A Critique of Webber’s “Built the Designer” Approach to Leadership Development

Dear Mr. Webber,

Some friends of mine came home very excited after they attended a seminar you gave on your “Build the Designer” approach to leadership development. They gave me the literature they’d picked up and urged me to read it. When I settled in my easy chair it was with an attitude of “OK., let me get my mind around this model as it clearly excites some of us”.

First of all, I appreciate your humility when describing actual results to date. I understand you are utilizing this model in your church and, according to my friends’ reports, it is being utilized by some in such diverse places as Iran and China. However, you did not actually claim that the model has proven to be more successful than other models.  You are also very right when you state that “leadership development is highly complex and very little understood”.

Having said that, however, I’m afraid that your paper left me disappointed, and that for the following reasons:

Please don’t build your model in contradistinction to a straw man

Your “4 P” characterization of academic institutions consists of little more than sloganeering and sharp contrasts. You state, for instance, that the old goal of education was “academic capacity” by teaching courses related to biblical knowledge, something you dismiss rather cavalierly: “Of course this did not prepare students well for the practical demands of ministry”, in contradistinction to your “new goal” of “building the whole person”. In truth, all the institutions where I was trained (both Christian and secular ones) sought much more than “academic capacity”, something you yourself admit: “Many seminaries and Bible schools have recognized this (i.e., that information transfer by itself does not build spiritual life, character and practical ministry capacity) and are complementing their classroom agendas (information) with a variety of intentional spiritual relational and experiential dynamics (transformational).”  You then go on to describe your “new paradigm” of spiritual, relational, experiential and instructional balance. My question is, “where is the genuinely “new” element?”

Allow me to share an old, 1970s paradigm of teaching. When I was a student at Prairie Bible College we had to attend classes, to be sure. However, there were also daily prayer and intersession sessions for the world at large (where I received my call to the Middle East). There was one-on-one mentoring/discipling by faculty members. We went on regular visits with staff members to do street and prison ministry. Various staff families took it upon themselves to be “surrogate parents” for lonely students. The school organized internships with churches—my internship featured hugely in my decision NOT to go into the pastorate. If that little Bible school operated that way back in the 1970s what, I repeat, is the essentially “new” element in your model?

Please don’t think that Prairie is unique. None of the schools of higher education I have attended in the West (6, not including 2 universities in the Middle East) nor any of the institutions where I currently teach (5) have “mere information” as their goal. All share your goals of multiplication, holistic development, giving the right people the right training, the provision of flexible options, close liaison with local churches, life-long learning, and effective evaluation. To suggest otherwise is simply not true.

Please don’t give me simplistic, unsubstantiated analysis

The fact that Wales today, in spite of its revival over a century ago, is “one of the most secular countries in Europe” (is that even true? Proof please!) really due to some kind of leadership problem? Are you actually suggesting that if the Welch had had the opportunity to embrace your “new model” the revival would still be rocking Wales?

You state that your approach is “a clear and accurate biblical model” of leadership training. However, your claim that, “biblically, the primary unit of leader development is the local church or cluster of churches” is completely unsubstantiated, as is virtually everything else you say.

You makes much of the fact that yours is, in fact, the model Jesus Christ used—and is thus ideal model. The anachronism seems lost on you, inasmuch as the church was not founded until Pentecost. A much stronger case could be made for Paul’s roving missionary team. I don’t, in fact, understand why you don’t use him as your model, as the peripatetic apostle seems to fit your paradigm better than our Lord. As for me, I see multiple models of leadership training in the Bible.

Your statement that the only three things Jesus came to do while here on earth was to die on the cross, to proclaim the kingdom and reveal the Father, and to build a team of emerging leaders (“And that’s all he did”) is so simplistic, I urge you to take a course in Christology. Could it be that Christ was as much–possibly even more–interested in fulfilling the law on our behalf during the course of his life than in “leadership development”?

Another interesting-sounding, yet unsubstantiated claim or yours is your intriguing “law of decreasing relearns” which you describe in your parody of the “train the trainer” approach as follows: “the effectiveness of the training decreases, often quickly and dramatically with each passing on”.

