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20. April 2009 by David Alexander.
Leadership development is a three-fold matter — let’s call it heart, mind, and soul:
Heart deals with personality, talents, spiritual gifts, abilities, and passions. Heart is shaped by one’s upbringing, experiences, time taken in practice, and education. Mind is all about what one knows. One’s education, what has been studied, abilities gained, and what one has learned over a lifetime impacts this area. Soul relates to spiritual maturity. Obedience to God’s Word, strong habits as a disciple of Christ, and closeness to the heavenly Father are all measured here. The development of leadership must address all three of these areas in a balanced way. Neglecting any one of these areas leads to catastrophic results.
I. Let’s take a moment to examine the MIND area first. In relating to Spanish pastors, the error I have observed all too often is equating knowledge gained with disciplemaking. That is, successful discipleship strategies are often measured by how many people are attending small group Bible studies and, at times, worship services. There are a couple of problems with this measurement:
First, the majority of Spanish language church attenders are oral learners. While many of them read, they do not make a habit of it and their reading comprehension level is extremely low. Yet, churches continuously use literate methods to teach and relay information. The teacher stands in front of the group and reads the lesson to the group, or asks the group to read the passage and then proceeds to lecture them for the rest of the time. The pastor spends 30 – 45 minutes of time lecturing the congregation each week.
This leads to the second error: the church assumes that because information is being passed on that learning is taking place. Even if this were so, information learning is not equal to behavior modification or personal change in core values. Generations born since the late 1950’s no longer accept information at face value. Therefore, objective truth received has no subjective meaning until it is truth validated by personal experience. Therefore, mind and heart go hand in hand as life experience validates information learned. Often times, one must practice basic knowledge acquired before advanced knowledge can make sense or be learned — just like Jesus’ disciples had to!
IMPLICATION: The majority of first and second generation Spanish speakers in America must be discipled using orality methods. The small group leader must become a facilitator for the group and cease being the “one-way” teacher. The Holy Spirit becomes the leader to truth as all rely on God’s Word to provide the answers and the group leader no longer has to be the head theological expert. The result is quicker multiplication of group facilitators and the group members become more involved in the learning process. The key tools in this area are Chronological Bible Storying, inductive Bible studies, narrative preaching, and audio/visual Biblical media. Links t this material may be found at www.missionalmisfit.com, www.chronologicalbiblestorying.com, www.churchplantingvillage.net, www.sbtexas.com/churchplanting
II. Discipling to one’s HEART is probably the easiest of the three areas and yet possibly the most ignored. Too often people are assigned tasks among the church body that have little to do with their giftedness or passions. So, when they fail to carry out the task, they get blamed for being irresponsible or immature. The reality is that they were probably frustrated and bored because they were asked to do something they had no ability to accomplish or were not interested in doing in the first place. Disciplemaking must help followers of Christ discover their giftedness and find places of service within the Body that utilizes their talents, passion, and giftedness. This way they are continually challenged and motivated, which then serves to reward their passion and perfect their gifts. Heart also has to do with the development of skills. That is, the more one acts upon information learned, the more one’s skill and ability to learn increases.
IMPLICATION: Rather than just having someone take a spiritual gift survey, the disciple should be given multiple opportunities to experiment in different areas of service to help them discover what they enjoy doing and what they feel gifted to do. This could include anything from mentoring people into different church leadership positions to simply allowing someone an opportunity to pour tea at the fellowship meeting or set up the chairs. An environment of encouragement should exist around whatever the Body engages in that allows its members to try out things and eventually commit to whatever matches their giftedness and passions.
The church should also be able to immediately plug anyone who visits into an area of service: from unchurched prospect to committed Christians. Remember, these areas of service are not limited to things within the four walls of the building that happen during scheduled church programs. The majority of what the Body is about should be happening outside the walls and outside of normal church programs anyway. Functional strategies could include servanthood evangelism projects, Epoch from NAMB, missions opportunities, spiritual gift inventories, mentoring relationships, and small group life. Coaching or mentoring relationships are also extremely valuable for gaining in skills and properly applying the information received. At times, the importance is not just applying the information, but applying it correctly. Coaching is an invaluable asset for most disciplines.
