Polycentric Mission Leadership: Toward A New Theorectical Model for Global Leadership

By Joseph W Handley Jr

The world is facing rapidly increasing cycles of disruption, challenges, and disorder. In the face of these challenges, mission leadership is stretched to adapt, trying to catch up with the pace of change and provide wisdom and action that helps navigate these challenges to further the mission God has bestowed on his Church. This book focuses on the ways leadership is changing in the face of these challenges, suggesting a new theoretical model for mission leadership. It reviews the idea of polycentrism through mission history, mission and church organizations, movement theory, and governance, identifying themes for polycentric mission leadership.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Regnum Books International
• Release date: Aug 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781914454578

Book preview

Preface: A World in Tension

The past 18 months have been one of the most disruptive seasons of my life. We have all been deeply impacted by a global pandemic, one of the worst economic downturns of the century, and a divisive political environment (whether in the US, ongoing troubles in Afghanistan, or the Ukraine crisis). We faced lockdowns, a loss of incomes and jobs, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

I began 2020 with high hopes and aspirations, only to find that I would be stuck in one location for longer than I had at any time for the last 30 years. I didn’t catch a bus or a train, or drive anywhere from my neighborhood in Tokyo for months on end other than to the local market. I lived on digital technology and watched what appeared to be a planet spiraling into oblivion.

When I moved back to Los Angeles in December 2020, it felt like I had entered a different planet than the one I left five years prior. My home state, California, had stricter quarantine restrictions than Tokyo, and yet many people didn’t abide by the regulations. In Japan, most people followed the guidelines, but the US individualist society sees things quite differently. There is something called a cowboy nature that sometimes comes out in those of us who live in the US. We question authority and want autonomy above all else. I found my new setting chaotic, difficult to thrive in, and even more challenging to lead in.¹

My Leadership Journey and Influences

My mission journey began with watching my parents provide leadership in our home, church, business, and on short-term mission trips. This family-style leadership provides the backdrop for how I flesh out Polycentric Mission Leadership in the pages that follow.

As I reflect on my life, I am struck with how many people and events have shaped who I am as a mission leader today. One of those people was my father. Coming to faith in high school, he left his Montana home to attend Life Bible College in California. After graduating, he served as a lay pastor for several years before going into business for himself as a roofing contractor. He often spoke about how he had more opportunities to lead others to Christ as a business owner than he had as a pastor.

As a young boy, I would spend a lot of time with my father during school breaks, joining him as he did roofing estimates, collected payments, and interacted with customers. As I watched my dad, I observed certain values like integrity, hard work, and compassion. As I got older he would occasionally leave me with a work crew on the roof so I could learn the nuts and bolts of the business. I learned more than just how to tar and shingle a roof, though. Those years of working with my father and his crew shaped my view of leadership and service as I learned how to work on a team, give and take, and serve together to accomplish a task.

My sister Suzy also shaped my view of mission leadership. Her autism profoundly affected our family as I was growing up and I would often watch on as my mother served as her devoted advocate, always looking out for what was best for her. This sometimes meant changing churches to be in a place that offered services for Suzy. At the time, I thought it was unfair that I couldn’t stay at the same church as my friends. In one such experience, we went from a Pentecostal Foursquare Gospel church to a Quaker Meeting. Going from a full Gospel experience, as some would call it, to the quiet, more meditative Quaker fellowship was quite an adjustment! Little did I know, however, how God would use those experiences to shape me into a more compassionate person.

To add more diversity to my denominational experiences, I attended a conservative Baptist middle and high school. Upon graduating, I attended Azusa Pacific University (APU), which comes from a Wesleyan/Holiness tradition theologically. While there, I continued to go to church with my parents and sister, who were now attending an Evangelical Free Church. Later, I followed my then girlfriend (who later became my wife) to a Wesleyan Church.

My colleagues at APU would provide the collaborative ecosystem that firmly shaped my leadership approach. They embodied a team leadership style that continues with me to this day. It was while I was at APU that my passion for mission was ignited. A friend invited me to join him on a mission trip to Mexico, which changed how I saw myself and the world. Whereas I had initially pursued business and psychology with aspirations of becoming wealthy, I now had a new focus – God’s mission. After working in a psychiatric hospital for a few years post-graduation, APU hired me to lead a mission congress similar to the Urbana Student Leadership Conference, but for high school students. It was there that I saw God’s hand in so many diverse ways and in so many different denominations.

When I attended the first task force for the congress, I was surprised to discover that the men and women came from nearly every denominational background I had experienced. Their leadership styles reflected their church traditions and I realized God had given me a rich experience of different denominational backgrounds for such a time as this. What I had previously thought unfair was what God used to shape me for a life of mission leadership I would have never anticipated or dreamt about.

At APU, I was also placed in a key role from an early age and began networking with mission leaders around the world. Through their influence, those leaders lifted my eyes to the world of mission that I was only vaguely aware of at the time. The only mission biography I had read up to this point was a classic my mother had given me in middle school: Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret.

Later, I joined my colleagues and accompanying missionary family from Rolling Hills Covenant Church (RHCC) in delving into the riches of pastoral and mission leadership. While at RHCC, I grew deeply in my understanding of pastoral and mission leadership and went through a profound transformation in my missional focus: from mobilization to empowerment and partnership. It was 1998 and the world was rapidly changing. I soon realized that the church was growing faster outside the West than within it – a revelation that would lead me to Asian Access, where I have since had the most life-changing shifts in my paradigms of mission leadership.

