Bishop Gretchen Rehberg

Our guest on this episode of Crossings Conversations is the Rt. Rev. Gretchen Rehberg,  PhD, DMin, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. Bishop Rehberg spoke with us about the importance of lay-clergy partnership and the difference between leadership and authority.

Full transcript now available here.

Guest Bio: Bishop  Rehberg was ordained March 18, 2017 as ninth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane.  She served as rector of the Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Lewiston, ID, from 2006 to 2017. She has served as the chair of the Commission on Ministry, a canon for regional mission, and a trainer for the College for Congregational Development. In these ministries, she combined her passion for equipping people for ministry and assisting congregations in becoming more faithful, healthy, and effective communities of faith.

About the Show: Crossings Conversations is a co-production of Church Divinity School of the Pacific and Trinity Church Wall Street. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or share it with a colleague. You can learn more about the only Episcopal seminary on the West Coast and subscribe to Crossings magazine at cdsp.edu.

Transcript

Intro: You’re listening to Crossings Conversations from Church Divinity School of the Pacific, a show about leaders creating Christian community and sharing God’s love. 

Kyle: This is Kyle Oliver, Communications and Marketing Manager at Church Divinity School of the Pacific. I'm here with the Right Reverend Gretchen Rehberg of the Diocese of Spokane. Bishop Gretchen, thanks so much for being with us.

Bishop Rehberg: Happy to be with you, Kyle.

Kyle: This is a conversation about leadership formation in the Episcopal church. To start, we were wondering, in your time as Bishop, if there's aspects of your understanding of leadership formation that have changed in that time?

Bishop Rehberg: Yes. I think one of the biggest changes for me has been the realizing the importance of lay leadership formation. We tend to concentrate on clergy and that's essential. Now, we have well-formed, well-trained clergy leadership, but we've inherited a model where the priest is viewed as the one who does everything, and that model can't survive.

We need to see ourselves, and we say this, but we need to see it as a partnership. We see that, but we're not providing equivalent lay leadership formation. By that, I don't mean turning them into mini priests. Teaching everybody how to work together, right? So when we highlight the ministry of the baptized, I don't mean being a chalice or reading the lesson or serving as an usher. I mean, really seeing yourself as a follower of Jesus Christ in the outside world.

Then, in partnership with the clergy of the congregation, how do we work together to help be the body of Christ? That partnership needs to be stronger, I think, and by doing that, we have to expand our relationship, our formation programs for all, and then really help our clergy understand themselves, not as the solo priest, but the solo priest or priests in community.

The other thing I would emphasize is the importance of clergy seeing themselves as members of a diocese, not members of the congregation, because our clergy colleagues are in the diocese and so how do we see that that's really-- The support that we get is not just limited to our own town.

Kyle: Are there other ways that you try to foster that sense of diocesan clergy collaboration in your diocese?

Bishop Rehberg: Yes. Part of what we're doing is we have clericus gatherings once a month. We're four regions of the diocese. Every region has a diocesan canon, a regional canon who responds to me. They're all parish priests, but they work on my staff as well. Clericus has a continuing ed component that's done by everybody. It's a common continuing ed for all the clergy of the diocese in their clericus groups.

There is a fellowship component and there's a business component. To really say, this is part of your work. So clericus clergy retreat, clergy conference are part of their job.

It's part of the hours they put in for work and really trying to be very upfront about that and saying to congregations, "This is essential for your wellbeing of your priest", and then having the strong clericus and people coming into the diocese that they encounter a strong clericus in a strong clergy system that expects people to show up and they want to show up.

People are really finding that life-giving. I had a priest that's been here a couple of years now who said that joining the diocese saved his priesthood because of the clergy support system he found here.

Kyle: Are there ways that you are working to foster that sense of clergy lay leadership partnership in your diocese, things that you found helpful in that?

Bishop Rehberg: We have a couple of things. We have what we call gathering days, and there are two Saturdays a year for all clergy and all the lay leadership. They gather in their regions. There's a continuing ed component, a strong continuing component. Again, fellowship sharing the best practices, but we say, we need to do that as a group. Then, we have the college for congregational development in the diocese.

