Learning To Lead Effectively

Sharing 5 key areas of being an effective leader.

This month I had the privilege of teaching basic leadership principles to all the national leaders of the Assemblies of God in the island. The head of every province and region was in attendance at a special leadership summit. My training on leadership was then followed up on by our national church officials who presented to these key regional pastors a new and improved structure for leadership.

Taking questions during our sessions.

This new structure is designed to empower more localized decisions in a particular region of the country and to give them the authority to make better and more informed decisions for their areas. Our national church officials then turned over the seminar to our new missionary from Tanzania, Paul Balela, who explained in detail the main concepts of the indigenous church and how our goal as leaders is to help each national church to become self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating, self-theologizing, and self-missionizing. Having an African present material like this is so wonderful. The principles are already working in the church in Tanzania and Balela has been a church-planting missionary with the Tanzanian Assemblies of God for years. He has planted over 40 churches in several countries and now brings his experience and his heart to Madagascar.

Balela sharing key principles of the indigenous church.

This type of summit meeting is especially exciting since I have been asking the Lord how we can help the National Church here to retool for growth and increased effectiveness. During my MA studies in Nairobi, it became apparent that there were some very good church models on the African continent, which were successful in an economic system quite similar to Madagascar’s. I began arranging for various African church leaders to make visits to Madagascar to cross pollinate with our leaders and create an idea exchange. Being an island, Malagasies do not benefit from other church leaders passing through. That sort of exchange is rare.

Balela shares about the self-supporting church with the country's A/G leaders.

Having a missionary from an African context is also an added blessing. Paul Balela and his family have been sent here by the Tanzanian Assemblies of God mission department to partner with the Madagascar church to help in church planting and training. He has been able to bring practical, proven ideas from the Africa continent and package them within his own context and experiences so that the way forward is becoming clearer to our local leaders.

Madagascar's national leaders in front of the Bible school chapel on the cold blustery last day of the seminar.

Pray for us as we continue moving toward better structure and stronger local churches in the country. A strong national church produces strong pastors who in turn lead strong local churches which in turn produce strong lay people who can then go where we cannot go, reaching every tribe and every village with the gospel of Jesus Christ. One day soon Malagasies empowered by the Holy Spirit will be preaching the Word, helping the needy, and church planting in every remote region of this great island. That is why I am here. That dream is what keeps me going.

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