emergent patterns of congregational life and...

Emergent Patterns

of Congregational Life

and Leadership in

the Developing World:

Personal Reflections

from a Research Odyssey

Donald E. Miller

TABLE OF CONTENTS

www.pulpitandpew.duke.eduDuke Divinity SchoolDurham, N.C.

© Duke Divinity SchoolPulpit and Pew Research Reports, No. 3, Winter 2003ISBN: 0-9725644-3-8

FOREWORD by Jackson Carroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

THE NEW FOCUS OF CHRISTIANITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

A PERSONAL PILGRIMAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

THE ROLE OF VISION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

THE ROLE OF WORSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

ORGANIZING THE PEOPLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

SOCIAL IMPACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

A FEW FURTHER ELABORATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

SOME IMMODEST PROPOSALS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

RESPONSES

Daniel Aleshire, Executive Director, Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada, Pittsburgh, Pa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Chad Hall, Team Leader, Innovative Church Team, Baptist State Convention of N.C., and Lead Pastor, Connection Church, Hickory, N.C. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Grant Wacker, Professor of Church History, Duke University Divinity School,Durham, N.C. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

William H. Willimon, Professor of Christian Ministry and Dean of the Chapel, Duke University, Durham, N.C. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

About Pulpit & Pew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Photography by Donald Miller

EMERGENT PATTERNS OF CONGREGATIONAL LIFE & LEADERSHIP IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD 1

FOREWORD

In recent months, several publications have made us increasingly aware of the dramatic shift southwards inChristian presence. The Christian majority has moved from being predominantly North American andEuropean. Now, it is found in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as churches in the Southern Hemisphere

experience explosive growth. Philip Jenkins has chronicled this growth in his recent book, The NextChristendom: the Rise of Global Christianity, and in several articles. Most of this growth, as Jenkins and othershave noted, has a decidedly Pentecostal flavor, regardless of whether the churches are affiliated with Protestantdenominations, the Catholic Church, or are independent of any denominational tradition. Many also have shedmany of the traditions that reflect the cultural heritage of the churches of the North that planted them throughthe missionary movement. Instead, they have adapted their practices to indigenous cultures in their own setting.

In some respects these rapidly growing churches of the South have similarities to what Donald E. Miller called“new paradigm” churches in the United States—churches affiliated with such movements as the VineyardChristian Fellowship, Calvary Chapel, and Hope Chapel. Miller analyzed these churches in his provocativebook, Reinventing Mainline Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium (University of California Press,1997). Fresh from that experience, he began a four-year study of rapidly growing churches in Asia, Africa, andLatin America. His particular focus in this new study has been on the way in which these Spirit-filled churchesare also deeply engaged in social ministries in their communities. The full results of his work will be the subjectof a forthcoming book, co-authored with Ted Yamamori and tentatively titled Pentecostalism and SocialTransformation: A Global Analysis, also to be published by the University of California Press.

Knowing that Miller was engaged in this new study and aware of his insights into leadership in his earlier studyof “new paradigm” churches in the United States, we asked him to reflect on what he was learning from his vis-its to these churches, especially on their leadership patterns. What might we, in the U.S., learn from them, espe-cially in the way that they call forth, train, and exercise leadership? What follows is a description of these con-gregations and Miller’s quite provocative personal reflections, both on patterns of church life that he encoun-tered as well as leadership dynamics. His report takes the form more of a personal odyssey than a researchpaper. We believe readers will find it both challenging and stimulating.

To encourage further reflection on Miller’s report, we have invited commentaries from Daniel Aleshire, ChadHall, Grant Wacker, and William Willimon that are included in the report, each of whom brings his particularangle of vision to the topic.

Pulpit & Pew is a major project on pastoral leadership underway at Duke University Divinity School with gen-erous funding from Lilly Endowment, Inc. In a variety of ways, Pulpit & Pew aims at providing answers tothree broad sets of questions:

What is the state of pastoral leadership at the new century’s beginning, and what do current trends portend forthe next generation?

What is excellent ministry? Can we describe it? How does it come into being?

What can be done to enable excellent ministry to come into being more frequently, and how can it be nurturedand supported more effectively?

To learn more about Pulpit & Pew, we direct you to our Web site, www.pulpitandpew.duke.edu. You may alsowant to register to receive regular project updates from our electronic newsletter.

Jackson W. Carroll, DirectorPulpit & Pew: Research on Pastoral LeadershipWilliams Professor Emeritus of Religion and Society

2 PULPIT & PEW: RESEARCH ON PASTORAL LEADERSHIP

• Role of Worship: Worship—both corporate andindividual—is an essential element of leadership.The leaders in churches Miller visited spent con-siderable time each day in prayer, reflection, andmeditation. Indeed, religious leadership that is dis-connected from worship is impotent.

• Organizing the People: The most successful church-es typically decentralized the ministry, affirmingthe Protestant principle of the priesthood of allbelievers. The clergy’s job is to train people to dothe work of ministry, rather than doing it them-selves. Members are given substantial liberty tocreate new ministries and programs, subject to thepastor’s control and direction. Churches typicallyemploy a cell model of organization, which allowslaity to develop leadership within a small group.

• Social impact: Pentecostal and charismatic churchesin the developing world are merging their historicalcommitment to spirituality with a social transfor-mation agenda that is creating innovative models ofChristian social service and community organizing.

In a section entitled “A Few Further Elaborations,”Miller discusses several implications of theleadership patterns he observed, particularly regard-ing the training of future leaders and the role ofseminary education.

Miller concludes his report with “Some ImmodestProposals.” He calls for U.S. churches to createmutual and equal relationships with churches in thedeveloping world; restructuring seminaries basedupon a series of proposed consultations betweenseminary leaders and the emergent church leaders;and sharing ideas and vision to help Christiansaround the world address social problems.

The report also contains four responses from DanielAleshire, director of the Association of TheologicalSchools; Chad Hall, pastor of Connection Churchin Hickory, N.C.; Grant Wacker, professor of churchhistory at Duke Divinity School, and William H.Willimon, professor of Christian ministry and deanof the chapel at Duke University.

The world of Christianity is being literally turnedupside down, with a dramatic shift in locusfrom the Northern to the Southern hemisphere.

Whereas a hundred years ago, 80 percent ofChristians were either Europeans or NorthAmericans, today 60 percent of all Christians live inAsia, Africa, and Latin America.

Undergoing dramatic growth, this emerging churchin the “Two-Thirds World” is heavily Pentecostal,independent, non-denominational, very poor, andlittle understood by those in the Northern andWestern Hemispheres.

For four years, Donald Miller spent two monthseach spring visiting dozens of rapidly growingPentecostal and charismatic churches in 20 countriesin the developing world. In this report, Millerreflects upon the leadership patterns he observed,convinced that North American Christians havemuch to learn from their fellow Christians in theSouthern Hemisphere. The paper is part of a muchbroader research project Miller is conducting onfast-growing churches in the developing world withactive social and community ministries.

Miller groups his conclusions on leadership aroundseveral themes, based upon characteristics heobserved in the churches he visited:

• Role of Vision: The churches Miller studied all hadvisionary leaders who communicated their goals toa cadre of committed followers of Christ. Thoughthey may lack seminary degrees or other formaltraining, these leaders approach life with an expec-tant spirit, believing that God will enter humanhistory just as in scriptural accounts of the past.

• Encounters with the “Mysterium Tremendum:”Although it does not fit within the world view ofmost Westerners, leaders in these thriving churchesin the developing world believe in a divine pres-ence that is active in the universe and that can beand is encountered. They are convinced they areconnected with the deepest truths and realitiesavailable to human beings.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


It had been three years since Ted Yamamori and Ihad visited Nairobi Chapel, located adjacent toNairobi University in Kenya. On that Sunday

morning, in spite of multiple services, the church waspacked tight with 350 people inside the wood framebuilding, and another hundred sitting on benches outside. As part of our research project on globalPentecostalism, we had returned to interview PastorOscar Muriu to see what changes had occurred at thechurch since our last visit.

As we sat down in Oscar’s comfortable study, we weretold that the church had reached a ceiling in itsgrowth. They now had seven services on a weekend,drawing about 2,500 adults. To deal with their over-crowded situation, the church had purchased 14 acresof land on the outskirts of Nairobi in an area wheresome of their members lived, and they were starting anew church that they expected would initially attractabout a thousand people.

In 1999, when we had last visited Nairobi Chapel,they had a goal to start seven new churches by theyear 2000. As they approached their goal at the turnof the millennium, the leadership of the church decid-ed that this church planting strategy was much tooslow. They needed to exercise more faith. Their newgoal was to plant 300 churches by the year 2020, withthe expectation that each of these churches would inturn plant daughter churches. Hence, within the next20 years they hoped for 1,000 new congregations.

Although most of these churches were in Africa,Nairobi Chapel was in the process of planning theirfirst church plant abroad—in Sidney, Australia. Thischurch would not be for African immigrants. Rather,Oscar said that the Western world needs the spiritualvitality that the Two-Thirds World has to offer. In hisview, churches in the West are working with a mis-sionary model that is 50 years out of date.Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere is thriving.It is Europe, America, and countries such as Australiathat need the Gospel.

When we asked Oscar how they were going to staffthis ambitious program, he cited the example of Paulin Ephesians 4. The gifts of the spirit are given toequip the saints for service. He recited the philosophyarticulated during our first visit to Nairobi Chapel.Every leader should be actively working to reproducetheir gifts in another person. In his own case, he hadestablished a timetable of seven years in which hewould develop a leader who would take over hisresponsibilities at this church. Fortunately, he wasable to cut this goal to four years, in part by regularlysharing the pulpit with emergent leaders within thechurch, which is why he was able to move to the newchurch they were establishing.

Much of their training of new leaders starts in a cellgroup of eight to 10 people, said Oscar. When thegroup grows to approximately 12, it is time for the cellto divide. When the split occurs, the apprentice to the

INTRODUCTION

KENYA: Nairobi Pentecostal Church


Consequently, now they go to the community leadersand ask them how this new church that they are estab-lishing can best serve the neighborhood. They thenwork with the leadership to create a service that will beowned by the community, rather than imposed by thechurch on the community. In Oscar’s words, “We havedecided that we will let the community decide how theywill facilitate these projects, because it gives them own-ership of the service that we give to the community,and it lends credibility and authority to the church tobe seen as representing the community and being partof the community.”

We were also interested in the progress being made bya group of Nairobi Chapel members who had formeda group called “Christians for a Just Society.” Threeyears previously they had published a white paper onpolitical corruption. This seemed to be a bold move,since it was critical of government policy. Recently,said Oscar, because of the group’s forthright leader-ship, they have been asked to serve as the secretariat

leader now has the opportunity to lead his or her owngroup and, in time, to replicate their leadership with anew apprentice. It is in this small group setting thatthe real work of the church is done, including pas-toral ministry, Bible study, and prayer. Sunday morn-ing worship, said Oscar, is a time for celebration.

Cell groups are oftentimes involved in social min-istries in their community. For example, we inter-viewed a mother of three children who started assist-ing women with AIDS. At first, this was her personalministry, but within a few months the demand forservices continued to increase. Thus she turned to thewomen in her cell group for assistance. Now they havea center that serves about 80 women, although it isbound to keep growing in size and scope. While thecore leadership is from her cell group, it is expandingthe ministry to include corporate sponsors and othersources of funding. Interestingly, although the centerhas a loose affiliation with Nairobi Chapel, no one isjealous to control it as a ministry of the church.Consequently, one of the key supporters is a pastorfrom another church in the local neighborhood.

Very few Nairobi Chapel leaders have seminary train-ing, although most have university degrees. Oscar saidthat theological colleges are too expensive, take toolong, and, unfortunately, remove students from theongoing work of the church. Consequently, they haveestablished their own church planting school. Drawingon the example of Jesus and Paul, mentoring and dis-cipleship are the key strategies for creating new leaders,with the cell group being the primary laboratory forthe initial phase of training. If the gifts of leadershipare not manifest in this small group setting, it is highlyunlikely that the individual will be able to lead anentire church—let alone plant new ones.

Since one of the criticisms of these fast-growingchurches is that they emphasize spiritual transforma-tion at the expense of social transformation, weinquired about the status of their social ministries. Inparticular, we were interested in the network of medicalclinics they had established in the slums of Nairobi aspart of their new church plants. In response to ourquestion, Oscar said that they had reevaluated theirstrategy. As important as medical treatment seemed tothem as outsiders when they entered these communi-ties, according to Oscar medical treatment was not nec-essarily the priority of the residents. Sometimes thelocal population wanted a school or some other service.

KENYA: Nairobi Chapel vocational school


to all the Non-Governmental Organizations in Kenyathat are monitoring political elections. Hence, peopleoutside of the church are recognizing the group’sintegrity as well as their servant leadership. In addi-tion, Christians for a Just Society has established amentoring program for young politicians who areentering public service, linking them with olderChristian politicians. Oscar said that this group is try-ing to instill in these politicians a commitment to thebiblical standards of justice, “a sense of responsibilityand duty to the populace, and a commitment to bemen and women of integrity.”

Nairobi Chapel has established another innovativeprogram. Working with the youth and parents of thechurch, the church has created a rite of passage toassist young people in the difficult transition to adult-hood. In Oscar’s view, modernity has destroyed theinitiation rites that were an important element ofAfrican culture. To compensate for this void, thechurch has designed a new set of initiation rites foryouth as they enter puberty. While it is no longer pos-sible for a teenage boy to kill a lion to demonstrate hisreadiness to be a man, nor is it morally right foryoung women to undergo female circumcision, thereare other experiences that can symbolize the transi-tion to adulthood. At the conclusion of these ritualexperiences, parents from the church join their chil-dren to write a contract regarding new responsibilitiesand liberties that they will have as young adults.

THE NEW FOCUS OF CHRISTIANITY

Since its inception in the first century, Christianityhas been evolving as a social institution, changingits organizational shape, redefining its mission,

and creating new expressions of worship. Perhaps therate of change is no greater in the 21st century than atother periods in the church’s history, but from my expe-rience of traveling internationally during the past fewyears, it appears as if the world of Christianity is beingturned upside down. And I mean this quite literally.

