I read with interest the articles on leadership in the church in the September-October 2000 issue of The Journal. Since I have written on this topic in religious life, (The Dance of   Leadership, Human Development, Fall 1998), I would like to offer some distinctions that have been hinted at in some of the articles in the last issue.

   It is evident that the patriarchal, hierarchical structures of our church challenge us in our exercise of leadership. If we believe what Vatcian Council II reiterated for us, namely, that the church is really the people of God, how then do we truly become leaders, leaders that hold the vision of the mission of Jesus Christ in a reciprocal dance of leadership-followership? We must ask ourselves in this model of reciprocity, mutuality, and equality if indeed, "every leader is given responsibility for  the activities of a group"? (The Journal, 2000, 1... underline added).

   In this article, I invite us to look at leadership in the church contextualized within a quantum theological perspective, a model that emphasizes right relationships, reciprocity, mutuality and interdependency. Unless we envision leadership within this paradigm shift, "the temptation to use Christian preaching and teaching to maintain power structures rather than challenge them is strong and deceptive" (Ellen Leonard, Rethinking the Call to Serve, CRC Bulletin, 1997, 6)

TOWER OF BABEL

What is leadership anyway? Ideally, we see our church as the  people of God;  practically it is run as an organization, a pyramidal institution in which confusion reigns from using the   terms  leadership, management  and  administration  synonymously.  Etymologically,  management  comes from  manus  (hand), indicating the day-to-day handling  of a business, the controlling or directing of an operation...  producing, implementing, innovating and integrating all its upects (Paul Hersey & Ken Blanchard, 1982.

  Management of Organizational Behavior).  Administration , on the other hand, is defined as the carrying out of tasks necessary for the management of an organization. One could say that administrators carry out the dictates of management. Witness the administration of any parish in which it is often said that the "secretary" or the "treasurer" manages the church. Because management and administration have many things in common, they too are often considered synonymous. Both focus primarily on maintenance rather than vision.

   This is not to say that management and administration are irrelevant in the day-to-day  functioning of a parish. Not at all. Initiative and expertise are clearly essential in the management and administration of our church. Confusion however, and even abuse and oppression occur when these maintenance roles are not differentiated from leadership. We need all of them in our church; they are not either-or but both-and. At the same time, we need to have leadership in our church where its role is clear and distinct from administration and management.

   The lived reality is that many organizations, including the church, are built an a  mechanistic and hierarchical model of governance. People are treated as machines; order,  control, predictability and status quo are paramount. "A hierarchical organization creates a strong magnetic attraction toward the top as power becomes more and more concentrated until it finally becomes ultimate in the one who occupies the single position at the pinnacle" (John D. Ingalls. A Trainer's Guide to Andragogy. 1976, 108). In such a system, tremendous psychic energy is expended to maintain the control and order deemed necessary. Abuse of  power can lead to "power over". People at the top may collude, albeit at times  unconsciously, with keeping the power in the hands of a few.

LEADERSHIP

   Leadership is about sharing power in determining the vision, the force within the church  which ignites the spiritual and psychic imaginations of the membership to follow their  dreams for the reign of God. In the new world order of a quantum universe with right relationships as paramount, leadership is not the prerogative of one person. Rather, it is contextual and interdependent; it does not occur without followership. Leadership involves the ability to intuit the church's vision together with the members, in which the leader has been mandated "the capacity to influence the behavior of others toward some goal or objective" (Richard McCormick, America, 1996, 13).

   In a quanturn world of interconnections, part of the leader's role as a source of vision  and vitality, is "to evoke followership...  It is impossible to expect any plan or idea to be  real if employees (church members) do not have the opportunity to personally interact with  it. Therefore we cannot  talk  people into reality because there truly is no reality to describe if they haven't been there. It is the participation process that generates the reality to which they make their commitment" (Margmet Wheatley. Leadership and the New Science, 1992, 302 144, 67).

   Today, within this quantum universe, a hierarchical model of leadership is no longer relevant; it is in fact, counter-productive. We all know people will only support what they have a stake in. With its emphasis on relationships of mutual respect, this new type of leadership is a dance that requires both leadership and followership; it means dreaming dreams, encouraging others' dreams and inviting the actualization of both leadership and followership. "Knowing the steps ahead of time is not important; being willing to engage with the music and move freely onto the dance floor is what's key" (Wheatley, 1992, 142- 143).

