MINISTERS COUNCIL SENATE 2007
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT
The Ministers Council continues its focus on three-part Ministers Council strategy (scope and frequency variables):
I. Together in Ministry, II Timothy 1:6, "to fan into flame the gift of God."
The following goals have guided the project since its inception:
Together in Ministry has emphasized the generation of holy friendships among pastoral leaders as professionals, primarily through the formation of collegial covenant groups. Evaluation results for 2006 reveal that ninety-seven percent of current covenant group participants plan to continue the practice but three key requirements for sustainability remain: further embedding the covenant group practice for solid and enduring systemic change and future participation; enhancing relationships among pastoral and lay leaders of congregations for mutuality in ministry and support for all aspects of the well-lived pastoral life, including congregational funding for covenant group participation; and capacity building of constituent Councils for bearing the ethos of covenant group practice and other dynamics of covenant essential to profession and call.
Two new TIM resources are available from the Ministers Council office: an 80-page print issue of Minister and a DVD on Together in Ministry collegial covenant groups. Both may be bulk ordered for 2007-2008 meetings.
B. 2008-2012, $979,800 Lilly Endowment Grant
1a. CONTINUED PARTIAL FUNDING FOR EXISTING COLLEGIAL COVENANT GROUPS
Partial funding will be made available on a competitive basis to the groups funded in 2007 that continue, at a rate reduced from $1,800 to $1,000 per year for facilitators for two additional years (2008-2009). While the necessity to seek your own funding for sustainability has been communicated to groups since the project inception, ensuring continuity of model groups will more firmly embed the consciousness of relational ministry as vital to pastoral excellence. Excellent groups that have continued for the duration of the project will be studied for learning what dynamics maintain the life of a group over time in the face of ministry’s varied demands, and how participation contributes to sustaining excellence over the long haul. At the same time, the stories of existing groups will be showcased to leverage their experience in the development of further collegial covenant groups.
If your group was funded for 2007, in addition to completing an application for 2008 funding please complete the evaluation instruments for facilitator and group members as part of your re-application process. Both types of evaluation forms are also available on www.ministerscouncil.org under the Together in Ministry link.
On a competitive basis, facilitation of fifty current collegial covenant groups will be funded at half rate of $1,000 per year for two additional years 2008 and 2009, for a total of $100,000.
1b. NEW COLLEGIAL COVENANT GROUPS
For each of the five years from 2008 to 2012 facilitation of twenty new collegial covenant groups will be funded at $2,000, for a total of $200,000. Also for each of the project’s five years 120 of the participants in the funded collegial covenant group will receive $100 group expense money, for a total of $60,000.
2. NEW COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE, PASTORAL AND LAY LEADERS TOGETHER
One means of working to enhance pastor-people relationships will be to offer an optional model for covenant group formation that includes both pastoral and lay leaders, focused specifically on Christian Practices.
According to Craig Dykstra, Lilly Endowment Vice President of Religion, “Christian practices are not activities we do to make something spiritual happen in our lives. Nor are they duties we undertake to be obedient to God. Rather, they are patterns of communal action that create openings in our lives where the grace, mercy, and presence of God may be made known to us. They are places where the power of God is experienced. In the end, these are not ultimately our practices but forms of participation in the practice of God" www.practicingourfaith.org/prct_what_are_practices.html
Offering the option for formation of covenant groups that include pastoral and lay leaders together focused specifically on Christian practices extends Together in Ministry work directly toward greater pastor-people mutuality. While Dykstra states that “many pastors complain that their ministries are consumed by all sorts of activities that make real engagement in any of these practices almost impossible,” the opportunity for communities of shared competent practice focused on Christian Practices and comprised of pastoral and lay leaders together will serve to encourage pastoral practice as it also strengthens pastor-people relationships (Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices, Second Edition. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005. pp. 54-55).
In 2008 and 2009 facilitation of sixteen groups of clergy and laypersons together focused on Christian Practices will be funded at $2,000, for a total of $32,000 each of those years. In 2010 through 2012 facilitation of nineteen groups of clergy and laypersons focused on Christian Practices will be funded at $2,000, for a total of $38,000 each of those years.
