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Got Wisdom?

April 14, 2009 in Building Leaders, Transformation | 1 comment

african-boy-w-bibleOne of the great needs in our world is Wisdom. What should I do today that will be good for tomorrow? How do I navigate the unknown without experience? 

 

When Jesus was only twelve years old, Luke 2:52 affirms that he was developing in wisdom. He knew how to live in the present for long term benefit. He had a perspective on life that transcended his experience. His discernment of what was good for today was not guided by feelings, hunger for instant gratification or the latest trend. If only the same were true of our kids or, indeed, ourselves.  

How do we get wisdom? How do hungry Rwandans recovering from genocide live wisely to benefit their nation? How do unemployed Americans live with a Kingdom of God perspective? Let me offer three thoughts.

  • Fear God! Remember that there is an ultimate judge of the whole of your life. Learn and apply the principles and values of the Kingdom of God that will stand the test of time. Pragmatic decisions that simply align us to modern trends and short term gains will be exposed and found wanting. In wisdom, apply a Biblical worldview.

  • Seek the well-being of all! Test what you are doing by asking, “Is it good for all?” Unwise decisions are made by those thinking only of themselves or their organizational greatness. Much unwise mission activity is produced as we seek our own success rather than everyone’s benefit. We see that when one church or mission grows disproportionately larger than others in a community, the result is disastrous. The large organization consumes the community’s resources, like a cancerous cell, leading to its death. God created the world and its creatures and called them “good.” Let goodness be your desired outcome. In wisdom, realize that you may need to govern your own growth so that all may develop.

  • Think multiple generations! “And the things that you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.” (2 Timothy 2:2) The apostle Paul was thinking out four generations. Changing the course of history requires that future generations take the baton and build on the leg of the race that we have run. Play your role well. In wisdom, build the next generation. Transfer a vision that will go beyond your own contributions. 

 

Gary Edmonds

Leaders who Change the Course of History!

April 7, 2009 in Building Leaders | No comments

rwanda-nov-2008-139

  Breakthrough Partners works in nations where there is long-term brokenness. From generation to generation, pain, suffering and dysfunction are repeated. The sins and ignorance of the fathers are passed on to their children so that good intentions are never realized in the culture. What is required to change the trajectory of a person, a family, even a nation?

 

In the next weeks, I’d like to look at some of the key ideas and principles that we have been learning over the past 30+ years that when applied can actually change the course of history for a people.

 

Ultimately, change starts with the individual. A culture is the sum of the parts and patterns of its members. If the people are sick and operating in dysfunctional processes, the society will be ill and toxic.

 

Doctor Luke provides us with a great clue when he writes, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” (Luke 2:52)

 

Jesus grew and developed wholistically!

 

The first principle for change is to seek the comprehensive and wholistic well-being of the individual. Wisdom, physical health, spiritual depth and relational health are building blocks for cultural change. Each of these characteristics reflects patterns of behavior that will produce fruit. And note that they are interconnected. My sleep pattern will influence my spiritual health will influence my discernment will influence my social relationships. 

 

Are you developing in wisdom and physical health and in favor with God and men?

 

Gary Edmonds 

Hope for Life Ministry

March 19, 2009 in Building Leaders, Children, Rwanda | No comments

Megan and Hilliary, two blond college girls with wild dreams of changing a few lives, have in fact done just that! Last summer, the two of them went to Rwanda as interns with Breakthrough Partners. Life hasn’t been the same since they returned.

 

Boys with Josiane and ChantalThough they are both in school, their time has been filled with planning, praying, emailing and speaking on behalf of eleven street boys that they met in Rwanda. These boys captured their hearts. Over the past months, Megan and Hilliary have raised funds, hired staff, rented a house, drawn up long-term plans, partnered with local Rwandans, and now have officially rescued ten street boys from jail!

 

To quote from their latest update, “These efforts are promoting the self-sufficiency and local community involvement we are aiming for!” Indeed, this is what Breakthrough Partners is aiming for as well - building young leaders who will see the possibilities that can be accomplished when we are opened to God’s leading and His purposes! Great job, Megan and Hilliary!

 

For more information about this remarkable new ministry, or to help and encourage them, please check out their website, www.hopeforlifeministry.org.


Guest blogger, Kari Fordice

Rethinking Stewardship

March 12, 2009 in Building Leaders, Financial Responsibility | No comments

key-to-stewardshipRecessions force us to do what we should have done in boom times. We scrutinize budgets, cut excess spending and eliminate redundant staff.  All of this invites questions about stewardship. 

 

Though stewardship is a word generally relegated to the vocabulary of the church, its’ roots are far more pedestrian. A few centuries ago, a land baron would hire a steward to manage his staff, his money and his resources. Today we might think of a steward as the CEO or COO of a privately held company and come close to the genesis of the term. 

 

So, how does the board steward the pastor? How does the church steward the staff? Collectively, the staff and board are called to steward the leadership of the church as well as the rank and file members of the congregation. Is it possible that lack of funding is symptomatic of more significant issues?  

 

Perhaps the time is ripe for Rethinking Stewardship: Good News for Pastor and People.  Our message is one of celebrating abundance and not scarcity. To get from where we are to where we need to be, someone needs to be the voice crying in the wilderness:

1)      Steward your pastor and staff. Protect them to equip the saints to do the work of ministry.

2)      Steward church boards and leadership types. Call them to balance and focus. Give them permission to step down from committees and projects that render them ineffective.

3)      Steward the congregation. Call all believers to find their ministries and equip them to serve. All gifts are vital for a healthy Christian community.

4)      Steward financial resources. This is a matter of thinking differently about money. Gift donors with knowledge on ways to navigate through difficult financial times.  If you do, saints know what to do with the excess.

