Here's a rather humbling post by Fr Jonathan Tobias:
So, let's just say that the critique of effective leadership should fall not only on the bishop, but on all decision-makers in a diocese: the Consistories, the Commissions, the Committees, the Apostolates, the Vicariates (if those things still exist in the Orthodox world), the Directors/Coordinators/Deans/Presidents of various associations/organizations/para-church administrations.
You know you're in one of these clubs, or breathing the rarefied air at these dizzy levels, if you ever receive minutes, long phone calls, longer email missives, and especially if you've had to take some vow of secrecy, formal or informal. "For everyone's sake, of course, sub rosa pro prudentia."
So now that you know you've got red buttons to push and all sorts of speed dial numbers ... and now that you've come to understand that it's not just the bishop, or that it's not just about electing a bishop ... now you know that it's all about the leadership culture of the Church.
So, what kind of family is this? Is it a nice house? Are people polite there? Does one feel safe there? Can a kid play there without looking over his shoulder? Are there any elephants sitting in the living room (and rhyming with "sitting"), with no one mentioning them?
I used to read family systems theory from the likes of Jay Haley and Salvador Minuchin et al. There is nothing wrong with clear authority and strong leadership. There is everything right about organization and boundaries and effective structures. It is right to be concerned about "functionality" if you mean by this just the ability of people to live together, to solve problems together, to love and to grow.
For us as a Church, that can be translated traditionally -- after St. Gregory of Nyssa -- as growing along the infinite lines of theosis, where "God being the infinite, creatures embrace it [i.e., the infinite] in an endless sequence of finite instances" (Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, p194).
So, priests who stand close to the bishop, whether they are "kingmakers" or "policy-makers" or "movers and shakers," are responsible for diocesan conditions that facilitate theosis.
Let that sentence hang there in the daylight for a while. I wrote it in as modern an idiom as I could stand.
The "facilitation of" -- or, rather, cooperation with -- theosis for a person must involve, necessarily, ascetical obedience. It involves, necessarily, the violent deliberate attack against the soul-destroying and intellect-distorting passions. It involves, necessarily, the constant refutation of evil logismoi. It involves, necessarily, the recognition of the logoi of creation, the residency of the Logos in the heart and the recognition of His Image in the eschaton.
That said, the facilitation of theosis for a group involves the same. It involves a social application of the fight against the passions. It involves the recognition of demons (who are much more demotic than their maudlin appearances on screen), and fighting against the demons' persistent attempts to subvert conversations into denunciations. It involves the conscious disavowal of the familiar and luxurious comforts of pessimism and despair, and the manly search for logoi, and the avowal of hope.
Practically, this involves, necessarily, the shelving of grudges. It involves, necessarily, the doubting of all negative impressions and characterizations, the agnostic review of all patterns of distrust. It involves, necessarily, the taking of risks, the shearing off of old habits of anger. It involves glasnost, and probably requires perestroika. It involves the recognition of the icon of Jesus in each of the brethren, and the careful veneration of this image.
It involves the acceptance that no one is a "good judge of character" -- nay, not even you.
It involves, necessarily, the renunciation of denunciation.
It involves, as the old song says, the guarding of each man's dignity, and the saving of each man's pride.
Then, when the world sees the Orthodox priesthood turn into a band of brothers, then, and only then, “they will know we are Christians by our love.”
We do not need a revival of bishops.
We need a revival, even more, of the men around them.
+ Fr Jonathan Tobias, Effective leadership: not something you'll hear on TED, http://janotec.typepad.com/terrace/2012/06/effective-leadership-not-something-youll-hear-on-ted.html
