Walter Brueggemann describes our era as one in which an old imagined world is lost, although still powerfully cherished. It is a time of bewilderment and fear because there’s no clear understanding of how to order our common imagination differently or better. He writes:
Brueggemann describes this transition as a troubling place to dwell, but it is exactly where we must dwell. There is no other time or place to which God has called us to live but this one.
Mary Jo Leddy describes it as a period when the great tapestry of religious life woven in Western Culture over several hundred years has unravelled and lies in tatters on the floor of our culture. She explains:
"We are living through one of those historical in-between times when a former model of religious life (either traditional or liberal) is fading away and a future model has not yet become clear. One could be tempted to flee from the dilemmas of this moment to some more secure past, to the surface of the present, or to some arbitrary resolution of the future. These are real temptations and they can be met only with the faith that this is our hour, our kairos [Greek for “season” or “time”]. This is the only time and place we are called to become followers of Jesus Christ; there is no better time or place for us to live out the mysteries of creation, incarnation, and redemption. These are our times and, in the end, God’s time." (Mary Jo Leddy, Reweaving the Religious Life (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990),
This is our time. It is not a place for simplistic, dualistic, us-versus-them thinking. We are leaving the era of modernity behind, and we find ourselves in a place so unlike the ethos, experiences, values, and attitudes of the last half of the twentieth century. It has been said that we find ourselves not in an era of change, but in a change of era. The generations that led in the previous era are passing, but still many leaders and organisations work with all the assumptions, skills, and frameworks of that passing era. The generations which will discover and cultivate God’s future are just emerging. Will they find the courage to explore possible new paradigms, or will the gravity of the past pull them back down?
When we are planning a vacation, constructing a building, designing a program, organizing a sermon series, or planning a field trip to another country, then the frameworks and assumptions of the past are a good way to proceed. But when facing discontinuous and disruptive change, doing what we’ve always done, wouldn’t work because, it fails to encourage the bold creativity and innovation required.
Planning and managing as we have always done, assumes we are still in a stable environment. In a stable, dominant paradigm, analysis, correction, prediction and control work. It is based on the belief that we can, as we did for most of the twentieth century, define, determine, and design the preferred future we want and then align all the elements of our world – our congregations, resources, money, marketing—to get where we want to go. In this world, SWOT analysis (Identifying organisational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), and vision-casting are the preferred tools.
The problem is that ‘managing’ leaves ‘leadership’ imagination unaltered. The environment is still treated as if it were a static, manageable pond rather than the turbulent ocean it has become. A turbulent environment is not a knowable environment—we lose control and predictability in the midst of discontinuity and transition. Maps don’t work anymore – the future is not predictable; it can only be discovered along the way. Therefore, leaders who want to cultivate missional communities in transition must set aside goal-setting and strategic planning as their primary model.
Leadership in this context is not about forecasting, but about the formation of networks of discourse among people. It’s about the capacity to engage the realities of people’s lives and contexts in dialogue with Scripture. It is about building new connections. The Spirit of God will be in the midst of such dialogues, forming new patterns of communication, relationship, and action as God’s people. But it can’t be predicted and controlled from this side; the future emerges as people live in the ambiguities of transition. It’s building a culture of listening and relating rather than casting a vision of activities and timelines.
The shift in frameworks, skills, capacities, and habits required of leaders isn’t easy, nor will the road be smooth. People are complicated and organizations are complex. People’s emotional, inner, non-rational responses play a large role in the transition process. One can’t apply change strategies like programs or templates laid over a congregation. Leadership in transition requires adaptive skills that innovate participative dialogue. Such leadership understands change as primarily an emerging process rather than carefully planned movements towards a predefined, preferable future. Emergence cannot be imposed from above; it is cultivated through participation. Leaders must let go of the belief that more information, or more data, or some new program can re-establish control and result in a desired future. It’s a new world requiring new skills and capabilities.
In their book, The Missional Leader (2006), Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk contrast 'pastoral' leadership, dominant in the stable era of modernity with the 'missiona'l leadership that will help faith communities navigate this liminal era of transition:
