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<\/a><\/p>\nIn \u201cAn Hour on Sunday\u201d, Nancy Beech quotes Gordon MacKenzie on the tension between creative types and management types: <\/p>\n In his memoir, The Pastor<\/em>, Eugene Peterson reflects on \u201cthe pastor he wants to be\u201d with the image out of Herman Melville\u2019s Moby Dick of the harpooner who is quietly poised and waiting in the midst of the frenetic activity of sailors all around fighting the tempest. He quotes a sentence, \u201cTo insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet out of idleness, and not out of toil<\/em>\u201d. Then this paragraph:<\/p>\n \u201cThe metaphor, harpooner, was starting to get inside me. Somehow it always seems more compelling to assume the work of the oarsman, laboring mightily in a moral cause, throwing our energy into the fray that we know has immortal consequence. And it always seems more dramatic to take on the outrage of a Captain Ahab, obsessed with a vision of vengeance and retaliation, brooding over the ancient injury done by the Enemy. There is, though, other important work to do. Someone must throw the dart. Some must be harpooners\u201d.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This juxtaposition of creative types and management types, between contemplative and activist, is an interesting one, and one which Max De Pree draws out with his own analogy of the baseball pitcher and the baseball catcher: \u201cevery great pitcher needs an outstanding catcher\u201d.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n The creative types need the implementers and management types, and the management types need the creatives. The great designers in his company (George Nelson, Charles Eames and co.) need the practical implementers (Pep Nagelkirk).<\/p>\n \u201cNow a fastball may be enough for a pitcher, but it is never enough for a team. Corporations and people can throw good ideas around as often as they want. Without giant catchers like Pep Nagelkirk, those ideas may eventually disappear\u2026. Without giant catchers there can be no giant pitchers.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I have felt this tension within myself, and I have observed it in staff teams that I have worked with. There is sometimes great tension and misunderstanding between the pitchers and catchers, the oarsmen and the harpooners, the businessman at the gate and the cow chewing the cud (slightly stretching the metaphor now\u2026) The organised, administrative types think the creatives are lazy and unproductive, the creatives think the organisers are petty-minded, too detail-oriented and legalistic.<\/p>\n But we desperately need both. We need the sense of diversity and inclusivity and empowerment championed by DePree \u2013the marriage of management and creativity, of the contemplative with the active, of ideas and implementation.<\/p>\n This was borne out by DePree\u2019s chapter on his company\u2019s \u201cgiants\u201d, a number of different employees whom he named and valued \u2013 and the challenge to release the giants at every level of our organisation or church, whether it\u2019s the giant cows or the giant suits. I better leave this metaphor alone now, I can\u2019t go around calling people big cows at church \u2013 it could end badly.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Beach, Nancy. An Hour on Sunday: Creating Moments of Transformation and Wonder<\/em>. Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2004.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Peterson, Eugene H. The Pastor<\/em>. Reprint edition. New York: HarperOne, 2012, 282.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n\u201cHe asks the reader to imagine a serene pasture where a dairy cow is quietly eating grass, chewing her cud, and swishing her tail. Outside the fence stands \u2018a rotund gentleman in a $700 powder-blue, pinstripe suit.\u2019 This gentleman is livid that the cow is not working hard. He doesn\u2019t understand that whatever milk the cow produces when placed on the milking machine is directly related to the time the cow spends out in the field \u2013 \u2018seemingly idle, but in fact, performing the alchemy of transforming grass into milk.\u2019 Gordon skilfully compares the rotund gentleman to management leaders all over the country who have no patience for the \u201cquiet time essential to profound creativity.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n