I can personally attest that this is not necessarily so. I happen to be involved internationally in the training of trainers in the area of language acquisition. Some of those I have trained have turned out to be better trainers than I am, just as I am better in some areas of applied linguistics than some of those who trained me. By encouraging the trainers to take my constantly evolving material, apply it to their context and develop it further (including dropping what doesn’t work in their world) my own material has been hugely enriched.

And how accurate are your claims about the current “crisis in the quantity and quality of leaders” we are supposedly experiencing? Could things actually be getting worse in certain places and better elsewhere? What are the trends? Local statistics please! Please don’t make wide-ranging claims for your model on the basis of unsubstantiated generalities.

Furthermore, to suggest that in more traditional methods of teaching/learning leaders are not taught to design but taught to repeat and that their own developmental processes are not nurtured “so that they turn disillusioned to the next outsider who comes along promoting his new and improved” method is an insulting parody.

And that leads me to my next point:

Please don’t insult me

You insinuate that leaders who went through more traditional training programs did not turn out healthy (“we must build healthy leaders” italics in original; “A new goal – the healthy Christian leader” ). You also suggest that many leaders trained in the old ways “may accomplish much but never amount to much”.

Of course we are all acquainted with major failures in leadership. Nevertheless, your caricatures are pretty off-putting for someone who has had the privilege of working with lots of wonderful, often older, godly Christian leaders—men in academia, the pastorate, mission leaders—healthy in body, soul and spirit, men who have amounted to much, whom I greatly respect and who were trained in very traditional ways. Sadly, you appear not to have had the joy of meeting such men.

Your paragraph on vertical and lateral thinking is also quite insulting. None of the numerous teaching institution I have attended or the various schools where I am an adjunct faculty just keep “digging deeper and deeper to make it a better hole”. We are constantly reevaluating and rethinking content, delivery, student-facilitator interaction, internships, etc. All are as interested as you are in providing a wholistic spiritual environment, an experiential context and a relational web—and are quite intentional as to how they get there. ( Note: I recently asked my daughter why she would repeat her year at Prairie Bible College if she had to. Answer: “Because of the wonderful sense of community…”).

You, however, seem keen to use the most derogatory terms when referring to more traditional forms of education: they are “disconnected academic institutions” with “inherent limitations” who “indoctrinate in training materials” people whom “we are likely to seat in neat rows behind desk and lecture interminably” using “merely a set of curriculum along with preformed implementation strategies” with “some token attention” paid to other things. And when all is said and done, we may even “forbid the poor indigenous leader from ever changing the program, requiring them to teach exactly the same thing exactly the same way”. Please don’t compare the best of yourself with the worst of others…

You go so far as to suggest that other forms of training don’t provide those “Aha” moments as students suddenly realize the relevance of something or other to their situation.

Please don’t feed me your holier-than-thou saccharine spirituality

“In the new paradigm, union with Christ, the cross, suffering, holiness and dependency on the Holy Spirit are at the center of all our leader development. The Person of Jesus Christ is the Beginning and End of all Christian leadership and leader development”. Mr. Webber, please give me a break…

I, for one, will need much more from you before I am prepared to place your notions on personal interaction, mutual exploration, coaching, “resourcing”, networking, development, etc. on the same page as the printing press.

Forgive me for asking: did you have a bad seminary experience that you haven’t gotten over yet?

Sincerely,

Peter Pikkert

Money and the Incarnation

Here a few quotables from Victor Shepherd in an interview with the July-August 2008 issue of Faith Today:

“Jesus doesn’t belong to the left or to the right. He’s preoccupied rather with the kingship of God. He’s concerned with upholding the Old Testament, which is full of references to the horror of poverty and the fact that poverty ought not to exist at all among God’s people.”

“The New Testament is preoccupied with a cosmic power struggle and money is regarded, by far, as the biggest spiritual threat.”

“The opposite of love is not hatred. The opposite of love is indifference.”

“Under capitalism people devour people. Under communism it’s the other way around.” (Quote from Emil Fackenheim)

“Any dialogue that comes out of a conversation beteen capitalism and communism still has an entirely naturalistic future. And, as a naturalistic future, it still doesn’t represent the Kingdom of God. Therefore it isn’t the long-term solution to anything.”

