Book Reviews

Loren B. Mead

The Alban Institute, 2005. $13.00. 100 pp.

I read this book to get up to speed with the Call Process. It helped me understand the realities congregations go through during the transition from one pastor to another, a change I had never experienced from the congregation’s side of the table.

Loren Mead, the now retired Episcopalian priest who founded the Alban Institute, is no new name to those who have read about how congregations work. Now retired, Mead has written quite a few books, including The Once and Future Church, which helped me understand the church as a family system. A Change of Pastors is an updated version of a book Loren Mead wrote in 1986.

Mead brings much wisdom to the table. Leaders will only work on issues they identify as important for them and the congregation. In every congregation, the relationship between the clergy person and the congregation’s lay leadership is the factor which will determine if the congregation thrives. It is hard to change congregations. The good news is they are very stable systems. You can disrupt the system, but stable systems don’t like to be disrupted. In the end a helpful middle judicatory (synod staff) can only wait for the system to be disrupted on its own, then be available for assistance. When a pastor leaves is the most disrupted, and malleable the system will ever be. If a middle judicatory wants to change congregations for the better, it had better be ready to step in when that change happens.

Mead uses work by John Fletcher, who interviewed a hundred congregations to see what they were looking for in a pastor, in order to prepare the seminary’s curriculum. He identifies “religious authenticity” as the factor most cited. This authenticity happens when pastor and congregation listen to each other deeply and have the strength to confront each other.