It's too easy to learn and apply business leadership models to the pastoral sector. But is it the best alternative to form Church leaders? What are we missing when we use business models in ministry? This book is about creating more sensitivity on how some of these secularly learned models can inadvertently limit pastoral effectiveness, and suggests an "hourglass approach" to leadership capable of fostering a set of principles more harmonious with ministry intent. In many ways this book is a guide for cultivating and developing a more authentic sense of leadership in ministry, one that emerges from within the scholarly sources of the leadership field but at the same time is rooted in the principle "leadership is a spiritual practice". This book is a "must have" for clergy, religious women and men, and anyone engaged with forming ministry leaders or performing leadership roles in diocesan, parish life, or Church ministry. The Challenges of PASTORAL LEADERSHIP Concepts and Practice By Ronald Rojas John Alvarez AuthorHouse Copyright © 2012 Ronald Rojas and John Alvarez All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4772-5632-9 Contents Prologue............................................................XI1 The Fundamental Challenges........................................32 Leadership as Spiritual Practice..................................293 The Influence of Personal Calling.................................714 Influencing through Character Strength............................935 Primacy of relationships as influence.............................1256 The influence of spiritual community..............................1697 Envisioning as a spiritual influence..............................2198 Discernment as spiritual influence................................2519 Pastoral leading within pastoral lifecycles.......................27710 Moving Forward...................................................305Appendix A, Pastoral Leadership course syllabus.....................325Appendix B, Pre-Assessment survey...................................335Appendix C, Pastoral Leadership Word-Search.........................341Appendix D, Answer sheet to Figure 7................................343Index...............................................................345 Chapter One The Fundamental Challenges A fact about the nature of the leadership construct that is frequently underestimated— yet central to the pastoral sector— is that leadership is related to spirituality . The demand for true leadership is traditionally said to arise from an expectation that "effectiveness" of group performance is resolved in large part by the leader (Borgatta, Bales, & Couch, 1954). But in looking deeper at the dynamics that drives the collective yearning for a "leader role" there is a more fundamental purpose, one that reaches into the soul. In many ways the need for a "leader role" is tied to a journey rooted in the soul, a sort of spiritual quest for direction where there is chaos, for transcending worldviews where there is inconsequentiality, for assurance where there is uncertainty, and for worth where there is uselessness. It's quite intuitive in nature to accept how a leader attends to some of the basic needs of the soul. Leaders are visionaries, meaning-makers and guides. Leaders offer a sense of accomplishment and provide inspiration and consolation, boundaries and priorities, comfort and hope. But what becomes more difficult is for the leadership discipline in general to recognize that it is also navigating side by side among the disciplines that study soul. Of course the leadership discipline draws from psychology, sociology, management and education but what about the other scholarly disciplines that have more experience in understanding the dynamics of the soul? Isn't leadership also related to fields of philosophy, theology and spirituality? Every major discipline has some level of discourse related to leadership topics within its own boundaries. But the leadership discipline has yet to fully reach out and benefit from the centuries of knowledge accumulated by schools of philosophy, religion, and spirituality. If the maxim from St. Augustine (Lib 1,1-2,2.5,5: CSEL 33, 1-5) "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. " holds true, then it could be only a matter of time in which leadership— just as many other disciplines—would eventually drift into the dynamics of the heart and soul. So it is no surprise that after close to 100 years of empirical focus of behaviors, use of power, traits, skills, and leader situational contexts, some prominent authors and scholars within the leadership field have asserted spirituality as a missing element within the leadership field of study (Dent, Higgins, & Wharff, 2005: Fairhom, 1997; Fry, 2003; Korak-Kakabadse, Kouzmin, & Kakabadse, 2002; Vail 1998). Yet this interest is spirituality and leadership is not without its opponents