Thinking Together

As I continue to read on the theme of collaborative thinking, a number of key themes do begin to emerge:

NUMBERS are important: The issue of numbers is an interesting one. The more people that are involved, the more "human resources" are available. On the other hand, the scale of the collaboration, particularly if it is voluntary, can result in a great imbalance in contribution between those who do a lot and those who do a little. Collaborative endeavours enable you to harvest the creativity of a large group of people - which is good - but there can be issues of management or governance for a larger group.

NETWORKING enhances collaboration: The networking of smaller groups is not just a convenient way of managing larger numbers. "Small Worlds Networks" provide increases in speed of communication and creativity. New ideas often emerge in the connections between smaller groups. It is the most connected, rather than the most intelligent, who often seem to be the most creative.

SELF-ORGANISATION is essential: Attempts to organise or manage collaboration often end in failure. Teams need to set their own goals and work our how they are to function by themselves. This can be a challenge for larger networks and requires a particular approach to leadership.

Learning takes place in CONVERSATION often resulting in individual action: Collaborative organisations seem not to make decisions very often. Meetings are essential but they tend to take the form of conversations in which ideas, facts and other information is shared. Change takes place at and individual and collective level resulting in consequent individual action. This raises the question of how group decisions can be enforced - and on what level collaborative action is possible.

We need a DUAL ECONOMY: Collaboration works best when it takes place on a voluntary basis. On the other hand, we also need a dependable and equitable "resource" economy to provide infrastructure - and basic human needs. This suggests a dual economy of paid and unpaid individuals co-existing in a creative tension. Such a dual economy is already emerging in many spheres of life, including media, information sciences and the Church. Collaboration makes failure cheap - which is great for creativity - but failure is not an option when it comes to individual or organisational survival...

TECHNOLOGY affects collaboration: It is important not to overlook the impact of our technology on our ability to think, share and act together. This has always been the case, but the current explosion of "social tools" is transforming our ability to collaborate.

SPIRITUALITY should not be overlooked: I am using the term "spirituality" here in a fairly loose way - perhaps in a similar way to the term "world view". Our understanding of the basic realities of human existance and the way we view the world can have a marked impact on our ability to collaborate and the way we understand collaboration. Many spiritual traditions regard each human being as containing, in some way, an expression of the divine. Some world views regard human beings as "fallen" - others as instinct-driven animals. Our spiritualities are therefore significant for the way we work together.

These, I think, are the big brush themes that I need to explore further. What do you think? Have I missed anything?

What are ministers?

At tonight's team meeting we may be discussing the role of ordained ministers. Here are some possible images that we could use to describe the people we sometimes call "ministers in pastoral appointment", "incumbents", "parish clergy", "vicars" or (more normally in ecumenical contexts) "ministers".

A Spider at the Centre of a Web: The minister can be the person who is in control of all the activities that take place in a church. She knows everything that's going on and has a finger in every pie. She belongs to every group and committee and attends every event.

While this image may suggest a very positive "hands on" approach it is enormously controlling, and sets a limit on the ability of the church to grow and develop - according to the limits of the minister in terms of capacity, skill and vision.

Nevertheless, this is what many of our ministers do - and it is an approach that can generate a certain amount of growth... but is it right for the WVEP?

The Octopus: The Octopus is the more pastoral equivalent of the spider. He may not be "in control" as such, but does have an arm for each member of the congregation - ready to reach out and embrace them in a loving and caring hold.

This is a popular and very "care" orientated approach to ministry and many clergy operate on this level. Their church is a community of people who they hold together through personal pastoral contact - but the church is only as strong as the hold of the octopus - and only as large as the number of arms will allow...

Captain Kirk: I liked the image of minister as starship captain when I was a curate - actually I though I was Will Riker, but there you go...

The starship captain has a mission to fulfil and is part of a wider star fleet to whom she is answerable. She has crew rather than passengers, and is repsonsible to care for her crew - but ultimately has a mission to perform.

This is a more "managerial" model and probably reflects the way many clergy see themselves as "leaders" of missionary communities. It's got potential, but it is a bit hierarchical and non-collaborative (even if you take a Next Gen approach).

In contemporary life it would be hard to gather the kind of disciplined community that a starship crew might suggest. Our churches are more liquid and random. Shame though, I do quite fancy the uniform...

Critical Friend: In many ways, we need clergy to be involved but less in control. The term "critical friend" suggests someone who is involved in a positive way but has something positive to add - particularly in terms of comment and direction. As clergy become fewer in numbers, we need a slightly more hands off image - and this may be a good one.

Or we could go for something slightly more challenging...

Auditor: The concept of an auditor may sound like a scary one at first, but actually it could be helpful. The minister as auditor is required to examine the life and work of a church community, record the achievements, point out problems and suggest areas of development.

