By Jeff Finley
For the gospel to spread effectively across Asia, well-trained pastors and church planters are needed to reach people and lead the rapidly multiplying church on the world’s largest and most populous continent.
Gethsemane Leadership Training exists to provide the education and mentoring to accomplish this. Darin, the associate director of the Free Methodist World Missions Asia Area, and Bryan, who works with the Asia Area leadership development team, discussed this important program on a recent episode of “The Light + Life Podcast.”
“We work with our pastors that are working towards ordination,” Bryan told host Brett Heintzman. “We provide the classes and the training to help them meet their requirements for ordination.”
The leadership training program is a key component of a goal for this continent that is home to 60% of the world’s population.
“Our goal for Asia — for the Free Methodist Church in Asia — is to influence 1 million Asians toward Christ, and that just catches me,” Darin said. “I want to be a part of what God is doing in Asia, and the leadership formation part of it is just closely linked to that larger goal.”
Darin recalled that one day he reflected on how “we don’t want to just tell people about Jesus. We want them to be influenced toward Him. We want them to have an opportunity to respond to Him and His love for them, and we want them to be discipled and knowing how to live for Jesus … how to live the abundant life that God has for us even now, and discipleship like that happens in the local church.”
Influencing and discipling 1 million people in Asian — currently home to approximately 400,000 Free Methodists — will require thousands of churches, which will require thousands of pastors.
“We need at least 10,000 new pastors, and that’s what really drives me,” Darin said. “That’s what drives our effort to train up the pastors, and not just train them here and there a little bit at a time, but to really scale up to be able to reach that 10,000 in a reasonable amount of time.”
Bryan said he appreciates the Asian leaders’ hearts, and Gethsemane Leadership Training isn’t providing information alone.
“We’re not just wanting to give people ‘Bible stuff’ or leadership facts,” he said. “It’s a formation process of being able to help people become the kind of leaders that can lead over the long haul.”
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“While some U.S. Christians talk about fighting back, the superintendent in the creative access country talked about letting gentleness be known but without compromising the view that “God is near.”
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Creative Access Countries
In nearly 20 Asian countries, ministries are under the leadership of the Free Methodist Church USA, but several countries (including Japan and the Philippines) have their own Free Methodist general conferences that are part of the Free Methodist World Conference. Some of the ministry occurs in what is known as creative access countries.
“It means that the work there is, in various ways, threatened. For example, in one of our creative access countries, there is a non-conversion law, which means it’s illegal for people to change from one religion to another, and so we have to be very careful about how we approach the people in that country,” said Darin, who noted that believers are not afraid to share the gospel but “we don’t want to expose them unnecessarily to risk. So we just are very careful to speak appropriately, and we don’t draw attention unnecessarily.”
As the United States experiences cultural shifts that cause Christians to feel disoriented and outside of the cultural center, Bryan said he appreciates “hearing from our brothers and sisters in Asia, because they have wisdom in this. They have experience with this, and really they can teach us.”
Bryan said Christians in creative access countries have “real backbones of steel” and are “firm, but they’re gentle in their firmness.” He explained that he asked one superintendent what he’s discussing with his pastors, and the superintendent replied, “We’re facing a lot of pushback right now in persecution, and I’m talking with them about Philippians 4. … ‘Let your gentleness be known to everyone. God is near.’”
While some U.S. Christians talk about fighting back, the superintendent in the creative access country talked about letting gentleness be known but without compromising the view that “God is near.”
“There’s a sense of we’re going to be gentle, and we’re going to be kind. We’re going to be unmovable, but we’re going to handle this in a way that, for them, reflects the nature of Jesus,” Bryan said. “For me, as I’m hanging out with these folks, it’s a learning process. They’re teaching me in many ways and coaching me how to handle our situation in a healthy way, in a good way, in a way that can reflect the character and nature of Jesus, because they have more experience with it than we do.”
One superintendent accepted an invitation to speak at a Christmas event and then “felt the Spirit kind of nudge him and say, ‘Be prepared to spend some time in jail when you’re done.” Bryan said that the authorities came to break up the gathering, but the superintendent “graciously, gently said, ‘I’m going to finish this. We’re going to do this invitation, and then I’ll go wherever you want to take me.’”
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“Core models focus on the approach of head, heart, and hands.”
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Obedience-Oriented Ordination
Many concepts of leadership can be found in our world today. Darin noted that “if there is no obedience to Christ, it might still be leadership, but it’s not Christian leadership.”
Darin encountered the concept of obedience-oriented education/ordination, which captured his attention because he believes obedience is “so central to what it means to be a Christian leader.”
After trying for a couple of years to make another name work, Darin said the name Gethsemane Leadership Training ultimately was selected because “Gethsemane is the place where Jesus said, ‘Not My will, but Your will be done.’ … We want to capture that importance of obedience right in the name of what we’re doing.”
Formation goes beyond the classroom to include emerging leaders being surrounded by experienced people who know how to serve and lead well. Core models focus on the approach of head, heart, and hands.
“In Gethsemane Leadership Training, we have two thrusts. One is church-based education, so we use modules, and the other is mentoring experience,” Darin said.
In classroom learning, Bryan noted, some people “struggle with literacy. They love Jesus. They’re great pastors. They’re doing phenomenal work, but their educational context” limited their ways to learn. In considering ways to increase their capacity, Bryan said, “we realized that video would allow us to do this — that if we can put our key modules on video, and we can then equip some national leaders to be able to use those as well, then we can expand what we’re doing.”
Some areas still need in-person training because of government restriction or limited internet access, but in other parts of Asia, the use of video technology can make the training accessible to many people. However, creating videos can be challenging because of the many different languages spoken in Asia.
“We tried everything we could for a long time, and finally we just had to say, ‘Let’s pivot, because this is just taking us way too long,” Darin said. “The pivot we did was, ‘Let’s do an English baseline.’ So we’re still using Asians as the speakers, but they’re speaking in English. We can build out the whole video, and then we can translate and do voiceovers to dub in and drop it in on top of that English. That makes it much more manageable, much more doable.”
One video in one language costs approximately $125. Even with many generous donations, the program still needs $25,000 to create all of the needed videos.
Some emerging leaders with MP3 players (but no video access) have requested audio versions of the training. “We can just pull the audio out of the video, and then they’re able just to listen,” Bryan said.
Despite persecution plus technological and financial challenges, Darin said, “We are hearing the results of all of these efforts, the good news of people coming to know the Lord. Month by month, we hear of baptisms and people finding the Lord. There’s great joy in Asia when we hear these good reports … great joy in the midst of all of those challenges.”
Click here to listen to the full podcast. Visit fmwm.org/asia to learn more about the church in Asia. Click here to give toward completing the video projects for the Gethsemane Leadership Training.
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