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WORKING WITH CLERGY Wardens must tend to the rector, creating an environment that supports the rector in his/her ministry. This means dealing with confidential matters of parish life, serving as a sounding board and advisor, protecting the rector's health by seeing that he/she takes needed time off, assuring that resources are set aside for the rector's ongoing spiritual and theological development, offering pastoral support to the rector (and family, if appropriate) in time of need, and alerting the rector to any issues that require attention.
Rector's Sabbatical (top) Most clergy contracts call for a sabbatical, as do some contracts for church organists or other staff. As a warden you need to ensure that plans are in place for the sabbatical. This includes: 1. Budgeting for the costs of the sabbatical. Costs include continuing the salary of the person on sabbatical, salaries and expenses of persons filling in while the regular clergy or staff person is gone, and expenses for whatever educational activity the sabbatical will include. 2. Making sure that the money is available. For most parishes this will require setting money aside in the years leading up to the sabbatical so that the costs do not all fall in the year the sabbatical takes place. Encourage your rector (or other staff person) to apply for grants, scholarships, or other forms of assistance to help defray the costs. The diocesan Angus Dun Fund offers educational grants to clergy for continuing education and is one source of such assistance. 3. Ensuring that the sabbatical is honored. When the absence of the rector or key staff member looms, it is too easy to try to put off the sabbatical. Your job as warden is to make sure that the rector and staff take the time they need to renew themselves professionally and spiritually. 4. Agreeing on the ground rules for contacting the rector when he/she is on sabbatical. In general, the rector should be free of parish responsibilities and not be contacted with parish matters while on sabbatical. But there will be certain kinds of issues about which the rector will want to be informed (e.g., a major disaster that destroys a large part of the physical plant; the death of certain parishioners). Talk with your rector prior to the sabbatical, agreeing under what circumstances and how to contact him/her. If you are the warden in a parish with a large staff, be certain that the agreements include them as well. 5. Making sure that supply clergy are available to cover while the rector is gone. Sabbaticals vary in length, but for those that last over a month, try to find someone who can stay with the parish through the entire sabbatical. This helps provide continuity in the parish, allowing the supply priest to get to know parishioners and to minister to them from the basis of that knowledge. A list of supply clergy in the diocese is posted on this web site (hyperlink to come). Where an assistant or associate rector can fill in, finding a supply priest may not be necessary, but there may still need to be a reallocation of responsibilities among staff. 6. In collaboration with supply clergy, ensuring that parish life continues. As the warden it is your responsibility to work with the supply clergy to handle situations as they arise. You may find yourself chairing vestry meetings (or even the annual parish meeting), seeing that the sidewalks are cleared after a snow storm, or doing any number of other things that the rector normally oversees. In parishes with large staffs, you may find that your role changes little, but it is still likely that you will find yourself assuming some new responsibilities temporarily. Searching for a New Rector (top) Once the rector announces he/she is leaving, congregations go into a transition period that puts new demands on the wardens, vestry and other lay leaders. Wardens, especially, find themselves having to take on new responsibilities, while dealing with their own sense of loss and continuing to lead the parish through the interim time until a new rector is chosen. The rector will have already informed the bishop of his/her intention to leave, so the first call the warden should make is to the diocesan deployment officer (DDO), Canon for Clergy Deployment and Ordination Nan Arrington Peete [202/537-6531, npeete@edow.org]. The bishop and the canon will meet with the wardens and vestry to discuss the search process. To prepare for that meeting and the search process, read about mutual discernment. Parishioners will naturally be anxious about the future of the parish, and the pressure will be great to move quickly into the search for a new rector. Resist this pressure - the first order of business is to celebrate the ministry of the person who is leaving. The search for a new rector should NOT begin until the previous rector has departed, although plans to hire an interim priest (priest-in-charge) should be in place. The DDO will give the vestry the names of several priests to consider for the position of priest-in-charge. Priests who serve in this capacity have received special training in interim ministry. If the person you ask to serve as interim is not available immediately, you can fill in with supply clergy. The DDO will also recommend several consultants for the vestry to consider. Use of a search consultant is strongly recommended. These consultants understand the dynamics of change in congregations and are familiar with the search process and diocesan requirements. They are most effective when they are able to work with the vestry to facilitate the planning of the search process and the selection of a search committee. Once the search committee is selected, the consultant will work more closely with it than with the vestry. Many consultants in the Diocesan Consultants Network have sliding fee scales. If costs are a problem, talk to the DDO about options. The search for a new rector offers a congregation a wonderful opportunity to reflect on its life and mission, to experiment with new ideas, and to clarify its core values for ministry. This reflective process should involve the entire congregation and should take some time. Its result should be a written profile of the parish - what it is now and what it hopes to become - and of the kind of rector it wants to lead it into the future. The profile becomes the basis for soliciting candidates and tells candidates whether your parish is one to which they feel called. Searches usually take from 12 to 18 months. New rectors often report that the wardens, on whom they need to rely heavily during their first months in a parish, are often too burned out by the search process to be able to help. To avoid this problem, engage as many people as possible in handling the extra responsibilities that fall on lay leaders during a search. Doing so will also increase the commitment of parishioners to the life of the congregation and expand the pool of people who can provide continuity of leadership once the new rector arrives. Finally, talk to other wardens who have been through a search and lived to tell the tale (there are a lot of them around!). They can offer you helpful tips and suggest resources when you get stuck. Ask the DDO or a member of the Wardens' Planning Committee for suggestions about whom to talk to. Working Effectively with an Interim (top) Interim ministry is a special calling. The Rev. Nan Arrington Peete, canon for Clergy