Again, a clergy lay team are supposed to come and we say, it's really essential to bring a team. This is a team effort, nobody does this alone. Then, the mutual ministry agreements that we have between our priests and our vestries, and to really say, this is never an evaluation of a person, this is an agreement among the leadership of the congregation about where are we going to work on this next year? And how are we going to do that?

We say, that they have to have that agreement, that's essential and then getting it in writing and then holding each other accountable to that. You can't hold somebody accountable to something they haven't agreed to.

Kyle: Thank you for that. Let's turn our attention now, we're trying in this series in part two just to collect some hopeful stories.

I'm curious among seminarians or recent graduates or new leaders in your diocese, new leaders in whatever way that might make sense. What are some stories of new leadership that you're hearing that are making you hopeful for the future of the church?

Bishop Rehberg: Yes, I think one of the things that's happened, we've had some seminarians intern at our church camp and they have been incredibly bright and dedicated and positive and looking forward to their time and ministry. I'm not hearing the, "Woe is me. The church is dying." I'm hearing, "This is prime opportunity to share the good news of Jesus Christ and spread the gospel and to do it in new ways." I'm really excited about seeing them get ordained and flourish.

I've had some newly ordained folks that I've met where I thought that there's an excitement level that they bring and not in longing for what used to be, but a recognition that this is the reality of our culture today and the church has opportunities to do amazing things if we just seize the opportunity.

Kyle: That's beautiful. Thank you.

Bishop Rehberg: I want to go back, if we could, to the question of the leadership formation.

Kyle: Yes, please.

Bishop Rehberg: One of the things that I think I would continue to hold on as essential, is the deep grounding for priesthood of what is a priest and the deep grounding in theology and scripture and church history. A lot of times, you hear, especially priests within their first five years, seminary didn't teach me X and X is usually something about plumbing or building. That goes back to how do we work collaboratively with people who do have that?

If our clergy coming out of seminary or whatever program it is, that's being formed, don't know who they are fundamentally in their identity as priest, then bring the traditional things that I think are still absolutely essential for the church; Scripture, liturgy, theology, history. Knowing how to fix the plumbing's not going to help them be the body of Christ.

They need to know that reality, that the seminary can't teach them how to collaborate, but if they don't know how to collaborate, they're going to just complain.

Kyle: Yes. Do you think it's true that the seminary can't teach people how to collaborate?

Bishop Rehberg: I think you can get people the tools, but I think if you've got folks who are not the ones who want to collaborate in the first place, you can't change their personality. God, can change their personality. I think part of it is helping people see the necessity for that, the need to do so, the ways to do it. That goes back to really having that collaborative, robust lay formation, understanding everybody, understanding themselves, working as one team as opposed to, "The priest does this."

I can't tell you the number of times that I'll go to a congregation and then I'll say, "Well, how are you planning on growing?" The idea is, "The priest is going to do it for us." There's a lot of reforming of all of our members that needs to happen as well. If the priest comes out thinking, "Oh, I have to do it," without understanding, "No, that's actually not my role, but how do I equip people and collaborate with people?" There's a problem.

Kyle: It's at every level. It's about the culture of collaboration rather than skills among any one particular person. Am I hearing that right?

Bishop Rehberg: Right. It's about how do we be the body of Christ? How does one person embody Christ for everyone else to just say that, "They did it for me."

Kyle: That's super helpfully put. Thank you. With all that in mind, I want to invite you to think big here. This is a sort of imaginative question. If you were asked to design or commission or team-teach if you like, some special topics course for today's seminarians, any instructor, any topic, this is your chance to create a course out of nothing that has a positive effect, who would you invite to teach and what would you ask them to teach?

Bishop Rehberg: There's a whole number of courses I'd teach, but the one I'm going to give you is this one. I would ask St. Anthony to come back and we will teach a course called Facing Your Demons.

Kyle: Say more.

Bishop Rehberg: St. Anthony went into the desert, his story is one of him being confronted by demons and what that was, and what it took for him to go through that and then come out having vanquished the demons. Every person but I would say, especially, anybody going into ministry, what they're going to have is demons, however you want to call that. The things that challenge you, that tempt you, that confront you, that you will have to face and vanquish.

