This afternoon, I drove out to a nearby nursing home to visit with a long-time member of the congregation who has Alzheimer’s disease. He just recently move into the nursing home.

He was quite talkative today. When he talked, some of the phrases made sense, and sometimes even whole sentences made sense. Mostly, though, I paid attention to his body language and his facial expressions and his hand gestures, and I paid attention to the rhythms of his speech. Maybe I couldn’t quite understand what he was trying to say — maybe he couldn’t quite piece together whatever it was he was trying to express — but you could get a sort of general sense of it.

I will readily admit that I glanced at my wristwatch while he was talking. It’s been a difficult week at church this week. Our new Director of Religious Education called me Sunday to resign for health reasons. A key member of the congregation died on Saturday night. I have a memorial service to plan, I have to scramble to put together a church school program for this Sunday, I don’t have any time. I glanced at my wristwatch, saw I had been there in the nursing home for twenty minutes.

But I didn’t leave. I was enjoying this conversation. I like this man, he’s a sweet, gentle guy. Many conversations don’t make much sense, if you consider the content of the words alone. In many conversations, what’s really important is the simple fact that two human beings are paying attention to each other; and that’s something that isn’t carried by the words of the conversation.

We continued having that gentle conversation there in the nursing home for a full hour, and then I really did have to go. It was a good conversation, even if we didn’t say much in terms of words.

Thanks to Rex and Jay, a good discussion on philosophy and religion has developed in the comments for the September 7th entry [link]. After spending a couple of hours reading, pondering, looking up texts in Peirce, Rorty, Habermas, and West, and writing and responding, I didn’t have time to write anything else today except this link directing you to those comments!

This afternoon, I got a telephone call from another minister. She had heard from a mutual minister friend that I was a good person to ask about going into search for a new congregation. I told her that it was sadly true, I do indeed know a great deal about searching for a new congregation because I spent three years in search, made lots of mistakes, got lots of practice, and finally wound up in a great congregation. I gave her some advice, and just for fun I’m listing six pieces of that advice here — for the amusement of other ministers, Search Committees, and those interested laypeople who would like an insider’s view of the current search process in the Unitarian Universalist Association.

1. Sell yourself.

The settlement process for Unitarian Universalist ministers is now totally open and transparent. That’s a polite way of saying that the settlement process is basically a open marketplace. In a marketplace, you have to sell yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to use high-pressure, dishonest sales tactics — when I worked in sales, I found low-key relationship-building to be my best sales tool — but I don’t care how good a minister you are, if you don’t sell yourself, these days you’re unlikely to get a good job.

Everything else I say follows from this first premise.

2. Check out the congregations that other ministers are ignoring.

This year, as is true every year, there will be a few congregations that are considered desirable by lots of ministers in search. If it’s considered a “prominent” congregation, i.e., medium-big or large with a substantial salary package near a desirable metropolitan area, you’ll be competing with thirty or forty other ministers for the vacant position. But remember that many of these “prominent” congregations are more dysfunctional and soul-destroying than the less “prominent” congregations. When I was in sales, I looked for the markets other salespeople were ignoring — they snickered at me, but I wound up being top gross and top net in my department. Go thou and do likewise. Check your ego at the door and look for a less “prominent” congregation where you can do some good ministry. The brass ring is not a “prominent” congregation, it’s a congregation where you will grow and thrive and have a good time.

3. Look at congregations in the Midwest.

The Midwest is one of those markets the others are ignoring. Yet from personal experience, I can tell you that ministers are not respected and religion is culturally unimportant on the West Coast, and in the Northeast people often take their churches and ministers for granted — whereas in the Midwest ministers are held in relatively high respect in the surrounding culture. Sure, there are anti-clerical and dysfunctional congregations in the Midwest, but on average people just care about churches and ministers in the Midwest in a way that never happens in New England or California. (I am told this is also true for the Southern United States.)

4. The materials you produce at each stage of the search process function as different kinds of sales tools.

Of course you should always be scrupulously honest about yourself and your goals for your ministry. Having said that, here’s my take on how to sell yourself at different stages of the search process:

• The ministerial record that you put up on the Unitarian Universalist Association Web site is really a sales brochure that should be designed to invite congregations to exchange packets with you.
• Your printed packet is an in-depth sales tool that should be designed to attract “live prospects” while filtering out casual inquiries.
• The telephone interview should help you build relationships and develop trust, to the end that…
• …you can ask tough questions and bare your soul (as needed) during the face-to-face pre-candidating interview.

5. Create a good Web site as your add-on sales tool.

When they check you out, Search Committees will search for your name on one or more of the major Web search engines. Thus your own Web site can be a secret add-on sales tool for you. Make yourself a Web site containing a selection of your best sermons and other written work. Get someone who knows how to create a clean, simple design for you. Find out how search engines find and rank Web sites [link]. (By the way, your own domain name and a year’s worth of Web hosting will cost about $55 — I use this service.) In a competitive market, you need all the sales tools you can get — go create that Web site now.

6. Set goals for each stage of the search process by working backwards.

The best salespeople are heavily goal-oriented. Your ultimate goal is to find the best possible congregation for your skills and talents as a minister. So let’s work backwards from that. Ideally, then, you want to have at least two job offers so you have a choice. So you should aim for three “pre-candidating weekends” (face-to-face, weekend-long interviews). That means you want at least five or six telephone interviews. That means you should exchange packets with eight to ten congregations. And that means you should identify fifteen congregations on the ministerial settlement Web site that you will click on to ask them to review your online ministerial record.

