Report of the Staff Needs Discernment Group

At its October 2001 meeting, the Stewards affirmed the creation of a group to discern "staff" needs for the community, not as a reflection of dissatisfaction with current staff but rather in light of the departure of the remaining founding leader, Sonya Dyer, and of our impending move to our own building on Carroll Street in Takoma, DC. The discernment group (the group) began meeting in November 2001 and has met twice monthly since. One meeting was open to all Seekers; input from that meeting confirmed to the group that its own discussions were on target with the needs and desires of the wider community.

In 1976, Seekers Church was founded by the call of Fred Taylor and Sonya Dyer on a premise, slightly different from that of Church of the Saviour, that the vision and authority, form and shape of the community would emerge from the members of the community themselves, rather than from a single leader. Fred left the community in the late 1980s and Sonya continued to serve as a leader for the community on a stipend, supported by other volunteer leaders. Recognizing, however, that not all nurturing of community life can happen on a volunteer basis, in 1989 the Seekers Membership, those who are now called "Stewards", issued a "Call to Leadership of the Whole" to provide, in the words of Bob Bayer, "additional, visible leadership. . . to develop and nurture the life of the Seekers Community out of its original call." The team that resulted consisted of Sonya, Peter Bankson, Bob Bayer and Kay Shultz, who, collectively, were paid for 7 work days per week. When Bob and Kay left the team in 1993, we again sounded a call to return the team to its earlier capacity of 7 work days per week. That effort resulted in the team of Sonya, Peter and Kate Cudlipp.

When Sonya retired from the team in June 2000, and moved away from the area shortly thereafter, the Stewards considered various options to address both the immediate loss of several days of team time per week as well as the significance of no longer having either of our founding leaders as members of our community. After deliberation, and in consultation with Peter and Kate, the Stewards concluded that it would be helpful for Seekers to "sit with" this situation for some period of time and do nothing to fill out the team, as long as Kate and Peter felt they could manage what was asked of them. A little more than a year later, in the fall of 2001, the Stewards felt it was finally time to begin the process of discerning team needs, in light of the loss of Sonya, of our move to our own building at Carroll Street, and of the general state of the life of the community, and so commissioned a work group to do so. At about the same time, Jeanne Marcus expressed to the Stewards her sense of call to be a part of the team. Jeanne's coming forward represented something new for Seekers with respect to its paid staff team: an individual approaching the community with a call to the team rather than the community sounding a call to the team based on felt need. Although the full ramifications of this approach are not yet clear, it should be acknowledged as a somewhat new development in our understanding of leadership. After considerable discussion, Stewards affirmed Jeanne in her call, for an interim period until the discernment work was completed. Currently, Seekers pays for a total of 4 work days a week, from Peter, Kate and Jeanne.

In attempting to meet the responsibilities assigned to it, the group began with an analysis of the values of Seekers Church because these values bear on questions of leadership and authority. In keeping with the early vision of Sonya and Fred, and as expressed in our values, discussed below, leadership and authority in Seekers Church come from and are encouraged from many sources: the Stewards, mission groups, ad hoc groups such as the Building Development Group and the Decorating Team that have formed around Carroll Street agendas, as well as individuals who are granted authority to exercise their gifts on behalf of the community in particular circumstances. We want both the work of the community as well as the visioning for the community to occur in those settings, as much as possible. The group came to understand this as "leadership from the whole," distinguishing it from the term "leadership of the whole" that was used to describe the staff team in 1989. Over the years since 1976, we have increasingly sought ways to model the non-hierarchical leadership expressed in this founding concept. Shared leadership and implementation of servanthood, both discussed below, are the two primary values that undergird such modeling.

We began with a review of values because they represent the core of who we are. Moreover, leadership in Seekers Church emerges through the engagement of these values. If one is called to leadership in Seekers Church, s/he is expected to embody these values as well as to embrace, support and nurture them in others in the community. The primary source for the values discussed here is the "A Guide to Seekers Church," ("the Guide") and particularly, "The Call of Seekers Church" ("the Call").

Our call is to be a "Seekers community" which comes together in weekly worship rooted in the Biblical faith, with shared leadership; and disperses with a common commitment to understand and implement Christian servanthood in the structures in which we live our lives.

1. Community - (as expressed in the Guide): a place where all who come can be welcomed, nourished, and empowered to live and celebrate God's call on their lives. "Community" in Seekers is built through a number of key activities:

These activities occur through our living out our value of shared leadership (see below).

2. Rootedness in Biblical faith - Seekers expresses this value in a number of activities, in addition to worship, as stated in the Call. We expect the School of Christian Living, special celebrations, and the religious education of the children and youth to be rooted Biblically.

3. Ecumenicity. Seekers Church values the tradition and rituals of the various denominations and sects within the universal Christian Church. "Rootedness" does not mean "restricted to" and Seekers welcomes the expression of ideas and rituals from Catholic, Orthodox, and a wide variety of Protestant denominations in our worship and religious education.