In 1900, 80 percent of Christians were eitherEuropeans or North Americans, states David Barrettand his colleagues in the World Encyclopedia of

Christianity.1 Today, 60 percent of all Christians livein Asia, Africa, or Latin America. The momentum ofChristianity has moved to the Southern Hemisphere.The colonial notion of Christianizing “heathens”through heroic missionary activity is something of ananachronism. The tables have turned. Churches inAsia, Africa and Latin America are now sending mis-sionaries to the West, believing that they have a mes-sage from the Christian gospel to share with secularEurope and America. Philip Jenkins states, “thephrase ‘a white Christian’ may sound like a curiousoxymoron,” projecting that by the middle of this cen-tury only one-fifth of the world’s three billionChristians will be non-Hispanic whites.2

There are two other demographic revolutions brewingthat will change the face of Christianity. According toBarrett, 26 percent of Christians globally are whatcan be called Pentecostal, including 30 percent ofChristians in the United States. British sociologist,David Martin, calls the growth of Pentecostalism “thelargest global shift in the religious marketplace overthe last 40 years.”3 He conservatively estimatesPentecostalism at a quarter of a billion people andsays that while it was initially a lower class phenome-non, it is increasingly drawing middle income people.

Pentecostalism takes its name from the experience ofJesus’ disciples on the day of Pentecost, described inActs 2:4, “when they were all filled with the HolySpirit and began to speak in other tongues, as theSpirit gave them utterance.” Worldwide,Pentecostalism takes many forms—for example bothas organized denominations and independent church-es, but the movement is distinguished by an emphasison the experience of the “baptism of the Spirit,”often, but not always, evidenced by speaking intongues. Pentecostals are also typically quite conser-vative in their theology. Related to Pentecostalism andoften referred to as “neo-Pentecostalism” is thecharismatic movement. This movement shares someof Pentecostalism’s enthusiasm and emphasis on spiri-tual experience, but it is typically a movement withinestablished, non-Pentecostal denominations andchurches aimed at revitalizing them from within.Most of the congregations that I describe here are

1 David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian and Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd ed (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2001, pp. 3-23.

2 Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 3.3 David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), p. xvii.


thousands of Catholics gathering every Saturdaynight in an open field, singing choruses, holding theirhands to the darkened sky in praise, and seeking mir-acles of body and financial well being. In Sao Paulo,Brazil, I visited a dynamic Catholic Church of severalthousand Spirit-filled people who were utilizingPentecostal hymns from a decade ago. In Hyderbad,India, I went to a huge Catholic Charismatic retreatcenter that draws tens of thousands of pilgrims eachyear for weeklong retreats.

This same process is occurring within other Protestantchurches. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for example, Iasked the head of the church council if any of themainline denominations had charismatic elements,and he laughed and said they are all Spirit-filled,including the Presbyterians. While theologian HarveyCox explains the growth of Pentecostalism and thecharismatic movement in terms of an “ecstasy deficit”in contemporary culture, there are many competinghypotheses. Those within the Pentecostal tradition seethe growth as a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spiritfor our age, while some social theorists view thismovement as an inevitable part of the cycle of renew-ing moribund denominational structures. When Iasked one well-informed theologian in South Americawhy Pentecostalism was growing while liberation the-ology, for example, seems to be declining, he repliedsuccinctly: “Liberation theology opted for the poor,and the poor opted for Pentecostalism.” In his view,progressive politics can never substitute for deep spiri-tual engagement, although the two can go hand-in-hand—which is the argument that Ted Yamamori andI make based on our research.

With this change in the population base ofChristianity, there is also a dramatic shift in the socio-economic characteristics of the Christian Church. Incontrast to the western Church, which is considerablyrelatively affluent, global Christianity is made upmostly of the poor. In many ways, this should not besurprising, especially if one looks at global statistics:Over half of the world’s population live a precariousexistence, and nearly one-fifth are desperately poor.When these Christians worship, they come to Godwith different concerns than do their North Americanand European counterparts, and this affects their styleof worship. They are oftentimes less cerebral in theirworship. They have a different attitude towards themiraculous. And they are sometimes more conserva-

self-consciously Pentecostal and are often independ-ent of denominational affiliation. Some, however, aremore accurately called charismatic. All of them, how-ever, give strong emphasis to the work of the HolySpirit and to the believer’s direct spiritual experience.

A dramatic shift is also occurring in the organizationalform of the Christian church. Globally, according toBarrett’s research, 20 percent of Christians are mem-bers of independent churches, up from 8 percent in1970.4 Some of these churches are splits from less pro-gressive denominations. Other independent churcheshave been started by religious entrepreneurs who have avision for sharing the good news of Christianity withnon-churched people and consequently are utilizingnon-conventional expressions of worship and organiza-

tional management.Denominations havegained a reputation forbeing hierarchical,authoritarian, and slowto understand thechanging cultural reali-ties of our postmodern

world. Consequently, tens of thousands of new church-es have formed in the last several decades that arelinked together in networks, founded on relationshipsrather than denominational ties.

I am a member of an Episcopal congregation in theUnited States, and the reality of this demographic shiftcame home to me when I examined the profile of theAnglican Communion to which The Episcopal Churchbelongs. Currently, 53 percent of Anglicans reside inAfrica, far outstripping the next largest region, namelyEurope, which claims a third of all Anglicans. The con-trast is dramatized when one realizes that Nigeria hasseven times more Anglicans than the United States.Furthermore, many elements of the AnglicanCommunion have a charismatic flair, or, alternatively,worship in a far more exuberant style than does thetypical Episcopalian in the United States.

The Anglican Communion is not alone in this realign-ment of its membership. The same thing is happeningwithin Catholicism, whose next pontifical leader may,indeed, come from the Southern Hemisphere. Thereare also significant elements of the Catholic Churchthat are charismatic, embracing the gifts of the Spirit.In Manila, for example, I witnessed several hundred

4 Barrett, p. 10.

“Liberation theology opted for the poor,

and the poor opted for Pentecostalism.”


tive in their theology and moral views, offending thesensibilities of Enlightenment-saturated WesternChristians. I went, for example, to a three-and-a-half-hour worship service in a township in Johannesburg,South Africa. Although that may seem a little excessive by Western standards—where the sermonis allocated 12 minutes and everything is timed so theservice ends in an hour and 15 minutes—this SouthAfrican congregation broke for lunch after morningworship and then reconvened at 3 p.m. for the nextinstallment of praise and healing.

There is also a failure by many Western Christians tounderstand the sexual and gender mores of Christiansin the Southern Hemisphere, as well as other culturaldifferences. Many of us have no appreciation of ani-mism, no experiential understanding of poverty, andlittle comprehension of cultures that are based on col-lective rather than individualistic values. WhileWestern values have much to recommend them—espe-cially the emphasis on democratic governance—weneed to understand better the cultural context inwhich the new face of Christendom is being expressed.When we do, our attitudes towards certain practices bySouthern Hemisphere Christians may be less strident.

A PERSONAL PILGRIMAGE

Adecade ago I ventured out from the safety ofmy liberal Episcopal Church in Pasadena,California, to visit a network of “new para-

digm” churches that started in response to the culturalchanges initiated in the 1960s. My research odyssey inthese neo-Pentecostal churches is described inReinventing American Protestantism, where I arguethat a second reformation of sorts is occurring—thistime focused on the “medium” of Christianity ratherthan the “message” of the Christian faith.5 While Inever felt tempted to join one of these churches that Iwas studying, I did undergo a profound shift in myworldview when I realized that I was trapped in anEnlightenment ideology that privileged mind overbody and perpetuated a dualistic epistemology thatmany of the postmodern members of new paradigmchurches had long ago abandoned.

After publication of this book, I noticed that many ofmy fellow liberals began to shun me, and there were

5 Donald E. Miller, Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1997.)

PHILLIPINES: Jesus is Lord Church, Manila

members of the academy who thought I had lost mymind. Indeed, I confess to having somewhat overstat-ed my thesis, because I intended the book to be awake-up call for the declining mainline churches. Icould, of course, have written a cynical critique ofthese churches that were experimenting with new wor-ship styles and forms of social organization, but thatwould have simply reinforced the stereotypes thatcomfort many liberal Christians as they watch theirchurch populations age and decline in membership.Nevertheless, there was a glaring inadequacy in theresearch for this book: I did not fully explore thesocial ministries of these churches. Were they makingany difference within their communities? Did theyunderstand the Great Commandment to love othersas much as yourself, or were they one-sided in theirfixation on the Great Commission to save the world?Also, how were these churches responding to the OldTestament mandates related to justice, care of wid-ows, orphans, and the poor in one’s midst?

In 1998, I was invited to a consultation in thePhilippines that was hosted by Tetsunao (Ted)Yamamori, president of Food for the Hungry, to dis-cuss a book that he was editing on the response ofChristians to poverty in urban cities around the world.At the end of the meeting we were relaxing over dinnerin a Manila restaurant when the topic turned to futureresearch projects, and the idea occurred to us that wemight test the argument of Reinventing AmericanProtestantism on a global scale, but this time we wouldfocus on the social ministries of these churches.


charismatic; and many are not as socially active andengaged as those described here. The churches we stud-ied are not representative of all churches in the devel-oping world. They were chosen to fit specific criteria,especially fast growing churches that are committed tomeeting the social needs of people in their communi-ties. The phenomenon of socially engaged Pentecostalchurches is relatively new, often a decade or less indevelopment, but I am convinced that this focus on the“holistic gospel” is gradually replacing more legalisticexpressions of traditional Pentecostalism.

Cutting across all of these churches we studied aresome common themes that we observed about theirleadership, organization, and practices. Since I am nota consultant on church growth, I am not advocatingadopting these strategies; rather, my intention is moremodest: namely, to offer some generalizations aboutways in which Christians around the globe are seekingto be faithful to their identity as followers of Christ.What follows then are observations and personalreflections based on my experiences rather than sys-tematic research findings. These reflections have ledme to ask whether and how what I have observedmight apply to U.S. churches and their leaders. Beforeturning to these observations, however, I state my ownstrong negative view of the stereotypes that someNorth American Protestants (including some NorthAmerican evangelicals) have of these churches in theSouthern Hemisphere, because many of the churchesare Pentecostal or charismatic in form.

For one thing, it is unfair for Protestants in NorthAmerica to superimpose stereotypical images of tele-vangelists on Christians in the developing world andthen marginalize them as unsophisticated, culturallyretrograde animists who are engaged in superstitiousbehaviors that compensate for their deprived socialcircumstances. It is quite possible that God acts inmiraculous ways on behalf of people who have norecourse to antibiotics and modern medicine. In addi-tion, it is also possible that many people who involvetheir body as well as mind in worship may haveescaped certain limitations of the modernist world-view. Indeed, they may actually be more holistic intheir mentality than Western Christians who aretrapped in an Enlightenment worldview. Finally,many of these Christians may have a better under-

After securing a generous travel grant from a founda-tion that had previously funded both of us, Fieldsteadand Company, we sent letters to over 300 church lead-ers, missiologists, and scholars asking them to suggestcongregations that fit these four stipulations:

• They were located in the developing world;

• They were experiencing rapid growth;

• They were self-funding, rather than supported byoutside mission agencies;

• And, most importantly, they were deeply involvedin social ministries within their communities.

To our surprise, 85 percent of the nominations forcase studies turned out to be Pentecostal or, at least,charismatic. Consequently, Yamamori and I spentapproximately two months each spring for the nextfour years traveling around the globe studyingPentecostal and charismatic churches that fit the fore-going criteria. We visited 20 different countries andconducted interviews with nearly 400 individuals.Some Sundays we attended three or four differencechurch services. We also wrote field notes on dozensof different churches and their social ministries.

It is important to note that, although these congrega-tions were selected as a result of a nomination process,they are not representative of all Two-Thirds Worldchurches. Many churches in the developing world arequite small and struggling, often like “storefront”churches in the U. S.; many are not Pentecostal or

PHILLIPINES: Jesus is Lord Church, Manila


standing of what it means to be a selfless servant ofChrist than do Westerners who are surrounded by theconveniences of modern society.

By making such suggestions, I do not wish to roman-ticize the poor, nor am I arguing that there are notpathologies inherent in some practices—for example,emphasizing faith-healing as a cure for AIDS patients.At the same time, I am convinced that we in NorthAmerica have a great deal to learn from our fellowChristians in the developing world, and I also believethat local churches in the U.S. should create partner-ships with churches in the Southern Hemisphere inorder to engage in mutual learning and collaboration.By so doing, we will open ourselves to what God isdoing in the world and may thereby discover our rolein being God’s hands and feet to the poor, marginal-ized, and afflicted—as described in Matthew 25.

After every trip that I have made to churches in thedeveloping world I have come back humbled by myown lack of faith, my own failure of imagination, andmy resistance to commit myself to the high standardof being a servant of Christ. We in North Americalive in a bubble of affluence and convenience, and thisaffects our theology. Again, I’m not romanticizingpoverty and implying that poor Christians are inher-ently more spiritual than wealthy Christians. Rather,confronting poverty on a daily basis—or religiouspersecution, or manifestations of the demonic—cre-ates concrete occasions to test whether the Christianfaith works. And when it does, the context is createdfor faith development of leaders who are called toserve with great vision and purpose.

THE ROLE OF VISION

All of the vital churches that Yamamori and Ihave studied are marked by visionary leaderswho have communicated their goals to a cadre

of committed followers of Christ, many being relativelyrecent converts. Formal training for the task of leader-ship has little to do with their success. In fact, manytimes they do not possess seminary degrees. Instead,they have had a radical, life-changing encounter withGod, and have subsequently become voracious readersof scripture—trying to practice the demands of thegospel, often quite literally—while simultaneously bor-

rowing organizational ideas from whatever source theycan find, including their own imagination. These leadersapproach everyday life with an expectant spirit, believ-ing that God will enter human history in the same waythat the scriptures reveal the acts of God in the past.

Many of these leaders also take prayer and meditationvery seriously, both corporately and personally. Allnight prayer meetings are very common in Africa, but I have also encountered them in Latin America. Thesemeetings typically start around 10 p.m. and go until 6 a.m. the next day. During this time there is singing,preaching, laying on of hands, as well as hours ofpraising God and calling on him for help. One of mymost poignant recollections is of a group of youngpeople in a barrio in Caracas, Venezuela. A womanwhose son had been killed through gang violence start-ed the group. Rather than retreating into bitterness andrage, she opened her very modest home to the youth ofthe neighborhood. Every Friday night she crowds 30 to40 kids into her dining room and a small adjacentroom where they sing, dance, testify, and preach. Thereare no guitars, just one youth who is drumming on anoverturned and empty tin food container. In someways, there is a nearly orgiastic quality to the gathering.But this exuberance is complemented by what appearsto be a sincere desire to seek the face of Christ, toforego sexual temptation, and to commit oneself to alife worthy of a child of God.

