Ross Rodhe on leadership

“Stewardship is about service and not doing what is necessarily in our own interest. This is in direct contrast with the typical paradigm of the use of power in business which is leadership. Stewardship moves power and choice down and to the edge of the organizational chain where actual work is done.” Ross Rodhe

Ross is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. And he is posting his doctoral research (leadership, postmodernism) on his blog. You should also know that I took over Ross’s job as Outreach Pastor of Southwood Ev. Free Church back in 1987 when he left for Mexico with Overseas Crusades.

Andrew

Andrew Jones launched his first internet space in 1997 and has been teaching on related issues for the past 20 years. He travels all the time but lives between Wellington, San Francisco and a hobbit home in Prague.

3 Comments

  • Liam Byrnes says:

    This is definatly interesting…it makes me about 2 things, that I know the answers are out there but cant find them, hope you dont mind me posing these in the comments section Andrew.
    the First is if Stewardship is the model for Christian leadership, then why do we see such strong leaders in the bible, very authortarian indeed some of them, did God use them in spite of these authortarian tendencies or does he use people to lead, and guide from the top up. When thinking about it actually, “Stewardship moving power and choice down and to the edge of the organizational chain where actual work is done” surely turns into democracy which is a man made concept for a start and so is somewhat floored, it may work for governments (I think in practise though we can see it dosen’t even work for them) but not for churches I feel….if you have a family you dont give the family the vote for what to do in situation the parents who have been around for longer, who have more wisdom and who in reality have given up more for the model than the majoirty (often likely to be the children) eg. 3 children vs 2 Adults in a democratic structure the children get there way but this may not always be the best decision.
    The second question, wo this is getting long sorry, is I often equate the word stewardship to our relationship to creation and the environment, if we were to take this view of stewardship would we end up giving up ourselves for the environment, dont get me wrong I believe ardently we need to protect the environment but clearly we are given stewardship OVER the earth.
    Any thougts you have would be great Thanks
    Humbly asking questions
    Liam

  • Isaac says:

    Good thoughts…
    biblical leadership is so different from that of the world — yet the church still uses a lot of business/worldly models of leaderships to learn from. Bit dodgy there.

  • Stephen Said says:

    I wonder if there is a biased presumption regarding leadership in business? I know that there are a *significant* amounts of businesses that are striving to move towards a more values based, humane business environment, both in terms of creating a humane environment for their employees to work within, and also humane in terms of the area’s and sphere’s of their business.
    As is always the case, stereotypes are handy, because we don’t need to think through our presumptions each time we use them, so we can short circuit the thinking process. An easy option seeing as laziness is a chronic characteristic of the fallen human condition.
    A case in point, i am writing this from a “secular business” and literally, at the whiteboard over my right shoulder, two business people are considering how their business might be involved in helping transform a caravan park (or “trailer park” for all you north Americans”) and improve the quality of life there for a number of very working class families.
    The planning process is very inclusive and is involving all levels of business. The process is acutally being facilitated by the most junior and recent member of the business team! With mid and senior members of the business being involved also, I find that the whole process is quite a challenge to the way that the assumed businesss model works, and even more of a challenge in terms of the way the church (both conventional *and* emergent) go about leadership.
    Are we just to lazy?

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