Charisse,
I spent the last 10 years in responsible ecclesiastical leadership
positions. The church I belonged to is commonly known as the "Mormon
Church."
Every leader within the Church is a volunteer. The Church has the world's
largest private welfare relief system; the world's largest women's
organization; and a strong youth program (including a program from
teenagers as well as children).
I spent my time as a leader within various congregations, ranging anywhere
from 500 members to a few thousand. (By the term leader I mean was called
to a position of "authority," which meant I was responsible for the
affairs of the church in a given geographic location.)
Much of my time was spent caring for the Temporal Needs of the members of
our Church. This meant administering welfare relief to those who were in
need (the aged, the unemployeed, etc.) as well as providing spiritual
guidance for members of the congregation (which meant I heard
"confessions" of transgressions -- things like adultery, addictions to
pornography, embezzlement, etc.), I heard marital problems -- which I
always refered to a professional marriage counselor, dealt with youth
problems, etc. The list is too long to list.
There were a number of smaller organizations within the congregation: The
Sunday School, which was responsible for teaching the doctrines of the
church to the members of the congregation on Sunday; The Young Men's
program, which includes Boy Scouting as well as spiritual instruction; The
Young Women's program, which helps young women develop certain
characteristics and attirbutes that the Church felt were good for a woman
to possess; The Relief Society, which is the Church's womans organization;
and the Primary, which is responsible for teaching the doctrines of the
Church to children, ages 3 through 11.
I could provide a much more comprehensive list of my responsibilities, but
I don't want this to be too long of a message.
When I read the Fifth Discipline, the first thing I saw was how it could
be used to help the congregation become a more meaningful and united
community. I was torn, from the start, between using "mans" knowledge to
govern what I considered to be "the Lord's kingdom," or to just stick to
the scriptures and policies of the chuch. Eventually I got to the point
where I was comfortable intermingling the two.
There is much need, in volunteer churches, for the disciplines of a
Learning Organization. One of the fundamental differences between a Church
and a Business is that no one gets paid for going to church or fulfilling
the assignments you ask them to. And the idea of eventual salvation seems
too far into the future to have meaning in the here and now for many
people. And so shared vision was a critical element in my leadership
style; dialogue, also had a prominent place in my leadership, as I wanted
to get at the assumptions that were guiding our actions and create new
possibilities (dialogue, combined with mental models provided an excellent
way to do this).
As I began to help the other leaders unearth long-held assumptions, some
became very uncomfortable. It shook up their world. Some people were
embarassed by their assumptions; others were infuriated that they had
become "public knowledge"; and others just closed their eyes and refused
to admit their assumptions might be wrong.
In doing this I challenged, at a basic level, the Mormon culture in Utah
(which is quite different from the Mormon culture outside of Utah). For
instance, Mormon's in Utah like to assign a family to "friendship" a
non-mormon family in the neighborhood. And the given rule was "it takes
about a year to get to know someone before you can talk to them about the
Church." (The purpose of friendshipping, of course, was to convert the
neighbor to our faith.) I challenged both of these practices: You cannot
assign someone to be someone else's friend -- that is pretentious at best;
and why does it take a year before you talk to them about your beliefs?
When I travel on business I talk to people all the time (and, to date, I
have never converted anyone to my belief system; but I have learned a lot
about other people, and found that my views of the world are much more
broad and tolerant than ever before).
Eventually I was accused of "running the church like a business," an
accusation I would not deny (Didn't Jesus say to Mary and Joseph, "Wist ye
not that I be about my Father's business"? It was a business, the Lord's
busines.) But when I filed for divorce in January I was released of all my
responsibilities.
It was an exciting time the proved to be valuable and cherised experience.
I hope that the work I did, in that area, will continue to mature. I don't
live there anymore so I'm not sure. And, frankly, I lost the respect of
most of the members of that congregation when I got divorced. So all the
work I did there, I'm afraid, is being rejected as "unsound."
-- Benjamin B. Compton bcompton@enol.comLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>