Ordination Question

I finally finished my ordination paperwork a week or so ago. Here is one of the questions...
I thought I would share the question and my answer with all of you. Has anyone else read this book?

1. Reflect on a recent book you’ve read regarding ministry. In what way was your heart/mind/soul expanded? How can you apply these insights to your future as a pastor?

Over the past year, I have read and reread the book, “A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix,” by Edwin Friedman. The book struck me with the depth of insight and new paradigms for the task of leadership. The first part of the book traces the challenges facing leaders (“from parents to presidents”) in our current society, while the second part helped me to see new ways I might provide effective leadership through self-differentiation. His thesis is grounded in the view that our society is filled with a chronic anxiety, and his encouragement for leaders is for us to focus first on our own integrity and on the nature of our own presence rather than focusing on techniques of manipulating or motivating others.

My heart and mind was expanded greatly relative to his framework for understanding our society, and I see the ways that our society, as well as the congregation and the community in which I serve seems to focus on the most anxious members of the system rather than putting our energy into the most energetic, visionary, imaginative and motivated persons. In order for medieval Europe to have a renaissance they needed bold and imaginative leaders. For the earliest European explorers to move their civilization into the New World they had to reorient the Old World that was stuck in its’ orientation. Friedman hypothesizes (and I wholeheartedly agree) that we experience similar societal anxiety in contemporary American society, and we need adventurous leadership to pull us out of our anxious existence.

My future as pastor will continue to be informed by my insights from this book. I believe I can more effectively identify the symptoms of this chronic anxiety: “reactivity, herding, blaming, a quick-fix mentality, and lack of leadership.” To counteract these destructive forces, I can only stand apart from this anxiety (refusing to get “sucked into it”) and be the presence of change that I wish to see. I believe that I can only do that if I am fully grounded in my identity in God, if I regulate myself well (with the help of God), respond to challenges in creative and imaginative ways, and allow time for processes to mature. Maintaining my connection with God through spiritual disciplines is vital.