When mainline (and many evangelical) Protestants thinkof Pentecostals, they often imagine people speaking intongues, falling down as they are slain in the spirit, orthrowing away crutches as they hobble across a stage.While these things happen—for example, recently, whilevideotaping a Johannesburg church service, I wasknocked off my feet and into a nearby chair as a largeman fell under the power of the Spirit—this exuberanceis not found in many of the growing neo-Pentecostalchurches. There the presence of the Holy Spirit is oftenmore subtle, less dramatic, and in some ways more pro-found. In short, vital Spirit-filled churches are character-ized by pastors and people who open themselves to thepresence of the Holy Spirit for guidance. Sometimesunusual things happen: God speaks to them in dreams,visions, or prophecy. More often, however, they haveinsights, growing convictions, or an emergent desire topush beyond the comfort zone of everyday life. Stated


ENCOUNTERS WITH THE

MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM

The Christian project doesn’t work unless there is adivine presence active in the universe. For millen-nia, this presence has been called the Holy Spirit

by Christ followers. The story told in the Book of Actsis that Jesus left behind the comforter, the Holy Spirit,when he ascended into heaven. Personally, I’m notvery attached to the three-tiered universe idea of heav-en above, hell beneath, and the in-between world ofstruggling humans pulled this way and that by oppos-ing forces. Indeed, contemporary astronomy has cata-pulted us a long ways from this simplistic rendering ofcosmic reality. At the same time, I’m convinced thatthe Christian project continues because peopleencounter the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.Without this manifestation of the Spirit, we haveempty organizational forms—which, of course,describes some manifestations of the Christian church.

Within my own Anglican tradition, there has been astrong emphasis on the “trinity” of tradition, reason,and scripture as a means for knowing God’s will. Thisformula dates back to the late 16th and early 17thcenturies where first John Jewel and then RichardHooker used the formula to do battle with bothCatholics, who ignored scripture, and Protestants,

differently, when people are open to the possibility, theHoly Spirit seems to challenge self-interest and compla-cency and nudge them into doing the heroic, even theunimaginable. In fact, I have often been tempted to think:“These people are megalomaniacs.” And then I discoverthat, indeed, they did start five new churches last year;open a medical clinic; now have three new nurseryschools in impoverished communities; and so on.

How do they accomplish such grandiose visions? Everyexample has its own story, but it is possible to general-ize to some degree. First, these faithful Christians areinordinately self-sacrificing and dedicated. They do notbelieve that they own their lives; instead, they havegiven them to God for his service. Second, they wor-ship ecstatically together and in this process the Spiritrefreshes them. They are not running on their ownpower or they would be constantly exhausted. Third,they have deep meditative lives and in these quiet timesinvite the Holy Spirit to renew them, inspire them, leadthem. Indeed, if they were operating on their owndesire or commitment, they would burn out after a fewmonths or years. Fourth, they often build strong orga-nizational structures. It would be a serious mistake tothink that their projects and programs run solely onHoly Spirit hoopla. On the other hand, without theHoly Spirit their efforts would result in pedantic organ-izations reflecting the visionary’s egoistic ambitions,not the spirit of a compassionate God.

PHILLIPINES: El Shaddai, charismatic Catholic sect, Manila


who emphasized scripture at the expense of reasonand tradition. While there is much to be commendedby this balanced approach—for example, I find myselfstrongly attracted to the rhythm of the liturgy and theemphasis on reason and scientific investigation—thereis also something missing that the Wesleyan traditionadded to its Anglican forebears: namely experience.

It is not that Anglicans are devoid of religious experi-ence. In many ways, for example, I find the Anglicanliturgy capable of fostering a mystical encounter withwhat Rudolf Otto called the mysterium tremendum.But our sophistication and emphasis on order anddecorum tend to strip us of a vocabulary for talkingabout such spiritual encounters. Consequently, thereis often fear and even hostility expressed towardsthose who talk too openly about experiences. Oneexplanation of this fear, of course, is that acknowl-edging the right to personal revelation threatens theauthority of the priestly class. But that interpretationis too cynical. A more plausible explanation is that wereject divine encounter because it does not fit ourworldview, or at least the worldview of the educatedelite of our society who chose to dichotomize mindand body, flesh and spirit, mythology and truth.

I believe that we need to move beyond thesedichotomies if the Christian church is going to havevitality, even if doing so makes liberal Christians likeme nervous. I have encountered in Asia, Africa andLatin America a number of phenomena that do notfit the Western liberal worldview. In India, for exam-ple, Ted Yamamori and I interviewed a young womanwho even her fellow Hindu villagers claimed had diedand was raised from the dead by the prayers of twodevout Christians. In Hong Kong, we did extensiveinterviews with heroin drug addicts who met Jesus,then received the Holy Spirit, and during the nextweek went through painless withdrawal. In Brazil, wewitnessed demons being cast out of possessed individ-uals, and these individuals were subsequently liberatedfrom external forces that had controlled their behav-ior. And everywhere we traveled there were numerousaccounts offered of supernatural healings.

At one level, I try to maintain a skeptical attitudetowards these claims—a product of spending yearsreading Marx, Freud, and other debunkers of reli-

gious enthusiasm. On the other hand, I have openedmy worldview wide enough to allow for the possibilityof the supernatural. In fact, on a one-week silentretreat to commemorate my 50th birthday, I had anencounter with the demonic that, while subject to var-ious interpretations, made me acutely aware that reali-ty may not be what Western rationalists always per-ceive it to be. Hence, it is possible that the miraclesperformed by Jesus and his disciples are still occurringin the 21st century—at least for those who have eyesto see and ears to hear. At the same time, one mustalways test these experiences by the other threesources of knowledge of God—scripture, tradition,and reason.

For me, one of the great revelations that has emergedfrom interviewing hundreds of Pentecostals is the dis-covery that these individuals are typically bright,articulate, reasoning human beings who happen tobelieve in divine encounters. William James’ analysisof the Varieties of Religious Experience, which I hadread in graduate school, provided me a philosophicalfoundation for critiquing reductionistic models—whatJames calls “medical materialism.” Nevertheless, itsometimes requires “encounters of a close kind” toturn intellectual formulations into experiential truths.6

Cynics, of course, will claim that I have “gone native”after a decade of hanging around Pentecostals. Thatis one possible reading, but a more charitable inter-pretation is that I am making a transition out of theideology of modernism, which, admittedly, is a one-dimensional world.

Recently, while in a Singapore bookstore, I read agood portion of Bishop John Shelby Spong’s attemptto liberate Christianity from the “primitivism” of thebiblical worldview.7 During my graduate school days,this book would have electrified me, as did JohnRobinson’s Honest to God, which I read in the mid-1960s. Frankly, however, Spong’s book bored me aftera while, primarily because it was so predictable andalso because it was long on critique and short on cre-ative solutions to the mysteries of the Spirit. In con-trast, I have found the work of Marcus Borg to bemuch more exciting, because he seems to recognizethe validity of the supernatural elements of Jesus’shamanistic practices. Jesus and the early leaders of

6 See William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Collier Books, 1961).7 John Shelby Spong, A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being

Born (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001).


suming individuals. Take Maggie Gobran, for exam-ple. She was raised in a wealthy family in Cairo, Egypt,and as a married woman lived the life of a well-heeledsocialite. One day, however, she encountered a desper-ately poor woman selling a few items as a way of sup-porting her family. Maggie looked into the eyes of thiswoman and her young daughter and saw herself andher own daughter Anne—except for the grace of God.This encounter led her into the slums of Cairo, wherepeople make their living by sorting garbage. Thestench made her sick for several days after her firstvisit, but she kept going back, because increasingly shedid not see herself or her daughter in these poor fami-lies. Instead, she told us that she saw the presence ofChrist in the eyes of these children, and that by caringfor them she was physically touching Christ. NowMomma Maggie, as the children call her, has estab-lished a network of approximately 30 nursery schoolsfor children in these slums. She also has started a voca-tional school for youth who cannot attend school.And several thousand children each year attend sum-mer camps, where they are able to eat as much food asthey want. They are also taught hygiene, moral values,and, most importantly, they are told they are valuedbecause God loves them.

Maggie Gobran is a quiet, self-effacing woman. In theplace of ego, there appears to be the spirit of Christ.The people working with her radiate this same spiritof compassion and vitality. What energizes this workis clearly not the desire for fame—believe me, thiswould not be a sufficient basis to sustain one in enter-ing the slums of Cairo on a daily basis. Rather,Maggie believes that God has called her into a life ofservice, as is also the case with many other servant-leaders whose lives have been marked by the experi-ence of being called rather than by a self-appointedvocational ambition.

THE ROLE OF WORSHIP

In the literature I have read, leadership is seldom, ifever, connected to worship. Yet, what seems mostto sustain servant-leaders in these congregations is

the act of worship, both individual and corporate.Every one of the exemplary leaders that I met spendsconsiderable time each day in prayer, reflection, andmeditation. This quiet period of the day is when theSpirit seems to speak to them, giving them direction

Christianity understood the supernatural, and theyunapologetically healed people, cast out demons, andmultiplied bread and fishes.

I clearly acknowledge the potential for abuse and evengreed by Christian miracle workers, many of whom arefar from self-critical about their work. Various claimsabout God’s miracles need to be tested and critiqued. Iagree, for example, with the critique by Oscar Muriu,Nairobi Chapel’s pastor, of what are often called“health and wealth” churches in Africa—those thatpromise both health and worldly success to people whojoin their ministries. Such churches are growing, Muriubelieves, because they make unrealistic promises topeople who are desperately poor. Their pledge thatfaith in God will bring about an easy and quick change

in their life circum-stances is extraordinari-ly attractive, but it runscounter to scripture,tradition, reason, andthe experience of God’speople. Nevertheless, toreject outright all suchclaims about the mani-festations of God’s

Spirit in the world—whether promising health andwealth or some other spiritual gift—as “abuses ofChristian teaching” is not only specious logic. It alsoblinds one to seeing how God’s Spirit is at work in peo-ple’s lives in often complex and demanding ways.

What gives power to the leaders of these churches,pastors and laity alike, is the conviction that they areconnected with the deepest truths and realities avail-able to the human species. This truth is not the resultof deductive reasoning; it is experientially based. On adaily basis people commune with God; they seekGod’s presence; they await divine instructions. Nolonger are their lives the result merely of strategic cal-culation intended to fulfill their personal desires andambitions. They have been called to a life of service.Their fundamental task as a servant-leader is to per-ceive what God wants done in the world and then tocarry out this divine plan, not with one’s own strengthbut, quite literally, with the power of God.

Some of the most significant ministries I haveobserved are not led by individuals with “big personal-ities.” Quite the opposite, they are oftentimes unas-

On a daily basis people commune with God;

they seek God’s presence; they await divine

instructions.


and correction, new ideas, and insights into the poten-tial, as well as vices and frailties, of people they willencounter that day. Moreover, a worshipping commu-nity of people who collectively have the resources toenergize a prophetic presence in the world also sus-tains these exemplary leaders.

In thinking about the failure of liberation theology,whose social critique I admire, I believe that it wasunsustainable in many contexts because it did not sufficiently emphasize the importance of nurturing a strong worshipping community—which is the basisfor sustaining a life of empowered commitment. Incollective worship, several important things transpire.First is acknowledgement of the source of lifethrough various means of celebration and commemo-ration. Singing is the nearly universal means of collec-tive expression, and this is most powerful when donein the local parlance rather than imitating anotherculture’s musical idiom. Second, Christian worshiphas moments of self-examination, followed bypenance and requests for forgiveness. This is donethrough prayers, collects (in liturgical churches), andpublic confession. Third, there is a period for teach-ing, which may include recitation of the roots of theChristian tradition through reading of sacred texts,remembrance of saints from the heritage, and com-mentary on scripture that is followed by moral andspiritual exhortation. Fourth is the opportunity forpeople to gather around the table, remembering thewords and acts of Jesus during his last meal with hisdisciples, connecting with the symbol—or mysticalreality, depending on the tradition—of Christ’s bodyand blood. It is these elements of worship that renewindividuals, give them vision and power, while at thesame time connecting them to a community of peoplewho can work collectively to bring God’s justice andcompassion to a broken world.

Drawing on sociological theory, one can argue thatreligious leadership that is disconnected from worshipis impotent. Not only is worship essential to sustainingthe moral order of a community of people, but as thesociologist Emile Durkheim has aptly stated, at theheart of every good ritual are moments of collectiveeffervescence in which individual identity is fused withcollective purpose. While Durkheim reduced thesemoments of animation to purely social origin (i.e.,celebration of the community’s collective consciencewhich is greater than any single individual), the

Christian faith rests on the premise that the “some-thing more” than Durkheim acknowledged is theCreator God to whom we owe our being. Hence,worship is an essential element of the triangulationwhereby the leader, community, and God becomepartners in a collaborative enterprise. In worship Godgives us the inspiration and power to be his agents inthe world; in worship we experience the unity ofpurpose that undergirds our collective activity as thepeople of God; and in worship we are given directionby individuals whom God has called to be his servant-leaders. All of this makes sense, however, only if thereis a God who elects to act in this world through humanbeings as an expression of his creative initiative.

One of the things that surprised me the most when I started studying new paradigm churches was howmuch time they spent singing. They did not refer tothis extended period as “singing,” but as “worship.”Furthermore, their songs were quite different from thehymns sung in my own church tradition. The hymnsto which I was accustomed often contained “meaty”theology; the new paradigm church songs were mostlysimple chorus with highly repetitive lyrics. Also, anoth-er substantial difference is that traditional hymns areoften statements about God or Christ, while the newparadigm worshippers are singing directly to God orJesus. While I was trying to sort out this puzzle, one of my interviewees put it simply: “The difference,” shesaid, “is writing a letter to someone you love com-pared to writing about someone for whom you care.”

The other difference between the two styles of wor-ship is the use of contemporary musical instruments.

UGANDA: Kampala Pentecostal worship


What seems to be common to vital worshipping com-munities is warmth among the members. People talkwith each other, hug, embrace, and kiss. There is oftena sweetness in the air that can only be felt and notdescribed. My speculation is that it comes from peoplebeing willing to yield themselves to the Spirit and thusexperience God in relationships with one another andlet a spirit of gentleness and humility take over.Perhaps, not surprisingly, there is often an acknowl-edgement in these worship services of brokenness andhelplessness, and an acknowledgement that one’sstrength comes only from Christ. In such worship, theworship leader is more like Max Weber’s notion of thecharismatic leader as a vessel of the divine, rather thanthe more popular view of the charismatic leader as adynamic extrovert who leads by force of personality.

ORGANIZING THE PEOPLE

Visionary leadership is essential to a vital,healthy, growing church. But that does notmean that the clerical staff does all the work.

