ETHICS In CHRISTIAN MINISTRY: Voices In My Head Podcast Episode # 241 with guest Charles Christian

Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd like to host my own podcast? Well, guess what? You can go to podbean.com/voices and get everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. I use Podbean every week for Voices in My Head. There's easy uploading and publishing tools, stunning templates, custom domains, social and promotional tools, an embeddable podcast player, monetization tools, and more. It is your all-in-one podcasting solution. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code "voices" and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean, for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. When you are in ministry long enough, you see not only the great joys and the triumphs, but you also see some of the brightest and most talented pastors and leaders depart from their ministries because of poor ethical decisions that they've made. In his book, Ethics in Christian Ministry: A Guide for Pastors and Mentors, Dr. Charles Christian, who holds a PhD in theology and ethics draws from his experience of 25 years in the pastorate and his experience as a professor of theology and ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary and Mid-America Nazarene University to take the reader on a journey through the professional and personal life of today's pastor to provide an overview of the important ways a leader can avoid ethical snares in the context of ministry. Dr. Charles Christian, welcome to the Voices in My Head podcast.

Thank you, Rick. I'm very excited to talk with you today.

Now, I should mention about you that you're a person who kind of wears a lot of different hats, and one thing that you're currently doing right now is you're the editor of Holiness Today, and I believe also Grace and Peace magazine. Is that correct?

That's correct. It's a new position as of May 2017. I work at now the Global Ministry Center for the Church of the Nazarene, and I am the communications coordinator for USA/Canada for Churches in USA Canada, and part of that role includes editing our quarterly clergy journal called Grace and Peace, and I'm also the managing editor of our denominational publication that comes out 6 times a year called Holiness Today.

Holiness Today, and I just had an article featured in that this month with several of my friends. There's people like—

Yes, you did.

Brandon Hancock and Brent Peterson and a whole bunch of my buddies on there. I'm really excited to be a part of that, and I thank you for inviting me to contribute.

Our pleasure. It was a great article you did, and it was our November-December, which focuses on worship in the church, and you were a great contribution to that given your experiences.

Well, it was certainly a pleasure, and I look forward to seeing what you do with the magazine in the coming days. It looks wonderful, and I love that there's a good online presence with it as well, so it's easy to share links and where people can see it. And so, so keep up the good work. You're doing a great job on that end of things. Things for the Nazarene Church. And, and, uh, I, I know that, I know that must be a difficult, uh, job when you're trying to get everybody together to write different things and, and multiple authors on those articles. And most of them are pastors in some form or another, so it's probably like herding cats to get an issue out each time. It is.

We have a great team here though. I have great assistant and, uh, on both magazines, great assistants and, uh, good folks that I report to, uh, our general editor and our, and our, uh, USA Canada director. So, uh, Thank the Lord we have a great staff of folks who are helping this thing move forward. It's great.

Well, I know you're a super busy guy, as am I, and we have been trying to find time to do a podcast on your book Ethics in Christian Ministry for some time now, and things finally aligned and we were able to work it out today, and I'm excited to be able to talk to you about it. I think that this is an important book for pastors and mentors. And as I've been perusing it, I just think for really anybody who is a Christian in ministry. And I guess you wouldn't necessarily have to be a Christian, but really the book is about Christian ethics specifically and some of the things that maybe we don't often even think about when we are trying to make decisions and whether we are grappling with, is this a Christian decision that we are making? And sometimes we let other things guide us that we we think are wise. But I think it's a wonderful thing that you are dealing with Christian ethics specifically. So let's start just super basic here. I like to kind of start out just for maybe the person who has never really dove into the topic of ethics before. They're probably an ethical person, but just, just being that people are ethical doesn't necessarily mean that they've done a lot of study into that area. So let's start super basic.— in maybe the best way you can for a person that's new to this, just maybe kind of define ethics for us.

