Seeking Authentic Voice

In preparation for our retreat last weekend the vestry and I read Peter Steinke's book, A Door Set Open . In the book Steinke places significant emphasis on "Mission." Our retreat was led by Jim Gettel a consultant who has worked with me in the past. I find Jim's approach to leadership, scripture, faith, discipleship, and mission inspiring. I have pondered mission for the better part of the past eleven years. What does mission really mean? I began my journey pondering mission with books by Diana Butler Bass: From Nomads to Pilgrims and Christianity for the Rest of Us. Her work has been transformational for me, and has inspired much of the work I have done in congregations. Nonetheless, I have found a need to have someone who remains outside the congregation, someone not me guide the leadership through the work needed to move into a missional mode. It's not that this work is impossible for a priest/rector/pastor to do. It's just that as a solo priest/...

"You chose a Wellesley grad who spent the first decade of her career broke, begging for freelance work, who constantly heard that she was under qualified or, later, overqualified (that means old) or basically just plain wrong for whatever it was she wanted to do. She eventually ended up with a really great job, doing exactly what she wanted to do, exactly where she wanted to do it: in the Middle East. And she got hit by a car bomb; they nearly took her legs off. She had to come back from the dead, roughly five times, and learn how to walk again. So it tells me a lot about you and your current state of mind that you all thought you needed to hear from me, with whatever lessons I had to offer from those experiences, as you leave college for the rest of your life. In short, you all want to know how to be bomb-proof, right? So, you're right: I learned a lot. Most of all, that every time I ran into a wall, I had two choices on how to face it: hope or fear." Kimberly Dozier, CB...

flickrfoto A friend of mine sent me an email that included this: "I thought about you yesterday as I was reading a collection of essays on leadership published by Harvard Business School. One writer emphasizes the differences between a manager and a leader. A manager, he said, copes with complexity through the accomplishment of daily, necessary tasks – in short, maintaining things as they are. A leader, on the other hand, is concerned with change – articulating its vision and ensuring its accomplishment, not by imposing it from above but by developing it from among the existing staff, getting people excited about the future. Organizations need both managers and leaders; it seems to me that what you are doing in small town big church is providing leadership – exactly what they need." Reassuring words from my gifted and knowledgeable friend as I struggle to claim my voice in this new place. In that same Alban Institute conference (previous post) the facilitator Susan Beaumont t...