Simon Says ...

     1. The BNP no longer have any MEPs Halleluia! But with far right gains across Europe, there is still much pause for thought.      2. Nearly 2/3s of the electorate didn't vote This is the really troubling factor.  In both the local and the European elections, most people didn't bother to show up and vote.  Voting is a right that was hard won, but which now seems an irrelevance to most people.  This is not a sudden phenomenon, unique to these elections.  It will need patient, long-term hard work to re-engage people with politics.  Unless and until this work is done, politics is dangerously becoming a minority sport.      3. The European Parliament has a democratic deficit I am instinctively pro-European, I believe in working with others.  I am a reasonably intelligent and fairly well-informed person.  But I still don't know how the European Parliament works, nor what it's real...

Review of Mike Bonem and Roger Patterson, Leading from the Second Chair: Serving your Church, Fulfilling your Role, and Realizing your Dreams (Jossey-Bass, 2005). I had heard much about this book before I read it, and it did not disappoint.   This is a common sense and helpful approach to being a leader when you are not in the position of power and control in an institution.   As an account of leadership, it recognises the leadership of an individual, is responsible in terms of the needs of the organisation and intentional in helping people to own what they are doing.   As a second chair leader in two different roles within the Church, and as a former first chair leader, I found this helpful.   As someone responsible for the development of clergy, I will often turn to this as a resource. Bonem and Patterson organise their reflections around three paradoxes.   Each reflects some of the tension of being a leader but not being i...