{"id":572,"date":"2013-10-31T16:33:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=572"},"modified":"2014-08-13T21:46:53","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T21:46:53","slug":"a-failure-of-nerve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-failure-of-nerve\/","title":{"rendered":"A Failure of Nerve"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Houston and Edwin Friedman<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a sense that the world faces a crisis of leadership.\u00a0 Europe is embroiled in a seemingly intractable economic crisis, much of their own doing.\u00a0 The US struggles with the continual threat of government shutdown.\u00a0 The millennial generation\u2019s response seems just as dysfunctional in this liquid world as popularly anarchistic groups such as Wikileaks and Anonymous seek to tear down, instead of filling the void.\u00a0 In my context, Spain, the idea of leadership is almost universally loathed and avoided.<\/p>\n

Reading through Edwin H Friedman\u2019s meditation on leadership, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, <\/em>I detect an almost nostalgic longing for the great mythical heroes of the American past: the conquistadors, explorers, pioneers, rebels, and other boundary breakers who set their own course.\u00a0 There is a sense that leaders are not like they used to be.\u00a0 Singer\/songwriter Owen Temple makes this observation in his song \u201cOld Sam\u201d about Texas icon Sam Houston:<\/p>\n

“Timber Ridge, Virginia is a mighty fine place
\nFrom that soil sprung a leader of the human race
\nHe had eyes full of thunderstorms and hair like gold
\nHe was seven foot tall when he was six years old- Old Sam, Big Sam\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Friedman chooses not to wallow in nostalgia, but instead create an emotional\/psychological profile of our society and how it creates an almost parasitic atmosphere of anxiety that stunts growth, creativity, innovation, and true leadership.\u00a0 In short, Friedman asserts: \u201cI believe there exists throughout America today a rampant sabotaging of leaders who try to stand tall amid the raging anxiety storms of our time (loc 115).\u201d\u00a0 For Friedman our society has stagnated (and on a micro level organizations, churches, and families have as well) from a failure to break through emotional boundaries that assert power over us through a powerful, systemic emotional control of anxiety. \u00a0We have become emotionally and imaginatively gridlocked. \u00a0He particularly sees this society of anxiety portrayed in a \u201ccompulsive search for safety and certainty (loc 1030).\u201d More specifically, this orientation manifests itself in the need for quick fixes, a constant striving for answers to problems, denial, a fascination with data and technique, and fostering empathy before responsibility.<\/p>\n

Friedman further asserts that these are essentially organic, emotional dysfunctions that then turn around to sabotage true leadership negatively and reactively.\u00a0 Through his metaphor of a family, we see the emotionally reactive and destructive nature of a society ensnared and frozen in anxiety, unable to move forward\u2026 a society of mutual enablers.\u00a0 This rings true in Spain, where leadership has become the distant and corrupt father, while those protesting on the streets take on the reactive role of the rebellious teenager who wants to burn it all down.\u00a0 Instead of bravely charting a new course for the nation, everyone is embroiled in a battle to protect their piece of the pie.\u00a0 Anxiety ensues.<\/p>\n

Friedman\u2019s solution is of course found in the title.\u00a0 To break through the gridlock we need leaders with the nerve to stand up and set a new course, they must take responsibility for their own mission and vision, often in the face of offending others, and create new maps and paradigms.\u00a0 In a sense, they must by being emotionally mature and develop, become the emotional antidote to the cancer of anxiety, allowing others to break through their own gridlocked emotional barriers.\u00a0 Here Friedman centers on the idea of being self-ish, and truly self-differentiated.\u00a0 That is, seeing one\u2019s individuality and integrity in a healthy light apart (yet also attached) from family, society, and organization.\u00a0 It is understanding the Trinitarian framework of unity and diversity, the one and the many, that togetherness does not subsume the individual, but that healthy individuality and community apart from emotional dependency and reactivity.\u00a0 This allows for good leadership, (and good leadership creates this context as well) which in turn creates an environment for breaking through the old barriers and freeing the anxious to be able to reframe the questions of fear to ones of new possibilities, all the while dealing with immense opposition. Friedman concludes that a gridlocked organizations need a leader with the nerve to emotionally shake people from their anxiety, and recapture a sense of adventure as opposed to fear.\u00a0 Here societies, families, and organizations can once again flourish.<\/p>\n

Church and Mission<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is much that rings true about Friedman\u2019s thesis.\u00a0 In a sense, Jesus models this kind of leadership, calling an entire people out of dependency to the liberating power of the cross.\u00a0 William Carey started the modern Protestant missions movement by having the nerve to call a staid church to the Great Commission, and moved his family to India.<\/p>\n

We have all seen how Christian organizations and churches exhibit the dysfunctional anxiety that paralyzes.\u00a0 Moreover, the crisis of Christianity in the West seems to be at an all-time high.\u00a0 Many denominations and churches are facing organizational death in the face, all the while maintaining an almost psychotic stance of denial, rooted in fear for their own safety and comfort, instead of seeking the new paradigm.\u00a0 These churches and organizations have in fact lost their nerve and sense of adventure.\u00a0 Some even carry a sense of historical Western guilt that paralyzes them because they don\u2019t want to offend.<\/p>\n

Could mission help us in the West recapture our nerve and sense of adventure, thus reigniting a vibrant and healthy face among us?\u00a0 Emil Brunner is oft quoted as saying, \u201cthe church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.\u201d\u00a0 Anglican church planter Dr. Martin Robinson asserts that \u201cthe church is what happens when the followers of Jesus meet together to engage purposefully in mission (Robinson, 14).\u201d\u00a0 Furthermore, missiologist Wilbert Shenk has stressed that the church finds its meaning in seeking out the frontiers of faith, and adventurously breaking through those frontiers. (Shenk in Changing Frontiers of Mission<\/em>).\u00a0 Could it be that the antidote for staid churches who can only worry about preserving their structure and past, are brave leaders with nerve and self-differentiation, unafraid of offending the anxious, whom can re-create the paradigm of a spirit of adventure, vibrancy, and mission.<\/p>\n

Quite possibly we need a new set of leaders who look more like Sam Houston, than the church lady.\u00a0 We need leaders willing to search out new frontiers and adventures in mission.<\/p>\n

Robinson, Martin.\u00a0Planting Mission-shaped Churches Today<\/em>. Oxford: Monarch, 2006.<\/p>\n

Shenk, Wilbert R.\u00a0Changing Frontiers of Mission<\/em>. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Houston and Edwin Friedman There is a sense that the world faces a crisis of leadership.\u00a0 Europe is embroiled in a seemingly intractable economic crisis, much of their own doing.\u00a0 The US struggles with the continual threat of government shutdown.\u00a0 The millennial generation\u2019s response seems just as dysfunctional in this liquid world as popularly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,236],"class_list":["post-572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-friedman","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1906,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions\/1906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}