Reaching the Unreached and Empowering the Disempowered
“The work of the Lord can be done only with the power of the Lord.”
Katra, a small town in the Jammu and Kashmir state of India, is home to roughly 9,000 souls and one of the most influential Hindu temples in India. Every year, upwards of eight million pilgrims travel 13.5 kilometers up the mountain to worship at this temple. Hinduism is the dominant religion at 93% of the population. The remaining percentage is made up of Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Christians (just over one percent).
God planted the seeds for the India Evangelical Team (IET) in this unlikely location in 1972, when Dr. P. G. Vargis and his wife Lilly established the first Christian church below the shrine. This was no easy endeavor. The Vargis family (including their son Aby) slept on newspapers on the floor of their shelter and often went days without food. However, poverty and persecution could not stop the spread of the Gospel, and through their efforts God brought hundreds of people to Christ in only the first few years. Daughter churches sprang up in the surrounding mountains and the Holy Spirit began to move like wildfire through Northern India.
Today IET is a network of over 12,000 churches and 2,000 missionaries reaching the unreached and empowering the disempowered throughout India, Nepal and Bhutan. This group of Christ-committed men and women is one of the largest and fastest-growing indigenous missionary movements in Southeast Asia.
IET’s mission, according to Dr. Vargis’ son and current president, Aby Kalimel, is “taking the Gospel among the unreached and making disciples of the nations.” This Gospel-centered approach naturally generates social justice efforts and relief work. In addition to planting churches, they aid those affected by natural disasters like the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, provides medical care to those in need, empowers children through education, and trains missionaries and pastors.
A COMMON LANGUAGE
IET has always valued leadership development, but never had a unified understanding of how to develop healthy leaders. Consequently, they have sometimes overlooked the development and care of church leaders, and in one difficult season, lost around 400 churches due to failures in leadership.
These losses prompted them to investigate leadership development programs, and eventually led them to LeaderSource. Prompted by a recommendation from a friend, President Kalimel and another senior leader attended a LeaderSource training program in Mumbai. According to him, this training equipped them with “a common language and a common understanding on developing leaders.”
This “common language” he describes begins with five Cs and four Ds. The five Cs describe the interconnectedness of a healthy leader. Competency in leadership is important – it’s the last of the 5Cs – but Christ, Community, Character and Calling are more important still. In order for a leader to experience healthy growth, these facets of life must be united and pursued simultaneously.
The four Ds describe the dynamics of transformational leadership development.
Emphasizing the context of the emerging leader alongside the content he or she is learning, the ConneXions Model underscores the spiritual, relational, experiential and instructional dynamics of leadership growth. This model moves beyond merely academic learning into the hands-on model of discipleship presented by Jesus.
BUILDING HEALTHY LEADERS
One of our experienced teachers, Robert Walter, conducted a Building Healthy Leaders training program for around 60 of IET’s top-level leaders who oversee numerous pastors and churches. The seminar proved successful, and LeaderSource returned to train the regional pastors and middle-level leaders within the organization.
After these initial trainings, President Kalimel specifically requested further training on the aspect of community. He remembered when their ministry was three couples sleeping on the floor of the same small room, in such close quarters that they were forced to care for and forgive one another. Such tight-knit community hasn’t endured through their exponential growth, so Robert returned to lead a training on the “one another” commands of the Bible: accepting, welcoming, forgiving, and speaking the truth in love to one another.
At the end of the session, senior leaders and their successors engaged in honest dialogue with each other over previously unspoken tensions. Older leaders affirmed the younger leader’s potential and younger leaders verbalized their admiration and respect for their senior leaders. Ultimately, these conversations generated peace and unity in the organization.
“WE CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT THE COMMUNITY”
Holistic leadership and community training also impacted individual leaders as it spread throughout the organization.
