DAI launches Latin America Website
February 24th, 2010
AID Latinoamérica
On February 8th, DAI launched a new website, la.daintl.org, focused on leadership development in Latin America. The new site features information in Spanish designed specifically for the DAI audience in Latin America. Senior Consultant for Latin America, David Johnson, has high hopes for the new site:
“If studies on the growth of Internet use in Latin America as noted in both the Miami Herald and the New York times in 2009 are anywhere near accurate, then the launch of the Spanish DAI website in January of 2010 is none too early. An on-line Spanish presence is key to giving interested parties quick and easy access to information about DAI and an understanding how those tools might benefit their own ministries. My prayer is that this site will broaden the awareness of tools available to organizations and individuals in the Christian Hispanic community throughout the region and that the Lord would use DAI to impact and strengthen the fast growing Latin American church in its global role of furthering God’s kingdom.”
Please pray for the effectiveness of this new website as DAI works to grow kingdom leaders in Latin America.
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DAI Video: What if?
January 15th, 2010
Be sure to check out DAI’s newest video: What if?
Tags: dai, Development Associates International, Leadership, video
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Measuring Impact in a Leper Colony
December 2nd, 2009
I was in a meeting last week of several important players in the world of Christian leadership development in the US. We spent a good bit of our time discussing how best to evaluate what we do.
One afternoon the discussions focused on what is “measurable”. We all agreed that it is relatively easy to measure whether or not a leader comprehends the material being taught. We agreed that in most cases it is possible to measure whether what was taught changed his/her life. In fact most of us agreed that it is even possible to measure whether or not it impacted how she/he does ministry. But, that is where the consensus ended because the next level of measurement is whether or not you can evaluate if this makes any difference within the local community. The idea some of us had, is that this is really the ultimate goal—changed communities that is—and most folks seemed to think that wasn’t really possible to measure.
While I can appreciate that sentiment, and arguably agree that many times it may not be possible to measure impact on the community, I was totally intrigued to receive the following report this week from one woman involved in DAI programs in North East India. Let’s call her Leah. Leah is the wife of a pastor, working among the very poor in their city. Unfortunately Leah’s husband had to leave the community to go to another large city to get work, leaving the congregation in Leah’s care.
With great excitement, Leah came to one of the DAI staff recently to report how moved she was by a recent DAI program about God’s heart for the poor and so encouraged by the sharing in the group about practical ways to live that out. As a result, she challenged her congregation to not celebrate Christmas the local traditional way, with a “love feast” on Christmas day for the church members, but to reach out to the children in a nearby leprosy colony that have been neglected by the government and social services.
Leah and her small congregation have decided rather than celebrating for themselves this Christmas, to sacrificially do something for those who rarely even have good food to eat. They are all contributing from the little they have and stepping out in faith to cook a full rice meal with meat (that’s a luxury!) for the 66 families in the leper colony, and eat it together with them. She said, “I want to personally touch and hug each of them so they know they are not outcastes, and give them tasty food.” Her young people are also preparing a program for the children, and hope to have games and give prizes and a small gift to each child.
Remember the question being debated earlier? Can you measure outcomes in a community due to a local Christian leader growing through a DAI program? While there will be times when this is not possible, I think it will be easy to do exactly that in a leper colony in North East India this Christmas!
Jane Overstreet is the President and CEO of Development Associates International.
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Free Paul Borthwick audio on iTunes
October 15th, 2009
iTunes U, a free area of the iTunes music store, houses audio from a number of colleges and universities across the country. DAI staff member Paul Borthwick has three of his chapel talks available via iTunes U. Clicking the links below will open iTunes and take you to a page where you can download these talks for free.
Paul at Olivet Nazarene University, 2007
Paul at Olivet Nazarene University, 2006
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Lausanne Partnership with Christianity Today International
October 5th, 2009
The Lausanne Movement and Christianity Today International are partnering to start the conversation in advance of the 2010 meeting of The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. In a recent communication, Christianity Today Editor-in-Chief David Neff wrote:
The idea began as a series of magazine articles that (by nature of CTI’s cultural location) would start pre-Cape Town discussion primarily in North America. But as the Lausanne and CTI teams began to discuss the possibilities, it turned into a much more ambitious project that will not only take advantage of CTI’s print magazine and website, but will interactively coordinate comments on CTI and Lausanne web pages, produce relevant videos, publish online responses from Christian leaders, and distribute advance copy of the main essays and responses to over 60 Christian publications outside North America.