I'll do that. Yeah, ethics in some ways is just a subcategory in philosophy, how we think about what is good, what is true, what's right, all these kind of things, what is real. So the part of— the thing that ethics zooms in on is what is right and wrong. So really, when you talk about ethics, you talk about a system of measuring— a consistent system of measuring what is right and wrong, or what we would call good or bad. And it's based on some authority, and it takes seriously the idea of community and consistency. OK, so you have this way of determining this is good, this is bad, or this is right, this is wrong. And there's an authority that you refer to, and then you look for a consistent measurement, and then you you take seriously the idea that what is right and wrong for me also has an effect on the rest of the community. Okay, so those are the four main elements for any ethical system, and it's very important, I believe, as Christians that we make sure that we're plugging in Christian things to those categories. So for instance, we don't just want right and wrong based on any old thing, we want right and wrong based upon the authority for Christians, which is the ways of Jesus. You could define it as that, as expressed in Scripture, or something to do with Scripture, tradition, reason, experience, you know, if you're a Wesleyan. But basically Scripture is the bottom line, and the ways of Jesus are the ways of interpreting Scripture properly. So that's our authority, right? That's what determines— that's the bottom line measurement in our system. Of gauging right and wrong. And then the community that we work primarily in as Christians, of course, is the church. And so this book talks about that in general, but it zooms in then on those that have been called to be leaders in the church, how we as leaders in the church can help navigate our decision-making in a way that takes seriously the fact that we are distinctly Christian. We're using those Christian measurements to determine what is right and wrong. Sure.

Well, and yeah, that helps immensely, and you've already talked some about this, and you do early on in your book, you talk about the importance of community, and you say that ethics is never done in a vacuum. And just thinking back to the intro that I gave at the beginning of this show, we talk about people who have been in positions of ministry that so often fall out of it for various reasons, often based based on ethical choices. I don't think we can emphasize enough the importance of doing this in community, and that's especially important, I think, with, you know, so many of our Nazarene churches. And we can only speak, I guess, for our personal denomination from the experiences we've had. But so many of our churches, a lot of them are small, and a lot of them are just sometimes the one pastor at the church. And I think sometimes they must feel very alone and very isolated. And so before I get too far into some of the questions I had, this was just sort of off the top of my head. I wonder what advice you would give, since we know that community is so important in making ethical decisions together pastorally and as Christians. What advice would you give to maybe the pastor that's listening out there that is the only person on staff at his church and doesn't feel like they have a great community around them but still wants to be a part of a community like this? Do you have any advice for someone like that?

Well, I could try. I mean, for women and men who are solo pastors, meaning solo-staffed pastors or bi-vocational ministry pastors, which is the fastest growing group of pastors in our denomination, are bi-vocational pastors. I can talk about two things that especially helped me early on. When I became a senior pastor, I'd been married for one month. I had been in seminary for just over a semester maybe, and was at a church that had been through a crisis and in a very diverse neighborhood where I really— which was a new neighborhood to me, obviously. So I had so much new going on, there was considerable fear and trepidation about just how am I going to do this and what does God have for me here. I think the first thing I would say is, and the thing that God provided for me, thank thankfully, it's why I'm still in ministry probably, is good mentors. Seeking out, and often these people are so busy. These are older, wiser men and women who have done this a while, who have some years under their belt, and who are respected on the district level or in the region. And I just really was told by my district superintendent who was near retirement at the time, you need to find, just call some of these people. And have— you need to have some people that are just sort of your peers in that way that you can just kick ideas around with and share your struggle with. But you also need people who have been further down the road than you. And man, that has stuck with me. And so that's why the subtitle of this book is, in fact, is called A Guide for Pastors and Mentors, because I think it's very important, even if we feel very isolated and out of the way, that we seek out someone. And some often, unfortunately, I can't For some locales it can't be someone maybe in our denomination, at least face-to-face, but someone whom you trust and respect and you can lean on. I've pastored in communities where the next nearest Nazarene pastor might be many, many miles away or too busy or whatever, so in the community I found an older, wiser person that I could call up and say, "Hey, occasionally," or "Once a month," or "A couple times a month, could I—" 'Can I just sit with you and run some things by you?' So I think that's incredibly important, and I think it can't often— I mean, district superintendents can facilitate that role. I think it's unreasonable to think that our district superintendents can always fill that role because of their schedules, but reaching out to our superintendent and say, 'Hey, is there a pastor near me that can sit with me and kind of walk me through some of these new things?' Whether it be I'm doing my first funeral or I'm about to lead the board in a new building campaign or something like that, whatever it is, or I have this issue facing me and I don't know if I'm prepared to assist in this. Having mentors is truly a key, I think, and I took it seriously early on, and I can look back and say in 25 years, the times when I haven't taken it seriously is the time I've struggled the most. So So I think having a mentor and using— I mean, hopefully a book like this will at least provide some mentoring temporarily. I mean, ideally I would like for this book to be something where a mentor or a senior pastor can sit down with his or her staff or with a pastor that he or she is mentoring and walk them through each chapter of this book and react together on the case studies or on the questions or whatever as a mentoring tool. And some districts, a couple districts already are starting to consider using the book in this way, by the way, which I'm very excited about. And there are even some church staffs that are starting to do this with their staff. And I think that's the ideal use of this book. But what if you're isolated? What if you don't have as much access right away? At least allowing this book to be a voice that you can bounce things off of is super important because we're only as sick as our secrets, as the counselors tell us. And if we become too isolated and secretive over a period of time, it can really come back to haunt us.

