Welcome to My Study
I’m finally ready to share my dissertation data as promised to all who took time out of the busyness and demands of ministry to complete my survey, making it possible for me to collect the data needed to better understand the complex factors that influence clergy leadership effectiveness in my beloved United Methodist Church. It took me a LONG time to emotionally prepare to share this with you, as it is deeply personal and, in some ways, painful. I apologize for that delay. For one thing, the data analyzed for this study simply does not support the loud claims that the church has been making in recent quadrennia about leadership effectiveness. These are the voices stating as indisputable fact that the vitality of the church is (nearly) solely the product of pastoral leadership. Most commonly, this is heard stated something like, “It all rises and falls on leadership.” These voices boldly claim that effective leaders serve churches that produce fruit and that ineffective leaders serve churches that are declining in attendance as well as floundering in all other measures of church vitality..and yet the data actually provide many exceptions to this claim. It is probably easier in many ways to focus (almost exclusively) on pastoral leadership than to confront some of the hard realities of our current situation. Clearly, effective pastoral leadership is ONE factor that affects measures of church vitality - that is a certainty, but it is one of MANY systemic and situational factors that affects whether or not a congregation will grow and be healthy.
I had totally bought into this mindset and I’ve have been blessed to work with some of the very best and finest in the field. The principles are solid and their work is powerful, yet the principles can only work when supported by a healthy system. In fact, they HAVE worked in regions where the entire system was revitalized. Accountability and support are both necessary in the church, and it needs to happen at ALL levels, not just for clergy under appointment in the local church. In my own ministry, after employing “growing healthy church” principles, when the conflict came (as it always does in any change initiative in the church), I felt abandoned, unsupported, labeled as “ineffective” by the “powers that be” and, quite frankly, just wanted to quit. I was completely defeated. I had done EXACTLY what I learned to be best practices in the mission of making disciples for the transformation of the world, but it wasn’t good enough. I know I’m not alone, especially after poring over the written (aka qualitative) responses of the pastors who completed this survey. A number of pastors expressed how they feel like scapegoats in a declining denomination. My heart truly goes out to each one and breaks for those who just couldn’t endure that conflict and pain of transformational ministry in a struggling system. Imagine, if you will, how many promising clergy have left the ministry feeling simply defeated because they were convinced that they had somehow failed the church and failed God.
Typically, if a researcher encounters a 25% response rate, she is ecstatic. I was completely overjoyed to find out that the response rate of ordained elders in the Susquehanna Conference (my colleagues) completing this study was 46%. I can’t begin to express my gratitude. My advisor, Dr. David Passmore, and I received numerous phone calls and emails from individuals who were not ordained elders but desperately wanted their voices to be heard. This is simply unheard of in the world of research. In fact, in over 30 years of advising Ph.D. students, Dr. Passmore has never encountered something like this (people typically don’t like to complete surveys, as you can imagine). Clearly, voices are crying out to be heard, valued, honored...clearly there’s also so much more to explore (and so little time).
So, what does this all mean? The biggest "a ha" moment for me during this research was that the strongest relationship (which is not the same as a predictor, as correlation does not equal causation) between church vitality and measures of clergy leadership effectiveness is salary. A church's health is related to the CHURCH and its resources much more so than clergy leadership. Healthy churches tend to have steady trends of health and growth. There isn’t a strong correlation between any measure of clergy leadership effectiveness and the clergy leader except salary (the higher the salary, the more likely that the church will be healthy - not exactly earth-shattering). As you read through the information here, I ask only that you faithfully share what the data represents. Be sure to check out the implications and study overview information listed on the homepage of this site and the link to my full dissertation. Be sure to also click on the “Qualitative Data” link to read some of the outpouring of voices crying out in the wilderness. Let us prepare the way of the Lord!
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:3-5 NRSV)
