Jill Hudson: Preparing for the challenges of tomorrow

Many church leaders are struggling to find their footing amid a changing cultural landscape. The solutions to the challenges of yesterday are insufficient for the challenges ahead. For the Rev. Jill Hudson, the seismic changes represent opportunities for the church to enter a new era of effective ministry. But new tools must be developed in order to face the future.

Hudson is the coordinator of middle governing body relations for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Her role is to facilitate connections among the local, regional and national organizations within the church. An expert in organizational development and strategic planning, Hudson is the author of “When Better Isn’t Enough: Evaluation Tools for the 21st-Century Church.”

Hudson spoke with Faith & Leadership at an event for judicatory leaders at Duke University. In her interview, Hudson explains why and how to effectively measure local and national bodies to develop vibrant ministries in a new era.

Q: Throughout your book, “When Better Isn’t Enough: Evaluation Tools for the 21st-Century Church,” you use the word “postmodern.” What is postmodern about evaluation?

When I use the word postmodern, I’m talking about the recognition that the church is caught up in a culture that’s radically different from the church I, and many of our parishioners, grew up in. [Not too long ago] Christianity and Judaism were the norm in the U.S. Now they’re among countless expressions of religious belief. For the first time, North American Christianity is faced with extreme challenges both in terms of how we communicate the faith and in the many cultural changes that impact people’s willingness to be active in organizational life of any form, much less within the context of a religious organization.

Q: So how do you do evaluations in subjective areas?

The way we do subjective evaluation is by getting clear on the expectations in a particular area of ministry before we evaluate it. For example, when we talk to a pastor about the effective use of technology, we first decide what that would look like. Perhaps a church wants a pastor that knows how to do a website, or maybe it wants a pastor that knows how to ensure that the website is kept up-to-date and creatively reaches the target audience for that church. Whatever the case, we talk about expectations before we begin to measure them, especially in these areas that are highly subjective.

Q: You also highlight the importance of effectively managing conflict. Why?

The effective leading of change involves the ability to manage conflict. It’s very difficult to lead any significant change without having conflict. Most of our pastors have gone to a conflict management workshop for two days at some point in the course of their ministry. But most of our pastors are ill-prepared to lead through the kind of deep, significant change the church in North America is looking at today.

Leading through change is as much an art as it is a science. Pastors need to expand their ability to manage the anxiety in the system so that they allow for a creative tension -- a creative conflict rather than a divisive conflict. We cannot resolve conflict. We can only manage it and keep it constructive. The ability to manage it is what’s really essential for a 21st-century pastor.

Q: This is not the first time you’ve written about evaluating structures in church life. What do you see changing in your work and in the church?

My basic beliefs about evaluation have not changed. But my convictions about what we evaluate have changed. I still believe strongly that evaluation is a mutual process: to lift out a pastor only is unfair; it’s very difficult to measure success in the practice of ministry without also looking at how the congregation is doing in those areas. So mutual evaluation remains important. What has changed is what needs to be evaluated.

In the new book, for example, I don’t talk much about preaching. I don’t talk about pastoral care or about some of the givens for leadership within the church that have always been a part of the evaluation process for pastors. Instead, I talk about how a pastor or a church professional learns to create an environment for change, how to manage conflict and [how to manage it] not as a problem-solving technique but as a way of life.

I think these things are more important to the life of the church than whether or not the pastor is a stunning preacher. As important as preaching is -- and it certainly is a key in our worship life -- it’s a very subjective thing to measure. Congregations that are populated by longterm Christians are going to expect one thing out of a preacher, but congregations that are focused on new believers are going to expect something quite different. So the criteria, the content for evaluation, is what has really changed.

I may be the best preacher in the whole denomination, but if I can’t lead my congregation through a transformative experience that allows it to serve the populations outside its front door, it doesn’t matter if I am a good preacher. I’m not being effective in ministry.

Q: Do church leaders have to choose between the internal life of the congregation and the external life of the community they’re in?

We have to hit an appropriate balance. We have to care for the good people that God has given us to serve, and [we have to] nurture them in their own discipleship. Many of our congregations have assumed that a person who was already a believer grew in his or her faith as a natural part of congregational involvement. What we’re discovering now is that we have a lot of folks in church, but not all of them have matured in their faith.

But the other side of that balance is what happens outside the church. As we understand social capital and the role of the church in society, we’re learning that community outreach is an aspect of evangelism. Thus, congregations can no longer afford to be focused on themselves.

An even greater challenge today is how we minister to the needs of the world and how we demonstrate and talk about our faith journey. Finding that appropriate balance between caring for the people already in the church, reaching out to those who have not heard the good news of the gospel, and also reaching out to those who are hurting or in need of justice. That’s a new conversation for us.

Q: How have you seen a national church body support its local congregations?

One example comes from how we, as Presbyterians, organize [or plant] new congregations. For us, that organization happens at the regional level. The region determines if it is imperative for our witness in a community to organize a new church. But after that, every level of our denomination has a role: Perhaps our middle governing body, a synod, will provide financial resources. At the general assembly level -- our national church -- we might provide additional financial resources as well as an organizing coach who will partner with the pastor organizing that new parish. Or it may be that [the national church] will link that region with another region in a similar situation.

The national church has moved from just being a place that money is delivered to being a place where you network among others who are already doing effective work in your area. In a economic setting where there are fewer dollars to go around, partnership comes out in ways other than just the financial.

Q: How can national bodies evaluate their effectiveness?

It’s very important at this point in history for denominations to be clear about their priorities. We’re no longer in a place to be all things to all people. Denominations need to focus on what they can do best. Once that is clear, we ought to be able to measure effectiveness by talking with the people we’re trying to serve. From a denominational perspective, we should ask, “How do we broker resources, services and relationships, and how do we follow up with the people we’re intending to serve?”

Evaluating relationships and productivity in certain content areas is always more effective than measuring how many people we have at an event or even how many people we have in worship on Sunday morning.

Q: How does a conversation like that move from the denominational level to the parish, local-church level?

Very few people are led to Christ by going to a general convention or a meeting of a presbytery. People are led to Christ by what happens in a congregation. In a churched society, we have had the luxury of allowing the denomination to do many things. Today, I think denominations have to listen very carefully to the parish about what the parish needs most in order to do its work. I think there’s a new conversation going on about how a national office can resource and support the front line of its mission, which, for us, is always the congregation.