Synchroblog on leadership

Today we are having a Synchroblog on leadership -- a group of (mostly) Christian bloggers around the world are blogging on their thoughts on leadership, and what leadership means.

• Jonathan Brink - Letter To The President
• Adam Gonnerman - Aspiring to the Episcopate
• Kai - Leadership - Is Servant Leadership a Broken Model?
• Sally Coleman - In the world but not of it- servant leadership for the 21st Century Church
• Alan Knox - Submission is given not taken
• Joe Miller - Elders Lead a Healthy Family: The Future
• Cobus van Wyngaard - Empowering leadership
• Steve Hayes - Servant leadership
• Geoff Matheson - Leadership
• John Smulo - Australian Leadership Lessons
• Helen Mildenhall - Leadership
• Tyler Savage - Moral Leadership - Is it what we need?
• Bryan Riley - Leading is to Listen and Obey
• Susan Barnes - Give someone else a turn!
• Liz Dyer - A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Polls…
• Lionel Woods - Why Diverse Leadership is Good for America
• Julie Clawson - Leadership Expectations
• Ellen Haroutunian - A New Kind Of Leadership
• Matt Stone - Converting Leadership

There is quite a variety among the posts, but also some common points. Some have focused on political leaders (it is the American general election today), and others have focused on church leaders, and some have compared and contrasted them.

My own contribution is on Servant leadership.

One of the most interesting ones, in the light of the US general election, is John Smulo's blog. In his actual synchroblog post he compares Australian and American styles of leadership, but immediately preceding it is a poll, in which he asks readers to indicate which way they will vote in the US general election.

He has two polls, one for Americans, and one for non-Americans -- the latter are asked to say which way they would vote if they were Americans.

Since John Smulo's blog is a Christian one, and most of his readers are presumably Christian, it shows an interesting difference between American Christians and Christians in the rest of the world, at least at the time of writing.

American Christians are split equally between the two main parties - 32% say they will vote for the Democrats, 32% for the Republicans, a few Libertarians and a few more "other".

Non-Americans show a very different pattern. None (so far) support the Republicans. It's 72.7 Democrat and 27.3% Green.

Perhaps that pattern will change as more people vote, but it seems to have important missional implications. American missionaries often travel to other parts of the world, but often do not realise quite how much the culture of other people, including that of other Christians, differs from theirs.

People in other countries, however, often have a better perception of American thinking, because American news media are all pervasive, and propagate the American worldview to most parts of the world. But even if people are aware of that worldview, they don't always accept it, as John's poll seems to show. Of course it's still a very small sample, but it will be interesting to see how it changes as more people vote.