Ep. 87 - The burden of leadership in theological schools

What does it take to lead a theological institution today? Auburn Seminary is relaunching Auburn Studies, beginning with a valuable report on leadership. In this episode, the Rev. Dr. Patrick Reyes, dean of Auburn Seminary, shares key trends in the field, and study author, the Very Rev. Dr. Michael DeLashmutt of General Theological Seminary, explains what his research uncovered. They discuss the increasing turnover among presidents and deans, the immense personal and institutional weight of leadership, and how leaders can navigate these pressures. The report is due out in April. You'll be able to find it at Auburn Seminary's website. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:03

Hello and welcome to the Intrus Center Podcast, where we connect with experts and innovators in theological education around topics important to theological school leaders. Thank you for joining us. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Good Governance Podcast. I'm Matt Huffman. While the stresses in theological education are no secret, as there is plenty of conversation about them, it also has to be acknowledged that there are plenty of people, schools, and groups working to deal with those and provide positive ways forward. I'm joined today by two leaders who've been working in the field to help explore how we move ahead, and we'll discuss some of the ways that they're working on and field is going. The first, the Reverend Dr. Patrick Rays, the Dean of Auburn Seminary in New York. Patrick, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 0:51

Oh, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02: 0:52

And the very Reverend Dr. Michael DeLashma, Senior Vice President and Dean of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church and author of a new Auburn Studies report on leadership in theological education. Michael, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks. It's great to be here, Matt. Let's start first with you, Patrick, and talk a little bit about the return of Auburn Studies. For people new to the field, they may not know that for many years Auburn Seminary had a center of study led by the late and great Barbara Wheeler, who was longtime at the seminary and really, I think, helped the field understand itself and evaluation. The seminary is now back in into the studies under uh the direction, of course, of President Emma Jordan Simpson and yourself, uh, and has revived this. And uh, we'll talk a little bit more about this first uh study. We'll link to it in the podcast about leadership. Uh, it's a great report. I'm gonna recommend it to anybody listening. But Patrick, talk a little bit about um, and and again, I'm really thrilled that you're back into this work. It's I think a wonderful thing for the field, but talk a little bit about uh coming back into this and what you hope to accomplish in the Auburn studies.

SPEAKER_00: 2:14

Yeah, first we just, you know, one of the things that we had hoped for that this study would come out um a little bit earlier to honor Barbara Wheeler while she was still alive. You know, she passed away last year. And it wasn't just, you know, in the recent history that we were doing the Auburn Studies thing. This goes back to the beginning of her tenure at you know, over three decades at Auburn Theological Seminary back in the 19 late 1970s. She was doing research on the Association of Theological Schools and helping the field see itself. Uh, she formalized that in 1991 when she launched Auburn Studies and in 2007 worked with the Lily Endowment to permanently endow this uh sort of research to help the field understand the questions that matter to executive leaders, to boards, to faculty, even to students, thinking about things like student debt, that she really wanted to help the entire field see itself a little bit better to navigate a changing landscape. And if you think about that, those shifts 70s to 2007 in theological education, you're like right at the heyday of theological education when schools are expanding to through the 90s, just like a steady decline in enrollment, changing uh demographic, the uh changes in denominational structures and fundings for schools. So Auburn Studies was this uh like real uh trusted resource that people could go to to help make sense of the changes that were happening so they could make informed, data-informed decisions for their leadership. Um, and it wasn't just our Barbara, it was a whole team of researchers like Helen Blyer and and others who really helped her uh put that out into the field. So we're excited about coming back to these deep perennial questions that theological education has and institutional leaders have about what's happening in the field and doing our best to resource those leaders with the data and the um trends that they uh understanding of the trends that they might need to make better decisions as they go about their day-to-day business.

