Archive for October, 2011
Spiritual Leadership, Part II: The First Sphere of Influence
[Read the previous section, Part I, here.]
Where to begin?
It is axiomatic to say that the spiritual leader does not have the same influence everywhere. We know this intuitively. For the sake of this presentation, I’ll say that our influence is strongest starting with ourselves. From there, we see a still strong influence within our family, particularly among our wives and children, but the addition of wills begins to complicate things, occasionally attempting to frustrate our leadership. Stepping beyond that we reach our parishes, those communities of believers who have willingly placed themselves under our pastoral care, but by no means submitting themselves absolutely or blindly to our leadership. Finally, we reach our community, the broader areas where we live and work, where we are known perhaps as pastors and preachers, but without any kind of acknowledged leadership for all. Read the rest of this entry »
Spiritual Leadership, Part I: Preliminaries
I’ll be returning to the parish website topic shortly. However, I gave a talk entitled “Spiritual Leadership: Extending Spiritual Influence” at the 2011 ROCOR Western American Diocese pastoral conference earlier this week. I will post successive sections of the presentation in the coming days. Please note that parish clergy (priests in particular) were the intended audience. Your comments are appreciated.
I want to express my thanks to the fine clergy of the Western American Diocese, especially His Eminence, Archbishop Kyrill, for blessing me not only to speak at the clergy conference, but also for inviting me to participate in the rite of revesting the relics of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco.
Defining the topic
Having introduced myself, I should say that this talk is not about me, but only observations and reflections concerning this topic of spiritual leadership. When I first began preparing this, I struggled somewhat, because, while I am a priest, a preacher, a servant of the Mysteries of God, and an intercessor for those around me, I do not see myself as particularly spiritual. In fact,an attempt to be what I held in my own mind as the image of “the spiritual person” led to a particularly acute period of spiritual malaise, anger, cynicism, and frustration in my own life. Read the rest of this entry »