Lyngine in her comment on yesterday’s post hit on something that I had in the back of my mind as I typed my response to John’s post last night and that, simply put, is “leadership”; how do we understand leadership in our very de-centralised, diverse, and even chaotic OC/IC context? Who are our leaders? How do we cultivate and recognise leadership?
Lyngine pointed to the very moving example of the recent demonstrations of Burmese monks – who are now paying a heavy price for their visibility and symbolism – I had to ask myself could we accomplish a similar thing in our OC/IC context? My gut instinct must sadly admit the answer is “No” because it is very difficult to get a substantive group of OC clergy in the same room to agree on a common cause without there being at least two who jump ship to join another synod, one schism, three ordinations, a consecration, and some fool jumping up & down shouting I’m the Grand Poobah, oh, and then we all sit around a table eating our own young and moaning about how ineffectual we are as a “community”. If you don’t believe me – I invite you to do a Google or Yahoo search on OC/IC chat groups on the net – the results will both entertain and horrify you.
When I was a teenager I was heavily involved in Scouts – a great experience which I look back on with joy. One of the things I witnessed and experienced in that setting was the way in which a group becomes a community – bringing together people, often who would not otherwise meet, or interact with one another and from that potential mass create a community with an identity and a vision. Leadership was cultivated in this setting – firstly by empowering individuals to participate and to take on multiple, diverse, and more difficult projects – secondly through that process the group supports that individual, and witnesses his abilities in practice – finally as needed the community moves to choose leaders from within its own ranks; having both trained the candidates, and witnessed their ability the community speaks and calls the individual forth to serve as a leader.
Scouts shares something with our OC/IC tradition in that it brings together people who would not otherwise interact, and it offers a diverse number of opportunities for leadership in particular areas and levels.
What we don’t do however, is cultivate that leadership. Too often we bypass the very important building blocks of cultivating solid community, and good, grounded leadership candidates, and shoot directly to an imposition of leadership upon individuals both those who are suitable and those who are entirely un-suitable to hold such offices. In our community it is so often the case that individuals are ordained after only a brief encounter with the OC/IC life – the result of course is that we do not have a culture that actively cultivates leadership, rather it cultivates a personalised priesthood serving first the needs or desires of the individual and only as a secondary corollary the needs of the community.
Thus, it is not uncommon that because we have not taken the time to cultivate leadership within the community, when an individual arises who shows promise as a damn good example of OC/IC leadership he or she is set upon by others in the community (goaded in large part by their own insecurities and agendas). We have lost too many fine men & women because of this all too familiar problem.
Given our very de-centralised tradition are there models out there that would empower us to recognise good leadership across synod boundaries? What is more, as Lyngine’s fine example of the monks of Burma inspired this post – I wonder what can we do to move closer toward the day when OC/IC folk can gather en masse to make a stand on an important social justice issue, and have that assembly really grab the attention of a wider audience. The only way this can happen is through good leadership (not Grand Poobah-ism, but real honest leadership).
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