I have begun the month of March with some strong reflections on the impact of leader development on unreached peoples. When we think of unreached peoples, most of what I’ve written in the past is focused on the idea of unreached peoples, the need to reach them, how to recruit workers to reach them, how to deploy them, etc. But when we think of leader development, don’t we often put it into a different box? Am I getting off track and away from my vision? I don’t think so, but it’s worth taking a few paragraphs to examine where leader development and unreached peoples intersect.

1.

I have written about the need for workers for the harvest: 150,000 is my estimate. What will these workers do? I’ve written about that, too: I—and many others—would not envision them as “evangelists” or “pastors” but rather apostolic pioneers.

What that means is: such pioneers go into a previously unreached place and start the process rolling. Yes, they would evangelize, but not necessarily en masse. Yes, they might pastor, but not a huge church. Their initial job is to make a “beachhead” for the Gospel: to seek out a smallish number of converts and disciple them and help them begin ministries that will repeat the cycle. What I envision is 50,000 pioneer teams who perhaps each disciple 10 or 12 leaders (I’m not trying to be magical about the number), and help those 10 or 12 leaders each raise up 10 or 12 ministries that in turn impact 1,000 people over the course of 10 years. The numbers don’t need to be precise, but what we’re angling for is a pioneer team that impacts 100,000 people over the course of a decade.

In this model, the team isn’t trying to evangelize 100,000 people on their own. What they’re doing is setting in motion processes by which at the third generation they are impacting 100,000 people.

Now you can see where I’m going. This “swarmish” structure is about cross-cultural missions, yes. But it is also about leader development. What kind of person can pour themselves into 12 people? What kind of person can be brought to impact 1,000 people over 10 years (that’s 100 people per year)? What kind of person will prioritize quality over quantity?

2.

The intersection between leader development and unreached peoples is the apostolic team that makes disciples: someone who is trained to communicate cross-culturally but also self-disciplined enough not to raise themselves up at the expense of the people they are training. These kinds of leaders are perhaps more like Edward Kimball, the Sunday School teacher, and less like his “recalcitrant Sunday School student,” D. L. Moody (who of course would go on to evangelize millions).

Such leaders do not need to be Western. Indeed, the majority will not be Western. I have written before about our need to focus not just on church planting movements, but also on mission planting movements: where we help catalyze the formation of non-Western mission sending structures. LeaderSource, who I now work with, has another name for this: they call it healthy leader development movements. Okay, it doesn’t sound the same – one is raising up workers to be sent out, and the other is raising up leaders for the church. But as my one-time mentor Kent Parks said, “shouldn’t we be sending a tithe of our very best leaders to the front lines?”

In other words, healthy leader development systems lead directly to healthy leaders, which lead directly to healthy leader sending structures. We need people who are, in terms of the “5C” model that LeaderSource has developed: (1) intimate with Christ, (2) able to live in community, (3) maturing their Christ-like character, (4) recognizing their God-given calling, and (5) building the competencies to complete their calling.

3.

If we have healthy leader development structures in a church – whether it is an American, British, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Nigerian, Russian or Swahili church! – it is a small leap from there to sending some of those leaders (a “tithe” perhaps?) to the nations. But if we don’t have healthy leaders, we aren’t going to have healthy pioneers. At least not in the numbers that we need.

Missionary recruitment of the kind I am talking about therefore begins with leader development. Healthy leaders from the LeaderSource model will tend to develop swarmish structures (which is why I was drawn to them). Leaders are sustained on the field by good member/leader care. And they multiply their impact by doing things multi-generationally, not by trying to evangelize everyone by themselves.

So there is the intersection between leader development and unreached peoples. We need to be about the business of helping both Western and non-Western churches develop the kinds of people—the kinds of pioneer leaders—who can go into cross-cultural settings and pour themselves into local leaders. How well are we doing that? How can we do it better?

That question leads into the topic of assessment, which is my focus for this month, and which I’ll write about more later.

Sorry. I know I haven’t posted in quite some time. Haven’t published a February issue of Momentum either. We changed to a new job with SGA Leadersource and moved back in to our old house, and I’m presently traveling. I’m also exploring using Google Buzz, so you can follow me inside Gmail or at http://www.google.com/profiles/justinlong.

