Bishops roles in context

Studying, on S Cyprian’s Day, what bishops are for with colleagues, there’s a clear four fold pragmatic model emerging. Bishops seem to have four kinds of role:

• Priest — signifier — drawing people to a wider purpose in God, beyond themselves, mediating, feeding the good esate of the Christian community
  
  
• Prophet — disturber — raising expectancy, reframing perceptions, challenging assumptions
  
  
• Apostolic Leader — transformer — encouraging shifts in understanding and practice
  
  
• Theologian — reflector — attending to the moment, interpreting and applying in a bigger context
  

So far so good. I wondered, however, about the more than individual perspective on all this. Since I first came across them years ago when working on Edward White Benson’s biography of Cyprian, I have been very struck by these words of the North African 3rd Century saint:

Quam unitatem tenere firmiter et vindicare debemus maxime episcopi, qui in ecclesia praesidimus, ut episcopatum quoque ipsum unum atque indivisum probemus. Episcopatus unus est cuius a singulis in solidum pars tenetur
(Bishops who preside in Church should firmly to hold and assert this unity that we may also prove the episcopate one and undivided... The episcopate is one, of which each part is held by the individual for the whole)

For Benson this assertion expressed the purpose of episcopal minstry. What are the the gifts, qualities and habits that make someone a good steward of their share in something, the whole of which they bear on behalf of the whole, but locally?