Team and Personal Development
We lost team members because of difficulties with other team members as well as differences in call and commitment. This has thrown up questions concerning recruitment, relationships and supporting team members without being a detriment to the mission of the team.
Has anyone got any thoughts on avoiding similar problems and encouraging the personal and spiritual development of team members?
I agree that we should be as
I agree that we should be as thorough as possible; but I do have a worry that we could also miss some diamonds if we trust all the tests etc too much. I am sure that if we had done all the above at least one of our team might not have come to us, and that would have been our loss, as each team member was fantastic.
We can use these tools; but they are only tools. We also have God to guide us. I know that sounds too easy; but it is truth. The probem with the tests is they don't make room for God's Spirit to mould and change people.
One of the values is a freedom to fail, and we have to remember that we will get it wrong sometimes and that is ok. The journey that we and those around us are on has good times and bad. Let's not be so hung up on getting everything right, that we are too afraid to move forward.
I do think that retreats and time for group and individual reflection are assential, and something that we failed to put in place often enough.
Sarah
Just a couple of further points...
Hi again Sarah. Been thinking some more about your post...
1. I would say also that its important to realise that screening isn't a be-all and end-all means to exclude people. Its a means to ascertain where people are at within themselves so that, if necessary, we can look at some pastoral issues BEFORE they join the team. Screening usually only increases the period it should take for people to join, rather than excluding them once and for all.
2. We do have the freedom to fail, but we also have a responsibility to care pastorally not just for the potential team member but also for the rest of the team. We need to be careful that we screen applicants also because they may later have a negative effect on other team members...I feel we are called to explore new patterns of church, not "experiment" with new patterns of church. People shouldn't be experimented on, whether thats team members or potential church members.
3. If someone doesn't get through the screening process, it doesn't mean they can't join the church itself! But there is a difference between being a team member and being a member of the church. Not everyone joining the church being planted needs to go through screening! Folk who don't pass the screening (at that moment in time) could just join the church until they have healed and are ready, and then join the team and take on more responsibility for core leadership.
4. Interestingly, in John Hayes' book Submerge he talks about using personality profiles as standard (esp. Myers Briggs) for helping grow self-awareness in teams
5. I was curious to ask which one of these might have put your team member off? And for what reasons?
Hi Paul, I guess the
Hi Paul,
I guess the difficulty I have with personality tests is that they say this is how this person is and doesn't allow for development or change. I do know that many people have found them useful; but I would want people to use them carefully and not to let them be the judge of someone's character alone.
Phil and I are not church planters - we are pastors - and maybe if we had taken a personality test we would not have been seen as suitable for church planting!! (maybe we're not?) Another member of our team had come out of a very difficult church situation, and there was question as to how he would cope in the church planting situation. We gave him a go - and he was fabulous! Yes there were things that needed to be worked through but he was a very valuable member of the team and church.
When do we deem that someone is healed enough to be a part of the team? I myself have had to have counselling whilst being in London - and although this was a difficult time for me, I do believe that I have come out better from being in that situation, and indeed it has really helped my ministry.
Of course I think people should go through a 'vetting' and for us to sure as we can be that they are right for the team and the team are right for them. I guess I was just flagging up that in being too cautious we may not choose anyone! Sometimes it is the weakest who end up being the best and the strongest who end up having difficulties. I do not want you to think that I was making too much of an innocent statement about trusting the Holy Spirit. I am a strong believer that he has given us minds for a reason! I was just trying to make sure there was that balance.
Of course I am talking about 10 years ago now, so maybe there are some rose tinited glasses around as well!!
Sarah
Aha!
Hi Sarah,
This helps me understand the situation a little bit more. It sounds like in the instance you were taking about, there had indeed been some form of vetting process beforehand, its just that it didn't involve personality profiling. It sounds like you were quite well informed about your friends journey and then made an informed decision or "risk", on that basis. Which is what I was pushing towards. It meant that these issues were already well understood before he (she?) was released, and you were prepared for the pastoral care they might need to receive. Thats good leadership!