Well, that's really good advice, and I think especially about finding somebody in the community. That's been a great benefit for me over the years. And so you've said a lot of good there, and I want to go into your book and some specific things you've written so that people can get a little bit of a flavor for what they're going to get when they read this book. And I'm sure it took you a while to do this because, I mean, this is a deep subject, and I'm sure you could probably write a lot more. There's probably a second volume out there, but Ethics Christian ministry. And when we talk about that, early on in the book you talk about 3 types of ethical systems, and I find this really fascinating, and I want to talk about each one of these 3. And if we have time, there's also an ethics grid, which is some considerations in making Christ-centered ethical decisions that you have early on in the book. And, and we'll talk at, at the end of our time together, I want to make sure we hit on the communications covenant as well. So let's start with the 3 types of ethical systems and kind of what they are for people so they can understand a little bit. And this is sort of— maybe we could call this Ethics 101 or something like that when it comes to Christian ethics. But the 3 types are deontological, which are duty-based, teleological, which are goal-based, and virtue ethics, which are systems that concentrate on forming the individual into a person of integrity. And they all 3 are very important and go together when we have this conversation on ethical. So So let's start, and I'm just going to let you talk a little bit, and maybe for sake of time, just maybe do a couple minutes on each one as we discuss here. But let's start with deontological ethical systems, which is duty-based, and kind of describe that for us. Great.

Well, like I said, we all engage all three of these types at some point in our lives, or maybe even daily, you know, in regard to how our decisions are made. The most common or best-known probably are the easiest, I think, to think about are the deontological, from the word deon, which means duty, duty-based, do your duty. So in this kind of system, one might think about a firefighter or a military person who is told, just go do this. This is your duty to do it. That person often is not asked to weigh consequences. For instance, the firefighter rushes toward the burning building. I mean, think about that for a second. That is not a logical thing to do. It's not something that if he or she were looking out for their own safety that they would do. But as a sense of duty, well, the fire is there and I'm a firefighter, so I run toward the fire. There are ethical systems that determine right and wrong or good and bad based on the decision you make up front. So you say, "This is right, and I'm going to do this no matter the consequence." And it's why this kind of ethics is also called non-consequentialist ethics. In other words, we don't really care what the consequence of this is going to be ultimately because this is the right thing to do. There's a lot of that in Christian ethics, right? There are some things that God just says, "This is what I want you to do. This is the way I want you to walk in." You look at the prophets in the Old Testament where God says, "I want you to say this," and the prophet is thinking, "Well, they're going to kill me if I say it," and God God says, "Just go ahead and do it. And if you die, you die," or whatever. So this is a deontological kind of system. And again, it's very— the good of the deontological system is that it is easy to measure because you're making all your decisions up front. It's kind of the John Wayne idea where you— I'm going to go do this and it's the right thing to do. The bad part of strict deontological ethics is that can become legalism, or it can— what do you do if two good things collide? The example I give is you're walking through a park and you see a sign that says "No swimming by city ordinance." Well, you don't swim in it maybe because you think it's a duty to be a good citizen and to obey the law, but as you walk by you hear a child yelling, "Save me, I'm drowning!" Well, there you also have you have the duty to preserve human life. I assume, you know, most Christians, or hopefully all Christians, think of life as very valuable. So at that moment you have two duties that are colliding. What do you have to do? Well, you have to decide which duty is better, and there's where you get into the second category, teleological ethics. Teleological, or teleological ethics, is from the word telos, which means goal. That's sometimes called consequentialist ethics where you, in this case, you gauge right and wrong not based on something up front but based on the result. What's going to result in the better thing? Well, that's a teleological system. Now actually we're very familiar with this in America especially because we're kind of a teleological government. Most democracies, right, you vote and whichever one gets the most, that's the good. We don't always feel that way but that's a teleological system though because you're you're looking at the result. You don't necessarily have a strict idea up front of what's going to be right and wrong. You're going to vote based upon maybe what's better or what's going to turn out better or what's going to have the best long-term effect. So that's the second category. Well, and it's interesting—

