An emotional connection with the clergy

We’ll be back in church with few restrictions sometime in 2021. When we get back to opening our doors to any and all, I hope clergy will take an emotionally intelligent approach to visitors, which is different than the one I observed most clergy taking during my ten plus years as a diocesan bishop.

Let me make one assumption first. The Sunday Eucharist is foremost a proclamation of God’s redemption of the world by Jesus Christ. It may be other things to some gathered (social time, community organizing, protest against the principalities and powers, etc.), but it is most importantly God’s people massed around the great narrative of redemption in Jesus.

As we make our common proclamation of God’s redemption in Jesus, we should also be aware of our stance toward visitors. Our stance should be based an honest understanding of how people first connect with any group. When doing so, we’ll be helped by avoiding wishful thinking (“if our liturgy is sublime, then people will return”) and certain sentimentalities (“they’ll just see we’re such a happy family, so why wouldn’t they want to join us?”). Both stances are unhelpful, however true we might want them to be.

One of the things we know about human behavior and how humans connect with others is that it’s not rationally thought out at the beginning. Our emotions, as David Brooks points out in his book The Social Animal, determine our first reactions to a new group. We first ask (even if it’s subconscious): “Am I safe here? Will I be accepted? Can I trust the person I see up front leading?” As much as we might like to see ourselves as mainly rational, we actually respond first to new experiences with these emotional-laden questions.

This means when people visit churches, if they make a connection at all, it’ll first be an emotional one before it’s a theological or liturgical one. And such emotional connections, by and large, aren’t made to a new group as a whole. They are focused on the leader. We might wish this weren’t so believing people should respond differently (see: wishing thinking, above), but it’s how humans process new experiences. So, if visitors can’t make an emotional connection with the clergy they see presiding at the mass, then they likely won’t return even if the homily was brilliant and the mass done sublimely (although both of those certainly help). They have to be able to imagine, even if that’s done subconsciously, that the clergy person is someone they could trust and relate to.

Again, we might think that it should be different; that visitors should first connect with others at the liturgy; that the clergy role is not that significant, but what we know about human behavior doesn’t bear that out. The initial experience of visitors will be overwhelmingly determined by their emotional connection to the clergy. This reality should change the way clergy connect with visitors before, during, and after mass. Clergy need to prepare strategically for their entire interaction with “the public” on Sunday. To be sure, that means how they prepare their sermon and how they preside in the liturgy, but it also includes how they make announcements and the way they make themselves available to visitors before and after the liturgy.

Rather than be trapped in the sacristy corralling acolytes before the liturgy or chatting with parishioners after the liturgy about an upcoming committee meeting, clergy should be out front meeting and greeting everyone, especially visitors, welcoming them, asking their names, shaking their hands (we’ll do that again someday) and then making a point of following up with them to arrange to meet in the next few days following the liturgy. This is not in the sweet spot for introverts, but such folk (me included) need to function extrovertedly for a few hours each week to respond to the visitor’s need for emotional connection. This, of course, places a significant burden on the clergy to make those emotional connections.

When meeting with the visitor soon after their visit, the emotional connection can be solidified (don’t let a visitor leave without inviting them for coffee or lunch – paid by you – get your vestry to give you a budget for that). This meeting over coffee or lunch is not a time to do a “sales job” on visitors. Rather, it is a time to listen with genuine interest to their life and their spiritual longings. Consider it a spiritual interview during which the clergy can connect the visitors’ spiritual lives to the congregation’s ministry, helping them see how the church can walk with them on their pilgrimage. When I met with visitors, I’d try to learn one thing about their lives that I could connect to the parish. I’d then call a parish leader I knew with similar interests and ask that person to connect with the visitor. For example, if I learned the visitor loved gardening, then I’d make sure the head of our community garden ministry called and invited the visitor to serve with our community gardeners. When they returned the next Sunday, they’d know me and at least one other person.

Lay leaders are also important partners in effective connection with visitors. The most significant role they play is to liberate clergy from liturgical and logistical housekeeping chores on Sundays. It’s hard for clergy to give up such housekeeping because of our need to control things. It’s the one thing we can control on Sunday, so we tend to keep our focus there; things like the acolyte’s order in the procession, who’ll hand out bulletins to worshippers before the liturgy, or who we can find to read a lesson for a no-show lector. Needless to say, this is the worst way clergy can steward their time on Sundays. And lay leaders are often co-dependent with clergy in this, leaving clergy to handle these “housekeeping” details and not seeing their important role in welcoming visitors by helping them make an emotional connection with the clergy. That means the clergy need to enlist their support, explain to them why it is so important, and get their buy-in.

Evangelism and hospitality are “retail” ministries. When we treat them as “wholesale,” we’re usually left wondering why visitors don’t return. Martin Luther was right: It is just “one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” What we know about human interaction tells us that beggar needs to be the parish clergy.

