Copyright holder: Tyndale University, 3377 Bayview Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M2M 3S4 Att.: Library Director, J. William Horsey Library Copyright: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Copyright license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Citation: McCance, Heather Kathleen. "A Mentors' Manual for Leadership Formation for Postulants for Ordination in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto." D.Min., Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2018. ***** Begin Content ****** Tyndale University College & Seminary A Mentors’ Manual for Leadership Formation for Postulants for Ordination in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Ministry Tyndale Seminary by Heather Kathleen McCance June 2018 Tyndale University College and Seminary Thesis Approval The academic requirements for this Doctor of Ministry thesis have been satisfactorily completed. Approval Date: June 28, 2018 Student’s Name: Heather Kathleen McCance First Reader: William Thornton, DMin Project-Thesis Advisor Second Reader: Michael Krause, DMin Assistant Professor of Leadership and Ministry Third Reader: Mark Chapman, Associate Professor of Research Methods; DMin Project-Thesis Coordinator Copyright © 2018 by Heather Kathleen McCance All rights reserved DECLARATION AND DISCLAIMER Statement 1. This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. (Signed) (candidate) (Date) Statement 2. This thesis is the result of my own independent work, investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged with explicit references. (Signed) (candidate) (Date) Statement 3. The views expressed in this thesis are my own and do not necessarily express the views of the thesis readers or Tyndale Seminary. (Date) (candidate) (Signed) iv TYNDALE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE & SEMINARY 3377 Bayview Avenue TEL: Toronto, ON 416.226.6620 M2M 3S4 www.tyndale.ca I, Heather Kathleen McCance, as part of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Ministry, from Tyndale University College & Seminary, have submitted a thesis/dissertation/project (Work) under the title of: A Mentors ’ Manual for Leadership Formation for Postulants for Ordination in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto 1. 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Tyndale University College & Seminary may convert this Work from its original format to any other format that it may find convenient to facilitate the exercise of its rights under this license. 3. Tyndale University College & Seminary will not use this Work for any commercial purpose and will ensure that any version of this Work in its possession or distributed by it will properly name me as author of the Work. It will further acknowledge my copyright of the Work and will state that any third party recipient of the Work is not authorized to use it for any commercial purpose or to further distribute or to alter the Work in any way without my e xpress permission. 4. I retain the copyright ownership and moral rights of this Work and I may deal with the copyright in this Work in any way consistent with the terms of this license. 5. I promise that this Work is my original work, does not infringe the rights of others and that I have the right to make the grant conferred by this non-exclusive license. I have obtained written copyright permission from the copyright owners of any third-party copyrighted material contained in the Work sufficient to enable me to make this grant. 6. I also promise to inform any person to whom I may hereafter assign or license my copyright in the Work of the rights granted to me by Tyndale University College & Seminary in this license. (Signature) (Date) V ABSTRACT Churches in Canada increasingly turn to clergy as leaders—not just as spiritual guides—in today's post-Christendom environment. The Anglican Diocese of Toronto identifies leadership as an important skill set for priests, yet there are few opportunities for postulants preparing for ordination to develop these skills. The author created a leadership development curriculum for experienced priests to use as mentors in working with postulants. Evaluation of the curriculum revealed that postulants expanded their leadership skills and grew in their intentionality for continued growth in leadership in the future. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLE .... ix CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .... 1 Context .... 1 Opportunity .... 4 Response: The Project .... 7 Overview of Contents .... 9 Key Terms .... 11 CHAPTER TWO: MENTORING FOR LEADERSHIP: A THEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION .... 14 God Works Through Mentors .... 14 Moses and Joshua .... 17 Learning .... 18 Respect and Affection .... 20 Acknowledgement of Differences .... 20 Commissioning .... 22 Elijah and Elisha .... 22 Learning and Respect and Affection .... 23 Acknowledgement of Differences .... 24 Commissioning .... 25 Paul and Timothy .... 26 Learning .... 27 Respect and Affection .... 29 Acknowledgement of Difference .... 30 Commissioning .... 31 Deborah and Barak .... 32 Acknowledgement of Differences .... 32 Respect and Affection .... 34 Learning and Commissioning .... 34 Conclusions .... 36 CHAPTER THREE: LITERATURE REVIEW .... 38 Types of Literature .... 38 Planning and “How To” Guides .... 40 Reviews of Existing Mentorship Programs .... 44 Analyses of Mentorship Program Effectiveness .... 49 From Planning through Evaluation .... 52 Conclusions .... 55 vii CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY AND PROJECT ....58 Outline of the Project .... 58 Objectives .... 60 Procedure .... 61 Instruments .... 65 Ethical Concerns .... 71 Methodology: Curriculum Development .... 72 Methodology: Adult Education .... 74 Methodology: Curriculum Evaluation .... 86 Conclusion .... 91 CHAPTER FIVE: FINDINGS AND INTERPRETATION .......92 Formative Evaluation .... 94 Summative Evaluation .... 97 Postulant Feedback .... 97 Mentor Feedback .... 100 Expert Feedback .... 104 Natural Church Development Empowering Leadership Assessment .... 109 Interpretations and Conclusions .... 114 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .... 118 Summary .... 118 Implications for the Diocese of Toronto .... 121 Implications for My Ministry .... 122 Implications for the Wider Church .... 124 Conclusions .... 125 APPENDIX A: MENTORING FOR LEADERSHIP IN THE POSTULANCY COMMITTEE IN THE DIOCESE OF TORONTO: A MANUAL .... 127 APPENDIX B: WORKING GROUP INTERVIEW QUESTIONS .... 182 APPENDIX C: MENTORS' FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEW QUESTIONS .... 184 APPENDIX D: MENTORS QUESTIONNAIRE QUESTIONS .... 185 REFERENCES ....187 viii LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLE Figure 1. Sample Natural Church Development second assessment result .... 110 Table 1. Initial and final overall score, and scores for each of the six traits, for each postulant by pseudonym .... 113 ix CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION As the Western Church has moved away from the suppositions of Christendom, the expectations of those ordained for ministry have shifted. Perhaps it was never enough to lead inspiring worship services, preach compelling sermons, offer compassionate pastoral care, and teach effective Christian education programs. It is certainly not enough today. Today's Church needs not only ordained pastors but ordained leaders. Men and women may be born with leadership potential, gifted with talents by the God who calls them forth for the situations into which these people are sent. Still, leadership skills can be taught and developed and leadership principles for Christian ministry can be grown. Through the use of a curriculum designed using best practices in adult education, mentors can work with those in formation for ordained ministry to help them develop and grow to become the kind of empowering leaders the Church needs today. Context As noted on their website, the Anglican Diocese of Toronto is the most populous Anglican diocese in Canada with 216 worshipping congregations in a 1 geographical area that stretches in Ontario from Mississauga to Brighton along the northern shore of Lake Ontario and then north to Penetanguishene in the northwest and Halliburton County in the northeast. Established in 1839, it is home to 376,000 self-identified Anglicans with over 54,000 identified as members in parishes. The Diocese is led by Archbishop Colin Johnson who is assisted by four suffragan bishops, each with responsibility for a geographical area, who meet together in a College of Bishops for mutual support and collegial decision- making. The governance structure of the Diocese includes biannual sessions of diocesan synod (at which clergy and lay representatives of each parish gather) and the Diocesan Council which serves as the primary governing body between sessions of synod. Alongside skilled diocesan staff, there are many committees and boards that carry out the work of the Diocese in areas such as social justice and advocacy, youth ministry, finance and trusts and the diocesan Postulancy Committee (Diocese of Toronto 2017). The Postulancy Committee of the Diocese of Toronto has two purposes: the discernment of priestly vocation and oversight of the formation process prior to ordination. The committee has twenty-one members (priests, bishops, and lay people) who meet five times a year, often following a meeting of postulancy working groups where postulants and committee members gather to discuss subjects of concern in the Church. A person is a postulant for two years prior to ordination, during which time she/he will be involved in theological education, 2 field placements and spiritual formation. The committee is staffed by the executive assistant to the Archbishop, Canon Mary Conliffe. I was the coordinator of the Postulancy Committee for six years and a committee member for six years prior to that. The role of coordinator involved chairing meetings and selecting topics for, and facilitating conversations of, the working groups. It involved assisting with discernment of vocations in unusual circumstances such as when a postulant from another jurisdiction sought to transfer to the Diocese of Toronto. I was also involved in trouble-shooting issues with individual postulants and crafting strategies for policy changes. It was a position of some influence that granted weight to my voice in conversations. As coordinator I generally did not serve as a postulant's advisor (although I had previously). I left the role of coordinator six months into the project period to take up a ministry position in another part of Canada. Postulants connect to the committee through their advisors; each advisor meets individually once a month with one or two postulants. Advisors are members of the Postulancy Committee, experienced priests who have been recruited to the committee by the Archbishop for their demonstrated gifts as leaders and mentors. The advisor updates the committee on the postulant's education, training, and life circumstances and recommends to the postulant areas that should be addressed as a part of that person's priestly formation (Diocese of Toronto 2017). 3 Opportunity In 2013 a task force commissioned by the Primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, described five standards required for ordination in the Anglican Church of Canada. These included “a personal faith and spiritual life that is adequate to lead others” and “the capacities to provide effective leadership in the communities we are called to serve” (Commission 2013, 7). In an address to clergy in the Diocese of Toronto in 2012, Archbishop Colin Johnson identified a general lack of skills in adaptive leadership and the need for these among clergy (Johnson 2012). The following year, Bill Bickle of Natural Church Development Canada conducted a study with participants of the Momentum program — those who had been ordained within the previous two years. It revealed that this group tended to refrain from being directive with others and from “risking, experimenting, and making mistakes” as a strategy for learning and growth for themselves and for the organizations they lead (Bickle 2013, 2). Theological colleges teach postulants missiology, liturgics, theology and Christian education, but implementing these in any ministry setting — without the skills of leadership — will be a struggle. There has been a marked increase in diversity among those who are putting themselves forward to serve as priests in the Diocese over the past two decades; such diversity is seen in ethnic and cultural backgrounds, life and church experience, gender and age. Given this diversity, and particularly its implications for a variety of understandings of leadership, the formation for ordained leadership needed by each individual would be quite different. One-on-one work 4 to develop skills not currently covered by the Anglican theological colleges in Toronto (where all current postulants have completed or are currently pursuing their theological education) would allow for this training to be focused on the developmental needs of each individual. The structure of the postulancy process, and in particular the pairing of postulants with an experienced priest who acts as advisor, opens up an opportunity to utilize that relationship in a new way. During a conversation among members of the Postulancy Committee, members shared that the most meaningful, enjoyable and ultimately successful pairings of advisor and postulant were those that bore many of the characteristics of mentorship (Postulancy Committee 2015). These included situations where the postulant and advisor built a real relationship where “the guard was dropped,” and both partners in the relationship felt free to be “real” (Postulancy Committee 2015). Often such a relationship was built when advisors had to engage postulants in a very difficult but necessary conversation that helped them see where growth was needed, but done in a way that kept them in the process of formation and preparation for ministry when they might otherwise have been turned away (Postulancy Committee 2015). Such awkward conversations are never easy but can bring with them a real recognition of the presence of a deep truth and an even deeper level of honesty going forward (Postulancy Committee 2015). Unsurprisingly advisors reported that having a relationship rooted in prayer during meetings with their postulants and regular prayer for the postulants when they were not together, 5 contributed to an effective working relationship (Postulancy Committee 2015). Sometimes the nature of the relationship, with the postulants aware that their advisors would be reporting back to the committee, made true relationship and honesty a challenge (Postulancy Committee 2015). Nonetheless advisor/postulant relationships were most effective for both when there was mutuality, honest communication, and “grace moments” of two people of different backgrounds coming together in an honest exploration of vocational journey (Postulancy Committee 2015). As noted above, in 2013, Natural Church Development Canada worked with recently ordained priests in the Diocese of Toronto to give them, and the Postulancy Committee, a clearer picture of the leadership strengths and weaknesses of this group. Natural Church Development (NCD) is an international organization focused on congregational health in Christian churches. Working initially with 1,000 churches in thirty-two countries in 1996, founder Christian Schwarz identified eight quality characteristics of healthy churches across denominational and cultural lines: inspiring worship, loving relationships, effective structures, needs-oriented evangelism, passionate spirituality, empowering leadership, holistic small groups, and gift-oriented ministry (Schwarz 2005, 14). That initial research has been upheld by twenty years of further work with over 100,000 churches in seventy countries around the world. Results are gleaned by each church completing a survey of thirty core members and analyzed through a proprietary algorithm (taking cultural and denominational differences 6 into account), calculating a church's health and then developing strategies for growth based on these characteristics (Schwarz 2005, 104). To assist churches in growing these areas, Schwarz has developed assessment tools and books to help individuals grow in each characteristic, including “empowering leadership.” The NCD survey and paradigm has been in use in the Diocese of Toronto for more than ten years and is generally a well-accepted tool within diocesan culture. The opportunity for this ministry project came from the confluence of the call of the wider Anglican Church for leadership skills in ordained clergy, the lack of formal training in these skills in the Anglican theological colleges in Toronto, the diversity of postulants making any one-size-fits-all course problematic, the availability of a resource for assessment of one's “empowering leadership” abilities, and the existing relationships between postulants and advisors that at their best exhibit the characteristics of successful mentoring relationships. Response: The Project This project created a program to allow advisors to function as mentors in the development of leadership skills in postulants preparing for priestly ministry in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, particularly focusing on developing empowering leaders in the areas (identified by NCD) of vision, experimentation, capacity, strategy, training and progression. Postulants and advisors had been paired by Canon Conliffe in June of 2016 and spent eight months getting to know one another. During this time, a Mentors' Manual was created. Based on research into leadership development, 7 best practices in mentoring across disciplines, theological reflection on mentoring for leadership in ministry, and the NCD resources on empowering leadership, the Manual was ready for use in February, 2017. At that time, postulants were invited to complete the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment, a tool that asks participants to identify those with whom they have worked in a leadership capacity. These people are invited to complete an assessment of the participant's leadership functioning (rather than the participant self-reporting on their own perception of their leadership skills). This provided postulants with information from which they could decide on which leadership trait they would focus, and also provided a baseline result that would allow growth through the program to be measured. For ten months the advisors, now mentors, met monthly with their postulants. The Manual guided mentors through a first meeting that included looking through the NCD assessment results and selecting one focus area (of the six identified above) for learning for the mentorship period, as well as creating a mentorship covenant to govern this time together. The Manual gave guidance for subsequent meetings to include conversation on questions specifically created for each of the possible focus areas, discussion of provided resources (readings and videos) for each, and reflection on how the postulant's work in field education placements could help develop skills in the identified areas. At the conclusion of the mentorship period, data was gathered to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. Two focus groups, with mixed participants of 8 mentors and postulants, were gathered to reflect on ministry leadership in general and specifically how this program had impacted the postulants' sense of their own leadership gifts for ministry. A third focus group asked the mentors about their experiences with the Manual. The Manual was sent for evaluative comments to individuals with expertise in adult education in the Church, the training of postulants for ministry, and the functions and needs of leadership in ministry. Finally, the postulants were asked to repeat the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment to provide quantitative data about growth in empowering leadership skills. Overview of Contents The focus of this mentorship program is the formation of leaders for ordained ministry in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto. The style and context for mentoring relationships, then, must be within the context of shared faith and seeking to serve not human goals or notions of success but the goals of the Kingdom of God. Throughout the Bible can be found examples of God using mentors to prepare emerging leaders for the ministries to which they are being called. Chapter Two explores key characteristics of biblical mentorships (a pattern of teaching and learning, respect and even affection between mentor and mentee, acknowledgement of differences, commissioning), as seen in the mentoring relationships of Moses and Joshua, Deborah and Barak, Elijah and Elisha, and Paul and Timothy. 9 Mentorship, an important method of adult education and training, is employed in many sectors such as the business world, health sciences, and education. Because it is so widespread, there is a plethora of literature about best practices for establishing a mentorship program and evaluating what existing mentoring programs have accomplished. While the specific learning goals in each sector might vary widely, there is remarkable congruence in the mentoring techniques employed across the board and these are examined in the literature review in Chapter Three. The Mentors' Manual is an example of a curriculum, and although that word was never used with participants in the process, the methodology of curriculum development and evaluation guided the entire project. As with any curriculum, objectives were set (that postulants would grow in their leadership skills and advisors in their skills in mentoring), a baseline established (through the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment), and learning activities were provided. Because this program was aimed at adults, the formation of these learning activities and the shape of the entire program was informed by an exploration of methods of adult education and particularly the work of David Kolb in learning styles. The methodologies of curriculum development and evaluation for adult education and how they were applied to this project are explored in Chapter Four. A curriculum only comes to life through its use, and Chapter Five presents the findings and results of the curriculum evaluation following the use of the Mentors' Manual for ten months. Evaluation included learner assessment before 10 and after the mentorship period, feedback from both mentors and postulants about their experiences, and reviews of the curriculum by experts in the fields of Christian adult education and ministry formation in the Anglican Church. Were this curriculum only useful once, it would perhaps still have some value. However the Mentors' Manual, with some revisions, could easily be used in different ministry contexts with others interested in developing their leadership skills in ministry. Chapter Six explores some of the implications of what has been learned here and how it might be applied in the future. Key Terms Archbishop: A title given to bishops who lead larger geographic areas (often in addition to leading their own dioceses) Bishop: A priest chosen by the diocese to be ordained as bishop, to have authority and pastoral care of the diocese. Area bishops assist the diocesan bishop and have responsibility for a particular area of the diocese. Canon (1): An honorary title granted to a senior priest or outstanding lay person. To be named a Canon of the Cathedral is an honour bestowed by the bishop to recognize exemplary service to the wider Church Canon (2): A law of the Church, governing its life and discipline. There are diocesan, provincial and national canons. Curate or Assistant Curate: A transitional deacon or priest in the first two years of ordained ministry who is in training prior to an Incumbency, appointment as Priest-in-Charge, or ministry as an Associate. 11 Deacon: A person ordained to a ministry of service in the church and world. A deacon assists at the eucharist but does not preside. Some are ordained deacons for life (vocational deacons); others are ordained deacon before being ordained priests (transitional deacons). Diocese: All congregations within a given geographical area, overseen by a bishop, and organized in accordance with the canons (by-laws) of the Church. Incumbent/Rector/Priest-in-Charge: A cleric to whom the bishop has designated care of a parish. Leadership: a process of social influence that draws together the energy and skills of others towards a shared goal. Adaptive leadership leads a group to such changes that are necessary for that group to remain true to its core identity and mission in the midst of a changing environment. Mentor: For the purpose of this study, a mentor is an experienced person who offers holistic guidance, reflection and counsel to another person seeking to build identity, skills and knowledge. This differs from a coach (who focuses on skills) and a spiritual director (who focuses on the person's spiritual life) in the mentor's concern for the person as a whole. Postulants are required to have spiritual directors and primary pastors so that these are not necessarily roles played by the mentors in this project. Momentum: A two-year post-ordination training program of the Diocese of Toronto for newly-ordained clergy. 12 Ordinal: The order of service for an ordination, and in particular the vows one takes in ordination. Ordinand: A postulant who has been approved for ordination Parish: A geographical area in which a priest, deacon or lay person is licensed to serve the church. A parish may include one or more congregations and/or church buildings. Postulant: A person admitted into formal preparation for ordained ministry. Postulant's advisor: A member of the Postulancy Committee who is a priest with at least ten years' full-time ministry experience. Priest: A person ordained by a bishop for the ministry of Word and Sacrament. The word “presbyter” is used less commonly for this order of ministry. Primary pastor: Each postulant in the Diocese of Toronto is required to identify someone who will be their primary pastor, so that their postulant's advisor/mentor does not take on this role. Primate: The chief or presiding bishop of a national church. Spiritual director: One who works with a directee in attempting to deepen his or her relationship with God. Each postulant in the Diocese of Toronto is required to have a spiritual director. Suffragan bishop: an assistant bishop Supervisor/Ministry Supervisor: A priest who oversees the field education work of a theological student or assistant curate, usually the incumbent of a parish 13 CHAPTER TWO: MENTORING FOR LEADERSHIP: A THEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION While men and women may have been given innate gifts for leadership, God also works through mentors to help grow and develop those gifts. This can be seen through the witness of scripture, particularly through the examples of Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, Paul and Timothy, and Deborah and Barak. God Works Through Mentors The witness of Scripture is clear that God's primary mode of working in the created order is through the work of human beings. This is, of course, most fundamentally so in the incarnation of Christ, God's self-emptying kenosis to take on the form of a slave to accomplish the work of salvation (Philippians 2:7). Yet God's incarnational work also happens in the community of God's people through human leaders, gifted by God for the work to which God calls them. As human beings, such leaders require formation, training, and equipping for the tasks before them. Certainly, in many cases this training can be professionalized in formal educational settings, but such a response to the need for leadership training is relatively recent in the history of Christianity (Williams 2018). For generations leaders were primarily formed for their work through the mentorship of others. 14 “While God is the ultimate mentor for each of us, God does his mentoring through other people” (Bramer 2015). New leaders “[become] more skilled at operating in their God-given call because of the people who [are] willing to invest in them and their future” as people by whom God's people will be led (Murill, 2015). As this is the basis for this ministry project, a more thorough understanding of the biblical basis for mentoring, and the shape of biblical mentorship is appropriate. The word mentor does not appear in Scripture; instead, we have word pairings like teacher (or rabbi) and disciple, master and assistant, or those who are described by their own role in the community: prophet, apostle, or leader, with followers. Nonetheless, our contemporary understanding of a mentor, as one who takes a protege under his or her wing to provide skills coaching and experience as well as enhancing the protege's sense of identity and effectiveness while also serving as a role model in the work (Allen et al. 2009, 2) is certainly at least a part of the role one can observe in Scripture. Here we have several biblical examples of the mentoring of individuals into leadership roles by those with more experience. This exploration of mentoring for leadership will not examine the relationship of Jesus with those of his disciples. It is certainly the case that Simon Peter, James and John, along with the rest of the twelve and arguably Mary Magdalene as well, were transformed through their interactions with Jesus (and the later gifting of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost). They became people who would 15 lead the church, the body of Christ, following Christ's death, resurrection and ascension. Yet the transformation that took place in the lives of these individuals was so profound because of the transformative nature of Christ himself and not because of a simple mentoring relationship. It is not possible, I would argue, to separate the mentoring work that Jesus did with these people from the more foundational, salvific work that took place alongside it through Christ's very nature. For that reason, it is more helpful for the purposes of this study to examine the mentoring relationships that took place between four pairs of regular human beings who were called and equipped by God for their work: Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, Paul and Timothy and Deborah and Barak. As will be seen, each mentoring relationship is in some ways unique, shaped as it is both by the unique personalities and contexts of the mentor and the protege. However, an examination of several mentoring relationships in Scripture reveals a number of common characteristics emerging. Not surprisingly, mentorship in Scripture is about learning, about the transmission of wisdom, about a learner shadowing a teacher and absorbing knowledge of the dimensions of leadership. There is often associated with this some experience in which proteges are sent away from the mentor, to gain skills and experience through working either on their own or with others who may also have valuable things to share. This educational component of mentorship often includes the celebration of successes, and admonitions where the protege failed to do or be all that the mentor hoped for. In biblical mentoring relationships, there is an 16 acknowledgement of the differences that exist between mentor and protege, and that the objective of the relationship is not to produce a clone of the mentor but to equip someone with different gifts and skills for the different context in which he/she will do the work God calls him or her to do. There is some element of explicit commissioning in biblical mentoring relationships, whether through a formalized, sometimes public ritual or through appointing the protege for a task in the life of the community. Finally, mentoring relationships in scripture are characterized by a clear respect of each party for the other, a respect that often grows into affection, such that these relationships are often compared to that between a parent and child. Moses and Joshua Joshua first appears in scripture in Exodus 17, when he was recruited by Moses to lead the army of Israel into war against the forces of Amalek. As fiercely as the armies fought, however, the text makes clear that it was God's work that gave Israel the victory, Israel prevailing in battle whenever Moses, staff in hand, raised his arm from his vantage point on the hill over the battlefield. This cooperation, God's power evident through Moses' staff and Joshua's more worldly skills as a warrior-general, is in some ways emblematic of the mentoring relationship that would come to unfold. The next mention of Joshua in the text is as Moses' “assistant” (Exodus 24:13). Moses continued to have a unique relationship with God as the only mortal in scripture to see the Glory of the Lord, the only one to ascend Mount Sinai. Yet Joshua is pictured as present at the base 17 of the mountain, as close as anyone else could get. As they set out to return to the camp, tablets of the commandments of God in hand, Joshua mistook the sounds they hear for battlefield cries; Moses understood what they were hearing to be the “sound of revellers,” as the people were worshipping and celebrating their idol, the golden calf (Exodus 32:17-20). Thus Joshua is depicted both as Moses' close assistant in the receiving of the commandments of the Lord, and as one innocent of the sins of the people in idolizing a statue. This would play a role in legitimizing his leadership later on, as one untainted by this sin. Learning Joshua's purity of soul would continue to be a theme when Moses chose him with eleven others as representatives of the twelve tribes to spy out the Promised Land in advance of God's people entering into it (Numbers 13-14). These twelve were not elders of the people but younger men better suited to the task at hand (Widmer 2004, 257). Ten of these returned full of fear and caution about entering this land, already inhabited by those they described as giants, and full of contradictory stories (was the land rich and fertile, or did it “devour those who lived there?” (Numbers 13:27, 32)). Joshua on the other hand stood with Caleb, who encouraged the people to stay faithful to God's plan and enter Canaan. Initially Joshua remained silently supportive, perhaps understanding that he was already so closely identified with Moses that everyone would know his viewpoint to be on the side of conquest (Widmer 2004, 271). In supporting this minority report, Joshua again showed a faithfulness to God in clear contrast to the 18 faithlessness of many of the people, faithfully proclaiming that God's favour would protect and guide the people into the land God had promised (Duguid 2006, 169). Indeed he spoke out against the faithlessness of the people, risking stoning. Only when the people proposed electing a new leader did he, as the prospective leader himself, speak out (Widmer 2004, 271). God's promise confirmed his faithfulness; of those who spied out the land all would perish in the wilderness except Caleb and Joshua who would survive to enter the promised land (Numbers 26:65). Joshua was not without need of correction, however. He was certainly loyal, yet another incident might raise questions as to whether his loyalty lay with God and God's vision for the people or with Moses, his mentor. Moses gathered the elders around the tent of meeting, and God poured out his spirit on all the elders so that they would prophesy. Yet two elders, Eldad and Medad, stayed in the camp rather than joining the others in the tent of meeting. Upon learning that these two were filled with the spirit and prophesying even though they had not gone out to the tent, Joshua was indignant and asked Moses to stop them. On the contrary, Moses suggested that he would prefer for the spirit to rest on all the people, and he rebuked his younger assistant (Numbers 11:23-29). Moses is less concerned about his own status as leader than he is about the well-being of those he leads, and he makes sure that Joshua learns this lesson as well (Duguid 2006, 154). 