In the Trenches: Understanding the Modern Pastoral Experience with Rev Archie Poulos

Join Rev Archie Poulos and myself as we explore this episode -  'In the Trenches: Understanding the Modern Pastoral Experience,' as we look at the complex world of church leadership. Archie is Head of Ministry (Moore Theological College) and Ministry
Director, (Centre for Ministry Development).

Based on Archie's PhD research, and mine, we explore the evolving nature of ministry, the hidden pressures facing clergy, and their impacts on families and personal life. We discuss crucial topics like leadership theories, burnout, and the paradox between convictions and behaviors. This episode also offers important advice for pastors, congregations, and denominational leaders. Dive in as we navigate the challenging yet rewarding landscape of pastoral ministry.

Show notes and reflection questions

Download my research report and reflections

Watch the video version of this podcast

Complete a Clergy Wellbeing Quiz here

Podcast Disclaimer:

Please be aware that the opinions and viewpoints shared on this podcast are personal to me and my guests, and do not represent the stance of any institution. This podcast aims to present findings for open discussion and dialogue, inviting listeners to engage critically and draw their own conclusions. While the content serves informational purposes, it is not a substitute for professional advice. Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration and conversation!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:26 Archie's Research
• 2:20 Fears
• 6:01 Changed nature of ministry
• 10:57 Clergy resignation
• 15:47 Exposure to conflict and personal threat
• 22:50 Leadership and followership
• 32:15 Burnout and leadership
• 43:55 Archie's thoughts about the way forward

Transcript

Valerie Ling: Welcome, everybody, to our next installment of speaking to not only a practitioner, but also a researcher. I've got Archie Poulos with me here today to reflect on my findings and to talk about what he's found and what he's seeing in the clergy wellbeing and leadership space.

Welcome, Archie. 

Archie Poulos: Oh, thank you, Valerie. It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me. 

Valerie Ling: Now, can you just tell us what is your role? You're at Moore Theological College and you've got a few things going on.  

Archie Poulos: Oh, thank you. Well, the titles don't mean anything, but the title is I’m the head of the Ministry Department at Moore College and have been for 20 years.

So lots of our Anglican clergy have been taught in some way or another by me. And in more recent days, we've set up a thing which is the Centre for Ministry Development, and that exists to help clergy to enhance their ministry. And I’m the director of that. 

Archie’s research

And my doctoral research over a number of years, and it’s an area of interest of mine, is how do we build the competency of clergy? So not so much about resilience, although that of course plays into it, but how do we get better at what we are doing? 

Valerie Ling: And broadly, Archie, what have you discovered in your research?  

Lack of role clarity

Archie Poulos: Most clergy don’t know what the job description is, which makes it very hard to perform the job well if you don’t know what you're actually doing.  So I've identified 10 roles that need to be done in order for a ministry to succeed.  And along the way I interviewed hundreds of clergy along the way from the diocese. And there's a couple of things that stand out. 

Fears of competency and inclusion

One is that in every focus group that I ran, the most visceral and common response was that of fear.  We are afraid and for good and poor reasons. 

The good reasons why we're afraid are that it is such an honour and such a big task that is before us, how will we ever be able to do it? And so we're afraid that we might not perform. But there's the other one as well, which I think borders a little bit onto Imposter Syndrome.

So everybody thinks one day they're going to find out I'm not as competent as they think I am. And that's partly because clergy have put the people who have been significant in their life on a bit of a pedestal. And congregations put their ministers on a pedestal. We all know that we are human.

We speak about human finitude and the prevalence of sin in our lives and things like that, but we actually don't practise with ourselves. And so there's a fear that I'll be found out not to be as competent as people expect me to be or as I expect myself to be. 

And the other fear, which I think is probably more seditious, is that clergy and denominational clergy tend to create their own tribe.

And we are afraid that if I don't perform well or if I say something or practise something that my tribe doesn't agree with, then I'm put on the outer. So there's some of the things, but one of the great things too is that our clergy are extraordinary people. The whole fibre of their being is to see Christ glorified and his name reach out into the world.

And so there's the danger of the fear, but there's just the great thing that God has given us in our clergy. 

Valerie Ling: Archie, your research, where did the sample come from? New South Wales? Australia-wide?  

Archie Poulos: No, it would only be in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney. Because one of the things about Sydney Anglicans universally is that we are different to any other diocese in Australia and in the world, and that leads to an identity.

