Excerpt



Peter Floyd Management Development in Business and Organizational Development for Total Ministry in the Church



After some years of up and down, back and forth, Peter Floyd now has the best of both worlds. He uses the same set of skills, resources, and experience in both business and church: as a partner in the consulting firm of Floyd (Peter) and Floyd (Patricia), and as sacramentalist/enabler of ministry at St. Dunstans, the Warren-Waitsfield, Vermont Episcopal parish. The unitive thread throughout is leadership development. The Floyds live in Warren, and the congregation serves Warren, Waitsfield, Moretown and assorted adjacent communities, roughly centering on the Sugarbush ski complex. While the ski industry is rather flat these days, the retirement industry is blossoming in the area and both region and church are prospering. A tentmaker pastor is appropriate for new church development, not requiring outside subsidy as work begins.

Peter, a multi-talented fellow, who is a great storyteller and educator, is another soul influenced by church renewalist David Brown when the latter was Rector of Christ Church, Montpelier and Canon Missioner (supervisor) to the dozen congregations of the Northeast Kingdom Ministry. After a curacy at St. Pauls Church in Concord, New Hampshire, with chaplaincy to the New Hampshire State Legislature, Floyd served parishes in St. Johnsbury and Lyndonville, Vermont (the latter the dowsing capitol of America). He brought his two congregations into the regional ministry with Brown and into one of the three operating clusters within the Northeast Kingdom, twelve-church arrangement.

Floyds last gasp at doing things the old-fashioned traditional way was three years following as Rector of St. Marys in Chappaqua, New York in Big Apple Suburbia. He then went tentmaker so that he could be a part of a Christian community not a hired hand, one of the dozens of different motivations people have for getting into this model. (Initially he nearly lost his shirt as a yachting salesman during a recession when the market for luxury boats reached its nadir). But he subsequently prospered as career and management consultant in an outplacement firm where recession meant mushrooming business. His office being in Westport, Connecticut, was a natural move to join the nearby Middlesex, Connecticut County Area Cluster Ministry as one of their squad of tentmaker sacramentalist-preacher-teachers. The secular work continued along the career and personnel development track with increasing focus on middle-level management people who were staying within companies but growing and retooling in new directions. Following this track, he picked up organization-development as well as personnel development skills and experience.

But Vermont, once before his home, beckoned again and the Floyds (his spouse being an organizational development consultant with Fortune 500 companies all over and therefore one who could travel out from anywhere) moved happily back to the Green Mountains and to Warren.

Christ Church Montpelier, had some short while before started a parish mission, which met to eucharistize every Saturday evening in the Warren-Waitsfield Roman Catholic Church, Our Lady of the Snows. The minyan there (a core of about 10-15 souls) wanted to have their own church identity and call their own shots and were willing to take on additional responsibility to do so. The diocese accordingly recategorized them as a diocesan mission with Peter Floyd as vicar, and he agreed to serve 30 hours per month, 10 of which was preparing and celebrating two Eucharists per lunar revolution. The rest of the time he would be coach but not administrator (a warden would so serve) on a total ministry model emphasizing lay-clergy collegiality and increased lay initiative (all baptized persons are ministers). Again Peter found satisfaction in living as an active participant in a good Christian community, not one that was the hired hand. The group now averages 45 people and continues growing, rents a roomy, heated and floored barn each weekend, sets it up for liturgy and education with stored furniture and equipment (much like the Amish) and breaks it down and hauls it off at the end of the weekend. The two weekends a month that Peter is not on duty, they engage priestly supply from the numerous Episcopal clergy retiring to Gods country. Thus with modest cost for clergy and for conventicle, they have, on a small budget, real money for outreach and missionary purposes and they have a great time fighting over how to apportion it. Priest and people are really excited about each other, and their joint ministry.

Floyd and Floyd in the management-consulting world, sends the wife-half all over creation to deal with large companies. The husband-half has clients nearer to home. The most excruciating of them was Ben and Jerrys Ice Cream as they asked help to deal with the transition from a small-group dynamic to life as a medium-size entity and than on to being a national corporation. The change had weird dynamics because one key persons method of operating was based on trusting nobody but himself! After a truly crazy time, Peter helped them get on the road to accepting and using well a new CEO with an almost main-line business background! Floyd then retired from the battlefield with honor. One such craziness, says Peter, with humor, is enough for a lifetime.

We note that Peters constant ministry is leadership development in two fields secular management development and church organizational and educational development. One ministry in two settings, two functions is a truly creative possibility emerging from the tentmaking model. And Peter Floyd has done it in spades. It has all come together, with the Holy Spirit at work, in Washington County, Vermont.