What a consultant brings to the party
Posted: 13 Jul 2012 @ 00:44
Alan Wilson assesses a handbook on outside
input into ministry
Consultancy Skills for Mission and Ministry: A
handbook
David Dadswell
SCM Press £19.99
(978-0-334-04373-7)
Church Times Bookshop £18 (Use
code CT833)
A CONSULTANT, they say, is someone who borrows your watch and
then charges you to tell you the time. The joke has some truth and
falsehood in it.
Truly, consultants are not purveyors of magic bullets. If your
work is boring, pointless, and toxic, all a consultant can do is to
describe the problem. He or she can often point out how things have
gone wrong, and, in a slightly elliptical way, help formulate
options for change. The consultant cannot take the way for a
client, nor somehow make folly fruitful.
Beyond the joke, an outside pair of trained eyes used to a
variety of predicaments and possibilities can bring new
understanding and encouragement, a different way of understanding
work.
David Dadswell has provided a comprehensive handbook to
consultancy from a variety of sources and rich practical
experience. He is no magician, but he does know paths into the most
unpromis- ing country. He has mapped the subject academically as
well as practically. As a priest, he is confident and competent to
en- gage with the particular challenges of church culture,
theologically as well as practically. He is not squeamish about
describing religious life in terms of organisational theories, with
a clear eye for the systemic dimensions of our life together - the
things that crop up in our in-trays again and again.
The author is convinced that the facts are, ultimately, our
friends. A mess there may be, but acknowledging the realities of
life with the help of someone who is on our side, a good listener
with some models and ideas, can only help. He is experienced enough
to resist the managerialist fallacy, more often felt than
articulated, that suggests that the world outside Church is always
right or somehow definitive. At the same time, he does not collude
with the "Here's to us! Who's like us?" school of religious
exceptionalism.
A really searching consultancy is costly to everyone involved.
Because it is based on actual work and relationships, it can easily
feel like having to rewire the house without being allowed to turn
the power off. There is a real possibility of the occasional shock
along the way. This book sees consultancy as a process of
accompanying, enriched by trust and mutual understanding. Control
rests securely with the subject, to whom there is an ultimate
accountability.
The result is a book that will help church leaders at all stages
of their working lives to understand and assess what is on offer
from consultants. This is useful, because most consultancies go
well or badly according to the clarity with which they were begun
and the questions driving them were formulated. It is when
expectations become unrealistic that trouble starts.
The big paradox remains: it is the healthiest who are most
willing to visit the surgery, and those who most need consultancy
are sometimes the last to seek help. If this book helps to dispel
some of ministers' illusions and anxieties about involving others
in our ministries to help us, it will perform a great and valuable
service.
Dr Alan Wilson is the Bishop of Buckingham.