4. Shared leadership - Seekers Church believes that each Christian is equipped by the Holy Spirit to carry on the continuing work of God's creation. We believe that the spiritual gifts enumerated in the New Testament are the starting point, but not an all-inclusive list, of spiritual gifts. Once that spiritual gift is evoked and confirmed by others in the community, a person has authority to exercise that gift as servant and as leader in the community. However, the person is always accountable for the faithful exercise of that gift.

As a result, "the role of the staff team is to encourage leadership from all Seekers, rather than to provide leadership for the life of the community." (The Guide)

…The staff team works to enable worship and other expressions of community life to embody the images, theology, hopes, visions, pains and limitations of our life as God's people…to encourage and empower each person in the community to deepen his or her personal spiritual life, live out his or her individual gifts and callings, and offer them to the community and the world as expressions of the life of Christ in that person. (The Guide)

Seekers Church believes in the "priesthood of all believers"¹ but recognizes that there are certain priestly functions, such as marriage, that require state licensing. Seekers Church expects that one or more of the team will seek and maintain such licensure. In addition, we recognize that others in the community are licensed to perform such rituals.

We also value the exercise of gifts and talents that have not been formally evoked and confirmed as spiritual gifts. For example, the coordination of overnights, special ceremonies, silent retreats, informal gatherings are frequently provided by one or more volunteers.

5. Commitment - We believe that we find true freedom by entrusting our lives to God's grace through Christ. This entrustment results in a freely chosen obligation to use our time and financial resources to love and support each other. Seekers Church lives in the tension between a radical vision of inclusivity and the radical vision of a church where the members commit to Christ and each other in unlimited liability. (The Guide) "We welcome all who come, but expect a conscious commitment to the community from those who stay." (The Guide)

We believe that this commitment requires careful spiritual preparation, which often begins with classes in the School of Christian Living. Following several classes in the School, we encourage people to move toward a mission group, as we believe that this commitment is best supported through a set of individual and mission group disciplines.

The mission group spiritual director assumes primary but not sole responsibility for working with each member to help him/her live out that commitment. This commitment is annually re-examined over a period of weeks and then expressed in a community ritual during worship.

6. Implementation of servanthood - Seekers Church believes that God has called each of us "to a particular work in the world that helps bring about God's vision for all of creation." (The Guide.) As noted earlier, Seekers believe that the Holy Spirit has given each of us a spiritual gift to carry out this work. Our mission groups are an expression of these beliefs. In contrast to a congregation with clergy, Seekers does not depend on the servant/leadership team to identify places of potential servanthood. Nor does Seekers rely on the servant/leadership team to ascertain how well the mission group is performing in its servanthood. Instead, Seekers relies on each member of the mission group to hold the other members accountable for the faithful exercise of their spiritual gifts, and on the mission group to hold itself collectively accountable for the faithful servanthood it has been called to do.

7. Welcome and Inclusivity. As stated in the Guide, we have sought "to maintain 'a place were all who come can be welcomed, nourished, and empowered to live and celebrate God's call on their lives. This inclusivity is radical as we welcome a person's participation from the moment that he or she walks in the door." In addition, "we desire and welcome participation in Seekers Church of women and men of every race and sexual orientation," (the Call). "We see children, youth and adults of all ages as valuable and valued parts of our community, and desire their inclusion in our care, our ministry, and our life together." (the Call).

The Stewards expect that each individual in Seekers Church will implement this value. In addition, some mission groups and informal groups have taken on responsibility for embodying the welcoming responsibility. (In particular, the Spirituality and Sexuality mission group has assumed responsibility for assisting us in living out our welcome to persons of varying sexual orientation. Similarly, Journeying with Children mission group is taking some responsibility for ensuring that activities are designed with consideration for whether children and youth are valued and can participate fully. That mission group seeks to provide a parallel activity designed for children and youth when a planned activity requires an adult level of spiritual maturity.)

8. Seeking. As stated in our Call, "Seekers are not persons who have arrived, but persons who are intentionally on the way" and "committed to bringing forth prophetic leadership from contemporary sources." (the Guide)

Values implicit in the Call or elsewhere expressed in the Guide B. Values implicit in the Call or elsewhere expressed in the Guide

9. Spiritual growth. Seekers Church believes that each individual is on a spiritual journey. We seek to nurture that through worship - on Sunday and in mission groups-, classes in the School of Christian Living, specific disciplines of the mission group, silent retreats, and special events.

10. Pastoral care. We believe that our commitment to support and guide each other in Christian community means a commitment to spend time with each other in deep spiritual listening, in asking questions that help each other find Christ in ourselves and in community, and, when asked, in providing guidance that is the result of prayer and deep reflection. We believe that each member is capable of providing such pastoral care, although preparation is needed.

11. Honest and transforming conversation. We believe that our commitment to support and guide each other in Christian community means that we are honest with each other. If this leads to conflict, we seek to identify and manage such conflict in a healthy manner, using third persons in the community as informal mediators and trainers.

What, then, is the role of paid staff in a community where leadership comes from the whole? As Seekers Church recognized in 1989, we need an identified team to do those things which the community agreed had to be done, but which could not be done adequately on a volunteer basis.