“The King of Torts” by John Grisham

OK novel, easy read; just the right thing for a long-haul flight.  Plot gets a bit repetitive, enabling you snooze mid-Atlantic.   Message: Fame comes at a price, money is a root of all kinds of evil and Jesus Christ can bring positive change to the worst human wreckage. 

Bloesch’s “Essentials of Evangelical Theology”

I’ve been reading Donald G. Bloesch’s Essentials of Evangelical Theology to help me fall asleep at night.  First published in 1979, it is a good introduction/overview of Chistian scholarship up to that time.

Bloesch’s strength and weakness is that he seeks to create a scholarly synthesis around his broadly (neo-?)Reformed presentation of the Christian faith.  That is not easy.  Sometimes he succeeds admirably, as in this synopsis of various views of atonement: “For Calvin it might be said that all is of grace, but grace is not for all.  Wesley and Luther on the other hand held that all is of grace and grace is for all, but not all are for grace.  Karl Barth, who unites Calvinist emphasis on the universality of the atonment, maintains that grace encompasses all but that every person is set against grace; at the same time every one is caught up in the movement of grace even where there is continued oposition to it”.  

Sometimes his attempt to include multiple strands makes no sense, as when trying NOT to have to embrace particular redemtion: ”Only those who believe have been effectively redeemed by Christ, and only those who are effectivley redeemed come to believe.  This is not necessarily a commitment to limited atonement, however, since the ultimate number of those who believe is hidden with God. It must also be affirmed that even those who do not believe are benefited by the cross and resurrection of Christ since the devil and his hosts were objectively overthrown and defeated irrepective of man’s response to the cross.”   The latter point, as he admits himself, is a “rationally insurmountable mystery”.  Also, those who believe in limited atonement don’t deny that the ultimate number of those saved is hidden with God.    Surely the uniquivocal embrace of particular redemtion would cut through this mish-mash. 

Even if nuanced in places, Bloesch is very partial to Barth.  For those who find the wordy German tough sledding, Bloesh might be a good stepping stone.  In any case, if you are looking for a good read to help you fall asleep, try Bloesch.

“The Gospels for all Christians” (ed. Bauckman)

I’ve just finished reading “The Gospel for All Christians” (ed. Richard Bauckman).  First published in 1998, I wished I’d read it 10 years ago. 

This easily readable 217 page volume argues convincingly against the common notion that the gospels were written for specific Matthean, Markan, Lukan and Johannine communities.  Marshalling a whole host of reasons it makes the case that the gospels unlike, say, the Pauline letters, were deliberately written for all Christians, as opposed to specific churches.  

Fascinating chapters include those on communication between churches of the early period, ancient book production and the ancient concept of biography.  The chapter “John for Readers of Mark” argues very convincingly that such parenthetical explanations as John 3:24 and 11:2 are specifically intended for readers of John who were already familiar with Mark’s gospel.   

If a theology prof tries to tell you that each gospel is the specific product of the unique ”sits im leben” of a particular (semi) isolated early Christian community (a la Davies & Allison, T. Weeden, J.A. Fitzmyer, H. Kee, W.A. Meeks, J. L. Martyn, et. al.), then read this book…

My Spouse: God’s Will or My Choice?

A teenager recent asked me whether or not I thought one’s spouse was preordained. “Is there a specific person who is God’s pre-ordained, one-and-only plan for my life?” 

The issue is, of course, a subtopic of the larger question about how one discovers God’s will for one’s life.  Let’s approach it from two angles: 1) the practical, Christian walk/experiential angle and 2) the systematic theology angle.  The two differ.  Systematic theology is not the Bible and, as such, not the Spirit’s primary tool for convicting, leading and teaching His people.  In fact, systematic theology can confuse as easily as it can clarify.  Let’s look at the Christian-life perspective first.

To get the right answer to the question of knowing and doing God’s will you’ve first got to ask right question—and I don’t think “what is God’s will for my life with respect to this or that” is necessarily the right question!  Although it sounds pious, it is, ultimately a presumptuous and, as such, a selfish question.  It presumes that God has some kind of special personal blueprint for each of us which we must discover and which then becomes the key to our happiness and success.  There is no such thing as a special plan, a special blueprint for you. 

