The Reverend Doctor Theodore William Johnson, an Episcopal priest for over twenty years, is a congregation developer who has specialized as an interim pastor for congregations in transition in a number of mid-Atlantic dioceses. He is also a consultant and coach strengthening leaders and congregations. He created CongregationSolutions.com to be the online vehicle for his consulting and coaching ministry and to publish his e-mail newsletters. He is 63 years old and lives with Onesimus, a black Labrador Retriever, in Basye, Virginia.

INNER CITY ORGANIZER

Involved in the civil rights movement while in college, Ted spent the year immediately after graduation in the Metropolitan Urban Service Training program, sponsored by a number of protestant seminaries. He was assigned to Newark, New Jersey where he worked as a protective service caseworker for children and spent his free time as a community organizer in the inner city neighborhoods using organizing techniques and principles developed by Saul D. Alinsky. This formative experience occurred during the year Newark (and other major American cities) exploded in urban rebellion (1967).

POLITICAL CAREER

Ted then spent more than 15 years in a career in politics, lobbying, and public relations in Washington, D.C. He started this career as press secretary for a number of groups opposed to the war in Vietnam, including Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (led by Professor John C. Bennett, Rabbi Balfour Brickner, the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., and other national interfaith figures) and the Vietnam Moratorium Committee. He was in charge of media relations for the massive November 1969 March in Washington and other major anti-war events.

He went on to be the press secretary for two United States Senators: Charles E. Goodell (Republican, New York) and Mike Gravel (Democrat, Alaska). He served as a political consultant to other members of Congress and candidates for public office, most notably Bella Abzug (Democrat, New York City) and Bob Eckhardt (Democrat, Houston, Texas).

He was vice president of a Washington public relations firm before founding his own company that specialized in assembling coalitions to lobby in support of various public interest initiatives in the Congress and in some state legislatures. These included no-fault automobile insurance, highway and automobile safety, airline deregulation, automobile theft prevention, reduction of industrial air pollution, and improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

INTERIM SPECIALIST

Since ordination in 1986, Ted's experience as a change agent led him to specialize in congregation development during the interim period between installed rectors and in other times of transition. He matches the description by Loren B. Mead that “interim pastors tend to be a feisty bunch who don’t fit the mold.” [Go to Specialized Interim Leadership]

Most of Ted’s assignments presented significant developmental challenges, such as serious conflict in the congregation, dissatisfaction with recent clergy relationships, inappropriate conduct by ordained or lay leaders, financial issues, or the unusually long tenure of the previous pastor.

In these assignments, Ted focused on the five developmental tasks formulated for the interim period. [Go to Developmental Tasks] His role was to restore healthy and effective functioning and to help the congregation achieve greater self-understanding so that its search process could lead to a positive relationship with a new priest without the baggage from the past.

MIXED FEELINGS

Ted has greatly enjoyed the challenges of these assignments and the chance to learn more about how congregations can become stronger and healthier. Nevertheless, he has been disappointed by the rush of some congregations to complete the search process while avoiding difficult or unpleasant realities and ignoring the unique opportunity offered by the interim period for meaningful development.

Ted has left some assignments aware that the developmental work was incomplete and concerned for the relationship between the congregation and its next rector. In a few cases, the new rector had a difficult tenure because the congregation had failed to address significant issues and called a new rector before it was ready to do so, resulting in an ineffective “match.”

EXPERIENCE WITH THIRTEEN CONGREGATIONS

Ted has served thirteen congregations, playing an interim, transitional role in all assignments, although some were not intended as such. He spent his deacon year as the assistant to the rector at Emmanuel Church in Alexandria, Virginia. This was followed by a short assignment as interim priest of St. Paul's Church in Prince Frederick, Maryland and as co-executive director of the Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry. Then he was the rector of Piedmont Parish (two yoked congregations): Trinity Church in Marshall and Emmanuel Church in Delaplane, Virginia. After training in interim congregation leadership, he had assignments as the interim priest of Meade Memorial Church in Alexandria; St. Paul's-by-the-Sea Church in Ocean City, Maryland; Johns Parish (two yoked congregations): Emmanuel Church in Middleburg and Church of Our Redeemer in Aldie, Virginia; St. Mark's Church in Alexandria; St. David’s Church in the Chesterfield County area of Richmond, Virginia; All Faith Church in St. Mary’s County, Maryland; Church of the Ascension in Silver Spring, Maryland; and Emmanuel Church in Chestertown, Maryland.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

While focusing on the developmental tasks of the interim period, Ted has also helped most of the congregations experiment with different paradigms of ordained ministry, spirituality, congregational life, and organization for ministry. He expanded communications with weekly newsletters inserted in the Sunday service bulletin and sent by e-mail. He increased lay participation in the leadership of worship. He introduced homilies for children and other “child-friendly” activities at particular seasons or events of the church year. He proposed ways for the vestry, staff, and other leaders to live into their spiritual, as well as fiscal, responsibilities of congregation leadership and to be concerned about becoming a congregation with a positive, healthy, and growing future. Most consistently, he has implemented an organization structure, appropriate to the size of the congregation, of ministry area teams involving vestry and non-vestry members in the leadership of all aspects of the congregation’s life. Many of these innovations have remained in place long after Ted’s time with the congregation ended.