19 Respect and Affection Moses knew those he led well and knew that if Joshua was to lead them, he would need to learn to stay faithful to the vision of God's will for the nation in the face of significant opposition and personal risk. Sending him to spy out the land and report back his findings and recommendations for action gave Joshua the chance to prove that he was capable of this critical leadership function. Challenging his assumption that leadership was vested in Moses rather than a gift of the Spirit of God forced Joshua to rethink his perspective. As mentor, Moses ensured that Joshua had shadowed him as he functioned in the day-to-day of leadership, had created learning opportunities for Joshua and forced him to examine his understanding of leadership. He “seems to have been accustomed to treating Joshua paternally,” loving and respecting him, supporting and occasionally correcting him, and praying for him and his success (Schwartz and Kaplan 2004, 55). Acknowledgement of Differences As Moses learned that he would not be entering the promised land and that his death was imminent, his first concern was for those he led (Numbers 27:17). It was a concern reflected in his use of the image of sheep in need of a shepherd (rather than, for example, lamenting the need for a king, lord or military leader), an image disassociated from worldly glory (Stubbs 2009, 213). The scripture makes clear that Joshua's leadership would be different from Moses, that Joshua himself would be a different kind of leader from Moses. Joshua is not a prophet; 20 where Moses was able to speak directly to the people as a spokesman for the Lord (Mann 1995, 163), Joshua would only be able to seek God's will through the priest Eleazar using the Thummin and Urim. Moses spoke directly to God, receiving the Law; Joshua would simply obey it (Duguid 2006, 206). Some commentators suggest that Joshua's authority and leadership would therefore be less than Moses'. Duguid suggests that Joshua's authority and that of the judges who would follow him was so incomplete that it would not be until the coming of the monarchy, working alongside the priesthood and the prophets, that Moses' prayer for a shepherd for the people would be fully realized (Duguid 2006, 307). Stubbs asserts that after Moses, every leader of the people would possess a lesser authority, with their power nuanced by a series of checks and balances defined by a relationship with the priests of the day (Stubbs 2009, 212). Yet it is also true that the context in which Joshua would lead would be very different than that in which Moses led. Moses was not a military leader and in the wilderness this was not often an issue; Joshua's previous military experience would serve well as the people began their conquest of Canaan. Different times require different gifts from leaders, and as they transitioned from the end of wilderness days and to entrance into the promised land the people of Israel needed a very different kind of leader, a leader Moses was able to mentor into his own giftedness. “Joshua can successfully succeed Moses only by being Joshua, not by being Moses” (Schwartz and Kaplan 2004, 57). 21 Commissioning The commissioning of Joshua is depicted in both the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, with Eleazar present in the version in Numbers and absent in Deuteronomy. More importantly, however, is who does the commissioning. In Numbers God spoke to Moses and commanded him to lay hands on Joshua, to commission him for leadership in the sight of the whole congregation (Numbers 27:10-23). This public laying-on of hands resulted in Joshua's endowment with the spirit of wisdom and the people's acceptance of his authority (Block 2012, 81). In Deuteronomy, while Moses gave Joshua a charge for his leadership of the people (Deuteronomy 31:7-8), it was the Lord himself who commissioned him to lead the people with boldness and strength, and gave the promise that God would be with him (Deuteronomy 31:14, 28). Both versions carry important messages. In Numbers, the public nature of the laying on of hands conveyed the message to the people that this was Moses' chosen and ordained successor, and emphasized continuity between human leaders under God's ongoing empowerment (Stubbs 2009, 211); in Deuteronomy, Joshua took on this role with divine authorization (Mann 1995, 164). Elijah and Elisha The relationship between the prophets Elijah and Elisha in many ways echoes the relationship between Moses and Joshua, right down to the final journey the two take together following a symbolic geography that reverses that of Joshua's journey upon taking over leadership from Moses (from Gilgal to 22 Bethel to Jericho to the banks of the Jordan River) (Bodner 2013, 50). There is, however, less detail given in scripture about this relationship and the ways in which Elijah mentored Elisha to take on the role of the preeminent prophet in Israel. Elisha is called to his prophetic ministry by God, who speaks to Elijah on the mountain subsequent to the theophany of the sound of sheer silence that followed the earthquake, wind and fire. God names Elisha as the prophet to come after Elijah, alongside Hazael as king over Aram and Jehu as king over Israel, and commands Elijah to anoint all three to their roles (1 Kings 19:15-16). Yet Elijah does not follow this commandment. He leaves the men whom God has chosen as king for Elisha to anoint some time later and instead focuses on finding his successor. Because he is named alongside these political leaders, however, scholars note that the political dimension that has marked Elijah's ministry is here implicitly confirmed and broadened for Elisha (Bodner 2013, 31). He will now be “inducted into the revolutionary party of Yahweh,” recruited without a word of warning about the risks or likely cost of continuing the prophet's mission to restore right worship of the Lord God against the wishes of the Omrides dynasty (Brueggeman 2000, 239). Learning and Respect and Affection Scripture is silent on how the two men related to one another, although these two incidents certainly leave the impression that the younger prophet was learning from the older. It is not that Elijah is being made redundant, but that a 23 new form of prophetic partnership is being advocated here, whereby Elisha the apprentice will be learning and then continuing the work of his master (Bodner 2013, 30). Elisha is described as the follower and servant of Elijah (1 Kings 19:21) who will later call the older man, “Father” (2 Kings 2:12). Acknowledgement of Differences The differences between the two men become apparent from the beginning. While Elisha is named “son of Shaphat” and his hometown known, Elijah is a figure outside the corridors of the establishment. The contrast between the two is highlighted when Elisha is first found at work at the plough, tied to the land and a member of a relatively wealthy family, one that can afford twelve pairs of oxen for the work. This is in contrast to the itinerant, landless Elijah (Bodner 2013, 31, 37). Elijah is known for his hair (1 Kings 1:8); Elisha is mocked for being bald (2 Kings 2:23). These two men are intended to be seen as different individuals, but two who carry out the vocation of prophet in their own time. The continuity is also implied by the continued relationship with the enigmatic company of the prophets, Elisha's feeding people after slaughtering his oxen echoing Elijah's feeding of the widow and her son during the drought (Hauser and Gregory 1990, 78), and Elisha rescuing a widow and her two sons while Elijah cared for a widow and raised her son (Bodner 2013, 43). In short, the narrative is meant to leave the reader with the impression of a new prophet “commencing his own journey in his master's footsteps” (Bodner 2013, 54). 24 Commissioning The story of Elisha includes not one but two stories of commissioning, the first at the outset of Elisha's ministry and the second at the conclusion of Elijah's. Immediately upon leaving the mountain, Elijah seeks out and finds Elisha (1 Kings 19:19-21). Oddly the prophet does not obey God's command to anoint his successor but instead tosses his mantle at Elisha as he is passing by. The reason for the disparity here is unclear. Some have understood this to be a reluctance, or at least a hesitation, on the part of Elijah to hand over any of his authority (Olley 2011, 215). Some have wondered if this was “an intemperate gesture,” something that would not be out of character for Elijah (Bodner 2013, 35). Others have taken this with Elijah's admonition to Elisha, “Go back again; for what have I done to you?” and seen in it a reluctance to foist upon anyone else the weight of the burden he has had to bear (Brueggeman 2000, 239). Regardless of Elijah's intent, Elisha's response is immediate and unreserved. He asks only for enough time to wrap up his affairs at home, bidding farewell to his family but also destroying the farming implements and slaughtering the oxen, marking a clean and radical break from his agricultural past and shift towards his future vocation (Bodner 2013, 37). The second commissioning of Elisha takes place as Elijah is carried into heaven on a whirlwind, accompanied by a chariot and horses of fire. It is unclear why Elijah asks Elisha to leave him as he journeys to the eastern banks of the Jordan; this may be a desire to spare his apprentice from seeing his departure, or 25 part of a rite of passage, or a test of Elisha's dogged tenacity in following his master (Bodner 2013, 46). The two pass to the eastern side of the Jordan River, the place where Moses' authority came to an end and Joshua's began. Elisha's only request of Elijah is to inherit a “double share” of the older prophet's spirit (2 Kings 2:9 NRSV), that is, the share of an inheritance due to come to the firstborn son, the recognition of legitimacy as Elijah's successor (Olley 2011, 216). This is something that is not quantifiable, however, and certainly not something that is within the prophet's power to grant. Yet for Elisha the external sign of the mantle twice bestowed is not enough; he fervently desires the inward power of the spirit that will allow him to continue in the work of a prophet (Brueggeman 2000, 294). The chariot and horses appear, Elijah is taken up in the whirlwind and lets drop his mantle thereby allowing Elisha to indeed received the double portion of the spirit Elijah had (2 Kings 2:11-13). Elisha takes up Elijah's fallen mantle, “and begins his long life-work alone, solidifying the gains for Yahweh that Elijah had begun” (James 1939, 188). The company of prophets meet him on the western side of the Jordan, affirm the spirit that has been transferred to him from Elijah and accept his preeminence among them (Brueggeman 2000, 298). Paul and Timothy When one thinks of mentorship in Scripture, the relationship between Paul and Timothy must surely come to mind as one of the most famous examples. 26 Learning As related in the Acts of the Apostles, the apostle Paul first met Timothy in Lystra, where he was immediately impressed with the way the younger man's faith and character had attracted such praise from others. Paul saw in Timothy the gifts to continue spreading the gospel. To make this work go more smoothly with other Jews, and according to Calvin to give him “prophetic warrant” (Twomey 2009, 119), Paul ensured that Timothy was first circumcised before having him accompany him in his missionary journeys from town to town (Acts 16:1-4). When circumstances forced them to part, Paul ensured Timothy continued his work in Beroea under another experienced preacher, Silas, before the two were able to rejoin Paul in Corinth. After time spent together there, Paul evidently decided that Timothy was ready to undertake a missionary journey without him, and sent him with Erastus to Macedonia for a time. The final time Timothy appears by name in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul was journeying through Macedonia and Timothy, along with several others, accompanied him on his way. Paul's epistles make reference to Timothy's work, as well. Timothy was “sent” to the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 4:17), a visit that appears to be in addition to the time the two spent together (with Silas) as noted above. Timothy was also sent to the church in Thessalonica without his mentor (1 Thessalonians 3:2-6), both to support the believers in their faith and to report back to Paul on their progress and concerns. 27 It is in the two letters from Paul to Timothy, however, where the mentoring relationship between the two men can perhaps be seen most closely. The letters may or may not have been written by Paul himself; for many years, biblical scholars have been split on the issue of authenticity (Johnson 1996, 3). Regardless of whether the letters are authentically Pauline or pseudepigraphical, they must have reliably reflected the relationship between the two men for them to have been accepted as Pauline in character and accepted as canon in the early church (Twomey 2009, 2). The author of the letters to Timothy will for simplicity's sake here be called “Paul,” without any conclusion about apostolic authenticity implied. As is clear from the descriptions of their missionary work in the Acts of the Apostles, there were three major techniques Paul used in mentoring Timothy into ministry leadership. Paul had the younger man work alongside him, observing and learning. Paul sent Timothy away to work with others. to observe and learn from them. Finally, Paul sent Timothy on his own to do the work himself and to learn from hands-on experience. Part of mentoring for leadership is being a role model. This was true in Paul's case; he would serve as a role model for Timothy and Timothy would, in turn, do likewise for the communities where he led (2 Timothy 1:13; 2:2). Moral instruction in the Hellenistic world was very much a matter of imitating the desirable qualities one saw in others (Johnson 1996, 47). Paul, of course, often urged those whom he led to imitate his behaviour, as he strove to imitate Christ 28 (c.f. 2 Thessalonians 3:9). “Nothing could be more typical of Paul than presenting Jesus as the supreme model for Christian behaviour while also proffering himself as an example as well” (Johnson 1996, 67). However, Paul was making a deeper point in writing to his disciple, that leaders in ministry must live with integrity so that their followers will understand that they practice what they preach, that there is authenticity in their teaching and instruction (1 Timothy 6:11). “Timothy is not called to a higher plane of conduct, but being a leader, he must naturally typify the life of faith in Christ. Yet on the other hand, this conduct is designed to ensure effectiveness in ministry” (Towner 1989, 240). At the same time the false teachers (for example, 2 Timothy 1:15) were presented as those to be avoided not only for spreading false doctrine but as immoral, abandoning both Paul himself in prison and the teachings to which he dedicated his life (Johnson 1996, 41). Respect and Affection The relationship between Paul and Timothy was surely one of not only respect but affection. Several times Paul spoke of Timothy as his child or son (1 Timothy 1:2, 18; 2 Timothy 1:2, 2:1), and the personal care he showed (for example, urging Timothy to drink some wine for the sake of his stomach) (1 Timothy 5:23) as well as the desire to be together again soon (1 Timothy 3:14; 2 Timothy 4:9) testify further to this loving relationship. It is worth noting that the word for “son” that Paul uses for Timothy is the Greek teknon, a more affectionate term that huios, the word for “son” found more commonly in the New Testament (Fernando 1985, 16). Thus Chrysostom pointed out Timothy is “not 29 merely Paul's son, but, ‘dearly beloved;' since it is possible for sons not to be beloved.... Where love does not arise of nature, it must arise from the merit of the object” (Twomey 2009, 18). Sri Lankan writer Ajith Fernando uses his own cultural background in understanding the relationship as that between a guru and a shishya, which may be incompletely translated as master and disciple, for this is a relationship that requires Paul, as the guru, to invest himself in Timothy and his future rather than to stand aloof, teaching at the front of a classroom. The guru is a spiritual father who chooses to train a small number of his spiritual children in a particularly detailed and comprehensive manner, spending an extended amount of time with them individually (Fernando 1985, 17). This South Asian cultural lens can help to broaden the Western understanding of mentoring, and seems particularly apt in describing the relationship between Paul and Timothy. Acknowledgement of Difference In urging Timothy to imitate him in some ways, Paul was not trying to create a clone of himself, but rather to empower his younger protege to claim his own giftedness for ministry. Indeed, in sending (or leaving) Timothy to work with other missionaries (Acts 16), and in upholding in his mind the influence of his mother and grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5), Paul was recognizing that Timothy's full development as a leader may require the influence of more than one mentor (Fernando 1985, 19). Timothy was encouraged not to give in to cowardice, but to take hold of the powers that were his by gift, preserve the teaching and not be ashamed of Christ (nor, indeed, of Paul himself) (Johnson 1996, 61), to “embrace 30 his own not insubstantial, and indeed God-given, capacities” (Twomey 2009, 118). Commissioning Timothy appears to have been somewhat timid in taking up the mantle of leadership (2 Timothy 1:6-14, 2:1-2). This may have been because of his youth (1 Timothy 4:12), but in answer to this concern Paul taught that a right way of life and true knowledge of the gospel carry with them an authority of their own in the Christian community. Some of the source of Timothy's authority arises from the laying on of hands he experienced, an ordination into leadership bearing the authority of Paul (2 Timothy 1:6) and of the “council of the elders” (1 Timothy 4:14). It is unclear whether these references are to one event (in which case, Paul was among the elders) or two different events, perhaps each inaugurating a different stage of Timothy's work, although both refer to a gift that the action conferred. Paul would certainly have known of Moses' laying hands on Joshua, and the transfer of authority that this action represented (Twomey 2009, 117). Yet the action was also by this time in the early church also understood to be a means of conferring the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:17) and of commissioning for ministry (Acts 13:3). Certainly, Timothy played a special role within the communities as the apostle's delegate (Towner 1989, 241), and the laying-on-of-hands might have been a symbol of this relationship. The action probably was intended to convey all of these meanings: a transfer of authority, the gifting of the Holy Spirit, and a commissioning for mission and leadership. 31 Deborah and Barak The relationship between Deborah and Barak is different from the previous three in that the role of the two individuals is explicitly different. Moses and Joshua were both the acknowledged leaders of their people (albeit in different times and circumstances); Elijah and Elisha were both prophets; Paul and Timothy were both evangelists and leaders in the early church. Deborah, however, was a judge and a prophet, while Barak was a military leader. This pairing is included in this exploration of mentoring relationships in scripture as an illustration that a mentor and protege need not necessarily be in the same field of work in order for the relationship to bear fruit. Some of the mentors using the Mentors' Manual do not serve as parish priests but as chaplains, as members of religious communities or in judicatory roles, where their postulants were training for parish ministry. Additionally, women served as mentors for men and vice versa, as Deborah mentored Barak. Acknowledgement of Differences Much of the study of Judges 4 and 5 have focused on Deborah's role as a woman, and nearly all of it has reflected the gender expectations of the scholar in question at least as much as it has illuminated the prophet's own story (Schroeder 2014, 247). She is introduced as a “prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, judging Israel” (Judges 4:4), and already there are questions. Some translations call her a “prophet,” others, “prophetess,” attempting to translate the feminine form of a Hebrew word that is, in scripture, rarely applied to a woman. She was the first 32 person since Moses to be identified as a prophet in scripture (Keddie 1985, 49), and her role of judge was clearly as much about leadership as it was juridical. The name of her purported husband, “Lappidoth,” is not known outside of this reference, which has led some scholars to note that the Hebrew phrase here would be literally translated “woman of torches,” or more colloquially, “fiery woman,” an apt description of her character (Bal, 1988, 205). Erasmus wrote that Deborah showed a “manly strength of soul,” while Calvin was forced by the witness of scripture to concede that here, at least, was one exception to the general rule that women should be silently submissive to men (Gunn 2005, 59). Some have asked whether she might have been a warrior, for although the text makes no mention of her taking up arms, it also does not mention Barak doing so (Ackerman 1998, 31). On the other hand, one medieval rabbinic text lamented her leadership strongly, “Woe to the generation which could only find a female to be its judge!” (Schroeder 2014, 250). Regardless of one's cultural perspective, Deborah was the only judge in scripture who combined all forms of leadership (religious, military, juridical, poetical), and was therefore called “Mother in Israel” even though there is no mention that she had biological children (Bal 1988, 209). If there is no consensus about Deborah's role, the role and character of Barak is equally controversial and for much the same reason: how could a military leader take orders from a woman? While some portray Barak as a competent, brave leader who simply lacked faith in God's intervention on Israel's behalf (Keddie 1985, 51), others see him as weak or frightened, needing 33 Deborah's goading or encouragement to move ahead, a little boy who still needs his mother (Exum 1985, 71) or a military leader who is dishonoured by the act of taking commands from a woman (Mayfield 2009, 311). The only reason that God would raise up a female to be judge in Israel, presumed by such authors, is because her male contemporaries (presumably including Barak) were lacking in the qualifications or virtue to take on the role (Schroeder 2014, 250). Respect and Affection The relationship between Barak and Deborah has been subject to a variety of interpretations. There is a midrashic tradition that the two were married (evidently the rabbis taking this view accepted “fiery woman” rather than “wife of Lappidoth” as the correct rendering of that particular phrase), and that as a couple each would have a role in leading Israel; Deborah to command but Barak to take the “masculine” role of waging war and violence (Gunn 2005, 61). However this interpretation seems to have little textual warrant, where it is simply made clear that each has a distinct role to play in the salvation of Israel. Learning and Commissioning The story of Deborah and Barak is told in two chapters of the book of Judges, the older version in poetry in chapter five and the later version in the prose of chapter four (Ackerman 1998, 30). Deborah summoned Barak and commissioned him to lead Israel's armies, sending him into battle against the forces of King Jabin of Canaan. She acted as advisor in military strategy, and the 34 tactics involved would require a miraculous intervention by God, the flooding of the wadi so that the wheels of the chariots of Jabin's army, under the generalship of Sisera, become clogged and useless. Barak demanded she accompany the army, which she did with the warning that victory would not be his but that Sisera would fall to the hands of a woman. The battle unfolded, and Sisera was indeed killed by a woman, Jael, who drove a tent peg into his head. Deborah acted as a mentor for Barak, but because each occupied different roles the mentoring techniques she used are different than those seen in the relationships of Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and Paul and Timothy. She did advise, teach, and admonish, yet she did so as a prophet, speaking God's word to the military leader, rather than as someone with military experience herself (Judges 4:6). Thus the kinds of shadowing each of the other mentees did of their mentors was not a technique for learning available here. Barak's request (or demand) that she accompany the army can be understood as a request that God do so, rather than the request for a teacher to tutor a student, for Deborah as prophet was seen as the “representative of the divine” (Ackerman 1998, 30). Her teaching authority came from her passionate commitment to Israel's well-being, as well as from the formal role of judge in Israel (Ackerman 1998, 43). She advised, asked probing questions, and suggested the timing of actions, but left it to Barak to carry out the military conquest. As a mentor, she served well, teaching and giving advice but allowing the protege to do the work he needed to do in order to come into his own as a leader. 35 In a thirteenth century French painting portraying the battle of the people of Israel against the armies of Sisera, it is illustrative to note that Barak is pictured at the front of Israel's army, leading them into battle, but that he is turning to look at Deborah, who leads from the rear (Gunn 2005, 58). The painting is a wonderful image of mentorship, with the protege encouraged and empowered to carry out the tasks of leadership, yet with the mentor there to bring up the rear, to accompany and support him/her in that work. Conclusions Although the word “mentor” is never used in scripture, there are several examples of mentoring relationships, as God calls leaders to teach, accompany, empower, commission, send and care for others whose leadership gifts are needed for God's mission. In the pairings of Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, Paul and Timothy and Deborah and Barak, we can see patterns that give shape to a biblical understanding of mentorship. Biblical mentorship emphasizes learning: mentors walking alongside proteges, nurturing their gifts, teaching and admonishing. Biblical mentorship requires acknowledging and respecting the different gifts and role the protege may play in the life of the community. It includes respect and even affection for the protege; this is a relationship and not merely a transaction. It includes commissioning proteges to do the work they are called to do. Above all, biblical mentorship seeks God's purposes for both mentor and protege, so that the leadership that is exercised will be for the benefit of God's people. It is this pattern of mentoring relationship that this ministry project 36 sought to encourage: the focus on the postulant's learning, mutual respect and even affection, acknowledgement of differences between mentor and postulant and ultimately ordination that would serve as commissioning. 37 CHAPTER THREE: LITERATURE REVIEW While God calls those with the gifts for ordained leadership God also works to equip those who are called, and one of the ways God works is by bringing experienced mentors into the lives of those preparing for ministry. Mentoring programs designed specifically for the development of leadership skills for those preparing for ordained ministry are not common but there are analyses of such programs, as well as studies examining similar programs in other contexts, particularly in the fields of education, health care, and business. Types of Literature Studies in mentoring generally fall into one of four categories: those focused on planning a mentoring program, those that describe and review pre- existing mentoring programs, those that analyze particular components that go towards creating an effective mentorship program within a pre-existing program and those that combine the planning, execution and evaluation of a mentorship program. Within all of these categories of study, mentorship can be formal or informal, mandated by an organization or freely entered into by the individuals involved. Depending on the researcher's definition of mentoring, it can focus on the career development of the mentee, can concentrate on transmitting specific 38 knowledge or teaching a given set of skills, or can be more holistic, seeking both personal and skills development. Mentoring relationships can be one-on-one or in a group setting, can pair individuals in similar circumstances or can cross differences of culture, field, age and gender. Any formal mentorship program that is mandated or supported by an organization requires significant planning. Much of the literature on mentorship programs, in all fields, aims simply to be very practical (Chang 2016, Zachary 2012, Allan 2009). Some works are context-specific, others seek to offer more broad guidance for setting up a mentorship program, for becoming a mentor, or for seeking a mentor for oneself. Studies on this planning stage often reference the results of programs in other organizations, seeking to build on past successes (Stead 2005). Planning for mentorship and leadership development includes clarifying the program's goals and outlining the training and support mentors and mentees will receive, how much the program will be structured by the organization and how much freedom each pair will have to explore their own goals, and how the program's success will be evaluated. Other studies on mentorship, in ministry and in other areas, have a researcher going into a given organization or context to review mentorship programs and strategies that are already in place (Holmes 2005). In some cases these mentorship initiatives are formalized and in others they are less formal, but this type of research seeks to describe what mentorship looks like in a given context, and in some cases, to evaluate its effectiveness. This type of study is 39 different from those that analyze the components of mentoring programs in that the former focus on the impact of the overall program, while the latter are more interested in which specific elements of a mentorship program are most likely to lead to successful outcomes. In part this depends, of course, on how one defines a successful outcome, and so this definition itself has to become a part of the analysis that is undertaken. Studies that move from the initial planning stages of a mentoring program, through its execution and evaluation of its results are perhaps the most satisfying. Such studies may offer a single case, and follow it through all these steps (Hartsell 2002), or may compile a number of cases in order to draw broader conclusions about what makes mentoring programs more or less effective (Allan et al, 2009). My project involved all these steps, planning, execution and evaluation, so that this category of study was the most helpful in the creation, implementation and evaluation of the Mentors' Manual, while other, more focused studies, contributed to the various stages. Planning and “How To” Guides Diane Carter 's 2012 Doctor of Ministry project involved creating a manual to equip lay leaders within a United Church of Christ congregation for ministry and pastoral care. She notes that one's leadership ability is directly related to the impact one is able to have in ministry, and defines leadership as a collection of skills that are developed over time, requiring a willingness to grow and the self-discipline to do what is necessary for that growth to occur (Carter 40 2012, 103). With sections on biblical and theological reflections on the ministries of elders and deacons, servant leadership, prayer, leadership, meetings, worship, conflict management and domestic violence, this is a manual covering a lot of bases yet without any analysis of why some sections are included and not others. There is also no indication of whether this program was ever carried out or, if so, its impact. For these reasons this work has not been terribly helpful in my ministry project. A much more detailed mentorship plan for lay leaders in a local church is Howard Chang's 2016 doctoral thesis project “Mentoring Leaders for Kingdom Ministry at Davis Chinese Christian Church.” In a congregation that is now forty years old, there is a need for the next generation of leaders, particularly within the English language ministry, to be trained and equipped for inevitable succession. Chang carefully analyzes the ministry needs of the church, defining the goals of the mentorship program, the cultural concerns and expectations of this ethnically- specific congregation, and the limitations imposed on it by the realities of the congregational life cycle. He outlines a training program for mentors, including a theological rationale for a mentorship program, skills in active listening and asking questions to encourage reflection, program goals and to build awareness of the role of mentors. He encourages each mentor/mentee pair to make a covenant about the logistics of the relationship at the outset: how often, where and when they will meet, for how long and for what duration, what goals they wish to achieve, expectations around confidentiality and accountability mechanisms, and 41 a process to evaluate the mentoring relationship at the end of the program, with a possibility of renewing it. For the duration of the program, mentors were to be encouraged to invite mentees to take on greater leadership responsibility, and the mentors were themselves to be mentored by the English ministry pastor. It is an impressively thorough program, incorporating many of the elements of successful mentoring programs identified in the literature noted below, and it only remained to implement it and evaluate the results (Chang 2016). This impressive project has assisted in the current ministry project in raising areas of mentorship for consideration (including how to handle generational expectations of leadership and church life, and the need for institutional/organizational support of a mentorship program to lead to the best changes for success). Lois J. Zachary 's The Mentor's Guide was released in its second edition in 2012, a comprehensive reference for mentors and those who plan mentoring programs in their own organizations. Drawing on twenty years of research in the areas of adult education in general and mentoring in particular, Zachary outlines the practical steps to be taken that will lead to the best outcomes for both mentor and mentee. She lays the foundation with a chapter on adult education principles, with a particular focus on experiential learning. She then urges mentors to consider the contexts in which their work will be done, both the ways a mentor and mentee might be quite different from one another (including the critical area of intercultural understanding) and the ways they might connect with things in common. She then outlines “the predictable phases of mentoring,” from preparing 42 and negotiation of expectations through the work of supporting, challenging and engaging to enable growth, though coming to closure and evaluation. The guide contains many exercises for the reader, some for the mentors to complete on their own, and others as exercises for mentor and mentee to work through together. There is good reason this book, and its 2000 predecessor, have become standard reference material in the field of mentorship work. This is a work that has significantly guided the creation of the Mentors' Manual that is the subject of this thesis, which has included some of Zachary's guidance on the creation of a Mentorship Agreement, a formal document between mentor and mentee at the outset of the program and her understanding of how mentorship can be most effective for mentees from different age cohorts. Randy Reese and Robert Loane have not written a “how - to” guide for mentorship in Deep Mentoring: Guiding Others on Their Leadership Journey (2012). Rather, building on the research of J. Robert Clinton's 1988 Leadership Development Theory they have moved from theory to practice by offering would- be Christian mentors a framework for understanding one's leadership journey. A Christian leader, throughout her/his life, travels through the stages of Foundation, Preparation, Contribution and Multiplication as God forms her/him through various life events, first to lead and in time to form others in developing their own leadership. These stages, and the leadership development that happens through them, were shared with mentors in the Mentors' Manual, to allow them to understand the development of leadership in the lives of their postulants. 