sorry if I can interrupt you just for a little humorous thing— when you said that about elections and whatnot, and my friend Brian Zahn, he's said oftentimes that his father, who was a judge, would always instill in him that the majority is almost always wrong. So it's interesting to— a lot of people would say though, like, just like you said, well, the majority said it's it, so that must be the right thing. But that's not necessarily always the case, as we just said.

That's true. And that's right. And that would be the drawback of teleological ethics, right? Because sometimes Sometimes some things are just right in our way of— Christian way of seeing ethics.

Now, Rick Lee James— I'm sorry, can I interrupt you just one more time? Because you were probably going to follow this up with something, but I just wanted to kind of distinguish between the two a little bit as we're talking, because the deontological is sort of the duty-based thing, and that would be duty-based. So let's say we see someone drowning, but the teleological, you know, if you were only going to go by that method, unless I'm mistaken, what you're describing is is, well, let's put a vote to it and see what, you know, is it worth the risk of going in to save this person? Let's take a vote. Yes or no, let's not, you know, not do it. When the ethical thing, according to deontological, would just be, well, it's our duty, we have to try, you know, we don't take a vote on this, right?

Well, that's part of it, but teleological can be a Christian ethic as well when you say, okay, maybe you have two options, like the case study. The first option is, do I obey the law? Well, everybody would say it's good to obey the law. It's my duty to obey the law. Or do I save this child and break the law? Well, it's not always good to break the law as a duty, but it's better in this case. Because I ask students this every year for the last 18 years. How many of you would save the child and break the law? And thankfully, so far, every one of them— hundreds of students have raised their hand on the second, "I will save the child." "Great, what you're doing there is you're saying there is one duty that's more important than the other duty, right?" Ah, right. So you're using a teleological ethic in that moment. You're saying the goal— if I do action B, which is save the child, it accomplishes a better goal. So there's a case where teleological ethics can help us, right? And Christian writers throughout history have said, For instance, in the Bible, when Rahab tells a lie, right, basically tells a lie, but God calls it good in Hebrews 11. I mean, he says this is a good thing. Well, how can a lie be good? Well, a lie is usually not good, right, most of the time. However, in that moment, because in weighing the duties, right, It's a duty not to lie. It's a duty to protect life, right? Right. Uh, well, in this case, Rahab chose the duty to protect life as more important. Uh, now again, we can't use that to justify everything we do, and that's a drawback of teleological ethics, right? You can get into the ends always justify the means. But the good of teleological ethics is we as Christians can look at certain situations and go Because we're faced with that most of the time, I think, in church life, aren't we? We know that there are certain things that are duties, but what do you do in a board meeting when, or in a life situation where someone says, "Well, I could do both things. Both things would be good on their own, but in this case, these two good things would contradict one another. Which one do I choose?" Well, the minute you say that, You're using a teleological ethic, right? You're saying, well, now we've got to pick the one that— in the case of Christians, I would argue, we would say, which furthers the love and purposes and mission of God the most? That's a big one for teleological ethics for Christians. Which one furthers the goals of God the most? Which of these two very good decisions is better? And then that's a teleological part. And then finally, the virtue ethics portion of it, kind of can fit into both categories. It's all about— virtue ethics is simply our reminder as Christians especially, although non-Christians talk about virtue ethics too, but virtue ethics is a reminder that in Christian ethics God often cares more about the intention of our heart than the result of our action. Intention. We believe that as Wesleyans very much so, don't we? Our actions matter, but the intention of our heart matters. In the Sermon on the Mount, you have Jesus saying things like, "You've heard it said this," like this is a good thing, "but I tell you something else." The "I tell you" is usually about the intention of your heart. Or when he chides the Pharisees and says, "Oh yeah, you pay the tithes of your spices and your monies and stuff, but you don't take care of the poor widows among you, so this is bad." So just because your action on the surface is good, like you do your duty, for instance, your character is flawed and therefore you need some improvement. You know, right? So this is virtue ethics, right? And yeah, go ahead.

