My unit this past semester was on ‘Organisational Development’, a seemingly dry and dull topic.  I found it strangely enjoyable and challenging, but you are sworn to secrecy on that one.  We spent a lot of time looking at leadership and organisational relationships, and through that I became intrigued as to whether there is a biblical paradigm that can be used to shape culturally and contextually appropriate models of organisational relationships (including leadership).  The vast majority of material on biblical leadership that I read this past semester had unacknowledged Western undertones, cherry-picking Bible verses that suited the author’s preferred cultural approach to leadership.  I explored the idea of Imago Dei as a possibly appropriate paradigm for organisational  relationships across all cultures; Imago Dei being the Christian belief that humanity was created in the image of a Three-yet-One God.

So I attempted to bring four thoroughly disputed topics together – the Trinity, Imago Dei, leadership and community development – in one short paper, with nothing less than a solid dash of youthful optimism (being 30, I have only recently become a man by Jewish standards).  But my argument is fairly simple: if all people across all cultures have been crafted in the image of a relational, three-yet-one God, then perhaps Imago Dei may be a helpful paradigm for shaping culturally appropriate models of organisational relationship.  If your work involves organisational relationships of any kind (regardless of whether you work cross-culturally or not), this paper may be of interest to you.

As always, any critique or feedback would be helpful for me as I continue to consider what it looks like for me to serve in and with and through organisational relationships of various kinds across two very different cultures.

Have a read here: Imagining us as Imago Dei