Quite the contrary, the most successful churches typi-cally decentralize the ministry, affirming the Protestant

New paradigm churches almost never have organs oreven pianos. Depending on the country, guitars, key-board, drums, saxophones and/or various brassinstruments are standard fare. In poor and undevel-oped countries, there may be no accompaniment orperhaps a simple padded mitt that is struck to keeptime to the music. There are also substantial differ-ences in sound systems. In Singapore I attended achurch in a newly constructed auditorium that had anincredible projection screen resembling a gigantic tele-vision screen, along with a million dollars of televi-sion recording equipment. It also had a sound systemto rival that used in any rock concert. On the otherhand, we visited a church in Hyderabad, India, thathad only a few drummers. In the middle of the serv-ice, we all left the church building and walked a quar-ter mile into a rice field where there was a water cis-tern. There a half dozen new converts were baptizedin full immersion with their clothes clinging to them.The Singapore church with its sophisticated equip-ment did not seem to me have exhibited greater spiri-tual fervor or depth in its worship than in the ruralchurch in India. Rather, different contexts necessitateddifferent worship styles and accoutrements.

BRAZIL: March for Jesus


principle of the priesthood of all believers. The job ofthe clergy involves training the people to do the workof ministry rather than the clergy doing it themselves.For this model to work, the people must have a rela-tively high level of biblical literacy. Otherwise the con-tent that fires the ministry is absent. It is also impor-tant that the senior pastor of the congregation main-tain veto power over any “craziness” that might getimplemented by fervent members whose vision needsmoderating or rechanneling. This said, however, thereis substantial liberty given to members to create newministries and develop programs. Without this permis-sion, new paradigm churches would not be nearly soinnovative and entrepreneurial. At the same time, thesenior pastor still maintains considerable control,because he or she defines the overall vision and also,as mentioned, has veto power over the proposed newministries or programs.

Some type of a cell-based church—for example, theone in Nairobi that I described previously—seems tobe the model that works best in these churches. Such amodel makes it possible for laity to develop leadershipskills within a small group setting. Furthermore, thecell model relieves the clergy in large churches of min-istering to the individual needs of thousands of peo-ple. Instead, this is primarily done at the cell grouplevel, with the lay leader of the cell group havingaccess to more senior leaders in the event of a problemthat he or she cannot handle. Clearly, however, thefrontline of ministry is always at the cell group level.

Various theories exist about what constitutes the mosteffective cell group structure and practice. To give buta few examples, some argue for homogeneous cellgroups made up of people from the same profession,class, or who share common interests. Others arguefor multigenerational cell groups that include youngand old alike. Still other theories restrict the contentof the cell group meeting, suggesting that cell groupsshould discuss the pastor’s sermon of the previousweek, while other others believe in a degree of auton-omy for leaders, where they select the theme or textfor discussion.

When the cell-oriented church is Pentecostal orcharismatic, the gifts of the Spirit are often manifestwithin the cell meeting, with members praying forhealing, prophesying, or speaking in tongues. In someinstances, relegating the gifts of the Spirit to the cellgroup is a way of “sanitizing” the larger worship

meeting for unchurched people who might be offend-ed by such dramatic displays of healing or prophecy.On the other hand, it is precisely the tenderness ofpraying for someone in a small group setting that maybe appealing. One interviewee told me that her cellgroup was like an extended family, caring for her in away that her biological family never did. After all,within healthy family settings people are touched,hugged, worried over, and prayed for, and it is precise-ly this intimacy that is missing for many people livingin urban settings, whether in the West or in the devel-oping world.

Undoubtedly, different approaches are appropriate fordifferent contexts, and I will not argue for one method-ology over another except to suggest that the cell groupstrategy seems to work well if the entire church is struc-tured around such groups. Experience has often shown,however, that shortly after this change is initiated, manychurches take a short-term “nose-dive” because theauthority of those in traditional roles is altered, andsome people become alienated and leave. Gone are 90percent of the committee meetings as well as guilds andother ensconced organizations. After this initial down-turn, many churches then experience a long-term periodof growth because the cell group model permits manymore people to be actively involved and hold leadershiproles. Furthermore, properly functioning cell groupsbecome tools of evangelism because of their permeabil-ity. Cell groups often take responsibility for serving non-Christians in their immediate neighborhood, and mem-bers also invite their friends to join them in these infor-mal home settings, which for many people are lessintimidating than entering a church building.

In Manila, I witnessed the linkage between cell groupsand evangelism at a large Sunday evening gathering of5,000 or so people. After a song or two, an invitationwas given for people to come forward to acknowledgetheir birth as new Christians. The timing of this altarcall did not make any sense to me until someonewhispered in my ear that the hundred people who hadcome to the stage had all become Christians thatweek in their cell groups, and now they were givingwitness to their conversion before the larger body ofChrist. The end of the service—typically the time foran altar call—was reserved instead for Christians whocame forward for prayer and healing.

Although cell group advocates typically argue thatthey are modeling this organizational structure after


individuals “holistic entrepreneurs,” and has beencompiling examples of people who have establishedbusinesses in other countries with the explicit goal ofthen starting a church or underground fellowship ofChristians. These individuals are self-supporting, and,in fact, the integrity of their business activity requiresthat it eventually turns a profit.

Another organizational characteristic that I encoun-tered within the developing world is a suspicion offoreign mission money as an advanced form of colo-nialism. While it may only cost a few thousand dol-lars to construct a church or fund a social program ina developing country, outside funding often destroyslocal initiative and sometimes actually corrupts therecipient of these foreign funds. In South Africa, aninfluential church leader told me that he advises con-gregations never to depend for more than one-third oftheir income from outside the country. When offers offoreign funding do occur, he counsels that the donorchurch be asked to send someone with the money toinsure that it is spent for the purpose that it wasintended. The problem with foreign money is that itcreates dependency, which is precisely the opposite ofbuilding self-sufficient indigenous leadership.

While the implication of the foregoing might be toabandon all missions giving, I suspect this would becarrying the point to an extreme. For example, aKenyan medical doctor that I met in Ethiopia hadimplemented an innovative public health project inAddis Ababa. A missions organization in the UnitedStates, with no trace of colonialism, supplied themajority of her funding for her ever expanding workin Sudan and elsewhere in Africa. Likewise, I encoun-tered a church in Kampala, Uganda, with a remark-able AIDS ministry, inspired, in part, by a white mis-sionary from the United States. He wisely, however,was absent from the church much of the year, raisingmoney for church projects, leaving the leadership ofthe church to the local population. What was discour-aging were the few times that we encountered whitemissionary pastors in large churches in Africa andAsia that surely would have been better off had localleadership been in charge. In contrast, there was aCanadian missionary in Kenya who clearly had a giftfor starting churches; yet, once they were up and run-ning, he transferred the leadership to a local pastorand moved to another location.

the first-century church, it should be recognized thatthe cell approach is essentially a coping strategy forlarge, ever expanding churches that, nevertheless, dohave historical precedents.8 These churches with multi-ple thousands could never hire enough clergy to keepup with the demand for pastoral ministry. The cellsalso serve as a strategy for new church planting andleadership development. One starts by developing acell group with the intentional goal of multiplying it.A few believers invite their non-Christian neighborsand friends into their home for a time of Bible study,prayer, and fellowship. Sometimes these cells growinto churches. Sometimes they languish. A wise andexperienced leader of a movement told me that youmeasure leadership—and whether one is called to be apastor—by whether a cell group led by a particular

individual stagnates orgrows.

The structure of thesegatherings seems to fol-low the same format,regardless of the teach-ing style. First, there isan “ice-breaker” wherepeople share somethingabout themselves orwhat is going on in

their lives. This is followed by a brief worship time,accompanied by someone playing guitar, if there isappropriate talent available in the group. Next is aperiod of Bible study and discussion, which is oftenfollowed by a time of prayer for people with specialneeds. Finally, there are light refreshments. In addi-tion to this formal structure, various activities may beassociated with cell groups. For example, if someonehas lost a job or there is a medical need in the family,the cell group members may pitch in to help this indi-vidual. Cell groups may also do informal outings asfamilies, and, as previously mentioned, they may pur-sue various social ministries within their community.

Beyond the emphasis on cell groups, there are otherorganizational innovations that characterize thesechurches. For example, although many are focused onmissions and new church planting, there is a growingmovement to use the medium of business as a way ofgaining access to countries that are not hospitable toChristianity. My colleague Ted Yamamori calls these

The problem with foreign money is that it creates dependency,

which is precisely the oppositeof building self-sufficient

indigenous leadership.

8 For example, in 18th century England, as the Methodist movement grew, John Wesley made extensive use of cell groupswhich he called “class meetings,” with laity as leaders.


Finally, globalization and the Internet are affectingthe way that churches relate to each other. In an eraof more and more independent churches, it is quiteeasy for relationships to be established betweenchurch leaders on different continents that have noth-ing to do with denominational ties. For example, Iencountered pastors in Guatemala, Singapore, andArgentina who are in weekly communication witheach other, facilitated by e-mail and inexpensivetranscontinental telephone calls. Often these pastorsare reading the same books on leadership and organi-zational theory, and they are swapping ideas on socialministry and worship music. What unites them is acommon view of mission, not a denominationalstructure. As mentioned previously, hundreds ofinformal networks have been established that functionas surrogate denominational structures, with one fun-damental difference: They are founded on relation-ships rather than legal obligations.

Everywhere I have traveled in these countries, I haveasked about the health of churches established bymainline U.S. and European denominations. In veryfew instances have I heard reports of growingMethodist, Presbyterian, or other mainline groups.This even applies to some of the older Pentecostalgroups, such as the Assemblies of God, that seem tobe saddled with legalistic traditions that worked wellfor poor people half a century ago but do not cur-rently make sense to middle class and college educat-ed members. Indeed, it appears that denominationalaffiliation sometimes stultifies growth and innovation.Some of the largest and most innovative churches wevisited are independent neo-Pentecostal congrega-tions. In many instances the senior pastor had begunhis ministry as part of a denomination until hebecame fed up with the supervision or slow rate ofchange and simply struck out on his own.

SOCIAL IMPACT

In the last decade or so, many Pentecostal andcharismatic churches around the globe seem to beincreasingly catching a vision of addressing the

social needs of their communities. Historically, thesechurches tended to focus on the spiritual needs ofpotential converts. More recently, however, they havebeen reading their Bibles through a different lens.Renacer Church in Sao Paulo, for example, sends out

many buses every night, staffed with volunteers, toserve homeless people living under highway bridgesand in skid row locations. In each bus is a huge potcontaining many gallons of soup, along with freshwater, blankets, and whatever else can be collectedand distributed. When the bus arrives on location, thevolunteers distribute food and strike up conversationswith the recipients, but there is no preaching and noexpectation of reciprocation. They are there to servepeople because that is what Jesus did, healing the sickand feeding the multitudes.

In Uganda, a Pentecostal church in the capital city ofKampala is responding to the devastating impact ofthe AIDS crisis on that country. Honoring the culturalcustom of the extended family taking in orphanswhose parents have died, this church acknowledgesthat many families are so overburdened with the chil-dren of relatives that they can no longer cope. Hence,the church is building villages with housing that canaccommodate a single mother and eight children.While several of these children may be the mother’sown, the rest are adopted. The church supplies thefood for each village, but individual families cook theirown meals. Since there are no men in these house-holds, the church—which numbers about 10,000—hasestablished a program called “Father’s Heart,” wheremen volunteer to be surrogate fathers to the children.

In nearby Kenya, a Pentecostal church has establisheda residential vocational school for street children,

KENYA: Nairobi Chapel clinic


uality. As a result they have failed to acknowledge theconcerns that other Christians have about social jus-tice, poverty, and those who experience disenfran-chisement in society. In fact, many North AmericanPentecostals seem to have bought so thoroughly intocapitalist individualism—possibly as a function oftheir emphasis on individual salvation and personalsanctification—that they have often forfeited anystructural critique that runs counter to conservativepolitical ideologies.

Obviously there are exceptions to these generaliza-tions. Some North American Pentecostal congrega-tions are deeply committed to serving the poor andmarginalized in the area around them. Also manyAfrican American Pentecostal churches in the UnitedStates never fell victim to the trap of spiritualizing allsocial problems. And, very recently, there arePentecostal Latino churches that seem to be discover-ing the social implications of the gospel.

Since this topic is the focus of a forthcoming bookthat Ted Yamamori and I are co-authoring—Pentecostalism and Social Transformation: A GlobalAnalysis9—I will not elaborate further except to statethat the mainline churches no longer have a corner onthe social gospel. If anything, because of fundingproblems, many mainline churches seem to be focusedmore on survival than on creating innovative newforms of social ministry. Instead, the important head-line is that many Pentecostal churches, especially inthe developing world, are merging their commitmentto spirituality with an agenda on social transforma-tion that is creating innovative models of Christiansocial service and community organizing.

A FEW FURTHER ELABORATIONS

In concluding these reflections, it undoubtedly isappropriate to define finally what I believe to bethe central task of Christian leadership. My sim-

ple answer is that leadership within the Christian com-munity involves, at its heart, helping individuals identifytheir callings as they commit themselves on a dailybasis to discern what the Spirit of God is doing in theworld—a task that I acknowledge is easier describedthan done. Christian leadership differs from secularleadership because of the moral and spiritual assump-

which is a growing problem because of the AIDSpandemic. They purchased a plot of 50 acres and onthis land built dormitories, a woodshop, mechanicsworkshop, sewing room, library, and meeting hallwith dining facilities. A social worker identifies hard-core street children who she thinks have a chance forsuccess—meaning they haven’t sniffed too much glueor become too hooked on drugs. After appropriatearrangements with the government, she brings thesechildren to the vocational school where they live untilthey turn 18 years of age and have become certifiedwith an employable skill.

The list of social programs that we studied is exten-sive, ranging from “mercy ministries” of providingfood and shelter, to community organizing that isaddressing structural issues of poverty and justice.What is equally important also is that many convertsseem to be experiencing upward social mobility. Why?Because they quit gambling, drinking, and womaniz-ing, and the indirect consequence is that they havesurplus capital that they can invest into their personalbusiness or their children’s education, thus givingthem a competitive advantage over their neighbors.These Pentecostal and charismatic churches in thedeveloping world are sometimes ahead of their coun-terparts in the United States in terms of respondingto the social implications of the Christian gospel. ALatino Assemblies of God pastor in Orange County,California, recently told me that he is learning fromnew immigrants in his church who are coming fromCentral America. They have a tradition of social min-istry that is more developed than the California-basedchurch that is receiving them.

One can speculate about why U.S. Pentecostals some-times lag behind their sister churches in the develop-ing world. In part it may be a result of the extensivenetwork of public social services available to needypeople in the U.S. Such a safety net is not available inthe developing world. Hence Christians are express-ing their commitment to biblical values by feeding thehungry, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison,and working for social justice.

