Legacy leadership: Influences on pastoral approaches to financial leadership
Timothy B. West, D.Min, and Lucinda C. West, Ph.D.
Yesterday we were sitting on the back porch contemplating some finishing touches. By noon, we hit “enter.” We submitted our final paper to Villanova and our research fellowship is finally finished (YAY!). It was a two year project. We had to pare it down to 24 pages to meet their requirements, which only barely covered all the interesting findings. We will have a few articles to submit to journals after this.
If you remember, we originally planned to look at how pastors from the four money scripts approach financial leadership of their congregations. As it turns out, our sample was largely from one money script (money vigilance), so we had to scrap the idea of comparing groups. In fact, one of the scripts was completely missing from our sample (money status).
We only surveyed Church of God pastors, so it would be interesting to do another survey with multiple denominations to see if the dispersion of money scripts is greater across tribes or if this is a pastoral phenomenon. We think someone in the next cohort might have taken that bait.
We did do a few correlational analyses of the larger sample, but mostly focused on the themes that emerged from the interviews with pastors. We found four basic themes. For the purpose of this project, we highlighted one theme “legacy leadership.” Basically this entails the legacies brought into the equation by money scripts, family of origin, mentors, and pastors as mentors passing on legacies to their congregations. It was very interesting to hear how their families, mentors, and scripts influenced their decision-making as it pertains to finances.
We also found three other themes of financial leadership which were discussed briefly and will be brought out in more detail in our other articles. Those included spiritual leadership, visionary leadership, and practical leadership. Again, it was fascinating to hear how pastors lead finances based on these themes. Once it’s posted in the Villanova archives, we’ll let you know where you can read it.
In our second residency, we were asked by Scott Thumma (a well-known researcher in the church world, and one of the mentors at Villanova) to submit a brief article based on our findings as part of a larger project he is conducting. They are exploring the effects of the pandemic on churches. His project is funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. and conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford International University.
This was a side finding in our study, but it was interesting to hear what pastors had to say about the pandemic. Our article just got published on their website, and they paid us a small stipend for the submission. Here’s the link if you’d like to read that one.
It is wonderful to be married to someone who carries the same interests, passions and vision as I have. We want to see the Kingdom of God expand. We love the church world. We want to see pastors succeed and congregations flourish. We both enjoy doing research and are task oriented enough to see it through (even when we get a little tired of the topic).
After we submitted this research project, we asked, “what now?” We decided it’s time for us to relax a bit. I’m still working on my books, and this freed up some time to create illustrations (more on that in another blog). But it probably won’t be long before we are on to the next big project.
À la prochaine…hasta la próxima vez…until next time!