Clergy Effectiveness Study Will Enhance Training, Help Annual Conferences

The results of a job analysis of what makes an effective pastor in a local church will enhance training provided this summer to district superintendents, boards of ordained ministry, and others who work with candidates and clergy in annual conferences.

“The breadth of tasks performed by local church pastors, coupled with the rapid switching between tasks and roles prevalent in this job is unique,” said Dr. Richard P. DeShon, who did the study using focus groups. “It is remarkable how complex this job is.” DeShon is a psychology professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich.

The Rev. Sharon Rubey, director of Candidacy and Conference Relations at the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, said the results from this study of what makes an effective pastor provide useful information for those who work with candidates for ministry, assign pastors to churches, and do clergy supervision.

“Now that we have this national research about pastors, the next step is to develop a widely distributed survey using the underlying behaviors associated with effective ministry to learn more about the amount of time and the value that is given to each behavior,” Rubey said.

“Along with that we hope to survey congregations as well to find out the kinds of knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal characteristics are desired in pastoral leadership. Together, these studies will offer guidelines that can be helpful in matching pastors with congregations,” she said.

The study, completed in December 2007, was conducted using focus groups of pastors who were identified by boards of ordained ministry and district superintendents as effective. Since the purpose of the study was to determine the meaning of effective performance, conference representatives were not given a definition of effective. Instead, they were asked to name individuals whom they considered high performing pastors.

The 20 pastors chosen for the focus groups were diverse in gender, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and age, as well as coming from a variety of ministry settings and different sizes of churches.

A set of 13 clusters or groups of tasks that contribute to effective performance emerged from the discussions. Those are: administration, caregiving, rituals and sacraments, facility construction, communication, relationship building, evangelism, fellowship, management, preaching and public worship, self-development, United Methodist connectional service, and other development (performing activities to teach, train or mentor individuals and groups to improve their knowledge and skills).

“Every pastor is not going to be able to perform all these tasks well,” DeShon said. But, he added, “The people who are effective at very big churches could out-compete CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. The problem is there aren’t that many of them.”

The Rev. Dr. Tom Pace, senior pastor of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Houston, Tex., believes there is one crucial element an effective pastor must have.

“You have to know how to learn, and you have to like doing it,” said Pace, one of the pastors who took part in the focus groups. Pace said that effective pastors must always be willing to learn a new way to do something.

“I also think pastors have to be self-assured enough that they can be psychologically grounded,” Pace said. “There is no work other than politics or acting where it is so much about whether people like you.” Pace said when he came to St. Luke’s – a church with about 2,000 weekly attendance at worship – some people left simply because he wasn’t the former pastor, and they did not like him as much. Pace said that can be hard.

The Rev. Sara Thompson-Tweedy, pastor of The Federated Church of Kerhonkson in Kerhonkson, N.Y., said she was stunned at the scope of the tasks identified by the focus groups.

“But really, it’s the work of the church. It falls on clergy to do it or see that it gets done, but there is no way one person could do everything,” said Thompson-Tweedy. The church she pastors has about 100 members in a community of 2,000.

Both she and Pace said churches teach their pastor things they need to know.

“When I went into ministry, I would have thought caregiving was my strength,” she said. But now, she believes her particular strengths are preaching and public worship. “I feel so alive when I preach, teach, and lead worship.”

Tweedy-Thompson said good pastors must learn to delegate and be willing to let people fail gracefully.

“If you stand over someone with your foot in their chest, they are going to do nothing or get sick of you and leave. You may discover you’ve delegated to the wrong person. If they fail, you need to pat them on them on the back and say that’s fine,” she said.

DeShon said all of the pastors in the focus groups talked about the importance of a strong call and also about finding a balance between life and being clergy.

In addition to call, DeShon said it was pretty clear that good pastors have to be adaptable, intelligent, and have good social skills.

“You must have a strong sense of call and nothing can substitute for that,” he said. “A lot of other things you can work on.”

To read the study, visit the Boards of Ordained Ministry site.