I was just going to say, and I found this interesting too when you were talking about virtue ethics in your book, and forgive me if I'm stepping on what you're about to say, but the idea that these ethics are formed for Christians through things like Christian devotion and corporate worship and mission of compassion, and that these things are actually things that help to shape us to be ethically Christian.

That's right, that's right. Our biggest challenge, I think, as Christians is recognizing that, for instance, what we do on Sunday morning in worship is not just an empty exercise. These are formative moments. Every time I participate in the gathered worship, for instance, of others, or every time beyond that, every time I participate in the service of others in the name of Christ, not only is it doing some good, some ethical good, but it is actually shaping me and forming forming me into a habit of mind, you know, you might say a way of thinking, a way of consistently living. It is holding up the virtues of Christ above all else every time I participate in worship or in service in the name of Christ. So yeah, I think that's what forms us.

Which is why as pastors I think it's very important that we put a lot of thought into our worship planning and what kinds of things we're going to be sharing in our Sunday times. I've talked with other guests before about how, you know, it's not right that we have to put so much weight upon that hour when we come together each Sunday morning or however long it is. But that seems to be just about the only time that our people are coming to be shaped and to be discipled. And so it's very important that in the structuring of our services that we put a lot of thought into that. And as I was reminded this past year at the Wesley Conference in in Nampa, Idaho on worship. I think it was Scott Daniels that asked the question to all of us who were there. He said, you know, what does a person look like if they worshiped in your congregation for 20 years? You know, what difference does that make? And of course, we had just come out of an election at that time, so it was, I think, January, early February of this year. And we know that the election this year was, you know, at least polls tell us, you know, heavily swayed by evangelicals in the vote and things. Things. And we all were kind of pondering this question just sort of as a hypothetical or whatever, and to say, wow, if our people have been shaped by the gospel that we're preaching, what does that mean about the gospel we're presenting in the world? You know, if our people— many of them have been shaped for 50 years by our congregations— which gospel are they listening to? So I just find that, especially the virtue ethics, incredibly fascinating, because the idea that corporate worship worship does form us, and that is why we need to take such care in the planning of our corporate worship.

I agree, and we know as pastors we have a much more limited window of time now than probably ever before, at least in modern American Christian history, as far as people's weekly schedules. It has become a strange world, new world in that way. All I ask in the book, and what I ask of myself as a minister, is even if their only interaction is a short time, and we can't just, we just don't have the time, you know, it used to be very standard for Nazarenes for sure to go to 2 or 3 services a week and sort of build their lives, literally their calendar flows from their church commitments. Now it's flipped. Church commitments try to fit into the other alternatives out there— and I'm not being too hard on that, although I do think it does a disservice to us when that happens, but it's the world we're living in at the moment— if that's the case, then I need to be even more intentional as a minister about how is this short time that I have with these folks at least being a catalyst to help them shape and to be formed and shaped into the image of Christ so that as they live out their lives, more and more things flow from their commitment to Christ, flow from it, you know, instead of sort of fitting in Jesus wherever you can. So I think that's a great observation you made there, and it's a really important, I think, a key aspect of what I hope the book helps with. Sure.

Well, we better move on. We're We're rapidly going through our time here, and I want to talk— have you talk quickly, if you could, about the ethics grid in your book. And the ethics grid is— there are key considerations in making Christ-centered ethical decisions. And I think that these especially would be things that maybe pastoral staffs or pastors or church boards or whoever in mentoring relationships, you would find these, these parts of the ethical grid, these different different quadrants to be very useful. And the four quadrants, just so our listeners will know, you'll find in the book there's the theological quadrant, the priorities quadrant, the character quadrant, and the relational quadrant. And I wonder if you could quickly— I know I'm asking you to do a lot in quickly doing this, but if you're able to sort of summarize for us these different quadrants of the ethics grid, that would be wonderful.