III. The area that is probably the most difficult and takes the most time is the SOUL. A biblical worldview is evidenced by one’s behavior even more than what one knows. Spiritual maturity grows as one puts into practice the information received using the talents, gifts, and passions one possesses. Opportunity and accountability are key issues here. One must be shown and be given opportunities to apply received information. Most strong disciples of Jesus have and/or have had strong accountability in their lives. Knowing God is more than just knowledge of who God is or desires; it is the willful obedience to His Word and will in one’s life that results in the development of a stronger personal relationship with the Father. A disciple learns to hear God’s Word and immediately put it into practice. This is strengthened over one’s lifetime and will never be perfected on earth.
IMPLICATION: Having a prayer life is basic to survival as spiritual growth is all about spiritual warfare. Small groups are among the best venues a church has for providing both of these. Groups can discover immediate relevant application to God’s Word and group members hold each other accountable for obedience. Small groups are also safe places for sharing spiritual journeys and having committed people pray for one another. Coaching is also valuable to help one deal with spiritual issues. The coach will interrogate reality and help keep focus and accountability in one’s life. A spiritual journal is also a great tool for measuring progress and wrestling with key issues along the way.
Although the list of strategies listed are not all inclusive, it should provide a solid springboard from which to measure one’s current framework and add to it those things that would contextually benefit the church’s disciplemaking process. The church cannot assume that the disciple will know how to do any of the things mentioned above. Therefore, time must be spent developing the strategic pieces and environments that will help the church participants grow into reproducing disciples of Jesus.
Disciplesmaking tools and additional links mentioned here can be found at www.missionalmisfit.com. Neil Cole’s Life Transformation Guides are also a great resource for small group accountability.
Posted in Missional Thoughts | No Comments »
9. March 2009 by David Alexander.
The missiological issues related to language peoples missions in the USA and inparticular Texas have become quite complicated. Due to the vast number of language peoples, population segments, and assimilation issues, missions among immigrants and their descendants is anoverwhelming conundrum. I have had the privilege of dialoguing with language planters and DOMs in at least 6 conventions and, over and over, the most evident challenges in evangelizing and churchplanting among language peoples are:o Multicultural aspects of the people groupo Lackluster and faulty disciplemaking/leadership development strategiesWhereas these can be found to different extents in any language group planting strategy, because of its size in our country the Hispanic community is a good candidate for illustrating a few of these missiological challenges. Churches that enthusiastically embark upon starting a Hispanic ministry often fail to think through missiological issues involved. At the risk of oversimplifying — because the mission field is far more complex than this - the mission team must consider the longterm goal. That is, if just a ministry to the people group is desired, then a certain standard programs can be implemented. However, if an autonomous and reproducing congregational body is the desired outcome, the strategy changes entirely. Furthermore, whether the target is the 1st or 2nd generationor later generation peoples has tremendous impact on mission strategy decisions. Every Hispanic church in America is a multi-national church. Therefore, the leadership needs to be able to relate to Spanish speakers of various nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds. Althoughthere are numerous success stories in importing ministers to help reach the American ethnic peoples, this is not the best solution, and lostness will only truly be impacted once the indigenous church canbegin to mass reproduce leaders from its own harvest. This is only happening well among a small minority of congregations. The Spanish speaking community is growing faster than available church leadership. This is at least a two-fold issue. One is the issue of traditional leadership paradigms that revolve around the conceptof the pastor as the key central figure who is the de facto congregational dictator. Even many Baptist Hispanic congregations view their pastor from traditional religious lenses as the area bishop or priest. He alone has authority from God and the congregation pays him