumphalist, and the statements made absolutist in nature. My fear is that the Vision and Strategy work is inadvertently creating cultural conflict, igniting unnecessary cultural battles.

The Bishop of Islington is quoted as saying ‘it is always new churches that are best at reaching younger generations, the unchurched, minority groups, and groups of people not seen in existing churches.’

I have one straightforward question and, an observation. My question is this: Is it true?

My observation is that statements such as this position the inherited, traditional, parish churches as palliative care units (underfunded ones at that), capable of ‘nothing other than placating the needs of the elderly,’ (a quote from a twitter feed). The implication is that a mentality pervades that ‘anything good has to be built from scratch.’

If we are to be a humbler church , then perhaps, in order to avoid deepening divides, ramping up the level of parochial anxiety, and increasing the stakes in the already existing culture wars, the claims of some of those charged with leading change need to be a little more self-effacing and modest?

The Vision and Strategy Group seem to have settled on a number of 10,000 new (predominantly lay led) churches by 2031. Leaving aside the thorny ecclesiological issue (for another day) of being a ‘lay led’ church, in the reformed-catholic tradition, (and the fact that the vision stands in tension with earlier GS reports – reports which were evidenced based) the number itself is highly problematic.

Now, I know that the authors are keen to suggest that the number isn’t a specific target, more of an aspiration and a cypher, but the problem is that aspirations, principles, cyphers, and even ‘issues’ tend to suffer from ‘mission creep’ and end up becoming policies (or even strategic goals!), and then the blame game starts and the house becomes ever more divided against itself.

The number needs jettisoning and jettisoning fast, it needs to be kicked into the long grass, before synod, never to be found; that is if the church wants to avoid further escalation in the culture wars, and in the inevitable and ensuing blame game. If we are to remain united then let’s get rid of the numbers, especially the big round incredulous numbers.

Before we let this one go let’s do a little maths, just to scale how bizarre and demotivating the number is: 10,000 new churches equals 3 new churches a day (including weekends) for the next ten years! Not doable! The number, as can be seen, is undermining of the very vision it seeks to support! Let’s just get rid of it for the sake of the vision and strategy (and the £1 million new disciples ‘target’ as well). To be clear I don’t, per se, have a problem with the use of numbers, but if we are to use numbers to motivate, let’s at least do so scientifically and realistically. Let’s build the numbers from the ground upwards, for this is the only way they can make any sense whatsoever. It is also the only way to achieve a sense of shared ownership and buy in.

A top down number, especially a very large well rounded top down number, isn’t, by definition, a visionary or strategic number. It just can’t be.

Vision and strategy, if they are to be ‘realised,’ aren’t the consequence of abstract thought processes, or even group deliberations (however diverse the groups), but, rather, the fruit, of hard work, critical analysis, and nitty-gritty engagement with both people and data. Vision and strategy doesn’t start with a number, but can, and often does, end up with a number: a real and achievable number. A number that is rarely a round number!

If a number is to be used to support, animate, and give ‘fresh’ expression to a strategy, it needs to be a real and credible number (a strategic number, in other words), arrived at through a strategic process; a process that turns aspiration into reality, dreams into vision, vision into strategy; real and empirically grounded strategy. The good news is that determining the strategic number needn’t be too hard, or even time consuming. The Church of England has the resources to determine the ‘right’ number in fairly short order, if it wants to do so. To do so would add credibility to the vision.

I don’t want to comment on the quotes attributed to Canon McGinley (‘limiting factors’) or indeed to the Archbishop of Canterbury but instead to return to the Bishop of Islington’s quote which concludes with the really quite astonishing claim that ‘church planting is the most effective methodology on the planet of growing the church.’

Now I might be an over sensitive instinctive parish priest, but is this statement either true or helpful?

Over the last fifteen months or so many parish churches have stepped well and truly up to the plate feeding a multitude of people, physically, spiritually, and digitally. The parish church has reached out to the unchurched, the previously churched, minority groups, and the excluded. Growth is, of course, a contested term but nonetheless the ‘parish church movement’ has acted diacionally, missionally, and evangelistically through the pandemic. Methodologically speaking it has done so as an empirical and observable phenomena.

My other problem with the reference to methodology is that comparing the parish / inherited church to new churches or congregations is methodologically highly problematic. Let me offer an analogy:

The parish / inherited church can be regarded as akin to the BBC. As a public service broadcaster the BBC’s successes and failures are there for all too see. The Beeb’s viewing numbers are in the public domain. The quality of its offering is a matter of public debate. Scrutinising the BBC is an ongoing and continuous process. For the BBC there is really very little shade it stands, permanently exposed, in the heat of the Midday Sun. The same is more or less true for the parish church. As a ‘public service’ church its successes and failures are there for all to see. Fresh Expressions, New Congregations, even New Churches (especially those without their own buildings) by contrast, operate in the shade, at least initially. They are more akin to, say, Netflix, which in the popular imagination is the most successful digital entertainment channel ‘on the planet.’ There is, however, an awful lot of myth surrounding Netflix. Not of all its offerings are successful, but it enjoys the structural advantage, unlike the BBC, of being quietly able to both hide and drop its failures, of which there are many. The successes therefore stand out, and the failures, well, they are quietly placed out of sight and out of mind, The myth further suggests that Netflix is growing rapidly – as the most successful entertainment channel ‘on the planet – but this is a fertile fallacy, for Netflix is struggling to entice new subscribers.

My plea to the Church of England’s visionaries and strategists is simply this: make sure that your points of comparison are methodoligically valid, and beware of exhibiting ‘survivor bias;’ the tendency to ignore / discount (or even not count!) ‘failures,’ and only count – for methodological purposes – successes. Presumably many of the 10,000 hoped for New Churches will ‘fail?’ Let’s count the failures as well as the successes before ascribing qualitative statements to the strategy (i.e. ‘the most effective methodology on the planet of growing the Church.’)

Is there enough in the BBC – Netflix analogy to render it useful in deliberations on the future Vision and Strategy for the Church of England and specifically in relation to the relationship between the parish church and New Congregations, New Churches and Fresh Expressions. Clearly I think there is!

Let me end where I began: ‘I believe in Fresh Expressions, New Congregations, and Church Plants. I really do. But I also believe in the parish church. In fact I believe in it passionately.’ As a missionally minded parish priest I want nothing more than to see the church ‘grow in number and in holiness.’ I strongly believe, that a bigger church is capable of making a bigger difference (I am thoroughly Bayesian in this respect and in others too – let the reader understand!). I also believe that we are called on to be a humbler church and for me this implies being a more modest church, a church which places less stress on big round numbers, absolute statements, and false comparisons. If we are to be a compassionate church, one that takes seriously the well-being of its members (clergy and lay alike) we need to recognise that every part of the church faces serious challenges as the way ahead is discerned and, we need to be sympathetic to the fact that the parish church – as the ‘public service church’ – has nowhere to hide. It is duty bound to operate in the full glare of the Midday Sun.