The conversation has already started with DAI UK board member Dr. Christopher J.H. Wright and his article Whole Gospel, Whole Church, Whole World. We invite you to read Dr. Wright’s article and join the conversation as we move toward this important event.
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Worth the Wait
September 21st, 2009
A version of this article appeared in The Herald of India.
When I was a boy every Saturday my father would take us to pick up our order at ‘Ming’s Takeaway’ for our family’s weekly Chinese meal. This was by far my favorite time of the week. During the weekdays I would day dream during about the taste of the succulent sweet and sour chicken in my mouth or try to recall the savory aroma of bamboo shoot pork in spicy garlic sauce.
On Sundays just the thought of next Saturday’s mandarin treat brought joy to my heart. On Wednesday it was only three days till ‘Chinese food day’ and I could almost smell the food. Come Saturday the anticipation had risen to such a level that when the food actual came I would wolf it down in such haste that it made me sick. Saturday night, a pot-bellied (and nauseous) six year old, I was ready to brace the week ahead only through the hope of next week’s feast.
Enjoyment and anticipation are regular bedfellows. The process of longing increases the excitement of any experience. For the younger generation technology and a consumer culture geared toward instant gratification have shortened and deconstructed the waiting periods in our lives. We have less and less in life to anticipate and consequently, less joy. According to the United States Postal Service, ‘slow post’ this year has seen the largest deceleration in its 234 year history. Our split second e-mails have made such services, in many ways, obsolete. For our generation, posting a personal letter is now seen as creative and nostalgic means of communication; like listening to an old cassette tape. No longer are we running to investigate the postman’s bundle, rather we are anxiously waiting for the 40 seconds that our computer needs to boot-up so we can check our inbox. In a couple of decades, we have gone from waiting weeks to waiting seconds.
Along with e-mail the internet has made the distribution of knowledge free and fast. Forget the stroll to library in order to look through an NFL knowledge book to find when Bret Favre’s birthday is (these days he needs all the celebrations he can get) I just found out in a few seconds- it’s October 10. Walks to the library for information aren’t the only things going out of business. As I write Google is digitizing hundreds of thousands of books creating a massive online book and reference system which many have coined ‘The Library of Babel’; traditional libraries will soon be unnecessary.
Since all and any information is now literally at our fingertips, perhaps the only true out-of-reach knowledge will reside in the questions created by the common domestic dispute (which, unfortunately, won’t ever go away) such as “Why can’t you understand me?” or “How many times do I have to tell you not to do that?”. But generally, the waiting time for knowledge has evaporated.
It’s not only technology which has made things instant. Our whole consumer culture is bent of delivering us services in the blink of an eye. Take fast food for example. The McDonald’s company measurement for food serving times is done in seconds not minutes. Some McDonald’s can dish out a McChicken Burger in an average of 27 seconds.
Fast, instant and plentiful information and consumption have made us spend more time fulfilling our desires and less time waiting for our desires to be fulfilled. We’ve skipped one of the main players in the equation: waiting. No wonder all the surveys show that we are actually less content and less happy in our new accelerated lifestyles.
In many ways our various Christian cultures have bought into this lifestyle. ‘Hallmark’ Christianity, where our biblical exposition and devotion becomes a series of nice bible quotes (such as Jeremiah 29:11), is not a true or complete expressions of faith. It is so easy to hold onto God’s good blessings but to completely miss both the liabilities and the beauties that come through living out one’s faith. Like spending half a minute to order and eat fast food, we skip the daily and ongoing process of a relationship with Christ and munch directly down on God’s juicy promises. This leads to hollow and discontented faith. Our hearts are pre-programmed to savor and enjoy the waiting in relationship.