The contrasting lack of attention to social ministriesamong North American Pentecostal congregationsmay also result from their preoccupation with person-al sexual “sins”—for example, abortion and homosex-

9 Forthcoming in 2004 from the University of California Press.


tions implied by what it means to be called to be a fol-lower of Jesus Christ. Thus, corporate standards ofsuccess, so often held up in leadership literature, areinappropriate for Christian leaders, whether in NorthAmerican congregations or those that we studied inthe Two-Thirds World. Building ever bigger churchstructures and having increasing numbers of membersare not criteria central to Christian discipleship. Butteaching people to love God and to love others asmuch as they love themselves are essential bench-marks for Christian leaders. Likewise, leadershipinvolves helping members understand how specificbiblical mandates related to ministering to the poorand needy define the agenda of every follower ofChrist. In short, the role of the leader is to help peo-ple within the body of Christ to discern their gifts anddiscover how God is calling them to live as Christiandisciples at this moment in time.

If the church is going to be a vital place for transform-ing people’s lives, then attention must be given to reex-amining the means of training the next generation ofleaders. As has been noted, many leaders of churchesin the developing world, as well as leaders of new par-adigm churches in the United States, have refused toadopt the classical model of seminary education. Also,when they need to add to their pastoral staff, theyoften ignore looking for credentialed pastors from out-side their congregation. Instead they prefer to train upleaders from within their congregation and deploythem for full-time service, once they have demonstrat-ed their calling and gift for leadership.

The reason for hiring from within the congregation isthat these new leaders understand the “DNA,” so tospeak, of the institution, and they have alreadyaligned themselves with that congregation’s vision.10

In contrast, the pattern prominent in most mainlinedenominations is for pastors to come from outside thecongregation, from a pool of seminary-trained pas-tors available to be called or appointed to serve thevariety of congregations in the denomination or inother church ministries. Both patterns have strengthsand liabilities. New paradigm leadership training hasthe merit of increasing the likelihood that the leader’svision will be tied to that of the congregation from

which he or she has come—the congregation that theleader has helped to establish or in which his or hervision has been nurtured.

At the same time, such in-house training may truncatethe leader’s vision of the church, depriving the leader ofa broader understanding of the church’s traditions andpractices, and leaving him or her at the mercy of the lat-est fads in church growth or worship styles, for example.The traditional pattern of theological education, in con-trast, has the merit of giving leaders a vision of thechurch much broader than that of a single congrega-tion. While it may make it more difficult and takelonger for the leader to learn a particular congregation’sDNA, that is a price that may be worth paying.

Another way of describing these differences is that newparadigm leadership is based on relationships in thecongregation, not functional positionality within adenomination’s career structure. Such relationships are

10 It is probably also true that this pattern of leadership development strengthens the control of the founding pastor over newstaff members and the pastors of new congregations planted by the “mother” church. Such control has been evident innew paradigm church movements such as the Vineyard Christian Fellowship and Calvary Chapel that I described inReinventing American Protestantism.

THAILAND: Hope of Bangkok Home for Girls


If leaders are not being trained in seminaries, what isthe source of new leadership? One answer to thisquestion was succinctly stated by Chuck Smith, thefounder of the Calvary Chapel network, who said,“God does not call those who are qualified, but quali-fies those who are called.” Indeed, I have often beensurprised by who is in leadership positions in some ofthese vital congregations, whether they are located inthe United States or abroad. The criterion does notseem to be the list of degrees behind one’s name orthe size of one’s monthly paycheck. More importantis the attitude of one’s heart. The questions guidingthe selection of leaders in these new paradigm congre-gations have very little to do with formal credentials.They include the following: Does the individual havea passionate commitment to God? Does he or shehave a vision for transforming people and the worldaround them? Does the person manifest a Spirit-filledlife? If these qualities are in place, then God will givethem the skills to carry out the task to which theyhave been called, regardless of formal training. Afterall, they say, Jesus used a group of fisherman to estab-lish his kingdom.

Does such a heroic philosophy preclude the role ofmore formal pastoral training? Obviously new para-digm churches are not inattentive to training theirleaders, but as I noted, they often do this by creating“equipping” programs in-house rather than sendingpeople away to a seminary for training. The modelsvary tremendously. Courses are often scheduled sothat working people can attend. Also, while there arelectures and assigned texts, there is a strong emphasison mentored relationships, with people learningthrough the act of doing ministry under the supervi-sion of a mentor. Teachers and mentors are not nec-essarily credentialed individuals themselves; although,they typically have a great deal of knowledge andpractical experience about their subject area. At theend of the course, certificates for completion may bedistributed, but the emphasis is on job readiness, noton accumulating degrees. In fact, while ordination isnecessary in order for individuals to perform variousclerical functions, there is often very little ceremonyattached to conferring certification on an individual.The prior and more fundamental test is whether thecommunity believes that God has called this individ-ual for service.

built through years of development. They are not easilytransferred to another congregation, unless that con-gregation is a direct offspring of the mother churchand bears its DNA. Hence, when leadership migrationdoes occur, it is typically in the process of planting anew church. As I explained previously, one strategy forstarting a new church is to “give away” a senior leader,along with some of the church’s key lay leaders, inorder to birth a new church on the geographicalperiphery of the mother church’s location. Or, in someinstances, the new leader and a group of members maybe encouraged physically to move their residence andtake new jobs in an entirely new location.

The net effect of this process is that leadership vacan-cies are created in the mother church. Rather than

viewing this as a prob-lem, however, thesevacancies are deemed tobe an opportunity fornew leaders to be devel-oped. Consequently, farfrom being a staticorganizational model inwhich people getentrenched in ego-cen-tered roles of leader-

ship, the model understands the church to be like anorganism that is constantly evolving. By creating lead-ership voids within a congregation, it enables new peo-ple to discover their gifts, and in this process their com-mitment is enhanced to the church, to God, and to theChristian mission is enhanced.

One of the major problems of a growing church is tocreate leadership roles for new members. The cell groupstructure addresses this problem in part, because it radi-cally decentralizes leadership. If, however, the church isnot structured around cell groups, then it is importantto create other opportunities for leadership by develop-ing new ministries or, alternatively, creating leadershipvacancies by establishing new churches in which peoplecan serve. Although stable visionary leadership at thehelm of an organization is positive, organizations thatbecome static often lose their creativity, which is the rea-son that corporations sometimes spin off new compa-nies as a way of promoting innovation. Many churchesthat have selected vitality and influence and not sheersize as their primary goal are practicing a similar strate-gy by spinning off new congregations.

The criterion does not seemto be the list of degrees

behind one’s name or thesize of one’s monthly pay-check. More important is

the attitude of one’s heart.


In describing this alternative pattern of Christian lead-ership, training, and ecclesiastical organization, I donot want to ignore some of the potential problemsassociated with it. For one thing, decentralized leader-ship, as practiced in these new paradigm congregations,can be messy. This is often the case when one movesfrom authoritarian governance, where a central author-ity controls all that happens, to the contrasting practiceof giving power to the people to develop their ownleadership opportunities within the congregation. Mostof us learn by making mistakes, and senior churchleaders have to give people the space for this learningprocess to occur while, at the same time making certainthat nothing too bizarre happens that could damagethe body of Christ or individuals within it. It is for thatreason that decentralized authority structures must stillhave built-in systems of checks and balances. Someyears ago, for example, the Vineyard ChristianFellowship was faced with what came to be called the“Toronto Blessing,” with people at a Vineyard congre-gation in Toronto engaging in “Holy Laughter” andmanifesting various barnyard animal sounds. Aftermuch deliberation, the late John Wimber, theVineyard Fellowship’s founder and head, decided to“disfellowship” the Toronto congregation because hecould find no biblical warrant for what was occurring.

Second, there are tendencies towards biblical literalismand anti-intellectualism in these churches and their pat-

tern of training leaders—tendencies that seminary edu-cation often counteracts in important ways. I have nodoubt that there needs to be a balance between open-ness to the Spirit of God and knowing how Christiansthrough the ages have thought and written about Godand God’s work in the world. New paradigm leaders—sometimes with justification—accuse seminaries ofessentially reducing God and God’s purposes to con-ceptual abstractions. But their criticism is more often acaricature. It is important that even the most successfulpastor of a growing, socially conscious church havesome historical perspective on how his or her congrega-tion relates to the last 2,000 years of Christian history.Simply claiming the authority of scripture andattempting to replicate the first century church is notenough. Church leaders need to know how the churchhas struggled to be faithful (or failed to do so) throughthe centuries. They need to know something about bat-tles that have been fought over theological doctrines.And they need also to develop the capacity to “read”and critique their culture through the lenses ofChristian theology and ethics, lenses that formal theo-logical education often provides. Thus, unless Christianleaders want to narrow their appeal to those who resistany form of intellectual concern, then it is importantthat they understand the evolution of the church, thehistory of doctrine, and gain the capacity for ethicaland theological reflection—among the various contri-butions of theological education.

Moreover, it is important that such leaders gain thecapacity for self-criticism that the resources ofChristian teaching and experience offer. Suchresources are also the fruit in part of formal theologi-cal education where one is regularly challenged toengage in self-reflection and critique. These are virtuesthat I have found to be sometimes lacking in self-trained leaders of new paradigm churches who pre-sume to know the Spirit’s leading without any attemptto test whether the leading is from God or not.

At the same time, however, I am convinced that semi-naries need dramatic restructuring—especially if theyare to be relevant within the developing world but alsoin the North American context. If that were not thecase, then some of the most vital churches of the 21stcentury would not be setting up alternative trainingprograms. Indeed, the kind of on-the-job mentoringdone in these churches may provide important clues to

THAILAND: Bangkok Baby Home


ranks, encouraging them to grow in their faith anddiscern and act on God’s call for their lives.

As leaders listen to the call of God’s Spirit, it isundoubtedly prudent for them to pay a great deal ofattention to their constituency. I doubt that agingcongregations are going to be up for some of the radi-cal changes that I have described. Such measureswould probably be divisive—the so-called “worshipwars” over the introduction of contemporary formsand music are an example. At the same time, denomi-nations and their member congregations shouldunquestionably think about ways of creating neworganizational forms and practices—some of themdrawn from the church’s tradition—that will connectwith a younger generation who typically feel alienatedfrom the standard format for “doing church.”Alternatively, some Christians will work outside ofthe existing denominational structures, as is the caseof many independent congregations and parachurchorganizations. I do not doubt that this is healthy.Reform oftentimes is stimulated through competition,with non-functional organizations and practices fail-ing to survive as new forms and practices come intobeing. But these new forms and practices, howeverinnovative, will also need regularly to be renewed, elsethey too will ossify and die.

ways that seminary education might be restructured totrain leaders—but not, I believe, by setting formalclassroom learning over against on-the-job learning.Rather I believe that what is needed are innovativeways of melding the two into a synergy, so that newleaders gain the intellectual grounding in scripture,church history, doctrine, and cultural analysis thatprovide them with the “why” of pastoral leadershipand have the opportunity for on-the job developmentof leadership skills and techniques that give them the“how.” At the same time, neither of these contexts willbe adequate if they fail to form students spiritually,forming them with the habits of prayer, reflection, andmeditation that characterize the vital leaders that Idescribed earlier in this essay. Such formation is essen-tial if they are to lead Spirit-filled churches.

Third, there is the poignant question of whether oldecclesial structures can or even should be reformed, orwhether it is better to invent new ones from theground up. Quite frankly, this question can only beanswered by individuals who are listening to the callof God on their own lives, for I assume that the bodyof Christ will always be multiform and not uniform.The history of the Christian church is a tug-of-war(or something even more violent) between what ErnstTroeltsch identified as the church, sect, and mystictypes. Although this typology is too constraining forwhat I have been observing, the point is still valid thatthe church-type of social organization is, by defini-tion, bureaucratic and routinized, while the sect isreformist, populist, and filled with visions of spiritualpurity. The mystic, in contrast, has typically aban-doned what he or she views as the corruption oforganized religion to pursue God in individualisticand privatized ways.

Although there is room for all three expressions ofdiscipleship within the Christian church, my personalfascination is clearly with the reformist movements,which, I believe, need not always exhibit sectariancharacteristics of exclusivity and isolation from secu-lar encounters. In fact, some of the best examples ofreform-oriented churches are congregations, some ofthem large, which are confronting social issues andengaging and collaborating with secular institutionsrather than withdrawing in lonely isolation.Furthermore, many of these reformist congregationsare welcoming diverse types of people into their VENEZUELA: Don Miller and friend, Caracas


SOME IMMODEST PROPOSALS

The odyssey that I have described in the precedingpages has convinced me that we, as NorthAmerican Christians, must surrender any lingering

assumptions that we may have about our superior sta-tus as members of the body of Christ. Along with thisadmission should come a reexamination of the legacyof western colonialism which was often given expres-sion in Christian missions. Western Christians are but asingle candle bearing witness to the truth that God haselected to share with us. In all humbleness we shouldseek ways to partner with and learn from otherChristian communities around the world. And in theseattempts we should put our checkbooks in our pockets,because dangling money in front of churches in thedeveloping world has the potential of perpetuatingcolonial control or, even worse, invite corruption. ThusI offer several “immodest” proposals.

My first proposal is that every church in the UnitedStates should create a relationship with a church in thedeveloping world. The first year or two should be spentwith members and leaders visiting each other, sharingideas on worship and community outreach, but, moreimportantly, breaking bread together and getting toknow each other’s cultures, needs, and aspirations.These relationships need not be within denominationalboundaries. For example, would it not be wonderful foran Episcopal or a Presbyterian congregation in LosAngeles to step outside its comfort zone and form arelationship with a Pentecostal church in Ghana? If weare to understand globalization, then we need to movebeyond the polarized debates that we read about in thepress, and instead form long-lasting relationships withpeople around the world. These relationships must becharacterized by mutuality, not missionary zeal orpaternalism. We in the West clearly have something tolearn about spirituality from churches in the developingworld, along with their innovative approaches toaddressing intractable problems related to poverty andhealth. In turn, people in the West have a longstandingunderstanding of the inner workings of capitalism andglobal markets that can be extremely useful to peoplein the developing world. However, as I have empha-sized, direct aid to churches in the Two-Thirds Worldfrom those in the West may be a mistake—at least ini-tially—because it is important not to commercializerelationships that have barely gotten off the ground.

