Should I Leave?

Should I Leave?

A Letter from One Priest to Another

Warner White

Dear Harry,

I’ve been mulling over our phone conversation and I’ve decided to write you a letter. I want to speak as clearly, as systematically, and as theologically as I can to the question you’re asking yourself, “Should I leave my parish? Should I be seeking a new rectorship?”

What struck me most was your telling the vestry at the time they called you to be rector, “I do not want ever to be the center of controversy the way Father Jones was, and if such a time arrives, then I will leave.” I believe I understand your reasons. The parish was split apart over Father Jones. It appeared to you that very likely he should have left earlier, on his own, without being pressured into going. You vowed to yourself that you would never be the source of such discord, but today it seems that you are. You find yourself attacked by some parishioners and defended by others. You say to yourself, “Here it is. Just what I feared. I want no part of it. I will leave.”

We talked well together the other day, you and I, because we trust each other, because, despite your newness in the priesthood, you are a mature man with much experience of human nature, and because you are also humble and want to “pick my brains,” to learn from my years of experience. So here goes—let me tell you the principles of judgment I have come to and the experience that led me to them.

Principle 1:
You are a symbol to your congregation

For your congregation you are not just Harry Woolman, you are The Priest,ⁱ you are a walking image of something deep in the human soul. To understand what is going on in a parish you must be very clear about the difference between you, the rector, as a person and you as symbol-priest.

For example, from time to time I call on someone in the hospital who is from out of town. Almost always they greet me with warmth and trust. I do very simple things for them. I enquire about their health, we talk a little, I say a prayer, I anoint them—the ordinary things that clergy do. Yet they often react with immense gratitude—and admiration for me. I swell inside, I have a sense of great power, of being bigger than life for them. I also have a sense of unreality—I’m just me, what I’ve done is very ordinary, and yet they are reacting as if it were very extraordinary.

What has happened? Is it me, Bill Hampton, they are reacting to? I think not, for the reaction is far out of proportion to what I in my real personhood have done. No. They are reacting to The Priest. What they are seeing is not me, but me-as-symbol. I feel larger than life because this person sees me as larger than life. To be a priest is to be singled out for others as a symbol of divine power and caring. Priesthood is not a property belonging to you or me; it is a clothing we put on for others.

After you have been in a parish for a while, and parishioners begin to see your humanity as well as your priesthood, you can begin to notice how at times they see other clergy differently from the way they see you. For example, have you ever felt a twinge of jealousy at the fuss and bother, the seeming excess of regard—the adoration almost—you perceive in laypersons as they prepare for the bishop’s visitation? How do you react to the admiration laypersons show for the visiting priest who has just said something you’ve been trying to tell them for years? I find myself thinking, “I know him. He’s just an ordinary guy like me. Why are they turning such cartwheels? They don’t do that for me!” They are seeing The Priest, where you and I see just another of our peers.

From time to time parents laugh telling me of ways their children confuse me with God or with Jesus. The children hear that I’m going on vacation and they ask their parents if there will be church, since “God is going away.”

We laugh. Isn’t that just like children! But down deep it’s also like adults! The priest-symbol triggers deep hopes and fears and longings. Clothed in priesthood, you and I evoke the longing for a loving parent, for the perfectly caring one who will make things all right. We evoke fears of wrath, of failing to please. We evoke deep hopes of being understood and valued by one who really matters.

Principle 2:
The priest is always the center of controversy in a parish

In a parish the priest is not only a symbol, the priest is also a human being. The priest’s mere humanity shows. The tension between these two factors, the priest as symbol and the priest as human being, is probably the most difficult problem for priests and parishes to live with. It means that at all times there are disappointed parishioners, parishioners who long deeply for The Priest, for the larger-than-life holy one of God who will rescue them, who will care for them—and what they find instead is Harry Woolman or Bill Hampton. Make no mistake—the large gap between The Priest and our personal reality is a serious scandal to many persons. They hope for much more than we are able to be for them, and their disappointment is deep.

Some parishioners never get over their disappointment. They become deeply angry at us and remain so. I have found such anger and disappointment very difficult to deal with. I have sometimes been tempted to leave a parish in order to escape it. But that’s a mistake. Only if your judgment is that your weaknesses are so severe as to invalidate your sense of call, and only if your judgment is confirmed by observers who care for you, should this be a reason for leaving.