The advantage of this image is that it reminds us that churches have responsibilities to God, the law and the wider church. The disadvantage is that it makes the minister a slightly more distant figure...

Jedi Knight: The Jedi Knight is not a leader. He does not belong to the local community and he isn't the only person with a role to play in any situation, but...

...he does have important skills and abilities and also acts as an ambasador or representative of the wider community - the Jedi Council or Republic.

This is quite a helpful image for a minister since it reminds us that the minister belongs to the wider church and also that he offers specific skills, abilities and gifts. He may not be "the" leader, but he does have a leadership role based on these abilities.

Lolly Pop Lady: The minister may not be the one who generates the vision, or be the one who makes it happen, but there is an important role of empowerment to take on.

The Lolly Pop Lady shows us where it's safe to cross and makes sure that the trafic lets us through. The minister (as "crossing patrol person") has the task of helping us to get to where we want to be - by showing us the way and making sure that those who might stop us have been negotiated with...

Dancing Bee: Collaborative ministry communities are usually self-organising - in that they don't need a spider, octopus or captain to make their life happen. The minister may, therefore, not be the centre of that community but a member of it.

In bee colonies, the community self-organises to gather pollen, produce honey and nurture the young. Each member is an independent being but works collaboratively with the others according to a set of predifined rules - and the whole thing works!

When explorer bees are out looking for good sources of pollen, those who discover it carry out a complex dance which other bees then pick up. Before long, the message has spread around the hive-mind and the efforts of the bees are rediriected.

Ministers are often ordinary bees who catch the catch the dance and pass it on? Is one call for a minister to be to an explorer who listens for the voice of God and dances?

What do you think ministers are? Clean answers only please!

Working Together

Planning for a Sunday morning service rarely begins with a moment of inspiration - usually it starts with a list of tasks and issues which need to be dealt with. This morning's service at All Saints' was one of those. Here is a cut down list of objectives to be achieved on this occasion:

• It's the first Sunday of the month so it needs to be an all age service with children included throughout - not too long so that there is time for coffee and no-one gets bored...
• There are some new wedding kneelers which need to be dedicated...
• There are two families coming to be welcomed before baptism...
• There's some lent material which the team have produced so that each service in Lent can be a kind of "Bible Study on a Sunday"... The theme for this week is choices...
  
• Peter's doing music so the hymns must work on a guitar...
• and so on...

When I was taught to lead worship and preach I was encouraged to think about a single idea and how that may be communicated. Leading worship on a Sunday morning is often more a case of knitting together a number of disparate strands to give the illusion of coherence...

Actually I think we did quite well this morning. I worked with John RJ and we did a bit of a double act. We focussed on the theme of choices and wove the various strands together to produce something which felt fairly meaningful and had some positive feedback. Well done us!

The double act worked very well and is always a good thing to do. It demonstrates team work, collaboration, and shared ministry - and provides a good mechanism for using the thoughts and talents of more than one person. It does require a certain amount of improvisation and trust, however, which is also a good thing...

At lunch time I attended the planning meeting for St Mary's Shenley 11 O'clock service. They really didn't need me there - which I think is basically a good thing. They are well on the way with collaborative ministry and are basically "self-organising". It was good to spend some time with them however and it was a good meeting...

Fresh Expressions and Church Leavers

On the third and final day of the Local Ministry Consultation Stuart Murray Williams spoke to us about church leavers and emerging churches and what these phenomena may tell us about the Church.

Through interviews and questionnaires, church leavers tell us that they are leaving church because they long for a more authentic expression of Christian faith and community. Emerging churches are experiments in creating the possibility and space for change.

The future of the Church will be complex but it must both respond to the message of those who are leaving and reflect the hope of those who experimenting...

And then, of course, there's reality - which is always somewhere in between...

Back to the evenings...

Tonight was a fairly familiar (pre-sabbatical) evening: two meetings on one night! I met with the Archdeacon and Will and Heather from Woughton to talk about the new appointment there. I then popped in on the All Saints Worship Team. As part of this meeting they discussed my sabbatical report. They raised the issue of collective leadership and gave themselves a big (deserved) pat on the back for being quite good at it. I pointed out that the problem with collective leadership and collaborative ministry is that those in authority can quickly take them away if they choose to. The LSM group has reflected on a number of stories about churches who had been doing well until a change of "leader" produced rapid (and undesirable) change. The challenge for ASL and the Watling Valley will be to find ways of maintaining collaboration through future changes of clergy... This issue is the central motivation for finding a more structural way of supporting collaborative ministry through LSM or another appropriate "scheme".

