Fathering Cities: 
Building Leadership Teams

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty

and he who rules his spirit than he who captures a city

                                                                            (Proverbs 16:32).

God himself is Father of cities.  Cities are the reflection of his image in corporate humankind, the manifestation of his goodness through the collective culture and society.  True city Leadership reflects this fathering of God, his creativity, his communicating ability, his creation of goodness and structure in the midst of nothingness and chaos.

The Ebb and Flow of Leadership

Years of working with city leaders have been years of encouraging successful failures.  Usually the successes in spiritual advance have come at the cost of leader's personal failure and inadequacy.  A grain of wheat must die to give birth to much fruit.  And death does not look or feel very successful.
 
My training ground has been years in and out of the slums of Asia, and Latin America,  then ten years in and out of Calcutta, living there, pioneering a team there, pioneering a ministry to the poor, and seeking to encourage unity in the church.
 
There is no success in warfare in Calcutta.  200 years of intensive missionary endeavor, by hundreds of missionaries, including some of the finest in the annals of missionary folklore, have produced only 143 churches, and among the Bengalis, for it is the city of the Bengalis,  only 2015 evangelical or Pentecostal believers.  Churches have plaques to those who died after a couple of years or forty. 

Among these missionaries almost every Indian pastor in the city is struggling with sickness, facing days of demonic oppression or bitterness and infighting within his congregation.  For this is no ordinary city.  It is a city birthed in treachery, and corruption, and dedicated to Kali, goddess of death and destruction.  She, the wife of Vishnu, the supreme deity of Hinduism, in one of his incarnations is one of half a dozen great spiritual principalities across the face of the globe. It is truly a demonized city, and that a demon of great power.  Brahmanic Hinduism is centered in this city.

What has it cost to do battle in this city?  What kind of Leadership survives? Only the broken.  Only those who pray.  And only those faithful in small things.  Only the one willing to carry in their body the marks of Jesus, the marks of battle.  Only the one who over long periods of time can consistently discern the wiles of the enemy, indeed of multiple spirits, as they go about their attack.   Others fall subject to deception, corruption or more simply sickness.

There is a brother who came to intercede for the city.  For four years he has visited and prayed day by day with every pastor.  There is a brother who has pioneered churches, sacrificing day and night to travel and visit pastor after pastor.   There is a brother who has held a Bible School together against communism, through the bitterness of opposition, without crucial funding, while coping with blood pressure and heart problems.  There is brother who has rescued the drug addicts, faced interrogations, been publicly humiliated by political opportunists, and carried on, year by year, without fame or glory.  

Such men are worthy to be called leaders of the city.  The leader carries the pressure. The leader serves.   And step by step God is giving breakthroughs in this city.

To do so the leader plans for times of retreat and reflection and rebuilding, as part of the long-term survival strategy.  And plans on raising an army of intercessors for his or her work.

The leader carries the cross on a lacerated back, his brow bloodstained with thorns, and heart saddened with accusations, treachery and betrayal by those closest to him.  The leader is a disciple of Jesus.

Because we are aliens and exiles we look to a higher city.  With that gaze we cope with success and failure.  Our sight is on the certainty of the promised future.  Like Abraham we are:

 looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God....they did not receive the things promised....they admitted they were aliens and exiles...he has prepared a city for them 

                                                                                           ( Hebrews 11:10,13,16).

 

 Building the Leadership Team

The Interim Steering Committee

This committee will include some of the leaders who represent networks or key areas of direction or who are apostolic or prophetic leaders of the city. Their main roles will be to:
·        encourage the emergence of the relational dynamics across the city
·        develop the listening progressions leading up to a City Strategy Consultation.
·        integrate longer term strategic plans and goals into formats that mobilize.

The Poor Wise Man

Crucial in this is the discovery of the "poor wise man" (or woman) of the city^[37] who can give Leadership to the process.  This person needs to build around himself a team that integrates the leaders of many major groupings (networks, pastors' fraternities, movements, denominational leaders, leaders of cities within the city) in the mega-city.

Those from a more Pentecostal background talk of leaders who have a mantle of authority.

