Have you ever met the top leaders of large, successful organizations and been struck by their lack of thoughtfulness? Not that they were stupid, but many times the very top leaders are not the very best thinkers in their organizations. The key thinker might be a vice-president or associate pastor, often not the top leader. What often specifically characterizes the top leader is that he or she acts.

On the other hand, have you ever met people who were extremely intelligent and yet they had not achieved much with their knowledge, or, for that matter, with their lives? They were brilliant in their insight and yet they didn’t actually do much with it. As Coolidge said, “Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent… unrewarded genius is almost a proverb… the world is full of educated derelicts.” Some of them were with Paul in Athens:

All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. (Acts 17:21)

This love of knowledge for its own sake – whether or not it ever results in any practical benefit – characterized the Greek culture of Paul’s days and characterizes the Western culture of our day.

The Greeks, more than any other people, displayed an irrepressible and unbounded passion for the exercise of reason and an incredible curiosity to investigate and know everything… (Charles Malik)

Inheriting this passion for knowledge for its own sake from the Greeks, more than by anything else, Western civilization is defined by total fearlessness of and openness to new knowledge – an insatiable thirst to know everything that can be known, a belief that everything that can be known should be known. This is knowledge for its own sake – whether or not it is ever of any practical significance. This explains why Western societies are content to spend billions of dollars in scientific research on outer space, when multitudes of people still live in poverty on our own planet. This is why some Christian theologians spend their lives studying nuances of obscure doctrines when hundreds of entire people groups still do not have a single church. They love to learn, to explore new vistas of knowledge; but they don’t actually do anything with it.

The world is not changed by people who think. The world is changed by people who act. Thinking may have the appearance of depth, wisdom and scholarship. But actions bring change.

This is often a tragic reality. The history books are filled with the names of leaders who accomplished a great deal; yet, their accomplishments, in many cases, were not good. They were “effective” leaders, they acted and they changed their worlds; sometimes they destroyed their worlds. They acted but their actions were unwise or ungodly. Their actions brought change, but it was not the right change. Too often, such leaders were surrounded by people who did think but who did not have the courage to act; consequently, the thoughtless actions were not overcome by the actionless thoughts.

It’s not enough to have insight; you must then do something with it. It’s not enough to know what should be done; you must then actually do it. It’s not enough to study; you must then act on what you learn.

The world is not changed by people who think; the world is changed by people who act. The world is changed well by people who think and act. Be one of them!

First, please teach me the Word of God – because the Truth is life. The Truth can change my thinking. It can transform my life. But I need you to teach me with the anointing and conviction of the Holy Spirit; not only with words, but with conviction and power.

However, please don’t simply teach me; I need you to share your life with me. Don’t teach me only theoretical ideas; be transparent with your life. Tell me about your experiences of God, about the victories you have seen, and about the failures you have had. Your hopes, your disappointments, your joys, your frustrations – share it all with me.

In addition to instructing me, please genuinely engage with me in my life. I need to know that you really care about me, that your intention is not merely to train me to do certain things and then send me out as a foot-soldier in your army. Please don’t use me. I need to know that you love me and are committed to me. Express this commitment to me in variety of ways. When I do things well, affirm me. When I make errors, hold me accountable; with love and gentleness, correct me.

Please give me responsibilities; responsibilities that are appropriate to my maturity. Some should be mundane tasks to build servanthood in my life. But also give me important things that increase my vision and help clarify my calling. Carefully design these responsibilities so they stretch me and force me to learn, to grow, and to look to God for success.

As I fulfill those responsibilities, don’t leave me alone; be with me and encourage me. And not only you; please build other relationships around my life. Encourage other mature brothers and sisters in the church to embrace me as their spiritual son. Help them know how to engage with me in practical and meaningful ways in my life. In their lives I’ll see what it means to be a mature believer. I’ll see it. Not only will you teach me about it; I’m also going to see it. I’ve got to see it!