43 Reviews of Existing Mentorship Programs In 2014, Richard M. Ngomane and Elijah Mahlangu looked at a number of charismatic churches in the Bushbuckridge area of northeastern South Africa. The study began with a series of focus groups of leaders from forty-seven churches in the area, and from these conversations a questionnaire was created and sent to 348 leaders, identified by the churches, in both urban and rural settings in the area. The study sought simply, at this stage of research, to establish whether these churches have in place any kind of mentorship or leadership development programs to assist in the inevitable process of leadership succession; most of these churches were founded in the past forty years and were still being led by the founding leadership at the time of the study. A quantitative analysis of the questionnaire responses was completed, and 84% of respondents asserted that the future of their church depends on the ability to mentor new leaders. Interestingly, while the majority of those in the focus groups had told researchers that their churches did not have mentorship or leadership succession plans in place, over 80% of questionnaire respondents reported that they did. The researchers speculated that there may have been a desire on the part of questionnaire respondents to give what they hoped would be the “correct” answer on the questionnaire, and planned further study (Ngomane and Mahlangu 2014). This study served as a reminder of the need to take cultural expectations into account, particularly in terms of the understanding of how one is to relate to someone in a position of authority, in the design of the mentorship program. 44 Rather than seeking what made mentoring effective, Janet Holmes sought in 2005 to analyze the discursive practices of those who engage in mentoring and whether gender was relevant to these practices. She took as her data weeks of voice and video records that were a part of the “Language in the Workplace Project” of the University of Wellington, Victoria in New Zealand. Throughout an office building, cameras and voice recorders documented the ways individuals interacted with one another in their daily work over the course of three months. Holmes' analysis was unique; no one had previously studied mentoring from a discursive standpoint. She identified five types of coaching in which individuals sought to mentor others, whether formally or informally. In procedural coaching, a mentor or supervisor schools the mentee in organizational regulations, norms, and formal procedures. In corrective coaching, the focus is on a mentee's errors or deviations from organizational standards in order to provide feedback on how to improve. An approving coaching strategy is the flip side of the corrective strategy, advising a mentee who wishes to progress to continue to act in a given way. The advising strategy is less directive than the first three, where the mentor seeks to support another by focusing on the mentee's own future, offering resources and ideas. Finally, indirect coaching is less overt, for while it reinforces good ideas this strategy tends to ask provocative questions and elicits ideas from the mentee for solutions to problems. Holmes notes that this last strategy correlates with what organizational science has called a “transformational leader,” and that the most skilled mentors will give attention to both transactional and relational goals 45 (Holmes 2005). In the needs assessment conversation with the Postulancy Committee in 2015, several postulants' advisors noted that they understood that role to be primarily transactional; advisor and postulant would meet for the exchange of information. By shifting to a role of mentor, the advisors were being asked to become more relational in their work with postulants (Postulancy Committee 2015). Thus the strategies of what Holmes calls indirect coaching were integrated into the first part of the Manual as part of the section on best practices for mentoring. Mentorship can help to lessen the impact of systematic marginalization for individuals within an organization by assisting the mentee in his/her own learning and by providing a patron who will stand on the mentee's behalf (Hartsell 2002, 77). A 2013 study examined the impact of mentoring on ten African American women serving as Baptist ministers. The ministers varied in age from their late thirties through their seventies, had completed a huge range of formal education (from high school graduation through doctoral studies), and served in different capacities within their congregations. While “everyone in life is mentored and taught how to do things by someone,” (Newkirk and Cooper 2013, 332), only four of the ten ministers interviewed had been formally mentored for the practice of ministry. Seminary-mandated internship programs, which provided an intentional mentorship experience were uneven; one woman studying to be a pastor was mentored by a male pastor who did not believe that women should be pastors. The paper concluded that strengthening mentorship for African American women in 46 ministry would assist them in ministry leadership, regardless of their previous educational experiences and backgrounds (Newkirk and Cooper 2013, 339). Given the significant ethnic diversity found among the postulants for ordination in the Diocese of Toronto, the finding that mentorship can reduce systemic marginalization serves as an encouraging word and justification for the Diocese at the judicatory level, as well as individual mentors, to invest in such a program. A Doctor of Ministry study with a similar methodology was completed by Beryl Whipple in 2014, interviewing five young clergy in the United Methodist Church about their experiences of preparing for ministry, looking at both formal and informal mentoring relationships. This study is not always clear about its terminology, conflating the roles played by a person who had influenced the young cleric in their faith journey (a childhood Sunday School teacher, grandmother, spouse and godmother are all named) with a mentor who was recruited, trained and supervised for this work of mentoring and supervising a seminary student though a field placement. While the former group can certainly provide guidance, support and teaching, which are among the functions of a mentor, their roles in the lives of the clergy being interviewed are not what the author identifies as “mentor” at the outset of her work, “a veteran clergy person ... [who has] obtained valuable ministry experience over many years and is willing to share it with a young preacher who is willing and able to listen” (Whipple 2014, 27). The study also suffers from opinions offered by the author with little or no support, such as, “Bad mentorship produces selfish, cocky 47 mentees ... thinking only of their own personal agenda” (Whipple 2014, 17). Nonetheless, the study does identify some of the important positive roles mentors have played in the preparation of these five young clergy for ministry: a role model, a sounding board, a teacher of content, a guide to denominational norms and structures, and a person who will call the mentee to authentic selfhood (Whipple 2014). These roles are highlighted in the Mentors' Manual. In 2006, Betty Crutcher studied cross-cultural mentorships in place at the University of Miami, seeking to learn what made these mentorships “successful.” In some cases the mentor (a faculty member) was a person of colour; in others, the student was a person of colour. Additionally there were often differences of age, culture and gender at play. Crutcher discovered that there were certain attributes in mentors that contributed greatly to success: selflessness, listening skills, honesty, non-judgemental attitudes, persistence, patience, and an appreciation for diversity. Successful mentors (whom she assigned such pseudonyms as “Pastor,” “Tiger” and “Sensei”) saw the potential for growth in both student and mentor, understood that an overemphasis on difference can lead to stereotyping and therefore became adept at seeing students as both individuals and as members of a particular cultural group (Crutcher, 2006). These insights are incorporated into the Mentors' Manual to give guidance to Postulancy Committee members who are mentoring postulants for different cultures, ethnicities or genders than themselves. 48 Analyses of Mentorship Program Effectiveness As the National Health Service in the United Kingdom underwent significant organizational change in 2003 the role of finance directors shifted, and these individuals were to take on a greater leadership role within their contexts. A mentoring program was instituted to assist them in this work and was evaluated by researcher Valerie Stead in 2005. In this case study, twenty pairs of mentors and mentees were matched by the organization, and met together every four to six weeks for a period of six to twelve months. Training was offered at the outset of the program for both mentors and mentees, with peer support gatherings for mentors throughout the program. Final workshops were held at the program's conclusion for evaluation purposes. Stead identifies challenges that arose and values of the program in three key areas: program design, content and process. Several factors were identified in the program's success: introductory workshops for both helped to set clear objectives and boundaries, peer meetings for mentors gave them tools to redirect any difficulties that arose, and the provision of content to share (for example, organizational change theory) gave some focus to the meetings. The two factors with the greatest influence on the program's success, however, were the level of commitment to the program on the part of the mentor and the degree to which the mentor held to two key principles: that the mentee is resourceful, and that the mentor's role is to enable the mentee's resourcefulness. To this latter point it was noted that “there was much to be gained from having a mentor more distant from the mentee's role to enable more open challenging and 49 questioning” (Stead 2005, 177). This kind of distance is built into the pairing of mentor and postulant in my project; the experienced priest who is the mentor does not supervise or work closely with the postulant in their daily ministry. Thus the Mentors' Manual highlighted the ways in which this can be an advantage in bringing new perspectives to the postulant's work and leadership. In their 2009 comprehensive study Designing Workplace Mentoring Programs: An Evidence-Based Approach, Tammy Allen, Lisa Finkelstein and Mark Poteet (Allen et al. 2009) bring together data from over fifty discreet studies of workplace mentorship programs and analyze what has contributed to their success or failure. On the level of the organization, Allen et al. write that a successful mentorship program will have the clear and articulated support of organizational leaders and will have program-wide objectives based on the needs of the organization: “More specific and targeted objectives lead to superior outcomes than do vague or overly broad objectives,” and lead to a higher level of commitment to the program from both mentors and mentees (Allen et al. 2009, 15-17). They note that while a mentorship program's success seems not to be affected by whether mentee participation is voluntary or mandatory, it is very dependent on mentor buy-in, so that building commitment and enthusiasm in the mentors is an important step to success (Allen et al. 2009, 25). Building this commitment begins right from the recruitment stage, through matching and training, to ongoing support through the mentorship. Mentors generally appreciate a structure that standardizes the approach (which additionally benefits the 50 organization as resources are maximized) yet leaves room both for the mentor to offer his/her own gifts and experience and for the mentee to explore his/her own questions and issues (Allen et al. 2009, 71). The analysis presented here does not draw firm conclusions about how best one might match mentors with mentees; the process by which matching takes place needs to go back to the overall objective of the program (Allen et al. 2009, 47). Successful mentoring programs take the time to educate participants, both mentors and mentees, about program goals and expectations, while mentors benefit significantly from guidance about giving effective feedback, helping another to learn from experience, and creating a developmental plan (Allen et al. 2009, 60-61). Mentoring agreements are strongly recommended to clarify from the outset expectations around logistics, confidentiality and duration of the relationship (Allen et al. 2009, 72-76). Support for mentors and monitoring the process is important, and evaluation at the program's conclusion from all three perspectives (mentor, mentee and organization) confirm for all parties that the program has been worthwhile and contribute to improvements where the program will continue (Allen et al. 2009, 87-90). The best practices identified here have been built into the Mentors' Manual, and into the introduction of it as mentors and postulants were introduced to the program over a period of some months with clear expectations and goals set forth. 51 From Planning through Evaluation In “Mentoring Leadership: A Practical Application for One's Career Path,” co-authors Kevin Laughlin and Holly Moore look at the case study of their own relationship in which Laughlin, an elementary school principal, mentored first-year teacher Moore, a Grade Five teacher at the Lasallian school on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning, Montana (Laughlin and Moore 2012, 34). The mentorship was guided by two primary philosophies: seeking to develop the Lasallian attributes of a teacher (first listed in 1706 by St. John Baptist de la Salle and including such attributes as humility, wisdom, patience and zeal) and understanding which of the Jungian life stages (accommodation, separation, liminality, reintegration and individuation) the new teacher was in (Laughlin and Moore 2012, 36-37). The mentorship acknowledged and sought to integrate the contribution of other mentors in this context (including Native American elders) (Laughlin and Moore 2012, 36), as will be the case in the postulancy mentorship where postulants will interact with field placement supervisors, home parish clergy, spiritual directors and others. The mentorship started with a period of relationship building, employed such assessment tools as the Myers-Briggs and Enneagram personality indicators and sought to hold a mirror to the new teacher to truly see herself and her leadership styles as she continued in her career (Laughlin and Moore 2012, 39). While the Mentors' Manual for postulancy employed different assessment tools, these stages of building relationships, assessment and reflection were certainly a part of the program. 52 Leaders in ministry require not only the kinds of leadership skills needed in other fields but also a deep spiritual formation. In a 2012 Doctor of Ministry study, Stephen Baldwin identified six young adult pastors from six different denominations. He had them meet regularly in structured peer relationships, which included a mentoring component, with a focus on spiritual formation. Compared to the process of an Oxford don meeting with a small group of students (Baldwin 2012, 82), Baldwin asserts that “the power of mentoring is multiplied when it exists at the centre of a small group of peers who also contribute what they are learning to the enrichment of the group” (Baldwin 2012, 85). Each of the six was then interviewed about the impact of the process on her/his perception of readiness for ministry. The process was reported to be most successful when there was trust and vulnerability on both sides and when the distinction between presumed expert and learner was not heightened by formalities (Baldwin 2012, 155). Unfortunately, this study suffers from poor writing and the advancement of opinions that lack documented support. In lamenting the hesitation of some to take on the role of mentor without exploring why that might be, Baldwin writes, “What could be more important that (sic) pouring the wisdom of experience a pastor has acquired over a lifetime into pastors who will serve the church in the coming decades?” (Baldwin 2012, 153). Postulants and their advisors met in working groups twice over the course of the mentorship, where peer-to-peer interaction alongside postulant-to-mentor conversation allowed for the kinds of growth Baldwin highlighted in his work. 53 A more helpful start-to-finish study was completed in 2002 by Richard Michael Hartsell, “Developing a Mentoring Training Program for Unit Ministry Teams at Fort Benning, Georgia.” The ministry setting, a United States Army base, brings its own unique cultural expectations. Hartsell acknowledges these and incorporates them into his work; it is, he writes, “Army doctrine” that all leaders will prepare all subordinates for greater service in whatever function they serve (Hartsell 2002, 53). There were also some unique risks to participation in a mentoring program within a military context; while all mentoring requires vulnerability on both parts, and the time, effort and energy to participate, the risk of gossip (especially with cross-gender mentoring) and reputation (if one's mentee performs poorly) carry unique weight within the structure of the army. Because of these concerns Hartsell expected some resistance to the introduction of a new mentoring training program (would not senior officer chaplains already feel they were fulfilling the function of a mentor to the chaplain assistants?) However, he was pleasantly surprised when a majority of the chaplains chose to be involved. This might be in part because within other sectors of the military those with mentors have been shown to be more likely to be promoted ahead of their contemporaries and to experience high job satisfaction (Hartsell 2002, 64). The mentoring program here consisted primarily of developing a syllabus to train chaplains to be mentors and the training sessions themselves. Because the unit ministry teams were formed by the hierarchy of the army, the chaplains worked as mentors with the chaplain assistants already assigned to them. The objective of 54 this particular mentorship program was spiritual development, so in some ways the chaplain/mentor served as a spiritual director to the chaplain assistants (Hartsell 2001, 53). Hartsell sought to impose as few rules as possible. He concluded after his research that good mentoring is more art than science in that it will always emerge from the unique combination of the mentor's gifts and the needs and questions of the protege (Hartsell 2002, 74). Evaluation of the mentoring program was carried out through observations by the researcher combined with reports from the participants, both chaplains and chaplain assistants. Mentors and proteges felt more empowered at the end of the program. Job satisfaction and personal morale had increased. There had been a higher level of trust built within the unit ministry teams and several members were encouraged to pursue continuing education. Two of the mentees chose to leave the army at the conclusion of the program; both had been guided through this process to see that this way of life was not God's will for them and for their families. While Hartsell regretted this outcome he also counted it as evidence that the mentoring itself fulfilled its objective in assisting participants to come to a clearer vocational understanding (Hartsell 2002, 128). As noted in Chapter Four, a similar dynamic emerged in my project. Conclusions Literature in the field of mentoring has exploded over the past four decades in the areas of business, health care, education, and in ministry. Researchers have come to some conclusions about what makes for successful 55 mentorship programs and subsequent studies continue to confirm these. From the organization's point of view, the important stages of a formal mentoring program are establishing clear program objectives aligned with organizational culture and goals, intentional recruiting and training of participants, training and ongoing support leading to evaluation of the program. From the mentor's side, the best practices for success are an understanding of one's own cultural context and experiences, establishing a clear mentorship agreement, the willingness to be vulnerable and a desire to assist mentees to fulfill their own potential (rather than seeking to create a copy of oneself) and ultimately a real commitment to the mentoring relationship. Both organization and mentor might provide content (articles, books, video content and so on) as a part of the mentorship program, or the content of the conversations between mentor and mentee might be driven completely by the mentee's and mentor's lived experiences. For the mentee's part success is most likely when there is a willingness to trust the process and be vulnerable and authentic in sharing successes and failures through the mentoring relationship are the most likely paths to achieving one's goals. In some of the literature, there is a lack of clarity about a number of concepts. Some draw a sharp distinction between a mentor and a coach, the former understood as being more relational and the latter more skills-based (Asche 2008, 4), Others, on the other hand, muddy the waters unnecessarily in discussing mentors, role models, supporters, teachers, supervisors and so on. Much of the literature acknowledges that holistic mentoring will encompass many 56 or all of these roles. While all of these relationships will contain elements of mentoring, it is difficult to draw reliable conclusions about best practices or mentoring success when it is less than clear what is meant by “mentoring.” For the purpose of this study, a mentor is an experienced person who offers holistic guidance, reflection and counsel to another person seeking to build identity, skills and knowledge. This differs from a coach (who focuses more narrowly on skills development) and a spiritual director (who focuses on the person's spiritual life) in the mentor's concern for the person as a whole. While there is substantial agreement that mentoring can be an effective way to develop leadership skills in business and education, and that mentoring can be an effective way to deepen spiritual formation and develop ministry skills in those preparing for full-time ordained ministry, there is little work that combines these two streams. In congregational church polities, it would be more difficult to design and implement a mentoring program for those preparing for ordained leadership than for episcopal polities. This may be a reason a number of these case studies address lay leadership development within a single congregation, or focus on the diverse experiences of individual ordained leaders, rather than any organizationally-implemented mentoring program. It is hoped that this current study will help to draw the areas of mentorship, ministry and leadership together. 57 CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY AND PROJECT This project combined best practices in adult education with learnings drawn from mentorship programs in a variety of contexts, alongside insights from biblical patterns of mentorship, to create a Mentors' Manual, a curriculum used by mentors working with postulants for ordination as priests in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto. The program was carried out for ten months, and then the Manual was evaluated drawing upon standard curriculum evaluation practices. Outline of the Project The Anglican Diocese of Toronto generally ordains between five and twelve women and men to the transitional diaconate every May; these people go on to be ordained priests within one year. These people have obtained a Master of Divinity degree or its equivalent and have completed many hours of field placement work in a variety of ministry settings. They have met regularly with a spiritual director and with a postulant's advisor for at least two years. They have submitted themselves to psycho-sexual assessments and police record checks, met with discernment groups and support groups, preached sermons and led Bible studies. Yet both anecdotal evidence and one previous survey have shown that newly-ordained clergy lack gifts, skills, and confidence in ministry leadership. 58 This project sought to remedy this deficit. Because postulants already met monthly with a postulant's advisor as they prepared for ordination, there was a great opportunity to engage advisors as mentors. The advisors were all experienced clergy who had been hand selected by the Archbishop of Toronto to serve in this role because of their gifts and skills in discernment and leadership. Many already served as informal mentors to the postulants whom they advised; what was needed was direction to encourage postulants to work on their leadership skills. A Mentors' Manual was created: “Mentoring for Leadership in the Postulancy Committee in the Diocese of Toronto” (Appendix A). The Manual drew upon a number of studies of successful mentorship practices in a number of sectors (see Chapter Three) and on the work of Natural Church Development (NCD) in their model of empowering leadership. Research into best practices of adult education (see Chapter Five) were integrated into the Mentors' Manual as was work on curriculum development. The Manual served as the curriculum for a ten-month long partnership, during which each postulant's advisor mentored his/her postulant to encourage growth in leadership skills. Postulants first completed the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment and used the feedback they received to pinpoint the leadership skills on which they would focus. Postulant and mentor were asked to meet monthly, form a mentoring agreement, discuss the implications of leadership in ministry, and seek to shape field placement experiences to include work on ministry leadership. At the end of ten 59 months, postulants re-took the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment to measure their growth. Objectives There were several objectives for the creation and use of this Mentors' Manual. The foundational aim was that, through its use, the postulants would demonstrate growth in their leadership functioning. A secondary objective of this project was to see both members of the Postulancy Committee and postulants themselves become more aware of the need for leadership gifts and skills for those preparing for ordination. One additional objective of this project was that the Mentors' Manual would become a tool that could be adapted and used in other dioceses and denominations as a means of increasing leadership skills for those preparing for ministry. The methods of curriculum evaluation were used to measure each of these objectives. The field of curriculum evaluation provided the techniques needed to assess the achievements of these objectives. The various methodologies of curriculum evaluation will be discussed below but in brief, curriculum evaluation seeks to answer the questions: “Did the learner grasp the intended lessons?” and “How did participants (both teachers and learners) judge the “worthwhileness of curricular experiences?” (Taylor and Richards 1985, 135). These were measured through completion of the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment for a second time to evaluate to what degree the postulants learned what it was intended they learn. The learning experiences and impact on the wider Postulancy Committee 60 were assessed through a combination of focus groups and surveys. The usability of the Manual in other contexts was assessed through a series of interviews with experts in the field of forming people for ordained ministry. Procedure Before beginning to create the Mentors' Manual, there were a series of conversations with the Postulancy Committee that drew upon two studies of recently ordained clergy. One of these studies suggested that postulants found the relationship with their advisors most helpful when they were able to relate to that person as a mentor and not merely as a link person to the postulancy process (Postulancy Committee 2015). The second study suggested that newly ordained clergy were generally lacking in leadership skills in their ministry settings, and that this was particularly so in the more directive styles of leadership (Bickle 2013). Conversations with advisors revealed a strong desire for more direction in their monthly interactions with postulants, and general agreement that leadership skills were both important in the practice of ministry and not taught in the theological colleges they were familiar with. (More detail on this process is to be found in the first chapter of this thesis). The creation of the Mentors' Manual followed inquiry into the state of research in the fields of curriculum development and evaluation, adult education, mentoring and leadership development, as well as work on biblical patterns of mentorship. The desire was to create a tool that would, in the best practices of adult education, honour and draw from the life experiences and ongoing field 61 education of the postulants while offering to advisors, in their new role as mentors, both insight into that shift of role and tools to enable learning in leadership. Remarkably, those best practices strongly echoed the principles of mentorship for leadership development seen in the Bible: acknowledgement of differences between mentor and mentee, intentional teaching and practice, and respect and even affection between mentor and mentee. It was clear that the group of postulants who would be mentees through this process were quite diverse in terms of cultural background, age, gender, education and life experience, and the curriculum was written to take this into account. The Empowering Leadership assessment tool from NCD was chosen as a tool to assess learning and form a part of the evaluation of the curriculum for two main reasons. First, NCD has been a widely-used tool in parishes within the Diocese of Toronto and, therefore, there was some cultural acceptance. Second, it provides a picture of the learner's leadership functioning in such a way as to make measurement (before and after the mentorship period) possible. The paradigm of leadership presented in the accompanying The Three Colors of Leadership by Christian Schwarz inevitably impacted the shape of the curriculum. Learning activities were selected and categorized based upon the categories of leadership skills presented in the NCD model. Postulants who had identified a weakness in a given area of their leadership functioning through the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment could easily be directed by their mentor to appropriate resources for that area. 62 In January, 2017, I led an orientation to the entire program for the mentors. I highlighted the information contained in Part One of the Mentors' Manual. I introduced the idea of the Mentorship Agreement, and emphasized the need for this as it would mark a shift in role from postulants' advisor to mentor. We talked about the process of assisting the postulant to select one leadership trait for focus and to set learning goals to help grow that trait. Those learning goals would likely be lived out primarily in field education placements, although there may be other parts of the postulants' lives where work could be done (work setting, student government, etc.). Two months earlier, the postulancy working groups had focused on intercultural ministry, and we discussed how this dynamic, as well as differences of age and gender, could influence the mentorship experience. I introduced the NCD Empowering Leadership paradigm, with its emphasis on balancing “empowering” and “leadership” traits for Christian leaders. All of this was contained in Part One of the Mentors' Manual, which mentors received in February 2017. Eleven postulants were invited to complete the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment at that time, and then Part Two of the Manual was distributed to mentors. This second part outlined how to understand the results of the assessment and assist the postulant to select her/his learning goals and area(s) of focus for the ten months of the study. Mentors and postulants met monthly for ten months, for at least an hour, in a variety of settings chosen by each pair for themselves. During this time, postulants were asked to focus on leadership 63 development as they participated in their ongoing field placements and in other ministry settings. For each leadership trait on which the postulant might focus, specific learning activities were provided. These included questions for reflection and conversation on the postulants' lived experience, as well as journal articles, videos, scripture passages and books that would assist the postulants to discover new perspectives and insights on their particular leadership trait (see Appendix A). Some mentors chose to read or watch these resource materials alongside the postulants; others asked the postulants to complete this work on their own and report back their learnings. Of the eleven postulants who participated in the program, one chose not to have her data included in this study. Two others left the postulancy process during this period, an echo of the experience of Richard Michael Hartsell in his 2002 work with army chaplains. An intense process that sought to increase self- awareness in the mentee led to a new understanding of God's call upon each person's life (Hartsell 2002, 128), which in these cases included not pursuing ordained ministry in the Diocese of Toronto at this time. That left eight postulants and their mentors who continued to participate in the program. At the end of ten months, the curriculum was formally evaluated using three methods. First, to assess student learning, postulants were invited to complete the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment for a second time, as a tool to help measure growth and development in leadership functioning. Second, all those who completed the project, both postulants and mentors, were asked to 64 take part in a focus group where they discussed leadership in ministry and the difference this project made to their sense of leadership and the usefulness of this Manual as a tool. Finally, a number of experts in the preparation of women and men for ordained ministry and in adult education was asked to comment on the Mentors' Manual as well. These people were: • Canon David Robinson, recently retired Director of Congregational Development, Anglican Diocese of Toronto • The Rev. Canon Terry DeForest, Vision Advocate and Director of Human Resources, Anglican Diocese of Niagara • The Rev. Dr. Eric Beresford, Anglican priest and former president of the Atlantic School of Theology • Janet Marshall, Director of the Centre for Church Development and Leadership, Toronto United Church Council, United Church of Canada • Bill Bickle, National Partner, Natural Church Development Canada Instruments Natural Church Development International is an ecumenical organization dedicated to the health of Christian congregations. Having identified, through extensive research studies, eight quality characteristics possessed by healthy and growing churches, founder Christian Schwarz created an assessment tool for individuals to help them grow in each of these eight characteristics. “Empowering leadership” is one of the eight quality characteristics. The NCD Empowering 65 Leadership assessment is a proprietary instrument that asks each participant to identify up to ten individuals with whom she or he has worked in some leadership capacity. Each of these individuals completes an online questionnaire, rating the participant on a variety of leadership behaviours. This means that the participant's actual leadership functioning, not self-perception, is assessed. NCD has created an algorithm, based on over a decade of research and study, that in the Empowering Leadership assessment assigns a numerical value to each of six leadership traits: training, progression, capacity, experimentation, strategy and vision. Within each of these traits are two “wings:” empowerment and leadership. Thus, a person who is very strong on the empowerment wing of training is someone who teaches principles to others so that they can use their own gifts in ministry; a person who is very strong on the leadership wing of vision is someone who powerfully casts a vision for the organization. The numerical values don't represent a percentage or a score out of some possible perfect score; rather they indicate relative strengths and weaknesses. The scoring scale is based on an average of fifty with a standard deviation of fifteen points; generally speaking a difference of two to three points or more is considered statistically significant with this assessment. That is, approximately 68% of leaders score between thirty-five and sixty-five in any given category. The categories each surpass the 0.7 Cronbach alpha correlation coefficient they aim for, with respect to the associated items' relationship with each other within the 66 categories (Bickle 2018). This measure indicates an acceptably high level of consistency with regard to internal correlation (Institute for Digital Research). Postulants and mentors met together in two focus groups in the synod office of the Diocese of Toronto on November 21, 2017, ten months after the beginning of the mentorship process. These groups comprised the membership of the Postulancy Committee, including the mentors, and the postulants, with each group having about fifteen participants. Because I was unable to be present, I had chosen two experienced facilitators and provided them with the following questions, and all were discussed. (see Appendix B): • How would you define leadership? • Do you think leadership skills are important for ministry? Why/why not? • Who is a leader in the church, past or present, whom you admire? What about this person makes/made his/her leadership effective? • Do you think that ministry requires a different kind of leadership than other sectors of society (business, government, education, health care, etc.)