Managing a Church is Indeed a Challenge - Essay Example

Project 507020 Module No. TH5202 Prof Topic: Case Study with Critical Reflection  This essay explore strategies on how to manage a church usingthe theory of “transformational servant leadership” within the context of Christian tradition in relation to the changes that may transpire in the process of church’s growth and development. It will also explicate professional and transformational Christian leadership in managing conflicts in a complex pastoral and organizational situation. Managing a church is indeed a challenge. There are administrative matters to attend; pastoral concerns to grace with presence; capability –buildings for Christian brethren to conduct for their growth; and spiritual formation or education to focus about, among others. Anent to these responsibilities, the church is also constituted with peoples of varying educational level, cultural roots, philosophy of life, political paradigms, social influences, strata in the community, familial orientations, standards of relations and their ‘otherness’ including the walls they built or their varying perceptions to almost everything. Ministers or pastors will deal with them everyday with their differences although they may share commonalities. At such context, church ministers and leaders would possibly be handling varied and conflicting responses whenever there are radical structural changes that will disturb the normative processes and operation of the church such as conversing or adding missionary functions to pastoral works (Adair, 2005). Conflicting expectations and assumptions may also get in the way as tension mounts in work-situation or if there are changes in its theological frameworks of service. This situation is further exacerbated with rapid cultural and social changes which can trigger defensive or bewildering reactions due to sudden shift on unfamiliar systems. Sometimes, Ministers will have difficulty convincing people whose reactions are too radical and confrontational, apparently due to fixity of Christian’s symbolical systems or often due to peoples’ fear to change itself (Bayes, Sledge, Holbrook & Rylands, 2006). Often, reactions can trigger conflict situations and if not managed well, could escalate to a level that will negatively impact to the church itself. In such context, there is indeed a need to improve the capacity of ministers and pastors to lead effectively by espousing dialogues and discourses to effectively communicate developmental goals for pastoral and ministerial works; promote peacebuilding within and outside the church’s framework; uphold conflict management and transformation to prevent its escalation to violence or to devastating impacts; and to empower church leaders and community by equipping them with skills, knowledge and tools as conflict-managers. In such a way, critical understanding on the theories of transformative leadership and conflict management will be inculcated into them as essential theological frameworks of Christianity, expressed in theological traditions or in the teachings of liberation theology. It is also perceived that attaining deeper knowledge on transformative leadership could help bring in appreciation on some strategies on how to manage responses to change; in bringing church growth or in determining better patterns in the performance of church-based services and leadership. 1. Transformative and Servant Leadership Transformative leadership (Tichy & Ulrich, 2008) requires leaders’ deep awareness on managing accountability and in exercising its moral ascendancy to lead the church’s flock professionally. As such, they do deeper contemplation to reflect on experiences and gain lessons from their journey with their respective Christian followers. Contemplation is essential in all religious denomination—whether in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. This is because pastoral leadership necessitates depth of understanding on existential meanings, experiential realities and peoples’ behaviors in relation to how they translate their faith whilst building interfaith relationships in the larger community. Transformative leadership (Terry, 2003; Bass, 1999 & Beyer, 1999) sees the importance of conflict prevention, drawing analysis on conflicts and threats, determining on how to prevent the escalation of conflict into violence and motivating the faithful to craft recommendation to meet the challenges of managing the church. This relates to how prophet Nehemiah responded to conflict situations by motivating his flocks in the face of cultural distractions; “demonstrating openness in meetings; showing integrity by not demanding the rights of his predecessors; expressing commitment to Godly principles and the discernment to submit to God’s will the “traps laid against him.” Transformative leadership also means “caring for persons through institutional mediations. This is maybe “complex,” powerful, impersonal, sometimes incompetent and corrupt, however if appropriately managed, can contribute in developing creative opportunity where all “regenerative forces” can perform their respective functions (Greenleaf, 2011). Moreover transformative leadership (Bass, 1999 & Nur, 1998) also relates to “servant leadership” because to transform the believers, leaders must serve them first before they could lead them through institutional services.  Servant leadership “encourage trust, collaboration, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power” (Today.org, 2002). Spears (2002) explained that servant leadership is the ability to use the art of “listening, empathizing, healing, awareness-raising, persuading, conceptualizing, ability for foresight, stewardship, commitment to growth of people, and in building community” (Spears, 2002). Leaders therefore have responsibilities with its followers, but of course with certain preferential option to serve more the needs of the disadvantaged or the worst of the society. Servant leadership is a vehicle of change (Patterson, 2003) for both “personal and institutional growth”; to enable community empowerment and service; and enabling environments of trust as platform for collaboration and in meaningful spiritual formation. This means that followers make use of valuing and idealism (Buchen,1998) in achieving influence, exercising power, and in managing the church systems. Transformational leadership is different with transactional leadership because the latter demand from members to solely follow the leaders (DuBrin, 2010); being irreverent means to be punished for being unable to follow prescribed standards. As such, there is little space for members to improve or be satisfied with their works because they are often subjected to corrective measures—an act that often results to demoralization and loss of self-esteem (Rowold, 2008). Transactional leaders manage by exception instead of rewarding them with incentives for great productivity. This style of leadership is effective only in short-term tasks, but not in institutions with strategic work-plans. This is because managing a church needed to inspire members and leaders using the lens of shared vision in achieving the goal and to value the initiatives (Bass, 1990). This feature of leadership can only be gleaned in transformational leadership. 2. Leadership and Power of Communication Transformational servant leadership necessitates communicative skills that are “peaceful in words and in meaning”, hence, articulated or written with clarity (Castells, 2009). Both leaders and church followers should realize that communication is a tool for understanding to resolve tremendous confusion and so as not to miss the opportunity of appreciating facts and interpretation of events or social phenomenon (Laclau, 2000 & Wilkins, 2000). Often, parties run in conflict with each other or with church-leaders because they either do not understand or they are immensely confused. Person could only successfully understand changes and issues when parties get the message across and when thoughts are conveyed effectively. Failure to communicate well means breakdown of communicative structures and such will hinder development and achievement of desired goals (Laclau, 2000)—and, may negatively impact personally and professionally. It is therefore imperative that church leaders weigh-in the circumstances surrounding one’s communications either in “situational and cultural context.” Servant-leaders must also endeavor remove communication barriers, though such may get in the way often within the communicative process. 3. Conflict transformation in church True, conflict is a natural process toward development. Church leaders must however be equipped with tools for conflict transformation and resolution (Goetschel, 1995). This means that they must harness their skills for mediation, human rights promotion, capability building and confidence-building measures (Goetschel, 1995). They must also be conducting empirical research and sustainably study situations too to systematically use conflict assessments in decision-makings (Lederach, 2003). They need to become reflective professionals “in the practice, design, and evaluation of a variety of conflict resolution applications (Allard, Goldblatt, Kemball, Kendrick, Millen, & Smith, 2007). For isn’t it a Christian aspiration to endeavor to have inner peace (Michaelson, 2006) and to be at peace with the community or one’s brethren. Hence, it is indeed imperative for pastors and leaders to craft pragmatic approaches (Tian, 2006) to solve problems inherent in human social relations and in managing the church. As images of Christ, they must utilize wide array of strategies that achieve goals nonviolently, non-litigiously and ergo, peacefully. 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