Mark Lau Branson
Teaches with Roxburgh
[read more]
Leadership - as shaping a group of people - in discontinuous change. Lawrence miller – life cycle – Roxbourgh expands it.

Apart from the Holy Spirit, the most powerful form of leadership is how do you shape conversations. Change takes place in those conversations. Pastoral ministry used to be Preaching, Pastoral Care, and Programs. Trying to move back from the expert systems approach.

Interpretive leadership
Creates an environment and provides resources for a community of interpreters who converse about god, texts, context and congregation. The fruit of interpretive leadership is in the truthfulness, and adequacy and ownership of meanings. How do you interpret the reality that you are living it? Issues of hermeneutics were right at the core. How do you interpret the narratives that shape you, modernity or scripture. How do you think about creating an interpretive community? Harvard Royce who studied under Pierce, American Pragmatism. How do they gain God’s eyes to see what is real? If we don’t see what’s real, we’re clueless.
That’s what Jesus was doing with the Beatitudes. Empires determine other people’s borders. Rome got local leaders to be their clients. Gospels included lots of this information – Jesus was born in the midst of taxation. Herod had changed the shape of Israel by marrying into the Hesmonian family, proper name of the Macabean family. Rome then had an insider. He also killed Merriam and all their kids. He married someone, changed her name to Mary, made her father high priest to give her a name. They found a way to control the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin. They benefited from this.
What would you do if you want to change it? Zealots? Jesus didn’t like that option. We know that this system is hard on families, economics. Then, listen to the beatitudes. They’re giving the crowds a new hermeneutic. If you don’t buy into the hermeneutics of the beatitudes, you don’t have access to the rest of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If we’re saying, that’s reality the way God sees it – not the way Rome, Herod, Pharisees see it.
Interpretive leadership creates a community who can see reality.

Relational leadership
Creates and nourishes all of the human connections in various groups, partnerships, friendships, families and networks. The fruit of relational leadership is in the depth of love, caring, health, accountability and synergism of the people. Who do you invite to dinner? Reshuffle the relationships inside of the congregation and with the world.

Implemental leadership
Develops practices, disciplines, strategies, methods, structures & programs so that a congregation embodies gospel reconciliation and justice in their own lives, in a local context, and in the larger world. The fruit of implemental leadership is visible in the organizational structures and activities. We structure job descriptions, budgets. As soon as one of those shuts out the other two, there is dysfunction. These three have to cohere.

Heifetz: technical vs. Adaptive.
Teaches at Kennedy’s school of business at Harvard. Providing leadership in discontinuous change. Moses in Desert is discontinuous change. Similar, Exile.
Technical leadership has clear goals, known methods, available resources, familiar roles/adequate competencies, predictable manageable change. If you’re going to lead in a church, you’ve got to be really good at this. Don’t hear us saying that these are unimportant. You still have to put the lights on, prepare sermons, have kids programs.
Adaptive leadership, we have murky future, unknown road, resources are not identified, unfamiliar roles and competencies, unpredictable and uncontrollable change. This is desert, exile, Paul in Mediterranean. If you think you know what you’re doing and how you’re going to get there, you’re already in trouble and you don’t have a clue.

Get on the balcony
You don’t need to leave your church but you’ve got to get some places where you can get some perspective. Enough distance to still be in the church but be able to evaluate. Trying to make some leaps. Gather an interpretive team.
Discern the adaptive challenge
Here are the discontinuous areas. We know they need to change and we don’t have a clue. Create the space to see, hear and rethink. Walking around the chess board, you see things differently. Looking at our own lives, our culture,
Manage the holding environment
You still have to manage the environment you are in. Try not to do technical things you’ll have to undo.
Regulate the stress levels
If you blow the stress levels, people will leave.
Focus attention and deepen conversations
All of the previous should lead up to this. Preaching, adult ed, committees, board meetings do this.
Give the work back to the people
Give the work of being to the church to the people of the church. Give people work to go experiment and come back and talk about it. Give freedom to fail
Protect the leadership voices from below
Have conversation starters that give you an opportunity to hear them.