Unexpected Training

At our last seminar we expected to be training people but God was training us.  Let me explain.  We had all of our careful plans and our thoughts about what we would do at and how we would do it.  But it didn’t happen that way.  For example:

• We were expecting the group to be all pastors. But there was only one.
• We were expecting 20 people and there were only 12.
• We were expecting one trainer to come to teach and translate but we had to get another—and he had never been with our team before.
• We were expecting all adults and yet one of the church leaders was a 14 year old girl. (She was the leader of the Jr. Youth.)
• We were expecting the adults to teach the practice session.  But the young girl taught the first half of the session on counseling!  This was definitely unexpected because it is not culturally appropriate for her to be teaching adults and especially men.  But it was exciting to see how well she did.

I watched as her small group worked during the preparation time and how the two elders on her team worked with her and involved her as they planned.  I watched as she interacted with them on the content and presentation. And it was exciting to see how well she did during the actual teaching of the lesson.

And so God unexpectedly trained me.  It was good to see that people who only had a high school or lower level of education being able to use the lessons and to clearly teach them to others.  I had written these lessons for pastors to use to teach their leaders.  And yet unexpectedly God showed me that these training sessions could be used by anyone to train others if they are given enough time to prepare.

What is the lesson to be learned?  We need to be willing to assist and equip the church’s untrained leadership to train themselves because many will never receive formal training.  This is highlighted in the two quotes below:

“There is an average of 178,000 people coming to Christ daily around the world.   Seven thousand new church leaders are needed daily to care for the growing church.  Eighty-five percent of the churches of the world are led by people who have no formal training in theology or ministry (emphasis mine). Leaders from every non-Western region say their number one need is leadership training.” (David Livermore, Serving With Eyes Wide Open, p. 41)

The second is one that my colleague Dr. George Renner shared with me from a presentation by Dr. Ted Ward at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology a few years ago:

“Only 4% of the pastors on planet earth today have a bachelors level (or higher) education.”

I believe these quotes point out the urgent need to bring training on all levels to the non-Western church but also demonstrate the need to make training accessible to the vast majority of church leaders who are not able to attend formal educational institutions.  And yet where is the vast proportion of funds and effort by the Western church and Mission organizations going?  I believe it is channeled into formal educational institutions and not directed to the non-formal education which is pointed at the grass-roots church leadership.

This is what fuels my passion to go out and train church leaders no matter what level of education they may have.  They have the Holy Spirit who can take what we share with them in their context and equip them to serve the church.

And there is nothing unexpected about that.

Stewardship, Ministry and Life

Stolen!

It was quite a shock when I looked into the box where we keep the MCPI projector and to realize that it was missing.   We were just setting up for our team training day–and it was gone.  It was quite a blow and my heart was very disturbed and heavy as I wrestled with the fact that such a valuable and vital piece of equipment had been stolen.  As I lead the opening devotional time I prayed and thanked the Lord for what had happened.  It was truly out of obedience and not because I felt like it.

We went on and had a very productive day as we learned and planned and prayed together.  That evening as I was going to sleep I asked the Lord what was the reason for this trial?  We are a small start-up organization just trying to get our feet on the ground.  Or as one of my colleagues says, “We are just learning to crawl.”  And then it was as if the Lord said to me almost audibly, “This ministry is mine, not yours.”  And suddenly, it hit me that The Multi-Church Pastor Institute  was “my” baby, it was “my” ministry and not God’s.  I was holding on to this new thing, this new ministry, too tightly.  I had too much of me invested in how this ministry was growing.  And so God through this painful event had to pry my fingers off of it so that He could be fully in control and not me.

Life is about stewardship–not ownership!

As I related this incident to my accountability partner he shared with me that God had been teaching him that “Life is about stewardship–not ownership!”  How true, and yet how often we forget this basic truth:  “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7)  Whether talents and abilities or tangible assets we are to be stewards for the One who gave them to us and allow Him to be in control of them all.

As the MCPI grows and develops, I want this to be a core value: we are stewards of this ministry, not owners.  I close with these words from the Robin Mark song, Jesus, All For Jesus:

Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.
Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.

All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into Your hands.
All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into Your hands.

For it’s only in Your will that I am free,
For it’s only in Your will that I am free,
Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.

Outside Resources and Church Leadership Training in Africa

The Moth[1] in the Cocoon

The story is told of a young man who found a cocoon and brought it home. Every day he watched to see if the insect was ready to come out.

