Contributed
The Rev. Gerry Seale delivers a plenary address during last month's Congress of Evangelicals in the Caribbean (CONECAR), held in Tunapuna, Trinidad.

The following is an edited excerpt of a paper presented by the Rev. Gerald Seale, general secretary of the Evangelical Association of the Caribbean, at the Congress of Evangelicals in the Caribbean, held October 22-25, 2007, in Tunapuna, Trinidad. His paper was originally titled 'Our Environment in making disciples'.

For decades, Bible schools in our region have almost exclusively taught theology and Bible-related subjects in the mistaken belief that they are producing leaders. Teaching theology produces theologians, not leaders. When Bible schools only produce theologians, the Church becomes spiritually constipated and introspective, able to lead an occasional soul to Christ but unable to impact the society and effectively disciple the nation as Jesus commissioned us to do.

When I was elected Superintendent of the Barbados District of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the West Indies, I soon discovered that I had no training whatsoever for the task. All my training was in theology, but I found myself leading a staff of more than 40 credentialed workers, a denomination of thousands of people, and managing assets well over Bds$10,000,000. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I was able to rectify the situation somewhat by pursuing a diploma in administrative management at the Barbados Institute of Management and Productivity. But it didn't take me long to realise that management was not sufficient. I needed to understand leadership and develop leadership skills.

While managers can keep a complex system functioning, leaders define the future and enable the people they lead to reach that future. Leaders are going somewhere and taking their people with them. This is fundamental to fulfilling the Great Commission. God has described the future in the Bible. As leaders, it is our task to guide our people into that future. When we fail to lead our people into full discipleship, we're a lot like the Israelis wandering in the desert for 40 years and, as we know, wandering in the desert buries an entire generation.

God's intention is that His people are to be leaders throughout the society. When we have theologian-managers filling leadership roles, not only will our people be inadequately discipled, they will not be the leaders God intends them to be. Willam Kumuyi of Nigeria lays out the comprehensive role of leadership when he describes a leader as "a seer, seeker, servant, strategist, shepherd, sustainer, steward and spokesman". Drs. Abdul Kalam and Sivathanu Pillai of India capture the changing essence of leadership stating, "Leadership is exercising the vision to change the traditional role from commander to coach, from manager to mentor, from director to delegator, and from one who demands respect to one who facilitates self-respect." This type of leadership is urgently needed to build disciples across the Caribbean.

Harris Lee has pointed out, "The people of God need not only the nourishment from the Word and sacrament; they need as well the nourishment that comes from the right quality and quantity of leadership and organisational attention." Leadership is critical in leading men and women to Christ, in showing them how to take off the grave clothes of the past and then disciple them in putting on the new man. Then leadership is needed to bring them into the ministry for which God has called them and empowering them to be all God intended them to be.

Merry-go-round

Without leadership, the Church is like a merry-go-round, lots of activity, bright lights and noise but in reality there's no forward progress. There is little numerical growth. There is marginal spiritual growth. There is stagnation. With God-ordained leadership the Church has forward movement because leadership gets us going somewhere. Disciples are birthed, matured and thrust out into society. The impact of their lives is transformational and societal norms begin to change.

This kind of societal change can be traced in history. Abraham Kuyper became Prime Minister of The Netherlands in 1901. History records the complete change of that country as a Christ-surrendered, Holy Spirit-filled man led the nation into discipleship to Christ. According to Kuyper, "In the total expanse of human life, there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, 'That is mine!'"

As John Maxwell reminds us, "Everything rises and falls on leadership." It is leaders, well-grounded in the Bible and teachings of Jesus, who will disciple the people entrusted to their care. It is leaders who, have a vision, call men and women to follow, and disciple those followers until the vision is achieved.

This brings us to the question:Who is a disciple?

As I have read the available literature, it seems that almost everyone has his or her own definition of 'disciple'. Easton's Bible Dictionary gives this helpful definition: "A disciple of Christ is one who (1) believes His doctrine, (2) rests on His sacrifice, (3) imbibes His spirit, and (4) imitates His example."

