still need the leader

a lot of me loves the conversations about the emerging church and how it’s asking great questions + rethinking + exploring ideas + reconfiguring + having an edgy attitude + prying out raw honesty + deconstructing + admitting brokenness.. and looking at the leading conversationalists, while the dialogue is open to all b/c of freely available technology, it still takes an articulate person to join and to parlay with the meandering mix of feelings and thoughts..

and it still takes the leader to form the community, to guide the conversations, to manage the people that want to gather for exploring and/or sharing their spiritual journey.. I’ve yet to see a more corporate model of leadership where a plurality of leaders, much less the whole (or majority) of a community group (aka “church”) gives the direction or vision or cohesion to making that journey meaningful and going somewhere; conversations can easily become like wandering in the desert, raising lots of questions, not willing to risk putting lives and resources and energy into an answer for fear of failure or unexpected outcome, or worse, wind up in crisis management, putting out one fire for the next – no fun for anyone who’s been around the block.. so, (one of) the big empty void is still -> the leader.. if my experience as a dialoguer and listener gives me a valid (large enough of a) sampling, then there are lots of voices who have desire for a safe place to experience AND to explore their spirituality, but very little significant happens because there’s not the leader to spearhead that movement, that community formation.. and the leader has to be resourced in the reality of this real world (aka “money”) and the leader has to be able to do the public speaking bit (do you know of any community group where the leader doesn’t bear the voice on a regular basis?!)