I'll try. I mean, it's, you know, it requires a lot of time, and it requires a lot lot of adaptation for each church or nonprofit or whoever is using it. But let me just say that I at least want— I mean, the very least I would love for someone to pick out of this grid. I'll start with that, it's the quickest. Sure. Is just to recognize that every ethical decision we make has the potential of hitting these 4 areas in regard to our witness for Christ. Okay, so when we sit down, let's say, at a staff meeting or a board meeting or a family meeting or whatever, when we're about being Christ-like representatives, these four quadrants should somewhere come into play. And so theologically, we look at the rationale behind it. We are a theological entity. The church is, in other words, created by God, headed by Jesus, driven by the Holy Spirit into the world, you know. So we are a theological entity, and we should be serious about that. We can't just say, "Well, that really doesn't have any theological meaning," because everything we do is identified at least with theology, how we view God. So taking that seriously. Secondly, priorities. Every church, every organization has mission priorities that are important to them. Whether it's podcasts or our local church. We have things that we say, "All these are important, but this is more important than this, and this is more important than that." So I think we have to take seriously— for instance, or even the decision itself needs to talk about are we magnifying and pointing to the character of Christ. If we are treating our vendors or our contracted people in a terrible way, even if we're paying them, for instance— that's one example— then that's a character issue that reflects on us and on the church and therefore on the character of Christ. And then finally, relational quadrant. How is this promoting the environment, the relational environment of the church? Right? And you know, most seasoned pastors in a staff or board meeting will rarely enact something based on, let's say, 51% of a vote, because they recognize that even though technically they could do it, relationally it might cause more problems in the long run. So taking that seriously, how is this promoting good relationship? Another way, especially I've encountered this on both sides of the staff as both an associate staff and a senior pastor with staff, is this decision, for instance, causing my staff to have to interrupt key relational priorities in their own lives? Am I asking my worship pastor to do so much that even though it might be doing good for the church, it might be affecting his other relationships? Well, I have a responsibility to take that seriously, right? If I'm asking the youth pastor to put in 70 hours a week, it may do some theological good, it may help us meet some priorities, it may even, you know, the way he or she does it might reflect on the character of Christ, but is it affecting his or her other relationships to the point where eventually he or she won't be able to function? So those are the 4 quadrants that I hope we take seriously when we make medical decisions. And I talk more about it obviously in the book.

Sure, sure, yeah. And there's a lot for readers to dive into for sure. Uh-oh. You're losing? Oh, sorry. Can you hear me? Hello?

You hear me okay? Are you there?

Yeah, I'm here. Yes. You hear me all right?

Yeah, I just lost you.

Well, you know what? I do now.

Yeah, can you hear me? I can.

You have been cutting in and out a little bit. Hopefully, hopefully you can hear me now. You still there with us, Charles?

Yes, kid, can I— I am, yes. Can you hear me?

Yes, yeah, we're good right now, but we will, we'll probably start wrapping this up just because of time, but also we seem to be having a little bit of a connection problem here today. If you can still hear me well enough, I'd love to have you talk for just, just real quickly about the communications covenant that's in the book, because you said that you've had a lot of pastors and churches and schools and places like that that are actually implementing this communications covenant. And to the best that we can, as long as our connection holds out here, I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. Sure.

