By the excessive promotion of leadership, we demote everyone else. We create clusters of followers who have to be driven to perform, instead of leveraging the natural propensity of people to cooperate in communities. In this light, effective managing can be seen as engaging and engaged, connecting and connected, supporting and supported.
How different this is from the tired rhetoric I hear too often in church circles about 'leaders' and 'leadership'. Also, how remarkably congruent with the community life extolled in the New Testament.
But, what gives me pause for thought is that this challenge to the hollowness of 'leadership' as a notion did not come from a bible-based Christian critique of business, management, the treatment of people in organisations or the like: that is, the church being prophetically attunded to the scriptures, but from a scholar who simply seeks to go where the data and his observations lead him.
I often wonder what we pay theologians for...and suspect that we get a very poor return for our investment on some occasions!
