DAI’s note: The following is an excerpt from a Cape Town 2010 Advance Paper by Jane Overstreen on behalf of the Leadership Development Working Group. Read the full article, and join the conversation at the Lausanne Conversations Website.

Lausanne Editor’s Note: This Cape Town 2010 Advance Paper has been written by Jane Overstreet, on behalf of the Lausanne Leadership Development Working Group, as an overview of the topic to be discussed at the Multiplex session on “How To Build a New Generation of Christ-like Leaders.” Resp

onses to this paper through the Lausanne Global Conversation will be fed back to the author and others to help shape their final presentations at the Congress.

We Have A Problem! – But There Is Hope!

Results of a Survey of 1,000 Christian Leaders from Across the Globe

Introduction

We have a leadership problem! And it is a problem that must be solved in order for World Evangelization to flourish! Too often evangelism is done successfully, a church is planted and begins to flourish, but then a leader is appointed who sadly destroys everything that was built, and the fruit is lost. While there are many variations on the story, its theme is much too familiar. The Lausanne Leadership Development Working Group was created to respond to this need for Christ-like leaders. The working group is made up of a cross section of global senior leaders in the Body of Christ, many of whom are specifically involved in leadership development. We started with a survey of Christian leaders. We asked them to tell us about their experiences with Christian leaders, what they thought Christ-like leadership should look like, and what they thought was most effective in building Christ-centered leaders. We collected responses from 1,031 leaders from across seven continents. Those surveyed included a wide range of ages, types of leadership experience and quantities of leadership experience. Approximate one-third of those surveyed were women. We conducted the survey in five languages to try to get a wide range of opinions. In the process of conducting the survey, one thing became frighteningly obvious—we have a leadership problem! First we will see how our respondents defined the problem, then how they defined Christ-like leadership and finally how they described the best methods of developing leaders as a partial solution to the problem.

The latest edition of DAI Connect is now available. Below, Jane Overstreet introduces the new issue by discussing the two keys to transforming leaders.

You can download the entire newsletter here.

“You must concentrate on the issues of the heart as well as skills,” said one of our Indian board members in the early years of DAI, “or you will just be training bad leaders to get more bad stuff done!” At nearly the same time a pastor in Russia told us, “I know the keys to spiritual growth, but when there is no one who can count the collection or help me plan what direction to go, it doesn’t seem to be enough!”

DAI’s mission, to enhance the integrity and effectiveness of Christian leaders, focuses on both areas of a leader’s life. By integrity we mean all of the interior and spiritual issues, the issues of the heart. By effectiveness we mean all of the core leadership and management skills a leader needs to carry out his or her role.

Watching a leader grow spiritually as they find more ways to open themselves to God’s Spirit on a daily basis is an unbelievable privilege. And so is seeing a leader recognize for the first time how to take the vision God has given him and put legs on it so that it will actually succeed!

In this issue of CONNECT you will hear testimonies from leaders whose lives and ministries have been changed through taking one of DAI’s core courses, Spiritual Formation or Strategic Thinking. One focuses on the heart and one on skills.

Read and reflect on how desperately leaders need both areas of their lives to be strengthened. When that happens their impact is nearly unstoppable! And that is what DAI is all about: enabling Christian leaders to bring the transforming power of the gospel to their own communities.

“I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, Go throw yourself into the sea, and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
Matthew 21:21-22

• Pray for all who are involved in DAI’s work so that they may continually seek to be like their Leader, Jesus Christ.
• Pray so that the non-formal education and MA program may bring development and changes in the lives of the beneficiaries so that the impact may become a reality in society.
• As francophone Africa is behind in various domains, pray for DAI programs to have means to bring changes in the countries.

Simon Pierre Gatera, Ministry Associate, Togo, Africa has seen a radical transformation among church leaders and a remarkable impact into the community through teaching informal DAI workshops over the past three years.

David Fraser and Chris Hall introduce students to the Spiritual Formation course.

Thanks to Eastern University Media Center.

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.

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.

<sup>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.</sup>