Leadership and Oversight: New models for episcopal ministry
Malcolm Grundy
Mowbray £16.99
(978-1-4411-4401-0)
Church Times Bookshop £15.30
EVERY bishop ought to read this book. Many will find the encouragement to exercise a “shared episcope” unexceptionable. They are likely to believe that what Grundy recommends — a much more collaborative pattern of oversight — is what they are seeking to achieve. If so, why isn’t this more evident in the life of episcopal Churches already?
Grundy asserts that there is a worldwide crisis of confidence in leadership within episcopal Churches. Whether non-episcopal Churches are in better shape isn’t addressed. The book begins with a chapter on the vacuum in leadership, a rather different concept from one suggesting the use of wrong models. If an episcopal reader gets past that chapter without becoming too depressed, more cheering reading follows.
Grundy’s wide knowledge of styles of leadership is illustrated by intriguing examples. Not everyone would expect to find Gerald Ellison, formerly Bishop of London, extolled in a book on shared episcope. There is also a short history of episcopacy in the Church of England, perhaps too short, which may explain why the already executed Laud is said to have kept in touch with the King in exile during the Commonwealth.
One of the strongest chapters focuses on the part played by bishops in wider society. Their continuing capacity to build networks in the secular world and often to be a welcomed presence is analysed well. Such a dimension of episcopal ministry is possible only because it is both personal and representational. The bishop represents more than himself, and has credibility only because of the network of churches and local congregations in his care. Often he knows better than anyone just how fragile that network can feel.
Grundy is surely right to identify trust as the essential building-block for any effective episcopal ministry. Wesley Carr has said that the one thing a bishop cannot delegate is the ethos of his diocese. Much depends upon whether he (or she elsewhere in the Anglican Communion) inspires a shared vision and trusts colleagues to get on with their work without undue interference or feeling a lack of support.
It is no surprise that Grundy, as the first director of the Foundation for Church Leadership, believes episcopal Churches suffer from a lack of staff-development programmes to help shape future leaders. It seems a rather institutional answer when the credibility of leadership in many Western institutions is much diminished.
Grundy recognises that the Church is good at transition. In many ways, this book is an account of already changing patterns of episcopal leadership, and one that I found ultimately encouraging. Not only bishops should read it, but clergy and lay people, too, especially those who are keen to learn what makes episcopal Churches distinctive.
The Rt Revd Graham James is the Bishop of Norwich.
CHRISTIAN leaders are often said to suffer from stress, overwork, burnout, and related conditions. Tony Horsfall’s book Working from a Place of Rest offers practical guidance on how to sustain a healthy balance in life, so that periods of rest and doing nothing can be incorporated into otherwise busy days and weeks. He takes as a starting-point the story of Jesus and the woman at the well, and the fact that the encounter occurred because Jesus was sitting in the sun doing nothing. The book even has an appendix giving the times in the Bible when Jesus is seen as saying “No,” a seemingly impossible word for many Christian leaders (Bible Reading Fellowship, £6.99 (£6.30); 978-1-84101-544-6).