I have not stopped posting, just gone on a bit of a break while I get things organized.

So here is the latest update. We have accepted a position with Leadersource, which goes to places where the church is growing fastest and trains leadrs to design their own contextualized leadership development program to grow healthy leaders. Their leadership material seems to fit perfectly with our swarming methods. We are looking forward to what the future holds!

I will continue to blog here and post items to Twitter. Keep following swarming here!

For the past several years, the effort to reach the unreached has gathered steam, gained strength, built energy, become a trend, gotten support, moved forward: in short, it has built momentum. Here we look closely at a word that helps to define our mission.

A definition of ‘momentum’ usually resorts to physics. Merriam-Webster defines momentum as ‘the property of a moving body that the body has by virtue of its mass and motion, equal to the product of the body’s mass and velocity, determining the length of time required to bring it to rest when under the action of a constant force.’

In simple terms: momentum is a number describing how likely it is that a mass (a rock, a car, a person, a movement of people, a stock price, whatever) will continue moving along a path. It describes how easy it is for the mass to be stopped or its path to be changed by objects in the way.

For example, the direction and speed of a moving object can be changed by an outside force. You toss a ball in the air (small momentum) and hit it with a bat (greater momentum introducing change), hopefully knocking it a long way. Or, a moving car (great momentum) might hit a wall (small momentum) thus changing both violently.

Momentum is defined as the mass (weight) of an object multiplied by its velocity. The bigger the mass, or the bigger its speed, the greater its momentum. Something small moving very fast (like a baseball or a football) will have more momentum than something small not moving at all (like a window) but not as much as something really big, moving really fast (like a car or truck moving at high speed).

Generally, the greater the momentum the harder it is to change, and the more likely it is that the object-in-motion will change whatever gets in its way. Swing a bat at a ball, and the bat will change the momentum of the ball. Let an armored tank pile into a brick wall at high speed and the tank will likely knock it down and keep going.

This is important because, obviously, it’s not just balls, cars and tanks that gain momentum. Movements of people (fads, trends, etc.) can gain momentum as well. And the effort to reach unreached peoples has indeed built momentum. Since it is has, it is easy to keep it going and even build more momentum. However, we know there are outside forces which are acting, trying to slow down or stop the efort—forces like laziness and spiritual opposition.

To improve the momentum of the effort to reach the unreached, we hope to build six things in our readers: drive, energy, efort, inspiration, power, and strength. In doing so we will hope to increase both our size and speed, thus building the momentum of the movement.

Drive refers to both direction and passion. It can be a passage cleared for travel (a driveway), activites taken to achieve a goal (a fundraising drive or campaign), a strong wish for something (desire), active strength of body or mind (he has drive, or energy), and the willingness to engage in daring or difcult activity. To be driven is to be following a path with passion. Our frst goal is to point out the path.

Energy is a word we use to describe the capacity for action. It can mean a vigorous exertion of power, or the ability to do work, or the resources to produce work. When someone has energy they have power, vigor, fuel, gas that they ‘burn’ in order to carry them forward. Our second goal is to to build the energy of our readers and increase their capacity to act.

Effort is energy used. We don’t just build up; we spend our energy to achieve. We want to challenge our readers to action that leads to evangelism, church planting, discipleship, and eventually to the transformation of a society and its people into the likeness of Christ.

Inspiration is sudden change created by an unexpected introduction of energy. It is the spark of life, the motivating force, the ability to cause low-momentum objects (like lazy Christians) to begin acting. Our fourth goal is to help our readers inspire more people to join the movement.

Power is only possible through control. Power can be physical, mental, moral or political. It means a movement that is unifed, led, and disciplined. Our fifth goal is to call our readers to self-discipline, accountability, and a high degree of focus.

Strength is the opposite of effort. It is being able to resist force or attack: staying the course, keeping to your path, resisting powers that would distract you. Our sixth goal is to build strength in our readers, so they may persevere despite the trials that come their way.

These are large goals, but we believe they are achievable. We believe they are also important. If we are honest, we know that while we have gained strength in the past two decades, we have lost some momentum in the past few years. It is not a lost cause, for we know the movement to reach unreached peoples remains strong.

We pray Momentum will be a voice that will help activists around the world gain the ability to achieve new things together.