Life Long Development - Exploring Christian Leadership Development.
ML530: This course explores the nature of Christian leadership development. Leadership emergence theory is a grounded theory derived from the comparative study of many life histories of biblical, historical, and contemporary leaders.
The development of a leader takes a lifetime. God processes or shapes a leader in terms of leadership character, leadership skills, and leadership values. The processes that God uses can be studied, categorized, and characterized. They can be integrated around a time-line of a leader which shows development from the big picture, the lifetime perspective. Patterns can be observed as God develops a person over a lifetime. These variables—that is, the large umbrella concepts of the course, processing, time, and patterns of response—form the backbone of the course. Emphasis in this course is upon recognition of values and lessons learned in God's processing as well as integration of them along a time-line.
Many individual concepts flowing from these variables such as various process items, the unique time-line, boundaries, giftedness development pattern, and many, many more are examined, all with a view toward understanding one's own shaping. The thrust of this course involves learning perspectives that will aid life-long development. |
Value Based Leadership in the Old Testament
ML534: Leadership theory over the past 150 years has evolved through five major paradigmatic eras. The present era, the Complexity Era, has a strong focus toward value-based leadership. Early eras concentrated on the “what” of leadership and the “how” of leadership. The Complexity Era continues these, but adds the “why” of leadership. This course utilizes many of these leadership perspectives, most of which are cross-cultural, to test and explore these findings in the Old Testament. What does the Old Testament say about these various leadership perspectives (such as leadership elements, leadership styles, philosophical models, leadership emergence theory, mentoring, change dynamics, etc.) as the framework for studying leadership? Four of the six leadership eras in the Bible, the four Old Testament eras, are studied: I. The Patriarchal Leadership Era (leadership roots), II. The Pre-Kingdom Leadership Era (desert, warfare, tribal), III. The Kingdom Leadership Era (united, divided, single), IV. The Post-Kingdom Leadership Era (exile, post-exilic, interim). Seven types of studies are done: (1) biographical, (2) historical leadership acts, (3) actual leadership contexts, (4) parabolic leadership literature, (5) indirect passages dealing with Christian character or behavior, (6) Bible books studied as a whole placing them in their context hermeneutically and in terms of leadership eras, (7) studies across books for common themes and lessons on leadership (called macro-lessons). Each time the course is taught one of the four leadership eras is focused upon. One or more Bible characters from that era are studied in depth. One or two Bible books for that era are also studied in depth. Students will learn how to do biographical studies, contextual studies for leadership lessons, and how to analyze leadership acts. Several macro-lessons will be studied in-depth. The Old Testament is one of the best leadership resources and least used for that purpose. |
Value Based Leadership in the New Testament
ML536: Leadership theory over the past 150 years has evolved through five major paradigmatic eras. The present era, the Complexity Era, has a strong focus toward value-based leadership. Early eras concentrated on the “what” of leadership and the “how” of leadership. The Complexity Era continues these, but adds the “why” of leadership. This course utilizes many of these leadership perspectives, most of which are cross-cultural, to test and explore these findings in the New Testament. What does the New Testament say about these various leadership perspectives (such as leadership elements, leadership styles, philosophical models, leadership emergence theory, mentoring, change dynamics, etc.) as the framework for studying leadership? Two of the six leadership eras in the Bible, the two New Testament eras, are studied: V. The Pre-Church Leadership Era and the , VI. The Church Leadership Era. Seven types of studies are done: (1) biographical, (2) historical leadership acts, (3) actual leadership contexts, (4) parabolic leadership literature, (5) indirect passages dealing with Christian character or behavior, (6) Bible books studied as a whole placing them in their context hermeneutically and in terms of leadership eras, (7) studies across books for common themes and lessons on leadership (called macro-lessons). One Bible character will be studied using lifelong development concepts. Several N.T. books—from the following list—John, 1,2 Timothy, Titus,1,2 Corinthians and/or Philemon--will be studied for leadership insights. Students will learn how to do biographical studies, contextual studies for leadership lessons, and how to analyze leadership acts. Several macro-lessons will be studied in-depth. The New Testament is one of the best leadership resources and least used for that purpose. |
Leadership Training Models
ML540: This course uses three modes as a backdrop for teaching training concepts: formal, non-formal, and informal. It then teaches basic leadership training models (the Adapted Systems Model and the Two Track Analogy) and numerous training concepts. These models are used in either of two ways by the student as they do their self-study project. 1. The student will design a training program that he/she anticipates using in ministry or the student will evaluate a training program in order to pinpoint its strengths and weaknesses as well as offer suggestions to improve it. |