Why training leaders is biblical
My first short term mission trip was on a trip to Mexicali, Mexico during my youth internship at a Baptist Church in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our team trained to prepare for this international encounter that, we hoped, would radically impact ourselves, our own youth and those who would be the focus of our mission—the Mexican people.
We learned songs in Spanish, prepared crafts, wrote and practiced our testimonies and prayed ourselves up. On the day of our departure, our church leaders came to give us a celebratory and prayerful send-off for our global endeavor!
As I remember, all activities, messages, crafts, songs and testimonies went very well. We even survived the “no showers for a week” regimen most short-term “missionaries” are sentenced to endure. Our high school and college-aged young people, led by our courageous and resilient Youth Pastor, went on to return year-after-year to the same community to serve the Lord and those in the area.
I discovered, however, that I was not adequately prepared for small talk with the children. I recall walking through a dusty field with some children, wanting to learn their names, asking them, “Como te amo?”Their quizzical look triggered something I said wasn’t quite right, so, being the inexperienced “missionary” I was, I repeated the words more slowly and forcefully: “Como te amo?”Their discomfort grew the more I upped my interrogation.
For those of you who understand Spanish, you are already chuckling. See, in all sincerity, I thought I was asking them for their name, which, in Spanish, looks like this: “Como te llama?” What I was actually saying can be translated, “How much I love you,” or “as I love you.” (Face palm).
I was earnest, but hindered by my ignorance. Thankfully, I discovered my faux pas, corrected my imposing lingo and, thereafter, was able to learn the names of several children. They were unquestionably more at ease around me.
How shall we then missionize?
To answer this question, we must accept there is an untapped and underdeveloped resource that is perhaps being discounted in our mission-minded quest to reach and plant churches among all people groups.
Hundreds of thousands of indigenous pastors and ministry leaders are already doing the work of ministry as best they can in their own cultural contexts. They are eager. They are passionate for the gospel. They are evangelizing and growing churches often made up of thousands of new believers.
Their sincerity and zeal, however is nearly evenly matched and challenged by a huge deficit: they lack training in the essential tasks of the ministry and the fundamental knowledge of the Scriptures and Christian Leadership.
It is estimated at least 90 to 95 percent of these global church pastors and ministry leaders have very little, if any, training to do the vital work they are called to perform. As a result, as I am reminded by my African colleagues, the church in the Third World is the proverbial “mile wide and an inch deep.” This is because the pastors and leaders who shepherd these churches are only an inch and a quarter deep. The “Law of the Lid” that determines a leader’s level of effectiveness is in full effect.
Training indigenous leaders
The reason I focus on training indigenous leaders is because it fulfills a Biblical mandate. In Paul’s instructions to the Ephesian Church (Ephesians 4:11-12), he calls gifted leaders of the Church (apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastors and teachers) “to equip the saints for the work of ministry for the building up of the Body of Christ.”
In any and every context, the leadership corps of the Church has as one of its chief assignments to equip (prepare and/or repair) believers to carry out the work of the ministry. Of this, there is no debate. The relevant issue is, do gifted leaders within local congregations have a responsibility to equip outside their geographical and/or denominational context?
To answer this, we must ask, “How big is the Body of Christ?” The astute believer will acknowledge that the Church – the Body of Christ – exists on a globalplatform. Given that, the leaders of the Body of Christ are gifted and appointed to equip the saints for the work of ministry wherever the Body of Christ exists.
Local pastors, professors and ministry leaders have the calling, gifting and responsibility to equip in the broader context of the global church, though they get to spend most of their time fulfilling local obligations.
Reverend Benjamin Oforinyame is the Co-Founder and President of ONIM Ministerial and Leadership College in Accra, Ghana. He affirms this biblical foundation of training leaders:
Jesus gave us a worldwide assignment in Matthew 28:18-20, to make disciples of all nations. Discipling can be viewed in the context of training men and ... focus on training (discipling) leaders to be able to train others and lead others in their local communities. In Matthew 5:19, we also see the admonition to teach others (thus train others) His commandments.
Also, we see Paul encourage the training of leaders in scriptures such as 2 Timothy 2:15; 3:16-17; 1 Timothy 4:7-8. This is seen vividly when we look at the life of Paul since he traveled around the world to train up leaders and wrote letters to churches and leaders he did not have the liberty of going to.
Though we are called to invest most of our time and impart most of our knowledge and experience with our local churches and institutions, our larger responsibility is to the global Body of Christ.
Photo source: istock
 | Rich Frazer is President of Spiritual Overseers Service (SOS) International, a global training ministry equipping indigenous ministry leaders. He holds a Doctorate of Ministry with an emphasis on training ministry leaders to upcycle declining churches. Learn More » |
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