What Pastoral Search Committees Can Learn from Conclave

The Roman Catholic Church and my own denomination, the United Church of Christ, could not be more different. The ways we each are structured, the ways each defines authority, and the ways each makes decisions are on opposite ends of a polity spectrum. The UCC doesn’t have a Pope, nor does it have bishops. Instead, per the congregationalism that forms the basis for our governing philosophy, each local church is able to make its own decisions while also remaining in covenant relationship with other churches. The closest thing that we have to bishops is a committee in every region that makes the same sorts of decisions about ministry authorization.

Furthermore, whereas bishops decide where priests are assigned, the UCC has a search and call system that involves ministers and churches creating their own profiles (think really exhaustive CVs), engaging in interviews, and ministers being called by congregational vote. That same search and call system is used when we need to find a new General Minister and President: a search team interviews candidates, eventually nominates one, and a body of representatives votes on them at our biennial national gathering, General Synod.

Given what I titled this post, I had to get all of that out of the way up front. Because at a glance, given the major differences between the two, one might question what a congregational system could learn from an extremely hierarchical one. Conclave isn’t close to being the same as General Synod, although my therapist did mix up the two terms the other day, which I thought was funny.

When a church search committee engages in the search and call process, they are far from Cardinals locked in a room. They’re entrusted to be far more transparent about their process, and members of the congregation don’t set up lawn chairs in the parking lot to wait for white smoke to billow out of the church chimney.

Nevertheless, there will be some aspects of conclave that already have began unfolding before it starts that I think UCC search committees could pay attention to and consider as they go through their own process.

1. Communication. The only form of communication that conclave uses is the aforementioned white smoke. Otherwise, the way they go about their deliberations is incredibly opaque. By contrast, search committees are entrusted to be very open with the congregation about where they are in the process while honoring confidentiality of the candidates until the appropriate time. The more informed search committees can keep the rest of the congregation, the better the latter might feel about how the former is conducting their work.
2. Seeking input. The cardinals ultimately debate among one another as to what their church needs in their next leader. In contrast, many parts of the search process involves gathering information and opinions about and from the congregation. Many parts of the church profile require this, but it also helps search committees to listen to members’ thoughts, desires, and hopes for who their next minister will be and how they will partner with the congregation in their work. Keeping one’s ears and spirits open will be crucial to the process.
3. Basing characteristics of the successor on those of the predecessor. One question I have as conclave begins is how different Francis was from Benedict in outlook and practice, and how different or similar the next Pope will be from Francis. Will the cardinals decide that they need someone who embodies a radically different direction, or someone who will continue along the same path? Likewise, a search committee and the congregation may voice desires for someone who will diverge from what the previous minister did, or who will continue at least some of the same things they did, if not more. Honestly weighing the congregation’s wants with their needs will help with this discernment.

There is likely far more that search committees could take away from watching the process of conclave, with all the caveats about how different our traditions are. One only needs to observe the proceedings and listen for what sounds familiar to emerge, and then bring it to the search process accordingly.

For more about ministry transition, check out my new book, The Unintentional Interim: Ministry in Times of Transition.