The Gray and the Black

The Gray and the Black--that’s what I decided to call the session when it was about to begin. Why? Because both of us guests—Brent Ropp and myself—were clearly the only ones in the room with silver-gray hair while the other thirty people there had jet-black hair, primarily because they were a group of young leaders who were all native Nigerians.

Meeting with Prosper Isichei, MANI's Director for the
Emerging Leaders Networki

When my friend, Prosper Isichei learned that I might have a free 12 hours in the capital city of Abuja before departing on an evening flight, he asked permission to recruit a group of his young “emerging leader” friends to gather for an informal time of learning exchange. “We would simply like to sit at your feet and learn anything from your years of leadership experience,” he claimed. Not really knowing what I was getting into, but feeling intrigued by such an open-ended request, I accepted.

What followed was about four hours of some of the most meaningful time I’ve spent in my years of ministry in Africa. With such freedom on presentation content, I prepared a PowerPoint covering eight “Life Lesson” that included such things as how to write a personal missions statement, developing a model of balanced personal growth, ministry and marriage, and the difference between being a leader and knowing how to lead. I felt that I was addressing a room full of thirsty sponges. Rarely have I experienced an interaction with 20 and 30-year olds where they hung on to every word I shared and followed up with deep, penetrating questions for personal application.

My guess is there are two reasons for such a positive reaction. One is that younger African generations tend to be regarded more as a threat by the established older leaders preventing healthy mentoring relationships from happening. A second reason is that what is often presented as leadership training tends to either be a highly academic lecture, a Bible Study sermon or some other top-down experience with little chance for interaction. Instead I paused at the end of each point to allow for plenty of personal application questions plus further insight to be shared by my colleague, Brent Ropp.

 At the end of the day, I asked for feedback about which topics were most relevant. It seemed to be a tie between balancing ministry and marriage and that of being a leader but not really knowing how to lead. The later was shared via a TED Talk video clip which was the first time any had seen such a thing. As a result, we brainstormed a bit about creating a similar TED-Talk-type ministry designed to share worthy ideas for the global mission world, something my son, Nathaniel is thinking seriously about doing. They were enthusastic about it. And, at the suggestion of returning to Nigeria with a prepared weekend seminar on balancing ministry and marriage, not only did every hand in the room go up but several seriously wanted to put their names on an advance sign-up list.

There was something amazingly refreshing for me about this one day interaction with these young men and women. It is even more fulfilling to think that some of the Life Lessons I’ve passed on to them seem to be worthy topics and truths that can help them become a generation with the capability to significantly advance God's Kingdom in their own continent and around the world.

A Retreat to Advance

Twenty-two have complete Bibles (green), fifty-three New Testaments (yellow) and forty-seven some portion of Scripture (orange.)  But the rest of the 350 languages of Nigeria do not have a single word of God’s Good News translated into their own language (red.)

 That’s why the challenge of the Nigerian Bible Translation Trust  (NBTT), the principal national translation entity in the country, is so daunting. Eclipsing the number of all other African countries in language translation needs, Nigeria actually is second in the world in terms of remaining languages that still need a Bible translation project initiated.

Since last January, NBTT has been led by a new executive director, Yakubu La’ah, a man short in height, but certainly not in vision.  Soon after stepping into his role, Yakubu contacted me asking if I could lead his new management team through another organizational development seminar similar to one I gave last year. But, this time, he decided to do something different—invite all 34 of his national staff to the first part of the workshop for purposes of restoring a new sense of excitement and commitment in their ministry task.

When I arrived in Jos, Nigeria, where NBTT is located, I learned that Yakubu had decided to move the workshop an hour out of town to a beautiful retreat center on the grounds of an MK school built by SIM missionaries back the early 1900’s. As the staff arrived, I learned that this was the first time in over twenty years that NBTT had offered such a retreat. That made it a double privilege for me to be the facilitator of the event and lead them in an animated review of their vision, mission and values.

The second part of the weekend involved a focused time with the new five-man NBTT management team going over basic leadership principles of strategic planning, organizing, teambuilding and accountability. Because this was the first time for several of them to be managers, they were intently interested to know exactly how to apply each of the topics discussed. It was particularly exciting for me to see that part of the motivation they had for ramping up their leadership efforts was a new commitment to advance Vision 2025--an attempt to initiate a translation project for all the remaining language of the world that need it. 

One evening, I decided to show the classic movie, Apollo 13, as an example of how to lead in a crisis situation.  It was so cool seeing how the team really connected the dots from our workshop and pulled out so many great lessons from the film.

If somehow affirmation is proportional to the brightness of the appreciation gift, the orange caftan I received at the end of the workshop has certainly made me feel that my weekend contribution toward helping NBTT accelerate Bible translation in Nigeria has definitely been worth it!