I believe firmly that the future health of any diocese lies in the vitality and imagination of the local parish or arena of ministry. Top-down strategies are sometimes helpful (Developing Servant Leadership, Academies) but are often self-defeating because energy resides at local level, and there is plenty of evidence in our diocese of prayerful planning of local mission. What senior leadership can offer, however, is a dynamic framework, not to control but to guide, release and encourage. Bishops can offer direction and undergirding values, and they can try to align resources to those strategic directions.
Great advice to any organization, secular or religious. I once had a great Boy Scout leader describe his role as “safety and quality control”. Bishops need to, and by and large do, set a direction and a standard. Priests need to adhere to those boundaries and actively support that direction. And finally Bishops need to do more quality control, to eliminate the parish clerical nonperformers whether of separatist bent, indifference and incompetence, or outlandish (not “unorthodox” by this blog’s interpretation) theology.
While I probably agree with what the good bishop of Oxford is saying here, I recoil anytime anyone brings up the term “servant ministry.”
Not that we aren’t called to be servants, but people who use that as a moniker are almost always the ones to go ballistic if they actually get treated like a servant.