+Scott

 The Rt. Rev'd Scott Benhase, OA

Earlier postings -  list of postings

Comments

[Michelle Heyne, OA]

On enlisting lay leaders to help the clergy focus on visitors - yes! One of the best parish experiences I had involved the rector helping the congregation understand how important it was for her to greet people, connect with them, and then have a way to transition the visitor to coffee hour. We had a scheduled group of volunteers who agreed to pay attention to visitors, make sure they weren’t abandoned, and help introduce them to one or two folks. But the first contact was with the rector. It was a great system for everyone—the priest made important connections, the visitor felt cared for, and parishioners had a role for which they received training and didn’t have to be “on” constantly. Like all systems, it needs to be periodically renewed and reinvigorated. It fell by the wayside at my parish and most people lost track of how effective it had been. There was then just exhortation to wear name tags and “be welcoming,” while bemoaning the declining numbers at coffee hour.

[Robert Gallagher, OA]

This set off two lines of thought in me. One was about “psychological contracts.” The other was my own curiosity about the various ways in which clergy deal with the emotional connection issue.
Brother Scott wrote, “They have to be able to imagine, even if that’s done subconsciously, that the clergy person is someone they could trust and relate to.” That’s my own experience both as vicar of several parishes and parishioner in some others. The notion that people have a range of psychological contracts with their parish seems obvious—the priest, liturgy and music, the building, historical links, a helpful presence in the wider community, and so on. What people coming seeking, and what binds them to the parish over time, may be something other than the pastor. But if in the first weeks they have a gut feeling of mistrust it will impact their ability to be in that parish community, and maybe even more importantly, their ability to receive spiritual nurture from that clergyperson.
I’d be interested in hearing how other clergy and parishioners manage the emotional connection issue. I love the ideas about how to use time on Sunday morning. I know for myself I needed to be still and centered before celebrating the Eucharist. That helped me be present, as person and symbol, during the liturgy. My hope was that people would find a true emotional connection in that. But afterward, coffee hour called upon rather traditional virtues—courage, perseverance, patience with people, gentleness, and so on. For me there is something of a baptismal spirituality needed at coffee hour—“An inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” Also, helps if here is good coffee.

[Richard Proctor, OA]

Thank you for posting this, Brother +Scott. For me, as the Rector of a parish (and only priest on staff), I agree that some of the "trust-building" work on Sundays rests in my hands. What I have found in the Episcopal Church these days is that a lot of that trust-building is done by revising the liturgy to make it feel more inclusive, comfortable, and less hierarchical, ie:

1) Inviting the congregation to join in saying the Collect for Purity and/or Collect of the Day (ie, we are not too hierarchical here - all are welcome to lead the prayers)

2) Introducing the Creed with something like, "Let us join together in saying the words that our forebears said to better articulate their faith a long time ago (ie: certainly WE don't believe these words today...)

3) Making it clear in the invitation to communion that ALL are welcome to receive ("Wherever you are on your spiritual journey...", "This is Jesus' table, not my table/an Episcopal table, etc....".

4) Inviting a child or youth to give the dismissal at the end of the service.

As such, the clergy are attempting to establish trust by (1) emphasizing that we are inclusive, radically hospitable, etc, and (2) we're really not that religious here, so relax and feel free to be a part of our worship service (our highest priority is for you to feel comfortable, at ease, and not intimidated by our liturgy)

Since I try to stick straight to the BCP, the places where I try to engage in "trust-building" (making some sort of emotional connection w/ worshippers) is through the announcements, the sermon, and the handshake line/coffee hour afterwards.

Like Brother Robert, I tend to use the time prior to worship for prayerful silence, stillness, and centering (in the Nave). I might try doing what you recommend - participating in the pre-worship welcome (I will need to train members not ask me things that are not related to the immediate context, but rather, perhaps even join me in looking out for visitors).

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I lament that much trust-building is done in the ways I mentioned above. By my not engaging in those things, I have to work extra hard to connect elsewhere.

With gratitude for your article, and Advent blessings to you all!

[Robert Gallagher]

Richard highlights how some clergy have a confused understanding about how trust develops. They seek to manipulate the faithful with comfort, false safety and popular ideologies (our tilt to the left is no better than the evangelical tilt to the right). Trust grows through reliability, responsiveness, reciprocity and congruence. [See - http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/1002566/28328331/1595531384577/Trust+dev.pdf?token=ryKE4C3E89rwN7Rj1YtSYF8y%2B1k%3D]
The Jesus kind of trust development takes us into places we don't understand and would not choose to enter on our own. Our invitation to people in the Eucharist, and all of life, gets captured by Underhill's words - "You are meant to incarnate in your lives the themes of your adoration. You are to be taken, consecrated, broken, and made a means of grace; vehicles of the Eternal Charity." A God that does that with me is a God I can trust. A priest that guides me to that God is a priest I can trust.