Frank Viola, Re-imagining Church, Chapter 8, Leadership

I had a great affinity with this Chapter because I've seen a change of attitude and working at Church due to the change in this paradigm.
Viola's basic assumption is that leadership is effectively a function not an office. That most structures within the Church are hierarchical based. The results been, the Church community is overly reliant on one person to do most of the work.

Most of Viola's disagreement is how the Old Testament understanding of 'Priesthood' is carried into todays church. Where it was not seen in the New Testament. That the 'Preisthood of believers' should be the dominate force, in understanding leadership.

One area which I would disagree is his comparison of leadership in a 'Gentile' setting. I would argue especially if you read any modern day organizational leadership book. More than ever in history of leadership/management. There role more than ever is bringing together different skill sets in a facilitatory manner to reach certain objectives. Certainly this has been my experience in Nursing.

leadership ::2, 'The itch in Church'

This is a bit of a follow up from my previous post so to get the context I'd recommend reading it.

One of the reasons, apart from 'consumerism' that some people move on from church is that there is the leadership uncomfortable itch. That current leadership does not have the capacity, for innovation within their own set of vision, mission or what ever they call it statement. That the leadership often feels threatened if the ideas and impetus don't radiate from the top! Therefore there is uncomfortableness and someone moves on.

Once we had a great guy coming along to our church who didn't quit fit. It took a while to work out why. When his itch was identified and he was given the freedom to scratch the itch, I discovered he actually didn't have the capacity to implement what was missing, in a sad way it was easier for him to move to a church which already had this stuff going on. (The strange thing was this person was perceived as a leader because he went to bible college, but really he was a manager, but more on that later)

I would go on to say, to have true apostolic leadership the 'Itch', needs to be present, with the capacity to implement whatever.

Capacity:: Leadership 5

One of the important aspects for all jobs, including Christian ministry is ones capacity to carry out the job. If you have 100% capacity to do a job then there is a good chance that it will become pretty boring after a while. Not much of a challenge.
The best type of situation is where there is constantly a need to increase skills, in that way there is always a challenge. In this respect capacity is about 80-90%
The worst situation is when someone just doesn't cut, they don't for what ever reason just don't have the skill level, to complete the job. Capacity is between 0-80%

Capacity for Church ministry is made up of a few things, and I'm sure others may have some other reasons. As I've all ready mention skill is real important, passion, vision, implementation, communication and time. For Christina and myself our biggest limitation is time, especially with two toddlers.
The good thing about a Christian community, is other can complement some of the leaders capacity.