I've just realised that here we have a pastor advocating taking risks and an evangelist advocating being careful. Crikey, even when we are advocating each other's natural positions we still can't agree!!!! ;-)
Anyway contrary to what you say here (personality profiles "say this is how this person is and doesn't allow for development or change"), personality profiles almost always present themselves as snapshots (Myers Briggs) or dynamic models (Ennegaram), which mean that they should never be used to box people in - its not how their designres present them. But they can provide really helpful insights into how people react under pressure, and a vocabulary for discussing inter-team dynamics which are invaluable. They can also really affirm people in who they are and help change other folk on the team to be more accepting of personality differences. Jesus said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" but I think its slightly more subtle than that...often actually what we need to do is to "love others in such a way that they understand that they are loved" (which is what we want for ourselves). This actually means interacting with them in ways that their personality regards as loving. Robustly challenging a Myers Briggs "T" is often a helpful approach which really hurts a Myers Briggs "F". Man, I have learned so much about myself and how to treat others through personality tests, never feeling that I have been boxed in, and never making (I hope) others feel that they have been boxed in.
Re: your comment about you and Phil being pastors, not church planters...I don't think we should use personality tests to guage people's gifting. These are two different things. You can't use a personality profile to tell if someone is a pastor. And even if you are a pastor, the idea is to assess not whether you are suitable for cross-cultural mission based on the gifts you bring but whether you are healed and whole enough to sustain the pressures of cross-cultural ministry (character/core spirituality). And if there are deeper issues, then that enables folk to make sure appropriate care is in place. I think that some personalities are perhaps more naturally inclined to pastoral care, but just because you are pastors doesn't mean you shouldn't be church planting. It perhaps suggests that you will need to form a team with people who have giftings which will balance yours, though. Maybe we should consider that its ideal (though not always possible) to have evangelists with us if we are pastors (and vice versa) in order to maximise our potential, though. Perhaps if there are only pastors on your team, we can expect your church to reflect that...
This is all again different from issues which come up further down the line which are a result of new experiences and not stuff that is brought into the initial selection process. Of course we can't discourage people for the moment on the basis that they might get unwell!! Its not wrong to experience depression etc as a result of church planting, but if you are depressive before you even start, its a fair bet that c.p. will exacerbate rather than heal the issue...
I agree that there is a question about how you judge whether someone is "healed enough yet" to take on the stresses of church leadership in a cross-cultural setting. That final intuition must be about communal discernment in the Spirit, and you are totally right to bring in that balance. But the response to the uncertainty shouldn't be that we will release anyone into it, because "everyone is hurting to some extent." (I know you weren't saying this). There are too many cases of folk being really damaged by inner hurts which still control them in church leadership, which no-one knew about in advance. Personality tests (among many other assessment tools) are one way to help us come to an informed and careful judgement on these issues. I can think of no cross-cultural mission agency (or even denomination) which doesn't have a vetting process, which implies that some folk can be encouraged to wait for some time before moving into these things.
Finally, I actually do think that in some cases, if we can't find the right people (or if we deem in the Spirit that the risk really is too great), we actually shouldn't move ahead. This goes against my natural drive to just get on with it... One way that God affirms that the time is right is that he brings the right people along to get to the next stage.
This has been a really good chat! Thanks for all your insights and for helping me get back to a more balanced perspective :-)
Hey, the Holy Spirit can be in the tests as well
Hi Sarah,
I think you are right to point out that the tests are only a method to helping build better teams, but then I think offering some methods is a legitimate answer to Hannah's question. I'm not sure that coming out of a situation of conflict the simple answer of "we need to trust the Holy Spirit" is all that satisfying...I think Hannah probably did, and things still seem not to have worked out. Praise God that you haven't had a situation of team conflict because of the gems that the Holy Spirit brought you! Sometimes it doesn't fall that way (certainly in my experience). Getting practical and deploying our wisdom and the best tools we can can be just as full of the Holy Spirit as a more "organic" approach (in my opinion). What if the "organic" approach doesn't work? What if a team gets mired in conflict, because team members aren't self-aware enough to be able to handle conflict well or just plain laugh at themselves? Or what happens if we deploy people who have significant and deep hurts which come back not only to trip them up but stall the whole team? The tests can also be a Spirit-filled means of using the 'gift if discernment' in order to create the opportunity for the Spirit to minister deeply into people's lives before they are deployed. This of course doesn't exclude more prophetic approaches...why not combine them both for maximum effect?
