Leadership Letter #6 Mentoring Along in Missions

With the most rudimentary of strategies and by dint of much effort by an eclectic mix of people my wife and I were part of a missionary church plant among urban First Nations people in Thunder Bay, Ontario in the late 1970s on into the 1980s. In hindsight we really planted 3 successive churches-one on top of the other-since the migrant population ebbed and flowed between the challenges of living in the urban world, and family relationships back at people's home reserve communities. One of the classic dilemmas for a white missionary in such a setting is knowing how to work-your-way-out-of-a-job, since the ideal of having a native leader seemed to be an important component to what constituted a successful cross-cultural church plant. I think now I would be much more pragmatic about whether the ethnicity of leaders mattered that much, but at the time this seemed to be relevant. So, in that context my wife and I along with our family of 2 kids took a sabbatical and went to a Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Discipleship Training School.

Our goal was personal refreshment after 7 years of ministry and also to test the viability of the native elders governing the church without missionaries being present. Our YWAM experience was both intense and wonderfully restorative. We felt like we finally received both mentorship and discipleship in a concentrated package that fostered a new love for the Lord and a renewed desire to serve Him in missions. Whatever motivation we had at the beginning of our missionary ministry had over time leaked out of our lives by the "cares of ministry". The upshot of this time was personal renewal for us as a couple in missions, and the growth of the native church in our absence. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to leave church planting and move to missions training with the idea of multiplying missionaries. To that end over the past 25 years I have been involved in mentoring a wide variety of Christian workers in cross-cultural missionary settings in North America, but also Europe and Asia. The following chapter is really a reflection on what I have learned to be important hard-won life lessons, and what I would see to be critical areas to seek out mentoring by others.

One of the major reasons that it was relatively easy to leave our church planting role was the positive impact the YWAM Discipleship Training School (DTS) had on us, both individually and as a couple. We felt like we had finally witnessed what discipleship might have meant for the early church instead of the haphazard discipleship that we had received. Consequently, our church-planting/missionary model of discipleship was equally haphazard and seemed to centered around attending meetings.

The DTS model is really based on an intensive boot camp type experience. I think it could be successfully argued that the boot camp/retreat/camp experience is modeled on the older monastic order type of spiritual development often called a sodality. The YWAM staff that "pastored" the students were highly relational, not only teaching content, but using many hands-on experiential learning methods with coaching and mentoring as part of the growth paradigm. In addition the proximity of living so close to others worked subtly on reducing our autonomy, yet not so far as to seduce us into group-think. For me this really pointed out that for the 15 years that I had been a Christian my discipleship model was based on what I knew rationally, doctrinally, theologically, and intellectually, but not so much on the "softer" side of change such as spiritual/emotional/ psychological health. Therefore, my basic model for discipleship was to get the right knowledge and everything would be OK. As important as much of the head side of discipleship is, it is not a sufficient model for transformational change. To engraft transformational change, discipleship seems to work well when it is walked out in community. Gunter Krallman writing in a mission classic, Mentoring for Mission, cited that Jesus basic mentoring model was the obvious fact that primarily he was "with His disciples". Therefore, as much as we learn from Jesus through the stories about Him and His teaching, the bulk of the Gospels covers a very brief accounts of the actual time Jesus taught His disciples in a 24/7 relationship based discipleship. In respects to mentoring a foundational need is to adopt some model of discipleship and to find the relationships that foster personal growth. Essentially, discipleship is a relational paradigm for character growth, and not something that can be packaged and duplicated strictly as a program. Over the years either through self-teaching, but more dynamically through mentored relationships the following topics have proven invaluable for my own growth as a disciple (learner):

• Seeking out wisdom, versus learning from the school of hard knocks
  
• Discovering a more holistic view of Repentance
  
• Seeking out "Soul Friends"
  
• Learning to soften self
  
• Learning from a variety of Christian traditions
  
• Finding a way to work with social and organizational complexity
  
• Leading from the grassroots as a tempered radical
  

Part of the challenge of any list is to determine the "logic" of the list. The above list would satisfy my own mind better as a picture, thus a pie diagram, rather than a bulleted list. If it were a pie diagram, you could read it in any order and each topic would be seen as a piece of the whole. Viewed more holistically the pie diagram could be seen as a picture of what I have learned over the past 30+ years in ministry. Seeing-from-the-Whole (the Bigger Picture) is a major aspect of seeking after wisdom as a learning style, versus learning through the school-of-hard-knocks which tends to have a more fragmented pattern.

