As One With Authority: Reflective Leadership in Ministry

Congregations today face both old and often new, unprecedented challenges--spiritual, moral, technological, and economic--for which there are no easy solutions. Facing such challenges calls for pastors able to lead with authority in ways at the same time faithful to the gospel and appropriate to the congregation’s setting and the issues at hand. Yet many pastors are unsure of their authority, often experiencing conflict as they attempt to lead. Others have abused their authority and brought mistrust and suspicion to ordained ministry, making it difficult for other clergy to lead. In this book, a new and revised edition of his earlier, highly regarded work on pastoral authority and leadership, Jackson Carroll brings together theological and sociological perspectives to provide an interpretation of pastoral authority as reflective leadership, a style of leadership that involves vision and discernment, and that is appropriate for the many roles in which pastors engage--preaching, worship leadership, teaching, counseling, and shaping the congregation’s corporate life. In this new edition Carroll draws on what he has learned from many conversations with pastors and lay leaders since the book’s initial publication as well as insights from others. He also introduces helpful new case material from practicing pastors and incorporates the perspectives of several recent leadership theorists and practitioners to deepen and enhance the discussion of pastoral authority as reflective leadership.

Jackson W. Carroll is the Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Jr. Professor Emeritus of Religion and Society at Duke University Divinity School, where he also was project director of Pulpit & Pew: Research on Pastoral Leadership. An ordained United Methodist minister, he has most recently authored God’s Potters: Pastoral Leadership and the Shaping of Congregations (2006). He has also written extensively on pastoral ministry and congregations, including Mainline to the Future: Congregations for the 21st Century (2000).