For the better part of a year, I have moderating the Odyssey Group whose charge was to produce a new Vision for Mission Design for the Los Ranchos Presbytery. In May the Design was past and now our Presbytery is in the midst of the understandably turbulent transition (not to mention the extra demands put on churches and mission bodies because of the economic stress.)
This website has all the information about our work (in a cool video format). I hope very soon to be blogging more regularly, especially about all I learned from doing this project.
For Presby types who are interested in the Final Design, "Flipping the Presbytery: From the Meeting to the Mission." Click here.
Glancing over your document I see: "The key adaptive shift required to achieve greater missional effectiveness is to change the mental model of a presbytery from “regulatory body” to
“missional learning community*”."
It'd be nice to see this in our own (United Methodist) judicatories. I think some in leadership (including even our Bishop) lean in this direction, but our system is so hierarchical and authoritarian that I don't see how we can get from here to there without more major changes than we're currently willing to consider.
How is authority expressed in your Presbyterian system (I've never studied your polity)? I'm unconvinced that a system that has near absolute authority vested in some people in the system can ever develop the level of trust needed to become a true learning community.
Posted by: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1303927158 | Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 08:46 AM