PARISH BULLETIN
Parish Life and Servant Leadership

How can one measure the life and vitality of a parish? A study of one diocese
indicates that a style of leadership may be the key.

by Dan R. Ebener

In 2004, Bishop William Franklin of Davenport, Iowa, assigned me to staff a diocesan task force that was looking at the closing, consolidating, and clustering of parishes. Like many dioceses, Davenport was struggling with staffing parishes, given the growing shortage of priests.

This task force returned a recommendation to the diocese that no parish should be closed due to the shortage of priests. Parishes should only close if they were no longer viable, if they had no life in them. When I reported this idea to the bishop at a meeting of diocesan directors, Bishop Franklin asked a question that drove a three-year study. He asked, “How do you measure the life of a parish?”
The bishop’s question galvanized the task force to develop a self-study that was distributed by the diocese to all of our eighty-four parishes so that they could evaluate themselves on nine areas of ministry—faith formation, family life, social action, liturgy, finance and administration, church life, evangelization, stewardship, and vocations. Following up the parish self-evaluation, the diocese developed a set of twenty operational measures that evaluated each parish using financial statements, demographic data, and sacramental records.

Deanery meetings

Six deanery meetings were held around the diocese, and hundreds of parish leaders turned out to view and discuss these parish reports. Members of the diocesan staff attended each of the deanery meetings and circulated among the parish leaders, helping them to discern what the reports meant for each parish. They also urged the parishes to use the data as a beginning point for parish planning and action. Parishes were asked to identify other data that would be helpful for their parish planning, such as the number of youth in the parish and the percentage of children and teens who are attending religious education, youth ministry, or sacramental preparation.

One of the surprises in this process was the realization that very few lay leaders from parish pastoral councils, finance councils, or parish staff even knew that these data existed. Statistics such as Mass counts are collected each November in parishes across the country. Sacramental records and financial statements are organized every year by every parish and submitted to their respective dioceses. In a business, the data would be used and studied by the owners and board members in the context of strategic planning. Projections would be made about whether the business was growing or not. The idea of planning future directions and strategies of an organization without even looking at the numbers simply would not make sense in a business context.

What the Diocese of Davenport did in collecting these data was simply to use the information that is readily available in every chancery. The added value in Davenport was developing a set of ratios such as average contribution per household, average Mass attendance, and number of years the parish could operate on its current level of reserves. They also calculated whether those numbers were going up or down in each parish and informed the parishes how they rated on a scale of one to eighty-four with the other parishes in the diocese on each point of data.

Behavioral measures

As important as it was to collect, distribute, and study the financial and demographic data, the bishop’s question lingered. Were full pews and parking lots on Sunday the best measure of parish life? Was there a correlation between the Sunday collection and the overall performance of a parish? Was high performance something that could be measured by numbers and data or were these merely an indication that something was going right? Surely, parish life was about more than numbers.
Numbers are simply indicators. They do not answer the question of whether a parish is meeting its bottom line. Like any not-for-profit organization, parishes are ultimately measured not by money and numbers, but by mission and vision. The accomplishment of the mission and the success of the vision depend on the behaviors of the people who are leaders, managers, and members of the parish.
Colloquial sayings remind us of the importance of behaviors. We are told to set a good example, to practice consistency in what we say and what we do, and to live with integrity by integrating behaviors with values. The sayings include, “Actions speak louder than words,” “Practice what you preach,” “Walk the talk,” “Act yourself into a new way of thinking,” “Do what you say,” and “Preach the gospel at all times—if necessary, use words.”

These messages indicate that behaviors are critically important. Words and behaviors need to resonate with each other.

High-performing parishes

If numbers are an indication of performance, then what would the actual performance look like? There was a need to look for behavioral measures of parish life. What would a visitor to a high-performing parish observe? What would the leaders be doing and what would the parishioners be doing? These became the questions that drove the second phase of this research, looking at the behaviors of three high-performing parishes.

To select three parishes that could be considered high performers, seventeen members of the diocesan staff who worked closely with the parishes and seven members of the priests’ personnel board completed an extensive evaluation of the eighty-four parishes. After reviewing the self-studies and all of the data that had been collected, the twenty-four evaluators rated the parishes subjectively from one to eighty-four. These scores were not released to the parishes, but were used to select three high-performing parishes, including a small, a medium-sized, and a large parish.

Extensive interviewing with the evaluators determined that they did not use behavioral measures to determine the high performers. Instead, they evaluated the parishes based on the facts and figures that had been collected. This cleared the way to test whether the high performers selected by the evaluators would also demonstrate high performance on certain behaviors. The study included focus groups with each parish council, interviews with the pastor and one lay leader, behavioral observations at Mass by a research team of three, and further review of archival data on all three parishes, all conducted with the intensity and rigor required for my doctoral dissertation in business administration.

Organizational citizenship

To answer the question of what behavioral measures would make sense for a high-performing parish, we researched both religious and business literature. It was a search for behaviors that could be empirically associated with high performance in organizational life, reflective of the life and message of Jesus and of the teachings of the church.

The discovery of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) was a major breakthrough. Recent research has demonstrated that OCBs can drive organizational performance. These are altruistic behaviors that go above and beyond the call of duty. They are behaviors that one would like to find in any organization, whether the twelve apostles, a congregation, or a successful sales team. They also enhance such social goods as trust, cohesion, and commitment. Some common OCBs are helping, initiating, participating, self-developing, cheerleading, sportsmanship, and housekeeping.