SPEAKER_02: 4:12

Yeah, I think it's an important place. And for and again, for those new to the field, they may not see uh the great history. The reports are still very valuable. There's there's great data in them, there's there's some trend telling, there's some storytelling. Um, and so the the re-emergence of this, I think is we're at the right time because there's an impetus or there's some energy in um some of the great leaders in the field. Lily Endowment has uh really seen, I think, the need to help schools find pathways to sustainability. So this kind of work I think will really be helpful. I'm interested in the first one out of the gate is about leadership, and we know um, you know, Frank Yamata several years ago, the executive director of ATS, kind of rang the bell and issued a call to say, hey, there's a lot of turnover happening. Um nearly every school has been affected in the past five years or so, and this wasn't just a pandemic issue. We've seen leadership turnover at any number of schools continue. Um, so I want to talk a little bit about the interest in leadership as a first place of study. I mean, it of all places, I think it's a good one to start. But what did you see in the field, Patrick? What was it that you said this is a this is the right place to start?

SPEAKER_00: 5:34

You know, one of the things is Auburn got back into this work. You know, we haven't, I think our uh previous study was 2018, 2019, that we really wanted to understand what were some of the um trend markers from our partners. So we talked with the folks at ATS and we talked with um folks at intrust and talked to trusted partners from uh, you know, my work in the past to just explore what was what are some things that are light bulb moments where we should all be paying attention to. And it was Frank's at that time, I think he had the number 500 turnover over 600 now in the last five years. And um, while ATS had done some really great studies, um, and you know, Debbie Jen, uh Molly Marshall, but they'll be posting that in their webinars coming up. That uh we wanted to understand what was happening with those who had left because that they hadn't been surveyed or asked questions, you know, why were you leaving? We'd always done people in the job, and so this that number was a nice 600 for only 270 schools, right? Is something everyone should be paying attention to and understanding having a better understanding of why and leadership um and how executive leaders play a role in theological institutions, which is a as the Michael study shows, is a very particular type of place to work and think about vocation in the work. Um, so it was a perfect place for us to navigate that and just you know, on our own side, Auburn's going through its own sort of generational transition, not just because of Barbara's uh passing, but also us discerning what does it mean to be an intergenerational institution that really supports the field, that does our work well, that honors our mission and our history and our legacy. So understanding of the role that executive leaders play in shaping that and um leading communities, boards, staff, constituents through hey, this is the this is what we can do in the world to make it a little bit better. Um, we felt like the leadership mark, that big number of transition, and also the the moment that so many executive leaders are finding themselves in, asking themselves similar questions around how do we lead together in this moment, it just seemed like the perfect place to start this uh to to relaunch Auburn Studies.

SPEAKER_02: 7:47

And I should note that um you know, that 600 number you're talking about, uh CEOs and chief academic officers. So you're talking about the you know the heart and soul of all of this. Um and and Michael, I want to turn to you before we even get into the report. I mean, in which you know, you know the seismic changes that are happening. You had your own change. I mean, you were um you were tabbed uh to from you know, academic dean, you're cruising along. Uh you and I have talked about this. Every you're doing you're deaning, you're doing your dean work, and all of a sudden the board says, uh, you know, taps you and says, it's time for you to uh to step into leadership as a president. Um and you know, I find one of the things I find in the field, it's like in any number of places in fields where you really you may be really good, you know, in our field, you have a you're a scholar, you're a practitioner, you're all this. But it's rare to say, you know, I want to be a president someday. There's such a different skill set, there's such a different role you have to walk into. Um and I love you've got a you know, you've drafted a semi little short version of your story, but uh I love the way you put it. It's like all of a sudden the weight of all this comes on. So talk a little bit about your own transition and your interest in this, because I I don't think that uh the uniqueness of your story of like waking up one day and saying, Oh my gosh, this is not what little boys dream of. Um, and here we are. Talk to me a little bit about your own transition and how it shaped your approach to this.