Principle 3:
Pay attention to the character of the pastoral bond

When you and I accept a call to a parish, we and our parishioners commit ourselves to a pastoral relation. We exchange vows in a ceremony much like a wedding.

That step establishes the pastoral relation, but it is only the beginning. From that moment on what matters is the process of bonding between priest and parish. What matters is the way in which priest and parish become attached to one another in spirit, emotion, and behavioral pattern. The priest’s pastoral task in the early years is the building and nurturing of that pastoral bond.

There are several elements in the pastoral bond—trust, caring, regard, power, centering, and the like. In a healthy process of bonding these elements go through various stages until the bond is established. I shall discuss three of them—regard, power, and centering.

The marriage encounter movement teaches that marriages go through three stages—illusion, disillusion, and realistic love. The illusion stage is the honeymoon stage, the stage in which the partners see each other through rosy glasses, in which the partners are on their best behavior. She is wonderful! Everything I ever dreamed of! She is the answer to all my longings. . . . Thus I see her more in terms of my own longings than in terms of her reality.

Then comes disillusion. I begin to see her humanity, and I am disappointed. This is a very painful stage, in which the partners can be very cruel. All too often they become so disillusioned they seek divorce. But if all goes well, the partners begin not only to see each other realistically, they begin to accept and respect each other as they are. When this happens the partners find great joy. Now she loves me for who I am! Now I love her for who she is! We love the real person, not the illusion. Now I am able to reveal myself to her without fear of losing her, and she is able to reveal herself to me.

I would expect the honeymoon between priest and parish to last a year or two, disillusionment to last three or four years, and realistic love to arrive thereafter. Any decision about leaving or staying must take into account the stage of the bonding process. Where are you in that process? What should be happening at the present time?

These stages can be applied to the bonding elements of regard and power.

Principle 4:
A healthy bonding process goes through three stages of regard— adoration, disappointment, and respect

“Adoration” is a very powerful word to use for the regard shown a priest at the beginning of the pastoral relation. Perhaps it is too strong. I choose it, nevertheless, because it expresses the particular nature of the “rosy glasses” with which the priest is viewed in the honeymoon stage.

I heard a priest once describe how he was greeted in his new parish as “the messiah,” “the one who was going to set all things right.” “And the trouble was,” the priest added, “I believed it! I thought I really was going to do all those things.” He went on to describe his own disillusionment with himself, as well as the disillusionment of his parish when they discovered that he couldn’t do everything they had hoped for.

“Adoration” suggests—accurately I believe—that the priest is viewed in divine terms. The priest-symbol is superhuman. When we start a new ministry that’s where we begin. Larger-than-life hopes and longings are stirred up and are focused on us by parishioners. And we, too, are likely to have larger-than-life fantasies of what we will accomplish, of adoring crowds coming to hear us preach, of large numbers of converts through our ministry, of great social action programs being carried out, and the like. This is especially true early in our priesthood.

Then, of course, comes disappointment. We and our parishioners become painfully aware of our mere humanity. We and they are faced with the necessity of accepting a merely human rector instead of a messiah. If that task is successfully completed, and both priest and parish move on to the stage of respect, in which the priest respects himself or herself, and in which the parish respects the priest in that priest’s humanity, a healthy bond of regard is established.

I do not believe that The Priest ever vanishes, however. Even when you and I are known as the human beings we are, we still remain, somehow, the image of The Priest. We still are walking symbols of God’s care and love for his people. In a healthy pastoral bond the tension between humanity and The Priest is resolved, not by banishing The Priest, but by accepting the human being.

I have come to understand the meaning of clerical dress and of vestments in this fashion. These special forms of clothing are a concrete sign that the person who wears them is functioning as a symbol, even though he be merely Harry Woolman or Bill Hampton.

Notice that in the progression from adoration, through disappointment, to respect, there is also a progression in perception. At first parishioners know little about the rector as person, they see the rector mainly as priest-symbol. Later, if all goes well, they become able to perceive symbol and real person in harmony. They respect the person who plays the symbol and they accept that person’s offering of the symbol to them.

