Adaptive Leadership (Part I): What preaching can teach us about how to solve congregational conflicts (a guest post)
Over three decades, Dale Matherly has successfully led faith communities and not-for-profits in retiring debt, reorganizing governance structures, and developing leaders who transform their communities. Known as a leader, coach, mentor, and facilitator, Dale is frequently invited to help others realize their aspirations through speaking, teaching, and coaching.
Dale earned a M.A. in Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity from the University of Notre Dame, a M.Div. from Emory University, and a B.A. in history from Centre College, certificates as a Leadership Coach and Teach Leadership from Kansas Leadership Center, and ordination in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
*Please Note: Dale references components of The Sermon 52 Framework used at Backstory Preaching to craft effective sermons. You can purchase a 1-hour video introduction to the framework for just $27. Or we invite you to join us in Sermon Camp, where we learn and practice the framework in real time during Kickoff Week and then dive deeper into its application over subsequent weeks with the additional content and support.
“Adaptive Leadership consists of the learning required to address conflicts in the values people hold, or to diminish the gap between the values people stand for and the reality they face. ”
You practice Adaptive Leadership every day!
In fact, as I see it from my work with Backstory Preaching, preaching is Adaptive Leadership.
And so preaching can show us how to do other Adaptive Leadership work in our congregations.
Identifying VALUE conflicts or gaps when preaching
Here’s where I see parallel processes in preaching and adaptive leadership.
When doing sermon prep, I read the text for next Sunday’s sermon and fairly quickly I can identify what God does or who God is (a belief statement) and what I hope my listeners believe after hearing this Good News (a hope statement). What gets in the way of the Good News (the human condition) arrives in similar fashion.
This step requires more digging at times to get to the emotional drivers or mistaken beliefs.
Still, we can answer the question, “What is getting in the way to fully believe?”
This is the conflict between values or the gap between values and reality.
Resolving the gap in your sermon
Inviting folks into a resolution of that conflict or gap, then, is the ultimate work of the sermon.
At Backstory Preaching, we refer to this vision as the Invitation to Transformation.
The invitation describes a change of who we are and how we live. Usually, I find this work to be the most challenging work in sermon prep.
Because, let’s face it…change is difficult.
Articulating the invitation clearly and effectively requires us to take time to get clear about what the ends of the invitation are.
For an invitation to “land” with our listeners, it must possess specificity so people can see and are compelled to move towards this way of living the Good News.
That specificity requires me to dig deeper and listen to God more intently.
How to get specific about the Invitation to Transformation
I find slowing down and letting the work unfold here brings clarity to the sermon’s invitation to transformation.
Some questions that help me in this step include:
What promise of God is present in this text?
What emotions does this promise evoke?
Do I trust that promise? Why?
How does that trust shape me and my faith?
And then how does it shape others?
Now, I can begin describing the vision of God’s fulfilled promise in an invitational way.
So, we know the gap between the values of the Good News to which people aspire and the reality people live with.
Life in this gap is difficult. Yet, trust in the promises of God opens the path of transformation.
Congregational Life in the Gap
We know all too well the difficulties of this same kind of gap in congregational leadership.
Communication, finances, spiritual formation, youth programming, outreach ministries, and many others present us with a gap.
Often, we can quickly describe what God does or who God is and what gets in the way of making progress on the challenges we face (akin to a belief statement and the human condition).
But reconciling the congregation’s conflicting values around the “Promised Land”—the vision for how our congregational world might appear when the Good News heals our human condition—can be challenging.
Making progress requires us to spend more time getting specific about what that future looks like.
Because progress asks us to sign onto the same Invitation to Transformation.
Getting Specific About the Vision for congregational Transformation
I rush through this process at times.
I know the aspirational vision—the congregational transformation I can see in my heart and head—and assume everyone else can see the same vision.
But they cannot…because I have not described my aspirational vision clearly enough that it becomes their aspiration.
I have not issued a clear, compelling invitation to the same vision of transformation.
I find these and similar questions helpful as I try to describe the aspirational visions in my heart and head:
What’s important to me about this [topic]?
What’s my intention related to [topic]?
What’s the deeper purpose connected to this [topic]?
Ask a participant, “What’s important to you about this [topic]?” Then just listen!
What is worth our best efforts?
Slowing down and asking ourselves and others these questions is hard work.
If we are going to make progress living in the gap between our concerns and our aspirations, this hard work helps us get specific about the challenges standing in the way of our congregation’s transformation.
Just as when our sermon’s invitation to transformation lands with our listeners, our adaptive work within our congregation will be most successful when it possesses specificity—so people can see and are compelled to move towards this way of living the Good News.
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