Cheers and Challenges

I am experiencing the struggle of trying to move those interested in and excited about the possibilities of adopting ABCD principles in their communities to being leaders who embrace these principles to the point of actually implementing them.

My intention now is to go deeper rather than wider in select communities. By this I mean that I am going to reduce my involvement in several communities in order to work more intentionally in two particular communities to identify community stakeholders and to organize visioning meetings.

I continue to find many churches, ministers and para-church ministries interested in learning more about ABCD but they also shy away from working with others in their communities to develop a connectedness in their community for this work.

Their motivation seems to be their desire to attract more community members to their churches and ministries without having to share leadership responsibilities for community development or their organizational resources for this work.

Although I will continue to share the ABCD message with these types of ministries as the opportunities present themselves, I plan to widen the circle of those I approach to other non-church specific community stakeholders.

One dynamic Iʼve observed is that of the ministry leaderʼs passionate ownership of his or her ministry. Although he or she may be interested in the possibilities of implementing ABCD they fear the dramatic changes such implementation would bring.

One leader said in response to my answer to his question of, “OK, what do we do next?” “Oh now, we canʼt do that! If we did that no one would come back.” In other words, even though there is a deep desire for their ministries to be much more effective and Kingdom- like, they canʼt let go enough to go through the process needed for His Kingdom to actually come.

I must let go of my stubborn desire to see the organized church embrace ABCD and simply implement the ABCD principles to the best of my knowledge and ability trusting that Jesus will bring the changes He desires in the process.