I am presently reading Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky.  It, along with Samuel Wells’ Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics, are required reading for Duke University’s Foundations of Christian Leadership program.  I will return at the end of this month to the Avila Retreat Center in Durham, North Carolina for the second of three one-week intensives.  But, before I return, I am to complete the two books and two reflection papers.  I must admit that I am further along in this post than I am in the two reflection papers.

Tonight, I completed Part One of the three sections of the book.  Part One, titled “The Challenge,” was of particular interest as I learned the difference between an adaptive challenge and a technical problem.  The authors write,

“Everyday, people have problems for which they do, in fact, have the necessary know- how and procedures.  We call these technical problems.  But there is a whole host of problems that are not amenable to authoritative expertise or standard operating procedures.  They cannot be solved by someone who provides answers from on high.  We call these adaptive challenges because they require experiments, new discoveries, and adjustments from numerous places in the organization or community… What makes the problem is not that it is trivial; but simply that its solution already lies within the organization’s repertoire.  In contrast, adaptive pressures force the organization to change, lest it decline” (Heifetz & Marty 13, 18).

It seems that none of us are an authority on race; neither do we appear to be experts as we are seemingly unable to solve the problem of race.  Instead, we pass it down to the next generation.  Race would then be an adaptive challenge as it will require a breaking away from social traditions to discover new relationships across cultures and to reorder society without the support or influence of race, prejudice or stereotypes.  It is not a change that is supported by neither can it be found in our current hierarchical and capitalistic system.  And unless we change, human relationships will continue to decline.

But, as the title implies, I now realize that there is a danger in leading persons away from race.  The race-less life can prove difficult as persons will incur loss and the change will challenge the person’s sense of social competence (Heifetz & Marty 27).  To ask persons to give up their knowledge of race, the experiences associated/attributed to race, their values concerning race that were learned in relationship with those they love and trust and to engage in something for which there is no model or precedence is dangerous.  I have no superior knowledge or faith.  I simply believe what the Bible tells me: “Here, there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3.11).  I simply want to adapt my life and the lives of others to this truth.