SPEAKER_01: 9:30

Sure. Well, I think you know, there's a a larger context, which um I started my PhD in theology in 2002. I had a dream of uh working at a seminary or a liberal arts college in a small town and walking around with a tweed jacket with leather arm patches and a pipe. And I thought this was just gonna be my life as like a North American C.S. Lewis. And uh my first postdoc was during the economic collapse of 2008. And uh my first jobs were within the context of closing or changing institutions. And so um my almost the entirety of my work experience in theological education for the last 24 years or 23 years has been within uh an industry that's undergoing seismic shifts that are related to a wide range of unrelated uh external pressures from changing economies to changing attitudes towards religion in the West, changing uh denominational polities and sizes. And then on top of that, kind of the un the the um the the significant, the seismic shift that's going on in higher education more generally, all of this is causing just this churn, this turmoil within theological education. So yeah, I took um I took a job at General Seminary in 2016 to serve as the academic dean. I've been an academic dean sick for six years prior at a couple of different institutions. Um, I love the work, I think I'm pretty good at it. And uh in in May of 2021, the board tapped me for this role, um, primarily because um I'd been the recipient of a Lily Pathways for Tomorrow grant that helped us to do some internal research that sort of surfaced major themes in our own institutional instability. And uh, and so the board wanted time to wrestle with and discern through some of the options that that created. And um, you know, I've been a number two for most of my career. And to step into the number one's seat, uh, and it's very much seat is the literal word here at the seminary. Our chapel has these two elevated stalls, one for the dean and president, one for the sub-dean. And so to move across the aisle into the the dean stall um was was a physical representation of this seismic shift. And in my reflection, I talk about how um I got the call from the board, uh, you know, a round of applause. Thank you, Michael, for saying yes to this. And I come back to my apartment and I lay down on my couch and I put my head in my wife's lap and I just start crying because I felt at that moment this intense weight of the role. And and I think the human element of higher education, of theological education and leadership, is something that really surfaced for me in this research and it resonated with my own experience. I told Patrick that the uh that the um working title for this, which has turned into sort of a subtitle in the report, was um, I love the work, but it's killing me. And um and this isn't just something that I I have, I mean, I've certainly said that myself about being the president um when I was president, but but this was a quote parroted back to me by multiple um research subjects who I was interviewing, uh, these this 10 or so um uh you know former presidents or deans of theological institutions that could describe their tenure. And and I don't think that we we recognize the personal, the spiritual, the physical uh um weight of this role. And that's something that I tried to surface. Um that I think we need a paradigm shift um in terms of our expectations as institutions and as boards of what a president is really capable of doing. And um, I've been through a lot of presidential transitions in my career, uh, and many of them have been very, very difficult transitions to watch, uh, either from a distance or up close. And most of the time, the difficulty stems from unrealistic expectations from the board, sure, either in the hiring or in the management or in the termination of the president. And I wanted to surface that in some of this work that we were doing.

SPEAKER_02: 13:58

But in in your reflection, you note, um, I mean, of course, in your tenure as president, it was I would say active, and that's a polite way of putting. I mean, you did a whole lot in a very short time, including moving an institution in into kind of a partnership or agreement with another institution. Um, you know, you're very creative things, very difficult things in a very compressed time, which I think is part of the world we're living in. As we see, you know, institutions where, you know, for years uh decisions weren't made, or or we can't expect people to see uh 10 or 20 years down the road necessarily. And and uh as you mentioned, in your career you've seen uh several, a couple of big economic changes, uh downturns. Uh you've seen all kinds of changes, but you but you note this, you know, those pressures are on top of what uh we're already expecting people to do, run an institution. You note that in executive leadership in theological schools, you say, is uniquely multifaceted, requiring simultaneous attention to spiritual, academic, financial, and operational dimensions. I mean, each one of those is is a huge thing. So let's talk first a little bit about the uniqueness or what you see as the uniqueness of leading a theological school. And then I think we can turn our attention a little more to what's in the report. Um, and and again, we'll put a link to that and tell people why they ought to listen to or read it. But let's talk about what you see as the uniqueness of this.