I need to see marriages that, while not perfect, are healthy. In a little while I’m going to be married. I need to know what it means and how it works. You taught me that the husband should love his wife as Christ loves His church. Because of the Presence of the Spirit upon your teaching, I was moved and touched by it; I was so moved I wept when I saw this in the Scriptures. But I still need to see it in life. I must see it. I’ve got to see it in lives around me.

I need those people also to walk with me in life. As I’m going through experiences, responsibilities and pressures, I must know that I’m not doing it by myself, but there are others who are with me, committed to me, affirming me, encouraging me, and praying for me. In their lives I will see how to endure. I know I need to endure; you taught me this well. But I need to see it. I need to be with you when you go through some terrible fiery sufferings. I’ll watch you endure. That’s how I’m going to remember. That’s how I will really get it.

So please take me with you sometimes. Let me watch you as you do leadership stuff. I love your teaching, but I need to see you actually do it!

As I walk with you and as we do things together, I will learn more deeply what it means to be a leader. I will watch you as you make difficult decisions in hard situations. I will watch you as you pray for the people you are serving, and when you weep for them. I will be with you when you are patient with people. I will be with you when you correct those who are wrong. That’s how I will learn to do it myself.

As you look at my life, help me see the purpose of God for me and give me assignments. Continually look for opportunities to put me to work. Never allow me to be passive. Don’t let me sit at a distance and be quiet. Draw me out saying, “Hey, come on my son! Look at the vision of God. Look at what God’s doing, and what you can be and do in Him. Come on!” Affirm the calling I’ve got on my life. Affirm that God has given me a wonderful purpose. Always be in front of me, saying, “Come on! You can do it!” When I respond, “No I can’t,” tell me, “Yes, you can.” Affirm me. Challenge me. Then send me off to go and do it, with others around me.

Please intentionally connect me with others around me – with ministry partners and teams. Wisely connect me with other people who complement how God made me. Sometimes you should intentionally connect me with people with whom you know I will have conflicts. And we’ll start to get into little disagreements, and some sparks will fly. And then I’ll feel bad. I’ll notice that you have been watching me during these conflicts, and I’ll feel as if I have let you down. But then I will see that you are not upset. You will reach out to me with care and love. You’ll say, “Hey, come on! Let’s dig into this. There are some bad things in your life, aren’t there? And this relationship, this circumstance, has brought up the worst. So, let’s dig it out now.”

In the past, I was afraid to let anyone touch those deep inner things, but you’ve built a strong relationship. I know you are for me, I know you are committed to me. So, cautiously, I will open up a little bit. And you’ll pray with me and look over some of the pains in my life. We’ll stare at it together. Gently you’ll encourage me to forgive those who have wronged me. You’ll lead me through the releasing of bitterness and pain. You’ll help me understand this conflict that I had in the relationship – that the relationship didn’t cause the issues in my heart; it simply gave them an opportunity to be exposed. As you work with me through this, I will understand more how God deals with me in the struggles of life. He allows me to go through the fire. I’ll remember that you taught me about this from Peter’s first letter; now I know it in my life. Other spiritual mothers and fathers will gently nurture this transparency and honesty in my life.

In dealing with all this, submitting myself to Truth, submitting myself to God, through these deep, nurturing, caring, accountable relationships, in the midst of the challenges, complexities and pressures of life, God will change me. I’ll find myself freer. I’ll realize that I’m learning the true nature of the Christian life. I’m learning what the nature of leadership is. Not just the doctrine. Not just some “eight points” that someone says is important. But I’m really getting it. I’m seeing it. I’m being changed. I’m being changed by the Truth of the Word, in the power of the Spirit, in the midst of a loving, nurturing, accountable family, going through the deep, challenging experiences of life. I’m finding God.

I’ll see Him in your life, and in the lives of the others who are around me, committed to me. I’ll learn how to pray, because I watch you pray. I’ll watch you worship God. In this way I’ll learn what it means to worship God. I’ll see in the Word the wonderful revelation of how I’m made just to worship Him. I will understand this. And then I’ll do it, because you will encourage me to do it. I’ll know how to do it because I have seen you do it. As I do it, I’ll be changed even more by the Spirit. I’ll come to know Him. I’ll learn how to turn my heart to Him, to find Him, to see Him, to know Him. I’ll know God. And I’ll have good doctrine about God too.

