Building the New City
Leadership Lessons for Social Entrepreneurs
{11/18/2017] This reflection on leadership is an adaptation of remarks I first gave at “A Farewell for Paul Schroeder” held on December 21, 2016 at Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Portland, Oregon.
Paul Schroeder is a social entrepreneur and spiritual teacher who was the founder of New City Initiative in Portland, Oregon, an organization that was dedicated to helping people who experience homelessness to achieve their full human potential. Paul has relocated to the Minneapolis area. He is also the author and translator of St. Basil the Great: On Social Justice.
At the farewell I identified six lessons for leaders that I observed in Paul's work with the New City Initiative. While this program has ceased to operate as a non-profit, the leadership lessons remain for social entrepreneurs.
1. A scalable vision for the city: First you have given us the gift of a bold and compelling vision for community. This is a vision that can be scaled up to embrace whole city or scaled down to the way a small group of people come together in the sacred act of discovering one another.
2. The priority of relationships: This scalable vision leads to a second gift: you have reminded us that in the end it is not about creating new programs but that it is by forging new relationships that we will build the new city.
3. Leaving our comfort zone: Third, you have taught many of us through days of awareness, through the stories you have told, and in so many other ways that we must learn to leave behind our comfort zones, because the most lasting change in the world can only come as we offer the gift of being fully present to others in the places where they dwell.
4. Practices lead to presence: This brings us to a fourth gift: you shared with us concrete practices that as we incorporate them into our lives we can indeed be present to those we meet in every sphere of life—those we encounter on the streets or in the shelters of the city or those we see daily at home or in the workplace.
5. Empathy moves us to action: Fifth, you have inspired us to see that true empathy for others always leads to concrete action so that no matter how large the social and community challenges that we are facing there is always a significant action we can take.
6. The power of imagination: You have shown us, finally, to look for what it means to bring the gift of an active and creative imagination to the work that we are called to do. You have always taken us to the growing edge, to the challenge of new questions, ever seeking fresh and vital ways of building the beloved community.