God has one master plan for all of His creation which He is working out, and He invites us to be used by Him in that process.  That being so, we should frame the question in more general terms, such as “I know that God is at work in this world all around me all the time.  What is He doing, and what adjustments do I need to make to fall in line with what He is doing?”  That question shifts the focus from mythical “personal plans” to the work God is actually engaged in. 

Of course God has specific purposes for His children, but these are nothing more or less than having them join Him in what He is actually doing in the world at any given time.  So, I repeat, knowing his will is not about having Him reveal private little plans, but our making the necessary ongoing adjustments to our lives so that it falls in line with His overarching purpose which, the Scriptures teach, is to reconcile His own to Himself.

Although God does lead His people specifically, He does not generally reveal the details of His plan up front (Exhibit “A”: Abraham).   Instead, He asks His people to make wise life-choices every day that nurture their love-relationship with Him and that are mindful of His overarching goal and desire.

The daily choices we make cause us to become more like (or unlike!) His Son, and that determines how our wills line up with His.  As we readjust our lives to what God is doing on an ongoing basis, as we make wise choices based on the Spirit’s guidance as revealed to us through His Word and through fellowship with godly men and women, we begin to see the pattern of God’s will for our lives unfolding.

(Note, incidentally, the absence in the above paragraph about “guidance through life circumstances”.  Of course God providentially uses circumstances.  However, God also wants to use His people to change circumstances!  They, in and of themselves, should not dictate our lives’ pattern.)

So how does all this relate to the question, “is there a specific person who is God’s pre-ordained, one-and-only plan for my life?”  Wrong question!  There are any number of fine women out there who love Christ and His people and who actively seek to adjust their lives on an ongoing basis to what God is doing in and around them with whom I could have fallen in love.  As it was, I chose to fall in love with just such a woman.  I eventually committed myself to her to the exclusion of all others.  Her name was Anna Hamill Kennedy!

For you singles this means you should pray for the wisdom and discernment to recognize potential life partners whose life-walk is in tune with (and constantly retuned!) to what God is actually doing.  Conversely, you need to be able to discern when fine-looking and fine-sounding people are NOT in tune with the Lord so that you can turn away from them!

When, in the fullness of time, you meet someone whose primary concern is to constantly readjust their lives to align it with God’s overall purpose, and you fall in love with that person, and ask him/her to marry you, the dynamic changes: you then make a life-covenant in which you bind yourself to that individual no matter what happens.  God’s will at that stage is clear: be faithful and stay married.  You make it work.  The relationship then becomes a reflection of God’s covenant to his bride, the church.

Now for a look at all of this from a systematic theology perspective.

First of all, I don’t think simply placing the issue on the Free Will versus Predestination axis is helpful.  Those two categories are too simplistic or, better said, too mutually exclusive.  It is more helpful to study the question within the framework of the doctrine of God’s providence and, more specifically, the doctrine of concurrence.   The doctrine of God’s providence teaches, essentially, that God is always involved in keeping, maintaining and directing every aspect of His creation to fulfill His purpose.  A sub-teaching of divine providence called concurrence teaches that God cooperates with His creation in the realization of that purpose.  This means, in effect, that most events (real miracles excluded) have a double causality: they are fully caused by God and have fully natural causes as well. 

Concurrence is true with respect to natural phenomena and international affairs, as well as with respect to the individual choices people make.  In other words, God may be the primary cause behind everything, but secondary causes, including human decisions, make a real difference.  The Bible teaches that you are responsible for your actions!  To phrase is another way, God created us with a specific property or characteristic, notably that the choices we make really matter!  The Bible doesn’t explain the relationship between this double causality—it just teaches that God created a real world with real people with an ability to make real choices which really matter! 

That brings us back to point 1, the practical, Christian walk/experiential angle with its fundamental question: “what is God doing around me today and what should I do fall in line with that?”  Discover that, keep making the necessary adjustments, and watch your life unfold!  One day you’ll meet a lovely person—maybe several—who think and act that way too.  You then have to make a choice—and if you decide to choose one of those people you are to remain devoted in love to your choice till death parts you for a season.

