1. PRACTICING DISCERNMENT AND DECISION-MAKING IN CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES
Terri Martinson Elton

2. Leadership on the line
Leadership would be a safe undertaking
if your organizations and communities only faced problems
for which they already knew the solutions.”
(13)
“The single most common source of leadership failure we’ve been able to identify – in politics, community life, business, or the nonprofit sector – is that people, especially those in positions of authority, treat adaptive challenges like technical problems.” (14)

3. Technical change situations are
“problems for which they [people] do, in fact, have the necessary know-how and procedures.”
Technical change situations are

4. adaptive challenges
…require experiments, new discoveries, and adjustments from numerous places in the organization and community.
Without learning new ways – changing attitudes, values, and behaviors – people cannot make the adaptive leap necessary to thrive in the new environment.

5. Leading adaptive challenges
- Naming what’s unnamed
Being open to examine and rethink values and assumptions
Takes time and patience

6. Leadership on the line What’s the work? Who does the work?
Tech: apply current know-how
Tech: authorities and experts
Adaptive: learn new ways
Adaptive: The people with the problem

7. DISCERNMENT AND WISDOM
Intuiting possibilities
Exploring what might be possible
Making a decision based on faith in possible outcome
Question:
“What is God doing?”
WISDOM
Studying what is known
Assessing capacity
Making the best choice in light of available information and previous experience
Question:
“What does God want to do?”
Need both
Copyright C. Van Gelder 2014

8. A Process of Decision-Making
THE FOUNDATIONS
Communally-Discerned
Bib/Theo-Framed
Theoretically-Informed
Strategic Action
Copyright C. Van Gelder 2014

9. Communicatively-discerned
Congregations are communities that are…
Open and recognize their complexity
At the work of creating their own cultural identity
See theology as a way of life
The first part has to do with communicatively-discerned. Three perspectives both described these congregations, as well as define the reality and the work of congregations empowering missional leadership. The first is that these congregations are complex, open systems and recognize themselves as such. They recognize that they rely on the environment to survive and have developed mechanisms for sustaining their life together. They also acknowledge that it are not just one system, but many and intentionally dance in the intersections of many complex systems. Second, they have discovered that their critical on-going work is that of tending to their identity as one of the many cultures that exist in this post-modern world. As this core identity is developed, it is used to be provide the compass or rudder as they regulate their life together. And finally, theology is not the work of the pastor or paid leadership, but theology is a lens by which they view the world – through their glasses of faith.

10. hybrid Identity
It is not what Culture exists, but what cultureS exist!
Common investments create the core
A group’s work together is to create meaning
They do that by transporting elements across boundaries of other cultures and redefining them.
This allows for porous boundaries
All cultural identity is a hybrid identity - between a group and it’s surrounding culture. it is a relational affair that lives as much between, as within, cultures.
Common investments

11. biblically and theologically framed
what theological commitments frame the ministry you are leading? how do these commitments share the ministry? shape the approach to leadership?
how commonly held are these commitments? which are primary and which are secondary? explicit? implicit?
what is historical and what is theological?
Theologically framed – What theological commitment frame the ministry you are leading? How do these commitments shape the ministry? Shape leadership? How commonly held are these theological commitments? Primary and secondary – explicit and implicit. What is historical and what is theological? We will start the course here, yet theological questions will be asked throughout the course!

12. …and God’s creative and redemptive mission in the world … involves us!
View of God
God has a mission …that mission is creative and redemptive.
Creative – God has created and continues to create.
Redemptive – sin exists in the world (within creation and within humanity) and God, through Jesus Christ, overcame sin and death and a new future became reality.
…and God’s creative and redemptive mission in the world … involves us!

13. Baptism
Vocation
All of God’s people have vocation/stations to live both their general and particular calling. All are to love God and neighbor. And all are given particular stations: home, work, society, and congregation.
In baptism, individuals receive the Holy Spirit. Christians are “agents of God’s love.”
Through the power of the Spirit, Christians have agency in general and in particular.
In baptism, individuals receive the Holy Spirit and are empowered to agents of God’s love.

14. Theoretically informed
New worldview requiring change and adaptively
Congregational system as a network
The dance of leadership between clergy and laity
Lifting up and empowering the gifts of the people
Theory, however, can also inform our life together. Missional congregations have a particular posture: this posture has a particular worldview (requiring change and adaptivity), see their congregations as systems that operate as networks and draw on their learnings (in particular the connectivity element and the reality that hubs are critical and need attending), resists the temptation to have leadership be individually focused and tending to technical elements and have shifted to an adaptive, shared leadership posture, and see people as the gifts they are.

15. Theoretically informed
theory can inform our communities and leadership. what theories influence your place of ministry?
theology frames, theory informs. what relationship does theology and theory have in your ministry location?
do the theories you draw upon align with your theological commitments?
Theoretically informed – Theory can help inform faith communities and leadership. Yet theories are always secondary to theology. How do theories align with your theological commitments? Middle of the course.

16. Strategic Action Cultivation Agents of change
Leadership as
Cultivation
Agents of change
Fostering Christian Community
Finally, the actions of missional leadership is emerging differently in this post-modern world. Actions center on cultivating communities, processes, and people to new awareness and understandings…Leadership understand that they are agents of change and take that aspect seriously and are developing capacities around change…Know that leadership in which realm requires multi-dimensional perspectives and skills, this includes tending to themselves individually in their faith and leadership journey…and Christian practices/disciplines continue to be core…especially as they stay dynamic and authentic to the community itself.

17. Strategic Action
leadership requires action and action is always contextual. do your actions reflect your theological commitments? do your actions put into practice theoretical learnings?
what particular actions are required for your particular context and/or situation? how do you discern?
Strategic action – Finally, action is required and action is always contextual and always reflects our theological convictions! How will the theological commitments and theoretical resources be put into practice? End of the course.

18. Communally Discerned Communally Discerned Theologically Framed
Strategic
Action
Theoretically
Informed
Communally
Discerned
Copyright C. Van Gelder 2014 18

19. A Process of Decision-Making
THE FOUNDATIONS
Communally-Discerned
Bib/Theo-Framed
Theoretically-Informed
Strategic Action
THE PROCESS
Attending
Asserting
Agreeing
Acting
Assessing
Copyright C. Van Gelder 2014

20. The Discernment and Decision Process
Assessing
Attending
Acting
Asserting
Agreeing
Copyright C. Van Gelder 2014

21. Discussion
Copyright C. Van Gelder 2014