Catching up on posts

I love getting back from a few days away from the internet. It's so exciting to get to read multiple new posts on my favorite blogs. There were two posts that really touched me and made tears come to my eyes (not good - this is a computer lab, for goodness' sake). One was good tears, the other hurt tears.

The good one: Real Live Preacher's Essay Big Numbers and Little Girls

The sad one: The comments to Bobbie's Emerging Sideways post about, well, I suppose the lack of understanding in some emergent leadership. It's fascinating. I'd love to be able to use it for my gender, feminism and development class. It starts with a few different women commenting and agreeing with Bobbie's hurt, you can really sense the emotional emphathy. Then, enter a few dominant male leadership types, bringing a sort of black and white defense of their position. Then the women come back in and try to knit all the voices together and get everyone to some sort of consensus.

It made me sad, because I've felt that male leadership dominance that claims to be completely open to women in leadership, yet really sticks to the traditional leadership roles that exclude women. One thing I found really interesting, when I checked out the sites of the men who were being criticized and were criticizing back, they could have been written by any of the pastors / leaders I've known over the years. It's that one 'type' that rises to the top in the business world and the church as well.

On Pagitt's site, he has the same personality test results that I have on mine. The Enneagram. He's a type 8: a Challenger."The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational" I'm a type 5: an Investigator. "The Intense, Cerebral Type: Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated." There's no competition there. Obviously, there would have to be a commpletely new understanding of what 'leadership' in the emergent church looks like, if there were ever to be a place for a female type 5, instead of being ruled by the type 8 males.

That's my two cents. Let it be said that I really know nothing, know none of these people, and don't think through my opinions before I write them. Disclaimer!