There are two issues that should be a gauge of our effectiveness in discipleship within the Caribbean. The first has to do with sexual promiscuity and the second concerns race.

Sexual practices

In the latter part of 2006, I conducted a survey in Barbados on the sexual practices of young people in our evangelical congregations. About 50 congregations from across Barbados and the denominational spectrum agreed to participate. I was able to tabulate 420 responses that met the criteria for confidentiality. Church attendance for this sample averaged eight services per respondent in the month prior to the survey - that's about twice a week. These are largely church-going youth.

When asked if they had ever had sex, 42.6 per cent replied in the affirmative but only 4.5 per cent indicated that their first sexual partner was a spouse. Some indicated that their sexual behaviour has changed because of faith in Christ, but 26.3 per cent indicated that they are continuing to have sex outside of marriage. Where one in every four of our church-going youth are sexually active but not married, we have a discipleship challenge.

When asked if their pastors talked about sex in church, nine per cent said never and another 17.4 per cent said rarely. When asked if their youth leader ever discussed sex, 9.8 per cent said never and 17.4 per cent said rarely. If more than 25 per cent of our pastors and youth leaders are not providing discipleship in the area of our sexuality, we have a problem.

Sexual promiscuity

I would like to do this survey in other Caribbean countries so that we can build a basis for comparison and see if the Barbados survey has any anomalies. The results of the Barbados survey clearly indicate that while we're ahead of the population in general in terms of sexual promiscuity, we have strong challenges to face and critical issues to address in our discipleship programmes.

A second issue that is vital, though controversial, is the racial culture of Christianity.

When the Roman Catholic Church declared Africans to be only three-fifths human, it was quite clear that they could not portray Jesus, the apostles and prophets as people of colour. So as the missionaries brought us the gospel, they brought it fully clothed in the culture of Europe - artistic expressions of biblical characters, music, traditions, architecture, vestments, etc. Having enslaved the Africans, the Europeans could not allow the European culture to be removed from the gospel.

Yet, a close examination of our Holy Bible shows it to be much more an African book than it could ever be European. There is growing consensus - still fiercely resisted in some quarters - that the Garden of Eden was in fact in Africa, making Adam and Eve black Africans from who the entire human race has descended.

There is now clear DNA evidence that groups such as the Lemba in Zimbabwe are indeed Jewish even though they are clearly black. Egypt was a very black African country during the period of the Pharaohs and during the enslavement of the Israelis there. It would be miraculous if the Israelis emerged from Egyptian slavery as lily white Europeans after 430 years in black Egypt. With this in mind, it would make no sense for God to send Jesus to hide in Egypt if he was a white baby. How could you hide three white people among a nation of black Egyptians?

Moses was raised in the palaces of Egypt. He spent 40 years learning the ways of black African rulers. It is not a surprise to discover that many of the laws Moses wrote into the Pentateuch bore striking similarities to black Egyptian practices and legislation, so much so that some people have called our Bible a book of African philosophy.

Strong African Gospel

Yet, we continue to disciple our black Caribbeans into a Christianity firmly wrapped in white, European culture to the point where detractors in our countries ridicule our people for serving a white God. In many Caribbean congregations white, Southern, country and western music is still considered 'real' gospel music and anything that sounds African or Caribbean is termed 'devilish.' I wonder where we got that from? To others, only the European anthems and hymns can create the right atmosphere for worship.

In all honesty, can we continue to disciple black people in a gospel that is strongly African, but so deeply embedded in European culture that it has lost for us its essential African nature? Shouldn't we lovingly remove the added culture and absorb the gospel into our own culture? Shouldn't we be able to express worship, lifestyle, discipleship from the depths of who we are as Caribbeans and not have to become white, Anglo-Saxon in culture and practice to be serious disciples of Jesus? I think so!

The Rev. Gerald Seale is general secretary of the Evangelical Association of the Caribbean. He may be reached at gaseale@caribsurf.com . To read the full paper see http://www.caribbeanevangelical.org/conecar2007reports/plenarypapers.htm.