Our Woman of the Week is Hollie Benton, nominated for her work as the Executive Director for the Orthodox Christian Leadership Initiative, where she leads the organization in nurturing servant leadership among clergy and laity throughout our jurisdictions. You see her here in some of her favorite downtime activities: kayaking, fishing, and contradancing. We asked her how she came to have that job:
"A seminary colleague, Dr. Ann Bezzerides who is the Director of the Office of Vocation & Ministry at Hellenic College Holy Cross, was my advocate to Charles Ajalat, the founder of the Orthodox Christian Leadership Initiative. I suppose with my background as a St. Vladimir’s Seminary graduate and a project manager in IT, the board felt I was suited to take on this meaningful work. I also had over ten years of working with the Orthodox Christian Fellowship at three university campuses and had developed a mentoring program to engage local parishioners with college students which is now taking better shape as MNTR – Mentoring and Nurturing Transformational Relationships. It’s a new program for parishes, college groups, schools, and other Christian organizations, to create opportunities for people to realize their unique place in the body of Christ, integrated through collaborative multi-generational ministry.
"When it comes to leading, my paradigm was shaped by growing up on a farm in a small rural community in southwest Idaho. When you see a job to do, like moving a pile of manure, and you’re standing there with a shovel, by golly, let’s start shoveling! Farmers are resourceful problem-solvers, and my dad, of blessed memory, was genius in the way he tried to adapt and work 'smarter not harder,' even though to this day he is still one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known. (One of his inventions I remember fondly is how he relieved us from hours and hours of shelling peas by drilling pea-sized holes in an old laundry drum. The peas would shake loose from the pods by tossing in the dryer without its heating element and fall through the holes into a chute attached to a bucket. The pigs and cows got the left-over pods.) Our family belonged to a small community with folks who really took care of each other, each stepping up with a sense of duty and responsibility, which is really what leadership is all about. If we wanted a school band, everyone had to practice an instrument. To have a volleyball team, everyone was recruited to play. If a house burned down, everyone pitched in to get the family back on their feet. As I look back on these formative years as a young leader, holding class offices and running extracurricular clubs and even attending a national Women As Leaders conference in Washington, DC, as the Idaho delegate my junior year in college, I see how it was easy to feel like a big fish because I was in such a small pond. But leadership isn’t about being the biggest fish in the pond so that others notice you and your impact; it’s about recognizing your duty and responsibility in any given situation, and then doing it for the well-being of the community.
"And this approach to leadership has been made even more clear as I took on this position within the Orthodox Christian Leadership Initiative. Early on, we partnered with St. Vladimir’s Seminary and many Orthodox biblical scholars, theologians, and lay professionals who have vast experience and training in leadership to collaborate on an intensive program in servant leadership. We call it Doulos, which is the Greek word for servant or slave. Doulos is used 127 times in the New Testament. Christ Jesus took on the form of a doulos and became obedient to death on a cross. (Phil 2:7-8) The Apostle Paul calls himself a doulos of Christ Jesus. (Rom. 1:1) When James and John sought to sit at the right and left sides of Jesus in his glory, Jesus reminded them that “Whoever would be first must be doulos of all.” (Mark 10:44) And it is our hope that on the last day, we may hear similar words like those spoken in Matthew 25, “Well done, good and faithful doulos.” In fact, every time we receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ unto the remission of sins and life everlasting, we receive it as a servant or slave (doulos-masc./doule-fem.) of God."
Axia!
Hollie Benton is our Woman of the Week, nominated for her work as Executive Director of the Orthodox Christian Leadership Initiative. You see her here at the latest OCLI conference at St. Vladimir's Seminary in September this year giving a talk as well as joining some of the participants at lunch. We asked her about how she sees leadership challenges among laity and clergy in the Church, especially now during the pandemic:
"Everyone is a slave to something. If you can name what you are afraid of, who or what angers you, what you desire, what keeps you up at night, what you’re avoiding – that is your master. By contrast, through Jesus, we are offered a yoke that is easy and a light burden (Matt 11:30), so why not trust and serve Him rather than be enslaved by worldly fears and our own egos? But sin is always crouching at the door (Gen. 4:7), so doulos leadership, framed by a life of repentance, requires that we keep submitting to this blessed duty and responsibility to serve the body of Christ of which we are members one of another. It takes encouragement and accountability within the body, so that’s why the Orthodox Christian Leadership Initiative is committed to growing in biblical literacy and accountability, cultivating watchfulness, leading as one under authority, caring for “the least of these,” and offering the “first fruits,” which are the servant leadership disciplines we explore in the Doulos program.
"The continued pandemic and political divisions are only revealing the many leadership challenges we face within the church. It’s tempting to think the problem of our parishes can be solved by finding the silver bullet to get more people to come to church or to keep our children from leaving. But why would these people want to join or stay in our church when the burn-out is palpable, egos divide the community, and meaningful change is resisted or moves at a snail’s pace? What’s worse, we don’t live what we proclaim through faith and trust in Jesus Christ by submitting to one another in love. The problem isn’t external – it isn’t really about getting people to join and keeping people from leaving. The problem is an internal one, and it’s locus is often in the parish leadership or parish council. Christian leadership must be rooted in repentance with commitment to hear, study, and do what the Lord through His written instruction is asking us to do. Show me a church where people are meaningfully engaged with life-long learning and are not burned-out, where decisions are made not by the power of majority rule but through consensus and submission to one another, where change is embraced for the well-being of the community, and I’ll bet people are flocking to attend and young people are actively participating in its thriving ministry.
"The Orthodox Christian Leadership Initiative doesn’t offer a silver bullet for leadership success, but we do aspire to support and encourage one another to lead as a servant, as Christ did, so that our parishes may flourish in the communities they serve."
We asked our Woman of the Week, Hollie Benton, as always, about her morning routine. You see her here at a local fair and with her husband and two daughters:
"The ironic thing about being a farmer’s daughter is that I’m not an early bird, even though many a morning I’ve risen to my dad’s wake-up call at the crack of dawn to irrigate, trap gophers, stack wood, or hoe the sugar beets. The only thing about my morning routine that compares to my childhood is that once I wake up, I hit the ground running. It only takes about 20 minutes to get out of bed, make it immediately, brush my hair and splash my face, start a French press while I pick a few raspberries to add to my homemade granola and yogurt, and listen to the news or my Bible app read aloud while I eat. I write down the most important three things to complete that day, which is governed by my top three weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly lists.
"I work from home, so if I don’t have a Zoom meeting right away, I’ll usually check in with my kids on WhatsApp since they’re studying abroad in the Netherlands and Spain. That’s also how we stay connected with our four former exchange students from Bosnia, Georgia, Serbia, and Spain. And when I go for my second cup of coffee, I typically do one Duolingo lesson in Spanish and check my fermenting foods, like sourdough, kefir, kombucha, and sauerkraut.
"If it’s a Wednesday morning, I’ll have coffee with my husband and we’ll check in on our marriage with a few intentional questions like, 'Is there anything I’ve done in the past week that may have unknowingly hurt you?' 'Do you feel you will need more connection or more alone time in the next few days?' I am really grateful for my husband, Rich. We met at seminary and he has a PhD in Old Testament, which is always fodder for interesting conversations. Marriage takes work, and we’ve found a great rhythm these 22 years."
Thank you, Hollie!