When I was in Scarborough Presbytery, before the change of structure in Toronto Conference (well, even after), there was a lot of discussion about why - all year round, every church wanted a "perfect pastor" who did everything well; why were we all beavering away in our little silos, all of us doing exactly the same thing week in and week out.
There was a small group of us - interestingly pretty much only women clergy - who came together to share services and collaborate on activities. For a while it worked. Then, once again, every congregation wanted to do its own thing, have its own activities - and little by little my clergy colleagues got "too busy" to collaborate. I do have to say that, compared to the guys, it was close to a dream come true. Not quite, but close.
Now, I am in a new conference with new colleagues. - and although there has been a lot of talk about collaborating, it's rapidly vanishing into the mists of "what might have been" because one of us is "too busy with the congregation."
There are five United Churches here, two of which are not really able to continue to function. Yet none of the five can afford to function independently of the others; we need each other, in more ways than some may wish to admit. My own congregation wants to collaborate, wants to do more things together - so do a couple of the others, but it isn't going to happen, at least not in the near future.
There are too many Lone Rangers in ministry - too many who need to be in charge, who need to set the pace, and others have to come along behind. Recently a colleague said to me "Well, I'm too busy now for that date, so it will have to be this date. It would have been nice to have you there, but if not, that's all we can do."
Lesson learned. I will continue to work for collaboration and true collegiality, but I am not sure I'm going to hold out much hope. We just don't do that well - at least not yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment