Leadership crisis in the Episcopal Church

From the Washington Post via TitusOneNine:

Katherine Tyler Scott

Katherine Tyler Scott is Managing Partner of Ki ThoughtBridge, a leadership consultancy, and is author, most recently, of Transforming Leadership: The Episcopal Church of the 21st Century. She is a board member of the International Leadership Association.


Leadership crisis in the Episcopal Church

The Episcopal Church, like other mainline Protestant denominations, is not immune from the seismic political, sociological and economic shifts happening today. Most of us are experiencing "a time of no longer and a time of not yet"--an era of rapid, complex change; chronic anxiety; and heightened ambiguity. The comfort of the familiar is fading, and the movement toward an unknown future can feel terrifying.

In times like these, Christians expect religious leadership to help bridge the gap between the ideal and the real, and to equip followers to live out the Gospel in an environment of extreme polarities, i.e., poverty and wealth, insularity and inclusiveness, hostility and hospitality, homogeneity and diversity. The call "to love our neighbors as ourselves" is being drowned out by a barrage of shrill and hate-filled rhetoric. The distance between what Christians profess to believe and what they do seems wider than ever, creating a gap of dysfunction. There are few trusted religious leaders in the public square, whose rational voices, theological gravitas and moral authority can quell the incivility, incendiary rhetoric, and growing intolerance of differences. At a time when the leadership of the church is most needed, there is silence.

The mainline churches are finding themselves on the margins, declining in membership and donations. Some are in the grip of unresolved conflicts and divisions; others are locked in scandal. The main mission is hostage to a host of distracting issues. In short, the church is experiencing a crisis of leadership.

The top-down authoritarian model of trachurch is no longer effective in a world of new seekers, whose access to information is on par with the leader and where the experience of community is in cyberspace. What will distinguish effective leadership in the church is not just the dissemination of information; it will be the ability to communicate meaning and to translate that meaning into responsible, ethical actions that serve the greater good. Like other sectors, the church is being challenged to lead in new ways that are inclusive and require meaningful involvement, shared authority, a redistribution of power and new forms of community.

The anxiety that so easily flourishes in a time of no longer and a time of not yet frequently pressures leaders to act prematurely to relieve the discomfort. Those leaders who succumb without taking adequate time to think through how to equip their congregants to respond in faith rather than in fear contribute to the creation of a culture of quick fixes and addiction to immediate gratification.

Sheer intellectual ability and objectivity are insufficient to determine the moral good and responsible action. They must be accompanied by the adaptive capacity to hold the tension of the opposites together long enough to understand the problems and the appropriate response. Such leadership requires patience: time and space in which dialogue deepens rather than limits understanding; time and space in which numerous solutions can be generated to address seemingly intractable problems. I believe the potential to lead in these ways lies within most religious institutions. I know it is in the Episcopal Church's DNA.

At its core, the Episcopal Church believes in the compatibility of tradition and reform, the partnership of faith and reason. If the church can remember and reclaim this charism, it will help those who follow to navigate the present currents of complexity, chaos and change with reasoned and mature judgment and action. It will enable the church, and all of us, to exhibit the courage to move from the margin, to stand in the gap, to hold the tension of the opposites together, and to take the risk to tell our truths in the world--a world that desperately needs to shed itself of the tendency to demonize differences.

The church will not thrive in a top-down structure of entitlement in which "power over" rather than "power with" predominates. The authority to serve and to lead is accessible to all. Leaders cannot sequester congregants in beautiful spaces of worship with glorious music and liturgy without also engaging them in deeper reflection about what it means to live one's faith responsibly in the world.

For the sake of us all, the silence is no longer an option.