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Wondering Pilgrim

~ the ramblings of a perambulent and often distracted sojourner

Wondering Pilgrim

Tag Archives: community

Business, footy and change

21 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Personal

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Tags

community, Football, Fremantle Football Club, management, postaday2011

Foot australien

Image via Wikipedia

Since last Thursday, the airwaves in the world’s most isolated capital city have been abuzz with the goings on at the Fremantle Football Club, which fields the AFL Docker’s team. Somewhat abruptly, following a mediocre season plagued with player injury, the board sacked the popular senior coach. Community outrage from club members and the wider community was focused, not so much on the fact of the termination, but its manner. No one saw it coming. At a public end of year breakfast on the same day, the coach had outlined his plans for the new season. The president of the club sat alongside him. Hours later, the CEO gave the coach his marching orders, the new coach waiting in the wings.

Public acrimony against the board and its principals has been strident. The “loyalty” word has been prolific in lament. The coach had been seen as extremely and transparently faithful to both club and players through his strategic planning, challenge and support through stretching times. What price the club’s loyalty to him, the team and the fans?

Eventually besieged board representatives emerged and spoke of “the club’s best interests”, “management decisions”, “key performance indicators”  and “business is business.” Of course, none of this washes with a community of fans that doesn’t give a brass razoo about these things. They follow their footy for excitement, belonging, vicarious esprit de corps and glory in either defeat or victory. In their perception, the board had turned on its own and the blindsiding dismissal of a coach deemed to be as heroic as the best of his players was perceived as nothing short of betrayal.

And so is illustrated a clash of cultures in a sea of change. Uncertain and challenging times call for courageous responses.
Some say “We must manage this proactively and dispassionately , using best management principles. The data is in; cold, hard decisions are required. Decide and act!”
Others say, “We are on hard times. Now more than ever we must stick together and allow our community values of compassion, loyalty, mutual support and generosity to prevail.”

Dry management principles applied without modification to wet and messy but aspirational human community is a volatile mix. And it is repeated over and over again in sporting clubs, churches, community groups, schools – in short, anywhere people gather and organise.

The key to bypassing such explosive impasses is wise leadership that can hold the two in tension. and this also abounds (it just doesn’t make news that sells). Good leaders understand and participate in community. They also are able to apply management principles in a way that is collaborative with and respectful of the best human and community values. They do not hide behind popular management idiom and argot.

Will the Fremantle Football Club ultimately profit from this upheaval? Only time will tell. We are all on a steep learning curve.

-31.911079 115.772731

Creating Communities of Compassion and Hope

13 Friday May 2011

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Ministry, mission, Wembley Downs

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Tags

community, compassion, hope, postaday2011, ted

From a previous church camp at Landsdale Farm School

Our church is in camp this weekend. It’s our annual pilgrimage to Landsdale Farm School, a state education department residential facility about 20 minutes from home. We hang out, eat, converse and have fun. There are lots of animals to keep the kids enthralled and we have a couple of group sessions around a theme – hence the headline, inspired by a TED talk which I blogged on back in February.

We will explore creativity in relation to community, compassion and hope – looking to some of the most overlooked to assist us. We never come back from a church camp feeling we have not gained something in bonding, growth in maturity and understanding, and confidence in being who we are called to be.

“Avagoodweegend!” – ‘cos we’re going to!

-31.911079 115.772731

Compulsory Income Management

22 Monday Mar 2010

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in local politics, Ministry

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Tags

community, economy, justice, politics, poverty

This morning’s article in Eureka Street scratches an irritating itch. On behalf of my local church, I receive occasional calls to help out families on hard times. My training has me quickly assessing the level of need, its genuineness and the appropriate response. Often it’s the choice between organising a food parcel or accompanying the person to the supermarket and saying “OK – get what you need to the tune of $xx” I’m far more comfortable with the first option – I maintain control and I decide “what is good for the other.” The second option is scary. It’s “unprofessional”; I have ceded control; the person’s choices will most certainly not be my choices, they might even go over the limit I have set. Yet this is often the choice I take. Why? The person’s dignity and sense of self in these instances seems to be as equally important. I note that the local food bank we support also majors on the “dignity” principle as it provides refreshments and conversation to those who come to make up their food parcel. The Eureka Street article highlights the contrast between sound economic management in government offices and the human interface of welfare agencies that oppose compulsory income management on the very grounds I have mentioned.

In my local church setting, I have noticed our most stringent economic managers soften and bend and become most generous and self-giving when face-to-face with genuine human hardship. Perhaps the proposed implementation of a wider policy on compulsory income management might soften if administrators and policy makers spent more time on the front-line with welfare and community development workers.

