When we are in ministry, we offer ourselves to others, for God’s sake, for the sake of those we serve, and yes, for our own sake. Ministry is not just about giving to others, nor is it, of course, merely about aggrandizing self. Ministry is about our relationships (with individuals and with the congregation), and about giving out of our deepest self without giving ourselves away.

We will find it hard to give without giving ourselves away unless we have a strong prayer life. At the same time, we can find it hard to sustain a prayer life amid the demands of ministry. But for pastors it is the better part of valor to take the time for prayer and spiritual practice. A deep relationship with God helps us sustain relationships over time.

My voice teacher has a monthly performance group for her adult students. This month I was singing a French song that I didn’t know well enough as it turned out, and I had trouble with both the words and the notes. As a (recovering) perfectionist, I mentally kicked myself both during and after my mangled performance. At the end of the session, my teacher asked me if I wanted to try again, and I did, this time with the music in front of me. I felt the power of the song once again.

You are not always going to get it right as a leader. In fact, when you are learning and growing and trying out some new things, failure at some of them is inevitable. Recovery and regrouping is as much a part of leadership as moving forward boldly. This is true about personal leadership as well as church programs and ministries. I was struck by Rick Warren’s words in The Purpose Driven Church that they had tried more things that failed than had succeeded at Saddleback. When we or a ministry fails, how can we take some time to recover (short or long depending on the wounds), and then get back on track?

My colleague Rev. John Rosenberg (director of the Lutheran Educational Network and Support) tells me he thought of me while standing in line for his morning latte recently. The quote of the day at the Java House was from Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), “Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.” Montaigne’s words are at least as true now as they were 400 years ago. Whether we are facing a traffic jam, a budget deficit, or trying to make sense of the Virginia Tech shootings or the war in Iraq, we are not able to govern events. The one area we have control over is how we respond to the challenges we face, big and small.

I like to say, it’s a matter of shifting from the impossible, controlling others, to the merely difficult, managing myself.

How close should you be to those you lead? Last month’s O magazine included an article by Suzy Welch, titled “When Good Women Make Bad Bosses.” Welch suggests that women sometimes err on the side of being either the “Ice Queen,” too distant from those they lead, or the “Good Mother,” too close. But the issues Welch raises are relevant for both men and women, especially in ministry and other helping professions. Welch says, “The remedy lies in striking the right intimacy balance-close enough to know your people, distant enough to lead them.”

How close do we need to be? Here are some tips for finding the right distance: 1) Keep your goals in mind as you relate to staff. You are first and foremost their leader, not their friend. 2) Be able to say both “no” and “yes” to requests from staff. Be sure both options are in your repertoire, and consider #1, your goals, as you decide. 3) Spend time with key staff regularly. While friendship is not the goal, developing relationships is essential to your leadership. Remembering both goals and relationships will help us as we supervise individuals and lead the entire group. Read my whole newsletter article here.

What do you think?

In ministry we need a fundamental humility about our ability to change others. When we wilfully try to create people in our own image, we get in the way of God’s work in the change process and the mysterious inner workings of the human heart. I’m being presumptious and arrogant when I think I know exactly what someone else should do. In my own leadership and life I have badly wanted to believe I could change others (especially my family!). But, paradoxically, the more I work to change someone, the more my efforts seem to backfire. When I can give others the respect and room they deserve to find their own path, the more we can all breathe easy and find our way together. This doesn’t mean anything goes: I can be clear about what I will and won’t put up with from others when it directly impacts me. I can be clear about where I am headed with my own goals for ministry and life. But ultimately others have their own choices to make (including whether or not to follow).

I’ve been getting a kick out of Victoria Weinstein’s blog, Beauty Tips for Ministers. She’s been getting a lot of attention lately, including a Nightline segment. The subtitle to her blog is “Because you’re in the Public Eye, and God Knows You Need to Look Good.” It’s worth a look partly for the laughs her quirky writing style elicits in posts such as “Black Sneakers with Suits: Non, Non, Mon Freres.”