8. Local Ministry

The theme of Local Ministry was always going to be a key element of my sabbatical. I won't bother to list all the blog entries that mention it...

At the end of my sabbatical I simply want to reflect that local / mutual / shared / total / collaborative forms of ministry are absolutely key for the future of the church and that I will continue to prioritise this area of work over the years ahead.

The Folly of Teams...

The concept of "team" and "teamwork" has been high on the agenda for many of us during the past few years. "Team" has become a top priority and has been seen as an antidote to hierarchy and a way of encouraging a more "collaborative" way forward, but...

...there are a few problems with teams (and groups) - particularly when it comes to decision making: Firstly, teams can indulge in groupthink as "popular", "safe", "established" or "familiar" approaches are prefered; Secondly, there is a tendency for teams to talk themselves into more polarised opinion - In other words, once a team begins to move in a particular direction, members supports and encourage each other to share the same stance - The more "popular" a decision becomes, the more "true" it can seem; Thirdly, the need for "belonging" discorages eccentrics and radicals - who may actually have something important to say; Fourthly, teams can easily be dominated by people with higher status, who speak more, or who speak first... In other words the opinions of the most highly ranked, and the most vocal, will seem more significant than those of the quieter and more reflective members.

This may sound negative, but it's worth thinking about, since it's backed up by research.

Teams are very good at tasks and projects. When you're trying to achieve an objective it is far better to have a functional team - but teams are less good at decision making and leadership, although they can have a role in managing or fascilitating leadership and decision-making processes. As far as I can see the best decsions are made when a collective and collaborative process has been used - the more people involved the better!

I've been reflecting a bit on the way the LSM Project Group has functioned over the past year and a bit. Some may well say (with some justification) that it's been somewhat chaotic, with different people involved at different stages as the discussions have meandered backwards and forwards over a range of related topics. It's been exilarating, ceratinly, and a great group to be part of - but a terrible example of "getting things done". I think it would be fair to say it's been a rubbish "team", but...

...the strength of this conversation was the collective and diverse nature of discussions - I never knew where things were going to go next - or who was going to lob in which theological handgrenade! As convener it was a real learning experience to ride the collective thought flow... It's a mirracle (in some ways) that we produced anything coherent at all - although I suspect, in fact, that the results benefited greatly from such a broad range of contributions...

It was a rubbish "team" but a fantastic process! A really creative group of people who were absolutely brilliant at tackling a very tricky issue!

As the Project Group moves into a more formal phase I suspect we need to widen the circle of vision and reflection rather than tighten things up. The success of collaborative ministry in Milton Keynes may well depend on the use of a collaborative methodology - but where will the Church in MK lead us? I wonder?...

The Wisdom of Crowds

Why the Many are Smarter than the Few
JAMES SUROWIECKI

This is a wonderful book on collective intelligence filled with a great deal of good sense and practical wisdom. Surowieki's main argument is that a crowd of people with great diversity in ability and knowledge, can consistently outperform the experts - as long as they are able to think with relative independence and there is a system for aggregating their collective mind.

The three conditions essential for good collective wisdom are diversity, independence and decentralisation - of a particular form.

Surowieki begins with the illustration of a scientist in 1906 who was convinced that 'normal' people were not able to make inteligent decisions. He attended a farmers exhibition and watched a group of people bet on the weight of an ox. He was convinced that the sum of their 'average' minds would provide evidence for the weakness of the 'herd'. He gathered the betting skips together and was surprised to find that the mean average guess was 1,197 pounds. The ox actually weighed 1,198 pounds - pretty close!

This is, of course, a fairly basic example, but the book is rich with theory and stories, ranging from psycological and sociological experiments to real world examples drawn from business, inteligence and nature. I am particulalry taken by the observation that a large group of people with limited knowledge can produce better and more consistent results than a few experts.

This is a good book which I have found very helful in my continuing reflections on collaboration, mutuality and the church...

It brings to mind the silly little exercise we used to do with congregations when we asked them, during a service, to list three things that they would like to see happen in their church within five years. This may seem like a daft exercise but it fulfils Surowieki's criteria. The whole bredth of the congregation were able to contribute, and their responses were fully independent, since there was no discussion and the small pieces of paper were gathered in without being seen. The results could then be grouped in themes to indicate the common mind of the church. Once again, you may say this sounds insignificant, but I would like to point out that the Watling Valley churches who did this in 2000-1 produced the list of six partnership values which still seem incredibly relevant eight years later!

The thing that has really got my mind spinning is that this concept of collective inteligence may be really helpful in developing a theory of collaborative discernment. The issue of discernment (particularly of new ministers) has been raised locally as we move towards a more collaborative appraoch. Who should decide which local people are called to take up particular roles. Clearly the issue of gifts is highly significant, but who is responsible for identifying them? Should people self-select? Do we trust the clergy to do it for us? Does discernment only work if it's done by people on the outside? Do we need a diocesan selection conference for vergers and coffee makers?

