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BOOK REVIEWS
A Review of Leadership, God’s Agency & Disruptions
36
PRESBYTERIAN
SUMMER 2021
presbyterian.ca
By the Rev. Brian Fraser, Brentwood Presbyterian Church in Burnaby, B.C.
Leadership, God’s Agency, & Disruptions: Confronting Modernity’s Wager
Written by Mark Lau Branson and Alan Roxburgh
Cascade Books, 2020
For a church whose organizational presence and leadership are faced with confusing and conflicted dis- ruptions, this book comes as a providential call to reconsider our attitudes and behaviours. I think everyone concerned with the mis- sioning to which the Trinity is calling us should ponder its provocative de- scriptions, analyses and strategies. What I par ticularly appreciate about this theology of church and leader- ship is its alignment with the pream- ble, vows and prayers of the ordi- nation services of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. This is a superb example of what many missiologists are calling “traditioned innovation.”
Let’s look at the innovative dimen- sions and then see if they align with the tradition of church leadership we have formulated in our ordination services.
Branson and Roxburgh have con- sulted with and educated a lot of church leaders, especially clergy, over the past 40 years. This book is the distillation of pastoral experi- ence, perceptive listening, extensive
research, provocative conversations and a deep devotion to what the tri- une God is doing in the world.
As I read them, here are the three key challenges that the “Euro-Tribal” churches, like The Presbyterian Church in Canada, face:
• A refusal to face fully the kinds of unravelling that are happen- ing in and around the traditional ways of being church in the Christendom era of assumed dominance in inspiring and in- fluencing the broader culture;
• A reliance on ways of thinking about leadership that are de- fined and distor ted by moder- nity’s wager that we can live life without God and be in control of what happens through the im- position of exper tise and plan- ning; and
• A social imagination that seeks to solve the problems faced by the church by reasser ting the attractional power that is be- lieved to be what the church once had and needs to recover.
Again, as I read them, the authors are proposing three positive possi- bilities for transforming the perspec- tives and habits in which we may be stuck:
• Recognize that the social/eco- nomic/religious disruptions in our world are generating a “space-between” for learning new patterns of discipleship that have significant parallels,
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and therefore lessons, in bibli- cal times, especially in the con- texts of the books of Jeremiah, Matthew, Acts and Ephesians; Refocus our attention from reli- ance on human agency, as does so much of our modern culture in subtle ways that have capti- vated the church, and hone our habits for detecting the work- ings of the triune God in the neighbourhoods into which we are being sent by the Spirit as ambassadors of Christ’s forgiv- ing and reconciling love; and Draw on the rich traditions of the church over the generations to attend to, appreciate and ap- propriate reformulated ways of practicing God’s justice with kindness and humility.
hood/community contributions. It is the triune God who gathers, equips and sends people to par ticipate in a missioning that shares the gos- pel with the world and offers wor- ship and service as ambassadors to God’s forgiving and reconciling love (2 Cor 5:19–21). This is the great affirmation of the gospel cited in the introduction to our most recently ap- proved subordinate standard, Living Faith.
The degree to which this agency is appreciated and appropriated var- ies, granted, but the tradition is there to inspire and guide us.
The dynamics of church life im- agined in our ordination services are rooted in our collaborative de- tecting of where God is leading us and how God is reformulating our faith and life. These habits of con- sultative conversations are encour- aged by Branson and Roxburgh. The Canadian Presbyterian ordering of our work and witnessing together is designed to “take away all oc-
casion of tyranny” by ensuring full participation in those conversations to enable full responsibility for what emerges from them. This is not a polity of experts imposing techni- cal solutions that they control, but rather of God’s whole people taking council together to discern the best ways to follow Jesus Christ, the Liv- ing Word, in blessing the whole of the Trinity’s creation.
The degree to which this collabo- ration is taking place at every level of the church varies, granted, but the tradition is there to inspire and guide us.
The imperatives of the church’s missioning, the internal building up of Christ’s church and the external blessing of Christ’s world, are en- couraged and prayed for throughout our ordination services. We praise and glorify the Lord who has cre- ated, redeemed and sustains us as ambassadors of Christ, entrusted with the message of reconcilia- tion, to declare God’s mighty acts of love for the world. As Branson and Roxburgh unpack the kinds of leadership they see as crucial for the reformulation of the church’s missioning in our day, they explore in stimulating depth the interpretive leadership offered by Jeremiah, the ways Matthew nurtured learning communities, the ways Luke de- tects the Spirit’s disruptive presence in Acts, and the new social relation- ships Paul is cultivating in his con- versations with the Ephesians.
The degree to which these imper- atives are informing the work of our cour ts and agencies varies, granted, but the tradition is there to inspire and guide us.
A Review of
Another Long Night
The question I was asking while reading this rejuvenating book was whether it aligned in any significant ways the traditions of church and leadership that we commit to in the ordination vows. My answer is a re- sounding “Yes!” Here’s why:
God’s agency is the star ting point in our ordinations. Jesus Christ is the reality from which all ministries of the church proceed and by which they are all sustained. This is true not just for the leadership in the various offices that are responsible for sup- port and supervision in the mission- ing of the church, but for everything participants in the church do in their daily lives through their neighbour-
Readers will be able to relate to their story as circumstances come up that are out of this family’s con- trol, as mother and daughter put their hope in Jesus Christ. Anyone reading this book will see how God never leaves us or forsakes us and provides for all our needs.
By Ann Isaak, Cheyne Presbyterian Church in Stoney Creek, Ont.
Another Long Night
Written by Marilyn Savage, 2020
Another Long Night is a compelling personal account that attests to the strong bond between Marilyn and her daughter, Joanna, as they jour- ney through a devastating health cri- sis a week after Joanna’s surgery, due to unforeseen complications. Their story takes place during the COVID-19 pandemic and involves an eleven-day stay in the hospital, which added to the isolation and stress of this space of time.
Joanna, a special gift from God to her parents, has had many chal-
lenges in her thirty-six years of life. She has an amazing faith in her Saviour that has taken her through her life and now through her diag- nosis of stage-four neuroendocrine cancer. Marilyn has been her voice, advocate, historian, comfor ter and best friend.
Marilyn has the gift to involve us, the reader, through the fabric of Joanna’s life in a way that allows us to experience it as a tapestry woven by God. She engages the reader so that we can feel the anguish and the turmoil when the ups become downs, and through the uncer tain- ties of Joanna’s future that, even then, are interspersed with mo- ments of joy and the assurances of God’s presence.