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By Melissa Lauber
UMConnection Staff

In the old Negro spiritual “Wade in the Water,” there’s a refrain: “God’s gonna trouble the waters.” But the temptation today is to calm the waters, settle the conflict and chaos that might stir in our churches and the world and soothe the Gospel into a silence that can be easily tamed or ignored.

In Nashville, for a weekend in January, 20 leaders from the Baltimore-Washington Conference joined 1,000 leaders from across The United Methodist Church, gathering to learn to live and become vital and relevant among the stirrings of the water.

The session centered around the theme of “adaptive leadership” and how it can transform the church so that “our purpose is rekindled for a postmodern, interreligious and increasingly postreligious, world, said the Rev. Philip Clayton of Claremont School of Theology in California. “What does it mean for us to be followers of Jesus in our time and place?” 

Adaptive leadership is a concept that allows the church to answer this question in new and deeper ways, explained the Rev. Susan Beaumont, a senior consultant of the Alban Institute who led the training event. “Adaptive leaders,” she said, build up their organization’s ability “to live in a less predictable, more ambiguous environment and learn to adapt to changing circumstances as a way of life.”

This new style of leadership was popularized by Ron Heifetz of Harvard University, who asserts that leaders are confronted with two kinds of problems: “technical problems,” which can be solved by expertise and good management, and “adaptive” problems, which are more systematic and require innovation and learning.

In helping people to define adaptive challenges, Beaumont encouraged people to avoid the phrasing, “How do we ...” and instead look more broadly, stating the challenge as “what does it mean to do ... in the face of ...”

“We need to reframe our thinking,” Beaumont said. We’re not looking for scripted or easy answers.”

One of the principles of adaptive leadership is that “there is no such thing as a dysfunctional organization. Every organization is perfectly aligned to achieve the results it gets,” Beaumont continued. “Adaptive leadership is the ability to mobilize people to tackle tough challenges and thrive. It is the act of capacity building in individuals and organizations so that people can learn to live in less predictable, more ambiguous environments and learn to adapt to changing circumstances as a way of life.”

“This is not the kind of thinking that can be tied up neatly with a bow,” said Sandy Ferguson, director of Connectional Ministries for the Baltimore-Washington Conference. “It requires deep soul-searching; being able to do ministry while orchestrating conflict, loss and dramatic change; and seeking out the stories behind the stories. It, like everything, is ultimately about relationship.”

At the training, conference leaders spent several sessions learning about adaptive change, but they also were immersed in conversation sessions. Together they explored ideas about trust, risk-taking and relevance within the church. They imagined what the conference would be like as a collaborative community or “a network of connecting possibilities,” and they envisioned how ministry might happen in churches without walls to separate congregations from their communities. 

They talked about the things that are an essential part of the Methodist DNA and what things the church might need to let go of to address a culture that increasingly identifies itself as non-religious. 

The group concluded that the conversation about these issues is really just beginning. “We’re leaving here feeling undone,” said Ferguson, “and that ‘s okay, that’s a good place to be.”