Brother D leads a division of IET and visits pastors in the field, training them in the Word and encouraging them in effective ministry. The ConneXions Model’s focus on keeping Christ at the center has deeply impacted him, and continues to sink in as he teaches it to others. In fact, it pushes him “to love [the people around him] and build a community with them.”
Brother A oversees ministry in four regions which are home to 80 missionaries, two schools, three orphanages and two Bible schools. Community was the most difficult “C” for him to develop. For such a task-oriented leader, focusing on developing relationships with other leaders and co-workers has been slow going, but he has grown closer to God through the process.
“Staying in His presence became the primary duty [rather than being] too busy in fulfilling the great commission! Since now I purposely started to train and give more input on my co-workers, they are also walking more closely with the God. We started to meet in small units to get to know each other and pray for each other. The pastors are teaching the same things to their church members also through which we could see a great impact as a whole.”
Brother D, a church planter, describes a similar experience:
“I have been a leader for almost 15 years, and as I grew in the posts of leadership, the responsibilities also increased. And due to that I always focused on performance/achievements, meeting the goals, etc. Of course, I prayed and meditated on the Word of God, but sometimes I didn’t have time to spend with God.”
During the training they read John 15:5: “I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”
This verse caught Brother D's attention.
“I [repented of] doing the work by myself, and I decided to depend on God for everything for my ministry, strength, and needs… The session was so powerful that the words of the Lord were impressed in my heart… I began to meditate on His Word regularly and spend more time with the Lord. Also, [I] came to an understanding that the work of the Lord can be done only with the power of the Lord.”
He also discovered that drawing closer to people prompted him to draw closer to the Lord, and in fact, became a lifeline in his ministry. In the past he had picked people out for leadership positions and simply thrown them into ministry, but the ConneXions training challenged him to change his approach.
“We learned we cannot survive without the community. But we have to form the real community in the family, church, organization and in the world. So [I] started doing it… In the seminar itself I prayed for two people to mentor and prepare for the next generation ministry. I not only prayed, but I began to work with these two men of God. One of them is already released to carry out the leadership.”
LOOKING AHEAD
LeaderSource has since returned many times to follow up with the leaders of IET. Together with them, our staff have now trained all of the hundreds of leaders in the entire network – from the very top national leaders to the grass-roots elders in the local churches. This has given the entire network a common vision, language and capacity to build leaders.
We have also helped them with Design courses, which focused on implementing the principles of the ConneXions training and creating systems that fit IET’s specific cultural and organizational needs. Design courses have equipped their leaders to create their own training which fits their own unique context. We are also conducting further training there on generational succession and transformational theology.
After these trainings, we remain available to them through consultation and coaching, but the Indian ministry is free to work with these ideas as it chooses. We look forward to seeing the Lord’s continued work through the leaders of the India Evangelical Team.
President Kalimel recently wrote this gracious endorsement of LeaderSource:
“In an organization’ s lifecycle, there are certain key moments that can be clearly defined as tipping points. I believe that meeting Dr. Malcolm Webber and Pastor Robert Walter was one such that has deeply impacted the trajectory and health of Indian Evangelical Team.
Through its more than 3,000 full-time employees, we are currently working in three South Asian nations. Developing leaders from within was always an important part of our value system. Yet, we were missing something! LeaderSource helped us to clearly define and understand what a healthy leader should look like. Moreover, they provided us with a flexible and easily implantable framework to raise up current and future leaders. Since then we adopted these frameworks throughout our organizational operation and language.
LeaderSource has deeply influenced us as an organization and has caused us to make intelligent and purposeful leadership development part of our culture.
However, the greatest impact of LeaderSource was not the knowledge growth through its training. They transferred to us their hunger to be godly leaders and imparted on us a deep burden for developing people. This was priceless!
I deeply respect Pastor Robert and Dr. Malcolm for their integrity, humility, sensitivity to the Spirit, and passion for developing leaders. We appreciate the impact of LeaderSource on us. We heartily endorse and recommend the ministry of LeaderSource and its leaders!”