In 2008 and 2009 ninety-six of the participants in the sixteen funded groups of clergy and laypersons focused on Christian Practices will be granted expense funds at $100 each, for a total of $9,600 each of those two years. Each year from 2010 through 2012, 114 participants in the nineteen funded groups of clergy and laypersons focused on Christian Practices will be granted expense funds at $100 each, for a total of $11,400 each of those three years.
3. CONSTITUENT MINISTERS COUNCIL CAPACITY BUILDING
Gatherings of constituent Ministers Council-Together in Ministry local leadership will focus on organizational capacity.
In 2008 a pilot gathering of adjacent Councils’ leadership will engage in the first of six community of practice regional gatherings. Each gathering will convene twelve pastoral leaders representing four to six adjacent Councils. Leadership of those constituent Councils will be equipped to invite colleagues at home into a similar learning process and will expand it to encompass congregational leaders, for mutual exploration of the covenantal realities that bind them in ministry and the Ministers Council resources that support that work. The entire pilot, from the 2008 constituent Council gathering and the experience of local leadership in transferring learnings to their local Councils, will be studied for inputting learnings into the next round of constituent Council gatherings. The pattern for multiple iterations with learning by trial and error is: one pilot gathering in 2008; two gatherings in 2009; three gatherings in 2010. Each gathering will be evaluated and learnings from it fed into the next.
The community of practice regional gatherings will impact far more than the leaders directly involved and will not occur in a vacuum. Those pastoral leaders will replicate the model within their constituent Councils at home to refocus them as communities of practice shaped around issues of covenant as their essential DNA, and the entire experience will both be made manifest as transparently as possible to lay congregational leaders and will also involve lay leaders in joint discussions of the covenantal nature of the well-lived Christian life. The goals will be:
After regional constituent Council covenant gatherings, each constituent Council will be assigned a member of the Ministers Council Executive Committee to coordinate its work as it replicates the learning process at home and reaches out to draw lay congregational leaders into it. This hands-on, ongoing collegial connection and coaching will retain the energy in the system, as ownership for Together in Ministry is further embedded as a responsibility of constituent Councils and its funding is transferred to congregational leadership.
II. CONSTITUENT COUNCIL DEVELOPMENT
A. A constituent Council of the American Baptist Churches of Rochester-Genesee was formed in spring 2007 by separation from the Ministers Council of the American Baptist Churches of New York State, development of bylaws and election of officers.
B. The Ministers Council of the American Baptist Churches of New York State developed its own bylaws and elected its own officers as a separate constituent Council.
C. The Asociacion Ministerial Latina/ Latino Ministerial Association of the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey has submitted bylaws and officers to qualify for recognition as a constituent Council by Senate 2007.
D. American Baptist Congregations of the Southwest and Hawaii formed on May 4, 2007, and an initial exploration meeting on the formation of a Ministers Council was held on July 1, 2007. Conversations continue with national Ministers Council support for a relational and organizational retreat.
E. Hispanic clergy of the American Baptist Congregations of the Southwest and Hawaii and the American Baptist Churches of Los Angeles have entered into a process of developing bylaws for the formation of a constituent Council.
III. COVENANT AND CODE OF ETHICS
In this the seventieth anniversary of the Code of Ethics, the Ministers Council Senate Professional Effectiveness Committee has just completed a Learning Guide for the Covenant and Code of Ethics, designed as a group discussion piece to facilitate collegial conversation where issues of accountability can be raised.
Unfortunately it is suboptimal to use the Code of Ethics as a means of discipline when it has not been held up consistently as the standard to which we hold ourselves and are held accountable. Once a breach has occurred it is rather late to bring up the standards of our profession.
The Guide can be found on www.ministerscouncil.org, left side link Code of Ethics & Guide. You might suggest that YOUR Ministers Council bring this as a discussion guide to their clergy gatherings. That is the dynamic that allows any professional association to exercise its responsibility for accountability, by fostering healthy self-awareness and self-examination through collegial conversation.
Covenant is the foundation of our work together and with congregational leaders. In contemporary literature on professionalism, William M. Sullivan in a Carnegie study report articulates the organization’s opportunity and challenge with covenant as the context for trust development: “Healthy institutions make maintenance of high standards of competence and an orientation toward serving the public standard operating procedures. They also set the protective social context within which the goods of professionalism can be nurtured, understood, and passed on as a collective asset that defines a sense of common purpose within an occupation” (Work and Integrity: The Crisis and Promise of Professionalism in America, Second Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005).
