Ian Price, Mission Network Leader, MRN
Presbytery & Synod Uniting Church of SA

Do you ever hear someone say something with authority and think, “Hmm, I’m not sure about that.” Truisms - the simple truth is, they ain’t always true! For some time I have listened with interest to those voices (usually coming from independent ministries) that parrot the belief that denominations are passé, dead, a Christendom construct, a modernist idea etc, etc. Some of the statistics bear this out – there is a decline in some of the mainstream denominations – unless of course you are a Roman Catholic in some parts of Latin America or a Methodist in parts of Africa. Of course, while mouthing such depressing truisms the same voices laud the rise of Saddleback, Willow Creek, Mosaic and Vineyard, which by any measures are thriving and helpful denominations in their own right.

In reality, any movement that empowers its members has to be stronger together than existing as a group of isolated individual constituents. The key issue is whether a denomination is a movement or a fossilised relic of irrelevant values, techniques and beliefs.

These past few years I have been amazed that people haven’t realised the power of our denomination. We have poured hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars into mission initiatives across South Australia. Resource minsters have been made available for our rural churches. Schools of ministry have been established to offer support to lay-led congregations and the revamping of theological education for missional effectiveness offers the best foundation imaginable for leadership development. Church plants, property expansion and new initiatives have been established - all because we have the resources of a denomination to shape a positive, Christ centred, Spirit led, faithful future.

Dorothy on Leadership
Or "How a Movie from our Childhood can Help us Understand the Changing Nature of Leadership in the Postmodern Transition"

In an article originally published in Rev. Magazine (Nov/Dec 2000) Brian D. McLaren admits that he "spent most of the 80's and early 90's wishing (he) could be just like Bill Hybels, Rick Warren or John Maxwell". He, like many others was sold on the image of the "successful pastor" as the "CEO, the alpha male, the armoured knight, the corporate hero." In his musings about leadership he found a strange memory returning... McLaren writes:

"...the scene in "The Wizard of Oz" when little Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal that the great Wizard of Oz is a rather normal guy hiding behind an imposing image. It struck me that the 1940's world that produced the film was in many ways a world at the height of modernity, a world enamoured with Superman, with the Lone Ranger, with Great Men. It struck me that by exposing the Wizard as a fraud, the film was probing an unexpressed cultural doubt, giving voice to a rising mis-giving, displaying an early pang of discontent with its dominant model of larger-than-life leadership. And it made me wonder what image would replace the great Wizard. The answer, of course, appeared in the next scene. No, it wasnt the lion, the scarecrow, or the tin man. It was Dorothy.

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 herself is 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."

Brian D. McLaren's interesting comparison between the characteristics of modern (Wizardly) and postmodern (Dorothy style) leadership can be read in full here  Dorothy as Leader (60.21 kB)

In the article, "Journey around Leadership", Professor Amanda Sinclair from the University of Melbourne charts her disaffection with leadership theory that invisibilizes the impact of gender. She weaves her personal experience as an educator in a business school around theoretical commentary in order to highlight some of the limitations of current leadership discourses. Amanda writes:

"My recent research has been focussed on showing how the whole way the discourse of leadership is constructed perpetuates a particular ideology about what leadership looks like. It advances the tough, heroic performance as the entire category and in so doing, maintains a particular set of power and social relations.... Leadership scholars and commentators have captured and co-opted the language of leadership to render some aspects, such as physicality and sexuality, invisible and undiscussable and other aspects so banal as to appear benign: the 'toughness', the 'commitment', and the sacrifice of family."

In charting her journey, Amanda outlines some ways to subvert the dominant leadership ideology and to do leadership differently.

"If we are to believe the leadership theorists then change is the one key requirement of leadership. But to be able to envision and live change, one needs to go against standard leadership practice. This is one of the great paradoxes of leadership - that leaders (i.e. those with power and privilege in society) are probably in the worst position to be agents of change and, more importantly, to be leaders who change themselves."

"Leaders should not be unthinking agents of a corporate agenda but use a variety of strategies to question, re-shape, perhaps even undermine that agenda. There are times when leadership requires reactions of resistance and detachment, subversion and antagonism.....Sometimes just being different and holding against pressures to 'fit' the expected leadership performance can constitute leadership."

To read the full article   Journey around leadership (58 kB)

Challenging leadership myths and building community leadership

At an address to the Communities in Control conference, Melbourne, June 19 2006, Professor Amanda Sinclair from the University of Melbourne Business School stated that she believes that leadership needs to be liberated from the narrow confines of a corporate inspired, individualistic ideology and that leadership should be aimed at freeing people. "The purpose of leadership should be about: supporting others to act; mobilising people to head in new directions; supporting people to value themselves, their families, their communities. The purpose of leadership should be about liberation. It should be about freedom." In Amanda's observation leadership very often does the reverse. "It often enslaves people. It often seems to quarantine them into working in ways that are unsustainable, that are disconnected to what's really going on. Leadership often seems to compel people to think they have got to do the great heroic quest, that they have got to be single-handedly producing visions and marching off over the horizon". In her address Amanda spoke about five myths about leadership and offered some liberating alternatives for each.

Thomas Bandy writes about how to respond to dissent and disruption in congregational life.

Chroniclers of ancient times speak with mingled terror and awe of a weapon of war called "Greek Fire." The tiniest spark could start a fire on a ship or in a castle, rapidly spreading and consuming anything in its path. Greek Fire could not even be extinguished by water. In fact, water seemed to make the fire even fiercer. The more water, the bigger the flame! The recipe for Greek Fire, though lost in the dark ages, has been rediscovered today in a different form. Today this fire consumes, not warships or castles, but church organizations.

Click here to download the full article in PDF format.  addressing discontent in cong (23.55 kB)