Excellence?

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The word “excellence” being used in UCC circles and elsewhere to set a high standard for ministry and other professional settings. I have recently been working with a list of personal qualities and professional skills that might define excellence in Interim Ministry. Still, I find I am of two minds about the choice of language. On one hand we can all strive to do what we do in the very best way we can. One definition of excellence that I read was that excellence was doing something better that we had done before. That recognizes differing abilities and can be a way to encourage growth, but does not establish an actual level of competence. Another approach is to establish and to aim for a set of standards. Standards can be set at any level from minimum competence to unreachable ideal. One of the lists of criteria for excellence that I received from a colleague was followed by two final items: “Walks on water, and turns water into wine.” The list was primarily a list of important tools in which an excellent interim should be expert. In some ways the last two were no more impossible than the 15 items ahead of it if we were setting them all up as necessary for effective interim ministry. Very few of us master all of the tools that have been created to help us do our work. Most of us understand and use a pretty good sized tool-kit, but may not be experts in every aspect of every tool. For example, we all use a word-processing software like Microsoft Word. Most of us get by quite well with the basic tools. Some of us use all the styles and tabs and formatting tools and many more of the tricks and techniques embedded within the software and find them very helpful and more efficient. But we are not being judged by our ability to use those tools, but by the value and presentation of the words that we write.

So, when we create a list of tools for interim ministry, Appreciative Inquiry, Asset Mapping, systems theory, conflict resolution, etc., and then say that these are necessary for excellence, I think we are confusing the toolbox with the final project. (Can you tell I’ve been working on my house?) Don’t get me wrong, I think the tools are very important. A worker installing a window in my house decided he needed to cut off a piece of trim. He had the right idea, but the wrong tool and left a ragged end with splinters pulled out rather than a smooth, finely cut surface. We have learned that if you want to encourage a large group to talk about the history of a congregation, you need to ask questions to bring out the positive parts of the story, or you can be forever sidetracked by old failures and disappointments and hurts.  You might get the same basic work done, but with rough edges and splinters instead of a smooth and helpful process.That is the essence of Appreciative Inquiry. But do we say excellence comes from being well acquainted with Appreciative Inquiry, or do we say that an excellent interim helps a congregation identify and celebrate the strengths of the past and select that which can be a base for the future?

Let’s say we have defined a set of outcome based criteria, then. (We haven’t, that task is still to be done, but…) Should we also have a scale of competence? My primary question is about effectiveness of interim ministry, so it is important to determine if there are good, better and best levels and how to judge that. There are, regrettably, some poor and awful levels of interim ministry as well. And there are some interim situations where even the very best skill and tools have very little in real outcome. Human beings are capable of great good and great harm and some can only be prayed about as we work hard to be a non-anxious presence. I struggle as a researcher with the idea of looking only at success stories even though what I want to do is hold up what is good and positive and effective.

For now, I will leave this open-ended, hoping that some wise reader(s) might have some feedback. I will keep thinking, and I intend to keep writing about my research goals and questions and about other topics related to Interim Ministry and life in transition.