The Role of Community in the Life of the Christian Leader
Healthy Leaders | Issue 51
Welcome to Issue 51 of Healthy Leaders. In this issue, we move from a factory to a family approach to building leaders.
Hello friends,
Welcome back to our ongoing conversation on healthy Christian leadership and leader development.1
An ancient African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Similarly, it takes a spiritual community to build a leader — and this is where the Church comes in.
Certainly, God sovereignly raises up leaders, but we also have the responsibility (and the joy) of building those leaders together as His Body. Churches must consciously, actively and deliberately build both the present and next generations of leaders. This responsibility can not simply be delegated to the “Leader Development Department.” It is a community responsibility.
Here’s Malcolm with more:
“It’s not a sign of strength to be by yourself in leadership. It’s a mark of weakness.
Leaders need friends.”
On a basic level, we know this truth. To follow Christ, we need a community around us that encourages, exhorts and challenges us — and our fellow Christians need us to do the same!
What we’re getting at here is the power of the relational dynamic in our lives and as we build leaders. We’ve seen this at work in our ministry in Indonesia with youth leaders.
“Learning about youth development strategies using the ConneXion Model inspired me as a program staff member at the child development center to implement it for the youth in our community. We shared our ideas with the new mentors and then proceeded to engage directly with the youth. We immediately followed up by creating programs aimed at fostering a sense of community among young people and sharpening their calling to serve others in their age group. We are amazed by the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of every youth involved in this community!
They not only reach out to other young people within their church, but they also extend their reach beyond their church community. They built a “Rumah Singga” (a youth center) in a neighboring village, a place for young people to gather and have fellowship. What amazed us about the work of the Holy Spirit was when Muslim children began to join our community. This became an opportunity for them to share the Good News with unbelievers.” (Brother Michael)
The unfortunate truth is that many leader development efforts don’t tap into this power like they could.
In the traditional approach to building leaders, the local church sends its emerging leaders to a specialized, independent, external entity (Bible school, seminary, non-formal training program, etc.) — the “central factory” — that takes responsibility for training them and then sending them back.
This “factory” approach2 is widespread and has actually hindered the work of Christian leader development in several ways:
By limiting the numbers of leaders who can be trained to however many the few available schools can handle.
By removing the students from the contexts of life and ministry that are vital to their development as people and as leaders.
By siphoning off key leaders who, after their training in a city seminary, for example, do not return home since they prefer the new lifestyle or the greater opportunities now available to them. This “brain drain” is a problem facing churches in many developing countries.
By discouraging and disabling the local church communities from their vital responsibility to build their own emerging leaders. Sadly, this disconnect often continues long after graduation, with the leader forever looking to outside influences for his growth and development.
By introducing woefully inadequate declarations of qualification in leaders, and confusing diplomas with actual capability.
By introducing a spiritual “caste” system into the church between the degreed professionals and the “lay people” who, in many cases, are actually more qualified to do the real work of the ministry.
By wasting significant resources — financial resources spent in maintaining institutions, and years of people’s lives spent studying many things that have no relation to useful ministry skills or inner spiritual capacities.
In general, the “central factory” approach has undermined both the quantity and the quality of our Christian leaders, as well as damaging the spiritual and social dynamics of our churches.
We need a different approach — and that’s where a learning community within the local church comes into play.
By moving from a centralized “factory” mentality to a pervasive “family” approach to leader development in the church, we have seen huge benefits:
Flexibility: When it comes to leader development, “one size” does not fit all. Around the world, leaders from a vast diversity of cultures, backgrounds, experiences, education levels, etc., need to be built. Our approaches must be flexible and customizable.
Multiplication: The family approach provides a model that can be multiplied endlessly, with every local church or cluster of churches providing a learning environment for their emerging leaders.
Self-support: The local church provides the financial support for the learning process, thus maintaining both responsibility for and control of the building of its own emerging leaders. To be truly self-governing, the community must be self-supporting.
Holistic development: The learning process becomes considerably more effective because the local church provides the spiritual, relational and practical context for the development of the whole person.
Security in restricted countries: In restricted countries, large educational institutions are often not viable due to their size, visibility and the ease with which they can be closed down. Church-integrated learning communities, on the other hand, can be small, easily-hidden and pervasive.
The right people receive training: The emerging and existing leaders who need training the most are those who are already engaged in ministry and cannot leave their work for years at a time to go and study in a distant Bible school. In the traditional approach, we consistently train the wrong people.
Ongoing, lifelong leader development: The training is not limited to a certain period of time, but continues throughout the emerging leaders’ lives. Leaders are built over lifetimes!
Effective evaluation: Members of the local community who know the emerging leader and who work with him on a daily basis are the best ones to help him both establish goals for his development and evaluate his growth toward those goals.
In our next issue, we’ll go further into how a learning community like this can be established within a local church context.
What about you?
The Bible is filled with examples of learning communities, whether it is David’s “mighty men” (2 Samuel 23), the “company of the prophets” in the time of Elijah and Elisha, Jesus’ twelve disciples, Paul’s apostolic team, or Paul’s learning community in the lecture hall of Tyrannus (Acts 19:9).
All of these learning communities were used in different contexts and for different purposes within the will of God. But all of them tapped into the power of relationship to build their people. It doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t require a curriculum or extensive funding to get off the ground. It can start with just you and a few others dedicated to following God together.
What are some ways that a learning community like this can be established and maintained in a church setting? How might you do something like this within your own church? Share your ideas in the comments.
Until next time, we’re with you!
— Chris
Recommended Resources
Core Model Brief: The Need for a Broad Culture of Leader Development
Tool: Potential Benefits of Foundational ConneXions Programs
Audio Teaching: The Pursuit of Community
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!
By no means is this a wholesale criticism or rejection of theological education. Some Bible schools, seminaries and non-formal training programs are very good, some are very poor, and there are many in-between. The ones that are disconnected from the life and ministry of the local church and who are entirely academic in their focus are addressed here.