This week Reaksmey, our
church’s Internship Coordinator caught me in the hallway and was really
excited. “Wayne, this week during the opening week of our new internship group,
3 of our 17 new interns have accepted Christ.”
Interns in our
church’s ministry apply to give one year of their life to learn about God,
study the Bible and serve in church ministries. These are usually individuals
who do not have any financial resources, yet voluntarily ask to participate
full-time in the internship without compensation!
Many people who read
this might ask the questions, “How can someone who has not accepted Christ
serve in church ministries?” “Why would they volunteer a year without
compensation?” “How do unbelievers have faith to believe God will provide for
their daily needs for a year?”
I have to admit I am
amazed at the hunger for God in a country where 98% of people are unbelievers. We
have to turn away as many young people each year as we are able to accept in
the internship. One of the things I have noticed in Cambodia in the healthiest,
life-giving churches is that they do not focus on making converts, but focus on
making disciples. Many of their ministry approaches are not focused on getting
people to make a one-time decision, but focused on a long-term plan for
discipling individuals. That means they develop ministries like the internship
to build on current relationships with people wherever they are at on the
spectrum - from seeking to know who God is to becoming a fully devoted follower
of Jesus.
At the same time
Reaksmey (who is a graduate of last years intern class) told me about the good
news, another of last years graduates found me and told me he had just been
hired by one of the top Christian supplemental education organizations in
Cambodia. Out of a large number of candidates he was selected because of his
leadership abilities and his visible relationship with the Lord.
Seeing these young
men and young women, who have been intentionally discipled by mature believers,
being placed into leadership positions has helped me to understand some gaps I’ve
had in my understanding of leadership development in the past. From my
experiences I think we in the western world spend a considerable amount of time
on making converts and then try to place them in leadership positions, without
taking the long road of making true disciples.
To quote Landa Cope:
“A reached community is not a discipled community.” God uses the process of
personal discipleship to bring about spiritual transformation in individuals’
lives, and in turn, those transformed individuals influence their business,
family, school and, in time, whole cities and nations.
The biblical mandate
to make disciples (Matt 28) and the example Jesus lived should be enough to
convince us that discipleship is the missing link and the true key to
developing leaders. If you stop to think about it, the core qualities of a good
leader are developed through the transformational process that discipleship
provides.
If the church is to
steward the message in the same manner as Jesus, we must make disciples who
know, love and obey Jesus. This means that every aspect of their life must be
different: how they work, love their family, tell the truth, handle money with
integrity, and reach out to the poor.
Floyd McClung says
this: “But if you want to build a leadership culture, if you want to impart
apostolic passion to your church or movement, and if you want to see the gospel
have its desired transforming effect on people and nations, it will happen
because you make disciples.”
Matthew 28:19 “Go
and make disciples of all nations”