to teach, preach, and do the work.Also, he has been given a 19th century model of discipleship that is lecture and classroomdriven, and centered around himself as the key disperser of information. The assumption made by the pastor and the congregation is that discipleship is happening if people are listening to thesermon or sitting in a Bible study. Unfortunately, because 95% of the Hispanics in America are oral peoples, this is a truly erroneous assumption. The second issue stems from a pressure derived from our societal expectations of academic preparation. Ministers with an accredited degree are placed on higher pedestals than those without. The barrier of language, academic requirements, availability, and sometimes residentialdocuments prohibit lay ethnic leaders from being able to serve as ministerial equals.Our societal expectations have caused a massive slowdown in leadership development. Whereas formal academic training has its place in personal development, disciplemaking and leadership development must take on a more nonformal “On-the-Job-Training” paradigm that uses reproducible mentoring models. Lay leaders need to be empowered to serve alongside their pastors with the sameauthority that Jesus grants all Christ followers in the Great Commission. The blessing is that resources and methods already exist that are incredibly reproducible and able to help the church develop leadersquickly and efficiently to employ a rapid multiplicative army of lay leaders and missionaries from our churches that will go on to reproduce themselves. However, the challenge is for pastors to let go oftraditional expectations and methodologies. For churches to keep up with the population explosion among the ethnic people groups, renewed emphasis must be given to the models that are employed in making disciples. Reproducible leaders can be developed quickly even as they are held to high standards of spiritual growth, quality training, ethics, and personal testimony. This is my heartbeat, to entrust myself to a next generation of leadership so that they will in turn do the same.
Posted in American Culturescape, Missional Thoughts | 1 Comment »
25. September 2008 by David Alexander.
¿Porqué. . .?
¿Porqué las iglesias de habla Español tienen tanta dificultad creciendo mas allá de 60 o 75 gentes?
¿Porqué las iglesias de habla Hispana tienen tanta dificultad apoyando a sus pastores por tiempo completo?
¿Porqué hay mas iglesias gringas comenzando obras Hispanas que iglesias Hispanas que comienzan iglesias Hispanas?
Lo que voy a concluir aquí rapidamente es una generalización y admito que en parte, es dicho en frustración, desesperación, y algo de preocupación por un problema epidémico. Pero por mucho que he hablado con iglesias de habla Hispana y experimentado, no es muy general que digamos.
Los Pastores Tienen la Culpa.
1. Los pastores e iniciadores de iglesias tienen miedo de soltar a su gente y darles el poder y autoridad para que ellos cumplan con la Gran Comisión sin pedirles permiso a cada rato. Si un pastor se cree libre de esta declaración conteste solamente la siguiente pregunta - ¿quién tiene autoridad de bautizar a los nuevos convertidos en su congregación?
Si no soltamos a los miembros para que sean misioneros, nunca sentirán el gozo de servir y nunca crecerán en su madurez espiritual. El pastor tiene que aprender a desarrollar a lideres de su congregación y soltarlos para ministrar al pueblo. Los pastores tienen que aprender a mentorar, a confiar que el Espíritu Santo puede controlar ciertas cosas mejor que uno mismo. Se que eso no termina describiendo todo el asunto, pero es el comienzo.
2. Los pastores tienen la culpa de no enseñar a sus miembros y mantenerles responsable por diezmar. Tienen miedo de enseñar a los nuevos convertidos que el dar es tan natural para el seguidor de Jesús como es la oración y lectura Bíblica. Como que hay miedo que si hablan de dinero, la gente se huye. Entonces hay congregaciones de 90 y 120 miembros que todavía no pueden sostener al pastor y los ministerios de la iglesia. Esto es un pecado. Por experiencia, puedo testificar que si mantienes el record de finanzas transparente al público, y mantienes a los lideres responsables para diezmar, una congregación de 45 debería poder sostener a un pastor de tiempo completo sin ayuda de afuera. Pero hay que levantar en alto el estandarte y mantenerlo firme.
Las iglesias Hispanas necesitan desde su comienzo tener estrategias para la iniciación de otras iglesias de habla Español y entre otros pueblos. Un organismo que no reproduce es eunuco y muriéndose.
Ya, eso dicho, todavía estoy preocupado por la obra entre los Hispanos en EUA pero por ahorita me desahogue.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
29. April 2008 by David Alexander.
Lord,
Posted in Missional Thoughts | 1 Comment »