? How would you characterize the kinds of leadership needed in ministry? • (for postulants:) What have you learned about your own leadership style as you have been preparing for ordained ministry? Have your meetings with your postulant's advisor and/or the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment helped you to think about this in new ways? 67 • How have you adapted leadership skills gained in other areas of life (previous work, volunteer work, previous ministry, family, etc.) for use in a ministry context? (Especially for second years: How have you been working on growing your leadership skills (through field placements, theological college, etc.)? • What would be helpful for you as you continue to grow as a leader in the church? The first four questions in this process did not necessarily relate directly to evaluating the curriculum but were included to assist focus group members in coming together for the topic at hand. Group members' responses were recorded by staff of the Diocese of Toronto, with whom I had discussed the need for accuracy and precision in the recording of each speaker's role (postulant, mentor or committee member) as well the words spoken. Mentors took part in a second focus group later the same day and in the same location, where they were asked for their evaluation of the Mentors' Manual (see Appendix C). I was able to facilitate this conversation via Skype, and the answers were audio recorded and later transcribed (and the recording subsequently destroyed). The questions asked of this group were different and more focused: • Did you find this curriculum doable? Was it feasible to incorporate this work into your role as a postulant's advisor? 68 • Do you believe that growing leadership skills in postulants was worth the time and attention we gave it? • Did the Manual give you what you needed in order to complete the project? • Did you notice growth/change/interest in leadership, in the postulant(s) you mentored throughout the mentorship period? Mentors were also invited to complete an anonymous questionnaire (see Appendix D) to offer evaluative comments on the curriculum. This was, in part, to allow for comments people may not have felt comfortable raising in the large group. Only three mentors took the opportunity to complete the questionnaire. After being asked about the degree to which they used the Manual (on a semantic differential scale from, “never opened it” to “followed it closely”) they were asked: • Do you agree that leadership development is a worthwhile part of formation during postulancy? Why/why not? • Were there particular parts of the Manual you found helpful or insightful for you as a mentor? • Were there particular parts of the Manual you found confusing or unhelpful for you as a mentor? • Were there exercises that were particularly helpful for your postulant(s)? How so? 69 • Were there exercises that were particularly unhelpful for your postulant(s)? How so? • If the program were to be run again, what changes would you want to see made to the Manual? • Did you see leadership development in your postulant(s) over the past ten months? In what ways? A number of experts in the training of men and women for ordained ministry and in adult education were asked to comment on the Mentors' Manual. There was no formal questionnaire prepared for these people; they were simply asked to read it, offer their thoughts and insights for improvement and suggest where they thought it might be useful in the future. This was to allow for the broadest possible range of feedback to be collected. The data gathered through all three focus groups, the mentors' questionnaire, and the feedback from the expert panel was compiled. To these were added data from the mid-point check-in with mentors, which were largely through email and other electronic messages, and individual emails with both mentors and postulants to seek further feedback. While maintaining clarity about the source of each piece of data, they were grouped into similar themes. From this coding process, common patterns emerged. To present these more clearly in Chapter Five, these themes were then again sorted by source (postulant, mentor, expert). 70 Ethical Concerns As someone in Christian ministry, it is always my duty, and my joy, to approach other human beings as beloved children of God, worthy of care and respect. As a researcher, I have a responsibility to respect the dignity of other people and to carry out research in such a way that they are never diminished by the process and that vulnerable persons are protected. In general, the ethical concerns I have for the treatment of others are much the same whether I am acting as a priest or as a researcher. As the research policy of Tyndale University & Seminary puts it, “we respect persons and are concerned for their welfare because we believe all people are made in God's image and we are concerned for justice because justice and righteousness are an intrinsic part of God's character and actions in Scripture” (Tyndale Research Ethics Board 2015, 5). However, as both researcher and coordinator of the Postulancy Committee, there was potential for role conflict in the carrying out of this project. Specifically, my voice tended to carry weight in committee conversations, which included whether or not we would ultimately recommend each postulant for ordination. (The final decision regarding ordination in Anglican polity always resides with the Diocesan Bishop, so the committee's work was always advisory.) The Research Ethics Board of Tyndale University & Seminary gave approval to this project with the condition that the postulants' NCD Empowering Leadership assessment results be anonymous. This was accomplished with the cooperation of NCD Canada, who assigned a pseudonym to each postulant before transmitting their assessment 71 results to me. Postulants, mentors, and experts were given the opportunity to consent to having their data used in this study, and one postulant took the option of withholding consent. Further anonymity was preserved in the focus groups in which postulants were involved, in that recorders of those conversations simply noted that the speaker was a postulant rather than naming him or her. Finally, all electronic data has been stored in a password-protected file and all paper data in a locked file box. Methodology: Curriculum Development There are essentially three components to any curriculum: what is to be taught, how it is taught, and what instructional tools are to be used (Hewitt 2006, 81). This simplicity is deceptive, for there are dozens of approaches to curriculum development and evaluation growing from factors such as the particular philosophy of the curriculum developer, the subject matter to be conveyed, the approach of the teachers, the audience of learners and the requirements of the sponsoring institution. Unsurprisingly, a significant percentage of models of curriculum development are concerned with the education of children and young people. From Ralph Tyler's seminal 1949 Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction came the basic idea that curriculum defined both long-term learning goals and short-term objectives, designed learning experiences to enable students to achieve the defined objectives and goals, and created means of assessing to what degree the goals and objectives were achieved (Brandt and Tyler 2011, 10-12). There are 72 several stages of curriculum work that go into this basic process, work that may not all be done by the curriculum developer but that will need to be accessed by her/him in the process of creating a curriculum. They are: • knowledge making (accumulating information both about the learning process and the subject matter), • policy making (done by an authority that sets the direction for the learning), • planning (including needs assessment and scope), • curriculum development (actually producing the curriculum), • management (oversight as the curriculum is implemented), • assessment (gathering data about this implementation and how goals are met), and • evaluation/research (aimed at improving future iterations of the curriculum) (Hewitt 2006, 53). These stages were followed in the creation of the Mentors' Manual. Through reading and studies through the Doctor of Ministry Leadership Track program at Tyndale University & Seminary, I accumulated knowledge on leadership development that was reflected in the content of the learning activities outlined in Part Two of the Manual. Policy making was done through the leadership of the Diocese of Toronto, who mandated the participation of all postulants and their advisors in this program. Needs assessment was carried out through conversation with Postulancy Committee members and through the review of studies with 73 recently ordained priests (see Chapter One). Yet when it came to the steps that would normally follow, curriculum development, management and evaluation, it emerged that to maximize effectiveness the principles of adult education would need to be integrated into the process. Methodology: Adult Education The adult education movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s questioned the appropriateness of transferring assumptions about curriculum arising from the education of children when it came to the education of adults. The perception of traditional curriculum models as rigid and prescriptive meant the use of the word “curriculum” in adult education circles was often avoided in favour of words like “program” (Jarvis 2010, 228). The process of setting objectives for the learner, applying learning activities and then assessing results was criticized as too mechanistic, and unresponsive to the needs of adult learners (St. Clair 2015, 84). Indeed, "...there is an argument that suggests that in seeking to achieve behavioural objectives, the autonomy of the learners might be quashed by the authority of the instructors, and the practice is therefore immoral” (Jarvis 2010, 231). Beginning from a desire for changed behaviour on the part of the student raises problematic power implications (St. Clair 2015, 87). It could be argued that it was a desire for changed behaviour on the part of postulants, namely that they would develop and use effective leadership skills in the practice of their ministry, that led to this project. Yet many adult education ventures have competency development and skills training at their heart, 74 especially those undertaken under the heading of professional development. The patterns of mentorship seen in the Bible (see Chapter Two) would suggest, however, that the development of new leaders is less about achieving behavioural change and more about equipping new leaders for the task to which they are called and for which they are already gifted. While we can see that Joshua shadowed Moses to observe and learn, and Deborah instructed Barak directly about strategy, the Bible is silent about the detailed methodology the biblical mentors used in teaching their mentees. An examination of best practices in adult education to be used in the development of the Mentors' Manual was necessary. Adult education has been defined as “the deliberate, systematic and sustained effort to transmit, evoke or acquire knowledge, attitudes, values or skills” (Darkenwald and Merriam 1982, 6). The word “evoke” in this definition is key, for adult learners always approach new learning with pre-existing knowledge and experience. Thus adult education is facilitated by bringing out the learner's existing beliefs and theories, examining and testing them, then integrating new ideas (Kolb 1984, 28). Malcolm Knowles gave the name andragogy (as distinct from pedagogy) to the art and science of helping adults, as maturing human beings, learn (Knowles 1975, 19). There are four key assumptions to a solid practice of andragogy: greater maturity among learners means a greater degree of self-direction; a greater reservoir of past experience presents a rich resource for learning; an adult's readiness to learn is related to the developmental tasks of her/his social role; and the approach to adult education needs to be problem- 75 centred with an immediate view to application (Darkenwald and Merriam 1982, 76). For adult learners, then, learning methods “that combine work and study, theory and practice provide a more familiar and therefore more productive arena for learning” (Kolb 1984, 6), by integrating their social role and the more immediate application to existing practice. The leadership development I hoped to foster though this curriculum would need to include a significant practical application component as well as engaging with postulants' existing knowledge and experience of leadership. Practitioners of adult education emphasize that not only do adult learners bring with them a variety of experience and prior learning (Darkenwald and Merriam 1982, 75), but come with a variety of learning styles as well. Of the many different schemas and learning style frameworks, that of David Kolb is perhaps best-known, proposing four orientations adults bring to learning. These learning orientations are: 1. Concrete experience orientation: Those with this orientation learn best from concrete experiences, and emphasize feeling over thinking; uniqueness and complexity over generalizations/theories; are good at relating to others; bring an open-minded approach; tend to be intuitive rather than logical. 2. Reflective observation orientation: While observing and reflecting on lived experience, those with this orientation value understanding and truth over practical application or pragmatism; they appreciate different points 76 of view; value patience and thoughtful judgement; and are quick to see the implications of ideas. 3. Abstract conceptualisation orientation: In learning, the person with this orientation uses logic, ideas, concepts to arrive at new insights; values thinking over feeling and the scientific over the artistic; are good at systematic planning and value precision and neat conceptual systems. 4. Active experimentation orientation: Learners with this orientation focus on learning through trying new things. They actively seek to influence people and change situations, valuing practical applications over reflective understanding and doing over observing; their desire is to see results and they are willing to take risks to achieve these (Kolb 1984, 68-70). Kolb also understood that these orientations can be arranged as points in a learning cycle, in which a learner moves from having a concrete experience to reflectively observing that experience, to abstractly concluding and learning from the experience to actively planning the next new thing they will complete. While a person might have a particularly strong orientation to one or another style of learning, combining them in this way is a strong tool for andragogy. In writing the Mentors' Manual, Kolb's learning orientations and cycle of learning were taken seriously. Learning activities were chosen and the process of mentorship described for the mentors using this cycle as a guide. The practice of ministry in a field placement or other ministry setting provided the concrete experience for the postulant. The mentor was asked to help the postulant engage 77 in reflective observation. Reflective observation was guided through discussion questions like “When was a time that being part of a larger vision made hard work or tedium worth it for you?” Resources including journal articles such as “Build on Your Strengths; Worship Advice for Small Churches” were also provided to help the postulants to understand different perspectives as part of reflecting on their experiences. Other learning activities provided in the Manual focused on the abstract conceptualization phase of the Kolb cycle, such as a journal article titled “Characteristics of Visionary Leadership,” which would encourage a more conceptual understanding of the leadership trait of vision. Finally, mentors were encouraged in the Manual to assist the postulants to develop plans for next steps in their field education settings, the active experimentation phase of the cycle. The guiding question here, regardless of which of the various leadership traits was the focus, was, “What would you do differently next time?” This leads to another key area of curriculum development, that of educational philosophy or approach. “Without a conscious philosophy, educators are directionless in the wants and hows of organizing and implementing what we are trying to achieve .... Our philosophy of education influences, and to a large extent determines, our educational decisions, choices and alternatives” (Ornstein 2011, 2). At a certain level the structure of the curriculum relates to the structures of the disciplines being studied, and will reflect certain orientations towards how knowledge is gained (Hewitt 2006, 113-114). Thus in seeking to teach adults about leadership, I wanted these learners to take the lead, seek to define their own 78 goals and work towards them. Indeed, “it is educationally unsound for [adult learners] to have little or no control in planning or carrying out their own learning activities” (Darkenwald and Merriam 1982, 243). When educating children the objective is for all learners to have mastered the same content; adult educators may need to set different objectives for their learners because of their different starting points and goals (St. Clair 2015, 83-84). All adult learning is self- directed: “Self-directed learning is a process in which individuals, with or without the help of others, take the initiative in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing learning strategies and evaluating outcomes” (Knowles 1975, 18). While this mentorship program drew on the experience and guidance of the mentors, the design was that it would ultimately be the postulants themselves who chose where to put their time and effort in developing their own leadership skills, would plan learning goals and would work with the help of their mentors to implement these. “Adaptive design” in curriculum development encourages learners' input and allows for maximum flexibility, especially appropriate when that kind of problem-solving ability is one of the aims of the course (St. Clair 2015, 105-106), and it was this kind of curriculum design that was sought. Thus, the Manual offered mentors a number of options, and the learning activities to be undertaken would be directly related to the learning goals defined by the postulants themselves. 79 The educational approach to the Mentors ' Manual was therefore to combine this philosophy of self-directed learning with mentorship, using Kolb's learning cycle of concrete experience/reflective observation/abstract conceptualization/active experimentation. Because postulants are learners already involved in field education programs in ministry contexts, those contexts became the natural place for the concrete experience and active experimentation to be carried out, while the Manual provided mentors with resources to guide postulants through the stages of reflective observation and abstract conceptualization. While some might find it odd to have mentors who are not supervising the postulants' field work directly, a facilitator from outside a learner's work context is actually in a better position to ask fundamental questions about the assumptions of both the learner and the context (Marsick 1990, 33) and guide the reflective process in new directions. Because mentors would not be working in the same context as the postulants, much of the work each pair would do together was in the stages of reflective observations and abstract conceptualization. Reflection can be defined as a series of intellectual and affective activities in which individuals engage to explore their experiences in order to lead to new understandings, and rationally examining the assumptions by which we have been justifying our previous convictions (Mezirow 1990, 5). “By far the most significant learning experiences in adulthood involve critical self-reflection ...” (Mezirow 1990, 13). This requires a hiatus from action in which to reassess one's perspectives and, if necessary, to 80 transform them. The meetings between mentor and postulant would provide this hiatus and the mentor would guide the necessary reflection for learning to take place. “Because we are all trapped by our own ... perspectives, we can never really make interpretations of our experience free from bias. Consequently, our greatest assurance of objectivity comes from exposing an expressed idea to rational and reflective discourse” (Mezirow 1990, 10), which this program sought to do in dialogue between learner and mentor. Reflection is undertaken with a facilitator so that participants are helped to take off blinders, challenge assumptions, benefit from differences in perspective, and reformulate problems (Marsick 1990, 33) Mentors and postulants had already been working together in most cases for eight months before the mentorship program began. This meant that mentors were aware of the kinds of background postulants would bring (educational and work experience, life stage, gender, learning style, cultural background and so on). Part One of the Manual stressed the potential for such factors to impact how postulants would understand the tasks of learning and roles of a mentor, as well as how they might understand leadership in general. Adult learners always bring a huge diversity of motivation and approaches to learning, including diversity of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social class, and all will play an often complex role in the learning process (St. Clair 2015, 34-37). In developing this curriculum it was known that postmodern curriculum studies acknowledge the subjectivity of experience and epistemology, question relationships of power, and strive for 81 curriculum that is more inclusive of a variety of perspectives and more resistant to status quo power relations (Au 2012, 5); it was critical for the mentors to be aware of these dynamics as they entered this program. “Not relating the curriculum to the students' [context, experiences, identities and material realities] effectively alienates their knowing from their being and turns education into a key factor in that alienation” (Au 2012, 67). In response to diversity among adult learners, “the most unacceptable option is to pretend that it doesn't play a part in your teaching” (St. Clair 2015, 37). Information was provided in the Manual to help mentors understand cultural differences, and a working group session for both postulants and mentors was held in November 2016 on intercultural ministry to help them to begin to reflect upon their own cultural perspectives and bias as the project was getting underway. Gender was an issue as well; women tend to be more internally-focused with a priority on relationship while men tend to focus externally, with a priority on success in tasks (Zachary 2012, 58). This information about mentoring across cultural and gender difference was provided for mentors in the Manual. In addition to diversity of culture and gender, educational experience and social class, perhaps the greatest challenge for mentors would come from the diversity of life stages of their postulants, many of whom would be in different stages from the mentors themselves. “Adult educators who are cognizant of the patterns of adult change and development can facilitate more meaningful learning experiences which in turn bring about further growth and development” 82 (Darkenwald and Merriam 1982, 87). Although his studies were almost exclusively conducted with white, middle-class American men, Daniel Levinson's 1978 study, The Seasons of a Man's Life was foundational in helping adult educators understand the stages through which many adults progress. (Levinson's 1996 follow-up The Seasons of a Woman's Life did offer some nuance here, but generally confirmed similar life stages for white, middle-class Western women.) Individuals in their twenties and early thirties tend to focus on building competence and career. Over the next fifteen years or so comes a stage of “settling down,” acting on the commitments one has made in early adulthood. The midlife transition that tends to come in the early- to mid-forties is a period of introspection and redefinition, a time of reflection on one's priorities and values in life prompted by a realization that the years ahead are limited. The late forties through early sixties are a time of a “second settling down,” when one seeks to give more lasting meaning to one's work, relationships and spiritual commitments. After the sixties comes late adulthood, when the focus tends to shift to defining the legacy one wishes to leave behind (Daloz 1999, 54). Parallel to these more general life stages, postulants are also members of three generational cohorts that all demand slightly different approaches from their mentor. Those who mentor Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) find the most success when they challenge with fresh ideas and new opportunities, acknowledge their postulant's efforts and accomplishments, connect on both professional and personal levels and engage in learning as a collaborative partner. Those mentoring 83 members of Generation X (born 1965-1979) will get best results when they set clear expectations and measures of success, give regular communication and feedback, don't micromanage, encourage creativity and initiative, and work to build a trusting, collegial relationship. Members of Generation Y (born 1980- 1995) value truth-telling, affirmation and feedback, want to be treated as equals and with respect for what they bring; mentors should ask for and listen to their postulants' thinking and help them to break goals into smaller pieces with realistic deadlines (Zachary 2012, 49). This information about effective mentoring of mentees from different life stages and generational groups was included in Part One of the Mentors' Manual. While the mentors in this program were chosen for their pastoral and leadership skills, not all had served as a mentor in a formal sense before. Part One of the Mentors' Manual included some information about the kinds of mentoring and teaching that was likely to be most effective. This information was drawn both from the biblical pattern of mentorship noted in Chapter Two of this thesis (an emphasis on the mentee's learning, respect for one another, acknowledgement of differences between mentor and mentee) and from the best practices of mentoring gleaned from the review of mentoring literature noted in Chapter Three. It was then expanded to include some more information about adult education principles. Good mentors of adult students support, challenge and provide a vision. Support is about listening, providing structure, expressing positive expectations, and sharing oneself; challenging involves setting tasks, 84 engaging in discussion, heating up evident dichotomies in that discussion, and setting high standards. In contrast, vision is about modelling, keeping tradition and offering a map, providing a mirror, and suggesting new language to help with understanding (Jarvis 2010, 154). “Mentors are both a part of and ‘meta' to the environment.” They serve both as another voice among many seeking to guide the student in a given direction but also “hovering above the flood,” helping the student to see what's going on when she/he cannot see it for him/herself (Daloz 1999, 202). As partners in the teaching and learning process, adult learners appreciate guidance on where their efforts should be concentrated (St. Clair 2015, 160), and the use of the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment would help the postulants to define their own focus. In adult education, the teacher's role changes from transmitter of content to facilitation of learning. Although at students' request the teacher might still transmit knowledge, this is only secondary and as a resource for content information. The teacher helps learners to translate diagnosed needs (in this case, diagnosed through the NCD assessment) into learning objectives that are clear, feasible and measurable (Knowles 1975, 33-34). A teacher in adult education is a resource person, and the learning situation is a cooperative endeavour (Darkenwald and Merriam 1982, 77). This means that the relationship between learner and teacher is important, based on trust, mutual caring and support (Knowles 1975, 35). “If we want others to grow ... we should first of all be able to recognize their gifts and be willing to receive 85 them. For people only become fully human when they are received and accepted” (Nouwen 1991, 33). A teacher's actions, beliefs and intentions are critical and participants learn from all three; thus self-awareness on the part of the teacher is important (St. Clair 2015, 3). Self-awareness is also critical for another reason: “When we fail to differentiate between self and other in a mentoring relationship, we run the risk of projecting our own lived experience onto our mentee .... The mentee ends up front and centre on [the mentor's] stage rather than creating his or her own” (Zachary 2012, 16). Methodology: Curriculum Evaluation There has been some confusion over the use of the word “evaluation” when it comes to curriculum evaluation. There is the process of assessing student learning, by some means of measurable demonstration on the part of the student. There is the process of evaluating the course contents, often including assessment by the participants of the learning process in order to improve it. There is external evaluation in which a sponsoring agency assesses the effectiveness of the course from the standpoint of its own desired outcomes. All use the word “evaluation,” and thus clarity is needed (St. Clair 2015, 133). For the purposes of this project, the word “assessment” was used to measure the learning of postulants through the course of the project, where “evaluation” was used for the process of analyzing the effectiveness of the curriculum itself. Student assessment played a part of curriculum evaluation, but it was not the only tool. 86 Curriculum evaluation seeks to answer a simple question: to what degree did the learners acquire the things the curriculum set out to teach? This question is deceptively simple; there are many variables that contribute to the learning process, and indeed many different definitions of what constitutes “learning.” Even when dealing with curriculum designed for children, different teaching styles mean that a system of curriculum evaluation that is uniform and consistent is not a simple task (Hewitt 2006, 320). A planned program's success depends at least as much on organizational/societal context as efforts in delivering the program (Boone et al. 2002, 201). One of the main ways curriculum has been traditionally evaluated is through assessment of student learning through quizzes, tests, examinations and so on. It is, of course, important that the tests students write are congruent with clearly stated objectives (McNeil 1976, 113), as was the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment. It can be helpful to begin a course with some means of formative assessment, an instrument that provides a baseline for students' knowledge level as the teaching begins. Running the same quiz at the beginning and end of the course gives a sense of growth and accomplishment for the learner and lets the educator see a picture of growth (St. Clair 2015, 157). Thus in this program, the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment tool was used prior to the formal mentoring period and again as the formal use of the Manual drew to a close. Ideally, a process of assessing learning also adds to the learning process and produces truly useful information for the learner (St. Clair 2015, 149, 155). 