I am currently engaged to a beautiful and godly woman. I will not see her until our marriage in four months and, although difficult, there is something both blessed and good in this time of waiting and preparing. In the same way the Church (the bride) longs for and anticipates Christ’s (the groom) return. This is one of the main meta-narratives of the Christian faith. We are preparing ourselves for the return of the Messiah, a practice of waiting, anticipating and growing in relationship. Philippians 3:20 notes: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ”. My suggestion is that we try to savor more the process in our walk of faith. That we not look for fleeting gratifications or sound bite theology but rather find hope and joy in the wait for the return of the king.
So next time you eat fast food…choose the longest line.
—
Jonathan Abraham is the Issachar Initiative Coordinator for Development Associates International.
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Ethnicity and Discipleship
August 19th, 2009
Interactions with Christian leaders over the last several years in Nigeria, Eastern Europe, and India, have provoked my thinking about issues of race and ethnicity. As I hear stories of Christian ministry in these diverse places, I wonder where racial reconciliation and inter-ethnic peace-making fit in our ideas about “making disciples.” We’re convinced that Jesus’ Commission sends us to make disciples of “all ethnicities”, but I fear that we’re not very clear on the implications of being a disciple on the way we view “others” – especially if a believer has come from a context of ethnocentrism. Where does ethnicity fit as it relates to being a follower of Jesus Christ?
History and the daily news remind us of this tension – whether we’re talking about recent racial incidents involving the police in Cambridge, MA or we’re studying the genocide in the 90’s in Rwanda and Burundi.
Consider three questions, questions that we all must deal with if we desire to build towards that great multi-cultural, multi-ethnic worship service of people reconciled to God and to each other that the Apostle John described.1
How much does our disciple-making need to wrestle with history? On a trip to Bosnia, our host explained that the Serbian aggression in 1989 towards the Muslims was related to an event in 1389. The 600th anniversary had stirred Serbian nationalism. As I heard this story, I thought to myself, “How can someone like me from the USA – whose entire national history is about 1/3 as long as this – teach a Serb to follow Jesus and love those he’s been historically indoctrinated to hate? How does Christian discipleship help people deal with “the leftover debris of their national pasts?”2
Those of us who come from Anglo culture in the USA think little about the past; witness how seldom we who are white want to deal with the lingering issues of slavery or racism or the “ethnic cleansing” of the First Nations Peoples centuries ago. Until we start wrestling with our respective and our collective histories, we won’t really know how to address the historical hostilities we find elsewhere.
History as well can urge us on to greater resolve to preach reconciliation. In light of the fantastic progress of Pentecostalism in the world, I’ve often reminded leaders of their own teaching on the “signs” of the Holy Spirit. William Seymour, key figure in the Azusa Street revivals that precipitated the modern Pentecostal movement, “came to believe that the truest sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit was not speaking in tongues but the demise of racial barriers between Christians.”3
What does it mean to be “one new person” (Ephesians 2)? At the theological foundation of our uncertainty of the relationship of disciple making and ethnicity lies this passage in Ephesians where Paul describes the church as the place where God makes “one new man” out of two ethnically different people. Perhaps we only get people “partially converted” so that they become a saved member of their ethnic specific group, but they never proceed to the point of being made into something totally new – to the point of seeing others who are different as fellow family members in God’s household.
William Barclay’s commentary on the passage sheds light on the “new” idea:
“The word that Paul uses here is kainos; he says that Jesus brings together Jew and Gentile and from them both produces one new kind of person. This is very interesting and very significant; it is not that Jesus makes all the Jews into Gentiles, or all the Gentiles into Jews; he produces a new kind of person out of both, although they remain Gentiles and Jews. Chrysostom, famous preacher of the early Church, says that it is as if one should melt down a statue of silver and a statue of lead, and the two should come out gold.”
What does this new person look like?
What is the role of remembering versus forgetting? In Mostar, Herzegovina, a sign is painted on the Muslim side of the city. It simply reads, “Don’t forget.” The older Muslims don’t want the younger ones to forget the atrocities committed against the by Orthodox Serbs and later Catholic Croats. But if there is no forgiveness and forgetting, the peace between peoples will be at best very tentative. Rather than peace, it will be, in the words of one writer, nothing more than “hatred that is sleeping.”
