Engaging Sacred Texts for Leadership Formation - ARL Annual Meeting Draft 2016

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Engaging Sacred Texts for Teaching Leadership

The ARL 2016 Annual Meeting will center on "Engaging Sacred Texts for Teaching Leadership."
 We will explore the following questions (these are in draft form and I ask the ARL community to refine these with me):
  • How do we understand, as teachers and leaders, the intersection and interplay of sacred text and leadership formation, as content?
  • Process: What are the pedagogical practices or implications by engaging sacred texts for leadership formation?
  • What are the methodological assumptions that we employ in our engagement with sacred texts for leadership formation?
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When it comes to our discipline and engaging Scripture or sacred text, the religious leadership conversation begins in one of two ways: 1) start with the biblical text and extrapolate new principles and theories or 2) start with social science concepts and theories and seek out biblical examples. This is not bad or wrong, yet this instrumental use misses the sacred texture and divine agency operating within sacred texts.  When it comes to engaging our discipline in relationship to sacred texts, we have more bad examples than good. But "we can do better," in the words of Craig Van Gelder.

Biblical engagement with leadership tend towards New Testament word studies, great man theories via David, Moses, and Elijah, or Christ as model and moral leader, namely through works such as Jesus, CEO. And the teachings on leadership to pastors as leaders are predominantly laws of moral superiority.

Martin Buber in his article titled, “Biblical Leadership” said,

“I do not imagine you will expect me to give you any so-called character sketches of biblical leaders. That would be an impossible task, for the Bible does not concern itself with character, nor with individuality, and one cannot draw from it any description of characters or individualities.” (137)

Buber continues,

"The biblical question of leadership is concerned with something greater than moral perfection. The biblical leaders are the foreshadowing of the dialogical [person], of the [person] who commits his whole being to God's dialogue with the world, and who stands firm throughout this dialogue... Because this is so [that biblical leadership is a word between man/woman and God] biblical leadership always means a process of being led – by a Word from God."


This conversation invites multi-religious participation, in similar ways to Peter Ochs Scriptural Reasoning Project. As a predominantly Christian community, the hope is that next year's topic will invite other relgious traditions with sacred texts to inform and expand our horizons around engaging texts. Presentations will need to not simply explain how to engage but actually engage sacred texts (See Mark Lau Branson's article, Interptive Leadership During Social Dislocation: Jeremiah and Social Imaginary JRL, Spring 2009) while also dedicating time to unpacking methodological assumptions and pedagogical practices for engaging sacred texts.

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