I speculate that in many of those cases where parishioners become stuck in the stage of disillusion, the rector as real person is never perceived. Instead, the rector becomes the symbol of anti-Christ. “We thought she was the messiah, but she is just the opposite!” The rector becomes the symbol of betrayal at the most profound level.

Just as “adoration” may seem too strong a term for positive regard at the beginning of a new ministry, so “anti-Christ” may seem too strong a term for the negative aspect. And perhaps it is. Yet I have received letters from disillusioned parishioners couched in negative language so strong as to suggest depths of evil far beyond my limited capacities!

In these cases parishioners flip the superhuman coin. They flip from perceiving the rector as beneficently superhuman to seeing the rector as maleficently superhuman. They never perceive him or her as truly human at all.

Principle 5:
A healthy bonding process goes through stages of power settlement

Group formation theory distinguishes three stages in power settlement— dependence, counterdependence, and interdependence. In a new group the members at first wait upon the designated leader to give direction. They depend upon the leader to get things going. Later they begin to see faults in the leader’s performance and begin to rebel against the leader. Finally, group and leader develop patterns by which they depend upon each other.

These stages can be distinguished in the process of bonding between priest and parish. At first parishioners wait to see what direction the new rector will take. They look for clues to the new rector’s intentions, and their general tendency is to cooperate. Later they begin to find fault, and finally they work out a pattern of decision making that is a balance of the forces within the parish.

PRINCIPLE 6:
The bonding agenda is set by the character of the previous pastoral relations of the parish and of the priest

It is well known that parishes tend to call priests as rector in reaction to the character of the previous rector. If the previous rector focused on social action and neglected spiritual life, the parish is likely to look for the same in the new rector if they were happy with the previous rector and to look for the opposite if they were unhappy. This sets the parish’s agenda with the new priest.

Similarly, the priest seeks to establish the same or different characteristics in the new pastoral relation in accordance with the priest’s previous experience. This sets the priest’s agenda with the new parish.

So two agendas set by past experience come together to form the details of what must be worked through in the bonding process. In my present parish I am very conscious that parishioners have been testing me on matters made important to them by their experience with my predecessor. I noticed that in the early months of our relationship they tended to interpret my actions in accordance with the character of my predecessor. I am also conscious that I have been looking for the likenesses and differences between this parish and my previous parish. The bonding process is not complete until the past agendas have been dropped, and new agendas based on present realities have been adopted.

You must ask yourself about the present controversy surrounding you, “What agenda is it? Is this controversy a leftover from my predecessor, or does it realistically concern me and this parish?”

Principle 7:
Of special importance for the new rector are the bonding agendas of your predecessor’s in-group and out-group

Your predecessor undoubtedly had an in-group, a group of people to whom he was especially close and who felt supported by him, persons whose needs he met in a way satisfying to them. He also had an out-group, people unhappy with him in various ways who felt distant from him. When a new rector arrives each group has a special agenda. The in-group hopes that they will have the same relationship with the new rector, and the out-group hopes for something better. The in-group will seek to continue the set patterns. The out-group will seek to change them.

Chances are that neither group will be completely satisfied. The new rector is a different person and will not satisfy the same needs as the previous rector, so some of the in-group will become unhappy. The new rector is likely to continue many of the same policies and practices as the previous rector, so some of the out-group will remain unhappy. The bonding process cannot be considered complete until the relations with these two groups have been worked out. Successful bonding requires that both groups perceive the new rector for the unique person that he or she is, and that they cease to perceive the new rector in terms of the previous rector.

Principle 8:
The healthy pastoral bond is centered in Christ

One of the grievous ills of priesthood is the temptation to the cult of personality. A parishioner says of us, “What a great priest!” and we believe it. We must be clear that we are not The Priest; we are the symbol of The Priest. This means that both we and our parishioners must find our center in Christ.

In behavioral terms this means that the center of parish life must be worship, and in worship you and I as persons must be transparent—we must be symbol to the parish. Our persons must be subordinate to our office. Our vestments must signify more than our persons. Both we and parishioners must focus on Christ.

Principle 9:
Listen to the heart of the parish

The heart of the parish is that group of parishioners who center in Christ by faithful worship, faithful giving, and faithful support and nurture of one another. They are the heart of the local body of Christ and he is at their center. They are bonded to one another in him and it is your bonding to them in him that is crucial. Listen to the heart. What do they tell you?