That is, us versus them. And that creates protective walls around us. And so I interviewed hundreds of people and in the kindness of our clergy, more than half the licensed clergy in the diocese were involved in my research. So it's Anglican clergy in the Diocese of Sydney. 

Valerie Ling: And so when you describe those fears, to me, that matches the clinical presentations that we find.  We see a lot of sense of defectiveness, a lot of shame, those unrelenting standards for self and a real fear that we're not only going to let our congregation down, but there's almost a catastrophic level of anxiety we're going to destroy the church, we're going to send people spiritually astray and my family will go down with me as well.

Changed nature of ministry

Valerie Ling: Some of the things that I hear when I'm doing my public talks and particularly speaking to pastors is, didn't all of those sorts of fears seem trivial when we think about New Testament figures like the Apostle Paul? Why do we seem to have these issues? Surely if you've got the gospel, you've got Jesus, that's all you need.  People of the past didn't seem to have these issues. 

Archie Poulos: I wish I had the answer to it, Val. I can make some suggestions along the way and you'll come up with as-good or better ones than I do. And those who are watching this will come up with other ones that I've not thought about before. One is, we have moved, as clergy.

Now I'm speaking about Anglicans in Sydney. And so if you are coming from a different denomination or a different setting, you've got to make sure you nuance it to your setting. But 50 years ago, you did what was always done. That is, if you're Anglican, you read the prayer book.

So your services were set. And so, you just went through those. You preached a sermon like everybody else preached because you were the minister of your local parish. These days, the stakes are much higher. People are more volatile, they move around more. And so, if they don't like you, they'll go to the church down the road.

In fact, if they don't like you, they'll go online to church. And so your pastor becomes a person that you've never met before. You've only seen them in two dimensions. The stakes are much higher. And you also need, therefore, to differentiate yourself from other people as well. And so it's not about merely proclaiming the truth, preaching the gospel of Jesus, praying for your flock, being a model, which is what those things the New Testament calls us to be. It's that I need to have a product that is differentiated from anybody else's so that people will come and join my ministry. It's, therefore, that people are assessed differently.

So the assessment, then, is how many people have come to my ministry rather than, am I a person who is on my knees praying for my congregation? Am I a person who, like the Apostle Paul, says, ‘Imitate me as I imitate Christ’? Those sorts of things are the bedrock and all these other things we keep putting on top of them.

Competition and performance

If I can just digress for a moment. One of the other startling and worrying things in my research was the way we are, therefore, terrified of networking. So if I can take a moment, I'm in one parish. The parish next door to me has exactly the same goals as I do. We want to see people meet Jesus, and in God's kindness, enfolded into his family and become children of the living God.

So my desire as a minister of this church is exactly the same as the goal of the person at the church next door. You'd think that would lead us to be working together, but instead the person in the church next door is my competitor. Because we are competing for who we bring along with us.

So I think that this whole increased level, then, of fear that people are finding in some of the psychological things that you are seeing stems from the sort of world that we exist in. 

Valerie Ling: What do you mean by that last bit? From the world that we exist in?  

Archie Poulos: So the world is, we are measured by our level of performance.

And so we live in a world of KPIs and things like that. I've been in ministry for about 40 years now, and when I finished at college, we were called curates. And everybody knew that we were in the business of learning how to lead a ministry, and so we were given a great deal of latitude. These days, it costs so much to have an assistant minister, you've got to hit the ground running and you've got to show everybody that you are worth the funding that it costs.

There's, I think, probably a little bit of an evaporation of gospel generosity as well. And so, in God's kindness, when I finished college, congregations continued to give money so that I might earn my stipend, knowing that as they were contributing money, I was getting better. And if even if I didn't stay in this setting, say more than five years, they'll contribute to the gospel going out through this person being better equipped.

But these days, bang for buck tends to be what the expectations of churches are. 

Clergy considering resignation 

Valerie Ling: That's intriguing, which I guess will bring me now to your reflections on what I discovered. 

So much like your research, Archie, mine, unintentionally, but just because of the time that I had, was largely [00:10:00] from Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptist, and there was a group of the independents, so your church-planter type [00:10:07] profile and largely from New South Wales. So I would think that there is a flavour of what I found that might synthesise with what you've found. So, any surprise to you that the percentage of clergy, in the last 12 months, seriously thinking about resigning, was more than 30%?

