Kingdom Grace

Kingdom Grace has posted a few thoughts on "Not Starting a Church" originally from Wayne. The talkbacks are fascinating. Very insightful thoughts indeed. For instance, on the vacuum created by requiring care to occur in the context of relationship,

For if there is no ‘group’ who cares about the person sitting beside me then there is more need for me to care about that person. If there is no pastoral support team in place then I need to be the pastoral support. The refusal to offer pastoral support thus generates a potential place where pastoral care is distributed among everyone.

It is a common feature of religious life that we often seek a leader to tell us what to do. In these situations I would argue that it is good to have a leader who refuses to take on that role. Who, by doing so, forces the other to take responsibility for themselves.

The truth is that many of us seek a particular kind of leader, namely one we can lead. What this means is that we want someone to tell us what we want to hear, but that we want them to take on the responsibility for our actions rather than embrace that responsibility ourselves. The leader who refuses to lead short-circuits this manipulative game and invites people into taking on the responsibility for their own decisions.

Kingdom Grace is a blog, so I recommend some time surfing the pages and articles to get a good grasp of the angle she is coming from without just taking things out of context. Great spot to visit for inspired thought.