The Ministers Council also encourages the use of covenantal materials developed by pastoral and lay leaders that generate a new level of trust and collaboration around ministry: the Covenant and Code of Ethics for Ministerial Leaders of American Baptist Churches first developed by the Ministers Council in 1937 and periodically updated; the Together in Ministry three-part covenant developed mutually by and for pastoral and lay congregational leaders to “encourage the partnership of clergy and congregation, pastor and people, to be the Body of Christ in carrying out Christ's purpose and ministry for us, together.”
These resources are available on the Ministers Council website.
IV. MINISTERS COUNCIL OFFICE LOCATION, AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSION CENTER
(American Baptist News Service excerpt) The General Board of American Baptist Churches USA and the denomination’s two major program boards have given the go-ahead to a “business plan” that would address both the group’s financial needs and short-term concerns about preserving its Valley Forge “Mission Center” headquarters location.
The plan is a two-part one. Under the first part, the headquarters property would be offered to the present leaseholder of adjacent property, which has the right of first offer, on terms favorable to the denomination. If those terms are rejected, the plan’s second part calls for the property to be offered to others, including to a proposed partnership comprised of the ABCUSA’s corporation, the Boards of National and International Ministries, and the denomination’s Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board (MMBB). The MMBB’s board of managers is expected to consider the business plan in the near future.
The denomination’s headquarters offices and those of the National and International Ministries boards would continue to be housed, at least for the next few years, in the large circular building at Valley Forge that has been a symbol of American Baptist Churches USA for more than half a century. However, those offices now use only about half the building’s space. The remaining space would continue to be rented on terms that would help meet the financial needs of the church’s general administration.
V. RESTRUCTURE PROGRESS OF AMERICAN BAPTIST CHURCHES
(American Baptist News Service excerpt) The General Executive Committee identified four areas of special concern—leadership, structure, the representative process and relevance. At a meeting last November (2006), the General Board discussed the early draft of a reorganization proposal and returned it to a writing team for refinements.
At its Monday session here (June 25, 2007), board members raised questions, concerns and positive points about the plan, which focuses on the church’s “missional” nature and reaffirms the importance of local congregations. Some speakers urged that the latter point be addressed further to show how that reaffirmation would take place.
In considering the reorganization issue last year, the General Executive Committee agreed upon a number of priorities, leading with “protecting and securing the local church as the fundamental unit of mission.” Other major points of consideration included: respect for diversity and inclusiveness; improving the ABCUSA’s financial position in various ways; enabling better oversight of ministry and mission outcomes; committing to clear accountability in all circumstances; determining how best to provide central office functions; and resolving or at least moving the denomination forward on the issue of homosexuality.
VI. GENERAL EXECUTIVE COUNCIL COVENANT ON HOMOSEXUALITY
In response to the controversy surrounding homosexuality, the General Executive Council meeting in Tucson on April 14, 2007, agreed upon the following statement by a consensus of the GEC members present at the meeting: “We covenant as GEC members to give due consideration to all ABC Policy Statements and Resolutions in recommending persons to serve at denominational levels.”
You may recognize the wording as adopted from the Ministers Council resolution voted on August 23, 2005, after the Jerusalem Council project year dedicated to dialogue and discernment of biblical interpretation on homosexuality.
RESOLUTION – MINISTERS COUNCIL SENATE AUGUST 23, 2005
“Whereas a year ago an amendment to our bylaws proposing to govern the selection of Senators to the Ministers Council Senate was introduced for consideration, and
Whereas the Ministers Council determined to spend a year discerning the convictions of its members through a series of meetings patterned after the Jerusalem Council in the Book of Acts, and
Whereas the final outcome of those meetings and the individual responses received revealed a strong commitment throughout our constituency for the Baptist principles of the authority of scripture, autonomy, and interdependence,
Therefore, the Ministers Council Senate:
Reaffirms that all representatives to the Ministers Council Senate must be members in good standing who uphold the biblical principles embodied in the Covenant and Code of Ethics for Ministerial Leaders of American Baptist Churches
Urges our constituent councils to give due consideration to all the policies, resolutions, and statements of concern of the ABC/USA when electing representatives to the Ministers Council Senate.