SPEAKER_01: 15:43

Yeah, well, as I say in the report, uh, the president of a theological school inherits uh a huge portfolio uh as they step into this role. Um, on one hand, there's this set of expectations that the board has for that person when they hire them. Uh, I only halfway jokingly often say that um presidents are hired by boards to fix whatever problem happens to be on the board's mind at the time. So if the board sees an institution has enrollment challenges, they're looking for a president that can talk about enrollment gains. If they're facing financial challenges, they want to see somebody who's either really adept at managing complex budgets or at fundraising. If they have an educational challenge, they want somebody who's more of a scholar that can speak to the curriculum. And sometimes they want all of these, plus, there's um uh an expectation of a certain kind of spiritual charism amongst presidents of theological schools that is kind of like chief pastor of a church, uh, almost like in our polity, a bishop's kind of role as somebody who's providing oversight of this community. And um, it's almost impossible to find somebody that can do all of those things because um there are no president of theological school training programs that can really prepare you to fire on all four or six cylinders or whatever number of cylinders we're talking about here. And so I think that there's there's an inherent disconnect between capacity and need in the role. And I think this is compounded by the fact that most of our schools are financially strapped. And if we're not financially strapped in the way that many of us are, you know, carrying debt, operating in deficit budgets, uh, maybe um diminishing our capital improvements in order to save on personnel costs or whatever it happens to be, most of us are feeling some kind of financial pinch. And so as a consequence, we tend to do kind of one of two things. Either we don't, we can't afford to hire people with the adequate skills for the complex jobs that they're asked for. That's not just in the president's office, but it's really all the way down in terms of administration. And again, I'm not I'm not picking on anybody individually. I've worked with incredible people who've been professionals in their field and gone into theological education, developed professional skills within theological education, or really, you know, take an initiative to um make the best with what they've been given. But often we're not able to afford the top talent that other larger, more well-resourced organizations would have. So that's kind of problem number one. And then problem number two is oftentimes, again, because of a reduced number of resources, we can't um hire in the kinds of executive teams that support the work of a CEO. And so many of the subjects that I interviewed talked about how uh they were bogged down by, that was a phrase, bogged down by a particular element of the job that they had to do, but didn't really want to do or weren't particularly gifted at. One of the subjects referred to this as the administrivia of the job. You know, they were hired in order to go out and make friends and raise funds. And this is something they were really good at and had a lot of energy for. But more and more the job of running a seminary um fell into their office because they were the pastor. They had to speak to academic issues, they had to deal with personnel issues. And um, and so in many cases, simply being able to afford a chief operating officer that the seminary could delegate some of these internal um roles to would have changed the outcome of a presidency's a president's tenure uh in considerable ways. But again, because we're financially strapped, um, and and most of us come into these roles with a a sense that it appeals to our vocation in that kind of spiritual sense of vocation. And with that comes a kind of willingness to sacrifice our own good for the good of the institution. And while that may be noble, I'm not entirely sure that that's healthy or helpful to institutions or their leaders.

SPEAKER_02: 19:57

Yeah, I think I I've started to see what I would say it's like the small town pastor or the small church pastor. You're called to be, as you say. I mean, I love this analogy of you moving chairs in the chapel and now you're in the big chair, you know, you're in the dean's chair, and that takes on all kinds of additional things. And as somebody told me, they were going up to preach one time, right before they went up to preach, somebody said, uh, hey, the boiler's broken. Right? It's I I tend to joke in my own seminary education that one of the places they failed is they didn't give me a tool belt when I walked out so I could fix the air conditioner, the window, the door, whatever. There's there's so much in this. And then by the way, you're supposed to be spiritual. Oh, and you can read the financials and talk about financial forecasting, and you can meet the needs of staff and and and so I really appreciate the way you broke this report down because it wasn't just that you talk to people, um, and you did you had some great there are great interviews and there are things that you found, but you also distilled uh some things that you thought moving forward would help. And this is one of the things I so appreciate about this report. It it's not just a matter of, hey, we know there's a problem, but you you provide some ideas about how folks can move forward and how folks can move forward well. We're not we're obviously not going to get to all these. I want people to download the report um and engage with it. Um, but one of the things that you noted in here is that leadership wasn't um you called it a relay race, not a marathon. Talk a little bit about that because I I really appreciated this insight.

