Asian cultures are gracious and self-effacing…even to a fault. I ran into an example of this on a recent trip to Asia.
I was meeting with the National Director and Leadership Committee of a restricted-access country to explore the idea of faculty development. (Because this is a country where identifying location or naming people are bad ideas, I’m doing neither.) A2’s vision is to raise up an ever-increasing number of qualified leaders from within our member countries, to teach A3 both at home and throughout Asia.
This country is beginning its second decade of A3 ministry, now training its fourth batch of “students”. Actually, we don’t use the word students for our participants. They are leaders—established, active leaders with years of on-the-ground experience. The Leadership Committee is comprised of such leaders. They are A3 alumni who continue to lead and facilitate the current training. Many of them would be ideal candidates for A2’s faculty orientation and training program.
Ideal, except… ”Other countries have more qualified leaders than we have here,” they told me. “The ‘closed’ years have left us behind the rest of Asia.”
The closed years refer to decades of repression—political, social, and religious. Only in the past few years is this country experiencing a “loosening.” This embryonic freedom has not brought economic improvement, and this country remains one of the poorest countries in the region. Furthermore, the future direction of the loosening remains very much in the air.
Decades of oppression, poverty, and uncertainty have left their mark on the people. “What is easy in the rest of Asia is hard here,” a member of the Committee told me. The natural graciousness and self-effacement present in this culture has been exacerbated by the damage inflicted on the people over many years.
What struck me, though, was how much these men and women of God have to offer the rest of us. Their resiliency, perseverance, and dogged faith in the face of sustained trial is a profile in Christian courage. Behind? In terms of what it means to walk the walk of Christ, they are way ahead of us.
“I trust your judgment as to when you want to suggest candidates for A3 faculty from your country,” I told them. “But please know that you have much—much—to teach me, and all of us, about what it means to be a true disciple and a Christian leader. It’s an honor for me to learn from you.”
These A3 leaders—and the leaders they continue to train—are the kind of unsung heroes that abound throughout Asia. I’m grateful that God has led so many of them to invest their time, energies, talents, and heart into the lives of the leaders the Lord is raising up through the ministry of A3.
