Mutual Ministry Review & Staff Covenant

February 19, 2018 Uncategorized

Dear friends,

Now that February is here, the vestry, staff, and I are busy with the important task of evaluating our first year of ministry together. At our retreat on February 10, the vestry and I conducted a Mutual Ministry Review; and I am in the midst of holding individual performance appraisals with our parish staff. Those of us who work at St. Andrew’s have a covenant with one another, an agreement to abide by fourteen practices to ensure that our interactions with one another are healthy, holy, and life-giving—for us and for the church as a whole. Preparing for staff appraisals has reminded me anew of how very blessed we are by the ministry and presence of each member of our amazing team: Lorna Williams, Kathy Gray, Brad Norris, Rachel Roby, Matthew Williamson, Bill Boyer, and Bill Wilds.

Lent is a season for introspection, an opportunity to look anew at the patterns and relationships in our lives and to re-commit to engaging in healthy, holy, and life-giving relationships. I invite you to spend some time reflecting on the staff covenant (see below). Please join me in giving thanks for our gifted, dedicated staff team; and please join me also in considering how each of us might adapt these practices into our own relationships—for the sake of the Church, and for the sake of the One who calls us to be church.

Blessings,

Anne

St. Andrew’s Staff Covenant

We, the staff of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Newport News, VA, as an expression of our commitment to God and God’s mission in the world, make the following covenantal promises and commitments to each other.

1. We will value our ministry of leadership to our congregation as a team and offer our primary relational loyalty to that team.

2. We will express criticism and negative feelings first to the person, not to others.

3. We will refuse to talk with a complainer until that person addresses the person she or he is complaining about.

4. We will maintain confidentiality in staff conversations and meetings.

5. We will explain clearly to people who bring staff complaints that we will be sharing the conversation with the staff.

6. We commit to being gracious towards one another about our personality differences in order to support strengths and to balance weaknesses.

7. We will lay our cards on the table and openly discuss our personal hopes plans, dreams, and agendas relating to proposals being made.

8. We accept the fact that disagreements are expected and are to take place behind closed staff doors; in public we present ourselves as a team.

9. We will not participate in factional power plays within the parish and will disclose any such invitations received immediately to the entire staff.

10. We will serve as “acolytes” to other staff in their ministry endeavors.

11. We will make amends to the staff person(s) we wrong when we break one of these promises, and we will forgive those who make amends.

12. We will remind each other of these promises when we observe another staff person breaking one of them.

13. We invite parishioners to join us in these behaviors.

14. We will ask God to write these covenants upon our hearts. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.” — Jeremiah 31:33