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!

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?

I had the chance to spend the day in Manhattan yesterday, after leading a retreat on Monday-Tuesday for the American Baptist Churches Ministers Council of New Jersey. I was able to go to the Museum of Modern Art for the first time. I found the art moving and inspiring. I was particularly struck by Rousseau’s Sleeping Gypsy, which is enormous.

Seeing art in person is so much different than looking at images in a book. The colors are so vivid, and you can see the scale of the artist’s vision. It takes courage to keep working and creating, especially when you are an innovative artist like so many of these represented. Van Gogh, Picasso, Jackson Pollock – these and many others faced extreme criticism of their art. I heard someone in the museum say of Pollock, “he just shook paintbrushes at a canvas,” as if there was no creativity involved. You don’t have to like Pollock’s art to admire his hard work and vision. I think creativity involves both.

Join me this Thursday, June 17, at 9 Pacific/10 Mountain/11Central/12 Eastern Time for a one hour conference call conversation with Charles LaFond on the topic, “What Does Prayer Have to Do with Money?”

The Rev. Canon Charles LaFond is Canon for Congregational Life in the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. His current ministry combines a decade as a fund raiser and non-profit management executive and a second decade as a priest and monk. Charles comes at stewardship, congregational development and spiritual conversion of life not so much as logistical issues, but rather as pastoral, spiritual and theological issues. Charles’ interest is in calling the Church to a deeper awareness of how much we are loved by God and to a simpler and more aware life in that context.

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!

Join me this Thursday, May 27, at 9 Pacific/10 Mountain/11Central/12 Eastern Time for a one hour conference call conversation with Larry Foster on the topic, “How Did You Learn about Money?”

The Rev. Dr. Larry L. Foster is the director of Clergy Seminars in Whitehall, MI. His own work with family process began in 1979 when he first heard Edwin Friedman talk about emotional triangles and anxiety. He has been a coach and consultant for sixteen years, working with Bowen Family Systems Theory, especially around leadership.

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!

One pastor remembers hearing his mother say, every time they saw someone driving a nice car, “But are they happy?” We internalize any number of lines, from “money doesn’t grow on trees” to “You can’t take it with you.” These messages about money affect how we lead in church life. Whatever the message, some grow up and follow the same way of dealing with money; others react and do the opposite. The daughter of a free-spending mother may still have her first dime, and carefully watch the church expenditures as well as her own.

Our birth order and other circumstances in our family often have an impact on how we live out the family story. In some families there’s one person, generation after generation, designated to be the financial success, often the oldest. And there maybe someone who typically struggles financially, who may be someone further down the line, a younger daughter or a younger son.

As we learn more about the family story that has influenced our attitudes toward money, we can become more neutral about it. We can have more choices. This is not an easy process, and it is not a quick one. It’s more of a gradual shift, and the old patterns are always ready to resurface in times of high anxiety. In a church budget crisis you may want to hide in your office, the way you hid in your room when your parents fought about money.

As we get more neutral about money in our own family life, we can have greater freedom when relating to money at church. In my own pastoral ministry, I found that as I learned more about the sometimes complicated history of money in my own family over the generations, I was simply less anxious about church finance. I dreaded the budget meetings far less, and I felt freer to preach about stewardship. This made my ministry much easier, and I like to think more effective. One year I began to make my own pledge to the church public, a significant change for me and for the life of the church.

My family legacy includes high anxiety and difficulty in making financial decisions. But I also gained a lot from my family that helps me every day. I know how to live frugally, which can be freeing. I understand the value of giving. I place a high value on being financially independent and standing on my own two feet. I’m grateful for these gifts, and I have a lifetime to work on lightening up about money.

What is your family story? Here are some questions to consider as you do your own research in your family:

1. Who is the most responsible person around money? The least?
2. How do people in your family make decisions about money? What values and criteria do they use?
3. How did you learn about money growing up? How did your parents learn?
4. What is the meaning of success in your family?
5. What do you notice, if anything, about how your leadership in financial matters echoes your family patterns?

Triangles are everywhere in church life. A triangle occurs when the relationship between two people becomes troubled, and a third person (or group) is pulled in to manage the anxiety between the two. Given the high-anxiety nature of money in church life, we can expect triangles to show up frequently. Here are some common examples:

The church board complains to the pastor that congregation members aren’t giving enough to support the budget. “Pastor, you’ve got to preach a really strong stewardship sermon this year to get them to give more.” Triangle: board-pastor-church members.

