It's too easy to learn and apply business leadership models to the pastoral sector. But is it the best alternative to form Church leaders? What are we missing when we use business models in ministry? This book is about creating more sensitivity on how some of these secularly learned models can inadvertently limit pastoral effectiveness, and suggests an "hourglass approach" to leadership capable of fostering a set of principles more harmonious with ministry intent. In many ways this book is a guide for cultivating and developing a more authentic sense of leadership in ministry, one that emerges from within the scholarly sources of the leadership field but at the same time is rooted in the principle "leadership is a spiritual practice". This book is a "must have" for clergy, religious women and men, and anyone engaged with forming ministry leaders or performing leadership roles in diocesan, parish life, or Church ministry.
The Challenges of PASTORAL LEADERSHIP
Concepts and PracticeBy Ronald Rojas John AlvarezAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Ronald Rojas and John Alvarez
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4772-5632-9Contents
Prologue............................................................XI1 The Fundamental Challenges........................................32 Leadership as Spiritual Practice..................................293 The Influence of Personal Calling.................................714 Influencing through Character Strength............................935 Primacy of relationships as influence.............................1256 The influence of spiritual community..............................1697 Envisioning as a spiritual influence..............................2198 Discernment as spiritual influence................................2519 Pastoral leading within pastoral lifecycles.......................27710 Moving Forward...................................................305Appendix A, Pastoral Leadership course syllabus.....................325Appendix B, Pre-Assessment survey...................................335Appendix C, Pastoral Leadership Word-Search.........................341Appendix D, Answer sheet to Figure 7................................343Index...............................................................345
Chapter One
The Fundamental Challenges
A fact about the nature of the leadership construct that is frequently underestimated— yet central to the pastoral sector— is that leadership is related to spirituality.
The demand for true leadership is traditionally said to arise from an expectation that "effectiveness" of group performance is resolved in large part by the leader (Borgatta, Bales, & Couch, 1954). But in looking deeper at the dynamics that drives the collective yearning for a "leader role" there is a more fundamental purpose, one that reaches into the soul. In many ways the need for a "leader role" is tied to a journey rooted in the soul, a sort of spiritual quest for direction where there is chaos, for transcending worldviews where there is inconsequentiality, for assurance where there is uncertainty, and for worth where there is uselessness.
It's quite intuitive in nature to accept how a leader attends to some of the basic needs of the soul. Leaders are visionaries, meaning-makers and guides. Leaders offer a sense of accomplishment and provide inspiration and consolation, boundaries and priorities, comfort and hope. But what becomes more difficult is for the leadership discipline in general to recognize that it is also navigating side by side among the disciplines that study soul. Of course the leadership discipline draws from psychology, sociology, management and education but what about the other scholarly disciplines that have more experience in understanding the dynamics of the soul? Isn't leadership also related to fields of philosophy, theology and spirituality? Every major discipline has some level of discourse related to leadership topics within its own boundaries. But the leadership discipline has yet to fully reach out and benefit from the centuries of knowledge accumulated by schools of philosophy, religion, and spirituality.
If the maxim from St. Augustine (Lib 1,1-2,2.5,5: CSEL 33, 1-5) "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." holds true, then it could be only a matter of time in which leadership— just as many other disciplines—would eventually drift into the dynamics of the heart and soul. So it is no surprise that after close to 100 years of empirical focus of behaviors, use of power, traits, skills, and leader situational contexts, some prominent authors and scholars within the leadership field have asserted spirituality as a missing element within the leadership field of study (Dent, Higgins, & Wharff, 2005: Fairhom, 1997; Fry, 2003; Korak-Kakabadse, Kouzmin, & Kakabadse, 2002; Vail 1998).
Yet this interest is spirituality and leadership is not without its opponents. Unsurprisingly, spirituality in leadership has the business sector as its toughest adversary and critic. In fact the separation of spirituality and business was considered the norm for most of the twentieth century (Crossman, 2010). The "profit motive" and the sacred were though as two separate domains, one dealing primarily with action the other with contemplation (Durkeim, 1968). The business sector was too enamored with rationalist and scientific approaches to leadership and organizational culture. But towards the beginning of the twenty first century, failures in major corporations such as Enron and more than 20 others named on the Forbes Corporate scandal list (Patsuris, 2002) prompted scholars, consultants, and the media to re-evaluate the effectiveness of leadership training (Hannah & Zatzick, 2007). What had been missing from all these years of leadership education that would result in these moral failures? Consequently, the business sector became more willing to allow values oriented forms of leadership which provided a gateway for moral, ethical, relational, emotional and eventually even spiritual perspectives of leadership modeling as the remedy to the wave of scandals.
Given this evolution of leaders, how has the evolution of the leadership discipline affected the way the leadership function is exercised within ministry? Have some of the leadership education flaws that triggered a rash of ethical misbehaviors in the business sector also latent within the ministry sector? And is the emerging interest in spirituality from the secular sector compatible with the understanding of spirituality in the ministry or pastoral setting?
These are important questions that do not have a simple answer. In order to answer these questions fully, it is necessary to analyze the evolution of leadership theory, the underlying assumptions of secular leadership models, to explore the assumptions and limitations inherent in these models and to demonstrate the circumstances in which it is appropriate to use them. By exploring how the nonprofit, education, government, social service and even the military sectors have reacted to the flaws inherent in current leadership models, we will be able to develop a clearer understanding of the severe limitations of these same models for ministry endeavors. An analysis of differences will illustrate the limits of secular leadership models in the ministry sector, and highlight the unique dimensions of pastoral leadership as a discipline in its own right.
The Imperfections of Secular Models
As benign as this may seem, two of the most common assumptions made about leadership models, which are responsible for their broad popular appeal, are the assumptions of universality and guaranteed success. As a result, when a new leadership model becomes publicly available, the implicit promises of universal applicability and success lead to a seemingly blinding eagerness to implement the model everywhere and anywhere a quick and cheap approach to excellent leadership is required.
The tendency to adopt leadership models unquestionably and unchallenged is frightening and dangerous. Current research clearly demonstrates that there are no grounds for accepting the assumptions of universality and guaranteed success of leadership models. There are no valid grounds to assume that a leadership model, which originated in the private sector, would work just as effectively in other sectors such as nonprofit, educational, government, social service or the...