Miroslav Volf, himself a Croat who suffered under Serbian aggression, wrestles with this role of remembering in order to forgive and move on. He illustrates the goal we are after through the Old Testament character Joseph. Volf writes:
“In the well-known story in the book of Genesis, Joseph was ready to undertake the difficult journey of reconciliation with his brothers who sold him into slavery because, as he put it, ‘God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house’ (41:51). Before coming to an end, the journey of reconciliation entailed a good deal of remembering, however. Joseph himself was reminded of the suffering his brothers had caused, and subtly but powerfully he made them remember it too (42:21-23; 44:27ff.). Yet, like the distant light of a place called home, the divine gift of forgetting what he still remembered – ‘backgrounding’ the memory might be the right term – guided the whole journey of return. Wanting to insure that the precious gift be lost neither on him nor on his posterity, Joseph inscribed it into the name of his son, Manasseh – ‘one who causes to be forgotten.’ A paradoxical memorial to forgetting (how can one be reminded to forget without being reminded of what one should forget?), Manasseh’s presence recalled the suffering in order to draw attention to the loss of its memory. It is this strange forgetting, still interspersed with indispensable remembering, that made Joseph, the victim, able to embrace his brothers, the perpetrators (45:14-15) – and become theirs and his own savior (46:1ff).4
Paul Borthwick serves on the staff of Development Associates International, a training group dedicated to the character and ministry development of leaders in the under-resourced world. Paul teaches missions at Gordon College and serves as an Urbana/Missions Associate with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.
Footnotes:
1. Revelation 5:9 and 7:9
2. Donald Schriver, An Ethic For Enemies p. 7.
3. Quoted in Stephen A. Rhodes, Where the Nations Meet: The Church in a Multicultural World, p. 75, and also noted by Harvey Cox in Fire From Heaven, p. 63.
4. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Oneness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), p. 139.
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Early feedback on Lausanne Leadership Survey
July 22nd, 2009
Comments are coming in regarding the Leadership Survey DAI President Jane Overstreet administered for the Lausanne Movement’s Leadership Working Group.
Your draft is a helpful contribution as we advance the cause of Christ-like leadership formation. Keep it up, Jane!
J. Paul Landrey, International Director, TOPIC, www.topic.us
Jane’s paper is excellent. I like her definitional work, her repeated use of good questions and the richness that comes from the survey. Clearly the survey was well designed and Jane’s analysis of it is very well done.
David Kornfield, MAPI Founder and Brazilian National Coordinator
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Leadership Survey being prepared for Lausanne 2010 Congress
July 7th, 2009
The Leadership Working Group for the Lausanne Movement met last month in Seoul, Korea along with many others, to plan for the 2010 Lausanne Congress. The topic was a paper titled Defining Christ-like Leadership and Describing Best Practices in Leadership Development submitted by DAI President Jane Overstreet. The paper is based on a 2008 leadership study completed by more than 1000 Christian leaders in 5 languages.
The research reveals a great deal about the current state of leadership in the global body of Christ, shedding light on the shape of Christ-like leadership, why leaders fail, and how to better prepare leaders for their calling. Among other things, the survey shows the critical need for leadership training in the areas of integrity and servant leadership.
The Leadership Working Group is currently editing the paper for presentation at the 2010 Congress. Pray that the information presented at the 2010 Congress will help those attending to take strategic action so that our common goal may be fulfilled: The Whole Church taking the Whole Gospel to the Whole World.
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David and Elouise Fraser Honored
May 8th, 2009
On May 4th, Eastern University honored the contributions of Drs David and Elouise Fraser. The dinner was held on the occasion of Elouise’s retirement from being Dean of Palmer Seminary. David served for many years at Eastern first as a professor, then as Dean and finally as Provost before retiring from the post a year ago. David now serves as Senior Consultant for Educational Partnerships at DAI.
Congratulations to David and Elouise on all you have accomplished. We look forward to all that the Lord will continue to do through you!
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