You can only do that if we look at how St. Anthony did it. He only did it by the power of God. One of the things that I know more and more and more to be true, is that I cannot do this work myself. I can only do this with the power of God. I can't face the things that challenge and tempt and be roadblocks for me by myself.

Kyle: If you could, you already would have.

Bishop Rehberg: Right. Exactly. How do we do that? Then, to really invite people to think about their own personal stories, but also to really reflect on the things that happened in congregations and things that were happening in our society, how do we face that? How do we acknowledge, name them as what they are, and vanquish them through the power of God. Maybe it's not quite the same as Anthony would, but his story, I think, is instructive for us.

Kyle: I'm curious, from your perspective, if you could-- One Bishop said, "You mean I can wave a magic wand and it's like," "Yes, yes that." If you could wave a magic wand and sort of implement one change to how we're training leaders that would really make a positive difference for the church, what would that change be?

Bishop Rehberg: I haven't been in seminary for a while, so I can't speak with any personal knowledge about exactly what you're doing, I just only have what I've been told. I don't know that this is a change. Let me just say that right upfront. I think the church often confuses leadership with position, and leadership with authority, and we get those two things confused. We forget that leadership is an activity, not a position.

I don't say that somebody is a leader, I would say they exercise leadership, and really looking at what it is to exercise leadership and who's doing it, and why there's a challenge when you're in an institution. Most institutions are looking for you to provide safety. They want to be safe in what they're doing in terms of their job. They want to know that everything's okay. They want to have, "Where are we going?" They want direction.

What's the vision? What's the mission? Where are we going? They want enough structure to feel like they're going that way. If you provide people with that, they will like you. They'll be happy with you, and you'll be rewarded. That's not necessarily leadership. The challenge is how are you going to exercise leadership if it makes people feel uncomfortable?

If you're saying, "Actually no, there is systemic racism in this country," when people are angry and quit the church. Are you willing to exercise that leadership? Or are you going to stay in the position you have and exercise the authority you have? What would that mean if it means you might lose your job? I think if I could wave a magic wand rather than change how we do leadership development, I would change how we pay people.

I'm in the diocese, we're in the 10th decile in terms of pay. When your job is tied to how well the people can give to the church, and whether they give to the church might be tied to what you preach, that can keep people from preaching the gospel. I would totally, if I could wave a magic wand, totally change our system of pay. I think that would do more to free up our clergy than anything else would.

From my perspective, I think a lot of what the seminaries are doing is already really, really good. I think that it's an unrealistic expectation that you can come out of seminary and be equipped for the rest of your career, which is absurd, nobody can do that. Every profession, including the church, requires continuity here. Now, we are training generalists, we're not training the specialty fields. There again, you can't know everything.

Kyle: I want to follow up. You said, "Okay, there's a model of exercising authority here." If you can provide safety, structure, and a sense of direction, that there'll be equilibrium. Are there accompanying categories? I may be fishing and you can say no. If one were to come to those three particular intersections and choose a different way, what might those ways be?

Bishop Rehberg: Yes, I don't think you're choosing a different way. You need to provide if you're an institution, and anything that survives is going to be an institution that we can knock it or we can be grateful for the institution of the church which has allowed the church to survive 2,000 years. It needs to have a direction it's going. It needs to have structures in place to provide the stability to allow us to grow.

It needs to have that sense of protection and safety that our people feel like they can do their work and be safe in doing so. That's essential. That's proper positional authority and you need to be providing it. Sometimes though, we also need to be asking the questions that invite us into uncertainty, the questions that invite us into discomfort, the questions that say, "Why are we doing this?" That challenge, the status quo.

A lot of that is to invite the ambiguity, it would be one way of really thinking about it, and raise the level of discomfort and give the work to the people. As much as we like to pretend that we resist authority, and we're individualistic and rugged individual, especially in the West, in many cases, the hard decisions people will often just prefer somebody else make.