My second recommendation has to do with restructur-ing seminaries. I believe there would be great value inholding a series of consultations in which seminarypresidents and deans would meet with leaders of fast-growing new paradigm churches around the world inorder to start a dialogue about the needs associatedwith creating strong Christian leaders. Initially, discus-sion of agendas related to institutional maintenanceshould be bracketed, including investment in buildings,high status faculty, library systems, and so forth. Rather,the focus should be on the needs of rapidly expandingchurches, the need for a contextual understanding ofthe Christian tradition, and whatever else participantswant to put on the table. There would be no expectationthat the goal of the consultation would be the birth anew model of Christian leadership development.Instead, the aim would be open exchange of ideas.

These consultations should be held outside of NorthAmerica, preferably in different locations in the devel-oping world. Extensive pre-planning would be doneby a small group of potential participants, ensuringthat the agenda and structure of the consultation aremutually owned and embraced by all. An independ-ent moderator would be selected who does not havevested interests. And ample time would be allotted forparticipants to socialize informally.

Three or four months after the first consultation, work-ing papers would be circulated that would describe newmodels of theological education and leadership train-ing. A second round of consultations would then beheld, with representatives of foundations and boardmembers invited to listen in on the conversations.Ideally, this consultation, as well as the first round ofmeetings, would include representatives from independ-ent churches as well as non-traditional denominations,since creating new models that simply conform to theold structures would be a serious mistake.

At the end of these consultations, there would be redraft-ing, re-visioning, and re-imagining. Hopefully the Spiritof God would take control of the process, and Christiansof all stripes and backgrounds would be led to build onthe relationships that had been developed. Being a realist,I don’t think anything too revolutionary would emerge,but on the other hand the implementation of such aprocess might help to further the work of the Kingdom,shattering some of the polarization, anger, and frustra-tion that currently reside between many established semi-naries and their potential constituents.


based social ministries. Secondly, we need to help buildthe capacity of research centers in the developing worldthat can gather these stories and be a hub for informa-tion exchange. And, thirdly, we need to create a sub-stantial Internet database of these promising practicesthat will be constantly updated.11 Clearly, foundationassistance would be necessary to help launch thesethree proposals, but one should not forget the impor-tant role that local congregations can play, includingmany of the affluent new paradigm churches.

In conclusion, I will simply restate the premise of myreflections and these several proposals. I believe thatthe locus of the Christian church has changed poles.It is no longer in the West or the NorthernHemisphere. Therefore, a paradigm shift in our think-ing is in order that reflects this changed locus of thechurch’s constituencies. I suggest that it begin byChristians in North America entering a steep, experi-ential learning curve. Now is a good time to changethe family vacation travel itinerary in order to visit achurch south of the equator. And it is also a goodtime to augment the travel budget of the senior mem-bers of your church’s clergy. September 11, 2001, wasa wakeup call to our nation. Churches have an obliga-tion to better understand our global context, andthere is no finer way to do this than at the humanlevel, forging partnerships of collaborative learning.

My third recommendation has to do with the variousmeans by which Christians around the world areattempting to manifest God’s love in the face of glob-al poverty, the AIDS pandemic, and a hundred otherneeds associated with the human inclination towardgreed and violence. Personally, I feel very privileged tohave had the opportunity to travel extensively, wit-nessing many different efforts by Christians aroundthe world to be God’s agents of healing, reconcilia-tion, and justice. In this process, I have been struck byhow creative and entrepreneurial Christians in thedeveloping world are in addressing intractable socialproblems, but, unfortunately, many of these programsexist in isolation.

Consequently, I believe that there is a great need toshare the wealth—the wealth of ideas, the wealth ofvision—because we in the West can learn from whatour brothers and sisters are doing, and we can partnerwith them in expanding these programs. The chal-lenge, of course, is how this undertaking can beaccomplished, and there is no easy answer.

I do, however, have several suggestions. First, if wewere to develop thousands of church-to-church part-nerships between congregations in the West with wor-shipping communities in the developing world, then wewould become more aware of these Spirit-filled, faith-

VENEZUELA: Church youth, Caracas

11 Internet access is increasingly available in all parts of the developing world, and there is no more economical way to dis-seminate this information than through this electronic medium.


next generation of leaders, and, with due respect forwhat Western-style seminaries have contributed to the education of leaders in North America, he is con-vinced that seminaries need “dramatic restructuring.”

I have not visited the congregations that ProfessorMiller describes, but from everything I know aboutChristianity as it is manifesting itself in this new cen-tury, Miller is right. The center of gravity of theChristian faith has shifted, and the shift has not justbeen the movement of Western European and NorthAmerican Christianity to other parts of the world.The shift also entails the invention of new patterns ofworship, new styles of congregational life and work,and different approaches to leadership education.These descriptions correspond to what I have readand everything that I have heard in conversations atNorth American seminaries, which are the schools Ihave studied and where I spend most of my time.Miller writes as a social science researcher who is ableto take delight in the integrity of emergentChristianity in developing countries. His descriptionsabout these new Christian movements evoke onlyagreement and appreciation from me. I found myself,however, less in agreement with the some of the impli-cations he has drawn from these movements forNorth American Protestantism and theologicaleducation. I want to respond in two general ways: thefirst concerns the phenomena of emerging Christiancommunities; and the second concerns theimplications for the education of Christian leaders.

1. DEVELOPING CHRISTIANITY

The current patterns of growth and change thatMiller describes are not new to the Christianproject; they have been a part of the development

of Christianity at other times and in other places. Inthe United States, for example. I think that very simi-lar descriptions could have been made a century orcentury and a half ago as Methodist circuit riders andBaptist preachers took a more lively and revivalisticProtestantism to frontier towns and villages. Englandand Europe had seen little of the kind of Christianitythat was emerging on the American frontier. It grewfast, with new churches starting everywhere a revivalhad broken out, most of them teeming withexpressionistic versions of Christian worship that

YET ONE MORE FACE

A Response by Daniel AleshireExecutive Director, Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada

Donald Miller takes his readers on a brief andinviting tour of congregations that he has stud-ied in the developing world, including Kenya,

Brazil, Ethiopia; and supplements the findings of hisresearch with the significant data that David Barrettand his associates have assembled on the religiousgeography of the world. The growth of Christianityhas shifted from the West and North to the East andSouth. Asia, Africa, and South America are centers of extraordinary growth in the Christian religion,and they are redefining the center of gravity ofChristianity. These new and rapidly growing Christianmovements are more likely to be Evangelical,especially Pentecostal, or Roman Catholic thanhistoric U.S. mainline Protestants, and whatever their denomination, they are characterized by moresinging, congregational warmth, and spiritual vitalitythan their North American fraternal communions.The ministry of large congregations in developingcountries focuses on physical well-being and commu-nity development needs as well as spiritualtransformation and personal piety.

In the Christian communities he studied, leadershiptypically grows from within large congregations, andreflects their ethos, vision of faith, and patterns ofministry. While pastors may be university educated,they are not likely to be seminary graduates. Rather,they have been trained by other pastors, in the contextof congregational work and worship, in the ministerialstyle and spirit of the teaching congregation. Millernotes that these leaders are not “personality” focused,but are committed to developing lay leaders who oftenshare highly visible leadership with pastors. These pas-tors are deeply committed to the Christian faith; theyare, deeply and devotedly, Christian believers. Thesecongregations eagerly plant new churches and theirstrategy involves sending both members and leadersfrom large congregations to new congregational starts.

“Leadership within the Christian community,” in hisanalysis, “involves helping individuals identify theircallings and commit themselves on a daily basis to discern what the Spirit of God is doing in the world.”And, on the basis of this definition and theeffectiveness of leadership that Miller has observed incongregations in developing nations, he argues that itis necessary to reexamine the means of training the


Pentecostal schools. These newer seminaries reflectthe passions and commitments of new or reformistChristian movements in the United States, which havebeen primarily Evangelical.

This essay seems to want to contrast new Christianmovements in developing countries with mainlineProtestantism in North America. That is fine, andmainline Protestants have much to learn. However, itcreates two problems. First, when a new religiousmovement in a different culture is compared to some-thing almost two centuries old in another culture, it isdifficult to determine how much of the difference is afunction of age, how much is a function of culture,and how much is a function of a work of the Spirit. Ifwe were to turn the clock back 200 years, would weargue that English Protestants would have been betterto have adopted the styles of Christianity that wereemerging on the American frontier or in slave church-es? Perhaps it would have been, but cultural andsocial contexts were sufficiently different that adoptionof these new practices would have been difficult.Second, to the extent that these developments are a“work of the Spirit,” it is difficult to imagine how theycan be duplicated apart from a similar providential initiative. While I celebrate the emergence of newChristian movements, and think that they should becarefully studied and celebrated by North AmericanChristians, I am not sure how instructive they are fororganized Christianity in North America, with its dif-ferent history, different culture, and itself the heir ofanother powerful, emergent religious sentiment.American mainline Protestantism has major problems,is in a 30 year decline, and has lost the social statusthat it once had. Reform is the order of the day. I’mjust not sure that the experiences of emergentChristian communities are the key to that reform.

2. EDUCATING PASTORAL LEADERS

Professor Miller clearly has a reformist agendawith regard to North American theological edu-cation. What should be done with the seminar-

ies that grew up in North America as Christianity wasinventing new expressions and institutionalizing newpatterns of social organization? Education, particular-ly professional education, is very culturally bounded.American legal education, for example, would nottravel well to Kenya or Ethiopia. The practice of law,

would have impressed a 19th century European soci-ologist, had there been one. As Christianity movedinto the frontier, the education of leaders changed, aswell. Methodists and Baptists were not likely to haveattended college or seminary, but would have readwith another pastor, and been educated on the job.Had they graduated from Harvard, Yale, Andover, orNewton in early 19th century, they likely would havefound their theological education inadequate for thepastoral leadership that was needed in the Kentuckymountains or along the Mississippi delta. Christianitytook on still new forms as Southern whites shared itwith their slaves, who took their masters’ religion andtransformed its practices and passions intoexpressions that had not been seen before. The “new”Christian movement that was described in this essay is

similar to “new”Christian movementsthat have flourished inother places, in differ-ent cultures, at differenttimes. I think that theessay accurately docu-ments that what hashappened in the past ishappening again. Thisnew expression is not

the new face of Christianity; it is yet one more face, ofwhich there have been many, and of which there willbe many more.

Christianity has a way of re-inventing itself as amovement, and I see these re-inventions as works ofthe Spirit that inevitably lead to social organizationalstructures. These structures establish and institution-alize these new expressions, including ordering a styleof ministry and education that fits an institutionalizedreligious community. For example, as 19th centuryAmerican denominations formed and grew, denomi-national colleges and seminaries were founded for thetraining of ministers. These schools were the result ofnew Christian commitments and passions, and manyof the mainline seminaries that Miller wants toreform were founded in the 19th century as the conse-quence of optimistic, growing expressions of faith. Asimilar pattern has characterized events in the 20thcentury. An examination of the seminaries that havebeen founded since World War II demonstrates thatthe vast majority are Evangelical, including four

This new expression is notthe new face of Christianity;

it is yet one more face, ofwhich there have been

many, and of which therewill be many more.


not to mention the legal systems themselves, are toodifferent for the same educational system to work wellin North America and these developing countries. Ithink the same is true for theological education. ThatUS-style seminaries were ever established in thesecountries was probably a mistake. They may haveworked as long as national churches were missionaryextensions of North American churches, but asnational churches mature, with their own cultural andtheological integrity, North American seminary struc-tures will not work. It is no surprise that pastors inthe congregations that Miller studied did not attendseminaries. However, it would be a mistake to assumethat because something does not work well in thedeveloping world it should be dramatically reformedin North America.

Theological education on this continent reflects thedominant educational system in the culture, and as newreligious movements emerge in this country, new semi-naries are formed. These new schools generally followthe graduate, professional school model, I think,because of its widespread cultural acceptance. They arefounded to provide education for leaders in communi-ties that follow a new or reformed religious vision, andto undertake the intellectual labor that the vision will,over time, require. Not only are new seminaries formed,seminaries, new and old, reform educational practices.Many ATS schools have developed extension programs,adopted distance education programs, and in otherways, have sought to get theological education to prac-ticing ministers rather than to educate candidates whohave little or no ministerial experience.

Although Professor Miller attempts to balance hiscriticism of North American theological educationwith appreciation for its strengths, he does not seemto be fully aware of the diversity that presently existsor of efforts being made to respond to a number ofthe criticisms he makes. In the United States,Evangelical Protestant schools are becoming the dom-inant presence in theological education.Approximately 49 percent of the students in ATSschools in 2001 were enrolled in schools that wouldidentify themselves, in one way or another, asEvangelical. I wish that he were more acquainted withschools like the Assemblies of God TheologicalSeminary, or Church of God Theological Seminary,or Oral Roberts School of Theology, or BethelTheological Seminary, or Asbury Theological

Seminary, or the Seventh-day Adventist TheologicalSeminary, or Southwestern Baptist TheologicalSeminary, or Columbia Biblical Seminary, or even theSchool or World Mission at his Pasadena neighbor,Fuller Theological Seminary. These schools areintensely aware of the accuracy of the description thatthis essay provides, and as schools, are beingtransformed by the changing character of Christianityin other parts of the world.

I also know that these schools are being called upon toprovide theological education in the very parts of theworld that this essay describes. Apparently, even inthese areas, there is a perceived need for the kind ofeducation that seminaries provide. I think that U.S.seminaries are providing this education at the requestof local Christians in these developing countriesbecause there are educational needs these schools canmeet. These needs are not so much about pastoralpractice as they are about understanding the history ofthe church, the interpretation of its scripture, the skillsthat can increase effectiveness in new cultural settings,and teaching the persons who will be the teachers.

But what about the mainline Protestant schools? Havethey become irrelevant to the theological education ofpastors in mainline Protestant settings? These schoolshave considerable work to do, because their foundingdenominations are changing, and it appears to me thatthey are doing it. They are thinking aggressively abouthow to contribute more effectively to the education ofalternatively credentialed clergy–a growing phenomenonin mainline congregations. They are becoming muchmore informed about the education of students that arediverse in every way, including denominationalbackground. They are providing education for anincreasing number of racial/ethnic students, and havedemonstrated a commitment to attend to the needs ofracial/ethnic communities, which are clearly the centersof new vitality in American Christianity. As mainlinedenominations have retrenched in the past severaldecades, and their colleges, hospitals, and child welfareagencies have distanced themselves from their foundingdenominations, the seminaries have become some of thelast institutions the denominations still have, and thathas meant that the seminaries have assumed roles andprovided programs that denominational offices wouldhave provided in another era. A seminary exists in a reli-gious community for a variety of reasons, one of whichis the education of pastors and other leaders.


