From the Dean
“Signs of healthy spiritual leadership can be seen in the kind of interdependency between the leadership and the congregation that creates generosity, freedom, creativity, and hospitality to strangers.” —Katherine Tyler Scott, Transforming Leadership
As Katherine Tyler Scott spoke to us at our recent clergy overnight I kept thinking of Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, and Ed Friedman’s book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the age of the Quick Fix. She named what we have been hearing in other quarters about the need for adaptability in our organizations, communities, and congregations during times of great change.
Our discussions engaged the ‘flatness’ of the world and our communities: mutuality of relationships within congregations wherein the job of leadership is serving to provide the spiritual and pragmatic resources that allow all members to see themselves as the ministers, the effectors of life in their wider communities. That is to say, if any member of the church is present in the world, the church itself is present. One need not wear a white collar to be the full and complete manifestation of the church in the world.
I find myself thinking about this in the context of change being called for across the church. From the Presiding Bishop’s office we recently heard Bishop Stacy Sauls asking that the national church structures be reexamined (http://tinyurl.com/bishop-stacy).
He is not calling for some technical modification to adjust to shrinking budgets. The national church has been doing technical fixes around shrinking budgets for over a decade. Instead he is asking us to examine the world about us including how differently congregations, dioceses and the national structures function now than they did even 20 years ago. While congregations have taken on more of the ‘equipping the saints’ and more direct engagement with the needs of their communities, there has not been an intentional revisioning of the church’s structures during this change.
Bishop Sauls is experiencing a certain resistance from many quarters with comments like, “What Bishop Sauls raises is important, but I am not sure he appreciates...” There may indeed be some things he does not appreciate, yet the similarity of resistance makes me wonder if he has not hit some nail on the head.
What does all of this mean for All Souls? At our next diocesan convention, November 10-12, there will be various resolutions put forth which at their heart are wonderings about how we might structure ourselves differently to reflect the reality in which we are living. There are no quick fixes among them. Each of the resolutions will find resistors and some perhaps deservedly. At the same time, I am intrigued by their call for us to be brave enough to name what has changed, brave enough to name our need to shape ourselves in ways that facilitate what is already emerging here and what needs to be fed: mutuality, collaboration, sharing of resources including life experience and learning.
It was Katherine Tyler Scott who coined the phrase, “no longer and not yet” which I mentioned in my sermon a few weeks back. It is where we are living: the old has already passed away, behold the new is coming. And we are not yet clear about all the details of the new.
What does all of this mean for us as a Cathedral? How do we serve the diocese and ourselves in a manner that keeps flattening, keeps connecting, keeps us adaptable to life and needs in the community? What helps us not simply reinforce structures that have passed their shelf life? What helps us to reimagine? What helps us to see what might be in our midst?
I would love to hear your thoughts on these questions.
Peace,
Todd