07.30.10
Posted in complexity/systems, ekklesia, emergence, leadership, transition at 9:33 am by len
In “When Complex Systems Fail,” Marg Wheatley discusses the need to increase knowledge and make it accessible to those who can bring change. Because we have built huge and interconnected systems, they are increasingly complex. This complexity is far beyond the ability of individual minds to grasp. Moreover, change processes, because they affect EVERYONE in a complex system, are easily sabotaged or resisted. The only way to reduce such resistance is to include all stakeholders at some level.
But the piece that grabbed me is a piece I have been trying to articulate in a variety of ways for the past three or four years. It is this need to build a creative commons; it is the need for leaders at all levels to take off their hats and shed their individual roles, with the power that accompanies them (and induces the distance that prevents free dialogue) and come together. It is the recognition that conversation and dialogue are near the essence of the kind of leadership we need now. Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
07.26.10
Posted in complexity/systems, ekklesia, leadership, mission at 10:40 am by len
I’m often on this topic, and I think I must have come at it from fifty different angles this past couple of years. Here is one more you may find helpful. And it may shock you to know that the three questions I will share date back to 1967.
One of the large shifts that is happening as we attempt to find the center in this missional conversation is from the church at the center to God at the center, and His purposes in redemption. “It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission who has a church in the world.” (Bosch) He is forming a people for himself. At the core of that purpose, we are formed for mission — to partner with God in both performing and proclaiming the good news. God is faithful in keeping his promises to Abraham, promises we inherit in Christ.
So if this is the core of God’s purpose, then governance and leadership in the ecclesia must align around this center. Lloyd Ogilvie, in 1967, asked three questions.
* What kind of people do we want to deploy on mission?
* What kind of community creates that kind of person?
* What kind of leadership cultivates that kind of community?
(This last question was probably “creates” rather than cultivates.. my adaptation)
The answer is a leadership that empowers people, nurtures teams, supports collaboration, shares knowledge, and cultivates a leadership culture. The shift we need has been well documented by a variety of sources. This example is adapted from Roxburgh in The Sky is Falling.
If it’s a metaphor you need, leaders must move from:
* Hero to host
* Director to Producer
* Map reader to Navigator
* Knower to lover
Permalink
07.25.10
Posted in formation, leadership at 10:41 am by len
Bill Kinnon posts Part 2 of this discussion.
“As I type this post, mid-Friday afternoon (May 7th, 2009), tens of thousands of church leaders are preparing their sermons for this coming Sunday. Some are in their church office, door firmly shut, a Do Not Disturb sign literally or figuratively in place. Others are in their home office. Their spouses and children knowing well enough to leave them alone. The cool leaders are in the local St. Arbucks, an over-priced Venti of surprisingly poor quality coffee close at hand, as they scribble notes into their Moleskinés while searching Logos on their MacBooks.
“Still others are somewhere listening to (insert your favourite preacher) as they copy down the theme, the examples and sometimes even the personal stories of those “gifted preachers.” For many, if not most of these preachers, the Sunday service will be their primary point of contact with members of their congregations…” Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
07.23.10
Posted in books, leadership, mission, semiotics, theology at 5:00 am by len
In this outstanding short book Nouwen is working with two stories. The first is the story of the three temptations in Matthew 4. The second is the story of Jesus three questions to Peter in John 21. Nouwen is going to describe for us “the leader of the future.” He characterizes the temptations like this:
1. the temptation to be relevant.
The question: “Do you love me?”
The movement – From relevance to prayer
2. the temptation to be spectacular
The task: “Feed my sheep.”
The movement – From popularity to service
3. the temptation to be powerful
The challenge: Someone else will lead you
The discipline – From leading to being led.
Nouwen describes the leader of the future as the praying leader, the vulnerable leader, and the trusting leader. I think these terms need reinterpretation. For our time and location, I would translate like this:
the praying leader = the listening leader
the vulnerable leader = the vulnerable/transparent leader
the trusting leader = the surrendered/powerless leader
Speaking from John 21:18, Nouwen writes that the mature leader will follow where he/she does not want to go. There are components of surrender and vulnerability here. The Christian leader of the future, the missional leader, is “radically poor” — takes nothing for the journey, is radically dependent on Christ (Mark 6:8; Luke 10:4). The discipline needed for this radical dependence and willingness to be led is theological reflection. He writes,
“Just as prayer keeps us connected with the first love, and confession and forgiveness keep our ministry communal and mutual, so strenuous theological reflection will allow us to discern where God is leading.” (85) Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
07.22.10
Posted in books, complexity/systems, leadership, mission, transition at 10:41 am by len
Gary Nelson writes,
“It is obvious to [secure leaders] that vision and possibilities emerge from the community and not just the leaders. Borderland leaders are community builders that draw vision, giftedness, and relationships out of the community while warring against the tendency toward going it on their own. In this cultivated atmosphere, the missional imagination of members emerges in greater clarity. it is a vision that does not come from pre-planned strategies void of dialogue or process, but from the community’s shared experience of God’s moving in its midst.” (77)
“All the literature on leadership points to the idea that leaders shape values and mobilize people through character, not just through technique and efficient management frameworks. Efficiency and technique may create good processes and systems, but they do not build deep communities of faith that effectively move into the borderlands of mission and ministry.” (80)
“Borderland churches need borderland-friendly clergy, comfortable in the worlds they so passionately and purposefully encourage people to engage. Leaders wired only for the Christian sub-cultures find it difficult to encourage borderland living because it is impossible to guide others to places .. where you are not willing to go yourself.” (80)
The full review HERE.
