But my thoughts on leadership have been much wider than just church discipline, and it seems I'm not the only one who is thinking a lot about 21st century church leadership lately (see Mike Friesen's blog here, here and here, for instance).
In my research for this essay I've found some great books, which I highly recommend:
The Fourfold Leadership of Jesus, by Andrew Watson, an Anglican vicar;
7 Deadly Sins of Women in Leadership by Kate Coleman, a Baptist minister;
Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World by Stuart Murray, an Anabaptist and overseer of Urban Expression, a pioneering urban church planting agency;
and Leadership: a Critical Text by Simon Western, a Quaker, and the Director of Coaching at the Management School, Lancaster University.
At this point in my curacy (in my final year) I'm reflecting a lot on what kind of leader I want to be and what kind of leader God wants me to be. I'm thinking about what kind of leadership style I'm inclined towards, and how I might need to push beyond my natural comfort zones to really go where God wants to take me in terms of leading a church as an incumbent. It's quite exciting, really. This is such an interesting time in Christianity in the west. Interesting and very challenging.
I quite like it that the books listed above, the ones I really got a lot out of, are written by people from four different traditions. One thing I warmed to about all four books is their common emphasis on the need for collaboration and community. The 21st century does not take well to domineering, heirarchical leadership, but a multi-voiced, sensitive, listening, serving and enabling kind of leadership is what many are calling for, with vision, attentive to the Spirit. Bring it on!
wow, read the first link about the "contract" for church discipline; seems incredibly harsh and even prurient to me; makes the roman catholic confessions and penance seem so loving in contrast and so much more like what Jesus would have given a nod to, imho.
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