Principle 10:

The parish must be viewed not only from the perspective of the pastoral bond, but also from a long-term perspective, in terms of parish history and norms

You spoke of how parishioners were in conflict about your predecessor when you arrived, and you spoke of the harm you saw them doing to each other. What you were observing were the established norms of the parish for dealing with conflict, and if they were harmful, then you were observing patterns that need to be changed. Any decision you make about staying or leaving must take into account its effect on parish history and norms. Will your staying or your leaving help those norms be what they ought to be?

Principle 11:
You yourself have a history and a calling

You are yourself at a particular stage in your relation to God. God has brought you to where you are and God is calling you to take the next step, whatever that may be. Any decision about leaving or staying must take into account your own history and calling from God at this stage of your life.

Illustrating the Principles

Let me now illustrate these principles in two controversies from my own experience.

I have been the focus of two parish conflicts in the past eight years. In one case I decided that I must leave. In the other I decided that I must stay.

Last year was my sixth at St. Richard’s. At the end of our annual meeting a parishioner moved that the vestry be charged to evaluate the rector’s performance and to report back to the parish with a list of changes to be made or with the rector’s intention to resign. The motion was amended to include the possibility that the vestry might give the rector high marks, and then it passed. I asked for a vote of confidence and received it. As you might imagine, the meeting was very upsetting to me and to a lot of people.

I discovered later that the parishioner who made the motion had gathered a group ahead of time in support of it. I was not surprised by his hostility. Nor was I surprised that there were others who were hostile. Some had personal disappointments. Others were angry about some of my policies. My attempts at understanding and reconciliation had not borne fruit.

The vestry, which included both supporters (the majority) and critics, spent many hours doing the evaluation, basing it on the criteria of the Book of Common Prayer and the canons. It was very painful for them and for me. They were able to agree unanimously, however, on a written evaluation which said, in summary, that I was adequately fulfilling my duties, and they appended a list of specific perceptions, favorable and unfavorable, of my performance. I responded in writing, and then we circulated the documents in the parish. That took care of the charge given us by the annual meeting, but it did not end the controversy. Vestry meetings were painful. I dreaded them, because at every meeting the critics harassed me about something. Two persons complained about me to the bishop. And during all of this I was filled with self-doubt. What had I done? How could I reconcile the complainers? And worst of all was the sinking feeling, the knowledge, that I couldn’t do anything, that it was me they didn’t like—me the way I am—and that my basic convictions were what led to the disagreements in policy.

During this time I received lots of support. I felt confident of the large majority of the parish. But I was aware of critics who had stopped coming to church and of critics who had withdrawn financial support. It was clear that we were going to run a large deficit.

At vestry meetings I kept trying to respond to the critics. I kept insisting that we work on reconciliation and that we strive for consensus within the vestry. But finally it became evident that the dissenters would have none of it. They were going to oppose not only me, but anything I proposed. This sort of strife was familiar in the parish. Some of the same people who were angry at me had circulated a petition seeking to get rid of my predecessor. Others had been angry at his predecessor. Power politics had been the parish norm.

I finally made two decisions: (1) I was going to stay; and (2) I was going to work with those who were willing to work with me, and not allow the dissenters to bring that to a halt. From that moment everything got better. Our energies were no longer consumed by attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable. Vestry meetings became easier. We began to get things done. One of the dissenters resigned. Another rotated off. And at the annual meeting the dissenters failed to win any seats on the vestry.

During all of this our Sunday worship and our sense of fellowship went well. There was no sign that dissent was growing; indeed, it was quite the opposite. We gained a few new families, and—most striking of all—our pledge canvass resulted in a marked increase in giving.

The controversy at St. Peter’s was different. It erupted in my fourteenth year as rector as a result of one action I took—I fired the music director. I can still see in my mind’s eye the coffee hour after the news got out. People stood around in isolated groups, and when I entered the room I felt cut off. Our music program had been a source of immense parish pride, even though it had also been the source of immense problems.

In this case a lot of my friends were angry at me. We called a parish meeting and decided two things: (1) the parishioners and I would hold a series of small group meetings to see if we could air out and work through things, and (2) we would get an outside consultant to help us find our way.