BOTH-AND

  From this perspective, leadership in our church is an invitation and a challenge to both leadership and followership. It is a both-and dynamic that is scary because it requires a moving away from the hierarchical, patriarchal model of only "Father knows best." It is also scary because it means moving away from the administrative and managerial aspects of church life. These complement leadership which is about dancing in partnership with church members into the radical call of the priesthood of the laity.

BORN LEADERS??

   We often hear people speak of "born" leaders. And we often slip into the temptation of  the "quality" or "trait" approach to leadership, enumerating the characteristics of "real" leaders. I submit that leaders are not "born" but evolve, mature, become transformed in a participative, interconnected way with followers, in what quantum physicists call  contextualism ,  "a sensitivity to the interdependency between how things appear and the environment which causes them to appear" (Wheatley, 1992, 63). Of course the context is established by the value we give to the relationships involved... the mutual dance of leadership-followership.

   Leaders and followers influence each other so that the type of dance ultimately chosen, as well as the tempo and rhythm, come from both parties. It is in such openness of participation that the steps of the dance unfold;   they are not preplanned but take their shape and form from the whole. This new model of leadership in our church would take on new meaning where leaders and followers are moved forward to the rhythm and beat of the vision that is enfleshed in both. "Pray who is the dancer and who the dance? Often it is more a case of we being danced rather than we controlling our movements and moods" (Diarmuid O'Murchu, Quantum Theology, 1997, 55).

INFLUENCE

   Leadership and followership are both about influencing, each in very different ways. What is important to realize in the church is the necessity of the two. "Any time an individual is attempting to influence the behavior of someone else, that individual is the potential leader and the person she or he is attempting to influence is the potential follower..." (Paul Hersey, & Ken Blanchard, 1984, 83). From this perspective then, leadership-followership is a process which can be aborted if forced, pushed, controlled. In its essence, it is power sharing, "power with". It is a co-creation which emphasizes partnership, cooperation, empowerment and an end to both patriarchy and matriarchy and the concomitant hierarchy.

   Management and administration are thus distinguished from leadership in a quantum theological model of church. The former are more concrete, tangible, maintenance- focused. Leadership-followership is about holding the vision and as such is more ephemeral, more scary because the focus is on sharing power in the change, chaos, dreaming and visioning of both the leaders and followers in the church.

SERVANT LEADERSHIP-FOLLOWERSHIP

As highlighted in Luke 22: 24-27, Jesus is the model par excellence of the dance of leadership-followership in the church. Responding to a power struggle going on among his disciples about who was the greatest (like parish councils of today??), Jesus said: "Let the greatest among you be as the youngest and the leader as the servant ... I am among you as one who serves."

   Yet, the very notion of servant leadership-followership is fraught with negative connotations, stemming in part, from the Latin root of servant meaning "slave"  (servus).  Jesus' life is an example of the   essence of service that is respectful, caring, mutual and reciprocal. The idea of "servant" however can suggest one who is less than or not as good as the "master". A servant is one who is hired from on high to do the dirty jobs. Jesus modeled servant leadership as reciprocal servant leadership-followership.

   Today, in the church then, as we (re-)appropriate servant leadership-followership we must ask ourselves: can we use this language in ways that are not oppressive? If, linguistically, language is a symbol system that bespeaks our reality, how then do we paradoxically live into servant leadership-followership in ways that are mutual, reciprocal and empowering rather than patriarchal, hierarchical and oppressive? Indeed, "it is not easy to remove servant language from the hierarchical power structures of society" (Leonard, 1997, 6). How then do we develop alternative ecclesial and societal structures that ensure "power with"?

  And so, we come full circle to the question of leadership in the church. It is within the new model of a quantum universe of right relationships, that the dance of servant leadership-followership must take place. It is in the ebb and flow of listening and dialogue that a sacred space for the dance of questioning, so essential to leadership-followership, is created. This is a dance of asking the core, deeply meaningful questions of the pilgrim journey of the church requiring kenosis, metanoia and ultimately transformation, of entering into "the great universal dance of being and becoming" (O'Murchu, 1997, 177).