Dr. Aila Tasse in his book Cabbages in the Desert says: “A Disciple Making Movement is a Leadership Development Movement because a movement can only proceed as leaders are identified, nurtured, trained, and mentored. Many movements have collapsed for lack of sufficient leaders.” Aila was the original catalyst of one of the largest church planting movements in Africa, and he has been training movement leaders for decades. His statement has been echoed in similar ways in nearly every movement of which I’m aware. My bookshelf is full of ministry books that circle back to this same basic concept - ministry movements rise or fall on the presence of leaders who emerge from the ministry.
In the first blog, we stated that Media to Movements strategy is built on the principle that at least 2 ½ percent of any population is open for religious change, and a media strategy can identify these seekers. An Asian coworker and I were reviewing data regarding our seeker population in an Asian ministry when we observed a pattern. We knew from the data that about 50% of our seekers eventually became disciples (not just converts, but growing disciples), but we also observed that about 15% of these disciples became house fellowship leaders. We also surmised from other data sets that about 15% of those leaders are qualified and gifted to develop other fellowship leaders, and 15% of those leaders are qualified and gifted to guide a movement, much like what Aila discussed.
Why is this important? In my last blog post, I discussed individual and group conversion. What I have observed is that some new converts under the influence of the Holy Spirit will begin expressing leadership gifts, often associated with group conversions. As Aila mentions, we as MTM practitioners must first identify, and then nurture, train and mentor emerging leaders. Encouraging groups to form helps in identify emerging leaders.
Recently my wife and I wrote a journal article on types of leadership development where we discuss this issue in depth. Leaders are not “better” people in our ministry, but they worth noting. David Watson, in discussing DMM training, noted that all the gifts in a church body will need a process of being developed, and leadership development facilitates the development of a church body in which all the gifts can be fruitfully expressed.
In the various MTM fields that I have observed, emerging leaders are identified by asking them to start a discovery Bible group and then to facilitate that study. We are not asking them to lead, but to facilitate the study. Some field leaders want to lead the group to make sure there is fidelity in the teaching process, which on the surface seems wise. But what happens when outside leader “leads” a study, this inhibits leadership from emerging from within the group. It is better to have a field leader mentor the study group facilitator and the facilitator guide the group through discovery process. This allows for mentoring of emerging leaders, and the facilitator and group members learn to “discover” truth from the scriptures.
For most of us MTM ministry practitioners, this will be a growth area. Most of us want to see seekers identified, and then we rejoice when some of these seekers become followers of Christ. But to reach your UPG, we will need to help leaders emerge. This will require thinking through leadership development as we are reaching seekers and discipling of new believers.
Feel free to contact me for a more individualized discussion on this topic. Your location will have unique challenges, and I want to help you navigate through your challenges.