The small-group meetings were excruciating for me. They became garbage-dumping grounds. Parishioners heaped on me complaints that were years old and of which in many instances I had had no awareness. Vestry meetings were also painful. Friend was pitted against friend. Vestry members who had loved me and supported me were now my critics.

Parish life went on pretty much as usual in terms of attendance and giving and activities, but it hurt a lot. We were having a hard time with each other. The consultant talked with parish leaders individually and had a session or two with the vestry. Finally he advised me that in his judgment I had lost the confidence of the key parish leaders and should leave.

This had been my parish for many years. I had chosen to come to the neighborhood as a young man. I had been ordained from the parish. My wife had been born there and had grown up in the neighborhood. We had raised our children there. I felt a very strong sense of identity with the parish. I had never considered leaving. I wanted to stay, and I told the vestry so. We negotiated an agreement. We would have a parish vote of confidence and allow that vote to be our guide.

When the vote was taken I won by 60 percent to 40 percent. That night I decided to leave.

These two controversies came to different conclusions, and, I believe, the right ones.

First, the two controversies occurred at different stages in parish life. Here at St. Richard’s we were still engaged in the bonding process and were at the disillusionment stage. At St. Peter’s we had long before established the pastoral bond. Here we had been deciding whether or not to go on to the stage of mutual acceptance. There we were experiencing a trauma to the established bond. I had struck a violent blow to that bond, and the question was whether we could survive it.

Second, at St. Richard’s there was a division between the heart of the parish and the dissenters. At St. Peter’s everybody (with but few exceptions) was my supporter. Here it was the heart who wanted me to stay and persons outside the heart who wanted me to go. There it was the heart who said, “Bill, you’ve got to go.”

Third, here the bonding process was proceeding successfully with the heart of the parish. I became aware as the controversy went on that I was in danger of abandoning that heart in order to appease a power-politicking group committed to other values and persons.

Fourth, St. Richard’s has a history of divisions and of settling them by a power struggle—in short, a history of unhealthy conflict. St. Peter’s had no such history; the conflict was carried out with a deep commitment by the leadership to the welfare of everybody involved. Here the dissenters sought to coerce others by withdrawal of support. There support continued throughout.

Fifth, I felt overwhelmed at St. Peter’s. I remember those months as months of muteness. Whereas normally I am voluble, then I was subdued. Whereas normally I am filled with ups and downs of emotion, then I was overwhelmed with sadness. In contrast, my years here at St. Richard’s have been years of blossoming. I have done a lot of writing and new thinking, and have received a tremendous response. A flood of creativity has broken forth from me.

As I see it now, my firing of St. Peter’s music director was not only an attempt on my part to solve a deep parish problem, it was also (although I didn’t realize it at the time) a blow for freedom, both for me and for the parish. As I see it now, I had become too identified with the parish and the parish with me. Rather than being two equal partners in a marriage, we were a merger of personalities. I was drowning and didn’t know it. I needed to get free and didn’t know it. Moreover, the parish needed to be free of me. They needed a rector with a strong sense of himself or herself as a person in his or her own right, a rector who would be more able to see them as they were and to confront them where they needed confronting.

Here at St. Richard’s I am conscious of a different relation to the parish. I am conscious of a difference in me, of my ability to see them more objectively. Here I am much more conscious of the parish’s needs as distinct from my own.

The crucial difference in the two cases is signified by the tactics of the critics and their relation to me. At St. Peter’s the critics were my friends, they cared about me and sought to see to my welfare, even while they criticized. At St. Richard’s the critics were foes, they withdrew support of both me and the parish, and engaged in power plays. They valued the Lord’s Table so little that they withdrew from it in an attempt at coercion. They had so little sense of bonding to the rest of the parish that they abandoned them as well. St. Peter’s had healthy norms of conflict; St. Richard’s had unhealthy ones. My staying would not have helped St. Peter’s; my leaving did us both good. My leaving St. Richard’s would have done harm, for it would have reinforced the unhealthy norms of conflict—it would have strengthened the tactics of withdrawal and coercion, and it would have undercut the tactics of support and consensus seeking.

There is much more to be said, of course. But perhaps the above will be of help.

Your brother in Christ,

Bill

Originally published in Action Information 12, no. 1 (January/February 1986): pp. 14-19.