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BUILDING TEAMS, BUILDING PEOPLE |
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I once had a conversation with a friend I consider to be one of the top Christian leaders in Asia. As the founding pastor of his 25 years old church he is now intentionally preparing for the transfer of his leadership when the right time comes. What caught my attention was when he said that he is not only preparing for the second generation of leaders but also for the third generation. That means, as a 55-year old leader, he is preparing a leader in his forties and leader in his thirties. That's amazing!
I once had a conversation with a friend I consider to be one of the top Christian leaders in Asia. As the founding pastor of his 25 years old church he is now intentionally preparing for the transfer of his leadership when the right time comes. What caught my attention was when he said that he is not only preparing for the second generation of leaders but also for the third generation. That means, as a 55-year old leader, he is preparing a leader in his forties and leader in his thirties. That's amazing!
He also mentioned that this problem of succession of leaders is not only unique to him but also true to most of the leaders of big churches and Christian organizations in both Asia and America. Most of these leaders of big churches around the world are now in their late fifties and early sixties. Although they are seriously considering preparing for leadership transfer, they do not know how. Today, we as an organization also failed to intentionally prepare succeeding generations of leaders. We badly need leaders who can readily take on the baton of leadership from the previous leaders. This is not unique to the Ebenezer organization. I think this is also true to the churches and other organizations. Where have all our leaders gone? We need to shift our focus from building organizations to building people. When we focus on building organizations we end up building kingdoms. Sadly, overtime most ministry organizations have become kingdoms in themselves. Every kingdom finds strength and essence around the king. What will happen when the king dies? The kingdom also crumbles and dies with him. That is what happens to organizations which are built around a strong leader. A leader builds a kingdom when he builds an organization but fails to build people. For me, ministry is the business of building people. Building people may result to building an organization. But such organization is intended to continue to effectively build people. Every leader needs to see and understand that. That is what makes Christian leaders different from the secular leaders. In the secular world, a leader functions with the authority attached to his position. He lords it over his subordinates. In the Bible the opposite is true. Leaders are instructed not to lord it over those who are entrusted to them but to lead by example (1 Pet. 5:3). We lead by serving. Our new mission statement states that we are committed to “produce servant leaders”. We want to produce servant leaders who are committed to build people.
That is our mission as an institu-tion. When we say we build people, we do not mean just to give our students knowledge and skills. Primarily, we want to build their character. Year after year, we build students with varying degrees of brokenness. It is our joy to see them rebuild their lives together into wholeness. One of the changes in our curriculum is the integration of courses on spiritual formation. This is tied up with the cell group program and prayer groups of our church (ECAC). Along with this process is the efficient job of our trained counselor. We pray that Ebenezer becomes a laboratory where the seeds of God's graces will sprout and flourish in the hearts of every student, faculty and staff. Let us commit to build people. Let us commit to build teams.
We enjoin our alumni, our partner churches, our friends, donors and supporters and other stakeholders of Ebenezer to help us build people. When we do that, we end up building a strong Ebenezer team.*
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