87 Postulants engaged in leadership development have had the opportunity to assess their own growth in leadership competency through the before-and-after picture provided by the NCD assessment results. However, these traditional tools of student assessment tend not to be popular among many adult educators. Assessing what learners have learned has generally been given less attention in adult education due to two factors: adult education is fundamentally different from the education of children and adult learning has often taken place in more voluntary, less formal settings in which student assessment seemed somehow out of place (St. Clair 2015, 149). With adult learners, there is a need to evaluate whether or not people learned something and also whether or not they felt respected and valued during the experience (St. Clair 2015, 113). Adult educators bring very different understandings of the purpose of learning to the task. For adults, learning happens when we make an interpretation of an experience and use that interpretation to guide future action and decision making (Merizow 1990, 1). Thus adult experiential learning is more about process than outcomes (where the latter are measured by the amount of fixed ideas/rote responses a person has accumulated); the experiential learning process is about ideas being constantly re-formed through experience and reflection. “Outcomes” are only a measure of past learning, and indeed can result in a failure in the ability to modify ideas and habits to suit a changing situation. A traditional kind of rote learning can therefore become maladaptive and is in fact non-learning (Kolb 1984, 26). Leadership development requires individuals to 88 learn not only a variety of leadership skills (conflict management, risk-taking, community building and so on) but also grow in their understanding of when each skill is appropriately used. In curriculum evaluation for adult learners, three classes of learning objectives must be considered: content objectives, learning style objectives (students may be expected to learn new ways of learning) and growth objectives (seeking to make the student self-renewing and self-directed) (Kolb 1984, 203). For each, outcomes can be intended (achievement of specified objectives) or unintended (unforeseen consequences of the program), manifest (evident and observable immediately) or latent (effects seen at a point in time well after the learning activity has been completed) (Boone et al. 2002, 204). Particularly with a course focused on so-called soft skills like leadership (as opposed to, for example, something more concrete like automotive repair), it is hoped that the impact of the learning will be both short- and long-term. “[Long-term] impacts may not manifest themselves until some time well into the future, or even after the program that nurtured them no longer exists” (Boone et al. 2002, 200). Yet, in almost every instance where adult education is mandated for some group it is assumed not only that learning will occur but also that it will be applied to improving proficiency at some task or role. Even under ideal circumstances, there is no guarantee that this will happen. When adults are forced to learn there is even less assurance that knowledge will be put to use. (Darkenwald and Merriam 1982, 242) 89 The use of the Mentors' Manual was made mandatory for postulants and their advisors by Archbishop Colin Johnson, and the analysis of the findings of this project needed to take this reality into account. Three groups of people were asked for their assistance in evaluation of the Mentors' Manual: the postulants themselves, the mentors, and a group of external experts in training ministry leaders. Postulants and mentors together participated in focus groups and then the mentors participated in a focus group on their own as well as being invited to complete an anonymous questionnaire. Finally, the Manual was sent to a number of experts who were asked for their feedback (see Chapter Five). It was anticipated that much of the evaluative data received from the focus groups and experts would be less scientific and more art. “Humanist curriculum scholars” have pointed out that education is essentially a human social enterprise, akin to anthropology, where the stance is descriptive and interpretive rather than measured and predictive. Thus the outcomes for evaluation are based on how participants (both teachers and learners) themselves judge the “educational worthwhileness of curricular experiences.” The stance [in this kind of evaluation] is that of a film critic rather than a scientist, recognizing what is neglected and employing “linguistic artistry” and anthropology to describe rather than pre- specified criteria of success to be measured (Taylor and Richards 1985, 135-136). 90 Conclusion The Mentors ' Manual was created using a methodology for curriculum development for adult education, with mentorship as the chosen method of teaching. The subject matter — leadership development for ministry — was researched as were best practices for mentorship. The NCD Empowering Leadership assessment was used both for formative and cumulative learner assessment and for giving some structure to the learning activities that could be selected by mentor and postulant together, focusing on the postulant's weaker leadership skills. Evaluation methods, in addition to the NCD assessment of student learning, included focus groups of postulants and mentors and mentors alone, and questionnaires for mentors and an expert panel. Findings of that evaluation will be found in Chapter Five. 91 CHAPTER FIVE: FINDINGS AND INTERPRETATION For ten months eleven postulants for ordination as priests in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto met with mentors to develop and grow their leadership skills. The mentors made use of a Mentors' Manual, an adult education curriculum that guided their monthly conversations and the postulants' learning plans. A series of curriculum evaluation methods were employed to assess the effectiveness of the curriculum in this process. Data Collected Data for this project was collected at four stages of the work. A needs assessment was completed prior to the beginning of the project. This assessment drew on both my personal notes and the official minutes from a meeting of the Postulancy Committee in January 2015, as well as results of the Natural Church Development Empowering Leadership assessment collected from those ordained in 2012 as presented in aggregate by Bill Bickle of NCD Canada. Finally, Terry DeForrest of the neighbouring Diocese of Niagara was interviewed in February, 2017, with the interview recorded and notes taken, to glean insight from experiences outside the Diocese of Toronto to be incorporated into the curriculum. 92 The second stage of data collection was at the outset of the project. Eleven postulants were invited to complete the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment in February, 2017. One of these postulants did not give permission for her data to be used for this project. Results from the other ten, under pseudonyms assigned to them by Bill Bickle, were collected. This was to give a baseline assessment for each postulant in order to assign a quantitative value to assist in evaluating growth in leadership functioning over the course of the mentorship period. The third stage of data collection was at the midpoint of the mentorship period, in August/September 2017. At this point each of the ten mentors was contacted and asked for their impressions about how the project was unfolding. One response was via a telephone conversation; in this case, I took notes and used these as data. The other responses were all electronic, either via email or Facebook Messenger, and these were gathered for later coding and analysis. The final stage of data collection came at the end of the mentorship period. By this point, two of the postulants who had taken part in the project's initial stages were no longer postulants for ordination. Three focus groups were conducted in November, 2017. Two of these were comprised of both mentors and postulants, and were only split in two so that the smaller group size would make conversation easier. Each of these groups was facilitated by a suffragan bishop who served on the Postulancy Committee, with notes taken by staff of the Diocese of Toronto. I facilitated the third focus group, this one of the mentors alone, via Skype (as I had by this time moved to a different province to take up a new 93 ministry role). This group's conversation was recorded and I took notes as well. At the conclusion of the focus groups, the remaining eight postulants who were still part of the project were asked to completed the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment for a second time; six did so from November, 2017 through January 2018. These results were assigned to the same pseudonyms as the initial assessment, and at this time the results were transmitted to me by NCD Canada. Two postulants did not complete the final assessment; through NCD Canada, each was emailed to seek data about why they did not do so, and one responded; the text of this email was used as data in evaluation of the curriculum as well. Finally, feedback was sought from an expert panel of six individuals; one did not respond. Four of the expert respondents sent their feedback via email; these emails were collected as data. The final expert was interviewed personally. This interview was recorded and notes taken. Formative Evaluation Approximately four months into the mentorship period, mentors and postulants were contacted to assess how the use of the program was proceeding. (Note that anonymity for all participants was assured and both mentors and postulants are identified throughout only as such.) At that time it was discovered that four of ten postulants had yet to complete the prior knowledge assessment tool, the Natural Church Development (NCD) Empowering Leadership assessment, which they had been invited to complete at the outset. This was an unexpected development, for many reasons. These postulants had agreed to 94 participate in the program and signed consent forms to allow their data to be used (anonymously). They were being offered an opportunity for greater self- awareness through this assessment and a chance to develop their leadership skills, both important aspects of preparation for ordained ministry, and the Diocese was covering the costs of participation. They were being asked to participate not only for the sake of research but as part of their formation. They were asked not only by myself but by the Executive Assistant to the Archbishop, who upon learning of this followed up with both mentors and postulants to urge completion of the assessment. It emerged that for one postulant, language was an issue; this woman is in formation for ordained leadership for a culturally specific Anglican ministry in Toronto and was having trouble finding respondents who both spoke English fluently and were in a position to assess her leadership functioning. Upon learning of the issue her mentor, fluent in the language of her ministry context as well as English, was able to work with her and her respondents to allow the assessment to be completed. The mentors of the other postulants who had not yet completed the assessment spoke with them and the assessment was eventually completed. However this delay meant that the baseline measure that was to have been recorded before the program began actually reflected a midpoint reality. One mentor was told by a postulant that they were “too busy” to complete this fifteen 95 minute process (Mentor interview, 2017). One mentor wrote that his postulant was offering significant resistance. When asked why that was, the mentor wrote: My candidate mostly questioned the process rather than engaging in it. [He found problematic] anything that felt like criticism. He claimed that people didn't really know him well enough to answer the questions properly. Then he kicked against the growth areas [identified by the assessment] as if they were all wrong in their assessment of him .... I'm not sure if [name] is going to last in the [postulancy] process (Mentor Facebook message, 2017). The mentor's sense was that the postulant's resistance to this project was reflective of an overall issue regarding how the postulant would relate to criticism and also to authority (which in the hierarchal structure of the Anglican Church is a significant concern). Participation in the project was helpful in surfacing this issue (Mentor Facebook message, 2017). The mentor of another postulant, one who had completed the initial NCD assessment, reported that “Unfortunately for me, it was never [name] who'd say, ‘Can we address this' [during meetings together], it was me saying, ‘so have you done the test yet, can I have the results?'” (Mentors' focus group, 2017). This mentor had to push fairly hard with her postulant in order to address the leadership questions raised by the NCD assessment. Other mentors reported different experiences with postulants' response to the project at this midpoint check-in. One reported that her postulant, following a summer internship experience, had intentionally crafted her final evaluation of that internship to include some of the questions from the NCD assessment on which she was really working. To this mentor this indicated a significant and creative commitment to incorporating leadership development as learning goals in 96 field work (Mentor 1 email, 2017). Another mentor reported that the process of completing the NCD assessment and defining leadership learning goals, coupled with a field placement in a supportive environment, had already made a significant impact on his postulant: [In over twenty years as a member of the Postulancy Committee] I can't remember such a dramatic transformation in a postulant's demeanour and confidence over a six-month placement ... Although the process has been difficult and challenging for [name], she truly seems to be delighted in her own growth in confidence and experience, which bodes well. I sense that she is finally feeling safe speaking with her own “voice” (Mentor 2 email 2017). Summative Evaluation A summative evaluation of the Mentors' Manual curriculum was carried out by conducting three focus groups, by soliciting expert feedback, and by assessing postulant growth, measured through a second iteration of the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment. Postulant Feedback Postulants provided feedback on the process through conversations with their mentors and through focus groups at the close of the project period. While there was general consensus that the project was worth doing, and universal agreement that leadership training for ministry was important (Working Group A), there were some concerns about the shape of the project and suggestions for future iterations. The feedback on the project was gathered from postulants prior to the completion of the second and final NCD Empowering Leadership assessment. This was to allow for feedback on the experience of the mentorship 97 itself and self-reflection on learning, untainted by knowledge of how they scored on an assessment. A number of postulants noted that ten months may not be adequate to measure much growth in leadership skills (Working Group B). One noted that some of the respondents he or she had asked to complete the first NCD assessment on his or her behalf declined to do so, and was concerned that therefore the results of the assessment were not very balanced (Working Group A). Despite these specific concerns however, the postulants reported overall that they benefited from participation in the mentorship program. One reported surprise that the initial NCD feedback identified strengths that she had not seen in herself before (Working Group A), while another confessed, “My biggest challenge is my internal dialogue, and no matter how much I work and study and prepare, I will always carry an internal inadequacy. But what I respond to is the call of God. That is what keeps me working hard, but also humble. The expectations feel too much and I cannot attain to that .... [But I have learned that] there are people around to lean on” (Working Group A). Another postulant stressed that participation in this program will be helpful in the long term, that through this program he had learned something that he would continue to apply over a longer period of time (Working Group A). One postulant reported learning from her mentor that planning is a skill (working Group A). Another reported learning from her mentor and through this entire process that “we don't do this 98 [ministry leadership] on our own strength,” and the importance of remembering Who it is that carries us (Working Group A). One reported that through this process “a certain amount of maturity and self-awareness — that not everything is about me— has taken place” (Working Group A). Reflecting on his experience of this process, one postulant reflected that it is “hard to learn how to let go and not be so controlling; I'm learning to let go, and not to be so affected [personally] by the outcome” (Working Group B). One appreciated learning through the NCD assessment “how they placed me on a spectrum from ‘buddy-style' to ‘authoritative' type leadership. It got me thinking about how I lead and why” (Postulant email 2018). Going forward from the end of the formal mentorship program, postulants understood that their development in ministry leadership would be ongoing. One noted, “I need exposure to different leadership styles. From that you learn to massage out your own” (Working Group A). Another repeated a similar theme: “[I] learned in this process my own leadership style,” and that one should not try to copy anyone else's (Working Group B). This related to another conversation between two postulants, who learned through this program that the call of leadership is “not to do something but to be something,” that fundamentally leadership is “identity driven, not task driven” (Working Group B). Thus they understood the mentorship process to be about “seeking out who we are and what we are meant to be” (Working Group B). Another reflected on the practice of her theological college, asking their students to experience field placements in at least 99 three different ministry settings as part of their Master of Divinity program. Noting that this poses a challenge to ongoing relationships and connectedness, she still expressed that “it is so important to test and taste different environments and different teams” (Working Group A). Looking ahead in his ministry, one postulant reminded his peers that “It's important to access continuing education funds” (Working Group A). Finally, a postulant summed up his experience in saying, “I need to be intentional in making this a personal development issue. It's an easy area to forget as we focus on preaching, etc., but this [leadership] is where the rubber hits the road” (Working Group A). Mentor Feedback Mentor feedback on the Mentors' Manual was gathered in two sets of focus groups (one with the postulants and one without), an optional anonymous questionnaire and through an open invitation to share questions, concerns and feedback with me over the course of the mentorship period. The mentors along with the other members of the Postulancy Committee felt strongly that leadership is a critically important aspect of ordained ministry. “It's a crucial part of vocation as a priest,” wrote one (Mentor's questionnaire). As the mentorship period drew to a close, however, there were some questions raised about whether postulancy was the best time in ministry formation to engage in a program like this. Because nearly all postulants in the Diocese of Toronto will serve as assistant curates for two years following their ordination, several mentors suggested that this curacy period might provide a richer opportunity for 100 leadership development than during postulancy and that attempting this program at this stage of formation was less than ideal. Most of the postulants followed the Manual's suggestion and used field education placements as the site for working on their leadership skills. However, the timing of this program made that difficult; nearly all were in two or possibly three different field placement settings over the course of the ten months of mentorship due to the requirements of their theological colleges. This lack of continuity made it difficult for others to see growth in leadership skills which may have been reflected in the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment results (Mentors' Focus Group). It also meant that the postulants were not necessarily seen by others as being in leadership roles but as students, and indeed several field placement settings would offer few opportunities for a field placement student to function as a leader (Mentors Focus Group). Several felt that ten months was not long enough for postulants to make the kinds of progress in leadership development one might want to see. As one mentor reported of her postulant, “His one concern was that obviously it's been a few months to work on some of these things” (Mentors' Focus Group). “There wasn't much time to learn and adapt .... Growing in leadership is a lifelong process” (Working Group A). The curacy placement, on the other hand, begins after one has been ordained and lasts for two years, which does create a shift in how others look at and respond to one's leadership (Mentors' Focus Group). Feedback on their leadership work would be of higher quality during a curacy, one mentor suggested, both because the curate could 101 “pick some projects and take a couple of years to focus on their development.” Because the supervisor of a curacy placement is the parish incumbent, she or he could serve as a consistent mentor for two full years (Mentors' Focus Group). For at least some mentors there was a sense that while addressing leadership in the postulancy process was really important, the use of this particular program would be more fruitful in the curacy stage of formation (Mentors' Focus Group). One suggested that “starting the process in the postulancy process is a good thing but then also [they might] have an opportunity to trace their development through their last year of postulancy and then when they're a deacon and then when they're priested” (Mentors' Focus Group). As noted in Chapter Three, there are mentorships where the mentor and mentee work together, having daily contact where the mentor can offer immediate feedback. There are others, like this one, where the mentor is someone from outside the immediate context of the mentee's workplace who brings an outside perspective and offers the space to reflect critically on what goes on in the day-to- day. Some of the mentors using the Mentors' Manual appreciated being at a distance from their postulant's day-to-day ministry. It allowed for theological reflection on the practice of leadership “in a rudimentary way” at this stage of ministry, which was encouraging (Mentors' Focus Group). One mentor really appreciated the way the Manual gave “a way in” to discuss specific concerns about ministry and leadership when he was not the placement supervisor; the Manual “provided a good handle to start talking about these things” (Mentors' 102 Focus Group). Others, though, thought that having the mentor be the person in the day-to-day supervisory role would be more helpful. “It was more challenging when we didn't have that kind of relationship,” said one, who went on to elaborate, “I just don't see [my postulant]. I see her for an hour once a month and then I may eat lunch with her when we have our [working group] meeting” so that deep mentoring is challenging (Mentors' Focus Group). “I'm not there to observe [name] in their ministry or context, so it's hard to have that sort of mentoring relationship,” said another (Mentors' Focus Group). The mentoring relationship is not the same kind of relationship as that of postulant's advisor/postulant has traditionally been. As one mentor expressed it, the advisor role is but a step away “from what used to be called examining chaplains, and that role is [about] trying to make sure that people are prepared for ordination. [That's] how I see my role as an advisor, helping people move towards that” (Mentors' Focus Group). Another noted that there was “that sense of advisor and mentor, it's not ‘versus' exactly but being different from each other” (Mentors' Focus Group). This need to fulfill these two different roles during each meeting of mentor/advisor and postulant meant that “I'm trying to balance a number of things each time we meet, which means there is just a limited amount of time to really engage with the NCD results [and leadership questions]” (Mentor email). While there were real questions about the timing of this mentorship program over the course of a postulant's formation for ministry and the role of 103 advisor as mentor, when it came to the use of the Mentors' Manual itself the mentors had some very positive things to share. “The questions you had [provided] were great;” “there were a lot of good questions that fostered theological reflection” (Mentors' Focus Group). “I definitely had what I needed to do what we were asked to do,” said one mentor of her overall impression of the Manual (Mentors' Focus Group). One suggested that “what the Manual talks about in terms of mentorship I think would be a real enhancement [to] how at least some people who are curacy supervisors understand their role” (Mentors' Focus Group). When reflecting on the overall program, the theme that emerged most consistently from the mentors was that the postulants with whom they were working were now more intentional and aware of the need for them to continue to focus on their ability to function as empowering leaders in ordained ministry. As a result of participating in this program, one mentor reported that her postulant “[has] been really intentional about reading some of the resources and trying to address ... the lowest quality characteristic [from his NCD assessment] so ... he's found it quite helpful” (Mentors' Focus Group). “There's a lot of intentionality,” said another mentor, “[name] has addressed the questions in the NCD survey, or the ones we had picked to work on” (Mentors' Focus Group). Expert Feedback Five individuals with expertise in the areas of training people for ministry and adult education were invited to provide feedback on the Mentors' Manual. 104 These individuals had only the written document to review rather than lived experience with it. One question raised by one of the experts was whether the leadership models presented by Christian Schwarz's Three Colors of Leadership (from which the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment takes its categories, categories followed by the Mentors' Manual) are adequate to the needs of the Church today and into the future. The problem with the model of training as presented by Schwarz, and therefore by this Manual, is that they presume best practices in well understood and predictable context where those practices apply. However, as you said at the very beginning of the first part of the Manual, we are simply no longer in that context. Things are changing around us rapidly and we need all the gifts of risk taking and creative [sic] that you encourage if we are to move forward. We are no longer training people for the church we know and recognize, we are educating people to be responsive in the midst of changes of both church and culture whose contours we can barely guess at. What this needs is not a simple set of skills but the wider capacities of imagination, courage and insight that will make us truly adaptive. (Beresford) Thus while the Manual acknowledges this reality, this expert questioned whether the program provided adequate frameworks to encourage this new kind of leadership. “I would have liked to have seen some reflection on the relationship of the categories drawn from the NCD materials and the competencies we are seeking to mentor in our candidates whether drawn from the Diocese of Toronto competencies materials or the five competencies identified in the General Synod document” (Beresford). On the other hand, the practice of mentorship as outlined in the Manual was noted by experts as bringing with it the potential for postulants to learn to be 105 self-reflective, one of the key skills for adaptive leadership. “One of the biggest issues in parishes that run into trouble is clergy who are not self-reflective,” said Dave Robinson. Terry DeForest agreed, suggesting that a lack of available spaces in Clinical Pastoral Education placements might be a part of “an emerging trend of non-reflective practice” and noting that self-reflective leadership training is certainly not happening in the [Anglican] theological colleges [in Ontario]. “I really don't believe that the practice of ministry can be formed apart from good, healthy, and effective mentoring relationship,” wrote Eric Beresford, because both mentors and mentees are required to reflect on their own practices and the effectiveness of those practices. That said, the experts had two major concerns about the practice of mentorship as laid out in the Mentors' Manual. The first was that the amount of time suggested that mentor and postulant meet together was simply not enough. “One hour a month seems like a very small investment in a program that can have such benefit,” wrote Janet Marshall. “I can't see how one hour a month has the potential for much impact. It needs more face time than this for the mentor to accomplish much; it takes time to develop the trust to be able to go deep enough .... Given how little face time there is here, the real impact will come from the intentionality of the postulant” (Robinson). The second concern was about a potential conflict between the roles of postulant's advisor and mentor. “Confidentiality issues are quite different [sic] to navigate if a mentor is going to report to the Postulancy Committee about areas of concern” (DeForest). 106 Mentors usually have one interest - the mentee and their development into their potential. They will advocate for their mentee within the system and help the mentee negotiate the next steps in their career path/development. Postulancy Committee members must have the interests of the diocesan system in the forefront of their attention. This is a gate-keeping function. Mixing the two is deeply unfair to both the postulants and the mentors. (Marshall) Frankly, were I a postulant I would bear that in mind in my conversations with my advisor. At the same time I would long to have a genuine mentor where I could be less concerned about where the balance of role and responsibility lay .... Personally, I would recommend that mentors never be advisors. There is too much potential for role confusion with the attendant conflict of interest. (Beresford) The experts tended to offer more specific critique on the various elements of the program than did the mentors themselves. Some suggested that the Manual might offer citations for sources of some of the information offered to assist mentors in their task (the developmental life stages and diversity pieces in particular) (DeForest, Beresford). One suggested that the piece on diversity might be expanded beyond cultural and binary gender differences to identify issues with respect to transgender and other forms of gender diversity and sexual orientation, socio-economic class and theological stance (DeForest). In particular, while the general concepts of mentoring across differences could still be applied, it could be important to name a diversity of experience with the Anglican Church: how one relates to the “magesterium,” the role of women in ministry, and other theological and ecclesiological differences between mentor and postulant (Robinson). One expert suggested that a discussion about the potentially different theological perspectives of mentor and postulant might be included in the process of forming the mentoring agreement (Marshall). 107 One appreciated the theological reflection on Philippians 2:1-11 within the Manual, and the relationship of incarnation to power and what this means for Christian leadership: “(I)t made me realize a connection between the Pauline vision in Philippians and the related but somewhat different vision of the Magnificat where incarnation and kenosis are not so much the giving away of God's power as an expression of what that power looks like and how it is exercised” (Beresford). While there were several suggestions for editing of specific wording of reflection questions, adding questions, or shifting the order in which questions are asked, the experts generally had positive things to say about “Part Two” of the Mentors' Manual, the learning activities. “This is a really solid piece,” summed up Dave Robinson. “The reflection questions in each section are a great example of good adult education practice, [where] the place to launch from is someone's own lived experience.” “[The Manual] is well written, it's engaging, and the ideas are very well expressed and inviting” (Marshall). “The range of resources is awesome, you've got everything from reading the Acts of the Apostles to TED talks to Bill Hybels. The variety of the kinds of resources (books, videos, blog articles) would meet a variety of learning needs and styles as well as different generational realities” (Robinson). Dave Robinson, one of the experts, noted two things that were missing from the Manual. The first was an orientation session for the mentors. This actually did take place but was not written up anywhere; it was suggested that this 108 be included as an appendix to the Manual. The other missing piece was any kind of concluding word in the Manual: “It ends really suddenly! Why not add an afterword, emphasizing to the mentors that this is holy and important work; include a prayer, maybe include Kolb's spiral of learning to encourage mentors to reflect on the ‘now what' piece with postulants once the formal mentorship period is over?” Natural Church Development Empowering Leadership Assessment The NCD Empowering Leadership Assessment results profile provides each participant a bar graph of the six leadership traits it measures (capacity, strategy, training, vision, experimentation, and progression), and the two wings of each trait. The results package also includes very detailed, area-by-area and question-by-question scores using the same scoring scale. Thus postulants received a full package of information about their respondents' report on their leadership functioning, so that they could understand more clearly the kinds of areas covered by each section of the graph. Figure one shows a sample second assessment result. In this sample, the individual scored fifty-five overall on the leading wing (top pink bar) and fifty- seven on the empowering wing (top blue bar), so that this leader is quite well balanced in her 109 Figure 1. Sample Natural Church Development second assessment result. [ Please contact repository@tyndale.ca for Figure 1 details. ] Empowering Leadership Assessment Results for Postulants in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto; Provided by and used by permission of Natural Church Development Canada. 