Permalink
07.16.10
Posted in books, culture, leadership, pilgrimage, the arts, theology at 5:30 am by len
Wikiklesia Volume 2, Taking Flight: Reclaiming the Female Half of God’s Image through Advocacy and Renewal, explores the changing views and perceptions of women’s roles and status both in faith community and throughout the world. In this collaborative volume, we hear from a wide diversity of established and bestselling authors, theologians, bloggers, leaders and practitioners, pastors, artists, entrepreneurs and a former U.S. president, offering a fresh approach to the theme of gender and gender roles amidst post-industrial tsunami’s in society and economy. This changing landscape is not one the church can fail to negotiate and hope to successfully navigate the future. Will it react, engage in unremitting theological debate, or will it act by seeking the high ground of integrity, balance and harmony in the awareness of God’s call. Is it possible?
ABOUT WIKIKLESIA: The award winning Wikiklesia Project, is a ground breaking, ecclesial publishing experiment in personal participatory media and on-line collaborative publishing. This project has created a non profit, between – publishing paradigm based on collaboration over copyright. The model is flexible and nomadic, exploring new publishing paradigms that not only create streams of information and narrative, but which have the potential to generate social movement as well as raise money for charities.
That covers the press release. The completed volume is 17 chapters and 290 pages. I’m sure many of you will have this volume in your hands shortly. I contributed a short chapter titled, “Leadership Lenses, Jungian Archetypes, and Gender.” Here are what some others are saying about this effort.
“Taking Fight is an important project that brings together a rich array of diverse voices to discuss the issues facing women in our world today. It is refreshing and challenging to read a book like this that provides strong theological groundings, historical perspectives and examples from today’s world that are both instructive and insightful. I would highly recommend this book.”
Christine Sine
Executive Director Mustard Seed Associates
“Wow. I found Taking Flight to be a thoroughly captivating book from the first page. It is thoughtful and provoking, relevant but never reactionary. It is full of Scriptural precedents and historical background while offering prophetic insight as to what’s coming up next. So
many issues of great importance and all of them dealt with fairly and passionately.”
Andrew Jones, The Boaz Project
“Taking Flight lives up to its title! The collaborative nature of this project gives witness to the power and creativity of a Christ-centered community rather than futile discursive matches. When grounded in Christ, it is possible to soar in hope that men and women serving together can be reconciling forces in a world desperately needing our full attention and contributions. Thoroughly enjoyed reading it!
Dr. MaryKate Morse
Author, Making Room for Leadership and Professor at George Fox Seminary
Permalink
07.15.10
Posted in complexity/systems, ekklesia, leadership, pilgrimage, transition at 11:20 am by len
Yesterday morning as I was working with a ten page postscript for a current book project, I was also reflecting on James K.A. Smith and his take on love and desire. That took me back to William Cavanaugh and his thoughts on Augustine and desire – Augustine argued that our desires must be trained. Smith argues that because culture is a cultivating force, we are constantly being trained –formed — by the practices of market culture. Our desires are being molded at a pre-cognitive (shades of Charles Taylor) level.
All this in the context of the previous post, reflecting on belonging and believing. Which is primary? If the goal of all this is that we might know God, do we know him primarily thru the intellect or the affections? If love is the true path to knowledge, it might help us sort out whether believing or belonging is the primary path to the goal.
But somewhere in all this reflection I found myself looking for something in The Forgotten Ways Handbook. I was thinking in particular of the role of the Abbot, or the Synergist. According to Miller (Barbarians to Bureaucrats, Fawcett Books, 1990) the key to holding together diverse communities of leadership types is the Synergist. Miller describes a Synergist as “… a leader who has escaped his or her own conditioned tendencies toward one style and incorporated, appreciated and unified each of the styles of leadership on the life-cycle curve. The best managed companies are synergistic.”
