LeadershipConneXtions

Special Prayer Request for Christians in India

A good friend of mine is in India right now for ministry. He is asking for special prayer for the Indian Church, especially in Orissa and surrounding areas. There are plans for multiple attacks against churches this Sunday. You are reading this one day ahead and that will be an opportune time to:

*  pray for protection,

*  for a cessation of violence against the church,

*  that the government would act responsibly to bring an end to this violence,

*  that those who are have already experienced violence would find grace and strength to forgive their enemies and to find healing.

Please join with many others in praying for this and if you want to spread the word to others, that would be great.

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions Internatioal

Photos From India

I wanted to share a few pictuers from India.

So there isn't any real comment on this post, just some pictures of the students (and one picture of the desk in my room where I did a lot of my prep time.

I will have more photos of this group on a photo list in the right column by the end of the week.

Brian Rice

Back From India

I arrived at home a few hours ago, back from India.

I flew out of Hyderabad at 6:00 p.m. to Mumbai (Bombay), then left Mumbai about 11:00 p.m. I had a 15 hour flight to Newark, a four hour layover, fly down to BWI and my good friend Mike Johnson picked me up about 9:30 in the morning.

I'll have a longer post on Monday about the trip.

Thanks for your prayers.

Brian

India Update

Today seemed even more humid than yesterday. I am getting about four hours of sleep at night. Usually I adapt to the new time zone right away when I travel. Not this time. I wind up taking a nap for about an hour before supper.

Today we talked about the Crossroads times of life, the Cost of Leadership, Below the Water Line transformation, life long learning and a little bit about the changing culture. To be honest, the material is a stretch for most of the students and I am having to work hard to get it to a place where they can understand it and they are having to do some work with ideas and concepts that are very new (and different) for them. It is emotionally and mentally draining and I have to make a lot of adjustments on the spot.

Here are a few pictures from today.

In the Indian culture, the men and the women sit seperately.

I have them doing a fair amount of personal reflection and then small group discussion on the issues.

It is very difficult to do any large group discussion. There are too many students, the room is a bit too noisy to really hear well with all the fans running to keep things cool, and I would find it almost impossilbe to understand their heavily accented English.

It is quite enough challenge for them to understand my accent. I have to make myself speak slowly and enunciate.

My approach is to try and give them one or two BIG IDEAS for each session I do. I tell stories, give personal illustrations and try to give practical application of the ideas.

Tomorrow I will spend the entire day looking at issues of servant leadership. We'll walk through the Creation-Fall-Redemption model and look at issues of power and authority. We'll look at the "metaphors" of leadership - Servant, Steward, Shepherd, Sufferer and Sacrifice. And we'll spend a fair amount of time looking at the counter-cultural example of Jesus on leadership!

The students graduate on Saturday. Unfortunately, I won't be with them for graduation. I will be leaving Friday afternoon for the airport and flying out Friday evening so I can get back home in time for Easter.

Most of the students are working with Operation Mobilization in some capacity. The approach is for them to come to the campus for intensive times of course work, and then return back to their field assignment. Most of them will go back to their ministry after graduation. Some of them will have a vacation or holiday with their family first.

It is a privilege to be with them doing this "spiritual life" retreat as part of their graduation.

Thanks for your prayers.

Brian Rice

   

Update From India

Hi Everyone:

Just a quick note to say I arrived in Hyderabad with no problems. The airport strikes were averted at most places. Hyderabad is in the process of opening a brand new airport and I was to be the first guest of ACCS that arrived at the new airport. The day before it was to open, they decided to push back the opening, so I arrived at the old airport!

It is great seeing old friends here.

it is great working with the students doing life-long leadership development with them. I just finished a little bit ago. We spent the day talking about finishing well, why leaders don't finish well, looking at the focused life of vision, values, strengths, and platform/role.

It was a long day. I have a pretty bad cough. I think it is just allergy or sinus related with the major climate change from southern Pa to south India. It is hot!

Tomorrow we look at emotional intelligence and self-awareness, the cost of leadership, the four mindsets of leadership and making decisons when at the crossroads times of life.

I am crashing due to some jet lag, not having slept the previous night and then sleeping last night for about four hours! I am going to catch a little sleep before supper and hope I wake up for it!

Blessings to all of you.

Brian Rice

p.s.  This is NOT where I am staying!

Leaders Need A Theology of Spirituality

Here is a paragraph by Bobby Clinton that, when I first read it, I had an "AHA" moment. Here are his words, which I've broken up into several paragraphs for easier reading.

