The Treasurer who Roared: An Alternative Scenario
Scott Cormode

It is Tuesday afternoon and Rev. Clare Morgan is sitting in her office at Grace Church drowsily sifting through her mail. She has just returned from a lunch appointment and expects to spend a couple of hours in the office before attending the Board of Elders meeting in the evening.

The top sheet on the stack of papers pleases Clare even before she picks it up. It is the first report of the new Sunday School Director, Angela Michaels. Angela symbolizes for Rev. Morgan the new hope that has blossomed since Clare became pastor of the 200-member mainline congregation three years ago. Angela is young and energetic, full of ideas -- a former bank branch manager with an infant daughter. Angela is one of a handful of Grace Church's newer members who had begun to take responsibility for the long-neglected Sunday School program. Clare smiled as she thought of Angela proudly presenting her report to the Board. It was a very hopeful time at Grace Church.

But as Clare read Angela's report, she began to worry. There was trouble on the horizon. Angela was headed for a tongue-lashing from the church treasurer and she did not even know it. Angela's sin appeared innocent enough. She and the Christian Education Committee had decided to abandon the Sunday School curriculum produced by the denominational publishing house. They had met together as a committee, reviewed the available options and selected the curriculum that Angela's report said was "the most Christ-centered." The fact that it was not published by the denomination was never really a factor in their decision.

Clare knew this was going to be a problem. She knew it was going to upset Gilbert Gaddis, the church treasurer. Gil had an authoritarian personality. He tended to reprimand people who displeased him. He had been the treasurer for twenty years and Clare had not yet convinced him that his job as treasurer did not include veto power. He believed that he had the right to approve all congregational purchases. The fact that Angela had not consulted with Gil was going to make him testy. But that was not the real problem. Gil was one of the core group in the congregation who felt a real allegiance to the denomination. This band of denominational stalwarts tended to be more theologically liberal than the young families who were beginning to take responsibility for the Sunday School. The old guard, as Clare thought of them, would likely be disturbed by the theological content of the new curriculum, interpreting it as yet another sign that they were losing control of the congregation that they had sustained for a generation. Clare was convinced that Gil would view Angela's report as saying that she had turned her back on the denomination, and done it without his approval.

Instantly, Clare knew this was a pivotal moment in her ministry at Grace Church. This situation touched on too many of the issues bubbling below the surface of her growing congregation. Now was the time for Clare to exercise leadership. Clare ditched her plans for the afternoon and decided instead to map out a strategy for meeting the evening's challenge.

*****

So what did Clare Morgan actually do upon reading Angela's report? After taking a few minutes to assess her situation, Clare planned out a course of action. She decided that she would have to set the tone for the Church Board meeting from the outset. That way the categories of interpretation she initiated would structure the evening's conversation.

The only thing Clare did before the meeting was call Hattie Berger, a congregational matriarch. Hattie had been teaching Sunday School at Grace for over fifty years and she had attended the Christian Education meeting where they had selected the new curriculum. Clare asked Hattie about the meeting in order to make sure there were no surprises. There were none. Hattie's recollection matched Angela's report and Hattie seemed enthusiastic about Angela's leadership. Clare then planted a couple of seeds to prepare for the evening. First, Clare asked for permission to recount an oft-told congregational story about Hattie at the board meeting that night. "Of course," came the reply. Then Clare said, "I expect that Angela is nervous about making her first presentation to the board tonight. Do you think you could sit next to her, just to comfort her?" Again, Hattie agreed. This short conversation thus activated Hattie's maternal instincts and made protecting Angela the focus of Hattie's evening. By assigning Hattie this pastoral duty, Clare freed herself to pursue the organizational and theological issues.

Clare opened the meeting that evening with a short devotional, as was her custom. Clare put a lot of thought into these three to five minute homilies because she knew that they reminded the board members which theological categories applied to their evening's work. For this meeting, Clare chose to talk about children in the church, celebrating the opportunities Angela brought while highlighting tales from the parish's past. Clare read the gospel story of Jesus with the children. And then she said, "Tonight's a special night at Grace Church. Tonight we are thrilled to receive the first report from our new Sunday School Superintendent, Angela Michaels. As you read it, you'll see that she is bringing in kids and parents that would never before have entered our building. It's exciting. And it is so appropriate to be happening here at Grace. She is continuing a long-standing congregational tradition of placing our children first. You know, I was thinking today about you people in this room tonight (our board) and about how many of you first entered this church through the Sunday School. That made me think of Gil's story. One of the first stories Gil told me when I arrived here was how he started attending church here when he was ten years old. Hattie Berger was his teacher. Gil eventually drifted away from church, only to return when he was thirty-five. That first Sunday back, he walked his own ten-year-old son to class, only to find that Hattie would be his teacher. And you know what? Hattie is still working with our kids. We welcome Angela's report tonight because she represents a renewal of our church's long-standing commitment to our children." Clare's homily set just the right tone. It set the categories for interpretation even before the debate began. Indeed, she did such a good job interpreting Angela's report ahead of time that no debate was even necessary. When Angela's report came up, Gil did not complain. The only one on the board who spoke was Hattie, welcoming Angela in the name of the congregation.

In preemptively diffusing the crisis, Clare used each of the leadership skills we have said are necessary for exercising faithful and effective leadership. She understood the tensions inherent to ministry, pursuing for example profoundly spiritual goals through deceptively secular means. She defined the theological reality that summed up the situation. She told the board that Angela represented the next step in their long history of placing children first. They adopted her interpretation and it became reality. Furthermore, her greatest resource in defining this reality was a narrative. She told a story, a story that celebrated Gil and that made children the center of attention. She also laid before the board a vision that told where they had been and where they were going. Children are Grace Church's past, she told them. And they are the future, she implied. Finally, Clare addressed the situation at multiple levels. She assigned Hattie the pastoral concerns; she defused the organizational problems before they came up; and she did all this by offering a theological interpretation. Clare embodied faithful and effective religious leadership.