Or this: One staff member complains to another that the pastor hasn’t done enough to advocate for staff salaries. Triangle: staff member-staff member-pastor.

Or this: a pastor comes home from the church budget meeting, and his wife asks, “Are they going to give you a raise this year?” Triangle: pastor-church budget committee-spouse.

What’s a church leader to do? We can’t opt out of these triangles; they are simply part of being a church leader. But we can manage ourselves. It’s easy to get caught up in the anxiety of others around money. A thoughtful response will always lead to better results than a reactive response.

To repeat some of the basics about triangles:

First, you can’t change the “other side” of a triangle. In other words, you can’t change a relationship you don’t belong to. If you are in a triangle with two other people, you cannot directly affect their relationship. Their relationship is up to them, not to you. For example, as a staff person, you may agree that the pastor could do more to advocate for staff, or you may want to defend him or her to your colleague. But getting caught up in bemoaning or defending will not help anyone make progress.

Secondly, if you try to change the other side of a triangle, the situation often gets worse. People resist, consciously or unconsciously, our willful attempts to change them. In our sample case, you can’t manage the dissatisfaction of your colleague with your mutual boss. At least, you can’t do it without adding significantly to your own stress:

Thirdly, when you try to change someone else’s relationship, you carry the stress that belongs to the other two. Trying to do the impossible always creates stress. The other two may love it, because they will experience less stress: you’ve taken on what belongs to them. But there is also no potential for change.

Here are some tips for managing self in these inevitable triangles:

1. Don’t spend a lot of time complaining to others about a third party or listening to the complaints of others. These are anxiety-driven triangles which are rarely productive.

2. Think through what your responsibility is and what it isn’t. For a pastor, preaching strong stewardship sermons is a responsibility. Developing a good strategy, together with the board or other appropriate group, for increasing giving in the congregation is a responsibility. “Getting them to give more” is not.

3. Cultivate a neutral response to those who try to draw you into triangles. That doesn’t mean you don’t have an opinion about the topic at hand, whether it is salary or congregational giving or budget choices. But resist the efforts people make to get you “on their side” about an issue. Work hard to relate to both those you agree with and those you disagree with.

4. Draw out triangles that you see on paper, before or after a meeting or conversation. It will help you get calmer and develop a more productive response.

Managing ourselves around hot-button issues like money is never easy. But beginning to think triangles will help us avoid many pitfalls and lead more effectively.

Do you ever take a day off from the Internet? Vern Sanders posted that he’s fasting from posting today. And Carrie Sturrock, writing in The Oregonian today under the title “Take a day to slow down, relax and log off,” tells about a project called Sabbath Manifesto. It comes from ReBoot, a Jewish nonprofit, and one of the suggestions is to avoid technology for a day.

I try not to access e-mail on Sundays, but I do usually get online sometimes during the day. It’s complicated for clergy serving churches when you’re working Sundays, and e-mail/Internet use may be part of that.

Could you fast, the rest of today, tomorrow, or Easter Sunday?

Are you feeling a little stressed as Holy Week advances? One of my favorite fun blogs is Beauty Tips for Ministers. Victoria Weinstein, AKA “Peacebang,” blogs about appropriate dress for clergy, both male and female. Here’s a post picturing clerical dress for Barbie, created by The Rev. Julie Blake Fisher. Enjoy.

Joseph Clifford, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas, highlighted in today’s teleconference the value of knowing your church’s story. He illustrated the way he had gleaned a lot of useful information for his leadership from the official history of the church. One interesting story — in 1905, the new pastor of the church received a note from the treasurer pointing out that out of 700 members only 245 contributed to the church, and suggesting that “the church officers” needed to do something about this. A classic triangle, as Joe pointed out.

Joe talked about the way he’s tried to exercise self-defined leadership in a church which has always been highly anxious about money. Joe emphasized the importance of self definition in the pulpit around money and other issues, and the challenge of doing it in a way that tells a story and doesn’t become willful. One example: he shared in one stewardship sermon his own journey of giving, beginning with his own realization as a young man that what he thought was a lot of money was only 1% of what he made, and their own challenge as a family to move toward 10%. He was honest with the congregation about the fact that they didn’t always make it.

Joe also talked quite frankly about his own family story and his ministry. His story was to me a terrific example of grace at work through our families with their strengths and challenges — I’ll let you listen to the recording for details.

The recording of the teleconference is available. E-mail me at Margaret@margaretmarcuson.com, and I’ll send you the link.