The Synergist guards this ethos and her role is to foster and maintain a creative and open space within the team so that no one role dominates. She helps maintain clarity of vision and her investment is in internal capital. As Mort Ryerson put it, the primary task of being a leader is to make sure that the organization knows itself. This connects us back to the function of memory as rooting identity within the living Body, and the role of story-tellers in passing on the narrative that connects us to the larger purposes of God in history. Miller argues that the Synergist is a dynamic combination of the other roles. Others, like Alan Roxburgh (The Sky is Falling), have identified this role in the traditional role of the Abbot.
Ok, what do we really know about all this? What knowledge has been preserved in the traditional Orders of the Church? Tim Keel asks, “where do we find these leaders?” And how do we fit these roles into the traditional five-fold expression we find in Ephesians 4? Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
07.09.10
Posted in complexity/systems, formation, leadership, transition at 12:00 pm by len
There is no going back to paradise. Individuals, systems, institutions — all are fallen. I took note of a post on Thursday by Paul Fromont, because I think it is really important to recognize that all our hopes and dreams will have limited realization in this world.
As soon as the new wine is poured out, it begins to go stale. Even as the new wineskins take shape, they begin to decay.
Paul points to a conversation between Jonny Baker and Kester Brewin. There will never be a perfect expression of church – much less a perfect ecclesiology. As Jonny put it, “the new institution free zone is also run by broken humans.” Jonny’s post is well worth the read. His reasoning is why my wife and I have reconnected to the broken institution we call “church.”
As I read I was reminded of a few quotes I’ve collected over the years. Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
07.08.10
Posted in complexity/systems, leadership, transition at 5:00 am by len
In this first of two posts, I want to talk about some of the ways and means of transitioning existing (inherited) church into new ways of being God’s people on mission. This post today is borrowed from David Fitch about two years back. David posted on “Instilling missional habits.” I like the post in particular because David is hitting at the necessity of change at the cultural level – the level of ethos and imagination as much as actual practice. He begins like this:
“How do we lead a church community to engage mission as a way of life? How do we steer a congregation out of evangelism programs into everyday missional living? How do we train a congregation out of Christendom habits and instill post Christendom virtues (character for living faithfully in post Christendom)? I think leaders walk along and among their communities. Along the way, they lead by consistently (and kindly) rejecting some old habits and directing the imagination towards other possibilities. This is the never-ending work of cultivating missional habits of imagination among a people.
Here’s my list of what to reject (slowly put to death in a congregation) and what to direct (nudge people forward) a congregation’s imagination toward. I’ve learned a lot of these things from missional thinkers/practitioners but have found all these things to be surprisingly simple and possible in my own life.
1.) Kindly Reject doing Outreach Events. Instead direct imagination towards ways of connecting with people where they are. Outreach events take up much time, planning and enormous “congregational capital” (if I may put it that way). In post Christendom outreach events rarely “work.” And you simply cannot compete with the local Park District or Megachurch event planning neutral site events. Instead, with little effort or cost, direct the people’s imagination towards seeing the ways you can connect with people in their everyday situations by going to the same place at the same time every week. Stoke imagination for the way ordinary life is the stage of God’s working. Visit the same places at the same time every week (this is easy for me because I am pathetically boring and love doing the same thing everyday). This has revolutionized my missional life with not a single ounce of extra-expended energy spent on my part. I believe the same could be true for every member of our church Body. Thanks to Alan Hirsch for teaching me about this. Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
07.07.10
Posted in books, ekklesia, formation, leadership at 5:00 am by len
My friend Gary Goodell has finally released his book, “Where Would Jesus Lead?” It’s interesting because it is in a missional frame, without using the word. Gary has naturally come to this place in his own life and work. He argues that to lead in these days we must be “among” rather than over or “from,” and that to lead today is to enter into the mess and chaos of other lives. Yes – a very incarnational and personal frame. The book blurb reads,
“Jesus modeled leadership by living and walking with His disciples, everyday people, and the religious leaders of His day. You can emulate His leadership style by changing the traditional hierarchical, pulpit-based leadership model of most Western churches to a more relational form of leading from among the people. This leadership style involves participating in the chaos of real, to-way relationships, yet bringing order by training and discipling in the midst of chaordic interaction.
“Where Would Jesus Lead?” is about leading among rather than leading from, or leading over, or leading from titles, positions, or assumed roles. Author and ministry leader Gary Goodell believes it is time to transition to a more collaborative style of leading, one of coming alongside people, for the peoples sake, and empowering them to achieve their personal God-given destiny. Thinking prophetically, the author courageously contends that interactive relationships that are purposeful yet inherently chaotic are ones to be joyfully embraced.” Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »
