The Medium is the Message
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| Circle Tale: Learnings for the New Now (excerpt from Peerspirit newsletter)
by Dr. W. Craig Gilliam
1) Congregations and organizations are self- organizing systems.
Creating safe space (a strong container for what is trying to emerge) and being able to hold
that space so the necessary spirit or voice can constellate in a manner it chooses is our work.
2) The living organism has within it the answers to the challenges and opportunities it faces.
Thus, our challenge is not to bring answers or solutions or to fix them, but to create the space,
hold the space for honest conversation to happen, connections to occur, and the collective
wisdom to emerge.
3) The systemic adaptive issue that the organism faces has more than one right answer.
Consequently, the paralyzing anxiety produced by thinking there is one right answer and we
have to “get it right,” is relieved. We choose, through conversation and connection with each
other and our environment, to act. We watch the effect of the action on the context, then we
make our next choice about next steps. It becomes a continual dance or ongoing conversation.
4) To have the space to ask open, honest, and sometimes difficult questions is significant to
healthy, emotionally and spiritually mature communities, for questions have the power to start a
person or community on a “quest.” We are all, as individuals and congregations/organizations,
living a question. How do we speak that question and share the journey with those with whom
we work and serve? Can we live with the question in creative ways and not have to have the
answer? What is the question you are living?
5) Spiritual practice, which fosters ongoing growth and grounding, is essential for effective
leadership and for being the guardian in the circle. Our presence as leaders has profound impact
on the groups we lead. Presence means alignment of heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit. It
means all who sit around the hearth, like in councils of old, honor the holy other and glean
wisdom from the group. Spiritual practice is the place where our theories move from intellectual
concepts to experiential presence.
6) At the root of all our conversations is the question phrased so well by the words of the poet,
Mary Oliver, "Tell me, what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?"
To read a longer version of this article published by Duke University click into the new web page
for the Center for Pastoral Effectiveness of the Louisiana Annual Conference of the Methodist
Church, under Conference Ministries, go down to Spiritual Formation to the Center for Pastoral
Effectiveness and click the article, “Lessons for Leaders in the New Now”.
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