The first four of these OCBs were selected as hypotheses for the study of the three parishes. The idea was that the presence of helping, initiating, participating, and self-developing ought to be signs of a high-performing parish. Helping simply means that the members of the congregation would volunteer to assist each other on various projects. Initiating means that parishioners did not wait for someone to tell them what needed to be done. Participating means getting involved in various committees and councils or showing up for parish events. Self-developing is taking personal responsibility for one’s growth and development as a member of the parish.

Organizational citizenship resonates with the message of Jesus to love God and neighbor. It reflects the behaviors of the early Christian believers, about whom Tertullian stated, “See how they love one another… and are ready even to die for one another.” If today’s Christians wish to live out that example and be known in the community for their love, it seems that organizational citizenship provides an excellent framework.

Some would suggest that people are inherently lazy and that unless the manager or leader in an organization is providing extrinsic rewards and punishments, the members or workers will not perform. Other theories of leadership emerge from the opposite view: that people are basically good and are searching for purpose and meaning in their lives. If the leader can inspire, which means to motivate someone from within their spirit, the results are more intrinsic and the leader does not have to constantly supervise the workers or members. Optimally, the people act with OCBs because they are inspired to do so.

Servant leadership

The presence of OCBs, according to the literature on organizational science, is an indication of high performance. So the next question was, if the high-performing parishioners would be acting with OCBs, what would the leaders be doing? The search for leadership behaviors asked the question, “What leader behaviors would enhance organizational citizenship?” It also included the question, “How would Jesus lead?” Servant leadership was the answer to both questions.

Servant leadership is a paradoxical concept that means that leaders are servants first, then leaders. The term was coined by Robert Greenleaf in 1970 as the type of leadership that places the needs and interests of others ahead of those of the leader. Leaders serve the people, not the other way around. The idea emerged out of a search for how Jesus would lead. The list of businesses and business authors that are now embracing servant leadership reads like a Who's Who of corporate America.
Servant leadership focuses on the health, growth and development of the people who are being led. The notion is counter-intuitive because we expect that leaders dominate while servants are subjugated to the will of the leader. Greenleaf intentionally selected a paradoxical term like servant leadership because it epitomized the paradoxical nature of the teachings and example of Jesus, who used parables to teach wisdom and who demonstrated the ultimate irony of servant leadership with his life and Resurrection.

The traits associated with servant leadership include honesty and integrity. Without walking the walk, practicing what is preached, and modeling the integration of behaviors and values, the leader has no credibility. Another servant leadership trait is humility, which can be exemplified in the leader’s giving credit to others when things are going well and taking the blame when they are not going well. A third trait is self-confidence, which is necessary if the leader is going to empower others to make decisions and act on their own behalf.

Servant leader behaviors

Servant leadership is consistent with the life and message of Jesus. It also fits the description of those leader behaviors that are supposed to enhance OCBs because it is associated with supportive leader behaviors. The case study suggested that servant leaders in the high-performing parishes would recognize, serve and empower the people.

Recognizing means that the leader understands the needs and interests of others and calls forth their gifts and talents. Serving means that the leader is able to give priority to the needs and interests of others and to those of the organization. Empowering means building the capacity in others to act on their own behalf and in the interest of the organization. Together, these servant leader behaviors (SLBs) place an emphasis on relationships with the members of the organization. If the servant leader supports, encourages and demonstrates genuine interest in the members, it is likely that this leader will generate trust, commitment, and cohesion among the members of the organization.

The notion of servant leadership as consistent with supportive leader behaviors can also be explained by reviewing Greenleaf’s original descriptions of servant leadership. Greenleaf suggests that the best test of servant leadership comes from asking whether the followers are growing as persons, becoming healthier, wiser, freer and more autonomous. In other words, the success of the leader is inextricably bound to the success of the followers.

Convincing evidence of all four OCBs and all three SLBs were found in all three high-performing parishes. The study lifted up great stories about how servant leadership can work in a parish. The conclusion was that if parish leaders practice servant leadership, the parishioners will reciprocate with organizational citizenship, and this will drive parish performance.

One contribution of the case study is the extensive list of examples that can help clarify what servant leadership might look like. These are a few of the serving behaviors found in this case study. The servant leader

• gives credit to others when things are going well
• takes the blame when things are not going well
• drops what he or she is doing when others are in need
• visits with marginalized members of the group
• helps set up for and clean up after meetings
• is not the focal point of organizational activities
• attends to the needs of others before his or her own.

Leadership training

Too often the leadership approach in parishes today reflects a command-and-control style of leadership that stifles lay participation and initiative. Dictatorial leadership was common in the time of Jesus, probably in the Roman empire. But Jesus modeled a completely different approach, one that can still become the basis for a fresh new approach to church leadership today, one that may seem new to some parish communities but has actually been around since the life of Jesus.

The church needs to address the disparity between the amount of time that parish leaders devote to leadership training versus the amount of time that they spend doing leadership in the parish. The study of leadership is not enough of a priority for seminaries, lay ministry formation programs, or continuing education. Parish leaders need to study theology and philosophy in preparation for parish ministry. But they also need training to exercise leadership in a way that resonates with the teachings of Jesus and enhances the performance of the parish.

Dan R. Ebener teaches leadership at St. Ambrose University, directs stewardship and parish planning for the Diocese of Davenport, and consults with Quad City Leadership Consulting, Inc. To get his full report on the parish life study, contact him at