I’ll learn what it means to be a friend because I have friends. They will love me and remain committed to me even when I act ugly. They will always be there for me. They won’t reject me. You will be there for me. Then I’ll start to realize what you’ve been teaching me, that God says He will never reject me. What you taught me about Hosea will start to make sense to me – that even though Hosea’s wife was not faithful, he remained faithful to her. And God said to His people, “That’s how I treat you. I will never abandon you.” I will remember when you taught me – at that time my heart rejoiced, and again there was such a beautiful presence of God that I wept in the teaching. But now I’ll see it more clearly, more richly, because I see you do it. I understood the Scripture, but I wasn’t sure what it looked like in life. How would it work? I had many questions. But now you have answered my questions, not just in your teaching but in your life. Because I see it, now I know. I thought I knew it, and in a way I did. But now I really know it. It has changed me.

In all the difficult times, I will not be alone; you will be there with me. I know that I only need to give you a call. If I come over and knock on your door, you’ll been there for me. And not only when I come after you, but you will come after me too, and hold me accountable. Even at times when I want to run, when I want to hide, you won’t let me. Not in a dominating way, but with affirmation, you will reach out to me. You’ll say, “Come on! Let’s face the issues, let’s face this stuff together. You can rise above it. Together let’s cry out to God. In the midst of the difficulty and pressure, together let’s look to God, to see His hand in your life.”

I will learn what it means to work with people, by watching you. I’ll learn how to work with nice people. I’ll learn how to work with difficult people. I’ll learn what it means to have a healthy marriage, because you will intentionally invite me to see what really happens in marriages. And when I think I have found my wife, you will help us. You will also connect us with mature couples, and they will share their lives and struggles transparently with us.

I’ll find that all the junk and worldliness that used to be in my life will drop off. I’ll be changed by the Truth. I’ll be changed by the work of the Spirit. I’ll be changed in this loving community around me, as we walk together in the experiences, sufferings and challenges of life. God will build true holiness in my life, making me a man of integrity – not merely someone who knows the right things to say, not merely someone who knows how to act properly when others are watching, but a man of true integrity – because you have worked deeply with my life. You were not content with superficial things. You created experiences for me that gave me the opportunities to show what was really in my heart. Then when all that was there came out, you were there for me, helping me to understand it according to the Truth of the Word of God, helping me to submit to Him, to give it to the Lord, and genuinely receive His grace – not just know about His grace, but actually receive it. Something changed in me; inwardly, in my heart, genuine integrity was born. I know I’m not perfect. I know I’m not going to be perfect, because when I look at you I don’t see perfection. So I know it’s going to be no different for me. But I know I’m going to do well, because I have seen it in your life.

I want to be like you. As I see the way that you seek God for your purpose and the destiny of the church, as I watch you do that, my heart will be gripped, because I see your heart gripped. I’ll see your passion, your vision. As I see the sacrifice of your life – as I see that – that will bring forth my willingness to sacrifice. As I see your passion for the lost, reflecting Jesus’ heart, my heart will be changed.

I’ll watch as you look at all the complex things around you, all of the complexity of what’s happening in your life and ministry. I’ll see you are not overwhelmed. But you respond to this complexity with brokenness and a deeper looking at the Face of God. I’ll see you do that. I’ll be watching you. I will see how you are able to look at all that complicated murky stuff and then make a decision and say, “Here is where we are going to go.” By the leading of the Spirit, you establish a clear direction. That will affect me. I’ll remember that for the rest of my life. I will learn how to do the same thing myself, without even realizing that I’m learning this. I will find myself in complicated situations and my first response will be to look to God – because that’s what you did. I’ve seen you do it many times. So without even thinking about it, I will do the same thing. Somehow your abilities to think strategically and make decisions will have rubbed off on me. I’ll have developed this capacity to think. Not only to think, but also to act. I’ll have seen you do it. I’ll have watched you so many times where a lesser man or woman would have been paralyzed with indecision. But you took the responsibility. You didn’t take the easy way out. You took the responsibility in spite of the complexity and, at times, the cost. I’ll have seen you do that numerous times. I didn’t realize that as I was watching you, somehow it affected me too. Now I’ll do the same thing, because through your teaching you have changed me. By bringing me to God again and again in so many different ways, you have changed me. By your example and your interaction, you have changed me, as you walked with me through the difficulties and challenges of my life.