One day as he examined it to his delight the cocoon was split a part of the way open and he watched as the moth struggled to emerge through the opening. As he watched the struggle it occurred to him that perhaps he could help the insect just a little and then it would be free from its prison.

So he gently cut the few silken cords and opened the cocoon the rest of the way.

But he was amazed at what happened next. Instead of a strong moth reach to fly, he saw that its wings were weak and deformed. What he did not understand was that the struggle was what made the wings strong enough to be fully formed and would enable the butterfly to take off in flight. In a short time the insect died.

What was intended in a well meaning way for good really was harmful to the moth. The struggle, though difficult was what would have made the creature strong enough to survive.

How does this relate to Church Leadership training in Africa? Often, leadership training has been done by overseas organizations who have charged little or nothing to come and do the training. I am aware of instances where organizations have actually paid pastors to attend their training sessions. In my own experience I had a seminar cancelled recently because another overseas short term ministry was coming to the same area and officered their training for free and were also giving away a lot of “goodies.”

What this kind of thing has done is to develop a climate of dependency and almost entitlement on the part of many in the African church. This has had an impact on Africa based ministries who do not have the outside support and who must depend upon the support of the churches that are requesting and receiving training from them.

Many are asking for training but say they are unable to pay the true costs. Some have expected that the training will be subsidized. In another case another seminar was postponed when the leaders found out that they would have to pay. They asked to be considered a “mission field”. What this reflects is a dependent attitude and a poverty and defeatist mentality.

What is the solution? The church may feel that it is bound in a cocoon of poverty and that the only way out is for someone to tear off the cords of the cocoon and release them. But in fact, without the struggle, the church that has emerged is weak and deformed.

The struggle for a church to become self-supporting will make it stronger. When the church struggles to pay for what it believes is important, it will be committed to that area. It will value what it has gained through self-support. That self-support will encourage them to expand their ministry in other areas. This expansion will only be achieved by struggle which will then increase commitment and the cycle will continue and the church will grow. [2]

Hebrews 12:11 says “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” For the African church the discipline of self-support may not seem pleasant at the time, but painful. However, the harvest of righteousness and peace that will come as a result of teaching and practicing biblical stewardship will be a great blessing and encouragement to the church and to the ones they minister to.

[1] This well known story—probably apocryphal—is usually about a beautiful butterfly. However I have substituted a moth because it is more scientifically correct. Moths spin cocoons. Butterflies emerge from a chrysalis.

[2] Bedru Hussein, Stewardship in the Self-Supporting Church, (Mwanza, Tanzania: Inland Publishers, 2006), p. 22. The basis for this post came from Hussein’s booklet.

Seminars are not enough! The Need for Follow-up Mentoring

Seminars are not enough!  The Need for Follow-up Mentoring

(Continuing reflections on the book Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision by Paul R. Gupta and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter.)

Sherwood Lingenfelter writes:

“The weakness of informal teaching and learning lies predominantly in its ad hoc nature.  Because it is learning on demand, the students and trainers engage in brief encounters that lack continuity and feedback.  The trainer shares as much information on a topic as possible in a very short, intense seminar.  However learners rarely take home more than half of what was taught.  When they return to ministry, they still face the challenge of applying what they remember to everyday life and work (p. 154-155).”

This has been a growing concern of mine as we continue to do seminars with the MCPI.  Even though we have all of the seminar participants develop an action plan based upon what they have learned and identify a person to whom they can be accountable to carry out that plan we have no idea or method of receiving feedback to see if indeed they are following through with their plan.

I know from my own experience that often I would attend a seminar, come home with a nice notebook filled with good material and promptly put it on my shelf with all of the other notebooks from previous seminars.  Then the pressures of ministry would come upon me and I would soon forget about what I had learned.

Is this what is happening in Africa as well?  In Kenya, we have many who come from the West and perhaps elsewhere and put on seminars for pastors and then leave with no visible or viable plan for follow-up.  To me, this may result in a lot of wasted time and resources.  Those who come for their “drive by” teachings may feel good about the exercise but I have doubts about the long term results.

We at the MCPI do not want to go down the same path.  Therefore, we are developing a mentoring network so that those who receive training will also be able to receive guidance, support and encouragement as they seek to put what they have learned into practice in their ministries.

We are calling it the Barnabas Accountability and Mentoring! Network.  Or BAM! Network for short.

Contact us if you want more information about it.  Or if you have suggestions.  It is a work in progress!

Breaking Tradition By Mentoring

(Continuing reflections on Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision by Paul R. Gupta and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter.)

