Marcuson’s Church Leadership Blog:

Are you feeling the need to reinvent yourself in ministry? I’ve been listening to and reading about the singer Tony Bennett lately. I’m finding it an inspiration. Here are four items I’ve been reflecting on:

1. Be yourself, and do what you do best. Bennett’s career took a downturn in the 60s and 70s with the rise of rock music. His label, Columbia, made him do an album of pop music (a dismal failure by everyone’s standards). He said it literally made him sick to do that album. And he quit the label. He has stuck with the songs he loves, including his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” He reinvented himself for a new era – but he didn’t stop doing what he does best. In ministry, plenty of people will try to tell you what you ought to be and do. While adaptability is important, don’t compromise the core of who you are. That’s what God made you to do.

2. Collaborate with younger people. When Bennett hit bottom in 1979, he asked his son to take over as his manager. And he listened to what his son said. He sang on MTV. He did an album of duets a few years ago with musicians like Elvis Costello and K.D. Lang. The result: A career that has gone on into his 80s. My young adult children know who he is (and not just because I’ve told them). For those of us who are getting older in ministry, developing relationships with creative and energetic younger folks can put some juice into our own work.

3. Express yourself creatively outside of ministry. Bennett began drawing as a child and never stopped. He studied painting seriously in the 1970s when his singing career was not going so well. He’s had exhibits of his paintings. (See his art work here.) What do you do that gives you creative satisfaction that is not at church? It’s a God-given gift, and it will feed your ministry.

4. Keep learning. Tony Bennett says the best advice he ever got was from the cellist Pablo Casals: “At any given moment you can learn.” Bennett says, “Isn’t that wonderful? The way he spoke. The way he spoke…” (Tony Bennett in the Studio: A life of Art and Music, p. 158). No matter what the challenges of ministry, of the wider society and even our personal lives, we can learn at any moment.

Financial adviser Kathleen Rehl had some terrific recommendations in today’s teleconference. She said that clergy who do better with their money “pay attention to their stuff and where it’s at.” They save some of their money (she recommends 10%), and they are aware of and take advantage of tax benefits for clergy.

She said some clergy say to her, “God will provide.” She says, “I believe God provides for us, but God gives us tools to get involved.” For those who are stuck in this area, she suggests expressing an intent to want to do something about it. “If there’s no desire, it’s not going to happen.” She suggests taking one small step at a time to move forward.

Asked how clergy might deal with the economic uncertainty we all face, she said, “I like to focus on things that you have control over.” These are items such as what you spend, what you can save, the length of time you are invested, and investing in a variety of investments. What you don’t have control over is market return. She suggests ignoring all the TV shows and financial magazines which say one thing one day and another the next.

The recording of the teleconference is available. E-mail me at Margaret@margaretmarcuson.com, and I’ll send you the link. Kathleen Rehl is the author of Moving Forward on Your Own: A Financial Guidebook for Widows, coming out next week.

Reminder: Please join me this Thursday, July 29, at 9 Pacific/10 Mountain/11 Central/12 Eastern Time, for a one hour conference call conversation on “What Do You Do with Your Money?” My guest will be financial planner Kathleen M. Rehl, Ph.D. Kathleen has assisted individuals with life-centered, comprehensive financial planning in her fee-only practice at Rehl Financial Advisors since 1996. Her late husband was a Lutheran pastor, so she understands clergy families from the inside out. Kathleen specializes in assisting widows, single women, clergy families, and those with a generous spirit to achieve important financial goals.

This is the next of a series of conversations with leaders on money and ministry, the topic of my forthcoming book. E-mail me at Margaret@margaretmarcuson.com with your interest, and I’ll send you call-in information. If you can’t make the call, a recording will be available. There is no charge for the teleconference (long-distance charges apply) or the recording.

I hope you can make it Thursday!

Pastoral leaders need to pay attention to their own personal finances. If we can be thoughtful about personal money management, it will help our leadership in stewardship and church finances. You can’t lead others where you haven’t gone yourself. Does this mean that you have to get yourself together completely before you can lead people to work on their own financial issues? No. But you have to be honestly working on your own life with money.

These matters are not just financial: they are emotional and spiritual. We can make anxious choices about money, whether we are spending with a credit card, postponing investment decisions, or never asking for a raise because people might get upset. Or we can make thoughtful choices and take responsibility for our own financial future-which can be hard. I know this myself: I’ve taken years to make certain financial decisions.

Here are some ways I have found to work on these issues: I’ve learned more about the history of how my family has dealt with money through the generations. I’ve joined a financial accountability group where I make commitments every month on actions I will take about financial matters. And I’m cultivating the spiritual practice of tracking my own anxiety about money daily, recognizing that the fear I can feel is not from God.

My spiritual director talks about the way money has us, rather than us having money. When money has us, we are emotionally fused with it. We are dependent on it in ways beyond the material. This is true whether we have a lot or a little, whether we are right on top of all our records, bills and investments or we have piles of unopened statements on the dining room table. It’s true of congregations, too: does your church have money, or does money have your church? When money has us, it’s hard for God to have us. Our fear about money gets in the way of our relationship with God and our leadership in the congregation. How might your own financial situation be influencing your role in the church’s finances?

Have the goal of being less anxious. I’m never going to be non-anxious about money, but I’m less anxious about it than I used to be. I’m better able to manage my money, plan about it and make decisions about it – and trust that God is caring for me, now and into the future. Money “has me” less than it used to. I am freer. And I can testify that a little lower anxiety goes a long way, both at church and in personal life.

