The vocation is integral to the community. Because leadership is a function of the community, the vocation of the leader is rooted in the vocation of the community. Leadership is a necessity that communities require in order to accomplish their vocation. The literature I have seen on leadership focuses a great deal on the attributes, skills, and characteristics of leaders. While I am sure all leaders have attributes and skills, I think we need to give much more attention to the vocation of the community and the community s responsibility for nurturing leaders, as well as its responsibility to function as a lead-able ensemble.
Presidential effectiveness is seen in terms of the community s accomplishments.
Understanding that leadership is rooted in the community s calling requires a greater commitment to evaluating presidential efforts in terms of the accomplishment of the community s vocational purpose. This would be a very different way of understanding presidential success. It was a successful presidency. These announcements don t say much about whether the president helped the school accomplish its vocation. Because of President Nowhere s leadership, the school greatly increased its ability to educate persons so that graduates are providing more pastorally skilled, theologically informed leadership for their congregations.