Brain Bombs Archive

NEXT recently interviewed George Cladis, author of Leading the Team-Based Church, about his book and what he learned in the process of writing it. This book is the first in a series for 21st century church leaders copublished by Leadership Network and Jossey-Bass. Cladis is the senior pastor of Noroton Presbyterian Church in Darien, Connecticut. To order a copy of the book, call 800-956-7739 or contact your local bookstore.

For more excerpts from the interview with George Cladis, please check out NetFax, issue 120.

NEXT: What were the origins of the book?

Cladis: The origins were my own experience as a senior pastor and subsequent study of management in relation to Christian theology and worship. As the church I was serving began to grow and the size of our staff increased, I realized that I didn't have the tools to capably lead the staff. As I read about organizational and business reform that seemed to me to match biblical and theological themes, I saw parallels between certain things we believe in Christianity and the themes of the business and organizational reformers such as Peter Drucker and Margaret Wheatley. I became interested in probing into the links between organizational reform, and biblical and theological concepts. It seemed to me that the Church could benefit from many of these reforms and understanding of postmodern culture – as it relates to what we believe about God, Jesus Christ and the nature of the Church.

NEXT: You mentioned the growth in the size of your staff. What did you learn in that process?

Cladis: As the church was growing, we added staff on the basis of the skill and experience of the potential staff member matching the needs of the church. We didn't consider how we would build the community of the staff or how the various personalities of the people we were hiring would fit with the basic orientation of the church and its developing philosophy of ministry. While we hired people on the basis of credentials and experience, we made assumptions that everyone was on the same track about what we were trying to accomplish as a church. We were essentially creating "tents of ministry" or separate ministry centers with very capable leaders, but we weren't all on the same page trying to accomplish the same goals. The result was conflict and some of the staff departed in anger and it resulted in hurt all around. I personally felt a failure and wondered, "What did I miss? or "What did we miss as a church?" How could we create a staff community that works in greater harmony, rather than one resulting in that kind of conflict and pain?

NEXT: There is a belief on the part of some that the church has sold out to the consumer culture. How do you understand the culture in order to minister to the culture and yet not be owned by the culture?

Cladis: In the book I was walking a tightrope on this point. Pastors generally like to condemn culture as fallen and the need for the church to be countercultural, and I think this is always the case, particularly in obvious moral and ethical issues. However, I found that some of the cultural trends today actually seem to encourage a more biblical way of leading in the church. And there's a certain irony about that. This seems to be because Christendom is over. The church now needs to approach Western society -- really all of the world-- as a mission church so that we are all dressing like the culture we are in, learning the language so we can communicate in the vernacular, learning the music, etc. We need to be learning the very culture itself, not to become identified with it, but in order to draw people out of it and into the Kingdom.

NEXT: Were there any unexpected learnings for you in the process of writing the book?

Cladis: Yes. I thought theological conformity was the most important characteristic in choosing staff, provided the individual was personally mature and emotionally healthy. What I learned instead was that one's philosophy of ministry or practical way of carrying out ministry, is really more important. You can have theological diversity, to a degree, on a church staff and be in relative harmonious relationships if you have a matching philosophy of ministry. But if you have theological conformity and divergent views on the philosophy of ministry, it can spell disaster.

NEXT: What's the unasked question you want to answer?

Cladis: I think it is, "Come on, George, does this really work? You paint a beautiful picture of pericoretic fellowship, but the reality is that there's still a lot of disharmony and anger that's latent on church staff. Does this really work?" Yes. To state it negatively, the concepts and practical steps in the book really do work to manage dysfunction. To state it positively, one tries to create a deeper and more enriched community, which hopefully becomes more grace-filled and a little more honest. The problems of sabotaging ministries and backbiting and so on still exist to some degree, but if you practice the model in the book, I believe you minimize them and it's less likely you'll have a total meltdown. Sometimes when I speak on this topic at conferences, I'm introduced as an "expert in team ministry." The first thing I say is, "You know, that's like being introduced as an expert in parenting. Being a father of three teenage children, I know the difficulties of parenting and that no one really has all the answers." Building leadership communities and teams is just plain difficult.

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