The Religious Workforce Project has released a report titled “What Clergy Leaders Wish They Had Been Trained To Do: And Why It Matters.”
I think it’s a pretty good report. And I think anyone involved in congregational leadership will find it worth reading.
A key finding detailed in the report is that there are five key skill sets where clergy leaders felt they did not receive adequate training. Those five key skill sets:
- Administration and management
- Technology skills
- Soft skills for leadership, a broad category which includes:
- inspire others to achieve shared goals
- set a clear vision and communicate it effectively
- create a culture of accountability and excellence
- solve problems
- coach or mentor others
- manage conflict well
- delegate tasks
- have high emotional intelligence, incl. self-awareness and self-care
- Counseling and pastoral care
- Facilities management
I encourage you to read the report, which includes many direct quotes from interviews with working clergy about what they wished they had been taught in theological school. One of my favorite quotes in the report starts off like this:
“So, I took two semesters on the early church and memorized all of the heresies of the early church. No one has ever walked into my office with a crisis on Donatism. No one has ever come worried about the light of Christ in them and if they were a Gnostic. I feel pretty strongly that a vast majority of my seminary education was great if I wanted to be a theologian, and useless if I wanted to be a parish pastor.”
But the real point here — for both clergy and for lay leaders — is pretty simple: clergy do, in fact, need to know these skills. In the Unitarian Universalist tradition, lay leaders of congregation supervise ministers, so lay leaders should be prepared to evaluate whether clergy have these skills or not. When clergy do not have these skills, lay leaders should work with clergy to prioritize which of these skills are most important in their congregation, and then figure out how to get clergy appropriate training for any needed skills. And lay leaders have to realize that learning these skills takes time, which means they have to reduce the clergy workload so that there’s time for the required training.
Furthermore, since lay leaders are pretty notorious for being inconsistent supervisors, clergy have to take it on themselves to hold themselves accountable for learning the high-priority skills. Ideally, clergy will find someone (e.g., a consultant or coach) who will work with them over an extended period as they learn a needed skill.
Another thought [added 15 April 2025]: I’ve been thinking about ministerial bullying recently, and I suspect at least some bullying happens because clergy lack soft skills (esp. inspiring others, coaching and mentoring, managing conflict, delegating tasks well, and having emotional intelligence), and because they lack administration and management skills. I suspect that if you don’t have soft skills, and you don’t know how to manage, it’s much easier to become a bully — because you don’t know any other way to get things done.
One more thing: when lay leaders are in the process of hiring a new minister, they should look over these five key skill sets, and determine which ones their new hire absolutely must have. During the hiring process, both lay leaders and clergy should make a point of discussing these five key skill sets together. Better that everyone has clear expectations right up front.
Part of a series of posts on clergy and bullying — Sigh. Not Again. — What ministerial bullying looks like — What ministers didn’t learn in theological school — When clergy get bullied — The opposite of a bullying boss