• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

The art of sacrifice in a region (Americas)

Posted on November 18, 2014 by wtdavid

The Mission¹⁴: Vision Forward Americas conference kicked off our year of Area conferences in 2014.  The conference focused on examining elements that promoted or encouraged church multiplication.  Topics such as: “Seeing with Pilgrim Eyes”; Engaging the Excluded Middle”; and “Thinking with the End in Mind” were parts of the daily discussions.  Large group and small group interaction provided opportunities to dig deeper into each topic and consider specific applications to current ministries.small group prayer

As I wrote in the previous post, “I shared a number of challenges with each region or Area.  The purpose was to affirm and celebrate what God has done through us over the past few years as well as to challenge Area members to “excel still more” in their work and ministry for Jesus.”

During the Americas conference, I shared the following challenges.

First challenge: restructure. WT Americas is historically one of our longest standing Areas.  It is where one part of our mission found its start.  God has blessed through the number of people who have come to Christ and the communities and church associations that have arisen as a result of our WT Americas workers.  However, the number of WT sent workers has diminished over the years and we find ourselves in situations where there is only one couple or unit in a location.  We need to ‘restructure’ WT Americas in its ministry oversight so as to better serve our current workers and create opportunities for new workers, wherever they might come from.

Second challenge: partner to send.  The Latin America church is now sending workers to serve Christ around the world.  We need to initiate dialogue with one or more like minded agencies as to how we can come alongside them and serve them in seeing more workers from the Global South to be sent into cross cultural ministry.

Third challenge: develop and release to younger people.  WT Americas has a large number of highly experienced workers with significant longevity in ministry.  This wealth of experience should be shared with the younger generation.  Becoming mentors and coaches for the younger generation will open up new avenues of service for our highly experienced workers.  It will also mean that we will be quicker to release these younger workers into ministry and leadership so that they can begin to develop and grow in those ministry functions.

I share these challenges to the WT Americas workers with all of us both as a reminder and as a motivation to pray for one another as we seek to learn the further change and growth to which God is calling us.

 small group prayer

Filed under: Development, Leadership, Vision Forward 2014 | Leave a comment »

Letting go

Posted on June 25, 2014 by wtdavid

Letting go BalloonsEvery June, a number of our teams around the world welcome interns who come to explore cross cultural ministry and serve alongside us.  Several weeks with interns are a microcosm of the struggle we often have with ‘letting go’, that is, with releasing people into ministry.

Our tendency is to want to do everything for those interns.  They’re interns, and so in our minds they do not really know what they need to do or how to do it.  So, we often graciously step in to ‘guide them through’ each step of the internship.

Effective training includes content and opportunity for testing applications.  In other words, we give people input and then “release” them to look for ways to apply what they have learned.  The best applications are the ones discovered by the training participants themselves.

I remember one group of interns that helped me begin to learn what it means to ‘let go’, to release people to discover ministry application for themselves.

We had just spent an afternoon explaining the metro system here.  We gave the interns several destinations to visit for themselves, figuring out the best way to get back and forth between these destination points and their apartments.  We all left together and headed for the nearest metro station.  As Rebecca and I stood on one side of the platform, we saw all of our interns on the other side.   We were headed home.  They were headed off to their first destination.  They were on the wrong side of the platform!  I was ready to yell over to them, when my wife simply encouraged me to let them discover their mistake themselves.

The lesson wasn’t over.  A week later, we all met at a local church in Paris for meetings.  I asked the interns what metro line they took to get to the church.  The line they took was not the line I would have taken.  I was just about to say that very thing when I realized they had nonetheless gotten to the church. Their route was a good as mine … maybe even better.

‘Letting go’ does not mean we diminish the quality of our training.  It does mean we allow for more individual discovery rather than always making the discovery for others.

 

 

Filed under: Core Values, Development | 4 Comments »

Raising and releasing for me

Posted on July 17, 2013 by wtdavid

Recently, I asked a number of WT workers if they could share in less than three minutes how our core values are being worked out in their personal, team and ministry lives.  Last time you heard from Dan about Interdependence.