Then I will notice that you’ve given me opportunities where I can serve others in the same way – where I can be to them what you have been to me.

One day, suddenly, I will realize that people are looking to me for leadership. And I will recognize that God has been raising me up to lead and serve His people. Through other lives around me, through His Presence, by His Word, in the experiences of life, God has changed me, prepared me, built me. I know I’ll never be perfect, but now I can do it. I can lead. I’ve been built – well built.

In this approach, the outside leader development ministry serves indigenous leaders along these lines:

We will come and explore with you the basic, biblical principles of how leaders are built, and, on the basis of those principles, we will then work with you as you develop the strategies, methods and tools that you will use as you build your own leaders.

The following are the six specific things that the leader development ministries can do as they seek to build designers among indigenous leaders:

1. They should build them in their own spiritual lives, marriages, families and ministries.

There are two reasons for this. First, one of the greatest current needs of many Christian leaders – including those with the most leadership responsibility, and especially in areas of fast church growth – is for their own personal nurture, encouragement and strengthening. It can be challenging for them to receive this help from inside their own groups; so, this can be an appropriate and beneficial role for an outsider to play. Second, as the leader development ministries work personally with them, it provides an example for them to follow as they personally build their own leaders. Thus, the leader development ministries must be committed to genuine, caring relationships with the indigenous leaders and help them build their own lives. These personal relationships then become the foundation for healthy leader development partnerships.

Such relationships cannot be forced. Neither can they follow preset patterns, plans or timetables. Trust and respect must be earned and this comes through a sincere commitment to listening and learning. The leader development ministries must first get to know the indigenous leaders, hear what they have to say, and learn the current situation in their churches, their vision, and their genuine needs and struggles. This can be done through time spent together during meals or while visiting for several hours or days. It will take time for relationships to be built and trust to be established. Moreover, the exact manner in which relationships are nurtured may vary considerably culture to culture.

When the leader development ministries are sincerely committed to the indigenous leaders, and not merely trying to use them to fulfill their own agendas and expand their own influence, they will find that one relationship quickly and naturally leads to another, as the indigenous leaders introduce them to other leaders in a pattern of relational-networking that is deep, open, effective and lasting.

2. They should explore with them the core biblical principles of leader development.

This is quite different from imposing a particular curriculum or preplanned leader development “package” on the indigenous leaders. Instead, this involves working with them conceptually to enable them to internalize the fundamental biblical principles of leader development.Universal biblical principles, rather than established curricula, are the foundation of indigenous leader development. For example, one core biblical principle is, “Leaders build leaders.” Two practical implications of this principle are:

• Leaders must take personal responsibility for building new leaders, and not only fulfilling their ministry responsibilities. Jesus personally built His emerging leaders, while He conducted His ministry; He did not delegate that responsibility to some “expert” institution.
• It takes personal interaction with mature leaders to build emerging ones, and not only academic work in classrooms. Jesus took His emerging leaders “with Him.” His disciples’ personal interactions with Him in life and ministry profoundly transformed their lives and made them strong leaders.

While biblical principles will work in any culture or context, the specific application of the principles (the appropriate curriculum, etc.) will vary considerably. Consequently, the leader development ministries should not impose the form of application but, instead, explore with the leaders what those forms might be. The leaders themselves must design their own leader development forms. In short, the leader development ministries should “bring seeds, not potted plants.”

During this building process, the leader development ministries must nurture the indigenous leaders’ abilities to think and design. This could be done through specific training that is designed for this purpose, as well as through the personal examples of the teachers and mentors who model the thinking-designing process. The leader development ministries can also give the leaders challenging assignments to stretch them and cultivate their abilities to think about how leaders are formed and to design their own leader development processes.

