I’m generally not one to encourage business models in church: we’re generally saturated with them already. Or, more to the point, we apply them indiscriminately, with the idea that churches in general need to function more efficiently and take on a more corporate strategy. My own denomination, The Episcopal Church, did this with gusto in the 1950s and has had trouble dealing with it ever since. Nevertheless, I’ll hazard a comparison anyway. One that I think can help us transition to our future: priest as Chief Communications Officer.

Often we put our clergy at the top of the organization chart, making her the CEO of our “company”. And certainly there are different ecclesiologies and models of church in different churches. But in ours, the priest isn’t the CEO, the bishop is. She gets to wear the big hat. Priests aren’t at the top. They must have a different sort of role.

When I read John Saddington’s description of the Chief Communications Officer (CCO) or Public Relations Officer (PRO), it struck me that this is what a priest in the 21st century needs to be.

We need our priests and pastors to be our CCOs, not our CEOs. Share on X

A Chief Communicator, an evangelist, a preacher of the Good News, and a guide.

Evangelism

According to the writer of Matthew, Jesus’s last words to the apostles were (28:16-20)

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

As Christians, we know the importance of evangelism in the life of our work: that it is ultimately our calling. Even when many us don’t really want to do it.

And yet we also feel woefully equipped to do it. Maybe we know our scripture, but we don’t have our own words, or we don’t have life experiences to share. Or maybe we have anxiety that we aren’t good enough or our story isn’t as good as someone else’s. Or maybe we’ve never really been shown how important this really is.

How many times have we heard someone else in the church say in response to the call to evangelism:

Oh, we don’t do that.

Then we aren’t doing one of the few directives Jesus actually gave the people.

The Preacher

We already expect the priest and the pastor to communicate on the church’s behalf. We expect them to preach each week. We want them to pray at Rotary meetings and go on the local news to advertise the Lobsterfest or Strawberry Festival. We want them to put into words the things we’re afraid to and direct us toward a better relationship with Jesus and our Triune God.

We already want them to be the CCO. Why don’t we just go the next step and let them be?

Why don’t we let our priests more direct our communication strategy and drive our mission and make that the primary focus. S/he is already doing the work of sacramental leader: communicating the love of Christ through the sharing in our sacramental rites; in inviting the Spirit’s blessing upon people. S/he is already communicating the love through preaching and personal and public evangelism. This is already central to the priest’s job description.

And yet, as a priest, I feel this awesome responsibility in speaking for the people. Particularly when the people have trouble describing to me what they believe.

I live with the leadership catch-22 of being responsible for articulating our voice while needing it to actually be our voice. And I often worry that the institutional laryngitis makes it nearly impossible for me to do my job.

In The Episcopal Church, we have a delicate balance between our levels of authority. We are hierarchical and congregational at once. We strive to share authority at the congregational level and the diocesan level and between the priest and the congregation.* This means we have to speak for and to/with. As a priest, I don’t get to design our logo and mission statement and say this is the way its going to be. But if I don’t initiate it and guide it, chances are we won’t have one. Or at least not have one that matches our theological goals.

I was moved by Laurene Beth Bowers’ book Designing Contemporary Congregations some time ago. She makes the astute observation that our seminary-trained leaders have certain skills we’ve honed and our congregations have certain needs that only we have the training to fill. It would be stupid not to line those two up. For her, these needs are for Scriptural study and theological training.

Back away from the CEO

This leaves me with only one conclusion: that the do-it-all, George Herbert reincarnated, renaissance man, pastoral priest is a way of looking at the priest and pastor that has long-since died, perhaps only holding on in the rose-hued memories of our congregations. It is a model that speaks to a particular time in our history, surviving into the mid-20th Century simply because that is how we trained them to be.

At the same time, we don’t need little CEOs running around being responsible for every little detail and every stock performance of their Fortune 500 want-to-be congregation. We don’t need the tyrant or the obsessive or the micro manager. In my denomination, that isn’t the priest’s job, but the bishop’s.

The priest needs to be unleashed to preach the gospel and share the vision s/he has for the congregation. To speak prophetically about where we can go together and what GOD is imploring her (the church) to see.

More importantly, the priest needs to be able to use her talents to communicate and sculpt that message and that vision. And the priests we recruit need to have these talents.

John Saddington writes:

I think that software developers and web technologists are the most strongly suited people to be put into these communication and leaders roles moving forward simply because technology is part of the back-bone of any communication strategy, both internally and externally.

The CCO needs to be able to code. To be versed in the technology and the knowhow of communication.

We have a lot of people in our church that are really good at caring for one another. But how many of our people can code? How many are skilled in information and communication technologies? How many can proclaim the Good News easily: to comfort and discomfort, inspire and provoke?  These are the skills we should be recruiting for leadership in the church.

We cannot possibly be the church if we aren’t skilled at communicating the Good News.

At it’s root, is that not the essential and only true vocation of the priest: to communicate the gospel, the love of GOD with and to the people with words and sacraments?

 

*[Note: This is why lawsuits about break away churches are hard to litigate: we are trying to have it both ways in TEC. So for the church to break away, it needs to be solely responsible for itself (it isn’t) and for the diocese to be the owner, it is has to be solely responsible (it isn’t quite, but slightly more so). Having it both ways is an intentional tension. And is, unfortunately, often messy.]