This must of necessity also be  someone with enough organizational structure from which to develop a citywide process.  At minimum this requires freedom of a significant bloc of time weekly, from a day to full time, secretarial and admin. backup, adequate volunteer labor for developing the infrastructure for conferences and events, and sufficient financial structure to be able to capitalize them.

 Such a person, who has  built relationships through serving leaders in the city can pull together the city leaders.  Others trying to do so find that they have plans to implement but they are listened to and not  followed through. 

 The Gamaliel Principle

As in the emergence of pastoral Leadership in a church, so at the city Leadership level, the quality of wisdom becomes a determining factor in the acceptance of a leader.  The word of advice, the timely Gamaliel type of word, the ability to create consensus, are all qualities needed.  The apostle James was the first Christian city coordinator, leader of the first apostolic Leadership team in Jerusalem.  He writes:

Who is wise and understanding among you?  Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.  But if you harbour bitter  envy and selfish ambition in your hearts do not boast about it or deny the truth....But the wisdom that comes from above is first of all pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.  Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness

                                                                                                   (James 3:13-18).

At the same time it seems it is the mantle of an overwhelming vision that seems to mark city leaders I have met, rather than the grace of wisdom.  It is their capacity to make things happen and get people mobilized rather than simply the fullness of character that marks good Leadership.  It seems the Peter-style Leadership rather than James-style wisdom is central. 

 Urban Leadership Networking Centers

The final measure of a season of citywide revival will be the extent to which new lay Leadership has emerged.  That requires simple training models.   It requires the emergence of defined lay Leadership roles that provide status, security and learning environments for emerging leaders.  There are models of Leadership in any culture.  Identifying these and collectively facilitating their development will give longevity to the fruits of revival.

There are urban training centres in a number of cities, such as Doug Hall's Emmanual Center in Boston, or CUTS in Philadelphia, or Pentecostal training schools attached to mega-churches in many cities. Each of these are contexts where emerging leaders and poor leaders can tell of their problems and rejoice in their stories with others.  They are centres of reflection on the stories of their peers.  Urban ministry is so diverse that learning institutions based on didactic models do not produce the kind of responsive leaders needed.

Lay Leadership and House Church Dynamics

Leadership, structuring, and developing an environment for the work of the Spirit will only be effective in growth to the extent that small group movements develop .   Since the reformation, the home has been the center of the church.  The extent of family devotional disciplines is the measure of effective penetration of the city.

Howard Snyder has written extensively on small group dynamics in churches.^[38] In Cry of the Urban Poor I have written two chapters on movement dynamics.^[39]   Ralph Neighbour has popularized small house church modeling.^[40]  

In most countries the small group dynamic is developed through church-planting approaches.  Poor people need churches (with buildings) for 70-200, and nightly worship, lead by a strong charismatic leader.  Their homes are too small for house churches, though the church may begin in Bible studies in multiple homes.  But in Western countries and among middle class people the idea of churches meeting in the lounges of larger homes has struck a modern day cultural chord.   Leadership is more interactive.  Homes are large enough.  There is an educated  culture that likes to discuss issues.  Both of these models and many in between emerge levels of lay Leadership. 

Apart from the conversion rate and depth of Holy Spirit lead revival dynamics, it is the mentoring, facilitating, serving of these emergent leaders that determines the growth of the future church of the city. 

 The Role of the Mega-Church

Small churches usually do not have sufficient logistical resources to influence other churches and to influence the city.  Often it is para-church movements that take Leadership in the city for these provide contexts for those with apostolic, or prophetic or visionary giftings.  However, logistical constraints remain an issue.  For this reason the mega-church, the large city church has a strategic role.  It has resources in people, administrative structure and financially. 

On the other hand the mega-church rarely partners well.  It has been built by going about its own business.  Smaller churches do not trust it.  It tends to subsume them under its own objectives.   In many cities the pastors work together minus the mega-church.    Ted Haggard^[41] , pastor of a church of 4,000 in Colorado Springs has some useful ideas in this regard that would encourage a larger church in its partnering with other churches in the city.   His thesis is that a large church cannot grow unless there are surrounding churches of a reasonable size. Hence the mega-church must encourage church growth in the whole city, rather than seeking to upbuild only itself.