2017. leadership style. This top bar of the graph also notes “+8” in the centre; that is, the person's overall leadership score increased by eight points between their first and second assessment. The circles on each bar mark the person's score on this category in their first assessment, and the numbers to either side of the bar show that the score increased by nine points on the empowering wing and by seven points on the leading wing. The second bar measures capacity, this person's strongest leadership trait. Here, the person scored a sixty-two overall (62.5 on “focus on strengths” and 61.2 on “assess weaknesses”), increasing thirteen points from her first assessment. The person's score on “focus on strengths” increased 110 by 16.5 points from her first assessment and by 9.5 points on “assess weaknesses.” The use of the NCD assessment to establish a base line caused significant confusion for postulants and mentors alike. Although all mentors had been invited to complete their own assessment (at no cost to them) to allow them to become more familiar with the assessment tool, only one did. This lack of familiarity with the tool led one mentor to comment, “I didn't find the summary profile very helpful, although [the postulant] did give me a copy of the detailed profile. I don't know how helpful I found it when I looked at him and what was brought forward but that might be because I didn't have the background that I probably should have” with regard to the NCD assessment (Mentors' focus group). Another reported, “Neither [my postulant] nor I found it easy to interpret the NCD reports ... it would be helpful to have Bill Bickle [of NCD Canada] come to one of our fall [Postulancy Committee] meetings and demonstrate how to read and interpret the reports” (Mentors' focus group).1 A third, at the midpoint review, reported, “I am waiting (sic) through [postulant's] results and trying to make sense of them. I'm not very good at those things” (Mentor email). The NCD online platform was also confusing and frustrating for several of the postulants. The system requires a participant to sign in with a token from NCD Canada and then enter the emails of their respondents. It did not allow for _________________________ 1 There was no fall meeting of the Postulancy Committee between when this feedback was received and when the project drew to a close, so that this did not happen. 111 reminders to respondents, as the participant had no way to track which respondents had answered, nor indeed which were choosing not to participate (as there was no option for respondents to indicate this). Several postulants found the initial token system frustrating, particularly that the tokens expired after two weeks so that if they were unable to complete the assessment process within that time they had to start over (Bickle). One suggested that having the platform send weekly reminders to respondents for three weeks, and include an option for respondents to indicate that they would not be participating, would greatly reduce confusion and enhance the process for everyone (Postulant email). Despite these issues with the process ten postulants completed their initial Empowering Leadership assessments. Of these, two left the postulancy process over the course of the ten-month program; they are no longer candidates for ordination in the Diocese of Toronto. Of the remaining eight, five postulants were able to complete the follow-up ten months later. NCD Canada provided anonymous individual before-and-after profiles. Table 1 shows the initial and final overall score, and scores for each of the six traits, for each postulant (by pseudonym). While there is variation among the postulants, statistically significant growth in leadership skills can be seen in all areas for four of the six. Cameron's and Anna's scores decreased. In an e-mail to NCD Canada National Partner Bill Bickle, Cameron noted that his first assessment was completed in a field placement setting. However, by the time of the second assessment he was no 112 longer in a field placement role and thus invited friends to complete the assessment. The decrease in scores between first and second assessments could indicate that those who saw him in a ministry context saw greater leadership qualities from him than do his friends (Bill Bickle, December 22, 2017, e-mail message to author). Anna's mentor, on the other hand, reported that he only skimmed through the contents of the Manual and did not follow the learning activities in Part Two at all in his meetings with her (Mentor's questionnaire); her scores therefore cannot meaningfully be used in assessing the efficacy of the Manual. Table 1. Initial and final overall score, and scores for each of the six traits, for each postulant by pseudonym [ Please contact repository@tyndale.ca for Table 1 details. ] 113 One of the postulants who did not complete the second assessment named several frustrations with the NCD platform as a significant factor in that decision. He also noted that, “I had to submit and defend my dissertation [during this time]. Second, our living space has no safe place to set my computer with my toddler around. That has meant that a lot of emails have simply fallen through the cracks” (Postulant email 2018). Interpretations and Conclusions Evaluation of this curriculum by experts, mentors and participants was generally positive. All identified the strength of having postulants working with mentors on leadership development, and all agreed that the concept of using an assessment tool to select one leadership trait for focus was helpful. There was agreement that the learning activities provided in the Mentors' Manual were thoughtful, helpful, and led to good reflections, conversations, and action. Among postulants there was agreement that the project was well worth doing, that they learned about their functioning as leaders and were now more self-reflective and intentional about how they exercised that leadership, and also that they recognized the importance of continuing to grow their leadership skills as they begin ordained ministry. There were significant questions raised here, however. One was about the level of engagement between postulants and mentors, specifically whether ten months was long enough to demonstrate significant growth and whether monthly, hour-long meetings were adequate for the kinds of engagement necessary to see 114 change and growth take place. A second issue concerned the dual roles of postulant's advisor and mentor. The advisors noted that they were trying to fill two roles that weren't always compatible, and the experts noted that this, in fact, could present a conflict when the advisors were in a position of power, making decisions about the postulants' future ordination. To mitigate the potential ethical concern it was made clear to all from the beginning what would be reported to the wider Postulancy Committee and what would remain confidential. Still, this presented the practical concern that postulants might hold back in sharing as fully as they otherwise might, impacting the effectiveness of the program as a whole. The NCD Empowering Leadership assessment was chosen for several reasons to be a tool to assess learning and as a guide for the shape of the learning activities for this program. Most importantly, NCD is a tool that has been used in a majority of the parishes in the Diocese of Toronto; if postulants were not yet familiar with the organization and its work, they would soon become so. The NCD Empowering Leadership assessment presents a self-consciously Christian model of leadership which was critical in this context, particularly the use of empowering and leading wings as equally important for Christian leaders. Because NCD works internationally, I was aware that their resources are often available in many languages. Finally, NCD Canada was an enthusiastic partner in this endeavour, eager to discover how their tools could play a role in the formation of individuals for full-time ministry. 115 Unfortunately it was in the use of NCD's tools that the program hit its greatest obstacles. The confusion about the use of tokens in order to participate in the online assessment, the inability for participants to track their respondents and the confusion about interpreting the results once the first assessments were completed all combined to increase resistance to the program as a whole. While most NCD materials are available in many languages, the Empowering Leadership assessment has not yet been made available in the language of one postulant's ministry setting, something that NCD Canada leadership did not realize when the process began. While the categories of leadership traits, with empowering and leading wing,s were a helpful paradigm and shaped the learning activities of the curriculum in valuable ways, these advantages ultimately did not outweigh the problems created by the technical details noted here. Because of the need for anonymity for postulants, it is impossible to assess why two of the final group of eight postulants chose not to complete the final assessment process. The reasons named by the one who answered a general request for a response (time constraints and difficulty with the NCD platform) were clearly overcome by others in his cohort. Adult educators have noted, In almost every instance where adult education is mandated for some group it is assumed not only that learning will occur, but also that it will be applied to improving proficiency at some task or role. Even under ideal circumstances, there is no guarantee that this will happen. When adults are forced to learn, there is even less assurance that knowledge will be put to use. (Darkenwald and Merriam 1982, 242) Given that their archbishop instructed them to participate in this program, it is perhaps remarkable that the postulants learned as much as they did and seemed to 116 have applied their knowledge in ways that resulted in measurable results in follow-up assessments. It is perhaps more surprising that six of them completed the program than that two did not. The curriculum evaluation process surfaced some real deficiencies with the Mentors' Manual curriculum. Nevertheless it also revealed some real strengths and successes. Ultimately curriculum evaluation seeks to answer the question, did learners learn what it was intended they learn. The answer here, as far as can be determined, is yes. 117 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS The Mentors ' Manual was an effective tool, allowing mentors to encourage postulants in their growth as leaders. With some revision, it is a tool that could be beneficial in other contexts. Summary The Mentors ' Manual was created as an adult education curriculum. Best practices in mentoring were researched and incorporated into the Manual, as were key learnings from the world of adult education. Postulants completed the Empowering Leadership assessment (created by Natural Church Development) prior to the mentorship period and then again at the conclusion of the mentorship. From that assessment, postulants selected one or two leadership traits on which to focus. Mentors and postulants met at least monthly for ten months, creating a mentoring agreement based on the guidelines in the Manual, and using the relevant learning activities that targeted the chosen leadership traits. At the end of the mentorship period, the Manual and the full program was evaluated by postulants and mentors as well as by a panel of experts in the fields of adult education and formation for ministry. Evaluation of the curriculum found it to be a qualified success, giving mentors the resources they needed to guide postulants 118 in growing in leadership traits. This was demonstrated through the evaluations of the curriculum and the increase in scores on the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment completed by postulants once the program was completed. There were issues, however. Some of these, around the preferred point during formation for ministry and the details about how often and for how long mentors and postulants met, and the dual and potentially conflicting roles of mentor and advisor, could be easily adjusted in future uses of the Mentors' Manual (and are outlined below where implications for the Diocese of Toronto are discussed). Others, including suggestions for new questions, rewording or reordering the existing questions, or the addition of an epilogue, are fairly simple tweaks that will be made as the Manual is made available for use in the future. The biggest issues with the program, however, revolved around the use of the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment. Postulants were given virtual tokens to participate, but these expired before some completed the assessment. Postulants reported they were unable to track which of their respondents had completed the assessment, so were unable to follow up with those who had yet to do so. Language was unexpectedly an issue for one postulant and those completing the assessment of her leadership. The resulting leadership profile received by each postulant was confusing for many, mentors and postulants alike. All of this made for unexpected frustration with the process, which in turn led to a late completion of the initial assessment for several postulants and two postulants who did not complete the second assessment at all. Had these difficulties been 119 foreseen, either another leadership assessment tool would have been selected for the project or more attention would have been paid to these realities in orientation to the project. However, the tardiness and indeed ultimate failure of postulants in completing the assessment also reflected a key adult education principle: adults who are forced into any learning course are less likely to complete it, to learn from it, and to engage with the learnings in their day-to-day lives (Darkenwald and Merriam 1982, 242). Feedback from mentors indicates that those postulants who were most interested in improving their leadership skills were able to work with and around the technical difficulties with the tool. This project had three aims. The first was to create a curriculum that would enable postulants to grow in their leadership functioning, as measured both by their own reflections on the process and through the use of the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment tool. The postulants who participated in this program reported a greater awareness of their leadership strengths and areas for growth, and the NCD assessment showed demonstrable growth in skills for two- thirds of those who completed the full assessment cycle. A secondary objective of this project was to see both members of the Postulancy Committee and postulants themselves become more aware of the need for leadership gifts and skills for those preparing for ordination. Conversations in all three focus groups revealed that this objective was met; while there were issues with the specifics of this program, the overall sense of the need for strengthening leadership skills for those 120 in ordained ministry was universal. One additional objective of this project was that the Mentors' Manual would become a tool that could be adapted and used in other dioceses and denominations as a means of increasing leadership skills for those preparing for ministry. As noted below, with some editing to account for denominational and diocesan contexts, the Mentors' Manual is indeed such a tool. Implications for the Diocese of Toronto Several years ago, Archbishop Colin Johnson of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto called on the Church in his area to reach out boldly, to engage in God's mission in the world, and to experiment and try new things in doing so (Johnson 2012). He spoke of the need to grow adaptive leadership skills among the clergy of the Diocese in order to lead the Church into the post-Christendom world that is our reality. It would seem, however, that risk-taking and experimentation is still the lowest leadership trait among both currently active clergy and among the group of postulants to be ordained in 2018 (Bickle 2018). This project has shown that with intentionality and the guidance of a mentor, leadership skills can be grown; if the leadership of the Diocese of Toronto wants to grow ordained leaders who are more comfortable in experimentation, a program like this Mentors' Manual could assist in building that kind of leadership culture. Unlike many places in the Canadian Anglican Church, the Diocese of Toronto continues to use curacy placements as an expected part of ministry formation. For the first two years after ordination, new clergy serve as full-time, 121 paid apprentices in parish ministry under the supervision of an experienced priest. Both the mentors in this project and the experts who reviewed the curriculum raised concerns about the dual role of mentor and postulant's advisor, and more than one mentor suggested that the curacy period, after ordination, would be a better time for the Mentors' Manual to be used. First, it would answer some concerns about role confusion; the role of a curacy supervisor is clearly one of mentor in ministry formation and not evaluation. Second, it would answer concerns about the length of the mentorship and the frequency of meetings between mentor and mentee. Instead of a ten-month program, the mentorship would last as long as two years, and rather than monthly meetings, supervisor and curate are expected to meet weekly for supervisory sessions that involve feedback on the tasks of ministry and theological reflection. Third, it would also address concerns about the ability of postulants to more fully implement their learning plan in a field placement setting. While not yet priests in charge of a parish, curates generally have more freedom to take leadership over some aspects of parish ministry than do field placement students, which would give them more freedom to design learning activities to help them grow in their weaker leadership areas. Thus it is recommended that those who coordinate the curacy formation process look at the Mentors' Manual as a resource. Implications for My Ministry In my new role as Diocesan Ministry Developer for the Diocese of Rupert's Land (covering southeastern Manitoba and part of northwestern 122 Ontario), I coordinate the formation of women and men for ministry leadership as priests, deacons or lay people in leadership roles in their parishes. The work of this project continues to inform my ministry even though I have changed contexts. Because there is no Anglican theological college within commuting distance of the Diocese, those training for ministry in Rupert's Land are heavily reliant on distance models of education to acquire the academic knowledge they need in the fields of pastoral theology, systematics, Bible and history. This learning needs to be supplemented with formation experiences that help shape the heart, soul and skills for pastoral leadership, and increasingly these formation experiences are being guided by mentors. Mentors are needed in field placements, where postulants in formation to be priests or deacons serve. Mentors are needed for local collaborative ministry settings, where teams of parishioners are taking leadership in parishes without the resources to pay a priest in the traditional model of ministry. Mentors are needed for those newly ordained as they learn to live into the role and identity of priest or deacon. Mentors are needed to walk alongside Indigenous postulants for priestly and diaconal ministry, to help them gain relevant theological and biblical knowledge while they work with elders to form ministerial identities appropriate to their cultural context. This project, and indeed the entire Doctor of Ministry program, has given me skills in project planning and analysis that have already served me well in this work. The advantages of combining best practices from the field of adult education with best practices from the world of mentoring has been clearly 123 demonstrated here. As mentors are recruited and trained for each of the roles noted above, I will use an edited version of the first part of the Manual, the background information about best practices in mentoring. I will also offer the program in its entirety to newly-ordained priests to use alongside a mentor, to grow their leadership skills as the embark on their new ministries. Implications for the Wider Church The Mentors' Manual is a tool that, with a few alterations, could easily be adapted for use in a myriad of ministry settings, in a variety of denominational and geographical contexts. Part One of the Manual focuses on the theology of mentorship and best practices for mentoring; this section is already being adapted for use by mentors of Authorized Lay Ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada through the Lay Academy of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon. Because NCD is an international organization, the materials on which Part Two of the Manual is based (Christian Schwarz's book The Three Colors of Leadership and the online Empowering Leadership assessment) are readily available and reasonably affordable. The Manual was written with the intent that, while mentor training is always going to improve the experience, mentors could read the best practices of mentoring in Part One and use the learning activities in Part Two with minimal to no outside support. The addition of an epilogue, as suggested by one member of the expert panel, including the Kolb learning cycle and some prayer resources will be made, and could encourage mentors and 124 mentees to continue the learning cycle until such time as they decide to conclude the mentoring relationship. In many parts of the Church, mentorship is used as a key part of formation for ministry leadership. Often, mentors are given minimal training or support materials. This project has shown the great benefits to mentors, mentees, and the Church, of properly equipping mentors for the ministry they are being asked to do. Ensuring that they are aware of best practices in mentoring, including skills for mentoring across differences and the use of a mentorship agreement, allows them to be more mindful of their role. Giving them background information about best practices in adult education, including an understanding of the Kolb Learning cycle and the need for mentees to take ownership of their own learning, allows them to mentor with a greater sense of direction. Providing relevant learning activities, including questions for reflection, encourages a deeper level of engagement with the subject matter than might otherwise take place. Conclusions Football coach Vince Lombardi once famously said that leaders are made, not born (Lombardi 1970). Leadership skills can be learned with intentionality, focus and practice. This project aimed to create a program to allow mentors to work with postulants for priestly ministry in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto to allow them to develop and grow as leaders. Combining best practices from the fields of mentorship and adult education with a biblical understanding of the role of a mentor in the growth of new leaders, the Mentors' Manual was created. 125 Results from the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment, as well as feedback from program participants and experts, lead to the conclusion that the Mentors' Manual is a tool that effectively assisted postulants in their growth as leaders in the Church. 126 APPENDIX A: MENTORING FOR LEADERSHIP IN THE POSTULANCY COMMITTEE IN THE DIOCESE OF TORONTO: A MANUAL 127 Mentoring for Leadership in the Postulancy Committee in the D iocese of Toronto The pairing of postulants with mentors has the potential to shape priestly formation in the direction of strengthening ... leadership skills Leadership can be defined as a process of social influence, empowering the efforts of others towards the achievement of shared visions. This manual seeks to guide mentors in the development of leadership skills in postulants for ordination in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto. As this diocese grapples with the shift to post-Christendom, the role of priests as leaders (and not only as pastors, preachers and liturgical presiders) is increasingly important. The pairing of postulants with mentors has the potential to shape priestly formation in the direction of strengthening such leadership skills as visioning, strategic planning, and influencing change. This mentoring manual has been developed through interviews with current advisors and experts in the field, incorporating successful mentorship models from other sectors and churches. It is hoped that this manual will assist advisors to become stronger mentors, and give postulants greater leadership skills, thereby equipping them to serve God's kingdom in an ever-changing world. 1 128 Table of Contents: Part One Table of Contents: Part One 2 Mentorship 3 Adult Education 4 Tips for Successful Mentoring 5 A Mentoring Agreement 7 Mentoring A cross Differences 9 Age Differences 9 Cultural Differences 12 Gender Differences 14 Mentoring Across Differences General 15 Growing Empowering Leaders 16 2 129 Mentorship Mentoring is one of the most effective and therefore most common methods of adult professional development. Pairing someone with less experience in a given field with someone with more experience, in various formal and informal ways, has tremendous potential to reap great results in the formation of needed skills, attitudes and knowledge in our postulants. At its heart any mentoring relationship is about learning. The purpose of this mentoring program is to build leadership skills for ordained ministry All mentors in this program have been selected in part because of leadership skills exhibited in their ministry and in other areas of their lives. Mentorship is not about creating a clone of the mentor. Each person whom God has called to ministry has their own unique, God-given gifts for that ministry, and the goal of mentorship is to release and strengthen these gifts. Mentoring is different from coaching. A coach, be it in a sport or in business, seeks to transmit skills related to a specific, narrow area of expertise. A mentor seeks to work with another to see them grow in a more holistic sense, to bring their God-given gifts to the fore and fulfill their potential. While the benefits of a mentoring relationship are obvious for the postulant, there are also many advantages for the mentor in participating in a mentorship program. Many mentors appreciate the opportunity to pass their knowledge and experience on to others, and derive significant satisfaction from helping someone else grow in their gifts. Indeed, mentoring a postulant can give the mentor an opportunity to reflect upon and thereby grow their own gifts in ministry and leadership. By participating in a program like 3 130 this, mentors will also play a significant role in building the Church for the future. Adult Education Mentoring relationships always have growth and learning as their goal. When working with adults, growth and learning takes place most effectively when the learner shares responsibility for setting learning priorities, finding resources and reflecting upon the lived experience of the learning process. As adult learners, our postulants come to us with background knowledge, with already-formed habits, and with possibly unexamined assumptions about leadership. This knowledge, experience and set of assumptions has served them well enough to this point that a change has not been made. For this reason, it's important to remember that all learning is in effect re-learning, a letting go of old presuppositions and patterns of behaviour in order to integrate new knowledge into one's practice of ministry leadership. There is likely to be some resistance to new theories until new theoretical knowledge about leadership is integrated holistically and experientially. Mentorship programs are an ideal way to help learners overcome this resistance. As a mentor, you have the opportunity to assist in the formation of postulant as they prepare for priestly ministry. In much adult education, lived experience forms a primary resource for the learning process. Yet experience alone is a poor teacher; it is rather reflection upon the experience that allows for growth and development. As a mentor, your primary role is to assist your postulant to refl ect upon their experiences of leadership, to ask questions, to assist them to sit at the feet of their own lives and be taught by them. You will help your postulant to discern what God has sought to teach them through their experiences, in ministry and in the [ Paragraph located under a picture two people walking with backs turned to the camera] Mentorship is not about creating clones of the mentor, but about seeking to release and strengthen the unique, God- given gifts of the postulant 4 131 other areas of their lives, that can be brought to the fore to help to shape their leadership skills for ordained ministry. Tips for Successful Mentoring 1. Maintain open channels of communication. While the onus will be on the postulant to be in touch with you, it’s important to do all you can as a mentor to make that as easy as possible: return phone and email messages promptly, keep appointments unless an emergency intervenes, etc. This may seem obvious, but making yourself available to your postulant sends a strong message about how invested you are in their growth and learning. 2. Communicate often. A monthly meeting, preferably face- to-face (in person or through technology) for about an hour is ideal. This should be enough time to hear updates from your postulant about their training, field experience and ministry journey, to share information that you need to relay from the postulancy committee, and to spend some time focusing on their growth in leadership. 3. Use your pastoral skills. Much of mentoring involves active listening, asking probing questions, leaving silences for reflection and the like, techniques that are well known to you in your pastoral work. Mentoring is not primarily a pastoral relationship, in that the goal is growth in a particular skill set (leadership), but the process of mentoring uses many of the same tools as pastoral care. 4. Confidentiality is important. Postulants’ advisors certainly have the role of reporting to the postulancy committee about areas of concern, areas of growth and learning, and questions about the readiness of the postulant for ordination. Yet for a mentoring relationship to flourish postulants need to have some sense that they can discuss with you their challenges and questions, and that this is a safe place to do that. Through this mentorship program, it 5 132 Cultivate an environment for learning. [Caption located under photograph of two people in discussion] will be most helpful for the committee to hear whether your postulant seems to be asking appropriate questions, whether she or he is open to trying and learning new things and moving beyond their comfort zone, rather than scores on leadership assessments or exact plans for development. Being clear about what information will be kept confidential from the beginning of the mentorship project will be critical to building a relationship of trust. 5. Keep notes. In your role as a mentor, you will be asked at the end of this program to help evaluate it, and your notes throughout the process will not only help you to track your postulant's progress (especially if you are mentoring more than one postulant) but to offer helpful feedback as the program unfolds. 6. Be conscious of cultivating an environment for learning. Where you meet (a coffee shop, your office, a theological college) and how (in person, voice-only phone call, through FaceTime or Skype) will have an impact on how your conversations unfold. W het her you choose to pray together at the outset and close of your conversations, and whether you are wearing casual, business or clerical attire will also shape the conversation. There is no right or wrong here but it will help to be aware of how your postulant responds to these sorts of variables so that you are making conscious decisions rather than simpl y allowing things to happen haphazardly. 7. Ask a lot of questions. When was the last time you failed? (Often someone who never fails is someone who never tries anything new.) Who is your role model for ministry, and what about that person do you most admire?What makes for a good leader in government, in business in education (particularly helpful in their previous career area), and (how) is that like or unlike what makes for good leadership in the Church?When have you seen your field education super visor exercise leadership, and would you have made the same or different choices in that situation? 6 133 Take the time to put together a mentoring agreement. [Caption title for a photograph showing 2 people and puzzle pieces ] Your role as a mentor is in large part to facilitate reflection on the lived experience of the postulant in order to assist them to intentionally grow leadership skills. A Mentoring Agreement The role of a postulant's advisor has not traditionally been that of mentorship. While there has in the past certainly been some overlap, and particularly so when those relationships have borne the most fruit, entering into a formal mentorship for the purpose of growing leaders is going to be a new step for our advisors and our postulants, and it is appropriate to take some time as this stage of the relationship begins to formally agree to the parameters of the mentor/mentee arrangement. It might best be set after the postulant has completed the Natural Church Development Empowering Leadership assessment tool. A mentoring agreement will lay out the basics of your mentoring relationship. Each one will be different, but some elements to consider: • how often will you meet and for how long each time? • where and when you will meet ? • will you be in touch between face-to-face meetings, by phone or email?how often? • what are your goals and objectives together? • what learning opportunities and experiences will the postulant commit to following in order to grow in his/her leadership? • what learning tools and resources will the mentor contribute and/or find in order to assist the postulant in leadership growth? • what will confidentiality mean for this mentoring partnership?what will the advisor need to report to the 7 134 postulancy committee, and what will be kept confidential between postulant and mentor? • how will you evaluate progress together?when will you take the time to do this? • what practical ground rules will you abide by?Are there subjects for conversation that are off-limits?W hat will happen in the case of a conflict?Who is responsible for confirming meetings?Will you pray together?Who will pray?Will you read scripture together?W ho will choose the scripture passage?If you're having coffee or a meal together, who is covering expenses? 