I got a reply to my previous post, and the writer wanted some background, so I rejoined with this:
My observations on 'leadership' come from years of ministry and advanced formal study in management.
The problem as we conceptualise the body of Christ (thus different from the pre-incarnation references to God's people) in terms that gives sense to 'leadership' is that we run, I think, the very risk that Mintzberg identifies as fatal to an enduring practice in any organisation, where one, or even a small group is stuck out the front or on a pedestal and isolation between leader and lead is created: the word itself does that; and renders everyone else a follower, induced to passivity; against how I think the biblical injunctions on church life would work.
The induction to passivity leads pretty quickly to the church coalescing around the 'priesthood' and ministry, the ministry of all believers, ceases to be the central motif of church life. It also gives the 'leader' an impossible job to do. Isolating this person from the coalition of mutual service that is in situational flux in the paradigmatic church. That is we take different roles with respect to one another as circumstances adjust. I've seen many a home group 'leader' feeling overburdened by the false responsibility they think they have, when if their service had been characterised, as it truly was, as 'convening', ministering or even just helping, their and the group life would have been simpler and more effective.
But, I think what disturbs me about the slide from talk about ministry to talk about leadership over the past 30 years, in my observation, is that we adopt organisational terminology which points away from the gospel. Thus my use of terms about my own experience above, which are community centric terms, not 'me-centric', I hope, and I hope my efforts have been genuinely of this manner, and the list I suggested in my first email to you. So, not 'youth leader' but youth minister/worker, not children's 'leader' (if there are any children's leaders, they are their parents), but children's worker, teacher...etc.
As I composed this list, I reflected on my admiration for my late father's trade union work. His union adopted terms for the service roles they had that reflected their beliefs about the way things should work. Oddly enough the 'leader' of the smallest unit (called a chapel) was the 'father'. They had organisers, delegates and similar roles, because they were all equally workers, and no one 'led' them!
So too in the church. If we are serious about our profession, I think that we must organise congruently with this profession. As soon as we say that there are leaders ('archon', is, I think the Greek equivalent word, and not used of church life in the NT) we say that there are followers; but we only follow Christ. Paul is clear on that as he teaches against party spirit; if we say there are leaders and followers, we also say that we have leadership, not community-ship (a coining by Mintzberg that I particularly like).
Thus, as I read the list regarding healthy church life...which list I've worked with in another denomination, I think, if a church has 'good leadership' that is expressed in the natural reading of the phrase, ministry will inevitably break down, the 'pastor' and elders will burn out and the church will dry up, the idea is a problem both terminologically and instrumentally. But what if a church was characterised by a resilient network of ministry groups? Much better I think, and very much what chimes with the NT church life exhortations.
A couple of references that may be of interest:
http://complexityandmanagement.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/hello-world/ and quite a few other posts
http://oss.sagepub.com/content/24/6/961.abstract (I can send you this article if you don't have access)
http://www.faithandleadership.com/multimedia/ronald-heifetz-the-nature-adaptive-leadership