I'm happy to ignore the tests if they exclude people because the tests are too middle-class, but if we don't screen using the tests, then our approach to recruiting team members in a more relational way should be no less thorough - it should just be more relational than programmatic. Culturally appropriate screening is crucial, no matter how gifted or exciting a potential recruit may be.
It may also be the case that I interpret "the freedom to fail" in a slightly different way. I think that "the freedom to fail" shouldn't be held up as an end in itself, but as a style which we employ as we push forward to seeing a prevailing church planted. Failure is acceptable in that it is the environment in which success is bred, and church is destined to prevail against the evil one, as Jesus prophesied. Mixed with the value of respecting those who have gone before us, I think the value of being free to fail only becomes fully meaningful when we take risks beyond those which the Church has already taken, failed in, and learnt from. Otherwise, we are just repeating the same old mistakes. I don't think we have the freedom to make the same mistakes which have already been made in past church history. I guess that goes for doctrine as well. Making the same mistakes over and over again seems unwise and unnecessary to me, and a bad stewardship of God's resources. There is a difference between unintentional mistakes being redeemed by the Spirit in a genuinely new insight, and intentionally setting out to make mistakes. One of these potential re-hashed mistakes is to not screen missionaries for cross-cultural work because we are simply trusting the Spirit.
I think deploying the best tools, and appropriately, so as to avoid unnecessary failure (and the inherent pastoral cost) is a legitimate starting point so we can concentrate on taking risks that no-one has yet tried. Screening potential recruits (whether using using middle-class or more contextual approaches) is just good mission practice and reduces attrition in the long-term. Its not about excluding people on the basis if whether they pass muster, its about recognising that church-planting is tough, that small teams are crucibles of tension in which deep hurts and character issues will arise, and that journeying together on the Emmaus Road and helping people to meet Christ is one thing, but having the character to endure the cross and give birth to a new church is another thing entirely.
I'm pleased that there is now effectively a three-year screening process for UE. A very general observation is that deep character issues tend to reveal themselves about 18 months into a new environment...its a time where people learning new skills and living in a new culture begin to have the confidence to strike out on their own, but still aren't fully confident that they have what it takes. Then insecurity and character issues begin to take over. Have you had an experience like this on your team?
Just reflecting a little on what I have just said, I guess I am arguing for a balance between the seeming naivete of a simple spirit-led approach (innocent as doves) and the use of the best tools we have (wise as serpents). We can have both!!! Thanks for helping me work this through (and sorry for my long-winded response...)
All the best
Paul
Response
Hi Hannah,
This is just a massive issue and one which I imagine I will be spending a lot on time of over the next years. Essentially, what we are dealing with here is the pastoral aspect of church planting, and since this gift is not one of my strongest points, its the thing that I will be making sure I major on as a team leader, to the best of my ability. Importantly, it is also the responsibility of the local Steering Group, and this is the issue that we are having a dedicated day meeting about with Stuart and Juliet in Glasgow in August. How does the Glasgow Steering Group ensure that the best possible quality of support for team members and team leaders will be in place for their cross-cultural work? I'm just gonna batter some ideas down, no particular order...My natural tendency is to put task before team. So I've made it my mantra to say "Team before task" in order to balance myself out!
Personality profiles
I intend to use Belbin. Myers Briggs, Enneagram, Navigators Gift assessment sheets, SHAPE (a system devised by Whiteinch Cof S), retreat days with Peter Neilson and his wife Dorothy, biblical teaching and any other method possible to raise individual awareness about personality, preference, communication, and style so that team communication is as good as it can be in spiritual, emotional and personal terms...we need to learn our blindspots and learn to accept other personality styles as a blessing, not a curse. If you would like access to any of these profiles, just email me. I reckon that 80% of team breakdowns are down to bad communication, not the Enemy himself, though he will exploit bad communication and personality tension.