8 135 Mentoring Across Differences There are several areas in which a mentor and a postulant might be different; age, gender and culture are the three most common, although different church experience can also play a role. Mentoring across differences requires some care, but it also offers some rich resources for conversation from which both mentor and postulant can reap bountiful fruit. Age Differences There are two main ways to seek to understand the differences that age can make in understanding different approaches to leadership and to ministry The first is to look at the phases of human development as we age, as identified by psychologists such as Carl Jung and Gail Sheehy. The second is to look at generational characteristics (Boomers, Gen X and Millenials), which are most appropriately applied to those who were born and raised in the Western world. Both approaches can be helpful in understanding postulants who are of a different age than their mentors. Postulants in the Diocese of Toronto have been as young as their mid-twenties and as old as their early-seventies. Thus, there is a huge spectrum of human developmental stages represented here, and it can be helpful to understand in broad strokes the kinds of life tasks faced Young adults, those between the ages of 18 and 30, are seeking, in psychological terms, to establish their independence from their families of origin. Yet there is often some uncertainty in this task, as the difficult and sometimes hurtful experiences of independent adulthood can prompt many to return home to the safety of family Mentoring in this phase of life needs to affirm the steps towards independence; where the mentor is older (which will most often be the case), there needs to be awareness of the possibility of transference, that is, does the postulant see you as a parent figure? This is not necessarily problematic if handled with intentionality and care. 9 136 Those aged roughly 30 through 45 are in the time of their life of establishing themselves. It is a period of establishing deep relationships (whether friendships or life partnerships), yet can also be marked by a resistance to these through self- destructive behaviours. They are often establishing careers and families, and the busyness of this period of life tends to consume as they are able to make deep commitments to individuals and groups outside of themselves. Mentoring someone in this phase of life should be aware of the increasing need for meaning and desire for deep dedication to something outside of oneself. Those in their middle years, roughly 40 through 60 years of age, begin to feel a new freedom to explore their inner life. As children grow and leave home, and often as parents die, however, a crisis of meaning and even identity can take place. There is a quest for wholeness during this period, often accompanied by a need to change direction in life (sometimes characterized as a mid-life crisis). Mentors should be aware of the self-doubt that can accompany this phase, reminding postulants of their abilities demonstrated in the past that can be brought to bear on new tasks and challenges. In later adulthood, there is often a desire to “give back,” a concern for legacy left for following generations and to use one’s experience and influence to make a difference in the world. People at this stage of life may not be as “formable” as those who enter ministry and leadership in younger years, but they bring a huge wealth of experience. Mentoring people in this stage of life, then, will often be most successful when it seeks to draw out and apply past experiences in new contexts, and to draw on this desire to serve in ways that impact the future. Millennials are generally understood to be those who came of age in this millennium, those born between the years 1980 and 2000 (although dates vary from source to source in each of these “generation” identifiers), who have never known a 10 137 world without computerization in all parts of their lives. Millennials tend to be overachievers, seeking constant feedback as they tend to set high standards for themselves. Their desire for work that connects to deeper meaning means that they are deeply committed to constant growth and learning, which can mean that they will be asking for your advice and feedback more often than you might expect. The Book of Alternative Services has been the dominant liturgical resource for most of them for their entire remembered experience of the Canadian church, and both a shrinking and aging church population and women as priests and bishops have always been assumed for them. As a mentor, your work with millennials will go more smoothly if you can treat them as colleagues in ministry rather than assigning them tasks without a rationale, and if you give them a voice in how their leadership development work unfolds. Generation X, born roughly between the years 1965 and 1980, tend to have a distrust of institutional authority that can be expressed as cynicism or as a drive to take on individual responsibility for their own success. They are entrepreneurial, and seek to produce work that is of lasting value, often as part of a team. If born and raised in Canada, they saw the introduction of the Book of Alternative Services, the ordination of women (although many likely don’t remember it), and have never known anything other than a church in decline. Mentoring Gen X postulants will likely be most effective if you can provide support and suggestions, perhaps sharing your own experience or sources of further information, and then give them the freedom to pursue their goals. Feedback for this generational cohort should be specific (“nice job” isn’t going to communicate what they need to hear), and should be in response to clearly- articulated goals and expectations. The Baby Boomers were born in the postwar period (approximately 1946 through 1964), and were raised through tough economic times with fairly traditional values. In the church, they knew the “golden era” as their formative years. 11 138 [ blank page] 139 They tend to be optimistic, competitive, and idealistic (this is, after all the generation that came of age at Woodstock). Lifelong learning continues to be a priority for the Boomers, who respond best to mentors who connect with them on both a personal and professional level. They respond well to challenges and fresh ideas, and tend to resist any expressions of cynicism, and will welcome the opportunity to focus on past professional accomplishments and how these apply to this new area of work. Cultural Differences It would be impossible to outline the various differences in different cultures from around the globe, but a degree of intercultural awareness is critically important for both mentor and postulant to get the most from the mentoring relationship. Mentoring tools and models, as outlined in this manual, are most often drawn from a “Western cultural” approach, and may not always fit the values and practices of other cultures. Additionally, the concept of leadership and what makes for a great leader can vary substantively across cultural differences. For both of these reasons, it will be vitally important for mentors to be aware of their own cultural biases and filters, and to come to understand something of the cultural background of those they are mentoring. That said, part of the task of mentoring for leadership is to prepare our postulants to become ordained leaders in this context. This might, then, be an excellent opportunity for postulants who come to us from other cultures to come to understand some of the cultural expectations of leaders in this part of Canada. Difficulties in the mentoring relationship arising from cultural differences most often take one of two forms. The first arises from cross-cultural communication. This may have to do with language or accent differences, or with the interpretation of the meaning of silence or body language. In 12 140 some cultures, one seeks only to please someone in a position of authority, such as a mentor, and so negative experiences or failures are simply not shared. In some cultures, sharing personal information would be greatly frowned-upon; in others, building a relationship of any duration without sharing this background would be considered impossible. The second set of difficulties most commonly arising from cross-cultural differences has to do with the mentoring relationship itself. There may be role confusion; some see the mentor as a friend, some as a supervisor, some as a mediator (possibly between the postulant and their field education supervisor). Some cultures highly value hierarchy, and you may be perceived as an authority figure; in some cultures, direct communication with an authority figure is seen as disrespectful. Some cultures highly value formality in professional relationships, others less so (does one address the mentor by a first name or by title, and how one dresses for a professional meeting between mentor and postulant, for example). Cultural differences are only a problem when they lead to misunderstandings of interpretation. If someone avoids looking you in the eye, that might be a sign of shyness, or of deep respect, or of a lack of respect, or of someone who is trying to hide something. As a mentor, it will be important for you to begin to understand how your own cultural background might predispose you to misinterpret your postulant’s intentions. One helpful tool here can be the Cultural Dimensions website, created by sociologist Geert Hofstede (https:// www.geert-hofstede.com/countries.html). The site gives insight into cultural understandings in such areas as power difference, directness of communication and risk tolerance. If you and your postulant are from different cultures, it might be interesting to look at the site together and have a conversation about each of your own cultural backgrounds has shaped your understanding of leadership. 13 141 Gender Differences While women have been ordained in Canada for more than forty years, there are still differences in how people perceive men and women in leadership, in ordained ministry, and as mentors or postulants. Mentoring someone of a different gender than you calls for some sensitivity and awareness of some of these differences. As with all of the categories of difference it is patent that these portraits are generalizations, yet that does not make them unhelpful in assessing the dynamics of the mentoring relationship. Researchers have noted that mentoring an “alpha” type, male or female although significantly more “alpha” types are men, is most effective when particular approaches are used. Alphas are driven personalities who tend to be self-confident, ambitious, with an urgent sense of mission and an insistence on top performance from themselves and those with whom they work. Because they have achieved some measure of success using strategies familiar to them, they are often resistant to mentoring or any other suggestion for change. (Alpha males will score strongly on the “leadership” side of the Natural Church Development Empowering Leadership test, see next section of this manual.) Mentoring alphas is most effective when their competitive streak and drive for success is engaged. In particular, alpha males can often be assisted to further their personal growth and skills development by mentorship that is strong enough to stand its ground yet also demonstrates care; often the resistance to change is rooted in a fear of taking the risk of change. Most women have been socialized to care more for relationships and process than for any end goal. They are more likely to seek the input of those around them, to build a consensus before acting and are often less comfortable giving orders to those who follow them. (In the NCD Empowering Leadership test, they will score more strongly on the “empowering” side.) Mentors of postulants who have been socialized in these ways will want to encourage them to take 14 142 ownership for their own ideas and for the growth they want to see. Most men have been socialized to present a less emotional face to the world; most women feel freer to exhibit emotions and, for example, to cry when something deeply touches them. It will be helpful to keep in mind when mentoring that tears are not to be feared nor to be viewed as evidence of someone who is “too” emotional, but rather a sign that deep inner work is happening, and this is a good thing. Mentoring Across Difference: General People are, of course, individuals, made up of far more than their age, gender and culture. One's family of origin, life experiences and individual personality will often override or work alongside these factors in how they function. Nonetheless, mentors can be most effective when they actively look for clues that their own perspective is different from than of their postulant, and use these differences as subject for conversation together rather than seeking to transform the postulant's point of view into their own. 15 143 Growing Empowering Leaders This mentorship program will seek to identify learning goals and track growth towards those goals using the Empowering Leadership Test from Natural Church Development Canada. An empowering leader is a balanced leader, a person who both can encourage others to use their own gifts and skills, in leadership and in any given piece of ministry, and can direct others towards accomplishing set goals for the larger group. A leader with strengths in “leading” in the traditional sense of that word will stand in front of people, giving directions and making hard decisions. A leader with strengths in “empowering” others often stands metaphorically behind others, providing support while they implement decisions. Truly balanced leadership is a type of social contract that conveys the message, “Follow me and I will help you to become something more than you are now.” An empowering leader not only makes a difference in the organization where she or he serves, but also elicits growth and maturity in the people they are leading. There is significant biblical and theological warrant for leadership in the Church to follow this kind of balanced, empowering leadership model. During the reformation Martin Luther reflected on the meaning of the genitive form of the phrase “the power of God,” and came to realize that the phrase means not only that God is powerful but that the quality of this power is one that God gives to others. While this was initially simply a new understanding based on grammar, it transformed Luther’s thinking about how God’s power works in the world. Luther rendered the phrase “the power of God,” “God makes us strong.” God’s power, then, is manifested in God’s empowerment of human beings. The incarnation is the ultimate giving-away of God’s power. The self-emptying of Godself as described in Philippians 2 requires a radical new understanding of what the exercise of power should look like for those who name themselves 16 144 Christians. Throughout his ministry, Jesus exhibited a leadership that was both powerfully directive and powerfully empowering. We might think of his proclamation of the Kingdom of God and the alternative vision for all of life that it means as casting the vision, and of his conversation with his followers (as recorded in Mark 8) about who they believe him to be as a setting free of their own vision. He both taught the principles and values of the Kingdom, and modelled them in his own life and death so that others could follow. He sent his followers out to preach the good news, heal the sick and cast out demons, to learn from their mistakes and celebrate their successes (Luke 12). Post-Easter, Jesus more explicitly gives his power away, knowing that the ascension will come, commanding Peter to care for his lambs as a consequence of his love (John). As John records the coming of the Holy Spirit, she arrives to continue to empower the followers of Jesus to continue his work and ministry in the world. The Spirit is Comforter and Advocate, yet is also the same Spirit that drove Christ himself out of his former life into the wilderness, to begin his public ministry The arrival of the Spirit in Acts, of course, is far more dramatic (Acts 2), and makes clear that God’s power is strongly at work through empowering the believers to take on the work of ministry Throughout his ministry, Paul invested significant and effort in identifying, training, empowering and supporting other leaders. Clearly a charismatic speaker and powerful leader, in each of his letters to local churches Paul identifies men and women who are leaders in their congregations, and we know that he most often travelled in company with others, who were not only companions on the journey but co-workers in the work of the proclamation of the gospel. While the authorship of the letters to Timothy is questioned by many scholars, they bear witness to Paul’s empowering leadership with his young mentee, a biblical model of mentorship that offered support and accountability from the younger leader. 17 145 As a mentor, this model of empowering leadership will be important in two ways. First, it will be important to understand that the kind of leadership we are seeking to grow in our postulants is an empowering leadership, that we are seeking to develop ordained leaders both who set direction and make hard decisions on behalf of those they lead, and who empower others to use their own gifts and skills in the ministry and mission of the church. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, as a mentor you will be modelling empowering leadership for your postulants. You will be nurturing their growth while knowing when to step in with needed correctives or directions. You will be teaching principles of leadership while encouraging postulants to live them out as well. You will release their own vision of themselves as ordained leaders in the church while at the same time setting a vision of what they might yet become. 18 146 Table of Contents: Part Two Getting Started 2 Vision 4 Experimentation 8 Capacity 13 Strategy 17 Training 22 Progression 27 1 147 The Program This mentoring program has been partially shaped by Natural Church Development's “The 3 Colors of Leadership” empowering leadership assessment tool, and mentors are encouraged to familiarize themselves with that tool and the book by the same title by Christian Schwarz (everyone who participates in the assessment receives a copy). In essence, the tool measures six principles of empowering leadership: vision, experimentation, capacity, strategy, training and progression. Within each of these six principles, postulants will receive feedback on whether they tend to be more empowering of others or to be more dominant leaders. An ideal leader would have both high overall scores on each of the six principles, and be equal ly balanced between the empowering and leadership styles in all six. Getting Started At the outset of the program, postulants complete the assessment tool and bring the results to your first formal mentorship session. Together, you will look at the results and mentors will guide postulants to choose where they want to work over the coming ten to twelve months. If one of the principles had an overall lower score than the others, the postulant may want to focus on that as an overall principle (for example, someone who scores low in experimentation may want to look at how they might learn to take risks). On the other hand, an overall principle might have a relatively high score, but may be heavily weighted on one side (for example, the overall vision score may be high but it may be that the person is only strong at casting their own vision and needs to focus on learning to release the vision of others). The mentorship program will be most successful if postulants are supported to select their own learning goals and to form their own learning plan. This first meeting will be the time 2 148 and place to do this, and will take into account their field placement(s) and other places in their fives where they exercise leadership. The learning plan would ideally include reading and/or video learning in the area of focus, to allow theory to inform practice. However, the bulk of the learning plan will generally be in the praxis of leadership, where the postulant will intentionally reflect with their mentor on their experiences as leaders in ministry, putting new ideas into practice and gauging the results. What follows in this manual are definitions of each of the six empowering leadership principles, and some ideas for exploring with postulants for each. (Additional thoughts can be found in Schwarz’s book.) These can be seen as resources for the mentors to draw upon in assisting postulants in their own learning and growth in ministry leadership. The shorter articles and videos listed would be most helpfill if both postulant and mentor read them, or if the video is watched and discussed together. Several of these are from the worlds of business, non-profits and other areas, and so a questions for all of these might reasonably be how well they translate into the realm of the Church. In each section are a number of questions for reflection, which might form a part of each postulant/mentor meeting, in addition to reflection on the lived experience of the postulant. 3 149 Vision Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18, KJV) When the prophets spoke God's words to the people, they conveyed a cosmic vision of God's will for the world. When Jesus called people to follow him, he called them to join in creating the kingdom of God right here and now. Strong leaders do the same thing; they cast a vision of the big picture, they show through words and actions the dream of a better future towards which the leader will guide the people. The vision inspires people to join in, to work hard, to do what needs doing for the vision to come to fruition. Only the vision of a preferred future will move people to make any kind of change; a strong enough vision will carry people through difficult times and circumstances to do the work, even if they don't anticipate tangible results within their own lifetimes. In creating a learning process to increase the postulant's strength in vision, mentors can help them find a context within their ministry setting where they might work on this. Perhaps they area member of a children's ministry team, or sit on an advisory board. Perhaps they work with a seniors' group or outreach committee. In any of these settings a postulant can cast a vision and release the vision of others, and reflect on when and how that might happen, the c ont ent of the vision, and what difference it can make both to the work being done and in the faith of those around them. Addressing “Vision” Postulants who wish to focus on strengthening their abilities within the area of “vision” might benefit from reflection on some of these questions: 1. Who is a leader you have admired (in the church or in other spheres) for their ability to cast a vision that inspired others to join in?What was the vision?How was the leader effective at sharing it? 4 150 2. What is the vision of the church or ministry setting where you are currently serving?How do you know that is the vision?Is it shared by the membership?How does it function in the life of that community? 3. How do you understand the relationship between the vision for a church (or other ministry setting) and the vision a leader might have for himself or herself ? 4. When has being part of a larger vision made the tedium or hard work worth it for you? Some resources for further learning and reflection: • “How great leaders inspire action,” a TEDx talk by Simon Sinek: https://www.ted.com/talks/ simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action • “Black preaching after the election” https:// www.faithandleadership.com/william-h-lamar-iv-black- preaching-after-election • “Christian leaders need clarity of a gospel vision:” https:/ www.faithandleadership.com/michael-b-curry-christian- leaders-need-clarity-gospel-vision • “J.K. Rowling, Alan Rickman and the reign of God;” https://www.faithandleadership.com/victoria-atkinson- white-jk-rowling-alan-rickman-and-reign-god • “Where Does Vision Come From?” https://alban.org/ archive/where-does-vision-come-from-three-theories-of vision-formation/ • “The End.” https://www.faithandleadership.com/ content/‘the-end' • “What kind of visionary are you?” https://alban.org/ archive/what-type-of-visionary-are-you/ • “Pastoral Vision: A characteristic of pastoral excel lence,” https://www.faithandleadership.com/programs/spe/ articles/200603/vision.html 5 151 Work on ‘casting a vision’ While convinced of the need for a broader vision to inspire the work of God’s church, some Christian leaders exhibit a weakness in casting that vision themselves. Such people shy away from putting their vision out there, preferring perhaps to follow the dictum attributed to Ghandi, “There goes my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” Others refrain from the role of casting the vision out of caution or fear that others might not follow or catch the vision. In addition to the general questions on vision noted above, some questions for reflection here might be: 1. How would you define a “visionary?” Who are some visionaries you admire? What about these people do you admire? Do you see yourself in these people in some way? 2. Why might you refrain from putting your own vision ‘out there’ (for the church, for a committee’s work, etc)? Explore your motivations for holding back. What might be the consequences of holding back, for the work of the larger group, for the members of that group, for yourself? 3. What is your vision for the Church? How do you understand the church/ministry setting where you currently serve fitting in to that vision? How do you see yourself fitting into that vision? 4. When have you shared your vision for the people of God? What was the response? 5. As a parish priest, people will be looking to you for a sense of vision. How will you respond? Some resources for further learning and reflection: • Read the Acts of the Apostles. Reflect on the role of the apostles as visionary leaders in the early Christian community 6 152 • “Communicating Vision,” by John C. Maxwell, http:// www.johnmaxwell.com/cms/images/uploads/ads/ Communicating_Vision.pdf • “Characteristics of Visionary Leadership,” http:// smallbusiness.chron.com/characteristics-visionary- leadership-31332.html • “What Births a Vision,” Bill Hybels, https:// www.youtube .com/watch?v=LIDF 2e7bKoM • “Casting Vision,” https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=tGVQtURLiNc • “Teamwork and Vision God Hand in Hand,’’http:// www.johnmaxwell.com/blog/teamwork-and-vision-go- hand-in-hand Work on “Releasing the Vision of Others” Confident in their own vision for the Church, excited by their recent learning in areas like liturgical transformation and the missional call of God on the Church, some Christian leaders are so passionate about their own vision that they fail to release the vision of others, a vision God has given to those others and that is also needed for God’s Church. Some questions for reflection: i. When have you been a member of a team when the leader’s word was law? How did you respond? How did the team function? 2. Reflect on the notion of hierarchy. What does it say theologically? How does a military chain of command resemble and differ from the hierarchy we know in the church? 3. When have you been part of a group where people had wildly different ideas about what the group was to do? How was that resolved? Was it a satisfactory resolution? Why or why not? 7 153 Some resources for further learning and reflection: • “Vision leads,” by Glenn Jonas, https:// www.faithandleadership.com/glenn-jonas-vision-springs • “Lead like the great conductors,” a TED talk by Itay Talgam, https://www.ted.com/talks/ itay_talgam_lead_like_the_great_conductors • “Vision from the leader and the whole,” by John Ed Mathison, https://www.faithandleadership.com/john-ed- mathison-vision-leader-and-whole • “How to manage for collective creativity,” a TED talk by Linda Hill, https://www.ted.com/playlists/464/ how_to_run_a_company_like_a_vi • “Creating a Vision that Makes a Difference,” https:// alban.org/archive/ask-alban-creating-a-vision-that-makes- a-difference/ Experimentation “But when he saw the wind, Peter was a#aid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘L or d, save me!' Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?" -Matthew 14:30-31 Experimentation, or risk-taking, is a critical part of leadership in an ever-changing world. Yet our churches and theological colleges reward successful performance rather than the courage to take a chance and to possibly fail. In times of great uncertainty there is a temptation to retreat to the ‘tried and true,' and the Anglican love of tradition can reinforce this. As has been often said, however, the seven last words of the church may well be, “We've never done it that way before.” Empowering leaders must be willing to experiment and to encourage others to do the same, to take risks and try new 8 154 [ blank page ] 155 things, to permit themselves and others to make mistakes and to have the ability to learn from mistakes and to help those they lead to do the same. Designing a learning process to experiment with experimenting will be doubly helpful for postulants seeking to grow in this area. If they wish to work on their own ability to take risks, this might involve trying out different preaching styles, or simply taking on ministry tasks with which they have no previous experience, and being open to the possibility that mistakes will be made. If they wish to work on permitting others to make mistakes, that may mean working as a member or leader of a group or committee and entrusting a piece of work to others. If they wish to focus on learning from mistakes, which of course presupposes mistakes have already been made, they might wish to design a reflection process for themselves or for a group to work Addressing “Experimentation” Postulants who wish to grow in their ability to experiment, to take risks, permit mistakes and to learn from mistakes, might benefit from reflection on some of these questions: 1. What is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made? What mistakes have you made lately? What did you learn form each? 2. What is the biggest risk you’ve taken that ended well? What gave you the courage to take that risk? 3. What mistake have you made that hurt badly, yourself or someone else? What happened? How did you move forward? 4. It has been said that if you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t learning anything new. Do you agree? Why? 9 156 5. When have you followed a leader who took a risk that turned out to be a mistake? How did that influence your thoughts and feelings about that leader? 6. Which distresses you more, the idea of making a mistake yourself or the idea of turning over work to someone else who makes a mistake with it? Some resources for further learning and reflection: • The book Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within by Robert Quinn. Chapter two particularly examines the dilemma of the need to risk change or face slow death. • “Seven Risks Any Leader Can Take Today,” by Carey Nieuwhof, http://careynieuwhof.com/7-risks/ • “4 Reasons Great Leaders Admit Their Mistakes,” by Glen Llopis, http://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/ 2015/07/23/4-reasons-great-leaders-admit-their-mistakes/ #3ac53i4f7e2i • TED talk, “On Being Wrong,” by Kathryn Schulz, http:// www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong • Chapter 22, “Run Experiments,” in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Glashow and Marty Linsky Work on “Permit Mistakes” In order to release the God-given creativity of the members of the community, leaders need to allow those others to experiment and risk making mistakes. Sometimes resisting doing so is about a fear of appearing incapable or a fear of criticism. Sometimes this is a control issue, not giving up any piece of the work for fear that it will not be done well. Some questions for reflection: 1. When has someone else let you down? What happened? What were the consequences, for the work, for each of you, for your relationship? 10 157 2. When did a parent, teacher or mentor allow you to make a big mistake?Why did they let that happen? W hat was the result? 3. What are you good at ?W hat skills and gifts do you need others to bring to the table when you are working on a project together? 4. What are the advantages to making mistakes? 5. When have you opted to stay with the known and comfortable rather than taking a risk to make a change? What was the result of that choice? 6. Reflect on the story of St. Pet er, and how he learned from mistakes throughout his life. Why would Jesus choose this person as the “rock on whom I will build my church?” What does this say to you about making mistakes? Some resources for learning and reflection: • “Good Employees Make Mistakes. Great Leaders Allow Them To.” by Amy Rees Anderson, http:// www.forbes.com/sites/amyanderson/2013/04/17/good- employees-make-mistakes-great-leaders-al low-them-to/ #36d53a0c4b7c • “Leadership Courage: Creating a Culture Where People Feel Safe To Take Risks,” by Margie Warrell, http:// www.forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2015/01/14/ leadership-for-a-culture-of-courage/# 53fd1f6b137e • “Opening the next door,” by Fiona Soltes, https:// www.faithandleadership.com/features/articles/opening- the-next-door? utm_source=conceptpage&utm_medium=practice&utm_c ampaign=christshaped • “Why comfort will ruin your life,” a TEDx talk by Bill Eckstrom, https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=LBvH I 1awWaI 11 158 • “Failure as Christ-shaped leadership,” by C. Kavin Rowe, https://www.faithandleadership.com/c-kavin-rowe-failure- christ-shaped-leadership? utm_source=conceptpage&utm_medium=principle&utm_ campaign=christshaped Work on “Learning from M i st akes” Permitting mistakes, in oneself and in others, is not enough if one is not intentional about committing time and effort into learning from mistakes. A postulant who wishes to focus on this area might create a checklist or process for themselves or for a group to gather learnings when things have not gone as they might have wished. Some questions for reflection: 1. What is the biggest mistake you've made this year? W hat did you learn from it?How did you learn from it? 2. Describe the last time you were with a group that evaluated a project's successes and failures. What process was followed?What was learned?What difference will this make going forward? 3. Think about the different kinds of mistakes or failures people in churches can make. What are the differences, for example, between a server who consistently lights the altar candles in the ‘wrong' order, a volunteer who mispronounces someone else's name, and an after-school initiative that attracts only two or three participants. What can be learned in each instance? When is making a mistake a good thing? 