This afternoon I spent nearly 5 hours sitting in a Montana’s restaurant with Robbymac conversing about many matters before ditching him at the airport and heading off to The King’s Head Pub to catch up with a couple other mates for another 2½ hours of conversation.

At one point (or more, I can’t remember), Rob and I got to talking about leadership (naturally). We also talked about relationships, and the fact that most relationships have a power imbalance. For example, in the heirarchically-structured church with a series of leadership/laity relationships, the leaders have the power on their side of the relationship with the laity. This necessarily places certain responsibilities upon the leader to treat the other person in the relationship in a certain way, being cautious about not misusing the power imbalance in the relationship, even inadvertently. A higher standard is assumed and applied.

All of that is merely a preamble to Emerging Grace’s post on Leadership – Part 2, who goes about saying things like,

If we are going to break away from the ongoing struggle for position and power we must first acknowledge the equality of our relationships with one another as a basis for understanding leadership amongst ourselves.

and then, classically,

At the very heart it means that we are willing to submit ourselves to those we live among rather than suggesting that our submission is to an external source and that everyone else is supposed to be submitted to us.

Well done, Grace. Turns out, “Missional Leadership” might be the thing… so also this afternooon, Bill Kinnon dropped me a note about a conference that he and Darryl Dash are spearheading, a Missional Leadership Conversation with Alan Roxburgh (of the Missional Leadership Institute coming up in Toronto March on 19th.

So while we’re considering some fairly fundamental shifts in the way leadership is inflicted exercised practiced in the church, Grace issues a challenge: “If you have been living the role of the elevated leader, how does it feel to consider stepping down to a peer level with those you have led?”