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Posted on Jul 28, 2011 in church stuff, leadership, the refuge, video convos | 12 comments

copastoring part 2 – a video conversation

copastoring part 2this is part 2 in a 5 part series i’m doing here on co-pastoring & shared leadership.  if you missed it, you can watch the first video conversation with my friend & refuge teammate karl wheeler.

one of the things we talk about in this piece is the difference between roles & relationship.  this is a place i think needs the most work when it comes to considering co-pastoring.  if we focus on roles, then we look at “who can do this or that function” instead of looking at the bigger picture–relationship.

through relationship we learn each other’s giftedness, strengths, weaknesses, and figure out how to live and learn together.  if we focus on roles, it becomes a rectangle on an org chart that needs to be filled with someone with those same skills. that means that if a person in that rectangle is called out of the community for some reason that we’d have to find someone to “replace” them in their role or function.  this is so typical, really, in most every organization.  we assume that we need someone who can do this or do that as opposed to finding people dedicated to learning to live and love and lead alongside one another in community.

this is a really hard shift to make when we are focused on building churches instead of cultivating communities.  building churches  often tends to point toward task, objectives, and strategies.  cultivating communities, however, is about creating containers to practice the ways of Jesus. in this model, relationship & commitment to practice in community is more important than role and function.

this sometimes means there are gaps in filling the needs and that some of the work won’t get done in the way we hope for.  in different ways over the years  this has happened at the refuge with music & kids & administrative stuff.  but instead of recruiting for it outside of us, we live with what we have in our community & respect the gap.  it’s not easy, we feel the absence sometimes, but we try  to learn to live with what we’ve got instead of working to find someone who can fit that “role” just to fill a spot that seems like it’s supposed to be filled.

the pushback to this usually is “but we need to make sure that we have people who can do this or that or otherwise the ministry won’t work.”  my response is that maybe the part that needs to be learned isn’t how to make sure we have every angle covered but rather to trust, wait, and learn how to live without certain things together.  in all kinds of ways, i think that’s leadership.

and practice isn’t about perfection. it’s about practice.

i also love how karl says that after all his years of seminary & pastor-training he had never even one class on how to be a friend, the actual skill that’s really needed in life together in missional community.  shared leadership, to me, is somehow about real friendship.

so here you go, another 10 minute or so conversation about co-pastoring:

co-pastoring part 2 from kathy escobar on Vimeo.

 

what do you think of this idea of putting relationship above function when it comes to shared leadership? 

 

 

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Posted on Jul 25, 2011 in church stuff, equality, leadership, the refuge, video convos | 6 comments

some thoughts on co-pastoring, part 1

when i first started this blog over 3 years ago i wrote a little post about shared leadership that still gets a lot of play–why i believe in co-pastoring.  it makes me happy that people are at least considering the idea enough to do a google search on it & read more about it.  5 1/2 years ago i had never even heard of the word.  now, i’m in the thick of it & wouldn’t do it any other way.

for me, the words co-pastoring & sharing leadership are synonymous.  some churches & communities use the word “pastor” & some may not.  the idea, though, is the same–no one person “at the top”.  at the refuge, we use “co-pastor”, so for the sake of this conversation i’m going to stick with that terminology.

today marks the start of a short blog series about the ins and outs of co-pastoring.  it will include a couple of video interviews with my friend and co-pastor teammate, karl wheeler, who was the catalyst behind actually starting the refuge and co-pastoring together (more on that in a minute), an interview with our co-pastor team at the refuge (there are currently 4 of us, 2 men & 2 women), and some responses from friends of mine in different parts of the country who either have or are co-pastoring.

i know for some of you this isn’t the most exciting topic in the world and you’re just not that interested in church leadership.  i hope you’ll listen in anyway, because some of these ideas might resonate, especially on why much of the leadership you may have experienced in the past didn’t seem quite right somehow.  i also know that many of you are leading in your communities in different shapes & forms and are wanting to explore shifts in what that could look like.   these posts won’t have all the answers & there are no formulas to follow.  but my hope is to encourage & challenge others that a different way is possible–that the idea of one leader in charge of it all isn’t necessarily the only way even though that’s what it always typically looks like in most every church, most every organization.

i’m going to start with a video conversation with my friend & co-pastor teammate karl.  there are two of them, recorded on my mac webcam with no editing, no big preparation, just a way to hear more of what we’re doing & what it’s like for us.  without karl, the refuge wouldn’t exist.  he’s the one who encouraged me to step into co-lead pastoring with him & plant this little crazy community 5 1/2 years ago despite the obstacles.  we’ve been through the war together, from getting the crap kicked out of us together on a big church staff to slugging through what it means to lead this wild, diverse, poor little church with a huge heart for people. in different ways, we’ve both tried to quit, to run, to throw in the towel, but by the grace of God we continue to stay in.  i think it’s because somewhere down deep we know we’re learning something that we can’t learn any other way.

yeah, i have no doubt that co-pastoring is a place where mutual submission, loving our neighbor, and leaning into being our own unique parts of the Body of Christ is put to the test. 

so here we go, part 1 of a 5 part series on co-pastoring:

copastoring part 1 from kathy escobar on Vimeo.

as always, love to hear your thoughts!

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ps:  i added a new page on the blog that shares a little more about down we go & also includes a video trailer  that my awesome friend & fellow refuge-ee craig spinks of recycle your faith put together that shares a little more about what’s inside (it’s different from the downward mobility one).  some of you already saw it on facebook but thanks for passing the link on to those you think might like this kind of stuff!

 

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