spiritual leadership development

jordon cooper brought to my attention a good post by AKMA on the potential limits of academic instruction and e-learning for the development of spiritual leaders. Using e-learning as if it were realtime institutional instruction is a common mistake made whenever new technology is implemented: there is the tendency to utilize new technology using old paradigms of execution. This, of course, fails to take into account the new functionalities and/or flexibilities of the emerging technology.

I've had similar concerns when I've seen org's offer e-learning at institutionalized facetime instruction rates. I see e-learning working best in spiritual leadership development when it cheaply works in tandem with a local facetime-intensive, relationally-oriented spiritual formation strategy. e-learning can augment these local efforts by providing information and by providing both delayed-email and realtime-chat distance interaction opportunities. In some instances, of course, where local relationships are not available, e-learning can take a larger role, but this isn't optimal. And I mention information because while currently deployed strategies for leadership formation seem to regard information transfer as the omnicompetent modality of spiritual transformation, that excess doesn't nullify the critical need for information.