Services or Servant Leadership?
I am often asked, “What does it mean that you’re the ‘Director for Congregational Life’?
I do wonder from time to time!
Officially I am the director for the UUA staff group which oversees our field services, congregational stewardship programs, and growth strategies. We call this staff group “Congregational Life” rather than the previous “Congregational Services” because we want to convey our conviction that the UUA does not “service” congregations in a mechanistic or consumeristic sense. Rather we understand ourselves as being partners with UUs in fulfilling our mission. Does changing the staff group name help us in communicating this? Probably not. But it does start an interesting conversation about our purpose at the UUA, which is not that different from conversations that are happening in many other walks of life.
Service organizations exist to make their members happy. “Services” implies that there is someone who has something of value that they are willing to give (for a certain price of course!) to someone who needs that value. This assumes that our interactions are transactional; that the “thing” of value can be passed back and forth.
Religious communities, however, should not be transactional. Religious communities create covenantal relationships based upon fundamental but intangible values that are not “given” or “received” but that are inherent in each of us. Our responsibilities as leaders of religious communities are to nurture that inherent capacity that lies within all to reach our truest (and, I would say, God’s truest) purpose. This is the very opposite of a service transaction. And it requires a very different mentality than “customer satisfaction.”
Thus the language of “servant leadership” feels more true to what we are called to do as leaders of a religious organization. We exist to serve, resource, and encourage the full development of our members and our communities. This means that our members have both the freedom and the responsibility for their own development, rather than being able to “purchase” it from us, or be impelled to it by coercion or dictate.
In public life we call it citizenship. What does it mean to be citizens of a community rather than consumers? It requires the citizens to be in active relationship with their leaders in mutually serving the common good. It requires the leaders to understand that their job is not to dictate the common good, but to facilitate everyone’s participation in creating it.
I’m still learning what this requires from me as a leader in our denomination, from our staff trying to serve our movement. Its astonishing to me how much the consumerist mentality is not just fed by people demanding our services, but also by our own needs to show ourselves to be experts of value. We all have to learn new ways of thinking about this to move to the next stage.
In the meantime, if you have think of a better title for my staff group, I’m all ears!