Note: For those of you who haven’t already discovered it, “Experiencing God” by Henry Blackaby and Claude King is a great guide to discovering and walking in God’s will.

The Moral Vision of the New Testament

 

I’ve just completed Richard Hays’ remarkable work, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.  The claim on the back cover is true: this book isn’t just a breath of fresh air, it’s a hurricane blowing away the fog of half-understood pseudo-morality and fashionable compromise to reveal instead the early Christian vision of true humanness and genuine holiness.

Hays reveals a unified, very challenging, solidly New Testament-based ethic for modern man focused on the themes of “cross”, “community” and “new creation”.  One of the book’s strengths is the way Hays outlines his hermeneutical approach.  Although one may not agree with all the particulars, his handling of such issues as divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and violence merit careful reflection.  I found his undermining of the “just war” theory particularly convicting and convincing.

As might be expected from someone on the faculty of Duke Divinity School, he makes statements regarding the inerrancy of Scripture that more conservative Christians (including myself) would quibble with.  Oddly, the actual authority he grants a priori to the New Testament text in terms of letting it shape his ethics is something many a more ideologically-driven American Evangelical would do well to emulate.

Iraq: No Price too High!

   The situation in Iraq would make a stone weep.

   Churches and mosques, traditionally places of refuge, are callously set ablaze.  Acid-filled tankers explode in poor neighborhoods, cruelly blinding innocent passers-by, burning out their lungs.  The other day a bomb killed a bunch of kids playing soccer.  Were they Sunnis or Shi’ites?  They were just kids… 

   Nothing, no-one is sacred.  Both Sunnis and Shi’ites post videos of their brazen atrocities on the internet.

   America is rightly blamed for the fiasco.  If it hadn’t invaded the country on trumped-up charges, history would have taken a different turn.

   But just blaming America is too simplistic.  Those who target worshipers at prayer, shoppers in a market, and children playing soccer are also guilty.

   Civil wars are always messy affairs, but the religious dimension makes this one particularly brutal:  “Shi’ite?  You’re dead!”  “Sunni?  Off with your head!”

   Meanwhile, both sides try to convince the rest of us that Islam is a religion of peace.  Little wonder the faith has an image problem…

   The occupation forces suffer least in all this.  Local warlords realize that the Americans and their dwindling allies will not hang around indefinitely.  The real enemy is the rival religious group.  It must be browbeaten, eliminated as much as possible before the occupation leaves.

   Saddam failed to create a cohesive nation state; he managed, by force and fear, to keep the various religious and ethnic groups from devouring each other.  By removing him the Americans opened a Pandora’s Box; they have no idea how to put the genies back in and clamp the lid back on.  They’re not even trying—they’re talking “exit strategy”.

   Everyone decent person in Iraq is a loser.

   Every decent person?  I recently read a report on the increased interest in Christianity among ordinary Iraqis of all sects.  More Christian literature is distributed than ever before, and more people are writing to Christian websites, TV stations, etc.  As happened in Iran, as happened in the Kurdish North of Iraq subsequent to the 1991 Gulf War, as has happened so often in the course of church history, a sovereign God will go to any length and pay any price in terms of human or divine suffering to draw those on whom He has set His favor to Himself.

   In Christ there is neither Shi’ite nor Sunni.  The good news coming from Iraq is that a church of mixed Muslim background believers is slowly emerging.   And that, in the divine economy of things, is worth the price.

“The Grave Below is All Astir”

As I watched Saddam Hussein’s last moments I thought of the welcoming committee awaiting him–the long line of history’s dictators and despots who preceded him:

“The grave below is all astir to meet you at your coming; it rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you–all those who were leaders in the world; it makes them rise from their thrones–all those who were kings over the nations.  They will all respond, they will say to you, ‘You also have become weak, as we are; you also have become like us.’  All your pomp has been brought down to the grave, along with the noise of your harps; maggots are spread out beneath you and worms cover you  (Isaiah 14:9-11).

Why Jesus chose Fishermen

It was not by chance that Jesus chose His first followers among fishermen. The fisherman, who spends the greater part of his days in solitude and encompassed by pure waters, is the man who knows how to wait. He is the man of patience who is not pressed for time; who casts his net and leaves the rest to the Almighty.
Giovanni Papini