Here are some questions to consider as you work on your own personal finances:

1. How do you make decisions about money?
2. What are your patterns of saving? Spending? Giving?
3. What resources do you have to help you make decisions? (Denominational resources, fee-based financial advisers, books or periodicals or online resources you like.)
4. If you struggle in this area, what would be one very small step you could take to help yourself?
5. If you are strong financially, what is the next thing you need to do?

In your church, who knows who gives, and who knows how much they give? This is a question that has come up on a number of the teleconferences this year. My June guest, Charles LaFond, expressed very strongly his view that the minister needs to know. And I understand that in Episcopal churches that is standard practice. In my own Baptist tradition there’s often a practice that the pastor does not know.

One of the problems when the pastor doesn’t know is that key leaders, including board members, may be giving nothing or next to nothing. Or members who are making a lot of trouble may be giving nothing. And no one knows except the financial secretary. When the pastor doesn’t know, there’s a triangle between him or her, the member, and the record-keeper, with the pastor on the outside. In something as important as financial stewardship, I’m coming to think that’s not a good thing.

I know that some churches have high anxiety about this issue. The church I served for 13 years was one of them. I have to confess I never fought this battle. But I did finally make my own pledge public: I figured I could tell my own secret. That alone gave me more freedom in preaching and teaching about stewardship.

At a recent presentation I gave on churches and money, I asked people to submit questions they had on the topic. One person wrote down a comment: “For a long time I thought I shouldn’t know what people gave. I have now come to understand I can be a better pastor if I know someone is hurting, and I am more confident in myself that I won’t play favorites with bigger givers. I also see giving as discipleship and I’m called to help people grow in this area too. I’m not there, but I am growing.” Well said.

What do you think?

It’s no secret that many churches and pastors are worried about money nowadays. But Edwin Friedman used to say, “The issue is never the issue.” He meant that issues and problems which are perennial in church life, or the latest hot-button challenge, are really primarily a focus for people’s anxiety. We live in highly anxious times, and there’s a lot of free-floating anxiety around. Somehow we attach it to certain issues. In church life a few are favorites: music, children and youth ministry. And, of course, money. As one pastor said, “There always seems to be an exclamation point when money is involved.”

Of course there are genuine financial challenges that must be faced. Bills must be paid. Staff must receive their salaries. The endowment must be managed. Budgeting must be done (and sometimes cuts must be made). But if we can delete that exclamation point and stay calm even when others are anxious, we’ll provide better leadership and the church will make better decisions about financial matters.

“A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.” Francis Bacon

My husband, Karl, a reference librarian, sometimes brings me home quotes he has come across in his work. This week he gave me this Francis Bacon quote. In church leadership and in pastoral care, sometimes questions are more important than answers. Our need to have the answers sometimes comes out of our own anxiety — we can feel like we are there to solve problems, to help people and to fix things. Asking thoughtful questions can help others find their own resources. It can be tempting to make the questions leading ones: “Don’t you think you should….?” But it’s more helpful to ask open-ended questions, the kind that cause people to pause and stare into the distance and truly reflect on their life, or on the life of the church. I notice when someone asks me a good question, I calm down and can think more clearly.

What’s the proportion of questions to answers in your conversations with folks?

This week we had the chance to visit Olympic National Park for the first time. My friend and colleague, Joey Olson, with her husband, Ole, hosted us for our visit. We drove up from Port Angeles, Washington to Hurricane Ridge, about a half-hour drive. It had been foggy but was supposed to clear off. But the fog didn’t actually lift to reveal the mountains until we were back down the mountain. But as we walked along the trail, Joey said: “If it were sunny, I wouldn’t be noticing all these wildflowers.” We spent as much time looking uphill at the flowers than we did looking at the fog.

We saw all kinds of alpine wildflowers, such as this lupine:

I know I can all too easily focus on what’s not there, what’s lacking, what people aren’t doing. This was a good reminder to focus on what is present.

If you’d like to see the view from Hurricane Ridge right now, click here. What can you see today?

Are you feeling discouraged? Is it hard to see signs of hope? Last week I had the chance to visit another great museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. I was delighted to see they had a special exhibition of the abstract painter Mark Rothko. I had enjoyed his paintings at my recent visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where I was struck by the rich color in his work. I went up the steps to the tower room in the National Gallery — and entered a room with nine black paintings. The museum describes this exhibit as Rothko’s “black on black” paintings, done in 1964. I was disappointed — I wanted to see color. But as I looked more closely, I could see that the work was far more subtle than that. Rothko used not only black, but rich shades of purple and gray. Every painting was different, and beautiful. Here’s an example of one of the works from the museum’s website.

I can see gloom and doom in a situation, or write someone off as hopeless. But if I can take the time to be curious and actually look and listen, I usually find some signs of strength and resourcefulness — and beauty. Where might you take the time to pay closer attention, to look beyond the obvious?

On Writing Well is a classic book on writing by William Zinsser. Jill Kelly, my writing coach, blogged about it last month here. I bought it for myself, and I highly recommend it for every pastor — for everyone, really. I’m about halfway through, and I see how much clutter and lack of clarity there is in my own writing — and I have an idea of how to improve. Clear writing is important for leaders, whether you are writing sermons, newsletter articles, blog posts or e-mails. Zinsser’s book will help you improve your writing and assess the writing of others. He’s also entertaining. The book has been in print for over 30 years, with good reason.