Deployment and Ordination (npeete@edow.org) will help you find candidates from whom to select to serve as the priest-in-charge for your parish when your parish is between rectors. The Rev. Roy Coffin of the Interim Ministry Network offers the following observations about what to expect during the interim period and how to work effectively with your interim rector. The rector (vicar) is leaving - elected bishop, retired, accepted another call, or has died. What now? Routines will change. Role expectations are shifting. It is a most important time in the life of a congregation, a prime time for renewal. It is a passage that can be both a rich part of a congregation's life story and, at the same time, an experience of wandering in the wilderness. Under the canons of the church, during such a transition, the wardens and vestry assume most of the responsibilities of the rector (vicar), subject to oversight by the bishop. However, given that reality, there are many ways the lay leadership may proceed, ranging from the use of supply clergy solely for the conduct of regular worship, to contracting with trained interim pastors for full-time leadership during the time of transition. A brief explanation of the emotional process related to transitions is in order to help wardens and vestries recognize the opportunities and risks inherent in transitions. There is a grief process present when a transition or change occurs. That is because there is a sense of loss whether the transition is positive or negative. Some options are lost as others are chosen - something is no longer possible. (Thus, there is grief at weddings as well as at funerals.) Even when the feelings pop out in anger or conflict, the underlying issue is loss. Unless a congregation comes to terms with its losses it will be unable to move on. The next pastor runs the risk of becoming an unintentional interim. Interim ministry specialists are aware of this reality and have learned how to be helpful at such times. The point of emphasizing the grief process that goes on is to alert wardens and vestries to a reality that will be overlooked if pastoral transitions are seen merely as occasions to search for a new rector or vicar. The intensity of emotions (and the need for transition-sensitive ministry) will be highest at the end of long-term pastorates and where the ending has been traumatic, such as in the case of a death or dissolution. In such instances, longer periods of interim with trained interim clergy are recommended. Experience has shown that the most effective working relationships between lay leaders and interim clergy occur when the clergy are expected initially to fill the leadership role of the person who left. If the clergyperson has set agendas for vestry meetings and presided, then continue that practice. If the Warden has presided, let him or her continue to do that. This approach will create an atmosphere of "normalcy" and will allow the interim minister an opportunity to explore with the lay leaders the strengths and weaknesses of the established approach to the mutuality of their shared ministry of leadership in that congregation. It will also allow Wardens, Vestry and clergy to intentionally try new approaches to working together. The interim time provides the opportunity for the membership to experiment with new ways of doing things. This is not to promote change for the sake of change but to test whether or not new approaches will strengthen the parish for its mission and ministry. Even where the change is uncomplicated, a congregation can be enriched by taking the time to recall and tell its story. The interim period is one in which all congregations can be renewed by reviewing and redefining their mission and ministry. As noted above, each interim provides an opportunity to reexamine the leadership roles of clergy and laity, which will have tended to revolve around the style of the pastor who has gone. Understanding our Episcopal polity can be deepened in interim times. Clergy who have had interim ministry training can provide the leadership to help parishes do those developmental tasks. Finally, a congregation that does what is described in this paragraph should be ready to make an enthusiastic commitment to a new chapter in its life with a new pastoral leader. Helping a New Rector Become Established (top) Helping a new rector or associate get engaged in the life of the parish is a challenge that sometimes takes wardens and vestries by surprise. Yet their active support and involvement is needed to get the new ministry off to a good start. A group of clergy in the diocese shared what had helped them become established in new ministries. Some things were purely logistical: the rectory had been repaired and had new appliances; the office was set up and ready to use when they arrived. These simple actions alleviated the stress of moving to a new place. But more important were the building of trust between clergy and vestry and how the vestry helped the new clergy understand the life of the parish. Key to building trust was conveying the feeling that the vestry wanted the relationship. Honesty about situations in the parish helped foster this feeling. Clergy wanted to know the history, hopes and dreams of the parish; circumstances facing parishioners; and whether there were conflicts -- "what do I need to know to function (well)?" Parishes helped clergy learn about their new congregations in a variety of ways. One scheduled appointments for the new rector with every major interest group - the treasurer and finance committee, church school teachers, etc. - and a special time with parishioners who could talk about the parish's history. Another had photos taken of every member of the parish and asked each family unit to introduce themselves in a brief written statement. The photos and accompanying statements were compiled in a binder for the new rector: "It made getting to know people a lot easier." Developing a partnership takes time. Clergy said what was most valuable was the time vestry members - particularly wardens - gave them. "(We spent) evenings on the front porch of (the senior warden's) house talking about the parish." One rector scheduled twice yearly dinners with the current and all former wardens just to talk about how things were going and brainstorm ideas for the future. As valuable as the gift of time was, several clergy
noted that wardens were burned out from the interim and the search, sometimes
to the point of not being as available as they needed to be. One rector
noted he had had three wardens in two years. Providing continuity of leadership
is important during times of change, and this presents wardens with a
challenge as they take on added responsibilities during the search and
interim periods. When the Rector Becomes Ill or Dies (top) Notes on As the Rev. David Williams points out in the notes from his presentation at the 2002 Wardens Conference, helping a rector maintain his/her health is an important task for wardens. However, given the vagaries of human life, there will be times when either the rector or someone in his/her family encounters illness or death. Watch this space for guidance on where to go for help under these circumstances. Clergy Guidelines (top) The Washington Episcopal Clergy Association has guidelines which are currently being revised. A link will be posted here when the revision is complete. (top)
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