We also recognize that the team role is more than just doing that which the rest of us don't get around to. Peter has described the role of the team as that of the "wipers" in a coal-fired, steam-powered ocean ship, the ones who walk back and forth for eight hour shifts wiping the drive shaft with an oily rag, checking the adjustments, making sure everything is working properly. "They were the lowest of the crew - yet their ability to monitor the engines and sound the alarm when something started to go awry often made the difference between success and failure during long voyages." (Peter Bankson - "My Staff Team Role" December 7, 2001). Pat Conover described the team as "our autonomic nervous system, to keep us breathing and digesting in a healthy rhythm." (Pat Conover, "Paying for Help in Seekers" Early 2002). These metaphors describe the servanthood/behind the scenes role of the team.

The group came to understand that we really ask more of our team than filling the gaps and working behind the scenes. At the outset, the group chose to call the people whose job we were creating/describing "the team," recognizing that the words "staff" and "leadership" each carried implications that we had not yet discussed. Over time, we observed that collectively we naturally came to refer to "the team" as "the leadership team," despite all our discussions about the high value that Seekers Church places on shared, non-hierarchical leadership. We spent considerable time discerning the quality of leadership that we want from the leadership team that may differ from that which we seek from all members of the community.

We came to understand that, in addition to servanthood, we want members of our leadership team to embody an authentic spiritual authority that is recognized by the whole community and that elicits respectful listening but does not claim ultimate power in any situation. We also want them to know the "dance steps" relative to different points of authority within the community; we want the leadership team to know when to step forward to encourage, when to step back to let new growth blossom, when to fill a void and when to let the void be.

We listed and classified as best we could the tasks that need doing by or for our religious community, in an effort to understand how and where in the community these things now get taken care of and what gaps exist. We did this recognizing that while the leadership team may "carry" something for the community at one time, that work may be taken up by a mission group at another time. (A recent example of this is authority and responsibility for the religious education of our children and youth.) Thus, this list represents what the leadership team needs to be aware of, on behalf of the community, rather than what the leadership team needs to do.

1. Prophetic vision of the community - articulating what we are about and a vision of what we should be about as a church "in the tradition of the Church of the Saviour."

a. holding tension between challenging the congregation and creating and holding space for renewal and re-creation

Concerning Carroll Street, we identified three somewhat distinct roles: (1) periodic staffing, such as answering the phone, cleaning up, attending to things that need fixing; (2) general building management, as in overseeing/supervising day-to-day staffing; and (3) attending to building use - making decisions about who can use space for what purposes. The first set of tasks could be performed by someone within or outside the community who could be paid a salary. The second and third sets of tasks might be undertaken by an individual or mission group called to such activity, but if not, would be within the rubric of activities of the leadership team. It is possible, but not necessary, that one person on the leadership team could undertake all three sets of tasks; that person would still need to meet generalist criteria for being a part of the leadership team. It is also possible that the leadership team could share all three functions among its members.

We struggled to find the words to name why compensation is important for the leadership team. We said it is a way of acknowledging the team's authority, but at the same time, we recognized that others in Seekers exercise leadership and are granted authority but are not paid. Some felt compensation makes it easier to approach the team and make claims on their time; since we expect leadership team members to also be participating in the life of Seekers Church as Stewards and members of mission groups, activities done as part of the team are clearly beyond what we ask of others. (We noted that the distinction between activities as a Steward, a mission group member or a team member is not always clear.)

We recognized, as a separate issue from team compensation, that there are positions or tasks (e.g., treasurer, commissioning art work, commissioning reports) for which we may be willing to pay someone whom we, nevertheless, do not expect to be part of the leadership team.

We named what we pay the team now ($200/work day at the entry level) a stipend - more than symbolic remuneration, but less than generous, both as a dollar amount as well as in terms of the time actually devoted to the work. We wrestled with the basis for compensation; we did not feel that pay based on either a number of days or a number of hours adequately captures the way in which the leadership team does its work. We also recognized that we need some basis for measuring compensation for budgeting purposes as well as for recognizing differing time commitments and differing levels of experience.

We do not want to participate in the societal norm of underpaying paid church leadership and we realize that the basis of our current compensation puts those who must work on a full-time or nearly full-time basis for an appropriate income at a disadvantage. While we have not resolved these issues to our satisfaction, we encourage those called to the team to state clearly the limits of what they are able to offer in terms of time.

An alternative approach to compensation (that we are not ready to adopt) is to pay those who need money to follow their call, rather than paying for the reasons stated above. As noted below, we recommend that the community work with this issue for awhile and revisit the issue of compensation in a few years.

Recommendations based on this report have been submitted as a separate document.

¹ The group had considerable discussion about the meaning of the term "priesthood of all believers" as well as who in the community we believe to be authorized to perform which sacraments. We recognized that the subject is one that needs considerable further development, but that, other than to identify that at least one team member should be licensed to perform sacraments, such development is not the work of this group.

Report of the Team Needs Discernment Group