Are there enough resources for the church to thrive in recessionary cycles?  Absolutely!  Will the church moving forward look like it did in times of financial abundance?  Hopefully not.  Without question, the church has every resource necessary to do that to which we have been called. Where there appears to be scarcity, look more closely. There is a stewardship problem of our own making.

 

For the full article, click here.

 

Guest Blogger: Randall E. Davey, President, accruWealth (www.accruWealth.com)

 

 

Financial Responsibility

March 4, 2009 in Building Leaders, Financial Responsibility | No comments


Let’s talk about financial responsibility, that scourge of our day, with the stock market in freefall, the housing crisis and rumors of bank failures. Wait! Don’t click the delete button yet. I wanted to share an email that I received from a friend in Rwanda.

 
Theo Mushinzimana of Rwanda Partners wrote that when we taught last May in Bugesera, Rwanda, he was helped by three phrases:

Theo Mushinzimana

Theo Mushinzimana

1.       Gain all you can.

2.       Save all you can.

3.       Give all you can.


We challenged the people of Rwanda, through these thoughts from John Wesley, to take full and personal responsibility for their own development and not to look to others to bring the change. With that challenge, we asked those who daily live in extreme poverty to rise and be the agents of hope in their own communities.

 

Today, Theo reports that as a result of these words of challenge, he and his partners are weekly visiting and helping those in the hospital, assisting an orphan to cultivate his inherited land, and receiving training to manage their own financial affairs more wisely. When truth is brought with love, lives are changed.

 

It makes me wonder how the world would be changed if we all followed John Wesley’s advice.

 

Gary Edmonds

Do You See the New Thing?

February 6, 2009 in Building Leaders, Transformation | No comments

I sense that God is focusing Breakthrough Partners on the youth and young adults of Africa. More than 70% of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa is under the age of 30. They are showing an unprecedented openness to be the agents of change. After more than 38 years of interaction in Africa, I am experiencing young people who actually believe that change is possible with God and that they can be used in this change.

God is doing a new thing, let’s not miss it. Isaiah 43:19 says, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

Norm Edwards, the chairman of our board, just told me this story: “I heard of a professor in Burundi who asked his students if they thought that with God’s help they could change the course of Africa. He said no one raised a hand. Then at the end of the course, he asked again. This time, every student raised a hand. I believe progress is being made.” So do we!

Gary Edmonds

A New Thing

January 5, 2009 in Building Leaders, Rwanda | 1 comment

On New Year’s Day I received a message from Jacob in Rwanda. He pastors a young church and leads a training ministry to equip pastors in how to lead their churches in a wholistic ministry. He presented me with a plan to begin a new ministry that he and his friends are calling “A Channel for Healing the Nation.” His belief is that based upon their vision, their relationship with Breakthrough Partners and their trust in God’s promises, together we will be instrumental in helping this dream become a reality.

As I read his vision and plans, it struck me that God is indeed doing a miraculous new thing in Rwanda. People who have experienced the deep trauma of genocide and incredible economic depravity believe that with God profound change can occur in their lifetime. With hope in the creative Lord, and according to His truth, they are convinced that they can be instruments of substantial change.

Gary Edmonds

Courageous Leadership

November 15, 2008 in Building Leaders, Rwanda, Transformation | No comments

My heart was overjoyed as I read an email from Jacob, one of our partners in Rwanda, written from a conference hall in Goma, Congo. With artillery fire in the background, he taught a Vision Conference to 50 pastors who “were so excited about the training they received about how to wholistically develop their community. Even though each day was filled with tension due to the advancing threat, the men and women attending wouldn’t leave until the last minute and hungrily received all the materials we shared with them.” God protected the attendees in the midst of rebel attacks and blessed them. As one elderly pastor said, “We can’t liberate our people from dependency and poverty without learning these materials.”

Breakthrough Partners works with courageous and godly leaders who are facing hardships that most of us cannot comprehend. Gas prices have soared to $8 per gallon in Rwanda. Food prices have skyrocketed and availability is scarce. People who ate one meal per day now eat one meal every three days. The result – churches are swamped with cries for help.

We are walking daily with leaders like Jacob to give them encouragement, skills, resources and tools to rebuild lives and devastated communities in the most challenging of circumstances. These leaders need to be strengthened to actually break the poverty cycle, genocide ideology, moral corruption and animistic beliefs. They need wisdom to bring sustain-able biblical solutions to change their nations. This is the work of Breakthrough Partners.

Gary Edmonds

The People Nobody Wants

November 9, 2008 in Building Leaders, Laos | No comments

I recently returned from meetings in Thailand focusing on history of the church in Laos. God has truly done some amazing things in that country. Laos still faces difficult times, with some sisters and brothers in Christ facing persecution, yet God is at work. It strengthens our faith when we recall how God has directly intervened in the past.

For example, Christ’s church in southern Laos grew among the rejects of society. A strong church grew up among the population with leprosy. Because of their disease they settled in villages which had been set up for others with the dreaded disease. Missionaries treated them there and allowed them to experience the love of Jesus Christ.

Another group, the “Phi Pop,” was accused of being possessed by evil spirits. Sometimes spirit possession did occur; at other times individuals or families were simply accused by rivals. Just the accusation forced them to leave the village. They set up their own “Phi Pop” villages. People here were particularly receptive to the message of Jesus Christ. In fact, for the average lowland Lao in southern Laos, Christianity became known as the “Phi Pop religion.” Whereas so much of our outreach efforts focus on people with means, Jesus still targets the rejects of society. As one person has said, “If the church will go after the people no one wants, it will end up with the people everyone wants.” A strong foundation was laid for a vital church still growing in Laos today.

Dave Andrianoff

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