Every February my church leadership team begins the process of planning the next year’s budget. It's always a stressful time, but this year we realized we were seven percent behind on offering. I had little time to prepare mentally or spiritually for the meeting and simply presented the year-to-date spreadsheet. I included a good 15 minutes for prayer in our meeting agenda, but the “How did we get here? Is it because Christmas fell on a Sunday this year? Is it because that one family left? Or because that other family lost their job?” conversation continued right through our prayer time. We left with more questions than when we began.
I went home deflated and overwhelmed. Not only did I feel inadequate to lead the church—I felt incompetent to lead this budget meeting. As a pastor, I’ve always preferred to focus on relationships, prayer, and deep reflection than spreadsheets, five-year plans, and action items. How are we supposed to figure out how to lead people spiritually while we make these business decisions? How are we supposed to handle not only our own anxieties but the anxieties of others in leadership?
I’ve discovered a few questions—they function like meeting liturgies—that remind me of God’s part in all I do. When I incorporate them into my meetings, my team is able to stop and remember our need for God as we plan.
1. Could I Walk Away from This Project?
If I told you to make decisions by casting lots during your planning meetings, you would probably cringe. Even though many significant decisions in Scripture were determined by casting lots (including the division of the Promised Land among the tribes of Israel in Numbers and the selection of an apostle to replace Judas in Acts), it is incredibly foreign to Western Christians. This practice was connected to the concept of “my lot in life” (i.e., my fate). Those who cast lots said, “We’re releasing our fate to God by letting these stones determine the outcome of this decision.”
Today we have the indwelling of the Spirit to guide us, so literally casting lots may not be appropriate during a planning meeting. But could there be another way to maintain the spirit of casting lots by releasing our control over outcomes?
I once heard a professional mediator talk about working with families arguing over who should inherit a lake house. He observed, “Often, the families who best navigate the decision-making process are those who can say, ‘I could walk away from the cabin.’” When I lead planning meetings, I often find myself thinking, The success of my church rides on this particular event or program or decision. If it doesn’t work out the way I imagine, I can’t see a way forward. My sense of identity and success get wrapped up in the specifics, and I don’t put my trust in God. So, like the mediator’s preferred clients, I try to ask myself, “Could I walk away from this project?”
What might it look like to invite God to be part of my entire planning meeting?
Every year when we set our annual church budget, I go through a strange practice. I say, “Even if I lost this job, even if we no longer had this building, even if this particular congregation ceased to exist, the Lord would still be good and the kingdom would still go forward.” I then lead my team through the same process. Of course, I hope none of those things happen—I work hard so they don’t!—but it’s freeing to visualize these “worst case scenarios” and remember that, regardless of the outcome, God will be faithful to his people and his mission. This practice allows my team and me to hold these decisions loosely, to make them with God’s guidance.
2. What Are Our Motives?
In his sermon on the mount, Jesus presented a fascinating concept with his “You have heard it said” statements. While the Law focused on external actions—for example, murder and adultery—Jesus fulfilled those laws, reminding people that anger and lust are greater concerns. In other words, God looks at our intentions. In our planning meetings, we should do the same.
I’d like to think the way I do ministry always flows from my reliance on God, but if I’m honest, many other motivations are involved. I compare my church to the church down the street, I want to impress people, I feel insecure about my ability to make the best decision, I feel in over my head, and I bring baggage from previous experiences—sometimes all at once. How can I direct the ministry faithfully with all of these unidentified motives in my heart? The key word here is unidentified.
I try to designate time in meetings to reflect on our motives. Each team will have to discover the best way to do this together. Not every ministry team setting provides a safe place to share; when one team member calls into question another’s motives, it feels like an accusation. Still, I’ve found it helpful to spend time discerning motives, whether or not we share them. In many ways, it’s my role as a leader to discover my motives, to model transparency on the team, and to invite others to learn their own hidden motives. With our motives identified, we can invite God to shape them and challenge them if necessary.
3. Does the Weight of Our Task Produce Worship or Anxiety?
Fresno Pacific Seminary president Terry Brensinger helped me think through this question in a helpful way. In a presentation about anxiety in leadership, he described a reality I’ve often felt during church planning meetings: we can’t help but feel the weight of the task at hand. That weight—“this budget determines the future of our congregation,” “this ministry redirection will affect the lives of many”—produces in us a reverence for our work. That’s healthy. We should feel the significance of our decisions.
