Leadership in Mission must be prophetic, attentive to the Spirit, and should always be based on Jesus’ model of servant leadership, the Mission: One Heart Many Voices conference heard.

A range of presenters touched on the topic of leadership, including keynote speaker, Sr Maureen McBride RNDM, the Congregational Leader of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions.

Sr Maureen said leaders in mission had something in common with pilots – checking the maps and compasses, charting a course and looking over the horizon to what lies ahead.

“Leaders are continually journeying into newness, into the dawning of the new day that takes place within each of us as God beckons us to hope every morning,” she said.

Sr Maureen said she believed there were three key functions of leadership in mission.

The first is prophesy and visioning.

“The role of leadership is to be attentive to the Spirit; to hold extraordinary diversity lightly, to be able to embrace differences of age, culture, ministries, countries, languages and experience,” she said. “It is to engage the imagination of the members in order to shape a common vision for mission; and to initiate and facilitate possibilities for a future full of hope.

“Second is the pastoral care of our members, our partners in mission, and of those with whom we are engaged in mission. The role of leadership is to have confidence in the young, to encourage and motivate the seasoned, to listen compassionately to the tired, the sick and disillusioned and to draw inspiration and strength from the wisdom of the elderly and support them in their frailty and their final journey towards the loving embrace of their God.

“And thirdly, there is the administration and the stewardship of resources. The critical role that leadership plays in strategic planning and sharing the ongoing training of personnel in key positions, and in an increasingly complex global financial reality, engaging the expertise of lay advisors, striving for transparency and best practice in all our undertakings.”

Sr Maureen also spoke on the need for vision in leadership, saying that the Book of Proverbs reminds us that when there is no vision, the people perish.

“One of the principal tasks of leaders in mission is to be attentive to the prophetic voices, within the members, among the people with whom we journey in mission and within society. Leadership must encourage good dreaming.”

She said that where ever people are engaged in mission today, locally or internationally, the context is multicultural.

“One of the tasks of the leader then is to create a comfortable environment where each member of the community or of the staff respects the other and is encouraged to share the richness of language, culture and tradition,” she said.

The multicultural nature of mission and leadership was also picked up in a workshop conducted by Sr Clare Condon SGS and Fr Tim Norton SVD.

Fr Tim said that ‘holding diversity lightly’ as suggested by Sr Maureen, involved leaders taking into account ethnicity and culture, generational factors, educational background, gender, ministries and personalities of both the members of the religious congregation and the people they serve in mission.

In Australia, he said, one in four people is born in another country; one in two have a parent born overseas. In the Uniting Church in Australia, they have eight national conferences of different ethnic groups and within the Catholic community there is a wide variety of Catholic ethnic chaplaincies.

“New worldviews and cultural practices have implications for discipleship, pastoral care, decision-making and conflict resolution,” he said.

“It is important in leadership to call it as it is, not what it’s not. If we call it what it’s not, we’re never going to get anywhere.

“And it’s important in dealing with all of these challenges that we are trying to keep Mission upfront and keep a shared vision for Mission.”

Sr Clare challenged workshop participants to always model leadership on Jesus’ model of servant leadership.

“Servant leadership as exercised by Jesus is where one is motivated by the needs and interests of others within the context of the Gospel message,” she said.

“As leaders, we need to be aware that we participate in the Mission of God. We don’t create our own. We all exercise leadership within the context of our call to God’s mission.”

Sr Clare said some features of servant leadership are that the vision should be aligned to the Gospel; there should be a capacity to listen to God, self and others; and there should be a willingness to trust and to delegate, believing in the capacity of others.”