Impotent Leadership
Thanks for the comment Rich it's good to know that someone's paying attention to my rambles. I liked the "I think the answer is to not lead. Then it's someone else's problem and I'll just consume from a back row" comment. I know that your tongue was firmly in your cheek at that point, however one of my fears is that that is what could happen. I think any leaders who are taking seriously the challenges of postmodernism and incarnational leadership can be left feeling nervous and indeed impotent when it comes to leading. Perhaps leadership has become too wedded with a "one man model"; autocratic and theocratic (where the leader is usually theo) styles have dominated. Often leadership has been understood as power, and we all know the dangers of power corrupting. One of the results now is that we don't have mentors in the alien (to quote Richard Sudsworth) way of leading.
I believe leadership is more often caught than taught, so we need a new breed of leaders who share their lives, their dreams, their hurts, their successes and their failures with others who really can share the good and bad times and build the kingdom of God (rather than the leaders' empire) together.
I think leadership is as important as it's ever been, so lead on...
Thanks for the comment Rich it's good to know that someone's paying attention to my rambles. I liked the "I think the answer is to not lead. Then it's someone else's problem and I'll just consume from a back row" comment. I know that your tongue was firmly in your cheek at that point, however one of my fears is that that is what could happen. I think any leaders who are taking seriously the challenges of postmodernism and incarnational leadership can be left feeling nervous and indeed impotent when it comes to leading. Perhaps leadership has become too wedded with a "one man model"; autocratic and theocratic (where the leader is usually theo) styles have dominated. Often leadership has been understood as power, and we all know the dangers of power corrupting. One of the results now is that we don't have mentors in the alien (to quote Richard Sudsworth) way of leading.
I believe leadership is more often caught than taught, so we need a new breed of leaders who share their lives, their dreams, their hurts, their successes and their failures with others who really can share the good and bad times and build the kingdom of God (rather than the leaders' empire) together.
I think leadership is as important as it's ever been, so lead on...
2 Comments:
Si - my tongue WAS firmly in my cheek... however, I agree with your post. As someone who feels others want me to lead, a sense of leadership calling and someone who wants to take seriously the challenges of postmodernism and incarnational leadership, I DO feel scared of HOW I work that out in practice.
I am increasingly uncomfortable/uncertain with the full-time ministry model. What does that enable me to BE ? I'm not convinced that to be the kind of leader you describe, I need to be paid to do it. Either I am that or I'm not. Paying me should be to enable me to do other things associated with the life of a church.
Hmmmmm.
Rich
By
Anonymous, at 2:21 PM
Simon, we always pay attention to you - even when you ramble!!
In this leadership thing I do wonder if our battle with leadership type/style/direction/alien(??) etc. is an issue about ourselves as people. We all have the capacity to be either auto/theo cratic or incarnational, but often our desire to get the job done - and done well, means we tend towards autocratic.
What bothers me most is how the leaders we are currently mentoring will struggle with the styles we have used, in 10 years or so. Am I prepared for them to challenge my ideals? Hopefully
By
Roy, at 12:59 PM
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