-31.911079 115.772731

Christmas breaks in…

08 Monday Dec 2008

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Personal

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Advent, Christmas, community

christmas-party-2008_2008-12-07_0019_edited-1christmas-party-2008_2008-12-07_0057_edited-1… see what I mean? There’s kind of a Mexican stand-off between Advent and Christmas observance. We had our annual community Christmas party last night – barbecue followed by games and carol-singing.

 

I used the epilogue to tell a story about “the angel in a gum tree”, sneaking in a flog for the Christmas Bowl Appeal.

Maybe Advent and Christmas weren’t in conflict; maybe they kissed!

It all comes together in the end!

Demolition begins – what of the future?

30 Thursday Oct 2008

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Personal

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Tags

community, shops, silence, Wembley Downs

A strange silence has descended on this once thriving street. Once it was busy with cars and delivery trucks as well as pedestrian traffic – neighbours walking dogs, skateboarders, children buying after school snacks, “golden girls” meeting for coffee – now there’s nobody. Even an advocate of silence, like myself, finds the silence is too loud.

But this morning the stillness is broken. The crash and thump of demolition has begun. Soon the burnt out shopping precinct will be a piece of valuable vacant land. What then? How will it be redeveloped? Some fear it will be rezoned as residential. There are complications with the current commercial zoning as it is deemed that adjacent sites, some of which are public open space, should be acquired to maximise current shopping precinct needs and potential. Naturally, there is opposition to this idea. The planning and rebuilding process threatens to be a rough ride. If a good community consultation process is established, I’m sure some win-win solutions will be found.

A community laments, remembers and hopes

26 Sunday Oct 2008

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Personal

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

community, fire, hope, Wembley Downs




Photos courtesy Brian Hills  [click each to enlarge]

About 400 people gathered this afternoon to share in a process of community affirmation and support following the loss of the Wembley Downs Shopping Centre by fire seven days ago. A short simple ceremony invited each person to hold a rock and to imagine it absorbing sorrow through its heaviness, emanating thanks and memory through its warmth, and issuing hope as the crowd built a cairn under the remaining shopping centre signage. Chris Richards spoke on behalf of the owners expressing appreciation for community support and the desire to rebuild. Pharmacist Henry Gulev, for the tenants, thanked the community for expressions of care and concern.  Councillor Elizabeth Re, on behalf of the Mayor and the City of Stirling, assured council assistance in working through the issues related to the rebirth of the site, including community consultation. The crowd, comprising business owners, shop staff, residents and neighbours adjourned to the adjacent church courtyard for refreshments provided by Indiret Singh of IGA, several neighbours and the church. The Rebuild Wembley Downs neighbourhood initiative collected messages and contact details from those wishing to help. Today saw a community rite of passage that led from desolation to expressions of hope.

From the ashes the phoenix…

24 Friday Oct 2008

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Personal

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Tags

ashes, community, fire, phoenix, regeneration, Wembley Downs

 

The community is beginning to rally. There have been very positive expressions to the proposal outlined below and which is being distributed, as I write, throughout the district. Compassion for one another – neighbour for neighbour, customer for trader, trader for customer has been working it’s way through the community. The annual District Fair tomorrow will be a venue for much meeting and sharing, and Sunday’s event will cap it.

This weekend will see the beginning of a new chapter for our neighbourhood.

COMMMUNITY GATHERING
for an act of
HEALING and HOPE

this Sunday October 26

2.30 pm (Daylight Saving Time)

at the site of the Downs Shopping Centre.

Refreshments at Church of Christ hall after

Acknowledging loss
Expressing thanks
Building hope for the future

Enquiries 9245 2593

 

Burn after Reading: Review

19 Sunday Oct 2008

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in cinema, Uncategorized

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Tags

balck comedy, burn after reading, cinema, community, satire

Well, it’s a Coen Brothers production, and that generally means it will be different. I went along to this with heart in mouth because we had recommended it as a high school chaplaincy fund-raiser. Many of the people I was with were senior genteel church folk, and, since booking the theatre, intelligence was coming in on how unpalatable this cinematic experience was going to prove to be. 

Burn after Reading is a black comedy, a satire – typically disturbing because it holds a mirror up to the masses. The laughter one hears in the theattre is the nervous laughter of recognition. None of the characters (as opposed to actors) had any redeeming qualities. Each one was self-obsessed… even self-addicted. The plot, with its typical Coen inspired twists and turns, was, I felt secondary to the portrayal of truly awful characters. Relationships were meaningless and moments that promised warmth and empathy in relationship turned out to be means to narcisssistic ends. Some would have come away from the film asking “What was the point of it all?” I think this was the point. I came home from the film and was immediately confronted with the community drama happening in my own street. My own community was gathered there, shocked and seeking to comfort each other as the fire engulfed our local shopping centre. It was the opposite to the “anti-community” portrayal of the film.

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