Paul R. Gupta is a leader at the forefront of the movement to plant a million churches to reach India for Christ.  As the movement has grown the challenge of leadership development has come to the fore.  In this series of reflections upon their experiences I have been seeking to apply their insights to the African church.

Sherwood Lingenfelter writes about Gupta’s early experiences in leadership training and the realization of the necessity of mentoring.  He says:

Training without mentoring by the pastor or another leader usually doesn’t succeed…Pastors did not know how to plant second or third churches without leader or peer mentoring.  While they knew they should make disciples, their effectiveness was limited without mentoring or feedback.  When gifted people finished the training to teach, they still were not effective without ongoing peer and master-teacher mentoring.  To train new leaders and empower them for ministry they must have mentors, be mentored and learn how to mentor others.[i]

It seems that Gupta has returned to the basic first century method of developing leaders and as a result is seeing a strong church planting movement being established.  This approach is what made Paul so successful as described by Roland Allen in his classic work Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?:

In little more than ten years St. Paul established the Church in four provinces of the Empire, Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia.  Before A.D. 47 there were no Churches in these provinces; in A.D. 57 Paul could speak as if his work there was done…This is truly an astonishing fact.  That Churches should be founded so rapidly, so securely, seems to us today, accustomed to the difficulties, the uncertainties, the failures, the disastrous relapses of our own missionary work, almost incredible.  Many missionaries in later days have received a larger number of converts that St. Paul; many have preached over a wider area than he; but none have so established Churches.  We have long forgotten that such things could be… Today, if a man ventures to suggest that there may be something to the methods by which St. Paul attained such wonderful results worthy of our careful attention, and perhaps of our imitation, he is in danger of being accused of revolutionary tendencies.[ii]

Specifically, why was Paul so successful and we often seem to see so much failure?  Could it be as a friend shared with me in an email?

Maybe what Paul did (based on Jesus?) was to live with these new converts 24/7  for a few months.  We must create (re-discover) ways to make equipping more thoroughly relational.  It’s only partially about information.

Relational equipping is another way of saying, “mentoring,” which is a key element in the strategy employed by the church in India and which we need to take seriously in Africa.

What is necessary if mentoring is going to take place?  It means there has to be a change of attitude by church leaders who must be willing to share what they have learned with younger pastors and leaders within their churches.  One of the reasons I have discovered pastors don’t want to train others is that they feel threatened by those who may be more gifted than themselves.  They are fearful that they may be supplanted by the younger men.  And so they refuse to train and pass on what they have learned and gained by experience to the next generation.

Gottfried Osei-Mensah comments on this situation in Africa today:

Our national leaders want to stay in office until they drop dead, and when they drop dead nobody has been prepared to take over for them.  It is the same in the church…But we cannot justify this by saying it is African culture…Scripture must judge our culture, and those things that are incompatible must go, however age-old, however authentically cultural they may be.  The church today needs leaders who are able to disciple younger leaders and prepare them, not just as leaders of tomorrow, but as God’s servants to serve him today.[iii]

Church leadership should not be an elite club.  Older pastors, if they are going to build the kingdom of God—and not their own—must break the tradition of hanging on to power and position and commit themselves to mentoring the up and coming generation of leadership for the church.  They must become future driven instead of fear driven.  If not, the growing church in Africa will be crippled due to lack of adequately trained and developed leaders.

[ii] As quoted in Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya (Grand Rapids, Michigan:  Zondervan Publishing Company, 1983), p. 29-30).

[iii] Gottfried Osei-Mensah, Wanted Servant Leaders, (Achimota, Ghana:  Africa Christian Press, 1990). p. 11.

Breaking Tradition By Trusting the Holy Spirit

(Continuing reflections on Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision by Paul R. Gupta and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter.)

As I have been thinking about empowering God’s people for ministry I have become more convinced that the clergy\laity divide has been a great detriment to the growth and development of the church.

Paul “Bobby” Gupta writes of his experience of church planters in India which illustrates what is so common in the church here in Africa as well.

“Often missionaries successfully evangelize people in an unreached group, but fail to train and empower indigenous leadership or to contextualize the church. Fearing the immaturity of new believers or the dangers of syncretism, they retain leadership and control of the process and inhibit the birth of an indigenous movement.”[i]

Why is it, that the missionary, or in a local church context, the pastor fails to train and empower God’s people?  Why is the pastor reluctant to allow church members to use their gifts and exercise leadership?  There may be a number of reasons but may I suggest that a fundamental and underlying reason is that we don’t trust the Holy Spirit?

