Body, Building, and Family: New Testament Images of Organization

Abstract

In the two previous chapters a variety of images of leadership were presented. A wide range of images were used to portray the complexity of the leadership process. Each of these images contributes to the understanding of leadership, yet no one master image of leadership comprehensively captured the essence of leadership. The analysis of the images of leadership also showed that the images were not mutually exclusive. They shared common characteristics, and often the images spilled over to other images. Furthermore, each metaphor that was used only provided a limited description. These limitations led the writers to freely link and mix metaphors in an effort to address the deficiencies of one metaphor by drawing on the advantages of another (Banks, 1994). Indeed, biblical writers often nonchalantly confused metaphors and seem to have intentionally garbled the various metaphors they used (Minear, 2004).