If you can hear me all right, briefly, when I became a senior pastor at the end of 1993, I already mentioned I was very inexperienced, very green. In every way and was in a church that had gone through some difficulty and there was still some hurt that was lingering. And I was very concerned about how someone as green as me would be able to come in and help provide some semblance of cohesiveness. And again, one of my mentors suggested, well, you gotta make sure that your communications process is stronger in that church if it's ever going to survive. So basically prayer and sitting down with my board, we developed a communication covenant. So this was, you know, 25 years ago almost, and we began to implement it. There are 10 principles and we stuck to it. In fact, we made a decision that from then on If someone is nominated for the church board, they have to adhere to this communication covenant if they're going to be on the ballot. It was that kind of thing. And so we began doing that, and God brought great healing. And some of— one of another mentor in the district who pastored a much larger church asked me about it, and I told him about the communication covenant, and he wanted to see it. And once he saw it, he said, you should really see if some publications might be interested in this. And really, one of the first major articles I ever had published was this, and Leadership Journal published a version of this in 1999. It's still on the Christianity Today website and all that. And from there it became— it just kind of went— before going viral was a thing, it sort of went viral, at least for more than I thought it would. I began getting requests, you know, can we reproduce this in Spanish, or can we put this in our newsletter, or can our diocese used this. In the case of the state of Washington, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, they now use it as their standard communication tool on their site with all their pastors. Some districts began to ask, can we utilize this? So, so of course, once the book process happened, eventually I would use this in my classes that I taught— clergy ethics classes or general ethics classes. And so of course, when the book book came around eventually, that was going to be in there for sure, right? Because it became such a tool that people were using and that I was using in my own ministry. And it's pretty simple and it's very biblical, but it is very conversational and it allows— it's 10 things that can be reproduced and adapted in any way. And it is— I joke with people, I've written I've written— thankfully, I've gotten to write quite a bit in the last, especially the last 15 or 16 years, over 50 articles and reviews. I mean, contributed to reference books and other books, but nothing has gotten more mileage than this very simple 10-step communication covenant, which I find ironic that it didn't take a long time to write, but it took a lot of prayer and implementation, and people seem to respond well to it. So, it's basically a covenant that that any entity, any organization can sit down, especially churches, can sit down with one another and say, "Let's agree to communicate this way." And it begins very simply, "If you have a problem with me, come directly to me. If someone else has a problem with me, send them to me. If they won't come to me right away, come with them." And it's a reciprocal covenant where the minister or the leader says, "And I'll do the same for you." And, and then it kind of goes on and on about how, you know, how we'll keep confidences, what confidences we won't keep, what confidences we will keep, on and on and on. There are just 10 of those. And it also gets into, you know, I won't, I won't, you know, I won't assume things about you. I won't interpret you. I'll ask you to do that. Please don't simply interpret me unless you've talked to me about, you know, this kind kind of stuff. I think it's really honestly over time— I mean, I know some pastors have joked with me that they've used it as kind of weeded people out. But I don't know if that— I mean maybe that's a secondary goal. Certainly if people don't want to communicate that way then chances are they're not going to be very healthy. But I think the good thing that it's done is it's increased the trust between pastors and board members or pastors and staff members because they'll know If a staff member of mine hears some kind of rumblings about, "Oh, I think you're going to be in trouble with the pastor on this," they'll know that that's not true unless I've come to them first. And there won't be any of this secret doubting kind of mistrust. They'll be, "Ah, no, the pastor sticks to the covenant." Now that staff member may come to me and she or he might say, 'Hey, is this— I don't think this would be true of you, but is there, you know, did you follow the covenant on this?' And then I'd be able to say, 'Well, yeah, no, I haven't said anything to anyone else that I haven't said to you first,' or whatever. So that has gone a long way in my own pastoral ministry. And thank— I'm very grateful that districts, a couple of districts now, are using it in their training, and even outside our denomination beginning to show up as a useful tool. It even showed up in a couple of chapters of books that— which I wasn't upset about this, but I've had students a couple times go, "Hey, look at chapter 3 of this book," and I see it and it's the Communication Covenant, it's rightly cited, but I didn't know. Now, I don't get mad when that happens, but that's happened a couple times where it's like, look, this is your article, this is your communication covenant. It has your name attached to it and this guy is discussing it in his book. Well, great. I mean, I'm all for that. I just, you know, so I usually contact the author and go, hey, thanks for using my covenant. Let me know. Yeah, yeah. You know, that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I'm very, of everything in the book, I'm particularly pleased that that's being used because I know it's helpful. Me.

So, well, Charles, I want to thank you for taking time to be on the podcast today. I think this is a wonderful resource that a lot of people are going to find some great help from, and it'll be great to have an actual, you know, book we can pull off our shelves and find the communication covenant in. It's been passed around many different places. Again, listeners, the book is Ethics in Christian Ministry: A Guide for Pastors and Mentors. Guess what, Christmas is coming and it may make a great gift for someone. You can go to Amazon, you can go— you know how it is in the age we live in— go just about anywhere online, just look up the book and you'll be able to find it and purchase it. And it's, it's worth your time. So Charles Christian, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Thanks, Rick. I appreciate it very much and have a great day.

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