And following the example of James as recorded in Acts 15, instructs the President and Executive Director to communicate this resolution to all constituent councils and each of our national and regional partners in the ABC/USA.
Resolved this twenty-third day of August, 2005 in Green Lake, Wisconsin”
VII. WEBSITE
The Ministers Council website was transferred in May 2007 to the American Baptist Computer Center. Given the cessation of the server Shem Systems as a business and the commitment of American Baptist entities to remain together in one location, the decision seemed the wisest course. The website www.ministerscouncil.org provides resources for pastoral and lay leaders.
VIII. BIENNIAL 2007, DC
The Ministers Council celebrated the Centennial and Biennial of American Baptist Churches with a pre-Biennial Event on the morning of June 29, 2007, “Ministry in Such a Time as This: Adaptive Change for Faithful and Effective Leadership,” at the Washington DC Convention Center. Speakers were Diana Butler Bass of Practicing Congregations Research and Parush Parushev from Prague. Co-sponsors of the event were the Campus Ministers Association and International Ministries. American Baptist pastoral leaders gave their testimonies to adaptive change in their ministerial leadership.
A comment from a former Senator exemplifies much of the feedback: “The Ministers Council program for the biennial was WONDERFUL! I received more at that meeting than during the rest of the biennial put together. Thanks for a great job of planning.”
The Ministers Council also hosted a Clergy Couple breakfast, convened by Alan Selig, facilitator of the TIM group Priscilla and Aquila Network for clergy couples.
At the exhibit hall the display featured TIM photos, and materials distributed included the new an 80-page print issue of Minister and a DVD on Together in Ministry collegial covenant groups, as well as TIM-MC keybands and membership information postcards.
IX. RETENTION OF ABC RECOGNITION BY PASTORAL LEADERS OF FORMER PSW CONGREGATIONS THAT LEFT ABC AGAINST THEIR WISHES
The ABC Professional Ministries Team spent considerable time discussing the way forward for any pastoral leaders in that situation. The attorney who advises ABC has recommended that the General Board not be asked to pass a policy that pertains to pastoral leadership, since the denomination claims no oversight on matters of pastoral leadership that might entangle it in lawsuits related to ascending liability in cases of pastoral misconduct. Therefore the proposed motion for that body to extend a grace period for pastoral leaders from the former PSW who did not wish their congregations to leave the ABC did not move to the General Board. Sam Chetti, the Executive Minister of ABC Los Angeles, will assist any such persons who contact him. He will ask for a letter stating intent to remain American Baptist and will in turn correspond with American Baptist Personnel Services and the Professional Registry to retain or return the name and credentials.
X. NEW BAPTIST COVENANT GATHERING, JANUARY 29-FEBRUARY 1, 2008, ATLANTA
The gathering seeks to unite North American Baptists around Jesus’ moral agenda of Luke 4:18-19. The event website is www.newbaptistcovenant.org. A Breakfast gathering is planned for ABC pastoral leaders after the New Covenant Baptist Celebration on Saturday morning, February 2. The morning will feature conference speaker Tony Campolo talking to us ABC family, with worship and conversation around tables. How do we further agenda of Jesus in our own places and together? A goal will be to covenant to pray for one another and New Covenant Baptist work.
XI. FANNING THE FLAME, NATIONAL PASTORS’S RENEWAL CONFERENCE, APRIL 22-25, 2008, AT GREEN LAKE
The conference is sponsored by twelve ABC regions (ABC of the Dakotas, ABC of Indiana/Kentucky, ABC Great Rivers Region, ABC Maine, ABC Michigan, ABC New Jersey, ABC of the Northwest, ABC Ohio, ABC Pennsylvania and Delaware, Cleveland Baptist Association, Growing Healthy Churches, West Virginia Baptist Convention).
Many Ministers Council members have asked about collaboration. The Ministers Council Executive Director has been invited to convene an afternoon conversation on Sabbath-keeping. The Ministers Council will be asked to be one of the "supporters" of the conference and actively to encourage members to attend.
Kate Harvey
Ministers Council Executive Director
Senate 2007