Developing Leaders Who Lead like Jesus in the Context of the Rapidly Growing Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church

Abstract

This project had a transformative impact on the character and in the lives of leaders of nine zones and five special districts of the Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church (EKHC). During the project, they reported that they developed more Christ-centered leadership skills to lead like Jesus. The MentorLink Passing it On and Leaders Covenant resources challenged the leaders to examine their personal lives in relation to their own family and church ministry. Using two cycles of Action Research, the general secretaries of the nine zones and five special districts of the EKHC were given training to "lead like Jesus," were taught biblical transformation of character to live and lead like Jesus and were engaged in collaborative planning and action to implement structural change in the zones that had been carried on successfully. The process helped the leaders to closely know each other and build a sense of family both at the zonal and the special district levels. Through the methodologies of narrative research and auto-ethnographic research, the project measured the perception of behavioral change of these leaders using pre-training and post-training questionnaires and journaling following each training cycle to describe how the training was applied. The project revealed three crucial areas that require further change and transformation: 1. It identified how far church leadership had drifted from Christ-centered leadership and the urgent need of reformation. EKHC needs to prayerfully select and develop competent ministers to train in the well-established formal and informal theological training programs. The MentorLink material must be used as one of important tools in the institutions. 2. Structural change must be made to facilitate fast communication for the rapid growth of EKHC. 3. A leadership development movement is needed for EKHC to achieve balanced growth in both quality and quantity.