Musings on Spiritual Matters

After receiving a large portion of surveys from the congregation, I have put the results together.  This was a helpful and interesting process for me, and highly beneficial.  Some of the results were close to one another; in those cases, I took the character trait that seemed the strongest from maybe missing out on the chart before.  For an example, Integrity, Courage, and Passion all had the same number of votes, but I picked Courage for number three because Passion was already used. Integrity seemed to be the strongest choice at number five.  So there was some estimation on my part in developing this overall summary of survey results, but for the most part, this is the general consensus of the congregation.  Some of the results were spread over a broad range, while other results were strong in one area.  One area that was a strong consensus was Empathy at number seven.  In fact, Passion and Vision were mostly always at the top of the survey while Emotional intelligence and Empathy were at the bottom.  Judgment, Courage, and Integrity were mostly grouped in the middle.  Here is the final list:

1. Passion
2. Vision
3. Courage
4. Judgment
5. Integrity
6. Emotional Intelligence
7. Empathy

Upon self-reflection on this process and on the results, I realize giving a survey can be scary.  I have been emotionally scarred before in this kind of process, so there was also risk involved in this survey.  I did develop the survey to take away the option of “just railing on me”, as this has happened in the past (not at Castle Rock), and to provide helpful feedback.  I must admit I did enjoy the comments that I received as they were highly encouraging and loving.  Thank you for being an edifying congregation.

Even though it was wonderful to hear such overwhelmingly positive feedback, I still wanted this to be part of a learning curve for myself.  Positive feedback encourages, but negative feedback can help one improve.  It was helpful to see which areas I am stronger in and which areas I am weaker in.  This was highly informative.  One area that I thought I was stronger in was Emotional Intelligence, as I have studied and worked on this a lot, but probably this is a weak area that I am really just making do with in the congregation.  As to Empathy, I have always struggled in this area.  It was interesting to me to see Emotional Intelligence and empathy at the bottom, as this is a strong area for a lot of ministers.   In this process Doug Cluck gave me an interesting insight; he said “Matthew, passion and vision usually do not go with Emotional Intelligence and Empathy.”  Good insight Doug.

As for passion and vision, I was pleased to see this score so high, but I wondered if it could be because of the role that I serve within the congregation.  As most people know, I am working toward moving this congregation into a more missional direction, so these are the areas that I am focusing on at the present time.  I wondered how I would be perceived in another congregation in which I was the minister.  I am happy that this might mean that I am doing a good job of helping the congregation transition into a missional church, as this been the focus of my dissertation and the two years of my work with the congregation.

One area that I was happy to get feedback on was integrity.  This landed more in the middle of the scale, but it is one area that I want to seriously work on in the future.  I feel very weak in this area, and want to put some focus on improving this.  I try to survey the times that I have spoken and not followed through.  The area of judgment, I would like to work on as well, and this will come more years of experience.  I still reflect on when I went to Waynesboro; thinking I had a clue of what I was doing.  Probably, in a few more years, I will reflect on my early years at Castle Rock and laugh at how naïve I was.

As for Emotional Intelligence and Empathy, the results seem in line with personality profiles I have done in the past.  On the DISC, I have always ranked high in I and D.  This indicates that I have inspiration, and am driven, which goes along with the passion and vision results, but that I am not overly good at tuning into people.  Hopefully with some work, time, and good mentoring, that I can balance this out in order for people not to feel manipulated or used in fulfilling my goals for the congregation.

Another interesting insight was that Charity ranked emotional intelligence (EQ) as number one while the congregation ranked it mostly in the bottom half of the survey.  I believe this is because Charity sees the level of stress that is on me and to deal with the tension and conflict within the congregation.

This was a rewarding and helpful process.  Thank you to everyone that contributed to this survey.  As your minister, it is important to me to do the best job I can for God and for the congregation.  You all deserve the best, and the best takes dedication and discipline to develop.  I am certainly have not arrived, but I give you my pledge to work on growing in the Faith.

Here is the action plan that I am going to use to improve my skills:

1. Read about developing integrity and gaining trust as a leader.
   1. Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality by Henry Cloud
   2. The Speed of Trust (I have read this before, but will listen to it again on audio)
2. Read about empathy and Emotional Intelligence.
   1. Both of these are similar so the same book will mostly address each one.
   2. The Other Kind of Smart: Simple Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence for Greater Personal Effectiveness and Success
3. In the next review of performance with the elders, we will address these areas to see if there was improvement in my performance.
4. Hopefully, the congregation will continue to provide feedback on these skills.  If you see me performing poorly in one of these areas, please just call it to my attention.  The best feedback is real life examples.

I probably should write a disclaimer on all this.  This might be the first time you have experienced this from a minister.  This might have caused you to wonder why this is taking place.   Let me assure you that this survey and this process was totally my idea, and no one has caused me to do this, beside myself.  I just take improvement and growth very seriously in my position and in my role as the minister in this congregation.  As you should know by now, continued learning is important to me.

My prayer is that we have all enjoyed this process, I have, and we all help one another serve the Lord to the best of our ability.  And everyone enjoyed the feedback that I gave from this survey.  Everyone hurts doing surveys and never knowing the results.  Thank you for allowing me to serve this congregation.

Related posts:

1. Results From the Survey on Ministrial Skills
2. Leadership Survey
3. New Survey and the Last Survey
4. Reflection on Class
5. Reflection on Wisdom and Moral Formation and Tennessee Football

Tags:

This entry was posted by Matthew on Wednesday, July 13th, 2011 at 5:12 pm and is filed under Church News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.