Each semester I ask my students the same question: what is the operative theology in your congregation? Not the articulated theology — not what your congregations tell you they believe. But the operative theology — the beliefs they have about God that they practice and perpetuate in daily life. These students come from all over the country and are already leading churches; some have multiple congregations miles apart in rural areas. But every year the answers are so strikingly similar they can be summed up in one term: “bootstrap theology.” The predominant theology in our churches is one of “save yourself,” where moral, economic, and even theological loss are connected to personal fault and resolved through individual action.
In other words, our churches reflect a culture of individualism, and congregations that follow this mindset see their pastors as responsible for the church’s health and prosperity. Individual leaders are to right the ship when things go askew. It’s no wonder so many pastors experience burnout: exhaustion, frustration, isolation, lack of creativity. Casey Sigmon, who is an assistant professor of preaching and worship, and the founding director of the Pause/Play Center for Preachers at Saint Paul School of Theology, notes the destructive and disruptive energy that comes with burnout. For Sigmon and her colleagues, this is the first sign of the need to “recover” from the “disconnection” that comes with burnout.
As a faith leader, I have found this to be true for me, too, and I often hear it confirmed from those who participate in the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt Divinity School’s Solidarity Circles: burnout leads to disconnection and destructive energy.
Bootstrap theology and its companion ideology of individualism are powerful myths that have organized our sense of self, world, and others to the core. Relationships of solidarity help us learn an alternative way of being.
In my work as associate director of the Wendland-Cook Program, I’ve found the recovery from burnout starts with relationships, but not just any relationships. Anyone can Google a Bible study on a specific topic. What people cannot readily find, however, are communities of praxis that re-invigorate them, inspire them, allow them to practice creative solutions in their change-making work. This is what Solidarity Circles was created to address. To stem the burnout tide, clergy and faith leaders need a certain sort of relationships — not friendly acquaintances they can chit chat with. Instead, they need spaces of solidarity that ground their change-making work in faith values.
Even for those pastors who are not knowingly experiencing burnout, the conditions are ripe for it. Congregations today are largely built on a concept of leadership as the “great man” (gender specificity is intentional here). Leadership is imaged as the strong man conquering his own and his congregation’s problems confidently and by himself. As pastor and writer Julian DeShazier recently summed it up: “And so the theory goes: human innovation is essentially stagnant until truly special people come along and push us forward.” This is the cult of leadership that bootstrap theology engenders. Congregations need to be better schools of leadership, grounded in specific skills and knowledge that are more in tune with the economic, political and ministerial conditions on the ground and how to best go about changing them in the direction of racial, gender, economic, political, and social justice.
Congregations need to be better schools of leadership, grounded in specific skills and knowledge that are more in tune with the economic, political and ministerial conditions on the ground.
One way that churches are seeking to address issues of burnout is through collaborative ministries. As Presbyterian pastor Catherine Neely Burton has noted, the future of many congregations may be pastor-less, and instead leader-full. Yet, ELCA pastor and writer Heidi Neumark has also chronicled what many of my students in “bootstrap theology” congregations know well — collaborative ministries can definitely be a wilderness experience.
As Andrew Richardson who leads the Collaborative Ministry effort of the United Church of Canada told me recently, collaboration needs solidarity. In our conversation, Richardson noted, “Solidarity calls the church to widen our understanding of who counts as ‘one of us.’ We must first ask ‘With whom am I asked to be in solidarity?’ or to put it in more familiar Christian terms: ‘Who is my neighbor?’”
Solidarity is at the heart of our work here at the Wendland-Cook Program. Solidarity is a certain relationship, yes. But Solidarity is achieved only through an adequate power analysis, where we realize our “neighbors” are those who face the same economic and political conditions and who are working to change them. We need these “neighbors.” Clergy don’t need more chit-chat; they need communities of praxis that can accompany them as they go about their change-making work. They need laboratories of social change that inspire creative solutions to old, tired-out problems. They need schools of Christian discipleship that equip them with specific skills and knowledge to build economic and political power.
Clergy don’t need more chit-chat; they need communities of praxis that can accompany them as they go about their change-making work. They need laboratories of social change that inspire creative solutions to old, tired-out problems.
What sort of skills and knowledge can help church leaders? Power analysis in theological and biblical interpretation because power relationships pervade the work of theology and biblical interpretation. Skills in value-based community organizing to equip you to navigate these relationships of power and ground the work in faith values, not issues. Active listening because you’re going to need to listen pastorally and prophetically as you navigate relationships. And storytelling as a framework for social change because we need to invite others into a new story of what the church can be in solidarity. These competencies are necessary for creating and sustaining social change.
Solidarity Circles aren’t the only solution, but they do seek to get at the root of many of the problems facing clergy and congregations: bootstrap theology blames the individual; solidarity requires relationship that support us and stand with us against the broader institutionalized social structure of capitalism and the religious culture it engenders.
Bootstrap theology and its companion ideology of individualism are powerful myths that have organized our sense of self, world, and others to the core. Relationships of solidarity help us learn an alternative way of being (and provide us with a more accurate reality) by practicing shared leadership, giving and receiving support, all premised on a shared understanding of what we’re up against. Some theologians are helping us see that our economic and political systems form and shape us to our very core, and that in order for political democracy to thrive, we need to ensure democracy in the economy. Until our congregations see solidarity as key to collaboration, the condition for burnout will remain ripe and bootstrap theology will remain the operative norm. But the promise of solidarity is a church that is truly collaborative and living into the vision of life together as God calls us to be.
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