Good practices are good practices, whether they come from a business or a church setting, says the Rev. Dr. C. Jeff Woods, associate general secretary for regional ministries of American Baptist Churches USA.
Woods brings his varied background as an actuary, pastor and in organizational development to his work with ABC. From 1996 to 2003 he served as executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of Ohio. For nine years Woods was senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Rushville, Ohio, and also held pastorates in Indiana.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Purdue University, an M.Div. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a doctorate in higher education administration and educational inquiry methodology from Indiana University. He is the author of numerous articles and several books, including “Congregational Megatrends.”
Q: Could you describe how you arrived at this ministry?
I started off in college at Purdue, thinking that I might become an actuary. I had all math, stats and physics classes. I was a number cruncher. Then I felt this pull to the ministry. At about the same time I realized the solitary nature of being an actuary. Those two things came together, and I decided that I was called into the ministry.
Later, in the Ph.D. program at Indiana University I encountered the same topics of organizational theory and research methodology that I had when I started off at Purdue. I had those experiences as bookends around seminary. I have studied congregations for the last 25 years and used these tools to take a look at congregations and see how to strengthen them.
Q: What’s the significance of the work you do with the middle judicatory?
The significance of being a middle judicatory leader is having the opportunity to develop leaders who are pastors or who will be pastors of congregations. Working with congregations so that they might truly make a difference in their communities is also noteworthy. As the [congregational] leaders come together, they might do what we call gap work -- work that is falling through the cracks, or in the gaps. This is work that no one is doing individually, but as people come together and work jointly on projects, they’re able to meet a need that’s beyond the reach of any single congregation. Facilitating that can be very rewarding. Encouraging that, training people to do that kind of ministry, both in the local church and among congregations, is significant.
Q: What’s the challenge of the work? What makes it difficult?
There are many challenges right now in the economy and the effect it has on one’s resources and budgets. But in a difficult time, as well, individuals sometimes look to their spiritual side or look to God for help in ways that they don’t normally. So in addition to there being challenges with the economy, there are opportunities because people’s spiritual needs are heightened.
Q: Often pastors think of the judicatory leader as someone they hear from only if they’re in trouble. Is that a fair assessment?
About 15 years ago there was a statement that middle judicatories might not survive over the next 10 years. And recently there was a book written called “Chasing Down a Rumor,” recognizing that the judicatories indeed survived and asking how that happened.
One reason is the current shift in the emphasis of middle judicatories. At one time the middle judicatories focused more on credentialing. They were seen as being there only for placement or installation or if you had a problem. Now, many judicatories across the country are focused on clergy development, pastoral development and congregational development. Certainly, some do better than others. But there’s much more of an emphasis placed on [development] than there was 15 or 20 years ago.
Q: With your background, do you like to see the influence of business leadership ideas in judicatories?
Some people will immediately resist anything that sounds like a business. But I explain that what we’re talking about are good organizational principles. A concept that I teach about leadership is the transferability of skills. In the last 10 or 15 years we have discovered how transferable learned skills are for leaders.
Good listening is still good listening whether you’re in a corporation or a congregation; we’re not asking the church to go to the well of the business principles. We’re asking the church to go to the well of good organizational practices. Businesses go to that same well and they adapt those good organizational practices to their bottom line, which is often a profit bottom line; whereas the church or nonprofit applies those good organizational principles to their bottom line, which is more often a sense of mission.
Not too long ago I facilitated a group that was seeking to develop a nonprofit track within their MBA program. When we tried to discover the major differences between corporations and nonprofits, we had trouble coming up with anything other than a different sense of mission.
The reality is that people are satisfied with their jobs for the same reason, because of the intrinsic nature of the job. Within that intrinsic nature, people develop in the same way.
Q: How would you define the differences in leadership styles between corporations and congregations?
Even though there are similarities between corporations and congregations, there is a different bottom line in congregations. Ultimately, the goal of a pastor or the goal of a group of congregational leaders is to please God: to feel that sense of purpose in one’s life and then have the sense that they are absolutely fulfilling that purpose to which they have been uniquely called makes a difference.
In ministry there isn’t the sense of pleasing the boss or being comfortable around higher management. There are times when a pastor or someone else may feel they need to stand alone in a particular decision that is made for the betterment of the community. There really is the need to be comfortable with discernment -- with asking “What is God actually calling me to do or to contribute in this particular situation?” -- and then following through with that.
In examining how pastoral leadership differs from leadership as a bishop or an executive, one description that is helpful from organizational practices is that there are really two or three levels, major shifts, that take place in terms of leadership.
There’s the individual contributor level, which means I’m trying to make a difference in my own life with the skill set I’ve been given. With my unique background, I’m trying to be an individual contributor. Often we do that well, and then we’re asked to lead other people. And that’s really the next level.
I view managers as leaders of people. The leadership skill for the individual contributor is to model the right way to do things, modeling a sense of integrity and then using the skills that I’ve been given. There’s a different skill set that needs to be utilized in order to mobilize a group of people to make a difference.
The next shift that takes place is from the manager to the executive level. For that, an individual needs to learn how to manage systems. A task that took one phone call at one level may take six phone calls now, because you’re listening to the different viewpoints or you’re tapping into the different systems. There’s no way to make this individual change and not have it affect the rest of the system or the rest of the systems, plural. And that’s a different skill set. A skill that may be helpful for an individual at one level can even be somewhat of a detriment when they go to the next level.
A good way to delineate the shifts that take place is, first, modeling behavior, then mobilizing people, and then really multiplying yourself at that next level as you manage systems rather than people.