This should be all done in a face-to-face context of much encouragement and prayer.

This exploration must, of necessity, be highly flexible, so it can accommodate not only cultural differences, but also maturity levels and even philosophical differences found among the indigenous church leaders.

It is also beneficial to create “design teams” – both within and across church networks – consisting of indigenous leaders and teachers who work together to design their own leader development.

3. They should coach them on an ongoing basis as they form and implement their own designs in their own environments.

This will happen in individual meetings with the leaders, in which the leader development ministries will discuss what the indigenous leaders are doing in their leader development, their specific designs, the problems they face, and possible solutions and strategies.This includes encouraging them, giving them “permission” to take risks and try new things, connecting them with others from whom they can learn, and debriefing with them their failures as well as their successes.

4. They should resource them with printed materials, examples and case studies of effective leader development in a variety of contexts, and other pertinent resources.

This is a different kind of resourcing than simply supplying the curriculum to use. The indigenous leaders are the ones who always must be in control of their own leader development. If they own it, they will implement it, use it and support it – they will take responsibility for it. Many leader development ministries have been genuinely puzzled when indigenous leaders initially embrace their materials and approaches with apparent excitement but never follow through with a systematic and enduring implementation. It was because they never truly owned it.

The leader development ministries cannot simply supply the indigenous leaders with the package that will do the job for them; instead, they must build their internal capacity to design.

5. They can network them with leaders from other groups and church planting movements, with whom they interact regarding leader development.

This can be done within their own nation or culture, or it could involve leaders from other nations or cultures. A vigorous sharing of models, ideas, applications, successes and failures is greatly beneficial to all participants in such networking.

In addition, new “design teams” spanning multiple movements and even nations can be established.

This kind of networking is not intimidating to the indigenous leaders since no one is trying to get them to “join” something or to embrace a specific doctrine or specific form of leader development – all the leaders are responsible for their own leader development work. Thus, deep friendships and even working relationships can be forged across the Body of Christ.

6. Finally, they can encourage them to conduct their own research and development of foundational models of Christian leadership and leader development, appropriate to their own culture and context.

In some cases,  the indigenous leaders have been so convinced by the outside “experts” that they will never be capable of such a thing; so, this may require a lot of encouragement.

This is the ultimate expression of indigenization and contextualization – when the indigenous leaders create their own foundational models of leader development.

Throughout all this work, the leader development ministries must:

• Aspire to an attitude of true servanthood, refusing to ever use the indigenous leaders in any way.
• Strive to come as learners, not as experts.
• Dialogue with the leaders, asking questions, learning from them, studying their culture, history, struggles.
• Bring resources rather than agendas, principles rather than forms.
• Embrace flexibility, since healthy leader development will look very different place to place. Moreover, it will change over time.
• Honor the local leaders, never doing anything that would undermine them or their authority.
• Affirm the local leaders’ right to all decision-making regarding their own leader development work.
• Help the leaders, from the beginning, to be self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating and self-designing in their leader development work.

Clearly, to do all the above will take considerably more time and involve more complex challenges than an outside leader development ministry showing the indigenous leaders “how to do it,” or simply doing it for them. This, however, is a true partnership of equals with neither domination nor dependency, and it is an appropriate answer to the current need of the church in much of the world.

In the last decade or so, there has been an increasing realization in the church around the world – especially in areas of fast church growth – of the need to build leaders. In response, there has been a steady growth of “leader development ministries.” But, what exactly does a “leader development ministry” do? (more…)

Our last several Letters presented significant paradigm changes regarding leader development that are necessary to deal with the crises of quantity and quality of church leaders around the world.

It is clear that these all require significant changes of thinking – or, “paradigm shifts.” (more…)

Our last two Letters set forth several significant paradigm changes regarding leader development that are necessary to deal with the crises of quantity and quality of church leaders around the world. (more…)

For the last 20-30 years, there has been a great deal of focus around the world on evangelism and church planting. (more…)