God is at Work - the idea of incarnational empowerment

In God is at Work, Eldred hints at the necessity of incarnational ministry that quickly empowers local leaders to fill the role that the Western business mentor begins with. To be a truly for-profit company in the 2/3 world, salaries of Western businessmen must be precious few, otherwise the overhead costs devour any profitability from the field.

I must admit that something in my soul likes this law of economics; for profitability, one necessity is being quite selective in choosing entreprenuers and (perhaps more importantly) a second is that the Western leaders absolutely must "give away" the leadership roles, discipleship process, and decision-making at all possible points "on the ground." Both these principles are also at the heart of good discipleship (selection and delegation in Coleman's Master Plan of EV). This is difficult, but ultimately, it keeps a company lean and demands creativity.

In reflecting on the state of the church and the modern missions movement, it seems that too many missionaries go to a place and set up camp and plan to be there forever. While their commitment is laudable, the identity of being a missionary and a provider of truth and encouragement among a given group soon becomes deeply embedded. This was something that Emily and I often grappled with, ourselves (and in the broader context of our company, which seems to be doing a good job at addressing the issue in Asia). Missionaries typically struggle deeply in giving away extensive leadership because it is not a felt necessity. Often, they excel at teaching another how to do evangelism or basic discipleship among a group, but handing over extensive leadership is more difficult - it asks one to evaluate the reason to stick around. If the missionary can raise support and stay at one site indefinitely, and people are coming to faith and growing, why be forceful in turning over leadership? Why go elsewhere? Why start the whole process over in learning a new place and/or culture? Ultimately, staying too long stunts the growth of the body of local believers, but the difficulty in crossing a culture, learning a language, etc. is so difficult that many who have been in a place for an extended time have difficulty thinking about going elsewhere. It is, however, a necessity in missions and especially in business as missions. The economic realities of Small-Medium Enterprise lending seems to dictate that genuine leadership must develop and it must be relatively fast, otherwise the lending institution will not be profitable.

So, to be effective, one must truly be incarnational in the sense of getting into a situation and seeing it from the eyes of the local people but must be empowering in providing ideas, accountability, a short-term financial boast, etc. without establishing a dependency relationship. I like the format in BaM because it some ways it seems like the natural laws of economics hold one accountable to that vision.