There you have it — six pieces of advice for minister who are in search this year. Just remember that this is free advice, and therefore worth exactly what you paid for it.

Back on August 26, I asked the question “If you’re a minister, are you more likely to be mistaken for a corporate executive, or for a holy person?” [link] I didn’t have a firm answer when I wrote that post, but I think I’m getting closer to an answer of some kind.

As a minister myself, I tend to work more as a manager than as a holy person. But I’m not much like a corporate executive. Instead, I’m much more like the manager of a small non-profit organization. Managers of small non-profits typically have to be generalists, able to do a little bit of everything. Managers of small non-profits typically have to rely heavily on volunteer resources, because in a small non-profit there’s never enough money to accomplish the organization’s mission. Managers of small non-profits have to be consensus-builders, because unlike a corporate executive managers of small non-profits can’t wield nearly unlimited authority over volunteers and members (and often not even over paid staff whom they supervise). Thus, I have a significantly different set of management skills from the typical corporate executive. You could roughly sum up the differences by saying I am not in an authoritarian, hierarchical relationship with “underlings” and “superiors.” I’m definitely not a corporate executive.

But I’m not trying to be the holy person, either. Why not? Because in a liberal church, everyone should be striving to be holy. Here we can turn to the concept of the “prohethood of all believers” as defined by Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams:

We have long held to the idea of the priesthood of all believers, the idea that all believers have direct access to the ultimate resources of the religious life and that every believer has the responsibility of achieving an explicit free faith for free persons. As an element of this radical laicism we need also a firm belief in the prophethood of all believers. The prophetic liberal church is not a church in which the prophetic function is assigned merely to the few. The prophetic liberal church is the church in which persons think and work together to interpret the signs of the times in the light of their faith, to make explicit through discussion the epochal thinking that the times demand. The prophetic liberal church is the church in which all members share the common responsibility to attempt to foresee the consequences of human behavior (both individual and institutional), with the intention of making history in place of merely being pushed around by it. Only through the prophetism of all believers can we together foresee doom and mend our common ways. from The Prophethood of All Believers, ed. George Kimmich Beach (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), pp. 102-103.

If prophets are holy people in the Western tradition — and certainly we would want to claim holiness for such prophets as Moses, Elijah, and Jesus of Nazareth — then Adams would argue that in the liberal church it’s not up to the minister to be the holy person. It’s up to every member of that congregation to be part of the prophethood of all believers.

If that’s the case — and I believe that is the case — then my job is to facilitate the members of the congregation becoming part of the prophethood. That’s the kind of skill a good manager should have, setting up institutional structures, and giving individual coaching at times, in order that each person may participate as fully as possible in the prophethood of all believers. I suppose you could say that the minister/manager is then a holy person too, because he or she must also find a place in the prophethood of all believers; but the minister/manager is not the holy person.

Of course, you might argue that you don’t like my definition of what a holy person is, because when you say “holy person” you want someone saintly like Mother Teresa or as meditative as a Zen master. But I still believe in the holiness of all believers, however you define holiness. It’s not my job as a minister to be the holiest person around. It’s my job to help the religious community be a place where everyone can achieve holiness.

Manager or holy person? Both, really, I suppose. But manager first and foremost.

While I was reading up on alternative worship, I happened to run across the following. It hit home for me….

In his book Dining with the Devil, Os Guiness writes of an alarming observation made by a Japanese businessman: “Whenever I meet a Buddhist leader, I meet a holy man. Whenever I meet a Christian leader, I meet a manager.”…

As CEO pastors, we are taught to lead the church as we would a corporation. We sit behind desks in our offices writing out vision and mission statements and lists of our church’s top ten values. We form management teams and executive steering teams. We run our churches efficiently like we would run a company, with cell phones on our belts and Palm Pilots in hand, walking with a purposeful CEO gait. –Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations (Zondervan, 2003) pp. 238-239.

Administration is central to who I am as a minister, so this caused me to ask myself some questions about what it means to be a manager-minister. I didn’t come up with any answers, but my questions reminded me of a talk Barbara Merritt gave in June, 2004. Merritt, the senior minister at First Unitarian in Worcester, Massachusetts, addressed the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalist ministers, asking us:

I am wondering, “Does being a religious leader work for you? Does it work for me? When you imagine religious leadership, what role does grace play? What is it that you control?”

That is the subject I wish to consider with you today. Is being a strong minister, or a responsive leader, or an entertaining religious leader enough? I don’t mean, “Is the ministry a satisfying profession?” or, “Does it pay your electric bills?” or, “Is it an honorable way to make a living?” I am not asking whether the liberal ministry is an effective or helpful agency of change in people’s lives, or to the larger community. (My answer to all those questions is “Yes.”)

What I mean by my question is: Does our ministry work as a spiritual practice?…Is the exercise of religious leadership a spiritual practice that is taking you where your heart and mind want to go?…

Merritt takes her questions off in a somewhat different direction than I want to go. But now I want to know what it is that manger-ministers are trying to control. I also want to know if we manager-ministers are exercising our leadership so that we are going where our hearts and minds want to go. And I would like to know why Christian and post-Christian leaders look more like corporate executives than holy people.

I’d love to know what you think. If you’re a minister, are you more likely to be mistaken for a corporate executive, or for a holy person? If you’re a member of a congregation, what about your minister(s) — corporate execs or holy people? If you don’t do organized religion right now, would you be more likely to join a religious institution that has a manager-leader, or a holy-person-leader?

On to part 2