Do we trust Jesus through His Spirit to guide the church and its members?  Or do we only think He gifts and empowers the “clergy”?  Do we allow Him to be the head of the Church or do we usurp that role by our insistence on controlling access to ministry by reserving it for the clergy alone?  How does our practice answer those questions?  ”What? Trust the Holy Spirit?  We can’t do that…!”  (Of course we would never verbalize that!)

Perhaps we should examine the relationship of the Holy Spirit and leadership selection in the early church which is highlighted by some fascinating and instructive examples.

In Acts 6 a crisis over the feeding of the Hellenistic widows arose, the church gathered together to deal with the issue and the body was told to select leaders.  The qualifications for leadership were that they were to be men of good reputation, full of the Spirit (emphasis mine) and of wisdom.  When we think of the chronology it seems by our standards today they would have been relatively new believers. And yet, the apostles had no problem having them assume positions of leadership.  Why?  Isn’t it reasonable that they trusted the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the lives and leadership of these men?

Paul’s strategy seems to follow this pattern as we see him appointing men to be elders in a short time after their conversion.  Let’s put this example in context. In Acts 13:52 (NASB) we read, “And the disciples were continually filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.” We need to emphasize that these were new believers who had come to know the Lord under Paul’s ministry in Pisidian Antioch (vs. 14).

And yet on the return leg of his first missionary journey to visit the churches he had planted, Luke records in Acts 14:23 that he appointed elders in every city.  Who were in this pool of potential leaders Paul could draw from?  He only had these new Holy Spirit-filled believers.  How could Paul do that?  He had to trust the leading of the Holy Spirit in his choice and the work of the Holy Spirit in those elders who had no training at all and very little discipleship. I find it incredible, that Paul did that.  Wouldn’t we say that a church planter was being very irresponsible if he did the same today?

Paul’s trust in the Holy Spirit in relation to church leadership is underscored in Acts 20:28 (NIV) where he addresses the Ephesian elders and says, “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.”  Clearly it is the Holy Spirit who was at work in a plurality of church leaders to provide pastoral care for the Ephesian church.  It was not left to a clerical elite.

It is naïve to think that the way to avoid problems in the church is to keep the control of ministry and leadership in the hands of the clergy.  Formalized training and installation into a pastoral position does not guarantee spiritual maturity. There are enough cases of serious moral and spiritual failure by those in that class to disabuse ourselves of that notion!

Did Paul fear immaturity in the leaders or syncretism or other such dangers in the early church?  I don’t believe so.  In Acts 20:29-30 he acknowledges that there will be external and internal attacks upon the Ephesian church.  And yet Paul was comfortable and confident to leave the leadership and future ministry of the flock in their Spirit-guided hands.  And so he could “commit [them] to God and to the word of his grace, which [could] build them up…”[ii]

To allow our fears be the reason we don’t empower our church members for leadership and ministry is not consistent with the Pauline pattern which was to trust the Holy Spirit to oversee and guide the church.

If we are going to break the clergy\laity tradition we must learn to trust Jesus as the Head of the Church to lead all of his spirit-filled members to use their gifts to build the kingdom.  Anything less is not biblical.

“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.“[iii]

[ii] Acts 20:32.

[iii] Ephesians 4:16.

Breaking Tradition While Working Within the System

(Continuing reflections on Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision by Paul Gupta and Sherwood Lingenfelter)

The clergy-laity distinction is a reality we have to live with.  (See previous post.) In many denominations in Africa (and elsewhere) hierarchy is the norm and will not change.  So how do we deal with the results of this structure which often reduces most church members to spectator status?  And how can we bring about change in the system without modifying the structure?   The answer is that the leaders within the hierarchy must bring about a transformation in the way ministry and service is viewed and carried out.

For example, in a seminar where I was teaching about team ministry, I was asked how this could take place within a hierarchical context where leaders are responsible to make decisions.  My answer was that instead of making  decisions independently they could set up a team of advisers  involving members from different levels and backgrounds in the process.  The leader would retain the responsibility for the final decision but would not be acting solely on his own.

This is but one small step but what would it accomplish?  It would begin to break down the clergy-laity distinction.  It would involve members in the direction and ministry of the church.  It would model a different type of leadership to the church and the world.  In fact it would bring it more into line with the teaching of Jesus on leadership as stated in Mark 10:42-45:

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

What would our hierarchical denominations look like if the church leaders did not lord their positions over each other and the members of their churches?  What would happen if Jesus’ words were taken seriously, “Not so with you!”  What would happen if servant leadership was seriously practiced?

