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Equipping Leaders: Listening, Learning, Teaching
Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), by Jane Vella, will challenge you to adopt principles of listening, learning, and teaching, useful for leadership, relationship, and ministry.
Vella educates adults; however, she does not simply teach. And she does not merely stick to her own cultural group. She facilitates learning in many cultures and for many different groups, mostly community development projects.
I’m personally very familiar with this kind of work and many of the places and people Jane Vella writes about. Vella’s books are important to me because my goal for summer outreach teams of interns is for the students to have the best learning experience of their lives. I want students to gain a deep revelation of who God is, His love and grace for the world, and their calling to engage the world in response to His amazing grace. Vella refers to this kind of learning as the ‘quantum’ concept, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
To teach effectively, we must listen.
To teach effectively, we must listen.To truly listen, we must ask open-ended questions.
Our Student Mobilization Centre (SMC) team is in the process of writing their own job descriptions. This is a very open process, requiring each of the members to engage, initiate, and define their contribution to the whole. That process and this book has helped me realize I need to be even more effective at listening and giving open questions when teaching.
Open questions need to be put to the ‘safe’ environment; they are usually best when posed in small groups. For example, when I teach I ask participants the question,
“What was your best learning experience?”
When forming small groups to process questions, Vella encourages teachers to define learning tasks and follow through on them so that the participants truly participate in the learning process. Defining the learning task is done when we apply Vella’s Assessment Principles, which is simply done by asking questions.
Applying Vella’s Principles
#1. WWW
Who needs What and defined by Whom? or ‘WWW’
Vella’s key assessment principle is the question:‘Who needs What and defined by Whom?’ This assessment is best accomplished by building questions into the application process, either before or immediately after acceptance to a training program or internship. Prayer for participants and decisions about what should be emphasized in a training experience can be made with greater effectiveness when we ask the right questions, keep record of responses, and assess the information gathered. This WWW assessment is not only for training; it is also an important leadership tool for assessing the needs and capacities of our team, their staff and their projects.
2. Safety
SMC Summer Internships
Field Ministry Internships (FMI), a principal program of the SMC, is a serving/learning outreach project for university student teams. Students integrate their field of study with a cross-cultural ministry over an eight-week summer intensive. Jane Vella, her books and other web resources for Dialogue Education, have confirmed that many of the aspects of our FMI program help students gain that quantum learning experience.
For example, to help students feel ‘safe’ we form small teams of 4 to 7. During the first few days in the host country, we typically send small teams out on a scavenger hunt in order to expose them to the new surroundings and help them learn how to get around with some measure of independence. However, this exercise is also a bonding experience that takes place within the safety of their small team.
Another reason for small FMI teams is that they may integrate well as a short-term team on a long-term field project. In this way, the students also gain a greater level of participation in the serving/learning process. The students design their own field projects on site as they learn to observe and listen to nationals and long-term project leaders. They are taught to assess the needs of the long-term personnel and projects while they are serving.
The safety challenge for FMI is the uncertainty of a cross-cultural experience. This challenge is overcome when FMI participants are safely embedded into the long-term project team. Within that safe environment for learning, FMI participants become more deeply involved in the learning process, which raises the creativity and energy level. Participants are therefore offering more of themselves in service and learning more about the contribution God has specifically called them to make during their summer internship, and perhaps, over the course of their lives.
3. Listening: Student Participation in the Assessment
Applying the Assessment Principle is a leadership challenge. We set the example of Listening and we invite our participants into the Learning process by giving them a Leadership assignment: Participate in an Assessment.
Before reading Vella, FMI was structured with four phases:
- Orientation – an intensive seminar, like a mini-Discipleship Training School, and project preparation.
- Cultural Awareness – the first few days at the site of the field project, getting acquainted with the new surroundings/people, including a scavenger hunt.
- Ministry - while serving the field project, participants write a proposal for a 5-year ministry project.
- Debriefing – the final few days reporting, saying good-bye to new friends, and evaluating.
I have since added a fifth phase, an Assessment Phase, just after the Cultural Awareness phase and before the Ministry phase. The assessment of the project was originally assumed by the FMI leaders. However, students had little appreciation for that important phase. To better equip the student participants for leadership in learning, we now require them Listen and to document their Assessment before writing their project proposal. By doing so we are showing more respect to the field project and the community they serve. We also show more respect to the FMI students, giving them more opportunity to participate and take responsibility for their project proposal.
Summary
These are only three principles, however Vella’s books outline 7 steps for course design (PDF download). I commend this amazing teacher and her principles to you as you develop training in your context. Pay particular attention to the key words, RESPECT and ENERGY, which are at the top of my list of priorities for equipping students for the life-work and calling.
If you or your group would like to learn to apply these principles for outreach and training, please contact me. If you would like to know more about the Field Ministry Internships program, and the Student Mobilization Centre network of Youth With A Mission‘s University of the Nations, send me a note.
I am expecting quantum changes as we train emerging leaders for every arena of society in response to Christ’s command to ‘make disciples of all nations’. (Matt. 28:19)
Three Principles of Growth for a Community in Transition
This past Sunday I spoke at a local church on the topic of Transition. They are welcoming a new pastor into their midst. This is the second post outlining what I shared. In the previous post I outlined how everyone is in some kind of transition. Much of what I have shared comes from lessons learned as a member of a search team seeking a pastor for a community just a few years ago. Go to this link if you would prefer to listen to this message, A New Kind of Transition, online.)
What Pastors Want
To the best of my knowledge, no pastor in his right mind wants to lead a church community by himself (or herself). If they understand their role biblically, they operate out of their gift, not our of their position. Most pastors (and most evangelists, prophets, teachers, and apostles: See Eph. 4) want Jesus to lead and the Body of Christ to grow in maturity. They want Jesus to be the center of every gathering, whether it is formal or informal.
I believe the biblical model and Jesus’ instruction is for pastors to operate as part of a team. They are one of many gifts of leadership for the growth of the Body of Christ. Paul understood this well. Even when he did not work closely with the itinerant preacher Apollos, Paul understood that each has an important contribution to make.
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow.” (1 Cor. 3:6)
Jesus is causing us all to grow. When we recognize and affirm the gifts to the Body of Christ in their proper perspective, growth will occur not only in numbers, but also in the character of the members. That growth will also increase the influence of a worshipping community. As we love God and love neighbors, understanding that the image of God is imprinted on every person whether they are a Christ follower or not, we will treat every person with dignity in our witness and service to a needy world.
The goal is a community that both loves God and loves their neighbors, both global and local. If we sacrifice this primary focus for other goals, such as “church growth”, we become neglectful of Christ’s mission. Recall from a previous post where I quoted David Bosch:
“Christ’s Church does not have a mission; Christ’s mission has a Church.”
When we follow Christ’s mission first, the leadership of our community will follow his principles for growth and our community will grow deep in character and wide in influence.
How does that happen?
In the previous post I promised to share a few principles for growth that I learned from a father figure, Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth With A Mission. My wife, Mary, and I have served with YWAM for over 25 years. Loren is a spiritual father to me because he has encouraged me and prayed for me at decisive moments in my life. When asked what I wanted to name the ministry God was calling me to establish in YWAM, a Centre of the University of the Nations, I timidly proposed: Student Mobilization Centre? Loren said: “Avec Courage! Say it with courage, John Henry!”
Then during an intense time of prayer in 1996 with the International Leadership Team of the University of the Nations, we were all laid out on the floor crying out to God for the future of the university and God’s dream for the nations. Loren knelt down and placed his hand on me and whispered, “Receive Your Inheritance.” He quoted scripture and prayed from 2 Chron. 16:9:
”For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show his might in behalf of those whose heart is blameless toward him.”
Three Principles for Growth
Loren shared these three points of fatherly wisdom with our YWAM Leadership a few years ago. Interestingly, George Isley, my pastor and spiritual father who went home to be with Jesus five years ago, exemplified these principles in a small church community in Upstate New York. I celebrated George’s life and ministry in a recent post.
These principles stand together like a three-legged stool; they work together as an integrated whole. I commend these three principles to you and for any community that desires to grow:
- Freedom in the Spirit – Every individual, young, old, male, female, must have freedom to hear from God. But we must also obey. This is the pattern: God speaks, we interpret, and then we apply. We may make mistakes, but that’s okay. That’s how we grow. However, this freedom is not in isolation; it’s in a community with elders.
- Spiritual Eldership – To be a spiritual elder, you do not necessarily need to be older. Paul’s disciple Timothy was relatively young, but he had maturity. Elders have a breadth of experience and spiritual maturity. They are submitted the Lord and one to another. They do not stomp on new vision, they test it and seek God about it. They lead primarily through prayer, influence, and relationship. They fulfill the scriptural criteria in 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1, which is really unremarkable. It says they should not drink too much or beat up people. Does that imply the rest of us can get drunk or beat up people? No! There are two characteristics that are important for our discussion: First, in those texts it says elders must be “able to teach.” They should be investing in others and able to communicate through godly example the gospel message. Second, elders must be “hospitable.” This term comes from the Greek word “xenophilo”, which means “a lover of the new, the strange, the different.” Spiritual Elders need to be open-hearted toward new vision. And they need to be able to coach their group to test the word to see if it is from God and apply it in the context of the whole group. They do not exercise authority over others, they serve. The greatest, as Jesus said, is the servant of all. Elders are open-handed, giving way for Spirit-led vision, and they serve well.
- Relationship – Elders should only intervene after appealing through relationship. They need to be mature enough to wait for the right timing, and the right approach. The danger in any community is when structures dominate. Those structures and policies tend to take a position above the importance of hearing from God. Structures and legal boards are necessary to hold elders accountable in all legal and financial matters. However, if elders fail to lead out of relationship, they tend toward legalism and hierarchy that is not godly. No leader is more valuable or important than another. Leaders are called to salute the dignity, value, and equality of every person. The functions of the various ministry gifts God has given us may be different, but the value of every individual is equal.
When we work with each of these principles, our community and our people will grow. However, true spiritual growth in community, the kind of growth that goes deep in character and wide in influence, will not occur when there is only a single leader or when there is formal board that leans on positional authority and policy rather than the gifts of the Spirit. Positional authority is the mark of a bureaucratic institution, which tends to take power away rather than encourage the people who are created in the image of God and spiritually gifted to join His mission.
The Mission of God
I recently finished reading (and discussing in our monthly book group on the University of Wisconsin campus) the book: The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative by Christopher J. H. Wright . In future posts, I will be unpacking much of this important read. For now, let me conclude by saying a growing community is led by a team of servant leaders who are giving freedom in the spirit for anyone to hear from God and obey. A growing community sees their primary goal as the Mission of God, their highest operating principle as relationship, and their God honoring principle of honoring the value of every person.
