This document is a complete summary of the revised edition of Carroll's important work "As One With Authority" (2011). Carroll provides a sociological and theological perspective on pastoral authority by describing both the ultimate and penultimate bases for authority. In addition he argues that "r...
Summary SumSam – As One With Authority (Jackson W. Carroll)
As One With Authority
Reflective Leadership in Ministry
Jackson W. Carroll
Contents
As One With Authority...........................................................................................................................1
1. As One without Authority?.................................................................................................................2
2. Authority Is Not a Four-Letter Word..................................................................................................6
3. The Relational Dimension of Authority............................................................................................10
4. Authority for What?..........................................................................................................................13
5. The Central Tasks of Church Leadership..........................................................................................16
6. Leading With Authority: The Dynamics of Reflective Leadership...................................................19
7. Elements of Reflective Leadership...................................................................................................22
8. Representing the Sacred and Reflective Leadership.........................................................................27
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, Summary SumSam – As One With Authority (Jackson W. Carroll)
1. As One without Authority?
To exercise authority involves influencing, coordinating, or otherwise guiding the thoughts and
behaviour of persons and groups. In the Christian tradition clergy authority includes proclaiming the
word of God through preaching and teaching, administering the sacraments, exercising pastoral care
and oversight of the congregation, and, in general, equipping the laity for ministry.
(Clergy) authority, however, has been questioned since the last century, both externally and internally.
Later in this chapter Carroll elaborates further on external challenges. Internal challenges indicate the
gulf that exists in many theology students and church ministers between certainty of belief in a
transcendent God who acts in history and a perspective that rules out all knowledge that one cannot
verify empirically.
Carroll provides diverse examples of typical and real experiences that pastors face, which reflect
issues of authority and leadership: fear of alienating influential members; inability to make sense of
the complex messes one finds in many parishes; resistance to authoritarian leadership, etc.
The questioning of authority makes it necessary to rethink issues of authority for ministry and to
discover ways of exercising one’s authority to lead that are faithful to the gospel and appropriate to the
church’s life and ministry in the early years of the twenty-first century.
What This Book Is About
The aim of the book is to locate pastoral authority in relation to a) the purpose of the church and to b)
the social and cultural context in which we find ourselves early in the twenty-first century.
a) So what is the purpose of the church? Carroll takes a narrative perspective on the church, which
means that Jesus’s story shapes what the church believes and what it practices; likewise it shapes the
exercise of authority and leadership in the church.
b) Carroll continues to describe the social and cultural context in which we finds ourselves. It’s a
society and culture vastly different from first-century Palestine and the Roman Empire. So what are
defining characteristics of our postmodern era? Carroll mentions four characteristics:
1. A crisis of belief that reflects the radical doubt that views all knowledge, including scientific
knowledge as well as our basic beliefs about God, as relative and provisional;
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, Summary SumSam – As One With Authority (Jackson W. Carroll)
2. The growth of large-scale, autonomous, global institutions that have taken over many of the
functions that once belonged to the church (thus pushing the church and clergy from the center
towards the margins of society;
3. The growth of “new voluntarism” (as we are now free from external authority and able to
invent ourselves through the choices we make, including our choices about religion);
4. A kind of radical egalitarianism, where hierarchies are profoundly suspect.
Finally, affecting each of these four characteristics is another that is a key concept for the perspective
on authority and leadership: reflexivity, which has intensified both for individuals and for groups,
including the church, because new and incoming information continuously makes it essential for us to
often revise our thinking and practices. Carroll argues that reflective leadership is a key word, by
which he is referring to a kind of intentional style of congregational practice and pastoral leadership
that takes account of the reflexivity characteristic of late modern or postmodern life.
Remainder of the book
Chapter Topic
1 Elaboration on the four social and cultural characteristics of contemporary society.
2-3 Perspective on authority.
4 Normative assumptions of the church which shape our conception of leadership.
5 Three central tasks of church leadership.
6-7 Dynamics and key elements of reflective leadership.
8 Ways that clergy’s authority as representing the sacred both informs and undergirds their
reflective leadership
Factors Affecting Clergy Authority and Leadership
1. A Crisis of Belief
The first factor is the perception of the historicity or relativity of our knowledge and beliefs that is
characteristic of late (post)modernity. It has become increasingly difficult to speak confidently of
timeless truths. Furthermore life has become a multi-possibility affair. Charles Taylor indicates a shift
from a “naïve” framework in which God is assumed to a “reflective” one in which we recognize the
diverse possibilities for believing. Postmodern philosophers like Jean-François Lyotard have called
our age “the end of the great narratives”. The authority of these great narratives is shifted from
something external to something that resides in the authority of one’s own knowledge and experience.
The question (caused by these developments) then is: Is it even possible to speak with authority at all?
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