But she raises some real issues that leaders need to consider. In one post, she asks, “You must be willing to project not just sweetness and light and healing, but leadership, vision, trustworthiness. I know that you ARE a trustworthy and devoted leader, but does your body know that? Are you projecting it when you step into a room?” Whether you agree or disagree with her prescriptions (yes, they are prescriptions; NO reindeer sweaters or flip-flops, ever), I think she’s addressing an issue that can go deep for clergy leaders. Are we really willing to be leaders and to act like leaders? Sometimes the way clergy dress can express something of our desire to be one of the community, and our unwillingness to step forward with the kind of clear leadership that is required for a congregation to truly move forward. Clothes are not the most important part of leadership, but leadership itself and being willing to take a stand as a leader is (and, by the way, clothing sometimes helps us).

Since I recently turned 50, I find myself thinking about age and leadership. I first started leading a congregation, when I was 26, as interim pastor of a primarily Spanish-speaking congregation. We had some bumpy times along the way, but somehow I found my way through the next year, preaching in Spanish and English, conducting my first funeral and my first baptism. Ten years later, I saw a woman from that congregation at a denominational convention. She came running over to me, calling, “Mi pastora.” Despite my inexperience and my language struggles, I was able to occupy the role of pastor sufficiently that she still saw me that way.

When I was called to be the pastor of a New England congregation at 31, people asked me, “What should we call you?” They had a woman pastor before who was definitely “Mrs. Thompson.” I couldn’t imagine these people of 60 and 70 calling me, “Mrs. Marcuson,” so I simply said, “Margaret.” The children called me “Pastor Margaret.” Over the years since our society has gotten progressively more informal, so titles are less of an issue than they used to be.

Clergy in mainline denominations are becoming progressively older, and there aren’t many 26-year-old newly-minted mainline pastors any more. And I have to admit I have crotchety moments when I think, what 26-year-old could lead a church, anyway, even though I did it myself. Yet all leaders of all ages stumble from time to time as they lead. No matter what our age, a key to leadership is learning from our mistakes, whether we are 25 or 50 or 75. I hope I’m still learning.

Israel Galindo commented on the last post: “One interesting wrinkle on this issue is the phenomenon that the relationship(s) we think have with our congregation or organization’s members may not be the same as the ones they think or experience with us. This can happen in many ways, including episodes of “projection” one either party. The ones that come to mind for me are those where I was surprised at the relationship and connection people in the congregation seemed to have with me that was disconnected with the one I perceived I had with them. I took it as one of those instancies of people relating to or projecting something on me mostly by virtue of the position I occupied in the system. In other words, it ‘wasn’t about me.’ ”

So, our followers project lots of things onto us. Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky in Leadership in the Line point out as Israel does, that we need to remember that many people have a relationship with the role more than with us. When we leave the role, we no longer have the relationship, which can be a shock. Of course, we also project onto our followers (and as I noted earlier, the extreme example of this is narcissism). The less we are dependent on our followers for our sense of ourselves, the better we can lead them.

Leadership never happens in a vacuum. We lead people, which means we have to have a relationship with them. Building these relationships is like building capital we can draw on when we want to challenge people to move forward in some new ways. If we don’t take the time to make these connections, any changes we institute will be short-lived and will certainly not last beyond our tenure. The force for human togetherness is a powerful one, and leaders ignore it at their peril. In a larger church or organization, we must be well-connected to key players, and find ways to communicate with everyone (preachers, of course, have the pulpit).

At the same time, the leader is not just one of the gang, and has to be prepared to step apart from the group. Leaders have to be able to deal with the anxiety this can produce. We all want to be accepted, and it is lonely to move apart in this way. Ronald Heifetz describes this as the “view from the balcony,” getting above the fray enough to have a wider perspective.

Finding the balance between connecting with people and stepping ahead of them to lead is the ongoing dance of leadership.