Mutual encouragement
One of the best exercises we did when I worked for 4 years on a scheme in Edinburgh was to simply sit down and encourage one another with what we saw in each other. We went round one by one and everyone else had to say something encouraging to each person in turn. It was massively affirming. Before we did this, we got everyone to write down what they thought they brought to the team. The correlations were staggering and also massively affirming.
Ephesians 4 giftings
Essential to understand how the 5-fold ministries interact and be able to diffuse tensions based on individuals championing their own gifting (understandable). This is about how the Body interacts with itself and developing the fruit of humility. Tensions between evangelists and pastoral types are most common, and thats where you need apostolic gift to hold things together. Prophets on core teams can be a tremendous boon but also a source of real crazy tension. Prophets get their words from God mixed up with the only way we should go. Important to keep emphasising that there are other perspectives and that ultimately the bible is normative. Belbin suggests, however, that possibly the most crucial team role on a team is what he calls the Plant, who provides eal creative stimulus and comes up with wacky but excellent ideas...often prophetic types are Plants as well.
The recruitment process needs to be as rigorous as it can be
Essential to get references, spend lots of time with candidates, ask probing background questions, expect them to take counselling if necessary. We are also probably going to ask every potential team member to go through a psychological assessment at Edinburgh International Heath Clinic (an overseas mission medical practice), an assessment usually reserved for overseas cross-cultural workers, but excellent, to for inner city teams. Well worth £100 a shot - includes background checks (eg past issues with family, sexuality).
Books
An excellent resource for cross-cultural and missionary psychology is Marjory Foyle's Honourably Wounded - staple mission agency fare it details clearly and well all the stumbling blocks (pastorally) that can arise in cross-cultural situations. I also recommend taking a course in cross-cultural mission at your local bible college (if offered) - ICC has an excellent course taught by David Millar, which I would recommend (it may be available by distance learning).
Understanding Culture Shock
Essential to pastoral care for cross-cultural mission workers is understanding the psychology of missionary adjustment. We must take our work seriously as cross-cultural mission, and there can be alot of tension on a team as it adjusts into a new culture. Important to manage this well.
Expectations
We must portray the right expectations to team members about our leadership, what they will be able to do, what we expect of them, what they can expect of us. I was very surprised to see that no UE team had created a strategy document before they began...what expectations are we creating for people if we just jump straight in? Check out the document Esther and I created. Note the disclaimer about how it will need to be continually re-written etc, but also see how it gives people a handle on what to expect and a place to begin disussing crucial areas of team life
Essay on best practice in missionary care
Check out the essay I write on this at my blog - had some good feedback within UE saying that it had been very helpful.
Team training days
An excellent innovation starting this year, and forum for us in UE teams to ask these questions.
Ongoing, programmed interviews
Important to build into team culture special one-on-one review times with team leaders to pre-empt potential issues before they blow out of all proportion. i want to learn more about how best to go about this.
Spiritual Warfare
Keep bringing reality of way that Satan tries to drive a wedge between teams into prayer sessions and bible-studies together. Get team memebrs to actually buy into a commitment to keep short accounts.
Best Practice
Try to stay ahead of the game and research best practice among other urban mission initiatives (Eden and UNOH being prime examples).
Support for team members
Ensure that team members have a range of individual support mechanisms and friendships in addition to the team, to let off steam, get perspective etc.
Prayer, prayer and more prayer
Crucial aspect of team leader's responsibility.
Team sabbaticals
UNOH expect all their individual teams to have 2 team sabbaticals a year, just for R&R and team dynamics issues.
Expect tension
This stuff really is de-rigeur in church planting. I cannot think of any plant that flourished which did not go through tensions like this. Its not necessarily a sin to disagree and go seperate ways, while sustaining relationship. Also, these issues are pretty much to be expected...name this potentiality from the word go and work very hard to enable God to pre-empt the issues breaking the team up...don't shy away from tensions but lovingly confront...letting them fester will really make the situation worse. Having outsise, impartial wisdom to work through issues is essential.
So there you go, hopefully these ideas may help, I expect you're already doing a lot of them.