The Power of Being Able to Design
Healthy Leaders | Issue 55
Welcome to Issue 55 of Healthy Leaders. In this issue, we put our design hats on.
Hello friends,
Welcome back to our ongoing conversation on healthy Christian leadership and leader development.1
We’ve emphasized how building leaders requires us to give them challenging assignments. We’ve talked about having good expectations of how long it takes to build them (i.e. a long time).
But building leaders also requires an understanding of how to put all the principles of healthy leader development into place in a real context — development that is holistic, spiritual, relational, experiential, instructional, and intentional. This is what we’re talking about when we use the word “design.”
Here’s Malcolm with more:
We shared a little bit last issue about our friends Jaison and Jessy, educators from India who sought to take our ConneXions Model into formal higher education. Their experiences with designing holistic leader development programs in that context offer a case study on what design can look like in real time.
Notice as you read through their story how they incorporated holistic leader development principles into their curriculum to great effect.
To start with, they sent faculty to the mission fields and ministries where their graduates were working five years after they had left the seminary in order to evaluate what graduates were doing now and what they wished they had learned in Bible college. With this research in hand, they began to retool every course to have a transformative goal and a holistic process. They also connected with local churches to bring pastors and mentors into the process, “because if we are not building the churches, what's the use of theological training?”
One of the ways they engaged students more holistically without adding more classes was through small groups. Instead of relying on chapel services with primarily instructional input from preachers, the small groups included Four-Dynamic elements that built the students holistically. They were a mix of old and young, men and women, and different language groups from across India.
They integrated the relational dynamic by sharing testimonies and making space for the students to tell their personal stories and pray for one another. The faculty and staff members who joined the groups not only built stronger relationships with the students, but were able to engage on a deeper level and understand their unique needs. They implemented creative themes, active learning opportunities, and service projects into the small groups. They ate together, fellowshipped together, and worshiped and prayed together. In this way all 5Cs were built strongly through a simple, time-efficient, Four-Dynamic program.
Their institution also began to immediately connect incoming students with local churches. Instead of asking for financial investment in students, they initiated ministry partnerships for mentoring and intercession. Students were given the chance to lead alongside and under the supervision of current church leaders, who in turn showed them what real-life ministry looked like. As relationships developed, mature believers from the churches began inviting students into their homes and connecting on a deeper level. “They needed to see what is happening in a church,” said Jessy. “They needed to experience love in a faith community.” In turn, the churches caught the vision for building the next generation to share Christ and make disciples in areas like northern India and Nepal.
Every year, they invited all of the pastors and their wives to the seminary for an entire day devoted to prayer. Afterward, they served a big meal to everyone and celebrated the work of God in the students and churches. “It was like bringing church into the seminary and then sitting and praying together for the nation's need,” Jessy recounted. “That collaboration is what we are looking for — bringing different people together and sharing our passion for God's mission in collaborative ways.”
Jaison noted that the institutional approach to educating students was lacking in this sort of collaboration and life experience, and the lack showed when graduates started ministry in real-world contexts.
“In the traditional model, we accept the students while they are quite young, maybe 18 years old. Then they are walled in within the four walls of seminaries. They can't experience what is happening in the church or in real life. Then after four years like this, they are going out just like a broiler chicken! They don't know what to do, because they only have philosophies and theories. They do not understand the problems of normal, modern life, only the problems developed in 17th-century Germany and England. So [in applying these models] we are trying to connect it with actual life.”
The ConneXions Model offered their faculty ample opportunity to build the spiritual life and practical skills of their students, and it provided them with flexibility to pursue the sort of training that was most essential.
The students weren’t the only ones impacted.
“Whatever we do with the students will not be effective if faculty do not take the journey alongside. … It was made a requirement, not an option. Faculty were sent with the students to the mission field in the summer, minimum one month, to go with them and do what they do. And it actually changed the mindset of faculty members from a classroom, hierarchical model to a teamwork model.
They received ample opportunity to be with the students, to see the real contextual challenges that our students were going through. This was a life-changing experience, not only for the students, but for the faculty as well.”
If you can believe it, there’s more to Jaison and Jessy’s story. Read the rest here.
What about you?
One of the reasons knowing how to design for healthy leader development is so powerful is that it makes building leaders a multipliable, multi-generational thing in any context. You’ve not only built your leaders, you’ve taught them how to build other leaders. This is powerful!
What are practical ways you have been able to do this with the emerging leaders you are building? What has the impact been? How have you seen it done by your own leaders as they built you? We’d love to hear your stories 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!