Theological schools–even mainline Protestant ones—are adaptive social organizations. They change as the religious constituencies they serve change. Becauseschools are organizationally conservative, whatever theirtheology may be, changes are typically slow. Many NorthAmerican schools, however, have already changed in suchsubstantive ways that it is hard for an accrediting agencylike ATS to keep up with them. I worry that some schoolsmight outlive the religious enthusiasms that foundedthem, but I am convinced they will find communities toserve and needed forms of education to provide.

Christianity, as had been true in the past, is changing, andas it changes, the patterns of education that will be neededfor religious leaders will change. As these patterns change,old schools will adapt to new patterns of education andother, new schools will be founded to embody them.

There is still more work to do. About 40 percent of the244 ATS member schools participate in a survey ofgraduates each year. More than 4,000 graduates in the2001-02 academic year completed the survey, and on afive point Likert scale, they rated relatively their satisfac-tion in progress in 15 skill areas related to future work.They are satisfied, for the most part (nine of the skillswere rated in 4+ range, and six in the 3.6+ range). Ofthese 15 areas, however, graduates rated satisfaction withprogress in their skill related to “ability to administer aparish” least positively. This is not a mainline issue, it is atheological school issue, and it confirms some of thesupposition that Miller brings to his essay. Theologicalschools are better at education in the biblical, historical,and theological disciplines than they are the pastoralarts. They need to become better at the kind of clinicaleducation that enhances ministerial and priestly practice.

THAILAND: Bangkok worship service


In Emergent Patterns, Don Miller examines andtranslates Third-World Christianity for a Westernmainline audience and provides helpful beginning

points for coming to terms with what is happening onthese geographically and practically distant fronts.Miller’s report complements other recent explorationsof Christianity’s explosive growth in the Latin, Asian,and African parts of the world (including articles inNewsweek and The Atlantic Monthly) and makes animportant contribution to the conversation. Hisreport helps make the Christianity of the developingworld both accessible and inspirationally prescriptivefor Christians in the United States.

In my opinion, the hope for implementing lessons fromthe developing world rests with the innovators and earlyadapters within the American church leadership popu-lation. Miller hints at one segment of this potentiallyreceptive population when he talks about the emerginggeneration of leaders in American churches. This groupof new generation leaders, who Robert Webber refers toas “Younger Evangelicals,” seem to carry a discontentwith typical American Christianity that opens them tofindings such as Miller’s. These leaders are both youngand old and they are in the minority of leaders inWestern Christianity. It is within such groups that newmodels of leadership will most likely take root.

American church leaders who seek to implementlessons learned from Third-World churches should findmany lessons that will apply to the American context.One of the greatest lessons for us is a focusedcognizance of God’s activity in contexts that are neitherWestern, Modern, nor mainline. For us to see and expe-rience (be it through firsthand encounters or throughreports such as Miller’s) God’s movement in these con-texts offers an encounter that is certain to impact bothour understanding and our practice of Christianity inmany ways. Though the implications are manifold, Ibelieve the implications will revolve around two foci –how we measure success and how we develop leaders.

CHANGING OUR CATEGORIES FOR

MEASURING SUCCESS

Churches in the developing world are pursuingsuccess in categories that differ from those usedby most American congregations. It seems that

these developing world believers are focused on

proclaiming the gospel so that spiritual, emotional,and physical healing can occur through persons’supernatural encounters with God. Much of what hashappened in and through these churches has goneunnoticed by Westerners not because we were incog-nizant, but because these churches have succeeded incategories that we do not evaluate.

Churches in the developing world help us to reconsid-er our ministry success in terms of social impact andpersonal spiritual transformation by bringing abalanced approach to these two important factors.American churches often find themselves out of kilterby exaggerating the importance of one of thesefactors over the other. Pentecostal and evangelicalcongregations tend to stress personal transformationto the neglect of social impact, while mainline andliberal churches go to the opposite extreme. As wewitness congregations in the developing world find abalance of these Gospel expressions, we can betterdefine success in our own contexts according toboth/and categories rather that either/or dichotomies.

The success of churches in the developing world canalso shift us away from an overemphasis on financialsuccess. In my work with new churches planted in theSoutheastern U.S., a recurring theme is the need formore money. As a leader of a new church, I also findmyself measuring our congregation’s success by ourbank account, offering receipts, and financial gifts frompartnering churches. The emphasis on money certainlyis not unique to new churches. Most likely, a congrega-tion’s interest in dollars rests dually on the need for staffsalaries and the fact that many Americans gauge ourpersonal well being according to financial standards.But the success of very poor people in experiencing thegood news of God’s love forces us to rethink the centralrole of money in our church lives. More money will notnecessarily result in more ministry, more life change, ormore spiritual renewal. Like some of the peopledescribed in Acts, we may need to learn that God’s heal-ing, resurrecting, and forgiving Spirit cannot be bought.

Another current category for measuring success isacclaim from other American church leaders. FromMiller’s report and others like it, we cannot deny thatGod is at work among and through the churches inthe developing world. Not only is God at work inthese churches, but also the level of divine impact inthese areas is stunning. And this success has largely

MEASURING SUCCESS, DEVELOPING LEADERS

A Response by Chad Hall, Team Leader, Innovative Church Team, Baptist State Convention of N.C.Lead Pastor, Connection Church, Hickory, N.C.


on the churches described by Miller, we will be well-served to consider whether to supplement, discard, orreinforce our various leadership development experi-ences. Training that is scholastic, short-term, and stat-ic pales in comparison to the leadership developmentmodels described by Miller. An entire report could bewritten on how these developing world churches andtheir methods for raising up leaders can impactAmerican seminaries. To put it briefly, the impact is atleast threefold.

First, I believe that seminaries will lose status as the cen-terpieces for preparing men and women to be successfulcongregational leaders. I do not think I am overstatingthis implication, and in fact this reality is already beingfelt. In many evangelical, Pentecostal, and independentchurches in America, seminary training is far lessimportant a criterion for becoming a church leader thanis proven giftedness and humility. I believe this hasmuch to do with the move toward theological minimal-ism mentioned earlier. The context for doing ministry inAmerica will more and more resemble that of the devel-oping world in that churches will become morepragmatically focused on expanding the kingdom andless interested in academic discussions about ministry. Itis easy to imagine the pendulum swinging too far in thepragmatic direction, but that does not change the pen-dulum’s momentum. As believers continue to put morestock in clergy’s demonstrated ability to lead, less weightwill be given to academic degrees and formal theologi-cal training. The question of “How has Godempowered you to lead us to accomplish the missionGod has given us?” will replace “Are you trained andwell-versed in the distinctions of our particulartradition?” In some contexts, this shift will make semi-nary training an accessory at best or a liability at worst.

Second, seminary leaders who take Miller’s report seri-ously will strive to help students better integrateacademic training and real-world ministry experienceso that leadership potential is incubated by theseminary experience. Most seminaries make someattempts at this already. However, these efforts typicallyresult in ministry experiences that are minorsupplements to classroom-based curricula. In programsseeking to prepare men and women to be successfulchurch leaders, Church Ministry courses might movefrom being a discipline within the larger M.Div. curric-ula to being the framework for the entire program. Thisshift in focus means that Biblical Studies, Theology,

gone unnoticed by the majority of American church-es. It seems that every American congregation with afew thousand members warrants the title “teachingcongregation.” The leaders of these churches writebooks, speak at seminars, and are held in high regardby their peers. I am not saying that the attention andcommendations are unwarranted, but they should notbe confused for success or even as a sign of success.The stealth success of churches in the developingworld forces us to reconsider whether praise from ourpeers has anything to do with Gospel success.

Finally, the churches of the emerging world can aid usin rethinking the limits of theological orthodoxy as ameasure of success. In a post-Christendom andpostmodern context, theological minimalism may be

the grandest of theolog-ical developments.Emerging world church-es appear to be morepassionate aboutexpressing God’s love,power, and purposethan about fully under-standing God or these

expressions. Popular American writers and thinkerssuch as Leonard Sweet, Tom Bandy, and BrianMcLaren are already ushering in a minimalist approachamong mainline and evangelical church leaders. Theyare doing so in an effort to help us deal with a contextin which our ability to minister effectively as Christ’sambassadors rests more on our participation in aunique community (with a few important beliefs) thanon nuanced belief branding that serves to distinguishvarious tribes within the larger family of faith. With theadded voices of developing world churches, Americanchurch leaders may find that ever-expanding systematictheologies are unnecessary baggage for a context inwhich it is better to travel light.

CHANGING HOW WE

DEVELOP LEADERS

From Emergent Patterns, it appears that the suc-cess of churches in the developing world hasmuch to do with their unique approaches to

leadership. Should these leadership practices gain cur-rency among American believers, the implications aremanifold – especially for theological training. Based

I believe that seminarieswill lose status as the center-

pieces for preparing menand women to be successful

congregational leaders.


and Church History courses will be judged on how wellthey actually prepare students to do ministry in a real-world context. Along with curriculum changes,seminaries will want to spend vast amounts of time,energy, and other resources helping students scrutinizetheir ministry experiences (experiences that will takeplace concurrently with classes). In addition, new sys-tems for accepting, matriculating, grading, and ordain-ing students will be needed in order to build a seminaryculture focused on fostering leadership growth asopposed to rewarding academic achievement. Already,students know that grade performance in seminary haslittle correlation with post-seminary leadership success.The schools that acknowledge this disparity and beginto overhaul their approach will succeed in the theologi-cal training marketplace of the next century.

Third, seminaries will become involved inlearning/training triads. As the developing worldchurches demonstrate, each leader-in-training has min-istry specific needs. Also, because leaders are attractedto leadership roles, young leaders will likely serve a con-gregation while receiving theological training. For thesereasons, schools might consider partnering withstudents and congregations to design learningexperiences that more deeply reflect the unique needs ofeach student and the congregation she serves. Thedevelopment of learning/training triads will mean thatseminaries have less voice in dictating what a studentshall learn. In this sense, the seminary will become theagent to whom a congregation outsources one aspect ofa developing leader’s training program and each student

SOUTH AFRICA: Highway Nursery School

will have a unique training experience both in contentand in length. This approach will have uncertain impli-cations for degree programs. It may mean that moreclergy will seek certificates or issue-specific courses asopposed to completing full-fledged degree programs.Also, if students and congregations have increasedinput into what happens at the seminary, the seminarywill need to have reciprocal input into the training thatoccurs within the ministry setting. Congregations whotrain leaders through internships, learning communities,and shadowing experiences will want to invite seminar-ies into the conversations that determine what theseparish-based learning experiences look like.

CONCLUSION

The world that Miller describes is not as far awayfrom mainline America as one might think. Amonga growing number of American congregations I

have observed many aspects of what Miller describes inhis report. These trends are already impacting us, andEmergent Patterns serves to help us recognize thesetrends more easily. Certainly not every characteristic ofChristianity in the developing world will replicate itselfamong American congregations, but as the Church leansmore heavily toward the South and East, towardpostmodernity, and toward charismatic Christianity,American congregations will be impacted. PerhapsMiller’s greatest contribution is that by raising the issueshe helps readers decide whether to brace for these shifts,embrace these shifts, or do both.


this respect their outlook differs from most mainlineChristians, especially those in the Protestant tradition.They evince an “expectant spirit, believing that Godwill enter human history,” just as he did in times past.(9) Miller suggests that new leaders’ willingness to seethe supernatural all around them stems from theencounter with God in their personal lives. I agree,but I would add that it also stems from their attitudetoward the Bible. Miller tells us that new leaders are“voracious readers of scripture.” This devotionalhabit rests on the assumption that the Bible offers atransparent lens for viewing the miraculous events ofancient times and, equally important, that the miracu-lous events described in the Bible serve as a templatefor the church’s life today. These are potent ideas, andthey bear potent consequences.

These two traits—charisma and supernaturalism—lead to a third: innovativeness. Indeed, innovativenessmay be what outsiders see first. To be sure, new lead-ers themselves probably would rank it pretty low onany list of their own virtues, and many would notcountenance it at all, for they believe that God’s Spiritdoes everything. But viewed from afar, Miller’saccount leaves little doubt that new leaders are distin-guished by their innovativeness or, to use a moreworldly term, entrepreneurialism. When the olderstructures do not work, he tells us, they “strike out ontheir own.” Miller intimates but does not expand onthe downside of this trait. When blocked, innovativepersonalities easily turn into mavericks. The romanceof the maverick should not obscure the plain fact thatover the centuries institutional and denominationalstructures have come into existence partly to keepcome-outer souls under rein. The Marlboro Manlooks better on television than in real life.

Finally, new leaders evince little regard for formalseminary training. It is important to be precise here.They do not disregard advanced education ingeneral—indeed, many are university-trained—butthey show little interest in the standard, seminary-based educational ladder. One might add to Miller’sanalysis that this pattern is common among groupsthat assume that the requisite gifts and graces of min-istry are available to all believers (including, especially,restorationist bodies like the Churches of Christ andthe Latter-day Saints, which esteem secular but nottheological education). In this respect, as in manyothers, new leaders differ from other Christian groups

ADAPTABILITY AND PRINCIPLE

A Response by Grant WackerProfessor of Church History, Duke University Divinity School, Durham, N.C.

Several years ago I received an invitation to give alecture at one of the oldest and strongest of theAmerican Pentecostal seminaries. Just before I

stood to talk, the president asked the students if any-one needed prayer. One middle-aged woman said thatshe had been diagnosed with cancer. The presidentasked her to step forward. He looked around the pul-pit area for anointing oil. Finding none, he turned tothe students and asked if anyone had hair spray.Someone passed a small canister to the front. Thepresident took it, dabbed a bit on the woman’sforehead, laid hands on her head, and ferventlyprayed for her healing. He then turned, smiled, andintroduced me as warmly as he might have introduceda long-lost relative.

I open with this scenario because it succinctlyillustrates the key point highlighted in ProfessorMiller’s perceptive essay. This point might be summa-rized as adaptability in the service of principle. Bothterms are important: adaptability and principle. Theformer without the latter leaves the ship rudderlessand adrift; the latter without the former leaves thevessel stranded on the rocks of obsolescence.

The integration of adaptability and principle revealsitself in numerous ways in the life of developing-world churches, but it stands out with particular clari-ty in Miller’s depiction of new leadership styles andnew organizational patterns.

Miller does not systematically sketch the characteris-tics of new leaders in any one spot but, consideredwhole, a composite portrait readily emerges. First ofall—and surely most important in their own minds—new leaders feel that they have undergone a “radical,life-changing encounter with God.” (9) Thisencounter nurtures the conviction that they are “con-nected with the deepest truths and realities availableto the human species.” Given this foundation, it is notsurprising to find that they “commune with God; theyseek God’s presence; they await divine instructions.”(12) I suspect that these features taken together—encounter, conviction, and communion—constitute asuseful a definition of charisma as one is likely to dis-cover in the whole of sociological and historical liter-ature on religious leaders.