SPEAKER_01: 21:47

Yeah, well, first of all, um I'm really indebted to um the qu the quantitative and qualitative research that ATS sponsored that made a lot of this project possible, particularly uh Debbie Jinn's work is just extraordinary on this. I would have been lost without it. And I'm also building on Barbara Wheeler and uh David Tede, etc.'s work in the Leadership That Works project that preceded mine by you know many years. And so, you know, building on the work of others, uh, and I wanted to try to make a contribution um that that maybe showed a perhaps a slight nuance in the contemporary context that doesn't look at this 200% increase in transition as a liability or but rather as a kind of baseline context that we need to adapt to. I don't think we can change, we might be able to change some of the frequency of turnover. I don't think so, though. And so I wonder what does it mean for us to adapt to a more volatile and iterative uh understanding of leadership? And so the marathon versus relay race comes up as the chief metaphor for that. And the thing that really kind of got me thinking about this um was uh I remember earlier in my career uh going into administrative buildings of seminaries and seeing this row of portraits, right? The the portraits of presidents that, you know, and each one represents maybe a decade, maybe two decades of leadership. And and alumni talk about the era of this president or that president and their accomplishments and the tone that they set. And in our own context, the names of past presidents are carved on the wall of our chapel. And there's 14 of our names on the wall, and five of us have been in the last uh 20 years, and so that means the preceding 180 years only had like nine presidents versus five in the current 20 years. And and a lot of the schools that I went to with these halls of portraits were missing the portrait of the person that preceded the incumbent, which said to me that there was something, there was some kind of cultural break going on. And um, and so I began to reflect on the nature of leadership, and and and both a lot of this has to do with my own reflections on taking up the role as an acting dean and then taking down the role, putting off the the kind of Tolkienian ring of power, right? Right. And um, and I think there's a temptation to um to identify oneself very closely with the role, to see one's own identity tied to one's success, and perhaps a tendency to hold on a little bit more tightly and a little bit longer than maybe healthy or helpful, because we've inherited an institutional culture that sees the president as this kind of focal point of leadership. And I want to challenge that and say in a context where leadership has become increasingly more iterative, what does it mean for the institution itself, its trustees, other members of senior staff and faculty to share some of that institutional identity and ethos among themselves instead of focusing it exclusively on this president as the kind of captain of the ship? And this reflects a piece that I wrote many years ago on leadership and theological education, where I reflected on this word that Paul uses to describe the gift of administration, Kubernetes. And it's a hepax legomena that only appears, I think, in 1 Corinthians. And it's one of these weird Paul words that he's borrowing from another industry. And he's borrowing it from maritime, uh, the maritime industry, where the the Kubernetes is the person in the back of the boat steering, holding on to the tiller. And so I'm wondering, you know, what does it think? What does it look like for us to imagine leaders of theological schools not front and center, holding the ethos, holding the mission, being being the person who is is frankly irreplaceable in our system? What would it look like for them to be placed in the back of the boat as somebody who's has a particular role, a particular perspective, but isn't the entire operation within themselves? And so that to me is where this idea of being a relay race. It takes all of us to lead these schools, not simply one singular person.

SPEAKER_02: 26:08

Yeah, I really appreciated your use of that word. I mean, I went to my Greek New Testament and uh and looked at how that had been translated. I thought it was a great, uh, great analogy uh for leadership. Um as we wrap up, let me give you both a chance here because I thought that insight, Michael, and there are several others in this report that I think bring a really fresh perspective or a nice perspective. I appreciate you pointing out Debbie Jinn and Barbara Wheeler and David TD's work as well. Um but this is a it's a great perspective, I think, on where we're at. Let's wrap up with this. Was there one thing in here that surprised you or one thing that you would want to point out to a reader? Um, let me start with you, Michael. Was there one thing that you went and I I think that that insight from First Corinthians was a was a great one, the relay races, but as I say, there's there's several in this report. But one thing you that you would want to point out?

