Building Leaders Takes Time
Healthy Leaders | Issue 54
Welcome to Issue 54 of Healthy Leaders. In this issue, we take our time.
Hello friends,
Welcome back to our ongoing conversation on healthy Christian leadership and leader development.1
One component of leader development that often gets disregarded is that it takes a lot longer than we’d prefer it to. We need healthy leaders now! But healthy leaders — like diamonds — don’t just magically become healthy or leaders without pressure, time, and heat. If we want to build Christian leaders well, the sort that will depend on Jesus, be shaped in and accountable to their community, full of integrity, sure of their calling, and competent to think and act well in any circumstance … well, it’s going to take some time.
Here’s Malcolm with more:
Two of our great friends, Jaison and Jessy, have testified to the time and work it takes to build leaders well in their context: formal education in India.
Over their years as educators, leaders, and administrators, they began to recognize a deep need for revival and revision in the training programs at their seminary. They were looking for life transformation in their students, but their efforts were somehow falling short. “If there is no meaning, if it is only a university degree, what's the use of theological training?” Jaison asked.
“We were disappointed, because there was criticism from the church that our current theological graduates were not serving the ministries of the church. They were critical in their approach toward the local pastors, the Bible, and even to God, because they were always looking to their reason more than to faith. Religiosity was there, but spirituality was lacking.”
As they advanced further in their own education and took on higher roles in their institution, they had ample opportunity to observe students and faculty up close, and thus became familiar with the specific issues and struggles they faced in applying their theological learning practically in their lives.
They began to experience a deep sense of “holy dissatisfaction” with the way things were. Jessy began to ask, “How can we really see people get transformed?” But this wasn’t the only question.
“Are we really accomplishing what we are called and expected to do? Because when God gives us students for two or three years in our hands, and they struggle with their own life situations, their financial struggles, their calling, their vision — we just teach them so many subjects! Is that enough? How transformed are the faculty members, and are there missing links between the teaching and the learning?”
They also identified a deep gap between the expectations of students, churches and seminary teachers. Jaison elaborates,
“The teachers are trying their best to make students into intellectual giants and to fill their hearts with all kinds of philosophies and theories. The students wanted to become a great preacher like their role models. The churches are looking for men of prayer, integrity, truth, sincerity — a person with character. So we were looking for ways to bring some reformation into theological education.”
Then, in 2010, a training opportunity with LeaderSource arose. “God is always connecting the right people at the right time!” The ConneXions Model offered a non-formal path to transformation through the Christ-centered goal of the 5Cs (Christ, Community, Calling, Character, and Competencies) and the holistic process of the Four Dynamics, or 4Ds (spiritual, relational, experiential, and instructional).
The ConneXions Model was inspiring to Jessy and the other leaders at their school, and exactly what they wanted for their students. However, implementing it within the context of formal education seemed like an impossible task.
“I heard people saying … this [non-formal methodology] is not possible. It is humanly not possible to spend that much time and effort on individual transformation. Everybody is already overburdened, trying to accomplish a robust, meaningful course of study.
We were in an academic, tightly-run institution. Accreditation has its own hours and minutes, everything must be precise, and there is no place to bring in anything new. The philosophy is good, but things were not going to work.”
Despite the structural requirements of curriculum, syllabi, and exams — the elements of formal education — the entire faculty and management of the seminary were wholeheartedly on board with the vision. They began a curriculum overhaul during their summer faculty formation seminars, based on what they had learned about the ConneXions Model. This took several years to do, working with each faculty member to apply the 5Cs and 4Ds in the students’ practical ministry training.
“We were already doing transformative stuff in different ways as much as we could. But then bringing that into a classroom setting and creating this awareness of how human lives are transformed, how Christ is deeply formed in a person, and how our entire life is formed and reformed and transformed by the Word of God … Is it possible, rather than simply teaching subjects, to bring God's Word into everything?”
This process of integrating God’s Word into every aspect of the academic program took years to accomplish. We’ll find out more about how Jaison and Jessy did it practically in our next issue, when we get into what it takes to design leader development. Stay tuned!
Of course, a formal academic environment carries its own challenges. But any leader development work is going to take years. If Jesus Himself took three years to build His own disciples, what makes us think we can do it more quickly?
What about you?
If it’s hard to be patient with the emerging leaders we are trying to build, its ten times harder to be patient with ourselves. Truthfully, growth and maturity as followers of Christ — let alone as leaders — is a lifelong endeavor. We are called to continually seek Him and grow in Him, yet sometimes doing so feels like two steps forward, three steps back.
But God’s timeline is not ours. His is measured, not in days or weeks or even years, but in eternity. We press on in His power and because of His grace.
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
(Philippians 3:12-14)
We’d love to hear other verses that have encouraged you to keep going in your pursuit of God. Share them in the comments!
Until next time, we’re with you!
— Chris
Recommended Resources
Core Model Brief: A New Proposal for Nonformal/Formal Collaboration in Leader Development
Core Model Brief: Summary of the Principles of Healthy Leader Development
Book: Building Leaders
For more resources, visit our website.
Thanks to our friends at Fifty-Four Collective for putting together a comprehensive set of video courses for growing healthy organizations, starting with this series of courses on leadership by Malcolm. We’ll be using some of their videos and some of our own. Be sure to check out what they’re doing!