My parents raised me to be independent. I am sure that during the age of Dr. Spock this was deemed to be the wise way to raise children, a way to promote both self-reliance and autonomy. However, for me this resulted in too much self experimentation, too many wrong turns, and too many disastrous consequences. I suppose the inevitable "bottoming out" contributed substantially to my salvation, but my pride-filled autonomy took a long time to be even acknowledged as a limiting factor in my life. Given this background it is wonderful to see how God can meet us in our brokenness and offer his love and forgiveness. While the Bible points the prodigal to salvation and a restored relationship with God, much of the Bible is also wisdom literature; which is designed to prevent us from becoming "prodigal sons," and learn proactively to modify our inner and outer worlds, living in such a way as to please God. Following the Wisdom of God's ways comes through personal study of the Bible as a primary source in partnership with the grace of God's energy present through the Holy Spirit. In addition, however, this wisdom seems to me to be the most attractive when it is seen in real people who have learned to lay aside their own autonomy, submit to God's word, but to do so in a winsome, humorous, genuine way, not as ones' baptized in pickle juice. I have had dozens of mentors in this discipline, but the ones' who stand out have not shirked the hard work of study and reading, they live principled lives, but do so with a relational warmth that includes the Trinity and others. There is a point in the Orthodox liturgy where the priest intones, "Wisdom, let us attend!" This attention to wisdom, a reminder prior to the Gospel reading, is equally relevant in recognizing both the Bible's wisdom, and those that model the way-of-wisdom in their lives as our mentors.

Out of the wisdom tradition there is a very rich understanding of the Biblical concept of repentance. All too often when repentance is cited today, it means to be sorrowful for our sins, to feel guilty, and ashamed to such a degree that one changes his/her ways. While this is an aspect of what the Bible teaches on the subject of repentance, the term "to repent" has a much broader range of meanings and hence a much more in depth understanding of the dynamics of human growth and change. The Greek word translated "to repent" is "metanoia", literally meaning "to change one's thinking". Therefore, Metanoia, means to change one's thinking (mind), to change one's intention (will) and to change one's behavior. In this context when Jesus started His public ministry he said, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" Actually these were the exact same words John the Baptist used in preparing the way for the Messiah to come. And while this does imply quitting sinning and getting right with God, it also is perhaps much more neutral in its' convicting emphasis. Therefore, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is a hand" likely means something closer to "change your thinking about the future coming of the Messiah, the time is now, not future. The kingdom of God is being ushered in your presence, recognize it! Get ready! It is now!" So, by implication God's kingdom intrudes into His world, but it means I need to respond by changing the way I think. So, how does one do this? More to the point what does it take, or what is the process where I recognize I am not thinking accurately and how do I change my thinking. Does guilt motivate me to do this? Does shame? Does wisdom? Does experience? This seems to be especially applicable in learning to adapt my thinking to God's ways while living and working with others. The broader my intercultural, interpersonal experience, likely the more I will need to change my rational mind and thinking dynamics. Therefore learning to make one's thinking explicit and to open self up to other's perspectives is a first step in broadening out repentance as a life style.

The implication of metanoia for theology and Christian practice is staggering. Could theology be more emergent, evolving, innovative and organic? If so, what will it take for me to have these type of learning mindset so that I might to enter into the perichoretic dance of the Trinity and learn and grow in relationship to God as Three-in-One. Can I in my daily relationships, in cross cultural relationships, in interaction with fellow pilgrims on this journey of faith actually learn over a whole lifetime? To begin to answers some of these questions I have needed the mentoring influence of soul friends, relationships that soften my self (my flesh, my natural humanity), creative metaphors and images that inspire me, and discovery of some of the rich history of others that have gone before me from a variety of traditions, backgrounds, and cultures.

I once had a visit with an Orthodox missionary priest in Alaska, who leapt into our initial conversation with the enthusiastic rhetorical question, "Do you know what the greatest thing about the Orthodox Church is?" Of course I had not clue, so Father Paul answered his own question. "It is confession-the ability to unburden your heart about anything, ANYTHING that is weighing you down!" I am not a stranger to confession, but for me it is basically a private affair and only very rarely does it involve a neutral witness. For the Orthodox and others in the more liturgical types of Churches, confession involves publically confessing sins to a "confessor." This heart unburdening involves absolution as well, but what the confessor role shows me as an evangelical is how rare it is to have a relationship with someone where I can unburden my heart about anything.