This week, Bryan, one of our workers in Asia, shares how he sees the core value of raising and releasing leaders worked out in his context.

 

Filed under: Core Values, Development, Leadership | Leave a comment »

Raising and releasing

Posted on July 15, 2013 by wtdavid

In a post last week, I described “developing” as providing opportunities and situations for others to grow and develop in their gifts and abilities; and that through those opportunities people would learn to grow themselves and help others do the same.leadership_kids_460x314

A working group I created to look at core values put it this way: “Christ was the first to develop and release leaders into the work of proclaiming His salvation to the ends of the earth, and the exhortation of Christ was that we would imitate His work in walking alongside people, developing them to release them to do the same, for the sake of His name and salvation to all people. WT seeks to honor God by doing this both through church planting among the nations as well as among our own community (Matthew 28:19-20).”

Two insights caught my attention. First, we are called to imitate His work, but it is ultimately Jesus who carries out the development process in the life of a disciple and of a leader. Our role is more of “raising” a disciple or leader by consistently pointing them back to Jesus, to learn from Him.

Second, in everything we do, in our ministry and in our life in the community, God desires that we create a context whereby others can grow in their commitment to Christ as a disciple or as a leader. We honor God by turning over, by releasing His ministry into the hands of others who we pray will do the same.

Filed under: Core Values, Development, Leadership | 4 Comments »

Developing and releasing

Posted on July 10, 2013 by wtdavid

Our current final core value is developing and releasing leaders.leaders bis

I think most of us end up focusing on the final part of this phrase: leaders. What about disciples? What about other workers? What about national partners? Aren’t we concerned about developing and releasing these people as well?

Perhaps the core value should be written: developing and releasing. If our core values are: “those values we hold which form the foundation on which we perform work and conduct ourselves,” then focusing on the action verbs of this core value might help us to understand the practical outworking of this value and the focus group(s).

“Developing” seems somewhat intuitively clear. It’s about providing opportunities and situations for others to grow and develop in their gifts and abilities. It’s about walking with them in this process and serving as an encourager, a mentor and a coach. It’s about time and face to face interaction. Our ultimate desire is that this person would learn to grow themselves and ultimately help others do the same.

“Releasing” is another story. If we were at all honest, we would say that we enjoy the developing part, but are not that enthralled by the releasing part. It signals a change to a current working relationship. It means we will give over responsibility to this person and no longer hold a role of authority in their life and development. Those of you who have children know the difficulty of this transition when your child leaves home to go to university or begin work on their own.

I guess this is why these words of Christ are having new meaning for me in these days: “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18) Jesus actively “sends” us, or releases us, into the world. He certainly knows the struggle we face to “release”, but He abundantly provides the grace and the courage for us to be able to “send” others out.

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Cross training developmentally

Posted on May 28, 2013 by wtdavid

One of the tried and true rules in sports is the importance of cross training.  Cross training means that when preparing for a distance bike ride or some other demanding sporting event, we include some kind of training in other sporting activities.  So, if you are preparing for that distance bike ride, you add in a swimming session or a 5 km run.  The effect is that the primary sporting activity is enhanced or bettered when the skills are transferred and integrated with other sports.cross training

Such is the case for our own development as believers.  A writer I recently came across wrote: “Forming a Christian mind is interdisciplinary.  In order to apply the Bible to a particular area of life – or to understand how another discipline interfaces with our faith – we have to know that area well. How can you expect to understand a biblical approach to, say, the economy, without a certain level of economic literacy?”

Now, I’m not advocating that we all go out and get an MBA degree.  However, our growth as believers and as workers in His mission would be enhanced if we engaged in further training in problem solving, team dynamics and priority budgeting, for example.

Cross training can occur in other ways as well.  It might mean reading works outside our theological spectrum.  It might mean changing my habit of spiritual disciplines to investigate other ways of encountering God.  It might mean reaching across an Area to mine the insights of others in World Team.

I’m not saying it’s easy.  I love to run, but I’m not excited about swimming laps.  I just have to push myself sometimes to do what doesn’t come naturally.

 

 

 

Filed under: Core competencies, Development, Lifelong learning | Leave a comment »

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