From my book reviewing work with the journal "Sharing the Practice", published quarterly by the Academy of Parish Clergy: To learn more: http://www.apclergy.org
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Olsen,
David C. and Nancy G. Devor. Saying No to Say Yes: Everyday Boundaries and Pastoral
Excellence. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
ISBN #978-1-56699-728-7.
Books
abound on clergy professional boundaries, clergy self-care and burn-out awareness
and church leadership texts. The
co-authors of Saying No to Say Yes
contend that many approaches take at best a partial, though well-meaning look
at the challenges of pastoral ministry.
What
is missing often is the fuller exploration of the less publicized yet everyday
depletion of a pastor’s energy and wherewithal.
The pastor’s fall from professional integrity could come after years of
unhealthy, poorly maintained understandings of the self. In turn, the complex systems within even a
small membership congregation can be the undoing of a minister unable to
navigate and lead objectively within a church membership, which in itself is
rarely a non-anxious and functional organization. The authors emphasize “how the minister
defines himself or herself within the congregational system and how the system
responds” (p. 63).
The
book is organized into five short chapters.
In the opening chapter “The Problem with Boundaries”, the co-authors
guide you through the development of clergy boundary literature and methods,
highlighting the timely and “products of their time” insights of the last forty
years of how the issues were understood and addressed. Suggesting greater results and long-term
health will be found by setting limits in anxious systems (i.e. churches),
Olsen and Devor encourage clergy to “say ‘no’ to what depletes their health and
the health of their congregation in order to say ‘yes’ to the attitudes,
knowledge and skills that promote pastoral excellence and contribute to the
overall health of the pastor, the pastor’s family and the congregation” (p.
20).
The
second chapter addresses the need for “healthy selves and boundaries”. Introducing the self-psychology work of Heinz
Kohut, the authors examine what happens when we lose or blur our sense of self
through over- and under-compensating for the demands on our time and energy as
well as the multiple ways a congregant expects a minister to fulfill some need
or role. The authors ground ministry and
the clergy with the admonition
to temper our sense of call with
reality: knowing ourselves well enough
to know where our selves falter, where we need shoring up, where we are
vulnerable. Without such tempering, our
calls can collude with our grandiosity.
We may see ourselves as special, as being above rules, not requiring the
self-care and boundaries to protect us. (p. 34)
Conversely,
some clergy find themselves at the ebb of low self-esteem, leading to other
likely opportunities for depletion and a weakened sense of self (p. 35).
The
next three chapters build on these insights, exploring issues of boundaries in
anxious systems, especially when systems collide inevitably with even the most
resilient, well maintained boundaries we put in place. Anxiety in congregations often turns to
scapegoating, and as I like to joke, “Clergy should shop at Target instead of
being one.”
The
authors emphasize the importance of congregations maintaining their own
equilibrium in the form of pastoral relations committees and other ways of
promoting congregational communication and self-reflection. Often, in my judicatory work, the church lay
leaders can be unaware of the toxicity they themselves are taking on in the
midst of a conflict or unsettled, anxious time.
Keeping a better balance between “pastor and people” will require this
book to be less reading “just for pastors” and shared with more
leadership. Anxiety and how to handle it
is a life skill sorely needed well beyond the sometimes pedantic, inward turned
issues of a congregation.
Skills
to identify and regulate one’s immersion in the anxiety of a congregation is
explored through brief antidotal insights from clergy dealing with cantankerous
leaders and uncertain times that spring up when we seem to be at our lowest
ebb. (How many times does it seem that
Advent or even Holy Week is suddenly when the unanticipated demands escalate on
a pastor?) The benefits of a robust
level of emotional intelligence are recommended, though I wish there could have
been more time spent on this by the authors.
(Perhaps a future text on the subject waits.)
Later
chapters address the pastoral excellence movement fostered by the Lilly
Foundation over a decade ago. Clergy
collegiality groups, special emphasis programs at leading divinity schools and
seminaries and a bevy of books on related subjects have flowered out of such
concern. Yet, for many clergy and
churches, these learnings are still being discovered, let alone integrated into
the life of the church. For example, a
few years ago, I shared a few pages of one such book with my former church’s
pastoral relations committee. None of
the committee members had read the short excerpt, which was quite demoralizing
for me at the time. Looking back, I
realize now that cultivating pastoral excellence is indeed like gardening in
that I had not really grasped some of the learnings yet and made them my own
practice and habits. In my naiveté, I
had not understood the longer conversation and process that needed to be
developed for anything approaching what that book’s authors or even this book’s
authors recommended.
Each
chapter ends with excellent reflection questions that I recommend are slowly
considered, especially in private and group reflection. Also, two appendices are offered to suggest
ways for a workshop to be presented around the book’s findings and tips for
organizing a clergy collegiality group. Olsen and Devor recommend that an
ecumenically diverse group with a gifted facilitator inform the model for such
an undertaking. Certainly, working with
colleagues who also do not have similar polity or judicatory connections with
one another may invite deeper reflection as your sense of true “peerage” with
one another is not complicated by working alongside pastors from your own fold.
The bibliography is likewise a helpful guide to future reading and growth in
understanding elements of Olsen/Devor’s engagement of varied sources.
Olsen
and Devor explore these issues with long careers in service to churches and
pastors as therapists and clergy themselves.
They write with a profound understanding of what it’s like “in the
trenches” while engaging in an exploration of the findings of psychology,
systems theory and recent writings on pastoral excellence. Olsen serves as Executive Director of the
Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region (Schenectady, New York) and
Devor is senior staff psychologist at the Danielsen Institute at Boston
University. Both are frequent presenters
on these issues for clergy groups and judicatories.