When Jesus says, “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” , who are the all? The answer is “all!”   The leaders must serve:  the lowest and least educated in the church to the most prestigious person in the congregation.  Children. Men. Women. Young and Old. Rich and Poor.  From our tribe or another. Church members and non-members.  The lovely and the unlovely.  The leader is to serve them all.  And it is when he serves the church members by equipping and enabling them to serve others that they will move from being passive spectators to spectacular participants in God’s plan!

Sherwood Lingenfelter makes these comments:

Cultural expectations about leaders and leadership, status rivalry among people emotional and economic insecurity, and an inherent human propensity to control rather than empower others all work against the vision for multiplying leaders in the church…

The idea of training others and releasing control of ministry to them, is utterly foreign to most people and cultures…[It] is counter-cultural and counter-emotional–leaders expect to control and oversee, but they rarely expect to release ministry and equip others to do their work.¹

It is when the leader refuses to maintain the distinctions and the control that comes with his position and becomes a servant leader that empowers and releases the local leaders to do the work that the traditional clergy-laity divide will be broken even while the hierarchy remains in place.

This calls for a work of the Spirit to deal with the pride of position. prestige  and power that is often seen in church leadership.  May revival come and sweep through our tradition bound and moribund structures so the people of God may be released to do the good works they were created to do.²

————————

¹Paul R. Gupta and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter, Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision, (BMH Books, Winona Lake, Indiana, 2006), p. 96, 97.

²Ephesians 2:10:  For we are God’s workmanship,created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Breaking the Clergy-Laity Tradition

(Continuing reflections on Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision by Paul Gupta and Sherwood Lingenfelter)

Perhaps one of the biggest hindrances to providing leaders for the growing church is the traditional clergy-laity distinction which has long characterised the western church.  This was definitely a challenge that Paul “Bobby” Gupta faced as leader of the Hindustan Bible Institute in Chennai, India.  He describes the leadership challenge they faced as a result of their goal to plant one million churches in India.  The traditional formal method of training church leaders could not fulfill the need caused by India’s rapid church growth.  As a result they began to develop a number of informal and non-formal means of education which I hope to explore further in this blog.

However, part of the challenge they faced was the clergy-laity distinction which had a limiting effect on the church’s view of who could be a leader.  Gupta writes:

Finally, we understood that the largest pool of untrained leaders were the people in our local congregations who had been taught that only ordained pastors do the ministry.   Our biggest challenge lay in “the mobilization of the national church to do the work…”[i]

How did the church come to this place?  I explain this in the following excerpt from my book:

George Cladis observes, “We exchanged Paul’s notion of the church as the body of Christ for a clergy-centered ‘parish model’ of ministry that usurped the role of the laity.”[ii] He describes it this way:

A priest or minister is supplied for a geographical area, and this cleric is responsible for the spiritual welfare of his parishioners; they are the recipients of his ministry.  Just as a doctor practices medicine and a lawyer practices law so the cleric dispenses religion.  After centuries of such hierarchical parish systems, the authority and responsibility that once belonged to the laity was transferred to the priests and pastors; in a system of ministry that no longer reflected the nature of the early church as described in the acts (sic) of the Apostles and the writings of Paul.[iii]

Although this model was developed and is widespread in the West it has been adopted in Africa as well.  This has led to the misconception among the membership of the churches that ministry is exclusively the work of the pastor.  The average person in the church does not feel that they can or should be involved in ministry.

Larry Kreider writes:

In the church, the opposite of a servant-leadership understanding is a clergy- laity mentality.  A clergy-laity mentality expects the clergy to do all the ministry because they are in authority while the laity is inactive, taking on the spectator role.  This kind of thinking stunts effectiveness and maintains a distance between leaders and the rest of the church body.  Elders who lead biblically know they must lead as fathers so the people see the need to participate actively to advance the kingdom of God and do not become complacent.[iv]

For the church to grow strong and be a vital force in the world today, the sleeping giant must be awakened.  God’s people must be prepared for works of service.  This can be accomplished as the pastor trains teams of elders and church leaders to minister in each local congregation.[v]

To my way of thinking we need to do away with the clergy-laity distinction as much as possible.  We need to emphasize the body of believers being involved in ministry and service.  Following Ephesians 4:11-13, Gupta writes:

“…The pastor must understand the urgency to equip his people to participate with him in ministry.  Rather than create dependency, he must mentor individuals in the congregation to be about the work of the kingdom.  He should help people recognize their gifts, point out open doors for ministry, and watch over and foster the progress of believers seeking to follow the Lord.[vi]

As I close, I don’t want to be understood as saying that we should not have trained pastors or those functioning in that role.  It is a reality that exists and with which we must work.  Their biblical ministry within the body is vital but often not being fulfilled within the church.  We will address this in a later entry.

