AUTHOR: Robin Dugall
DATE: 1:34:00 PM
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BODY:
This is a part of the Independent Study that I have just completed on Talmid and the Novitiate and their implications for contemporary leadership development especially with adolescents. I just had to share it…it may otherwise never see the light of day!
History’s Balm to Contemporary Praxis
"At first glance, Dorothy is all wrong as a model of leadership. She is the wrong gender (female) and the wrong age (young). Rather than being a person with all the answers, who knows what's up and where to go and what's what, she is herself lost, a seeker, often bewildered, and vulnerable. These characteristics would disqualify her from modern leadership. But they serve as her best credentials for postmodern leadership."
In a very astute article written for a website, “Rev. Magazine”, Brian McLaren identifies a number of wizardly characteristics of that have epitomized Church leadership in the ages of modernity. Each focuses on the authority of a “chosen” instrument of God who owns the sheer technical knowledge of their profession, an individualist with specialized training and academic degrees, a conquest attitude of soul, the knack of always wanting to be on stage and in public view, the narcissistic focus on being “above” the normal laity, and who abides on the top of the church’s organizational chart. Without a doubt, most people who love the Bride of Christ would assess that the growth, development, and effectiveness of the cause of the Kingdom of God is in trouble because of this type of leadership paradigm. Many are calling for a release of the post-reformation captivity of the Church. In order for there to be any hope for the future of God’s Kingdom of earth through the calling, passion and ministry of the Church, new paradigms for leadership and the development of new leaders must be explored.
One of the dominant factors in any ministry that acts as a harbinger for renewal lies on the laps of its leadership. Over ten years ago, a man with spiritual fortitude and a passion for the Church sat in a coffee shop and wrote down the words, “the local church is the hope of the world and its future rests primarily in the hands of its leaders”. As the Church in the 21st century casts its gaze on to the horizons of the future, current strategies utilized to prepare it and its emerging leaders for the exponentially changing world seem shortsighted and inadequate. The demands of doing ministry within a postmodern context, which is rapidly proving to be explosive time in human history, appear daunting. Despite those actualities, most experts who measure the dynamism of change within current ministries especially within the current climate of the American brand of contemporary Christianity agree that change occurs slowly and at miniscule increments. Hence, the disconnect…it seems again that the Church is out of step with the times at hand. That is why, in many respects, hope for the contemporary Church as well as the Church of the future lies not in the effectiveness of its current leadership but in the preparation, release and anointing of the emerging generations of leadership. How to be able to engage future leaders in a manner that encourages, equips and faithfully enables the call of God upon their lives to be difference makers in the culture should be at the pinnacle of the concerns of the contemporary Church. Leadership needs to be developed at younger and younger ages to be effective. As leaders age the likelihood of them being moldable and teachable decreases. There is high likelihood and probability of significant impact on leadership development if we start early in a student’s spiritual formation.
We need to move from Wizard of Oz leadership to leadership honed through the crucible of character-formation and community-based foundations. The time of the solo pastor who is seen as expert, prime minister and CEO of the corporate gathering of believers has ended. A new day where leaders are formed in communities not dependent on size or political structure, where participation and service matters more than quality, where expert is changed to sage, broadcaster to listener, technician to friend, salesman to artist, careerist to amateur, problem solver to co-journeyer…where there is a transformation from knower to seeker and from spotlight headliner to team builder are going to be the factors that have the potential of moving Christianity into the new millennium. A new movement that breeds enthusiasm, hope, self-renunciation, and “faith in a holy cause as a…substitute for the lost faith in ourselves” must be birthed in our time.
