Visionary Leadership vs. Cult of Personality (updated)

UPDATE: I just ran across the following video presentation on Steve Jobs and Apple Computer. It has a lot to say about the cult of personality verses a culture of vision:



One of the things I struggle with in my own ministry is how proactive to be in my leadership. I've seen (mostly evangelical) churches where the pastor (or, sometimes, the pastor and his wife) are front and center in advertisements and promotional materials, and it is very clear that this is "Pastor X's Church." Among the many difficulties with that is that when the pastor moves on or, God forbid, has some moral failing, that loss has an incredibly huge impact on the congregation, much more so than it might if the pastor were just another staff member. How do you have Pastor X's Church without Pastor X? On the other side, it is quite clear that the pastor of any church has enormous impact in all areas of church life--spiritual, financial, programming, etc... Leadership does matter, and as much as we talk about delegating authority and broadening our leadership base, someone has to be the point person and say "We're going THERE!" Committees don't do that nearly as well as a single individual.

The other issue with a single leader versus a shared leadership model is the cognitive dissonance that people go through. On the one hand, people crave clarity and stability and so are often happy to follow a leader who is self-assured and at least appears to have a good grasp on things. On the other hand, there is a deep distrust in our country of people with any sort of power. We can see it at work in our national politics, with the warnings of people "taking over" or "ramming things through." We seem to be intellectually more comfortable with distributed power and shared leadership, but our hearts know what our brains often forget--there is no substitute for a clear vision and direction and a visionary leader to cast that vision and support it.

As we enter October, the church moves from the rush of the beginning of the program year to thinking about what is variously called stewardship season, the Fall Pledge Drive, or any number of other names. It is a time when we quite literally ask people to buy into a vision, to support it with both their money and their time. The more specific and compelling that vision is, presumably the easier it is to achieve such buy-in. Yet this is not my church, it is God's church and the congregation can do far more collectively than I can do individually. So we are back to the conundrum--do we make the pastor the focus in the interest of having a more focused vision or do we have a more distributed leadership in the interest of sharing power and inviting more participation? Like anything else, it is a delicate dance...

Keeping Balance in the Midst of Transitions

As many are aware, I'm in the midst of a family transition at the same time as my parish is in the midst of a programmatic one. Early this month, we moved in to church-owned housing from our temporary housing where we had been since October. On the positive side, my commute is substantially shorter, and we're all settling in to the neighborhood well. On the negative side, it still has that "this isn't our house" vibe, mostly because it is so new and we haven't moved all of our things in yet, much less put up pictures and done other things to personalize it. Ironically, it seems more temporary than our temporary housing seemed! I know that will pass, but it is nonetheless disquieting.

At the same time, St. Edward's has embarked on a new journey--a two-service schedule. At 8:30 a.m. we have a traditional Rite I (Elizabethian English) communion service with hymns. At 10 a.m. we have a Rite II (modern English) service with contemporary music. We have had great success with both so far, with a combined attendance last Sunday of 63 people! At the same time, there are always issues when something new comes about, not the least of which is that I'm needing to get back some balance in my own life as both my family and I settle in to our new house and the parish settles in to our new schedule.

Hence the reason I'm blogging on what used to be my day off--I've decided to take Mondays as an "Administration and Study Day" and make Fridays my day of the week off. Hopefully, that will mean more time and energy for my family as I close the door of the office on Thursday evening and don't re-open it until Sunday morning. With my office and home so much closer, maintaining boundaries becomes both much more difficult and much more important as well.

So, after this brief foray into personal blogging, my plan is to do some prayer and study for a while and see where God takes me!