Spirituality and Religious Leadership

Abstract

What are the qualities required for the leadership of a religious community? It hardly needs saying that what is especially required - along with competent overall, financial, and crisis management, insight into social and psychological factors, knowledge of the societal and ecclesiastical context of a community etc. - is pastoral competence to accompany the individual members of the community on their faith journey. This is especially the case when its members are confronted with sickness and death, processes of breakdown and vulnerability, or the challenges of new options of engagement and service. Leaders of religious communities, it seems, must first of all be competent to do things for others. They must have the ability to inspire their community by word and example in authentically interpreting and practicing the charism of the religious institution in question. They must be leaders on the spiritual journey which flows from the institution’s foundational charism and is mapped out in its rule and constitutions. They must create a religious context such that all the members of the community can make their own journey within it.