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Leadership & Oversight - new models for episcopal ministry

Author:	Malcolm Grundy
Published By:	Mowbray (London)
Pages:	237
Price:	£16.99
ISBN:	978 1 4411 4401 0

Reviewed by Julian Reindorp.

This is an important and well researched book which analyses the crisis in leadership in the Anglican Communion, but also outlines the core concepts for a renewed episkope wherever leadership is exercised in our churches. My eighteeen years in two ecumenical projects made me very grateful for the episcope exercised by Methodist Superintendents and Chairs, by Baptist Area Superintendents, and URC District Chairs.

The author is a very experienced Anglican priest, who has been a team rector, an industrial chaplain, a ministerial consultant, an archdeacon and the founder director of the Foundation for Church Leadership. He has written previous books on church leadership, understanding congregations, and 'what they don't teach you at theological college'. He began by trying to understand why concepts of collaborative leadership have not taken root in episcopal churches, and how church leaders, from bishops to parish priests and ministers, could develop a new understanding of how they could work together and become more trustful. He notes that “internally, churches which up till now have been held together by membership of a common international family, have been fractured by separatist movements. Bishops and archbishops who once were the people symbolizing a church which was One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic have ceased in many cases to be the focus for unity...and have become leaders of disaffected groupings (p.201).

He outlines the earliest forms of episcope where churches gave and received oversight in a mutually beneficial way and, drawing on both anglican and ecumenical discussions, suggests the key concepts of an episcope that is personal, collegial and communal. He describes the vacuum in leadership and oversight today, outlines episcope (a new, old idea), illustrates bishops both old and new - servants of the servants of God - through their historical roles until now - “the enslaved liberator of the rainbow church” (p.68). He describes the routes to senior leadership, the view from the pew, the view from the market place, and the view from the churches, the vital spirituality and integrity needed, and the DNA of an emerging church.

My parish priest father wanted from his bishop an inspiring confirmation service sermon, his next job, and then to be left alone. Today I may still hope for the first, I replied to adverts for the second, and I valued appraisal and leadership that was personal, collegial and communal. I hope in return I gave loyalty encouragement, and an awareness of a shared episcope.

This book breaks new ground in all that Grundy has brought together, and while there are many books written about pastoral ministry, there is hardly anything that underlines episcope as a gift from God and not as a human organizational convenience (Cameron Report, p.36).

As well as descriptions of how different churches appoint senior leaders, there is an excellent forward by the Bishop of Oxford, John Pritchard, outlining the key elements in an effective collaborative episcope. He quotes a predecessor who, standing in the lavatory of Oxford Diocesan House, said to his neighbour, “You know, this is about the only time in my life when I feel I really know what I'm doing, and have a pretty good chance of finishing the job”.