[ii] George Cladis, Leading the Team-Based Church, (Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1999), p. ix.

ⁱⁱⁱ Cladis, pp. 91-92.

^iv Larry Kreider, et al, The Biblical Role of Elders for Today’s Church, (House to House Publications, Ephrata, Pennsylvania, 2003) pp. 79-80.

[v] Philip E. Morrison, The Multi-Church Pastor (Gratia Veritas Publishers, Allentown, Pennsylvania, 2004), p. 43.

[vi] Gupta and Lingenfelter, p. 82.

Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision

Meeting the Needs for Church Leadership Training

(A reflection the book Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision by Paul (Bobby) Gupta and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter.)

The Church is growing very quickly in Africa.  Some report 23,000 people are becoming Christians each day[i] and that the church is growing at an estimated pace of 1,200 churches a month, many of them from indigenous African denominations.[ii]

While this growth is exciting it is sobering as well.  With this kind of growth the church will never be able to provide traditionally trained pastors for all of these churches.  (If, in fact we could, it seems unlikely that all of these churches would be able to support their pastor.)  Therefore, most churches will most likely be served by a pastor who is responsible for more than one church.

These facts are challenging to me as I look to the future of meeting the leadership needs for the growing African Church.  I spent ten years training church leaders in a Bible College and feel it is a vital need, but the traditional institutional training model will never keep up with the need for trained leadership.

The key for leadership in the African church (especially in the multi-church pastor context) rests in training teams of elders to do the work of the ministry in the pastor’s absence. By default they are already providing pastoral care and leadership. But if they are not trained we must ask “how well are they doing it?”  And if they are not doing it well what does this mean in practical terms for the future of the African church?  Weak leaders will not produce strong churches.  Therefore, if we do not train the lay leaders in ministry skills and the spiritual disciplines we are condemning the African church to weakness.

What is the answer?  We at MCPI believe the level of training must be pushed down from the pastor to the elders and church leaders. We must equip trained pastors to train their elders and in so doing we will empower them to care for the members of their flock.

Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision chronicles the church planting movement in India of the past 20-30 years.  Their goal is 1,000,000 churches for India or one church for every 1,000 persons. How they could accomplish this goal and develop leadership for the many new churches that were being planted is the burden of the book.  To do this they had to think outside of the box and turn to non-traditional and non-formal methods of training.

In the next number of blogs I want to highlight some of the lessons they learned in India and apply them to the multi-church pastor context here in Africa.  Although the situations are similar they are not identical. However, we can learn a great deal from their experience.

Let me leave you with a quote that in many ways captures the thrust and the lessons of the book (and which affirms many of the core values and emphases of The Multi-Church Pastor Institute):

Every pastor and church must take the responsibility to equip members to lead by making disciples of others.  The professionally-led church is a distortion of God’s plan and purpose.  We return to the pattern of the church in Acts, where apostles, evangelists, prophets, pastors, and teachers made disciples and empowered people in local churches to shepherd and disciple others. God gave gifts of leadership in the people He calls to the church; pastors must learn to identify, equip, and release them to serve the body interdependently in fulfilling the needs of the church.

Leaders with advanced theological training provide a very important resource to the church, but such training is not essential to a rapidly growing church.  These leaders fit most readily in an urban context and in roles of ecclesiastical leadership where they lead and train other leaders.  Theological training institutions may better serve the larger body by adopting different methods to equip pastors to train others in their congregations to lead.  Schools must not expect all leaders to come to them.  Rather, they must go to the people, understand their need, and develop training that will serve the development of leadership in the region and in the context of the church and local culture.

The strength of the church—and its ability to serve its people and fulfill its mission—is directly proportionate to its success at developing leaders for ministry to its people. Every seminary must train its pastors to equip leaders at the local church level.  Without this multiplication of leaders, the church will remain a superficial community of people who lack understanding and obedience to the teachings of Jesus, and who have no understanding of how to engage their communities with the transforming power of the gospel.[iii]

[ii] Mary Welch, Africa’s Hope, http://archives.tconline.org/stories/July01/africa1.html

[iii] Paul R. Gupta and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter, Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision, (Winona Lake, Indiana:  BMH Books, 2006).  p. 209-210.