SMALL/MEDIUM CONGREGATIONS

Much of Ted’s experience has been with “family” or “pastoral” congregations (terms defined by Arlin J. Rothauge), those with less than 150 people in average Sunday attendance. After working with several congregations who had been unable, over time, to achieve desired membership growth significantly above that number, he became particularly interested in the difficult and complex transition from a single-celled “pastoral” congregation to the larger, multiple-celled “program” congregation. This has been a primary focus for his continuing education, research, writing, and consulting.

CONTINUING EDUCATION

Ted pursued a number of continuing education opportunities dealing with small churches, conflict management, Bible study, congregation and family systems, the Myers-Briggs Temperament Inventory, interim ministry, the church of the future, church growth, and other congregation development issues, supplemented by his own reading and experiential research.

He is familiar with the thinking of the key figures active in congregation development in this country today and has had the privilege of personally interacting with many them.

More than any others, the theories of Arlin J. Rothauge, Edwin H. Friedman, and Saul D. Alinsky have been crucial in forming Ted’s understanding of congregations and congregation leadership.

DOCTORATE IN CONGREGATION DEVELOPMENT

This continuing education culminated in a Doctor of Ministry degree in Congregational Development in the Advanced Studies program of the Seabury Institute at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. He was a member of the first residential class of this program, which started its studies in 1995; he received his diploma in June 2000. The title of his thesis is Congruence and Transitions in Congregational Size. [Go to abstract of thesis]

ROTHAUGE PROTÉGÉ

While earning this degree, he worked closely with Arlin J. Rothauge, who developed the theory of congregation size described in the book Sizing Up a Congregation for New Member Ministry. Rothauge is the author of other books on congregation development [Go to Congregational Vitality series], the former congregation development officer of the Episcopal Church, and the founder and first executive director of the Advanced Studies program of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. Ted is continuing the development of Rothauge’s theories in congregation development, particularly regarding congregation size and transitions.

PUBLICATIONS

Ted wrote the introductory chapter, “Current Thinking on Size Transitions,” in Size Transitions in Congregations, which The Alban Institute published in the summer of 2001. [Go to “Size Transitions in Congregations”] He expanded on Rothauge's original theory and noted common misunderstandings of essential concepts, as well as areas where new research is necessary. The chapter contains Ted's concept of congruence, which identifies the health-giving match among the unique numerical size, relationship style, and leadership structure for each of the four types of congregations. It also describes the three building blocks of congregations, based on recent anthropological research on group size.

A shorter version of this chapter titled “Building Blocks: An Anthropological Approach to Congregational Size” appeared in the September/October 2001 issue of Congregations, The Alban Institute magazine. [Go to “Building Blocks”]

SEMINARY LECTURER

Ted has been a guest lecturer in congregation development at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, presenting to students in its residential and extension Doctor of Ministry programs.

CONSULTANT

As a consultant and coach for congregations and judicatories, Ted has led vestry retreats and planning days; facilitated team-building activities; offered seminars for clergy and lay leaders on church growth, congregation size, and related issues; coached transitions in congregation size or demographics; intervened in times of parish conflict; and guided strategic planning and mission/vision discernment processes. He has been the keynoter or workshop leader at various judicatory, national, and international conferences and events.

CongregationSolutions.com

Ted created CongregationSolutions.com. It is the on-line vehicle for his coaching and consulting services to strengthen leaders and congregations. It also has published three e-mail newsletters he wrote that are currently suspended:

· BodyBuilding (weekly) – sermon preparation suggestions, utilizing the Revised Common Lectionary, for preaching that helps congregations become more fully the Body of Christ.

· EquippingSaints (bi weekly) – practical program and organization suggestions to help lay and ordained leaders develop their congregations.

· Glimpses of the Body of Christ (bi-weekly) – actual observations of congregations and their practices to help lay and ordained leaders imitate what works and avoid what does not.

DIOCESAN ACTIVITY

While serving at St. David’s Church in Richmond, Ted was a member of the Commission on Congregational Development and Lay Ministries of the Diocese of Southern Virginia. Before that assignment, Ted had been active in his home diocese, the Diocese of Virginia, serving on both the Council on Missions and Church Planting and the Commission on Congregational Missions where he was chair of the Subcommittee on New Missions. He previously served on the Communications Committee and on a variety of task groups in that diocese. He also coordinated special events for the leaders of small churches in the Diocese of Virginia.

FAMILY AND PERSONAL

Ted has been married twice; both marriages ended in divorce. He has two sons. Benjamin is 37 years old, the manager of an auto repair facility in Newington, Virginia. He is married to Stella, nicknamed “Sisc,” 35 years old. They have a daughter, Kristina, sixteen years old, and live in Woodbridge, Virginia. Ben and his wife also have an older daughter, Emily, eighteen years old, who has lived with adoptive parents since her birth. Ted’s other son, David, is 36 years old and the manager of special projects for Staples Office Supplies. He is married to Samantha, 27 years old. They have two sons: Tyler, four years old, and Nicholas, eleven months old. They live in Chester, Virginia, near Richmond.

Ted is the son of an Episcopal priest who died in 2000. His mother lives in Pennsylvania, where Ted spent most of his childhood. He has two younger sisters. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1966 at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He did graduate studies at Union Theological Seminary and the New School for Social Research, both in New York City, in the late 1960's. He earned the Master in Divinity degree from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1986.

Ted's primary avocation is music. He is a baritone with the Alexandria Choral Society, performing four major concerts each year. He also plays the piano for his own enjoyment and listens to recorded music. In addition, he enjoys the theater, photography, camping, hiking, and boating when he makes the time available.

11/29/2007