Gamaliel in the book of Acts said in regards to a movement of young people who were radically and sacrificially following their rabbi, “if it is not of God – it will burn up – if it is of God, no stopping it” (Acts 5:39). To understand the foundation of a new, subversive, difference-making discipleship is to understand relationship, spiritual experience, and self-sacrifice. Parker Palmer put it this way, “to know something or someone in truth is to enter troth with the known…to become betrothed, to engage the known with one’s whole self”. A relationship with God engulfs the totality of a person’s mind, heart, soul and strength (i.e. Deuteronomy 6:4ff). Contemporary culture is a cult. It is a system of revelation. It is the entire range of corporate ritual, of symbolic forms, human expressions, and productive systems. It quietly converts, calls for commitment, transforms, inspires heroics, and emits a sense of fulfillment. Culture does not teach, it propagandizes. It is an idolatry – in whose image humans are recreated and diminished. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God is a revelation – an ultimate source of reference wherein we find ourselves and the world revealed. The Gospel is a response to the questions of who we are, what we may hope for, how we may aspire to act, what endures, what is important, what is of true value. Following Jesus, if it is real and true, can not merely change the way you worship…it has got to change the way we play, work, buy, sell, love, do life. The movement of Christianity has got to be about defining the ultimate in terms of God’s Kingdom breaking into the world to redeem a new global community. Jesus tells us that we will find our ultimate satisfaction not in seeking life but in losing it in service to others.
We can no longer be adherents to dualistic discipleship. In spite of all the talk about Christ’s Lordship, everyone knows that the expectations of the culture come first. That is the unspoken façade of modern Christianity. Christ followers tend to make decisions like everyone else – based on income, professions and social status. Modern Culture shapes our lives – overwork, single-family detached homes, congested time schedules. Following Jesus can no longer be trivialized as little more than a devotional lubricant to keep us from stripping our gears when pursuing our own lives. It can no longer be reduced to quiet times and Sunday mornings…highly privatized and spiritualized and disconnected. Following Jesus has got to begin to define the good life.
The first community of followers turned the world upside down. They were constantly challenging the dominant values of their culture AND paying the price. The contemporary church often is one of the strongest apologists for protecting the dominant values of the world. The church should be a counter-cultural community. Being a Christ-follower cannot be something that you work around the edges of an already overcommitted life. It is a whole-life proposition…it challenges us to reorder our entire existence. Instead of trying to excuse what Jesus actually said, followers act on what the Lord commands. That’s why the Talmidim and the Novitiate play such a major role in critiquing our current praxis of leadership development. That’s why these time-honored and Spirit-inspired efforts need to be resurrected in new ways as we learn from history how to invest in lives and how to take students extremely seriously by pushing them to live in transformational community through which they will impact the world. John Kavanaugh says it this way as he answered the question of this generation as to whom or what was going to shape our lives,
“If we say Jesus Christ, then we are called by him to a life of simplicity, a life without racism or vengeance, a life of compassion and trust, a sharing of our goods, a consciousness of and attention to the world’s poor, and a committed covenant in faith, hope, and love. In a culture that increasingly demands the “thingification” of human life, we are called to struggle with the “personhood”.
That appears to this writer as a call that is completely consistent with the call that was followed in history…the same call that changed the lives of young people and consequently changed the culture and the world. Oh, do we have a lot to learn! I pray we will!
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COMMENT-AUTHOR: Chris Monroe
COMMENT-DATE:8:21 PM
COMMENT-BODY:"We can no longer be adherents to dualistic discipleship. In spite of all the talk about Christ’s Lordship, everyone knows that the expectations of the culture come first. That is the unspoken façade of modern Christianity. Christ followers tend to make decisions like everyone else – based on income, professions and social status. Modern Culture shapes our lives – overwork, single-family detached homes, congested time schedules. Following Jesus can no longer be trivialized as little more than a devotional lubricant to keep us from stripping our gears when pursuing our own lives. It can no longer be reduced to quiet times and Sunday mornings…highly privatized and spiritualized and disconnected. Following Jesus has got to begin to define the good life."
Great synopsis! You could probably stand to state it even more strongly. "Culture" has way too much clout.
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Chris Monroe
COMMENT-DATE:8:21 PM
COMMENT-BODY:"We can no longer be adherents to dualistic discipleship. In spite of all the talk about Christ’s Lordship, everyone knows that the expectations of the culture come first. That is the unspoken façade of modern Christianity. Christ followers tend to make decisions like everyone else – based on income, professions and social status. Modern Culture shapes our lives – overwork, single-family detached homes, congested time schedules. Following Jesus can no longer be trivialized as little more than a devotional lubricant to keep us from stripping our gears when pursuing our own lives. It can no longer be reduced to quiet times and Sunday mornings…highly privatized and spiritualized and disconnected. Following Jesus has got to begin to define the good life."