SPEAKER_01: 27:07

I think it would be um to be attentive to how financial fragility influences hiring practices and anticipate and expectations for executive leaders. I I don't think that um boards appreciate the amount of pressure that the the financial fragility of our institution institutions place on senior leaders, uh, whether that's the team or the individual. And um I mention this because there really was a pretty significant shift in the narrative between those former presidents of financially threatened institutions and those former presidents of well-resourced institutions. While all of them expressed to a certain degree a sense of the burden and the difficulty and the cost of the role, those who were in better resourced in terms of finance and human resources had the capacity to develop those practices that we talk about in the report, which nurture thriving and flourishing in leadership. So they had they were more likely to delegate, they were more likely to see themselves as part of the mission as opposed to being the embodiment of the missions. And they were more likely to engage in those kinds of ongoing nurturing spiritual practices, which I think contribute to the unique needs of a theological school leader. I mean, we're in a weird spot with theological schools because we've inherited a kind of higher education technology which requires a particular sort of infrastructure and a particular kind of way of ordering an institution. And in the same way that leadership of any faith-based institution can borrow from the best of the leadership techniques of a particular time, we have to recognize that there's a different charism to the leadership of a theological school. And I think the one of the small practices that we as leaders can take on to help ground our leadership within these theological principles is through regular prayer, some kind of spiritual friendship, whether it's spiritual direction or something of that sort, the kinds of activities that remind us that the work we're doing is of a particular theological nature. And I'll conclude with this. Um, years ago, I was part of the Duke um leadership uh education program uh when Craig Dijkstra was working with him. And I will never forget this moment where Craig was teaching this group of Gen X and older millennial uh young-ish leaders. We were all in our 30s and early 40s, and he challenged us to think about what it would be like for us to lead our institutions as if the gospel were true. And um, that sank in with me because it it and it's been with me for 12 years now. Um, how can I uh live out my faith in God's provision? For me and my family in a way that it then extends to the institutions that I serve.

SPEAKER_02: 30:06

That's a great point. And so much in that. Patrick, let me wrap up with you. It's a wonderful start to this revival of Auburn studies. And this has been a wonderful conversation. What would you say that you pulled out of this first report that may have surprised you or one takeaway that you would want folks to know about?

SPEAKER_00: 30:28

I'm just going to combine uh the uh kind of intergenerational approach that um the Lashmit uh lifted up in the uh report that um that sort of relay race mentality, but also the team thing. Those things go together in my mind that we separate them out in the report, but the none of this work gets done alone. Whether it's Auburn Studies or leading an institution, that you need to be in community with other people, both those who came before you, those who will come after with you. And I think building a culture of that on the team as well, that succession planning, to be very direct about it for your audience, succession planning is everybody's work at every level of the institution. So on the board, at the executive level, with the executive team, with the staff, with thinking about students coming in and leaving and going out, that all of that is just healthy, good culture leadership. That the moment you feel like, oh, I'm trying to sink my roots down as deep as possible. So I will not move, you're probably setting the wrong culture and trend that at least we're lifting up in this first report, that it really is about bringing together the right people and everyone together thinking about how are we going to think about this institution being an intergenerational institution that really loves and has a vision for future leaders who are going to be coming through our doors or our virtual walls or however we want to think about that. But those two things combined, having a great community and thinking intergenerationally, that relay race, um, I think is some of the most important lessons I'm taking away from the research.

SPEAKER_02: 31:58

This has been a fantastic conversation. I'm going to recommend that our listeners download this report and get it. We'll link to it in our podcast page, intrust.org slash podcast. Michael, Patrick, thank you so much for being part of this program. Thank you for the wonderful work you've done and this great conversation. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you for listening to the Intrust Center's Good Governance Podcast. For more information about this podcast, other episodes, and additional resources, visit intrust.org.