In some ministerial models it is common to present people with a list of members and ask them to indicate which individuals are called for particular roles - or ask them to put names on a piece of paper and drop them in box - after prayer, of course. Is this merely an exercise in consultation or is something more significant taking place? Can a congregation, filled with the Spirit, opperate as a collective inteligence, thus producing an authentic piece of group wisdom?

In some places the "nomination" from the congregation is then processed by a central panel who pick people who fit with their own objectives. This would be one way of processing the information - similar to the process used to develop Linux.

A more authentic way of "agragating" the information may be for a co-ordinating panel to approach the most frequently identified individuals and invite them to explore their call further through a process of mutual discernment, further exploration, formal interview or election - depending on the post. Surowieki is correct to say that the more people who are involved in the agragation process the better.

Interesting... I'm going to think some more about some of the strands in this book. It has a lot to say about leadership, decision-making, group processes and collaboration. It's a very useful theoretical tool.

Women Bishops and Collaborative Leadership

I watched some of the reports on the General Synod vote with mixed feelings. While I have no problem with the concept of women bishops, I do feel a little uncomfortable about some of the language being used.

On women bishops (as such) I am convinced the Paul has a point - in Christ there is no male or female, Jew nor Gentile, etc... And I can't see why we need to wait for universal acceptance - there are other branches of the Universal Church who don't have them - there are others that do... The same applies to other "innovations". We need to do what we think is right.

Having said all this, I am uncomfortable with the idea of women (or men) who are seeking positions where other people can "serve under" them. Is this a debate about power and status? Are there women priests out there who would like to join men at the top of the clerical pyramid? I hope not, but this was the way it was presented on TV.

The issue for me is the model of episcope we are seeking to develop. In an age when we are aiming to build collaborative leadership we need people who want to "serve with" rather than "lord over". I don't care whether our bishops are male of female, but I do care about the ministry they model.

Collaborative Ministry

by David Robertson

It's not often that I find a book that I think other people must read, but this is one of them. David Robertson has written a classic, which explains in very simple and straightforward ways what collaborative ministry is, why it's important and how you might develop it in an ordinary church.

He begins by exploring some of the theory behind collaboration contrasting the classic pyramid approach to leadership with the "Jesus model" which puts Christ at the centre of a circle. He says, "If Jesus is replaced with the minister, then the church is proclaiming, in effect, that Jesus died on the cross but never rose from the dead."

This is one of the finest critiques of current leadership thinking that I have yet seen and challenges the current habit of viewing incumbent clergy as CEOs, leading the church in mission. The minister is one amongst many disciples gathered around the risen Christ, sometimes s/he leads, sometimes s/he follows... This is a view of leadership that emphasises faith, gifts and community.

Having established what he thinks CM is, Robertson then takes us on a journey through Acts, demonstrating how God always act collaboratively. One example of this involved Peter (appropriate for this weekend) who was involved in a collaborative journey with God and Cornelius as the Church opened its doors to the Gentiles...

Robertson also looks at images of priesthood, marriage, temple, body and covenant, demonstrating how our misunderstanding of scripture has tended to warp our concepts of leadership and church.

The final section explores how collaborative ministry might evolve in practice. He takes us through the development of CM in a classic Anglican parish (which can be extrapolated to other contexts). The journey to CM begins when the minister takes the lead (since only the minister has the power to do so). This is followed by a period of learning, moaning, and collaborative leadership - which eventually morphs into true all member collaborative ministry. The end result of the process is usually a minister with more time but less prestige... A lot of this was fairly familiar, but good to see in print.

As I say this is a book that should be read. Every member of the All Saints' Servant Leadership Team should own a copy, and the St Frideswide leadership team, and the Watling Valley Ministry Team, etc, etc...

There is a danger that Collaborative Ministry is just another cheap phrase that is dropped into mission plans without being thought through properly. It can easily be confused with delegation, or shared ministry, but it is more dynamic and more challenging. David Robertson's book sets this out very clearly.

My one criticism of this book is that it doesn't go far enough in thinking about how churches might be structured and ministry developed when there is not one vicar per church. He assumes a fairly traditional inherited model of church - which is backed up by Anglican rules and regs. Unfortunatley we are already moving into an age when this can no longer be assumed, and may infact need to be challenged. How many rural churches have a resident vicar? How should a fresh expression or emerging church model collaborative leadership?

David Robertson has written a really super book which will be invaluable to anyone who really wants to get stuck in to collaborative ministry, but further thought is probably needed if small and emergent communities are to reap the benefits...