Focal Point: Leadership Training to the Highest Degree
Dr. Michael G. Loftis, President, ABWE International
In the United States, the church has often fallen into the trap of believing that the Christian faith is all about knowledge. We have unlimited resources at our fingertips and many opportunities to attend seminars and conferences, to study at theological institutions, and listen to wonderful teachers on television, radio, and the internet. Yet pastors across the nation constantly reveal that although their congregations know a lot, they are not carrying out the basic tasks of evangelism and disciple making in local communities. It is shocking to suddenly realize that we know far more than we are willing to obey. Every Christian needs to learn early on that the life of a follower of Jesus is not primarily about knowledge but about obedience.
My early days as a missionary with ABWE were focused on a single major task: to train evangelists, pastors, and church leaders who were part of the underground church behind the Iron Curtain. Having spent most of my adult life in the world of theological education and institutional learning in the pursuit of various degrees, I eagerly sought to follow these familiar models in the early stages of my ministry.
One day, after a long seminar presented by a visiting young professor from the United States, a Russian pastor who had spent years in prison being persecuted for his faith pulled me aside with a twinkle in his eye.
“Michael,” he said, “don’t you respect us?”
“Brother,” I replied, “of course we respect you.”
“Then why don’t you bring us more experienced pastors who have endured years of difficulty and opposition to build the church? These young people are nice, but most of what they know they have gotten from books, and we can tell they have not suffered much. We can read books, too. What we really need is to see experienced men and women of God with scars, who can show us how God has used them.”
That moment forever marked my thinking about leadership training as a missionary. I realized from that point forward that my task was not merely to transmit knowledge from books, seminary lecture notes, and sermon outlines from my culture into other cultures. My task was much deeper than that. My real assignment was to live as such a faithful follower of Christ that those I was training would copy my life, not merely my notes.
The fulfillment of the Great Commission of Jesus Christ will not primarily depend on how many students we graduate but on the degree of obedience of the disciples we make. This is because the central command in the Great Commission is not to go and make converts or graduates, but to make disciples. Thus it is both a paradox and a powerful truth that our success in missions will be determined not by the quality of our leaders but by the quality of our followers.
ABWE is passionately pursuing our global vision of developing church-planting movements that will launch missions movements to the glory of God. Our greatest need at the present time is for knowledgeable, obedient Christian leaders in every nation. We seek to train these leaders by exposing them to experienced and obedient missionary disciple makers and church planters. Knowledge of the truth is important. Obedience to the truth is more important. Pray that we will go far beyond mere transmission of knowledge to replicate disciples and disciple makers who both know and obey their Master, Jesus Christ.
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