Archie Poulos: That doesn't surprise me. It saddens me, but it doesn't surprise me because that's the sort of data that has been coming out, probably for the last 15 years, from the National Church Life Survey and some of the other organisations that were set up for clergy 20 years ago. The figures were much higher in other parts of Australia than we have in Sydney and New South Wales, but we've caught up over the last decade or so. So it's sad, but not surprising. 

Valerie Ling: And the top three reasons for quitting,  - so you could answer more than one - 76%: my family suffers, versus 49% that says the immense stress of the job and 75%: I feel lonely and isolated. 

Archie Poulos: Thank you that absolutely resonates with the research that I did, Val.

Pressures on ministry families

Archie Poulos: One of the things that was very common in my own research was the family pressures, in that I'm the person that's employed, but yet the whole family is involved.  Again, a couple of generations ago when you had the clergymen employed and the family living in the church house, which was next door, that was an easier pathway to navigate than what we find now where often our spouses are in the workforce and so they have an existence outside of the parish housing, and yet the same expectations are on them.  The way that my husband is treated affects my whole family. Because we live in church housing, we are actually in relationship with the same sort of people, and so if there are disputes going on between my husband and a congregation member, then the whole family's involved.

And if there's a dispute going on between my husband and another man, the kids are often friends with each other as well. His kids and my kids, all of that. So the family is a very significant thing. Tied up with that, how do you relate to congregation members? It's actually quite a complex thing in that you lead volunteers, but the volunteers are actually your employers as well.

And so that leads to a complexity. You are living in church-provided housing, so that's certainly not surprising. 

Ministry isolation

And the other piece of data that I collected, which resonates with what you have said - so I think there is a triangulation of confirmation that's going on here - and that is that, again, every one of my focus groups spoke of isolation. So the language that was common in our groups was ‘siloing’. When I talked about being in competition with the church next door, that creates the siloing effect. So I am only interested in my little patch and siloing then creates isolation.

The other word that was fairly common was the idea of ‘island’. I feel like I'm an island and it works both ways and so lots of people kept saying the system should work to integrate us all. And then when I'd ask the question  ‘What have you contributed to the system?’, people say ‘Well, I don't trust the system’.

So it just feeds on itself. Those findings that you found, certainly finds resonance with the work that I did. 

Job design and job demands

Valerie Ling: Certainly to me resonates. Years ago as I started to think about this space, I've often thought of it as there is the ‘jobs, demands, resources, burnout, work stress’ component - which I think in the last 10 years, we're a lot more aware of the issues and certainly trying to progress. How do we actually do job design? Even the fact that we use the word ‘job design’ is interesting, isn't it? But how do we get how much we're producing and the expectations of what ministry people can do?

But I started to think there's also this real threat pathway - the language that you've just used, Archie, fear. They're terrified, they're isolated - and I think alienated; low trust, low sense that I can actually say something about it. This almost to me is a related but significantly separate issue that we need to look at because we're actually looking at safety or the feeling that psychologically I can endure and keep going, and I even worry about my family.

Archie Poulos: I think that resonates with all that I have done. I think that there is such immense pressure on the position. You just spoke about needing to clarify the positions that clergy are expected or employed to be, and they're also now employed to do. It is quite an onerous thing.

So we are employed to be the model, to be the shepherd, to be the one that leads the congregation. So that's being, but we overlay that with a whole lot of: these are the things that you do, and so you need to do it at this level. And that's an increase in job demands, which I think becomes threatening.

Exposure to conflict and personal threat

Valerie Ling: I'm going to jump down now to the last-minute question that I threw in.  Almost like from a moment of just going ‘Oh Lord, is there anything else I should throw in?’ And, I thought I'll throw in the same sets of questions that we ask Australian school principals with regards to the levels of personal threat and violence that they're experiencing.

And lo and behold, it was disturbing to actually see clergy respond and say that the level of conflict that they are experiencing is regular, it goes to the extent of feeling like they're being gossiped and that there’s slander. There's unpleasant teasing, feeling bullied and, of course, all of that conflict and quarrel and there are those who have experienced physical and sexual threat. Does this surprise you?

Archie Poulos: That does surprise me. Certainly, in our own setting here, there is increasing comment about bullying. and I think that there can be a whole lot of different facets on that. I think that that's probably true.

I think if you have a greater demand on the senior person, it's likely to show up on those that work under them. At the same time as the world is changing in expectations of, say, the assistant minister, the senior person [00:18:00] says ‘I'm just asking somebody to do what was asked of me’.

