Diversity and web leadership

Here I am again reading The Web of Women's Leadership. I will admit that I am enjoying this book more than I was the last and I find myself excited about digging into this book.
This week the section I read was based on diversity and how it plays into web leadership. For me, I was excited to read this section, diversity is something I find important for both the church and it's leaders. Let's dig in shall we?

"Diversity, we believe is not about numbers nor is it a politically correct buzzword; it is a state of being, an attitude and a way of life."
Amen. What often frustrates me is that people tend to think that diversity is only race related. Diversity has many more levels than this. Diversity can be as simple as way of thinking, the background you were raised in, or the political party which you affiliate yourself. What I feel we often have a hard time admitting to ourselves is that we are not diverse as we could be. I admit this right now about myself, I could try harder to be diverse.

One of the barriers to diversity that is mentioned in the book, is that people are afraid of encountering "otherness". I stopped when I read this thought and began to think about how this effected my life, how this effected me as a leader and how the church is effected by the fear of other. I understand that often we are all afraid of being uncomfortable. Lets face it, no one really likes to feel awkward and uncomfortable. But what if experiencing otherness was no longer seen as uncomfortable, what if instead it was seen as normal. For me I think part of this would be to learn how to enjoy people's uniqueness on a new level. If we remind ourselves that we are all unique children of God, we would always be in situations where we are meeting someone who is different than we are. Of course there would be varying degrees of difference, but there would always be difference.

Another barrier talked about in this chapter is the idea of ranking people to create a system of people who are better than others. I sadly admit that there are ministry situations that I have been in that this is the case, I have been ranked at both ends of the spectrum in various places I have been. However, I am delighted to find this is not at all the case at this church. As I have been committee hopping I have realized that there are a lot of really talented people in the congregation who are very diverse. I have enjoyed meeting different people and seeing how the diverse talents represented in the congregation bring out the richness of the Kingdom of God.

So, where does leadership and diversity meet? Leaders are often looked at the foster diversity, yet, can a leader really foster diversity if there is no diversity represented in the leadership? I believe that our congregation is blessed to have two pastors who are diverse from one another. Yet, there are churches that have no diversity represented in leadership. While I will admit it is harder to work with someone you are different from than it is to work with someone you think just like, it is still necessary to foster a community that values diversity. The first place a congregation looks to see how to respond to diversity are their leaders. If diversity is not valued AND represented in the leadership present, it will simply not be a value of the congregation. When web leadership is present instead of hierarchy there is less risk of putting people in classes, stereotypes or the like. Instead, there is a even playing ground where diversity is organically grown.

Overall, I find that often we as the Church try to strive for diversity in narrow ways. i.e. race, age, gender. While these are all good ways to find diversity, we must not overlook the ways in which we are already diverse, and celebrate them to their fullest!