On each Sunday in Lent I have been speaking about the life of the parish. I began with the place of Children at Communion, on the next Sunday I said something about Small Groups and last week the topic was Evangelism. You'll find these sermons on the website.

Today we are to commission our churchwardens, the members of our parish council, our parish nominators and our synod representatives and so I would like to explore the idea of Leadership. The rule book of the Diocese tells us that we must have churchwardens and that we can have a parish council. It sets out the tasks which our elected leaders are to carry out, mostly to do with administration and with money, and these tasks are important. It also tells us that our parish council is part of the spiritual leadership of the church. (Church Administration Ordinance 1990, 28 (1) (d)). Our parish also has other groups to lead the work of the parish, Committees to lead such ministries as the Friendship Group, and groups to lead in the ministry of the Liturgy and to build the ministry of Natural Church Development.

For leadership to be effective, we need to understand how leaders lead. There are many different styles of leadership and all of them have their good points and weaknesses. Very early in its history, the church copied the leadership patterns of world wide empire, the Roman Empire, and this worked very well. As human society changed, the church changed, too. At the time of the Reformation, many churches, such as the Anglican Church, took up a model of a national church and copied the Kings and Princes of the time with their Parliaments. More recently, some churches looked towards a more democratic model, such as the Uniting Church, which replaced bishops with elected committees. Our own church, the Anglican Church of Australia, reflects this history. We have a fine old muddle of imperial, national and democratic models of leadership, and surprisingly, it almost seems to work.

But for this parish, I have a model of leadership which I would like to encourage. It is the model that we see in today's gospel. You will have to read your Bibles for the whole story, we left parts of it out so it would fit in the pew bulletin. The story is this. Jesus and his disciples came across a man blind from birth. In those days blindness was seen as a punishment from God, so this man would have been regarded as a evil person punished by God, an outcast. Jesus' disciples asked him, "Whose wickedness is God punishing?" Jesus answered, "No one sinned, but God can use his blindness to show God's glory to the world." And Jesus healed the man with mud spread on his eyes. The man was cured of his physical blindness and also his spiritual blindness, for Jesus declared, "I am the light of the world." The man saw the light of day and also the light of the world, Jesus.

Jesus' model of leadership is not to take power and glory for himself; he resisted that temptation when the devil tempted him in the wilderness. What Jesus does is to give power to others. The man born blind is set free to begin a new life. He is no longer a blind beggar, cursed by God, he becomes a minister of God's glory, blessed by God in Jesus Christ himself.

The man recognises Jesus as one sent by God, and himself becomes one sent by God - John gives us a clue by saying that the name of the pool, Siloam, means "sent". Jesus, the leader sent by God, sends this man to lead as well.

The man who was born blind becomes a leader not because he can tell others what to do, he becomes a leader because of the light that now fills him. Even the Pharisees are impressed. Their style of leadership was to control people through the Law of Moses. "Obey the Law," they said, "or suffer the curse of God." Many people were afraid of them, including the man's parents, but not the man himself, for he was empowered by the light of Christ. He spoke up boldly; the Pharisees refused to listen, and drove him out of the Temple. It is hard for those who like to be in control to allow others to have any leadership. Jesus, on the other hand, when he found the man again, blessed him and affirmed his faith. The man said, "Lord, I believe." and he worshipped Jesus.

It is this sort of empowering leadership that I want to see growing in this parish. Thanks be to God that there are people who are ready to be leaders. Thanks be to God that we are able to commission them today. It is true that we need another warden, but that is no problem for God or for us. In fact, it is an opportunity, maybe, for the Glory of God to be revealed. We can pray that God, who opened the blind man's eyes, will open our eyes, too, to see one whom God might send to be our warden.

After the hymn we come to the commissioning. The wardens, councillors, nominators and synod reps are to serve under the Acts Ordinances and Regulations of the Diocese, but they are also to serve under the example and witness of Christ, to equip God's people for the work of the gospel in this place, to build up the body of Christ, which is the church, and to raise up other leaders so that every one of us will have our eyes opened to the gifts we have, the possibilities for ministry that God sets before us, and the wisdom and will to make best use of them.