But there is more. New leaders see the world as a the-ater for the direct action of the divine in history. In


not so much by inventing fresh trends as by amplify-ing or sharpening ones already present.

In place of seminary education, new leadersemphasize one-to-one mentoring and discipleship.Miller suggests that this trait reflects both commonsense and biblical literalism (this is the way Jesus andPaul did it). I would go a step further and say that italso reflects a thin appreciation of history or, moreprecisely, a sense that what counts is the immediatepast, the example of one’s immediate forebears, notthose long dead and now irrelevant. This disregard forseminary training and the concomitant regard fordirect mentoring is, to adapt the words of historianRoger G. Robins, a kind of plain folk modernism.10

The norm of theological construction and practice liesin the needs of the present, not the antique past. Thestrength of this posture is its freshness and vitality; itsweakness is its deafness to the wisdom of tradition.

Miller makes clear that new leaders create new organi-zations, and this insight brings us to the second majoraspect of his research on developing-world churches.Several themes replay throughout.

One recurrent theme is new organizations’ propensityto divide into cell groups. In doing so they provide anintimacy of fellowship often not available in largerand especially larger mainline bodies. Converts hug,embrace, and kiss. They instinctively understand thetherapeutic power of human touch. In Miller’s words,“There is often a sweetness in the air that can only befelt and not described.” (14)

Dividing into cell groups serves additional needs, suchas giving potential leaders a chance to test their skills.If they prove wanting, they can pursue othervocational channels sooner rather than later. If theyprove gifted, they can take over the guidance of theirown cell group. The process is cost-effective, both inthe obvious sense that it is cheap to train new leadersthis way, and in the not so obvious sense that successon the ground serves as the acid test of readiness.

My own research on early American Pentecostals sug-gests that dividing into cell groups performs yetanother function—one that Miller does not mention.In brief, it allows leaders already comfortably in placeto deflect pressure from insurgents. This suggestion isnot as cynical as it may seem. Insurgents can do harmas well as good. Most often, perhaps, they do bothharm and good at once. The organization, which typically seeks its own preservation, instinctivelyunderstands this truth. So rather than simply crushingor excluding insurrectionaries, it tries to gain the ben-efits of their energies while avoiding their liabilities.

Miller emphasizes the quality of worship in neworganizations. Quality, in this case, means frequency,intensity, and effectiveness in promoting both socialreform and personal holiness of life. One of the mostfruitful products of Miller’s research is his concern toexplode the myth that new churches in the developingworld lack a vision for concrete measures of socialreconstruction. It is high time someone said so.Groups like the Salvation Army do not make theindex in most accounts of Christian social reform, butthey should. For generations such groups have imple-mented Christ’s care for the “least of these” at thegrass roots level of daily life. Equally important is theway that new organizations redefine what counts associal reform. Though they may not spend a lot oftime agitating for laws that will, say, reconfigure

PHILLIPINES: Jesus is Lord Church

10 Adapted from Roger G. Robins, Plain Folk Modernist: The Radical Holiness World of A. J. Tomlinson (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, forthcoming 2003).


States. First, I worry about Miller’s definition ofChristian leadership (one schooled by his research ondeveloping-world churches). “Leadership within theChristian community,” he tells us, “involves, at its heart,helping individuals identify their callings as they committhemselves on a daily basis to discern what the Spirit ofGod is doing in the world.” (18) This definition provesapt as far as it goes, but it underplays the role of alearned clergy, tutored by the accumulated wisdom ofthe church’s life over the centuries. One of my seniorcolleagues—a superior instructor by any measure ofsuch things—used to say that college teaching is noteducation by plebiscite. If students already knew whatthey are supposed to know, they would be theteachers. Something like the same principle applies tothe church. Though notions of polity and ordinationdiffer from one tradition to another, in the end, leadersmust be more than discerners and enablers. They mustprophetically bear “the hot coal of God’s Word upontheir lips and in their lives.” A lofty responsibility it is,and not one readily gained outside a praying academycommitted to exploring and thoughtfully applying theriches of the Christian tradition to the modern world.

The second observation is to say that we stand indebt-ed to Professor Miller for his determination to takehis subjects seriously. He has carefully and empatheti-cally chronicled their behavior and, equallyimportant, remained open to the possibility that theyare telling the truth about miracles. Miller stands ingood company; William James and Rudolf Otto didsimilarly. But by and large academic discourse thesedays implies, when it does not explicitly declare, thatstories about God’s extraordinary acts in history maybe “meaningful” but not, really, “truthful.” Miller’swork reminds us that though the Enlightenment mayform a decisive turning point in the Western tradition,it hardly constitutes the final word on its trajectory,let alone its end.

labor/industrial relations, they do spend a lot of timebuilding orphanages, providing AIDS relief, anddrilling wells in parched regions.

And then there is personal holiness, or what jadedChristians of the West might dismiss as “lifestylechoices.” Miller rightly notes that conversion enhancesfinancial standing by prohibiting or at least diminish-ing the amount of money wasted on tobacco, alcohol,gambling, and partying with one’s friends. Miller alsonotes but does not amplify as fully as he might the rev-olutionary implications of a single, not double, ethicfor men in matters of sexual temptation.11

New organizations emerge in Miller’s research asdecentralized. They eschew central bureaucracies andsending agencies in favor of congregational polity and

voluntary missionaryefforts. But this patternis more complex thanfirst appears. For onething, ordinary believ-ers commonly delegatepower to leaders whospeak on their behalf.

Miller tactfully sidesteps the obvious: such figures canbe as autocratic as any up-town bureaucrat. Miller alsonotes the impact of the Internet on new organizations.The Internet constitutes the nerve system that turns thevast number of churches in the developing world into aglobal human network. This network not only performsthe obvious function of facilitating communication,but also the less obvious one of giving believers a senseof strength greater than their numbers, strictly consid-ered, might warrant. With “everyone” seeming to beworking and praying for the same goals at the sametime, defeat is literally unimaginable.

I close with two observations prompted by my ownwork as a historian of Christianity in the United

If students already knewwhat they are supposed to know, they would be

the teachers.

11 See for example Elizabeth E. Brusco, The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995).


all. Some criticized Miller’s earlier work for not exam-ining the social impact, the political and social impactof these churches. The conventional charge againstthe Pentecostal resurgence is that it emphasizes spiri-tual transformation at the expense of social transfor-mation. How well I remember the distinguishedLiberation theologian who visited our seminary in thelate Seventies saying, when asked aboutPentecostalism in South America, “pie-in-the-sky,escapist theology is what the Pentecostals are about.”Pentecostalism, according to this liberationist, was anattempt to leave the powers-that-be undisturbed. Asobservers like Miller have suggested, it was LiberationTheology, the last gasp of the Constantinian attemptto get a theological handle on the government, thatwas the accomodationist theology. Pentecostalism’schallenge to the powers-that-be was much more radi-cal and deep than neo-Marxist Liberation Theology.

As in my review of his book, even in this paper Ifound myself wanting to hear Miller talk more aboutthe theological implications of his rather astonishingobservations. His paper certainly stimulated my ownthought on the theological implications of emergentPentecostalism. What he describes strikes me as a pro-found challenge to the thought that has dominatedour churches in the developed world. LiberationTheology, which presented itself as a challenge to thehegemony of the North and the West in the thinkingand the structuring of the worldwide church, isexposed in this paper as one more way in which thechurch in the North continues to attempt to dominatethe imagination of the church in the South.

Pentecostalism’s stress upon the miraculous, forinstance, strikes me as a deep and fundamental attackupon the way that Christianity has been presented tothe West, at least since the 17th century. As Millernotes, here is Christianity moving from stress uponthe message of the faith toward stress upon the actualexperience of the faith. Or, as he put it in his book onthe new paradigm churches, these churches stress the“medium” of the faith rather than the “message” ofthe faith. I wonder if it is more accurate to say that, inthese churches, the medium – their free, adaptable,empowering structures of Christian experience – istheir most interesting message. Miller’s interest in theway these churches organize themselves and pioneernew structures of leadership and activity may be oneof their great messages to the rest of us who are

RADICAL CHALLENGE TO A PLODDING CHURCH

A Response by William H. Willimon, Professor of Christian Ministry and Dean of the ChapelDuke University, Durham, N.C.

Imet sociologist Donald Miller through his fascinat-ing study of “new paradigm churches,” ReinventingAmerican Protestantism: Christianity in the New

Millennium (Berkeley: University of California Press,1997). In that book, Miller provided a critique ofNorth American Mainline Protestantism by looking atus through the lens of the burgeoning “new paradigmchurches,” those new congregations who, in the laterpart of the Twentieth Century, had become virtualinternational denominations through their unique mixof conservative, evangelical theology and innovativeorganizational and leadership structures.

Miller’s paper, “Emergent Patterns of ChristianLeadership” continues the approach that he pioneeredin his earlier book. He views the Pentecostal explosionin Africa and South America from the standpoint ofa North American Christian and finds importantinsights for the North American church.

I cannot adequately express the deep impact Miller’spaper had upon me. As someone who has thoughtabout, and prayed for, and worked in behalf of renew-al of North American Mainline ProtestantChristianity, Miller’s paper struck me to the core andconfirmed some of my own impressions. By theroving, creative work of the Holy Spirit, the center ofChristianity is shifting to the South. The most interest-ing dynamism of the faith is to be found elsewherethan in my neighborhood or in my denomination.

There is an explosion taking place throughout Africaand South America. It is not being driven byLiberation Theology (“Liberation Theology embracedthe poor and the poor embraced Pentecostalism”),nor is it taking as its model those comfortable andaccommodated forms of the faith as practiced in theNorth. In its emphasis on “signs and wonders,” itsstress upon the miraculous and the power of the HolySpirit, Pentecostalism represents a protest againstmuch of the structures and the thought of theChristianity that produced and still characterizes mychurch. According to some church growth observers,nearly a third of the world’s Christians arePentecostal or charismatic. Most students of thesematters regard Pentecostalism as the fastest growingsegment of Christianity around the world.

Miller seems most interested in the communal andstructural patterns that worldwide Pentecostalism pro-duces. That is appropriate. He is a sociologist, after


I would encourage him to go a step further in his post-modernism and forsake the categories of modernistslike Rudolph Otto in his analysis of Pentecostalism.Division of the world into the “natural” and the“supernatural,” relegation of religious experience tothe realm of some ethereal mysterium tremendum is afavorite ploy of the modern world to make religiousexperience irrelevant. I hope that his forthcomingPentecostalism and Social Transformation: A GlobalAnalysis will demonstrate a more postmodern recog-nition of the deep intellectual challenge thatPentecostalism presents to our Western, NorthAmerican ways of apprehending the world. Modernthought forms, whether they knew it or not, wereoften attempts to exclude God from the world. Theyare therefore probably in need of abandonment if weare to think creatively about the signs and wondersbeing worked among us in the Pentecostal explosion.Miller seems to have embraced postmodernism whenit comes to church structures, but not when it comesto theological reflection.

I do wonder about the implications of Miller’s obser-vations for those of us in mainline Protestantism. Ifind it difficult to conceive of how the Pentecostalexperience can be folded into the experience of main-line Protestantism. Even though Miller was producedby mainline Protestantism, I sense too great a disjunc-ture between the theology and polity of these twowings of the church to believe that they can learn fromone another. While the idea of North American con-gregations partnering with Pentecostal congregationsin South America is exciting, I wonder if there aresuch vast differences of context and theology that suchpartnerships would be irrelevant. While I would paygood money to witness the deans of North Americanseminaries in conversation with Pentecostals in SouthAmerica, I fear that the dialogue would be a waste oftime for the Pentecostals. Perhaps I am demonstratingthe limitations of my own essentially non-Pentecostalway of thinking. However, as Miller demonstrates, theSpirit of God is on the move throughout the worldand, where the Spirit of God moves, there is alwayshope for change, threat of radical transformation, andpromise of an outbreak of the Kingdom of God.

trapped in less productive, more self-protective modesof church polity.

Pentecostalism’s stress upon the free, unconstrainedmovements of the spirit is a challenge to the waychurch life is conducted in my part of the world.What if the church is the result of the free, top down,giftedness of God rather than a product of our order-ly, structured, hierarchical, essentially anthropologicalcultural patterns? In other words, Miller’s paper isabout as radical a challenge to the theology and prac-tice of my safe, plodding, mainline church as I know.

In a review of Miller’s book, I complained that he dis-played too much sociological detachment from hissubject and too little theological engagement. Heappeared to want to ascribe the dramatic growth andsurprising movements of these new paradigm church-es to exclusively sociological factors. However, in thispaper, although Miller’s observations are presented asrelatively objective, sociological observations on theleadership patterns of these churches in the develop-ing world, one gets the distinct impression that Millerhas “gone native,” that he has come to embrace andto champion those theological tendencies which atone time he only observed with safe scientific detach-ment. That embrace is fine with me. I find the moveof this California Episcopalian toward Third WorldPentecostalism to be fascinating in itself, whatever thelarger implications of his move may be. This is notsome cool, detached, objective analysis of oursituation. This is an impassioned confrontation with amode of Christianity that is both an inspiration forand a judgement upon declining European and NorthAmerican Christendom.

He says, “I did undergo a profound shift in my world-view when I realized that I was trapped in anEnlightenment ideology that privileged mind overbody and perpetuated a dualistic epistemology thatmany of the postmodern members of new paradigmchurches had long ago abandoned.” Miller has, in this paper, embraced a postmodern consciousness and here presents the Pentecostal explosion in Africaand South America not only as a sociologicalphenomenon but also as an intellectual challenge.


ABOUT PULPIT & PEW

Pulpit & Pew is a research initiative of the DukeDivinity School funded by Lilly Endowment,Inc., and aimed at strengthening the quality of

pastoral leadership (clergy and lay) in churches acrossAmerica. The goal of the research is to strengthen thequality of pastoral leaders, especially those in ordainedministry, through (1) understanding how changes in thesocial, cultural, economic, and religious context inrecent years have affected ministry, (2) forming pastoralleaders with the capacity for continual learning andgrowth in response to these changes, and (3) identifyingpolicies and practices that will support creative pastoralleadership and vital congregations as they respond to achanging environment.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Donald E. Miller is executive director of theCenter for Religion and Civic Culture and pro-fessor of religion at the University of Southern

California. A noted teacher and researcher in the soci-ology of religion, he is the author or co-author of sixbooks, including GenX Religion, Reinventing AmericanProtestantism: Christianity in the Next Millennium,Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide,Homeless Families: The Struggle for Dignity, Writingand Research in Religious Studies, and The Case forLiberal Christianity.

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