MORE THAN WORDS
Recession: A Pathway to Creative Leadership
by the Rev. Brenda Buckwell, D. Min., West Ohio Conference
"New leadership is needed for new times, but it will not come from finding more wily ways to manipulate the external world. It will come as we who serve and teach and lead find the courage to take an inner journey toward both our shadows and our light -- a journey that, faithfully pursued, will take us beyond ourselves to become healers of a wounded world."
—Parker J. Palmer
I found the above quote a long time ago, while I was doing a Web search on Parker Palmer for a class that I was teaching. This quote has resounded within my heart and shaped the way I envision leadership for the church.
We live in a new historic time, one like no other has been. The unemployment rate in the urban area where I work continues to reach upward, displacing families, veterans, high school graduates, and PhD's from their homes as well as occupations. Social service agencies distributing food to this neighborhood have seen unprecedented need. The Free Store, sharing free goods for healthy living, is overflowing with clients seeking assistance to make ends meet. And sadly the dreams, the desires and the hopes of the people fade into the background as the drudgery of everyday survival looms brightly.
Into this wild and reeling world, I find Parker's words a call for holy attentiveness and new creativity. Indeed:
"New leadership is needed for new times, but it will not come from finding more wily ways to manipulate the external world. It will come as we who serve and teach and lead find the courage to take an inner journey..."
No longer can filling quotas be enough. No longer can we color by number the ministries, saying but we have "always done it that way before." No longer can spiritual direction and holy listening skills, storytelling and the attentive care to receive the other be omitted from training of church leadership and seminary students. Robert's Rules of Order has ruled us into divisiveness that creates winners and losers. We the church have been entering the culture at a cultural level - lifting up "hot button" issues from a cultural perspective of right and wrong, justified and unjustified, winners and losers; rather than leading with the passionate compassion of the Risen One.
Could we within the church offer an alternative stance from which to lead ministry? Could we open potential and possibilities within the other for the transformation of the world?
Leading from the center, opening an interior space of holding the soul and gently gazing upon the other (other opinions, other people, other thoughts, other ways of being present and active in community...) is key to creative relevant leadership for this time in history. Leading from this interior space requires banishment of fear. Fear often plagues us in the forms of doubts, questioning, second guessing one's self and in the struggle to "out do" the other. Fear often holds us back from entering into relationship with the other, fear of the unknown, fear of letting go of habitual and traditional views and values, and fear of being led by God into the unfamiliar.
Spiritual directors and retreat leaders invite folks to slow the pace, listen deeply and gaze upon the other with the soft eyes and compassion of God. What is your challenge during this time of history in leadership training? How can you use the skills you learned in leading retreat, or holy listening to train church leadership? I look forward to hearing of your hopes, aspirations, temptations and challenges in applying contemplative methods of discernment to the leadership challenge of our day.
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