And so I think we would all benefit from being able to see the perspective of the other person that might help a little bit of the low-level bullying. That high-level bullying, the threat of physical violence and sexual violence and that sort of thing, I find astounding and really, really disturbing.

I think it shows if it's true - and I've got no reason to doubt that it's not true, Val - it shows that we have been very poor at creating relief valves. I still remember one of the sentences that was given by one of the senior clergy of the diocese of Sydney - of course, I'm not going to give you the name, but well-known to many people - and his comment was: ‘No one wants to be that guy who fails’. And as a result of that, we will not seek help.  We will not even own up to what's going on for us. And so the pressures mount and mount, and in some way it's got to be released. And I assume that some of the release has proven to be very dangerous.

Valerie Ling: We'll touch base about that in the destructive leadership patterns.  Interestingly enough, I definitely know that there are some horrible things that happen between seniors and assistants. I guess my research, though only 200, was heavily flavoured by senior ministers. So in this sense, we've actually got a sense that senior ministers themselves are feeling the target of this sort of conflict.

I didn't ask where they would've come from. It could be from staff, it could be from congregants. So there seems to me an escalated sense that we've gotten to the point, just within our body, within churches, that this level of conflict - I don’t whether I could say it's okay - but it seems to be a bit of an issue. 

Archie Poulos:  I am not surprised by that. So I said I think I'm surprised by the intensity of it, not the breadth of its existence, which is very dangerous, isn't it? I think that there's a few things that are going on. This is just a knee-jerk response to what you've just said there. Victimhood is the way that our society works these days. So somebody owns the name ‘victim’; then the person who is not the victim is the one that's in trouble. And so for senior ministers, for example, all you need is a congregant or an assistant minister to say ‘I'm a victim’. And everybody in lots of ways, rightly runs through the defence and the victim, but we are weaponising victimhood, not just in churches, but as a society in general.

And so that adds extra pressure to you. Likewise, congregation members will say things if they don't like you. You can just say, ‘Look, you're abusing your power’. And you can be absolutely honourable in your desires and actually absolutely honourable in your behaviours, but somebody can say ‘You're abusing your power’ because you're doing something that I don't like.

Valerie Ling: I mean, certainly we were seeing an increase in our clients who were coming in for support due to conduct protocol or professional standards-type complaints. Obviously we are not able to adjudicate whether those complaints have any veracity, but it has been noticeable for us that there has been an increase in having to support people as they go through that process. 

Leadership and followership

Valerie Ling: Leadership and followership, that's probably one of the things that I've been interested in - to what extent we study leadership and we try to get the characteristics and the qualities that are needed.

I mean, the fact that you've got 10 roles - did you say, 10, Archie? 

Archie Poulos: Yeah. 

It must also mean that the complexities of followers and followership has also changed, perhaps, that you would need to have those roles. What do you think? 

Archie Poulos: Yes, absolutely. Most of us are aware of the change in the whole leadership realm over the last 30 years.

So at the middle of the 20th century, it was always great men in theory. That is, the thing about leadership was the traits of the great person that made them a leader. And so they looked at Henry Ford, people like that, and they tried to work out what are the traits that made these great men.

Second, the last quarter of the 20th century was that movement from leadership to followership because you lead followers. That's the obvious next phase. And that actually makes life more complex. It's absolutely the right way to go, but it does make life more complex because you have less control over followers.

I have control over how I act. I don't have control over my followers. So I'm a great fan of transformative leadership. There's no right one, but transformative leadership - particularly Burns is the one who pioneered that, or at least popularised it - I think that's right.

And so transformative leadership has as its pinnacle activity  idealised leadership. That is, when you look at the followers, they say ‘I want to be like that person, not just in their abilities, but in their character’. And, so the follower will follow you because you are the idealised leader.

I think that that's a really helpful thing. And so followership really does matter.  The old line was if you want to know whether somebody's leading, you see who's following. So that’s just an obvious thing, I think. 

Leadership theories: transformational and servant leadership

Valerie Ling: I'm curious about your thoughts about this transformational or transformative leadership, as you put it, is probably a very popular leadership style right now in lots of sectors - education, healthcare - and I think it's because of what you said: the way that we've organised, entities or organisations has changed because over the years, we’re not producing cars, we’re dealing with ideas, we’re dealing with influence. I think we're more and more trading those things. And so people look to a leader that they trust, not just because they produce really good cars, but because that person represents someone whom I want to follow and I want to be, and I'm going to invest my trust in.

But surely in a church setting, in my simple thinking, that's Jesus. And then doesn't it just fall to very basic pastoral leadership? Have we just overcomplicated things? I mean, if we preach, if we pray, if we visit and we go out of the church to tell people about Jesus, isn't that enough?  Do we really need to bring in these sorts of leadership theories? 

Archie Poulos: I think that the leadership theories are helpful in our own development. The other things that you say - preaching and praying and modelling - God uses and uses very powerfully, but they occur over time. I think the assessment of ourselves and the assessment that other people have of us tends to be short-term.

And that actually creates one of those stressors for us, I think. So for example, if you compare again - it was last century - servant leadership was the big thing. They were all saying, clergy are all about servant leadership because the Lord Jesus was a servant, didn't count equality with God something to be grasping himself. And so therefore, that becomes our model. That's that whole pouring out of yourself, which is actually Christian. When you sign up to be a Christian, you sign up to be a slave of Christ and a servant of others, but there's an element of wisdom that needs to be applied to that as well.

So we had the pushback again at the last quarter of the last century where people talked about boundaries, because servant leadership - just pouring yourself out - often was destructive and enabled people. To see their clergy person as the one who was my chaplain, who did what I wanted them to do, rather than the one who helped me to become what I need to be.

So servant leadership, just by itself, can suffer from that. Things like transformational leadership involve you needing to be self-reflective. It's not just about pouring yourself out. It's understanding the way God has made you and it's learning what are the things I need to work on in me and what are the things I need to work on in me in this setting.

That internal reflectiveness about me and the external reflectiveness of how do I engage in this setting and with other people - transformational leadership just helps you to be aware of that. 

Valerie Ling: If you wouldn't mind, could you supply us with a definition of transformational leadership and then a definition of servant leadership?

Archie Poulos: Sure. So transformational leadership developed from this whole idea about the way leaders and followers worked was transactionally. You are my follower. I pay you, and because I pay you, I can tell you what to do. Well, that transactional thing doesn't change people.

And so that led to the whole transformational leadership, which is, the leader is somebody I want to be. And so I look at my leader, they understand me. They are there to help me. They enable the task to be done. And so I want to be like them. Servant leadership is: I will always put my follower above me.

The trouble with servant leadership is it's easy to measure. Are you putting yourself out for another person? But is that the best thing to do? What it's done is actually taken wisdom out of the equation because sometimes you won't do it, and it's absolutely right that you don't do it.

So even the Lord Jesus didn't do everything that people asked him to do. He was actually really wise in saying, ‘No, you need to do things from time to time’. And so I think that what servant leadership doesn't do is it doesn't say sufficiently enough that you need to incorporate into the way that you live - which is a culture of service and slavery - the whole concept of wisdom. Understanding what the right thing to do at this time is. So, to use a quite trivial example, but Ecclesiastes, in the ditty there, there is a time to mourn and a time to dance.

There's a time to build up and a time to break down there. You know, there's a time to embrace and there's a time for warfare. That takes wisdom. And so transformational leadership actually says to you, it's not just the activity, it's actually the wise application of it. And as people see that, they say ‘I want that.  I want to have that morality. I want to have those ethics. I want to have that wisdom’. I think that's what it is. And so as we talk about transformational leadership, what it does is expand the canvas of how clergy might develop. I think that's what I like about transformational leadership.

Valerie Ling: So as part of the Masters of Leadership, I had to make sure that my research had leadership behaviour.

And it was interesting that as I looked to what was prevalent in ministry leadership literature - and there's not a lot - there is a leaning towards servant leadership. And I think, as you say, it's because we know that Jesus, the servant king, other person-centred, we are to be servant-hearted.

And yet transformational leadership is not necessarily in opposition to those things. You can still be servant-hearted. So my research - and I'm curious what you think about this - found that first of all, clergy who actually said that they had some kind of formal training leaned towards or had a relationship to transformational leadership, and servant leadership was correlated with burnout.  Transformational leadership wasn't.

Archie Poulos: That’s very interesting, isn't it? It's not surprising. Servant leadership is always about emptying yourself and that has to be our disposition, our posture, our countenance, but it’s wisely applying that, I think, that we need to do. 

Convictions versus behaviours

I'm interested in something that you said if I can just trace back for a moment. I don’t know if this will take us anywhere, Valerie. But as part of your research into leadership, you talked about behavioural things. One of the things I noticed about us clergy in Sydney - ’cause that's where the focus of my research has been - is that we are really good at being abstract. And so therefore what drives us is our convictions. And it often doesn't translate into our behaviours. So there is a gulf between behaviour and convictions. So I have a series of questions that I asked the clergy of our diocese to help to see how they were going in each of the 10 roles.

And it was interesting that, when I asked the questions, people tended to answer them convictionally. So I had the conviction, for example, that sharing the gospel is really important. But then I would ask a question about ‘Have you spoken to somebody about Jesus and surrendering your life to him that hasn't been brought to you by someone else?’

People answered ‘yes, I think that, I'm really good as a missioner because I'm absolutely convinced the world needs Jesus’. But then when I ask the question: ‘And have you done it?’, the answer is actually very low. And so there is a gulf between behaviour and conviction. And I actually wonder whether that might lead to some of that destructive leadership behaviour, in that we're actually aware of what we should be and where we see there is the gulf between what I believe and how I act.

Burnout and destructive leadership

Valerie Ling: I think you are right. So I think we've just established that you are not surprised that the transformational leadership, as you said, has a reflective component - which is what I also found.  Clergy who indicated they tended to use more transformational leadership behaviour - now this was a moderate correlation, which is hard to come by in these sorts of research,  but it was a moderately strong correlation - also indicated that they tended to self-reflect and that they understood the connection between thoughts and feelings to gain insight. So self-reflection and self-insight was positively correlated with transformational leadership.

With the burnout, destructive leadership, you get a sense that while self-reflection can happen, or maybe more rumination, that level of self-insight is not growing. It was one of the things that I wanted to test, because I know Kirsty Bucknell, who will be interviewed as well at some stage, found adaptive self-reflection was really helpful.

As a clinical psychologist, I was wondering, to what extent are people actually reflecting and accessing their emotional world to also inform them about their behaviour? What I found was a correlation that clergy who weren't using their emotions or who were blocking their emotions or who were what we call surface acting, were more likely to have destructive leadership patterns, burnout.  What do you think of that? 

Archie Poulos: I think that that just makes sense. There's a whole lot of work that's been done in terms of mastery, in terms of adaptive leadership and all that sort of thing. And, the mastery people say you need to understand what's going on inside you and outside of you, which is, I think, captured by transformational leadership.  And so it doesn't surprise me at all. I'm not sure what else I want to say on that. 

Valerie Ling: If we go back to that relationship of burnout to destructive leadership, I think for me it was an important connection to be made because I hear people talk about narcissistic personality disorder.

That we have too many clergy who are narcissistic.  It just doesn't match our prevalence data as, in the population, there aren't that many people who actually meet the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. So what else could be going on? And it seems to me like maybe some part of it is the level of conflict in the church, the level of burnout that we have, maybe no formal coaching or help to modify how we respond to that - just leads to a kind of reactive, forceful leadership.

Archie Poulos: Wow. That is really helpful, Val., Really helpful.The figures that came out of Canada that we keep quoting is that 30% of clergy have narcissistic personality disorder. And I've never questioned that before.

And you are saying while we diagnosed it as that, it could be something else. And so I think that is really worth further exploration. That's a wonderful piece of research that you've discovered. Can you give me a definition of what you mean by destructive leadership?

Valerie Ling: That's a great question, Archie. So, in my tiny little survey, I really can only sample, so if we go destructive leadership from unhelpful to inappropriate to forceful to abusive to toxic, I was really looking at inappropriate and forceful leadership. So I asked questions - and it really did depend on their honesty.  To what extent in the last 12 months, will you honestly say that you got angry and actually lost your temper in your leadership? To what extent did you use blaming tactics? To what extent did you use punishing tactics in your leadership? They're really more the forceful, inappropriate leadership practices. 

Archie Poulos: Thank you. Yes. You are suggesting, if I'm hearing you properly, is that is just the last-ditch response, is that right? It could be that. If we'd have been able to have an intervention earlier, we wouldn't have gotten to that.

Valerie Ling: Possibly. Certainly as a clinical psychologist, I recognise that there are different responses when you're under threat. Some of us are going to freeze, some of us are going to run, some of us are going to fight. And so clinically in our work, we tend to see that there are ministers who come in and have fallen trap to what we call a bully attack mode.

When you're under a lot of stress - things aren't going well at home, the fear of really failing God and questioning your ministry convictions - we can fall into a pattern then of ‘Well, I'm going to push and attack to protect what's really going on inside me’.

And if you add to that, while I might think I'm self-reflecting, I'm actually just constantly ruminating and worrying and not allowing the emotions to come out because they feel too hard. So you don't get feedback because you are now just retreating, isolated and alienated and not telling anybody, and you're also not getting yourself insight to moderate your behaviour.

Beware PEA: A protective posture, entitlement, arrogance

Archie Poulos: Yes. Thank you. I think that resonates with what I see and also the research that I've done. I say to our graduating students, one of the things that I've observed - and this is purely anecdotal at the moment,  but I see it -  beware of what I call P E A. The P is a protective posture.

That's to be expected because, as a minister of the gospel, it is not the car that you produced (to use the example that we talked about before), it is you. And so how you perform is actually tied up with your very being and your very identity. So we are much less like a person who's on the floor of a factory, than we are to a concert violinist.

So if a concert violinist is performing on Tuesday night and they read the reviews that say it was really bad, it's not that the person had a bad night, that person is bad. And so they are second rate. And so you develop a protective posture, when you're trying to protect. And so I keep saying that, because our whole identity is tied up with how we perform, one of the things that you do is you protect your vital organs. And so if you are out at an automatic teller machine in the middle of the night, and some people come and steal your money and start kicking you on the ground, you're automatically getting in the foetal position to protect your vital organs.

And I think that's what happens to us.  In order to protect ourselves, we don't want to get that feedback that you spoke about and so we distance ourselves. I think it's made worse. There's a whole lot of leadership literature around now about leadership agility and flexibility, and they pick up on Kohlberg's developmental psychology, and they usually say people move from heroic leadership to post-heroic leadership.  

In heroic leadership, what you want to do is you want to show yourself and other people that you're a good leader.  And so you will do everything that you can to prove it to yourself and to prove it to other people. And you've got to go through those stages, the agility people say, before you can get to post-heroic leadership - which is, it's not about me, it's about the thing that we are trying to leave behind in the world. And so I don't need to shine. In fact, I want other people to be launched off my shoulders. That’s post-heroic.  In heroic leadership, it's got to be about me. There's the P, the protection.

The E is entitlement. I often see clergy say ‘Look at what I gave up in order to do this. And so, therefore, I'm entitled to all sorts of things’. That it is a very dangerous way to be. 

The A is accountability or arrogance - that is, I know best. I'm not accountable to anybody else. 

I think all I'm doing is just resonating with what you've suggested about some of those traits of destructive leadership.  And the literature confirms it as well. 

Advice for pastors

Valerie Ling: I might finish by asking you some questions that I'm going to ask everybody that I talk to. If there is one thing a pastor listening to this interview can walk away with, Archie, one thing they can say ‘I can shift this bit or I can change this bit’, what would you say to them, coming off listening to us? 

Archie Poulos: Recognise that finitude is not something that you don't have. That is, we are limited and it's okay. You've got to be honest. Seek help. 

Advice for congregations

Valerie Ling: And for people who are sitting in church listening and thinking about what we've talked about, someone who goes to church, loves Jesus - what is one thing they can take away from our conversation that they can shift or do differently? 

Archie Poulos: Help your minister to see they are not Superman. You know that they're not Superman, but you have the expectation that they'll be able to do everything and they will therefore feel as though they are.

So ask them each week: ‘What is something that I can pray for that will help you to be better?’ That automatically assumes that you're not there yet. So the Apostle Paul says to Timothy, ‘Watch your life and doctrine closely.  Persevere in it so that people might see your progress’. And I think I want to say to congregations and to leaders: you are not the finished product. You are works in progress.

Advice for denominational leaders

Valerie Ling: And what's one thing policy makers or denominational heads or leaders can take away from our conversation? What's one thing they could think about or change and shift?

Archie Poulos: Rather than telling people that they need to be part of the team, and you've got to pitch in for the team, say, ‘Let's work together to see how we can actually become a community that cares for each other and get rid of that isolation’. 

Conclusion

Valerie Ling: Thank you so much, Archie. That's been such a wonderful conversation and you've given me lots to think about as well.

Archie Poulos: Thank you, Valerie. It's been a delight to be with you and I look forward to hearing what the people who know better than I do say about it. 

Valerie Ling: Thanks, Archie.