{"id":8,"date":"2014-07-14T09:48:20","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T09:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=8"},"modified":"2014-08-11T20:33:38","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T20:33:38","slug":"be-encouraged-to-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/be-encouraged-to-lead\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Encouraged to Lead"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Making Room for Leadership: Power, Space and Influence<\/em>, Mary Kate Morse does something amazing. She gets us outside of living inordinately inside our heads.\u00a0 That is, it\u2019s not that we are overthinking things (though that can happen); instead, it\u2019s that we have had a tendency to incorrectly be thinking about a lot of things.\u00a0 One such thing often thought about unhelpfully is power.<\/p>\n

If you want a subtitle for this book, here\u2019s the redemptive one that I would like to offer from a quote straight out of the book, \u201chow power used well can make a big difference in someone\u2019s life.\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0 It does seem that there are a lot of times when those \u201cwith power\u201d are one\u2019s that haven\u2019t really reflected upon their power and how it is affecting them and others around them.\u00a0 As well, it seems like there are a lot of times when those \u201cwithout power\u201d have thought about such aspects, but are not appropriating their giftedness due to a variety of reasons.\u00a0 Mary Kate Morse\u2019s book is about changing this dynamic and she does a good job of getting at it.<\/p>\n

Recently, I have been reading quite a bit on economy and its relation to the practice and understanding of faith.\u00a0 In this book too, Mary Kate in her discussion of leadership notes Jesus\u2019 practice of self-giving hospitality in relation to economic structures in contradistinction to a primary orientation of self-focused consumption.\u00a0 She focuses on the idea of sharing over taking.<\/p>\n

Leading the way that Jesus led is in one way, shape or form incumbent upon all of us who follow Christ.\u00a0 Actually, perhaps it would be just as well to write \u201cliving\u201d as well as \u201cleading.\u201d\u00a0 A piece in Morse\u2019s book I find refreshing is when she writes, \u201cAlthough Jesus had a tremendous amount of power he did not refer to himself as a leader or a king. Yet no one else has influenced this world as much as Jesus has.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 This should be eminently encouraging to us.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the kind of understanding that will make all of the problems of the world disappear, but it will assist in recalibrating our perspectives which well might make a number of the problems of the world disappear.<\/p>\n

Over my years in leadership, one thing that I have desired to exemplify is authenticity and openness to participation.\u00a0 Of course, like any person, there are days when I am better at this and days which I could have been better.\u00a0 But, overall, I think that due to my focus on these aspects and my desire to live into them well, I have done reasonably well at making this part of my practice.\u00a0 Certainly, I see many people in leadership positions that at the very least don\u2019t seem to be actively working to exemplify this.\u00a0 I hope to influence more people along these lines and it is encouraging to have Morse write a bit about this.<\/p>\n

\u201cAuthentic leadership \u2013 leadership that catalyzes a group toward deep change and moves its members in positive, energizing directions \u2013 involves the group acting together.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Navigating the waters of leadership is anything but simple.\u00a0 However, by the grace of God and with some training and ongoing practice I think that we all can come together a bit more and accomplish greater goals than we expect.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> MaryKate Morse, Making Room For Leadership: Power, Space and Influence (Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 2008), 18.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2]<\/a> Ibid., 29.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3]<\/a> Ibid., 33.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Making Room for Leadership: Power, Space and Influence, Mary Kate Morse does something amazing. She gets us outside of living inordinately inside our heads.\u00a0 That is, it\u2019s not that we are overthinking things (though that can happen); instead, it\u2019s that we have had a tendency to incorrectly be thinking about a lot of things.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"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":[2,8],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-morse","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","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\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1324,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/1324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}