In the Celtic tradition the anamchara, the soul friend, was a spiritual director, a pastor, a friend, a judge-one who loved deeply so as to inform a person being mentored of his blind spots so that spiritual growth did not stagnate at a certain level. Over the years I have realized how vital it is to have this type of relationship in one's life. For me it has involved a variety of people for different seasons fulfilling aspects of this role. It is often implied that leaders have this in their covering structures, but rarely have I found this to be true or satisfactory. At the serendipitous end of a continuum soul friends involve those conversations that are deeply satisfying and matter to one's soul. On the other end it requires finding and making appointments with spiritual directors for a monthly check-up. All of this is important soul care to forestall some of the mind-numbing loneliness that can exist in the midst of Christian service (quite a source of tension and ambiguity given the relationship we have with God). The image that most speaks to me is the need for myself to soften and yield before the Lord, so that somehow God by His Spirit works above and beyond my own ability to grow and change. For this I need people who love me enough to speak the truth into my life so that I might become more than I am.

In my own journey I have been surprised by the wide variety of inspiration I have had from sources not part of my own spiritual tradition. Brian McLaren captured this sort of breadth-of-influence in his book, A Generous Orthodoxy. This book is McLaren's tribute to the broad impact that the whole Church in all it's divergency has had on his own spiritual development. I too recognize that I am a product of not just a relationship with Jesus, but also the mentorship-from-a-distance of Christians from the Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Charismatic, Anglican, Evangelical, Faith Missions, Postmodern Missions, and the emerging church movement. Perhaps at one time I would have feared acknowledging such a mongrel pedigree of influences, but now I urge Christian workers to broaden their horizons by embracing the whole body of Christ, especially finding inspiration from those the most unlike one's own natural spiritual inclinations. Definitely, having a more ecumenical viewpoint has boundary-blurring risks associated with it. However, sectarian inclusivism seems to be more dangerous both to personal spiritual development and advancing the kingdom in ministry.

To see the kingdom requires thinking and promoting metaphors and methods that speak to our current reality. When Jesus talked about putting new wine in new wine skins this was an ancient metaphor that is being worked out today. Many of the new wineskin experiments do not look like what has worked in the past, but it is these new innovations in ministry- anchored by the core orthodox beliefs of the past-that keep us linked to Jesus and promote creative responses to the influence of the Holy Spirit at-work-in-our-world. Generally, linking ancient church with innovation creates a strong field of ambiguity. The tendency in stress between opposites is to resolve the tension by moving to one pole or the other. However, another viewpoint is that creativity is birthed out of the matrix of opposites (perhaps even multiple opposites) clashing with each other. Therefore there is a need personally to find models of living with such ambiguity and being creatively adaptive in ministry. While most mentors are as unsure of the future as everyone else, a companion in the journey is invaluable aid to foresight.

As important as living with ambiguity is to personal growth, it is also critical to understand how organizations and ministries are coping with increasing complexity and diversity. One of the numerous tools for understanding complexity is the whole interconnected field of what is termed "learning organizations". These are not only educational facilities, but businesses, ministries, churches, and missions that embrace learning as a key means of adapting to the complexes of change that are awash in our world. One of the disciplines in this field of learning is systems thinking, which is a means of seeing the interconnections of multiple actions within a unifying whole. At one point I was very close to leaving the ministry I am now involved in, but it was "chancing" upon some of the resources of systems thinking that gave me the hope to continue. This is a field of study that is hard work, but there is so much internally and externally in most organizations that can paralyze progress, that overcoming some of the inertia is essential in leadership.

Linked with organizational understanding is the need to continually re-invent the model of Jesus' leadership often dubbed "servant leadership". It seems to me that servant leadership is most applicable to grassroots activities that are more networked than hierarchically structured; more organic than centrally planned; more pneumatically influenced than command and control driven. Again from a mentoring perspective this is a whole new field of expertise that might be called "chaordic" mentoring (from blending chaos and order). This is one area where finding mentors "outside-the-box" to create adaptations of missions and ministry that are new wineskins seems absolutely necessary for having hope for an unfolding future.

Just as I had a paradigm shift in discipleship from programs and meetings to relationships and mentors, it seems it is crucial for those moving into ministry to seek out mentors that can help them navigate. The navigation metaphor is adept, since some leadership experts are seeing out current world as a perpetual white water rafting type experience. Therefore managing the rapids is not an occasional activity; rather it is now the current norm. To manage rapids might be too strong a controlling metaphor. Perhaps a fitting exhortation would be "Run the rapids with courage! Stay in the boat! Help each other! Rest when you can! See you at the Ocean!"