********************************

Plateaued leadership and leadership which is set aside (disciplined by God) usually can be traced back to problems in spirituality. While there are, of course, some leaders who fail in leadership due to lack of ministry skills, it is probably more true that the majority of failures in leadership come due to failure in the area of spirituality.

Every leader should have an explicit theology of spirituality (emphasis mine) which guides him/her as development proceeds along the three major goals of spiritual formation, ministerial formation, and strategic formation.

As Dallas Willard (pictured to the right) has so aptly pointed out, your thoughtless and heretofore unorganized theology of spirituality guides your life with just as much force as a thoughtful and informed one. (Again, the emphasis is mine.) Kingdom leadership demands spiritual leadership. An informed theology of spirituality is vital to this kind of leadership . . .

Ministry essentially flows out of beingness. You must continually assess your spirituality and maintain it if you are to give spiritual leadership in the kingdom.

********************************

Okay, in those few short thoughts is a world worth exploring at length and in depth.

When I came face to face with this paragraph, my AHA moment was realizing that I had a deficient theology of spirituality which inevitably led to an inadequate practice of spirituality. The last 10 years have been, in part, the exploring of and developing of a thoughful, informed, robust, holistic, biblically based and church history informed theology of spirituality.

To say it another way, I have been pursuing a spirituality that is characterized by relationship, intimacy and transformation. My previoius spirituality, which was unknown to me at the time (i.e. thoughtless and unorganized), was mainly rationalistic, pragmatic and behavioristic. (By the way, two of the categories in my theology of spirituality are that of mystery and messiness. But I am thoughtful about the messy side of the spiritual life!)

My week in India, working with the graduates of ACCS is developed around this theme. With 30 sessions and 30 different themes, I want to help them develop a theology of spirituality that will sustain them for a lifetime of fruitful ministry, the platform to finish well, and to have a legacy worth leaving.

Brian Rice

Prayer Requests for India

I leave for Hyderabad, India today. If you look on the south east part of India, Hyderabad is the main city in the state of Andhra Pradesh. It is right above the blue colored state of Tamil Nadu.

OM's Training Center is where I'll be for the week. It is called ACCS. I am the graduation speaker for their week-long conference. I'll do six one-hour sessions each day. It is a spiritual life, leadership conference that is for all the graduates for the year.

Here are some prayer requests:

PRAYER REQUEST JUST ADDED IN!  According to the news, there are strikes in the Indian airports. I am spending the night in one  of the Mumbai airports!  Facilities are suppose to be "rough." And then the Hyderabad airport is suppose to have some major problems. Please pray.

ONE:  Pray that I'll get some decent rest on the flight over. The last few days have been very hectic due to some unexpected issues I had to spend some time on and I am a bit emotionally drained.

TWO:  The trip has two long parts. I have about a 14-hour flight from Newark to Mumbai. There I have to switch airports and I'll stay in the airport for a ten-hour layover before flying on to Hyderabad.

THREE: Pray that I'll have stamina and that my voice will hold out with all the teaching and preaching. My schedule is to speak for about four hours (with some break) take two hours for lunch and some rest and then two more hours of teaching before supper.

FOUR:  All the teaching is in English. Some of the students' English comprehension will not  be as strong as other students, so they may miss some of the ideas. Pray for understanding and integration of the ideas.

FIVE:  Pray that I'll have some good contacts with the leadership team at ACCS. I knew a few of them from many years ago, renewed acquaintance with them last January, and met a number of new and very good leaders. I would really like to strengthen relationships with them this visit.

SIX: Pray that jet lag will be minimal, both going and returning. I return the day before Easter and I'd like to be awake for Easter Sunday!

I hope to have decent internet connection while there and will try to post during the week.

I love Indian food and look forward to some very good meals while there. India is one place where I NEVER LOSE WEIGHT when I travel. The food is hot and spicy and tasty. If you want to learn some more about Indian food this is a great website.

Blessings,

Brian Rice 

A Few Pictures of the ACCS Class

I just wanted to drop a few pictures on the site of the classroom which was my home for about six hours each day while I was at ACCS. I was really remiss in not getting more pictures while I was there. it just seems a bit awkward to ask someone to take photos of the American doing ministry! Still, here are a few to look at.

Brian Rice

Great Time in Delhi With Chad and Family

My last day in India was visiting a friend I met almost exactly one year ago to the day when I was one of the speakers at a retreat in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

I was talking about the wilderness experience that God used in developing leaders. Chad was one of the people in attendance that was really interested in that subject and in the whole field of leadership development. A significant part of Chad's ministry is developing leaders.