But what will we choose to do in response to that reverence? Will we let it devolve into anxiety, as we take on total responsibility for every outcome? Will we see our meeting (and ourselves) as successful only if we walk away with every question answered, every problem solved? On the other hand, that respect for the weight of our task holds immense potential because, in its highest form, it leads us to worship. So in meetings, when I stop to name the significance of the task at hand, I help my team fight the temptation to panic by, instead, using it as an opportunity to tell the Lord how much we need him and to celebrate his faithfulness.
4. What Are Our Fears and Joys?
Of course, anxiety isn’t always bad. It’s human to feel anxious. God gave us anxiety to show us when something isn’t right—there’s danger or we’re headed in the wrong direction. Anxiety alerts us to pay attention. The trouble is, we mask our anxiety. It’s more socially acceptable to overwork or to blow our top than it is to say, “I’m a little anxious about this; can we take time to figure out if that feeling is worth listening to?”
I’m often inclined to think, I’m going to open a can of worms if I listen to these anxieties. We’ll never get anything done, and it will devolve into panic and reactionary decisions. But when left unstated, fear only festers. Then it erupts in dissension, conflict, and abusive behaviors.
In A Failure of Nerve, Rabbi and family therapist Edwin Friedman paints a picture of a leader who can handle their own anxiety and the anxieties of others. This “well-differentiated” leader is
… someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals, and, therefore, someone who is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about. I mean someone who can be separate while still remaining connected, and therefore can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence. I mean someone who can manage his or her own reactivity to the automatic reactivity of others, and therefore be able to take stands at the risk of displeasing.
It takes a lot of work to find that kind of differentiation, but we have a fantastic resource for it: prayer. As I prepare for business meetings, I often ask, “What are my hopes for this thing we’re planning? What are my fears?” And I ask God to reveal the ways I’m not relying on him, what his hopes and concerns are. Only then do I feel the permission (and peace) to ask those same questions in my meetings.
My task as a pastor is not to create an efficient factory. It is the messy, humbling, never-ending task of tending a garden.
During a recent planning meeting, we discussed a congregational conversation with the potential to be divisive. We stopped and asked ourselves, “What are we afraid could happen?” We took turns saying, “I’m afraid someone might feel excluded,” “I’m afraid someone will get angry and leave the church,” “I’m afraid it will create division in the community.” It worked the way confession should work—we remembered we were not alone, that we were all limited and unsure, and that we all needed God.
After confronting those anxieties without judgment, we were able to decide which were worth listening to. In some cases, we said, “Well, if we trust the Lord, we need to choose not to act out of that anxiety.” In other cases we said, “Hmm, that’s a good thing to consider. How can we prepare for that eventuality? How can we choose to believe God can use it even if the worst happens?” Then, on top of those fears, we shared our hopes for what could be. Expressing joys and fears together ensures that our imaginations are directed towards a reality where God is at work, towards an economy where nothing goes to waste—not even “failure.”
My task as a pastor is not to create an efficient factory. It is the messy, humbling, never-ending task of tending a garden. In gardening, there are certainly decisions to be made and structures to be designed. But as I lead the decision-making process, I must remember that there is a force at work beyond my own. I till the soil, plant the seeds, and tend the growth, but God provides the sun and the rain.
My roles as spiritual guide and administrative overseer are not in conflict. As Ann M. Garrido writes in Redeeming Administration, if the primary task of administration “involves the creation of an environment in which life can flourish,” this is something pastors are gifted to do.
These practices of releasing control, discerning my motives, choosing worship over anxiety, and naming my joys and fears have forced me to ask: “Do I really believe God is concerned with the decisions involved in leading his people? Do I really trust that, even in the planning stages, God can shape me as a leader? Can the challenges of making ministry decisions invite me into deeper reliance on the Lord? And as I learn to walk in the trust that this is his church, that he cares more about this work than I do, I’m discovering the peace that comes from giving it all to him.
Mandy Smith is lead pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and author of The Vulnerable Pastor.