4. Often when a project fails to achieve its intended goals, the response is to find someone or some circumstance to blame. Have you seen this dynamic at work in your church experience?How might you, as a leader, redirect that tendency to more worthwhile ends? 12 159 Some resources for learning and reflection: • “How to learn? From mistakes,” a TEDx talk by Diana Laufenberg, https://www.ted.com/talks/ diana_Jaufenberg_3_ways_to_teach#t"325O2 • “Strategies for learning from failure,” by Amy C. Edmondson, https://hbr.org/2011/04/strategies-for- leaming-from-failure • “Don’t Fear Failure: Nine Powerful Lessons We Can Learn from Our Mistakes,” by Lisabeth Saunders Medlock, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisabeth- saunders-medlock-phd/donrfearfailure-9-powerful- Iessons-we-can-learn-from-our-mistakes_b_6o5838o.html • “How to Identify and Learn from 'Your Mistakes,” by Scott Berkun, http://lifehacker.com/586349o/how-to- leam-from-yourmistakes • ‘After Action Review,” a process for learning from successes and failures, http://www.kstoolkit.org/After +Action+Review • TED Talk: “Eduardo Briceno: How to get better at the things you care about;” https://www.ted.com/talks/ eduardo_briceno_how_to_get_better_at_the_things_you_ care_about Capacity “I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” -1 Corinthians 2:3-4 The Natural Church Development Empower Leadership paradigm uses the word “capacity” to describe how leaders and the teams they lead increase their overall ability to complete tasks. 13 160 There are some leadership gurus who advocate leading from one’s strengths and focusing on growing those strengths, which tend to be God-given gifts that come most natural to the leader. Other leadership researchers suggest that overall growth can best be achieved by focus on one’s weaknesses, and seeking to strengthen these. This program seeks a balance, to grow in postulants the ability both to discern which is most appropriate to a given situation and to learn how to do this. It seeks to help ordained leaders embrace their weaknesses and use their strengths, and the weaknesses and strengths of those they lead, so that God can work through both. A learning process that helps a postulant grow in capacity will need to clarify a few things. Does the postulant want to learn how to grow their own strengths and/or buttress their own weaknesses? Or do they want to learn how to help a group focus on working out of their strengths and/or to strengthen weaknesses? Addressing “Capacity” Postulants who would like to grow their ability to both strengthen weaknesses and work from strengths might reflect on these questions: 1. In general, do you think you have grown your abilities more by working to strengthen your weaknesses or build your strengths? Why? 2. Think of a leader you admire. What are this person’s strengths? What are their weaknesses? When are their strengths most evident? What do they do about their weaknesses? 3. It’s been said that churches should focus on doing a few things and doing them well, rather than trying to be all things to all people. Why do you think this is so? Do you agree? When is it okay to drop ministries or projects? 14 161 Some resources to assist with learning and reflection on building capacity: • “Resurrecting Excellence: Should Christian Ministry Strive for Excellence?” by Kevin R. Armstrong, https:// www.faithandleadership.com/programs/spe/articles/ 2OO5O5/2OO5O427f.html • “Leverage strengths and opportunities,” Brenda Lang and Amy Purdy, http://ed.ted.com/on/sYINbM36#finally • “Maximizing Strengths v. Fixing Weaknesses: Why Choose?” by William C. Byham, http:// www.ddiworld.com/ddi/media/articles/ maximizingstrengthsvfixingweaknesseswhychoose_ar_ddi. pdf?ext=.pdf • “The weakness in virtue, the virtue in weakness,” by J. Warren Smith, https://www.faithandleadership.com/ sermons/the-weakness-virtue-the-virtue-weakness • “Embrace the Shake,” a TED talk by Phil Hansen, https:// www.ted.com/talks/phil_hansen_embrace_the_shake? language=en Work on “Weaknesses” 1. What was your worst subject in high school? What did you do about it? Looking back on that strategy, what did that teach you? Do you see similar patterns in how you work with your weaknesses today? 2. Think about the church or ministry setting where you currently serve. What areas of ministry are lacking? Why is this so; is this about a lack of time/energy/resources, or a lack of skill? How might this be addressed? Should it be? 3. The vast majority of parish priests are generalists; they engage in a wide variety of tasks from liturgy to pastoral care, from chairing meetings to Christian education, from working with children to working with seniors. What 15 162 does this mean when it comes to working on bettering the areas where one is weaker? 4. Ask around the church or ministry setting where you are serving. Is there a time when something in their life failed?What happened?W hat did they learn from it? How did their leaders help them through that experience? 5. When we are weak, God's strength is revealed. What does this mean theologically for how we should deal with our weaknesses, as individuals and as communities? Some resources to consider when focussing on working on weaknesses: • “How to Overcome a Weakness and Gain Confidence in Your Skills,” by Lea M acLeod, https://www.themuse.com/ advice/how-to-overcome-a-weakness-gain-confidence-in- your-skills • “Stop Focussing on Your Strengths,” Tomas Chamorro- Premuzic, https://hbr.org/ideacast/2016/01/stop-focusing- on-your-strengths.html • “Top Weaknesses of Effective Pastors,” by Tom H arper, https://www.churchcentral.com/blogs/top-weaknesses-of- effective-past ors/ • “Confronting Ourselves,” by John McClain, https:// www.ucg.org/beyond-today/blogs/confronting-ourselves Work on “Strengths” 1. In working in churches, what have people told you that you are good at?How have you responded?When was a time that you were able to use this strength for ministry, and how did that feel? 2. Think about the church or ministry setting where you currently serve. What is this church good at? W hat are they known for?How does this strength serve the gospel? 16 163 How has this strength been built to this level?How is it being renewed today? 3. The vast majority of parish priests are generalists; they engage in a wide variety of tasks from liturgy to past oral care, from chairing meetings to Christian education, from working with children to working with seniors. What does this mean when it comes to the theory that people are most effective when they work form their strengths? Some resources to consider for reflection and learning: • “Change your career by st epping into your strengths,” a TEDx talk by Lisa Cummings, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=l9ftEN9-d2Y • “Lead from Your Strengths,” by Chad Hall, http:// www.christianitytoday.com/past ors/2007/december- online-only/cln71210.html • “Build on Your Strengths: Worship Advice for Small Churches,” by Kathryn Bannister, http:// www.ministrymatters.com/worship/entry/1104/build-on- your-strengths-worship-advice-for-small-churches • “Leading from Your Strengths,” by Tim Elmore, https:// growingleaders.com/blog/leading-from-your-strengths/ • “Leading from Strength,” by Gail Dutton, https:// trainingmag.com/trgmag-ar ticle/leading-strength Strategy For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? - Luke 14:28 Once a vision is understood, strategy is needed to move any organization towards that vision. There are two wings to 17 164 strategy: analyzing the present situation, and setting goals that will move the vision forward. These two wings of strategy are among the least -taught in theological colleges, and the most -needed in moving a church or organization from point A (present situation) to point B (goals). W het her an ordained leader is seeking to introduce liturgical change, help develop a more missional culture in a parish, or seek to establish a discipleship mindset among church members, the skills of strategy will be necessary. In a learning program to help postulants to become more strategic, mentors might want to consider asking postulants to actually do this work with regards to a ministry team or committee with whom the postulant is working. Analyzing the present situation is well within the bounds of a postulant's authority within a field placement or other ministry setting, and while introducing major change is likely beyond their jurisdiction, setting some smaller, more achievable goals towards which progress might be made during a field placement certainly is. Addressing Strategy Postulants seeking to grow in Strategy might reflect with their mentors on some of these questions: 1. Who is a strategic leader with whom you have worked before, or whose work you have witnessed?In what area did this person work (government, business, church, etc.)? What made their work effective?How did people respond to their leadership? 2. When have you seen a change initiative work well because a leader took the time to do the work of analyzing the present situation and setting goals to make a change happen?Have you seen a change initiative fail because these things were not done well?What happened? 18 165 3. Who should do the work of strategic leadership in a parish setting? The incumbent? The churchwardens? The advisory board? How do you decide who should be involved in different change scenarios? 4. Think about a sermon you’ve recently preached. Did it analyze the present situation and/or set goals for your listeners’ future? 5. Take a look at the Diocesan Strategic Plan (http:// www.toronto.anglican.ca/aboutrthe-diocese/ourstrategic- plan/). How does it analyze the present situation? What are the goals it sets for the future? What are the steps it advocates to get from point A to point B? 6. In what ways is strategic planning different when done in a church setting than when it is done in a business setting? When working primarily with church members and volunteers rather than with employees? Some resources for learning and reflection: • “Strategy is not the same as operations,” by Dave Odom, https://www.faithandleadership.com/dave-odom-strategy- notrsame-operations • “5 Unfair Criticisms People Levy at Strategic Church Leaders,” by Carey Nieuwhof, http://careynieuwhof.com/5- unfair-criticisms-people-levy-at-strategic-church-leaders/ • “Overview of the Strategic Planning Process,” by Erica Olsen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU3FLxnDv_A • “Strategy Matters: The Importance of Strategic Thinking in the Church,” by Ed Stetzer, http:// www.christianitytodaycom/edstetzer/2014/october/ strategy-matters-importance-of-strategic-thinking-in- church.html • “Overcoming Barriers to Strategic Planning,” by Ron Robinson, https://charityvillage.com/content.aspx? 19 166 topic=overcoming_barriers_to_strategic_planning# .W LSM hXeZPwc Work on “Analyze pr esent situation” Analyzing the present situation is critical if an organization is going to move forward from that situation. Note that seeking why things are the way they are can sometimes become a matter of seeking to assign blame and is generally not as helpful as simply striving to understand all the aspects of the situation at hand. 1. Take a look at a ministry team or committee on which you currently serve. What is its goal?What are its strengths?What are its weaknesses?Do the members have a sense of the mission and goal of the c ommittee or team?Are its work and goals known in the broader parish/ ministry context? 2. How would you describe the worship life of the parish/ ministry context where you currently serve?To what degree does it matt er how this situation came to be? 3. What tools or disciplines might you use in analyzing the situation of a parish or faith community?How might the “secular” disciplines of sociology, psychology, history, economics, architecture, anthropology, systems theory, etc. be helpful?Do you possess training in some of these areas?Are there members of the parish or faith community who have such training? Some resources to consider for reflection and learning: • Uncovering Your Church's Hidden Spirit, by Celia Allison Hahn (published by the Alban Institute, 2001) • part two, “Diagnose the System,” of The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World by Ronald Heifetz et al (published by the Harvard Business Review Press, 2009) 20 167 • “Working on “wicked’ problems,” by L. Gregory Jones and Nathan Jones, https://www.faithandleadership.com/l- gregory-jones-and-nathan-jones-working-'wicked’- problems • How Your Church Family Works: Understanding Congregations as Emotional Systems, by Peter Steinke (published by the Alban Institute, 2006) Work on “Set Goals” In The 3 Colors of Leadership, Christian Schwarz offers an example from the American civil rights movement, during which Martin Luther King, Jr. would set the vision (“I have a dream”) and Ralph Abernathy would set the goals (“don’t ride the buses”). Goals in this context, then, are different from vision and are targets over which members of the organization have some control (“let’s make the church more loving”) and not results that might naturally occur when the goals are reached (more people attending church). This is includes the kinds of SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) goals some might be familiar with, but may also include bigger, broader goals as well. 1. Work with a ministry team or committee of which you are a member. What is one goal you can set for yourselves over the next number of months that will help you move toward the vision (of either that committee or of the wider church)? What are the steps that will be needed to get to that goal? What are the resources and people that will contribute to progress toward the goal? 2. When have you been part of an organization or team that effectively set goals and worked towards them? What was the role of the leader in that setting? What worked well? What did not? 3. What allows you, personally, to effectively work towards goals you set for yourself? What practices, tools, and 21 168 strategies are helpful? How might you use or adapt these when leading a group to work towards achieving goals? 4. It’s all very good and well to set a goal for oneself or a single ministry team or committee. How do we make sure the goals set for smaller sub-groups within a parish, or for a parish within a diocese, reflect the overall vision for that larger system? Some resources for learning and reflection on setting goals: • The movie Invictus (2009) would make for some good conversation and reflection about how leaders set goals with and for those they lead, and how they motivate others to work towards what then become shared goals. • “Seven Mistakes Leaders Make in Setting Goals,” by Ron Ashkenas, 2012; https://www.forbes.com/sites/ ronashkenas/2012/07/09/seven-mistakes-leaders-make-in- setting-goals/#68eo9c823800 • “Two reasons companies fail — and how to avoid them,” a TED talk by Knut Haanaes; https://www.ted.com/talks/ knut_haanaes_two_reasons_companies_fail_and_how_to_ avoid_them • “Organizational Goal Setting: Criteria and Process,” by Chandra Vennapoosa, 2012; http://www.exforsys.com/ career-center/goal-setting/organizational-goal-setting- criteria-a.html • “Should a Church Set Goals?” by Scott Scruggs, 2016; http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2016/may-web- exclusives/should-church-set-goals.html Training Teach them the statutes and instructions and make known to them the way they are to go and the things they are to do. Exodus 18:20 22 169 Teaching has always been a vital part of ordained ministry, and indeed is listed among the roles of those to be ordained priests in the admonition of the bishop to the ordinand in the ordination liturgy in the Book of Alternative Services. Training, however, is somewhat different than teaching. Depending in part on the subject matter, teaching might convey information that is merely interesting, or it might transmit information that helps individuals to deepen their spiritual lives, or it might equip people to do the work of the church in carrying out God's mission to the world. The word “training” implies a more active response to information; a leader certainly teaches the principles, but also models the principles for others. Addressing “Training” Mentors seeking to help postulants grow in “Training” could assist them to reflect on questions like these: 1. From which Christian leaders have you learned the most? How did they teach you?Words, actions, both?W hat made the biggest impact? 2. What do you see as the goal of training in a church context?Is this about skills (what one needs to know to teach church school or be a lay pastoral visitor), about faith formation (study of the Bible or how to pray), about discipleship (how one grows to follow Christ more deeply in all areas of life)?Is it about establishing a base from which overall organization transformation might take place?How do you think that the methods of training might differ when the goals are different? 3. What aspects of the life of the church that already exist give ordained leaders the opportunity to train others for ministry?How have you seen these used effectively in the past?Are there areas in the life of the church where the need for training (or further training, or different training) of others is required? 23 170 4. What do you know now, as a result of your theological education and formation for ministry, that you wish you had known five or ten or twenty years ago? How could you make that information available to members of the church? 5. Overheard in a pastoral theology course, on the topic of equipping all members of the church to become theologians: “That’s a great way to work yourself out of a job!” How do you respond? Is there theological information you would be reluctant to share with laypeople? Why? 6. How is preaching training? In what ways is it not? Some resources for reflection on and conversation on “training” • “Five Reasons Not to Equip Lay People,” by Wayne Jacobsen, 1988; http://www.christianitytodaycom/pastors/ 1988/summer/8813O44.html • “The Purpose of the Lay Person,” by Richard J. Krejcir, 1999; http://www.churchleadership.org/apps/articles/ default.asp?articleid=41974&columnid=4544 • The Authority of the Laity by Verna Dozier (published by the Alban Institute, 1984) • movie, Dead Poets Society, 1989 Work on “Teaching the Principles” In a “post-fact” world, where the opinion of the loudest is so easily accepted as the truth, the need for Christian leaders to teach has never been more urgent. Because of this context, however, it is vital that this teaching happen in a way that honours both the timelessness of that which is truly timeless and the lived experience of those faithful Christians who are the members of our churches. Ordained leaders will teach in a way that does both. 24 171 Postulants who wish to strengthen their aptitude for teaching the principles will benefit most from the opportunity to actually teach, and many field placements will afford an opportunity to do so as well as a chance for evaluation and reflection afterwards. Mentors may want to make themselves available as reflection partners throughout this process. Some questions for reflection and discussion: 1. Who will be learning from you?What is their background, their age, their experience of church?How will knowing these things impact what and how you teach? 2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a pre- prepared curriculum in leading an adult study group, teen confirmation class, vacation Bible school, or sexual misconduct policy training seminar?When do you start from scratch, when do you adapt someone else's materials, and how do you know? 3. How do you know when your teaching has been effective? If the program is of significant length, what are ways to adjust course partway through if needed? 4. What are the different styles of teaching information? When might you choose to lead a discussion group rather than give a lecture, or vice versa?When would you bring in other resources (videos or readings), and why? Some resources for reflection and conversation on “teaching the principles:” • “Learning Styles and Experiential Learning,” by Saul McLeod, 2013; https://www.simplypsychology.org/ learning-kolb.html • “How to speak so that people want to listen,” a TED talk by Julian Treasure, 2014; https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=eI ho2S0ZahI 25 172 • chapter 21, “Inspire people,” in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World by Ronald Heifetz et al (published by the Harvard Business Review Press,2009. • “Equipping the Saints,” at http:// newtestamentchurch.com/articles-of-interest-to-church- elders/index-of-ar ticles-relating-to-church-elders/ equipping-the-saints/ • chapter 7, “Preaching,” in The Preaching Life by Barbara Brown Taylor (published by Cowley Publications, 1993) Work on “Model the Principles” Those who walk the walk will always be more effective trainers than those who only talk the talk. St. Paul often wrote to new Christians and emerging leaders that they ought to imitate him, not to become his clones but in order to learn from his example. Strong leaders need to be seen to have integrity, to be living out the principles they teach. Postulants who wish to work on modelling the principles may need to pay attention not only to how they live, but in making how they live more visible to those in the community where they serve. 1. Who has been a leader who you have admired for their integrity, for their commitment to living out what they say they believe?What difference did this make in their leadership? 2. What personality trait in your current super visor (as opposed to ministry skills) do you most admire?Why? How does that trait contribute to that person's effectiveness as a leader in ministry? 3. How does your own background (your education, former career, cultural or linguistic background, family, position within the church) impact your teaching and leading others?In what ways do these things make it more likely 26 173 people will listen to your teaching? In what ways do these things serve as barriers to others’ learning? Some resources for conversation and reflection: • “How to Be a Good Role Model,” by Jim Wideman, 2013; http://churchleaders.com/children/childrens-ministry- how-tos/165445-how-to-be-a-good-role-model.html • “Everyday Leadership,” a TED talk by Drew Dudley, 2013; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAy6EawKKME • “The Leader as a Role Model,” by Dan Reiland; http:// globalchristiancenter.com/administrative-leadership/ church-leadership/24792-the-leader-as-a-role-model • Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero (published by Zondervan, 2006) Progression Be strong and courageous, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. ~ Joshua 1:9 Either one is a defender of the status quo or one is seeking progress in some way. The NCD category of “Progression” addresses how we lead people through changes processes. Since the kingdom of God has not yet arrived in all its fullness, leaders in the church will need to be capable of employing a variety of strategies for leading change, be this liturgical change, a shift in the focus of a church from maintenance to mission, taking on new ministries or giving up old ones. Postulants will not have the opportunity in field placements to lead momentous changes in the overall direction of their ministry settings. However, they can certainly introduce smaller changes in how a particular committee does its work, working alongside supervisors in rolling out a new process or program, and so on. Those who wish to focus on working on “progression” will need to work closely with their supervisors 27 174 to ensure that the change they lead will be appropriate to the context, and mentors will be useful reflection partners in this work. Addressing “Progression” Mentors seeking to help postulants grow in “Progression” could encourage conversations around these questions: 1) When have you been part of some kind of change in the past, in a work, church or school setting?What was your role? How was the change introduced?What made this an effective or ineffective strategy? 2) What do you think makes leading change in the church different from, or similar to, change in other settings (government, business, education)? 3) What do you think are some helpful ways to respond to those who criticize the direction you believe a group should take? 4) Do you think change within an organization happens most effectively when it is introduced and implemented quickly, or when it is a matt er of slow and st eady progression towards a goal?Why? 5) What changes in behaviour did Jesus advocate during his earthly ministry?How did he introduce these? 6) It's been said that the test of a leader truly only comes when that person is leading a group through a process of change. Do you agree?Why or why not? 7) When in the life of the church might slow, steady progress towards a goal be more effective than advocating a bold move? When might the reverse be true? Some resources for reflection and conversation on “progression:” • Influencer: The new science of leading change, by Joseph Grenny et al, 2013. 28 175 • “Six keys to leading positive change,” a TED talk by Rosabeth Ross Kanter. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=owU5aTNPJbs • “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” by John Kotter. http://www.gsbcolorado.org/uploads/general/ PreSessionReadingLeadingChange-John_Kotter.pdf • “10 Principles of Leading Change M anagement,” by DeAnne Aguirre and Micah Alpern, https://www.strategy- business.com/article/00255?gko=9d35b • The 4 disciplines of execution, by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey & Jim Huling. 2012. Work on “Nurture Steady Progress” “Slow and st eady wins the race,” or so the tortoise taught us as children following his victory over the hare in a running race in the fable. Every leader needs to know how to slowly and intentionally lead people in a given direction. Some changes are most effective when steady progress is the goal, and this is particularly true when seeking cultural change. This may be the most difficult piece to work on in a field placement for postulants, who are simply unlikely to be in one place for long enough to allow for practical experience in this area to bear fruit. However, if this is an area for concern for postulants, there may be other places in their lives where the strategy of nurturing st eady progress could be enact ed. 1. When have you experienced a leader in the church nurturing steady progress towards a goal?What strategies did s/he use?How did people know that progress was actually being made? 29 176 2. What is a habit you have that you would like to break, or a new habit you would like to take on? What is a habit you have successfully implemented in your life? What would/ did it take to make this your new reality? 3. Reflect on the phrase, “the fullness of time” and the concept of kairos, as opposed to chronos. What do these mean theologically? In the life of the Church? 4. Is there a connection between nurturing slow, steady progress and nurturing relationships? Why do you think so? Some resources for conversation and reflection: • “There’s Only One Way to Change: Slowly, Over Time,” by Jennifer Kunst, https://wwwpsychologytodaycom/blog/ headshrinkers-guide-the-galaxy/201109/theres-only-one- way-change-slowly-over-time • “7 Life Skills for Making Steady Progress,” http:// advancedlifeskills.com/blog/change-slowly-but-surely/ • “The Progress Principle,” a TED talk by Teresa Amabile, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD6N8bsjOEE • “Slow Ideas,” by Atul Gawande, http:// www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas • “In Praise of Slowness,” a TED talk by Carl Honore, https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_honore_praises_slowness • “Why Slow Change is Better Than Fast Change,” by Dan Erickson, http://www.hipdiggs.com/slow-change/ • “Cultural Change that Sticks,” by Jon Katzenbach, Ilona Steffen, and Caroline Kronley, https://hbr.org/2012/07/ cultural-change-that-sticks Work on “Advocating Bold Moves” There are a plethora of jokes about the resistance to change in the Anglican Church, perhaps the most well-known being, 30 177 “How many Anglicans does it take to change a light bulb?” - “Change?!?! Who said that lightbulb has to change?!?” Bold moves are not always rewarded in our church culture. Leaders, however, need to have the ability to take groups boldly forward in response to God's call. Postulants who wish to practice this skill will need to work very closely with their supervisors to ensure the moves they wish to take are in line with the overall direction of the church, or they may want to look at an area of their lives outside the field placement for a place to practice advocating bold moves. 1. When have you taken a big, risky step in the past?W hat happened?How does that experience shape how you approach change today? 2. What are the dangers of making a bold mo ve?W hat is the potential? 3. When have you seen a leader advocate a bold move in a given direction?How did s/he bring others on board with their idea?What ultimately happened?W hat factors impacted the result? 4. In what passages of scripture do biblical characters take bold moves?What helps them to succeed? Some resources for reflection and conversation: • Daring Greatly, by Brene Brown. • “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals for Christian Workplaces,” http://blog.bcwinstitute.org/big-hairy-audacious-goals-for- christian-workplaces/ • “What the Best Transformational Leaders Do,” by Scott Anthony and Evan I. Scwartz, https://hbr.org/2017/05/ what-the-best-transformational-leaders-do • “6 Steps for Successfully Bringing Change to Your Company,” by Ken Blanchard and Scott Blanchard, https://www.fastcompany.com/3015083/6-steps-for- successfully-bringing-change-to-your-company 31 178 • “7 Steps to Help"Your Church Change Before They Know They Need To,” by Karl Vaters, http:// www.christianitytodaycom/karl-vaters/2O16/may/7-steps- church-change-before-they-know-they-need-to.html • The movie, Selma 32 179 Photo Credits p 2, Used by permission, Creative Commons license: https:// www.flickr.com/photos/jdlasica/1132o863865/in/photostream/ p 4, Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.maxpixel.net/Choose-The-RightrDirection-Career Direction-Direction-1536336 p 5, Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-man-standing-on-rock- mountain-pointing-out-mountain-842687/ p 8, Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.flickr.eom/photos/92416586@No5/12188421633/in/ photostream/ p 11: Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.pexels.com/photo/man-person-street-shoes-2882/ p 12: Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// pixabay.com/en/light-bulb-papercrumples-solution-1024218/ p 16: Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-barbell-84113o/ p 17: Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.pexels.com/photo/person-standing-on-hand-rails-with- arms-wide-open-facing-the-mountains-and-clouds-725255/ p 18: Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.pexels.com/photo/arrows-box-business-chalk-533189/ p 20, Used by permission, Creative Commons License https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D- Day_Museum_Stage_Door_Canteen_From_BalconyJPG p 23, Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.flickr.com/photos/codnewsroom/32802741855. p 25, Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// pixnio.com/people/african-american-woman-is-talking-with- caucasian-male-and-female 33 180 p 26, Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosimoes7/1301014184 p 28, Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.flickr.com/photos/nicksieger/4778230211 p 29, Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.flickr.eom/photos/88394234@No4/8139271342 p 31, Used by permission, Creative Commons license, https:// www.maxpixel.net/Risky-High-Spirits-Courage-Rock-Risk- Sky-Balance-3047147 34 181 APPENDIX B: WORKING GROUP INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Two Working Groups were convened on November 21, 2017, each comprised of postulants and mentors as well as members of the Postulancy Committee who did not serve as mentors. Because I was too far away to lead these in person, the Working Groups discussions were facilitated by experienced members of the Committee who had not served as mentors using the following questions which had been sent to them ahead of time. Notes were taken by staff of the Diocese of Toronto. 1. How would you define leadership? 2. Do you think that leadership skills are important for ministry? Why/why not? 3. Who is a leader in the church, past or present, whom you admire? What about this person makes/made his/her leadership effective? 4. Do you think that ministry requires a different kind of leadership than other sectors of society (business, government, education, health care, etc.)? How would you characterize the kinds of leadership needed in ministry? 182 5. What have you learned about your own leadership style as you have been preparing for ordained ministry? Have your meetings with your postulant's advisor and/or the NCD Empowering Leadership assessment helped you to think about this in new ways? 6. (How) Have you adapted leadership skills gained in other areas of life (previous work, volunteer work, previous ministry, family, etc.) for use in a ministry context? (How) Have you been working on growing your leadership skills (through field placements, theological college, etc.)? 7. What would be helpful for you as you continue to grow as a leader in the church? 183 APPENDIX C: MENTORS' FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEW QUESTIONS I convened a meeting of the mentors on November 21, 2017 and led the conversation via Skype. This was less than satisfactory, as the technology on their end cut out three times over the course of the conversation. The following questions were discussed: 1. What are your overall impressions about the Mentors' Manual and the leadership development program you were asked to use with your postulant over the past ten months? 2. How was the Manual helpful as you met with your postulant? 3. What challenges did you encounter as you implemented the program? 4. Did the Manual give you what you needed in order to do what you were being asked to do? 5. Did you observe growth in your postulant over the course of this program? In what ways? 6. Do you have suggestions for improving the program in the future? 184 APPENDIX D: MENTORS QUESTIONNAIRE QUESTIONS Mentors were invited to submit further feedback via a (potentially) anonymous questionnaire that asked the following questions: 1. To what degree did you follow the program outlined in the Mentors' Manual? a) never opened it b) used a few activities c) followed it closely 2. Do you agree that leadership development is a worthwhile part of formation during postulancy? Why/why not? 3. Were there particular parts of the Manual you found helpful or insightful for you as a mentor?4. 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Interview with Group of Mentors and Postulants by Jenny Andison. Toronto, ON. November 21. Zachary, Lois. 2012. The Mentor's Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships. 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. ***** This is the end of the e-text. This e-text was brought to you by Tyndale University, J. William Horsey Library - Tyndale Digital Collections *****