If you make them in a way that they feel safe and there's a direction and there's a structure, there'll be relatively happy. Right? Yet, if we can-- One of the things that I've said here is, you need to make some of these decisions. This isn't me, it's the Bishop telling you what to do. This is me as Bishop asking some of the questions you want me to answer. That makes people uncomfortable.

The person who asks those questions could be anybody in a congregation or a diocese. It doesn't have to be somebody in a position of authority, it could be somebody who's the youngest kid or the oldest person but not the rector or the senior warden. So, really understanding that difference between leadership and authority, that the positional authority is essential.

There are specific tasks that have to happen for the well-being, but that does not the same thing and it was really inviting leadership.

Kyle: That's really helpful. Thanks for teasing that out a bit more for us. As we wind down here, I'm just curious what other advice you might have for a seminary that is contemplating its future mission and role in grappling with some of these questions ourselves. What advice might you have for us?

Bishop Rehberg: Yes, so I think one of the challenges we have as a church is we swing back and forth or I should say as a recent church on what does it mean to be a priest? My own personal opinion is that priesthood is like, it's more identity than task. It can't be broken up and I know I don't agree with everybody in that regard. Others won't agree with me in that regard.

I can teach somebody how to say the mass in an afternoon, that doesn't make them a priest. I think really focusing on the deep essentials, being a person of deep prayer. Being a person of deep prayer is the only way you're going to survive this call. As much scripture as you can possibly get, it's essential. Really understanding the liturgy. Why do we do the things we do and why do we not say, "Oh, that was a cool thing I saw on television. Let's do that."

As an example, right now, during COVID we're online. One of the things I've been saying is if all we're doing is reproducing online, what we do on our congregations on Sunday, we're not thinking about our liturgy, right? All we're doing is in some ways, parroting back what the proverb says. What has deeper level is the liturgy we need to be offering for this medium and having the ability to really think that way.

And to face the theological question, how do we understand the theological threat of totalitarianism? What's the theological threat of fascism? What does it look like? What's the threat to the body of Christ that our political parties have catechized better than we have. There's so much that I think the seminaries are pushed to teach this latest thing that is not necessarily what is going to keep that person in their priesthood for the rest of their life.

With the seminary engage in the partnerships for, "Okay, we're going to give you this when you're here and then there's going to be continuing education and it might not be through the seminary. We might help you with that but it's a lifelong thing." Really instilling in people that it's a lifelong thing. Unfortunately, right now, we're in a time when education is being devalued across the country.

I worry that I'm seeing that in the church. A well-formed, well-educated clergy, I think, is essential for the health of the church. I would urge you not to just go with the next new thing, unless it somehow goes deeper into what we're already trying to do.

Kyle: A deepening of that tradition of priesthood, of ministry of the baptized, et cetera?

Bishop Rehberg: Right. Yes. I think if our laity could understand better what a priest is versus the role of the rector, that would be helpful. If the priest could understand better what our laity are, versus just somebody in the pew, that would be helpful. We have asked as a church that our laity step up and do more at the exact same time that the culture itself is doing that.

I think back to when I was a kid and my mom was active with the Episcopal church women and my dad was on Vestry and there wasn't the amount of outreach going on at the church that is there now. There wasn't the number of Bible study courses or adult formation courses and most of the women didn't work outside the home, so they did the fundraisers.

They did a lot of that stuff that there aren't the people to do that right now during the day and the churches asking people to step up and do more. We need to have a serious conversation, I think, about that reality. You can't just say, "It's the ministry of the baptized, now you step up and do it", when we are stretched thin. We will do whatever we can.

How do we really then teach people at us about being followers of Jesus Christ in your everyday life? What does that look like? Sometimes that means you say no to a particular way of serving the in your congregation because you don't have the time and that's okay. We're going to make sure that's okay. Again, that goes back to that partnership and being the body of Christ.

Kyle: Bishop Rehberg, you've given us a lot to think about. Really appreciate your time and your insight.

Bishop Rehberg: My pleasure. Thank you, Kyle.

Outro: Crossings Conversations is a co-productions of Church Divinity School of the Pacific and Trinity Church Wall Street. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or share it with a colleague. You can learn more about the only Episcopal seminary on the west coast and subscribe to Crossings magazine at CDSP.edu