Chad is one of the people I do distance mentoring for leadership coaching. Chad is one of those individuals who I see as a "deep generalist" who has many interests and capacities and is going to have an increasing impact on the leaders in his orbit.

He has a delightful family (his wife Serina is in the picture above) and we had a wonderful Sunday afternoon meal at a restaurant who served awesome chicken kabobs!

Brian Rice

A "Chance" Meeting With R. Jeyaraj

One of the great joys of my recent trip to India to teach at the Asian College of Cultural Studies (ACCS) was being able to spend time with my friend R. Jeyaraj. I have known Jeyaraj for many years, having met him when he was a part of the faculty at Bethel Bible Institute in South India.

Once I moved to Cortland, NY to be senior pastor at FBD (Now GRACE Community Church), I lost touch with Jeyaraj for a long time. During that time he took a position as director of the M.Div. program at ACCS and has been there for about ten years.

Last year, through a "chance" and very brief meeting when I stopped in Bangalore, India to visit a university, there was Jeyaraj who had come down to visit the school. We connected, I gave him a business card and we talked about Leadership ConneXtions International. The next contact I had was when he emailed me to ask if I could be a replacement professor for a course at their school. I was delighted to do that.

This is just one of our many examples of networking and partnering. God is creating all kinds of relationships and networks and we want to join in with that work for the purpose of promoting leadership development around the world.

Thanks for all you are doing to develop leaders in your places of work and ministry and for your friendship and partnership with LCI.

Brian Rice

Finished in Hyderabad

Today was the last day of class. It has been a great six days. I'll have pictures of the students posted in a Photo Album in a few days.

I feel sad saying goodbye. Most of the students were either pastors or missionaries working in some very challenging situations. They were very appreciative of the class and I was deeply challenged by their insights, their faith and their commitment. There are some very good leaders and emerging leaders in the group.

Now I am heading to Delhi early tomorrow morning.

Brian Rice

Quick Update From Brian Rice

Hi Everyone:

The week is drawing to an end. It has been an intense week of working with about 20 pastors and missionaries. They have been an awesome group to do leadership development with and walk them through the topic of team building. It has been a real learning experience for me to cross cultures and speak of these things in meaningful ways. The feedback has been quite good and I am grateful that I have been able to be helpful for them. (Pictured to the left are some of the participants working on a small group exercise, talking about how leaders can introduce change in change resistant organizations!)

I have one more day in Hyderabad and then I go to visit a friend who lives and works in Delhi.

Brian Rice

Sunday Sightseeing in Hyderabad

It was a long trip to India. I got a ton of reading done on the plane, but I was glad to touch down in Delhi. I had a 6 hour overnight in a hotel near the airport and on Sunday morning flew down to Hyderabad early in the morning.

My friend Jeyraj was there to meet me and take me to ACCS (Asian College of Cultural Studies) which is the main Operation Mobilization training center in India. They have a very nice college and seminary here along with a retreat and conference center. January is the month of intensive courses for the M.A. and M.Div. students. Since it is located in the city of Hyderabad, it has a very cosmopolitan feel about it.

I've met a lot of good leaders and interesting people. This place is VERY BUSY with all kinds of activity and lots of "foreigners" passing through. I'll have some pictures and stories to tell you soon.

I had about five hours on Sunday when I was able to do a little sightseeing. Here is a picture of a very impressive "fort - fortress - castle - city" or whatever you want to call it. it is simply huge and goes on forever. What you see in the background is only a small portion of the structure.

Monday and Tuesday were non-stop teaching and mentoring sessions with missionaries and pastors (the students in the course I am teaching). I am having a great time. I am teaching people who are working in Tajikistan, Bangladesh, various parts of India and the Philippines.

Wish you were all here!

Brian Rice

Leaving for India

I leave for India today (Friday). I am taking the train from Lancaster to Newark Airport. I fly into Delhi, have an overnight layover and then take an early morning (Sunday) flight to Hyderabad.

On Monday I begin teaching at the Asian School of Cultural Studies located in Hyderabad (see map). There will be about 30 pastors and church leaders on the theme of Building and Leading Teams.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to provide updates on this blog about India while in India, but if not, I will as soon as I return to the States.

Pray that I would be able teach culturally useful leadership ideas and practices to those in attendance.

Also pray that I would be able to connect with several individuals who have a real passion for doing leadership development in India. One of the MAIN STRATEGIES of Leadership ConneXtions is that we find the right international partners to train, mentor and then partner with for ongoing leadership development.

To see the Course Syllabus click here for a copy Download syllabus.pdf

Brian Rice