My colleagues at Asian Access have shaped my proposed Polycentric Mission Leadership model and approach like no other. I am blessed beyond measure by the powerful cloud of witnesses with whom I have the privilege of serving alongside – and who have allowed me to understand more fully what it means to be a Polycentric Mission Leader (a term I will flesh out in later chapters).

It is important to note that this has been a collaborative journey. First, a few family members and colleagues have journeyed with me in reviewing the research. These have included my wife Silk, my son John, and my colleagues Noel Becchetti, John Houlette, and Mike Wilson.

My doctoral committee and outside readers also played an important role in challenging my assumptions, encouraging further research, and exploring new avenues to deepen my proposed concept. My mentor Doug McConnell led the way, giving special attention to analysing leadership theory. David Bennett suggested the Lausanne Movement as the ideal ecosystem to test the new theory using qualitative interviews, and Allen Yeh catalyzed what I would call the breakthrough idea. His work on Polycentric Missiology took the research to an entirely new level. Spending time with Allen and interacting with him brought a theoretical idea to light – namely, that a world in need of polycentric approaches necessitates a new form of leadership.

Bambang Budijanto and Francis Tsui served as outside readers, giving texture and depth to the research, especially reviewing the model from a non-Western perspective. Having their eyes refine the research was particularly insightful given that the study was looking at operating in a global context.

I am grateful for all of these leaders, friends, and family members.

¹ This section is an adaptation of an article presented for Outcomes Magazine. Handley, Joseph. Polycentric Leadership: A Leadership Model for a Polarized World, Outcomes Magazine: Christian Leadership Alliance, Spring 2021 – https://outcomesmagazine.com/polycentric-leadership/ (accessed on 6 March 2021).

1. Toward a New Theoretical Leadership Model

Introduction

We live in a time of unrivaled global complexity. Political upheavals are occurring in several countries, and ongoing warfare continues unabated. Pressures created by chronic unemployment, income inequality, and refugee migration are on the rise. South Asia and the Middle East face rising religious tensions, bringing societal polarities into sharp relief. Russia and China are seeking to extend their reach, bolster their influence, and pressure their neighbors into submission. On top of these, the rapid challenges we face for climate change and the impact on the environment are troubling.

And the speed of change magnifies these complexities. New technologies designed to connect us also divide us. Social and behavioral norms are in rapid transition where different value systems challenge tradition. For the Global Church, this era of complexity requires that we discern new ways to engage the world around us and discover fresh ways of approaching leadership.

Sherwood Lingenfelter, an anthropologist and former provost at Fuller Seminary, identified a core ingredient to leadership in this new century: The complexity of leading cross-culturally lies in the challenge of building a community of trust among people who come from two or more cultural traditions.¹ Lamin Sanneh, renowned Yale University professor of World Christianity, affirmed this reality, stating, Christianity has become ambicultural as the faith of multiple language users straddling national and social boundaries. ² The world is experiencing more cross-national and intercultural interaction in the fields of commerce, government, education, and faith traditions than at any point in history. The issues of racism and post-colonialism only exacerbate the relational challenges leaders continue to face. Given the new interdependence (along with a growing sense of national identity and tribalism), intercultural competence is critical and, as Lingenfelter advocated, fostering communities of trust is foundational to leading well interculturally.

Lingenfelter also highlighted the need for teamwork, which was illustrated by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky in Leadership on the Line, where they underscored working in teams as an important dimension of leadership for the future. Heifetz and Linsky believe that, Hierarchical structures with clearly defined roles are giving way to more horizontal organizations with greater flexibility, room for initiative and corresponding uncertainty. Democratization is spreading throughout organizations as well as countries.³ This theme is captured by many current postmodern and emerging church models⁴ and is also present in the way emerging generations lead.⁵ Given the chaotic, rapidly changing pace of the modern world, flexible, contextually appropriate models of leadership are essential.

Reggie McNeal also captured these challenges for mission leaders: We do not live in normal times. You may have noticed that we are in a vortex of transitional forces that are creating a new world. We need great leaders to help us get through the wormhole of overlapping universes.⁶ James Kouzes and Barry Posner added: We have said that leaders take us to places we have never been before. But there are no freeways to the future, no paved highways to unknown, unexplored destinations. There is only wilderness. If you are to step into the unknown, the place to begin is with the exploration of the inner territory. ⁷ The environment that McNeal, Kouzes, and Posner described necessitates a new look at how to lead given the complexities before us. They highlight the importance of self-awareness and inner work as well as a grasp of context and culture.

My goal is to find a better approach to leadership in a world where everything – from supply chains to political conflict to the church – is global. Drawing from my personal experience in mission leadership, the works of my colleagues from Azusa Pacific University, Rolling Hills Covenant, and Asian Access, and a wealth of academic research in fields as diverse as mission history and research on governance, I am proposing what I hope is a useful new model for leadership. Instead of the centralized or statist approach people often associate with corporate CEOs, I envision a model of leadership that is polycentric – leadership that is collaborative, taking input from a rich diversity of sources in order to achieve better and more representative outcomes than the traditional top-down hierarchical or managerial approach to leadership that has been prevalent for decades. Over and above collaboration, decentralized leadership allows for each region of the world and every sector of a company to make decisions that are just in time and appropriate for the local context. In this way, agency is empowered through different centers, allowing better choices to be made that are relevant to the local situation.

In developing this new model of what I call Polycentric Mission Leadership, the Lausanne Movement and the 2010 congresses celebrating the centennial of the famed Edinburgh Missionary Conference in 1910 provided a background and ecosystem for my research. I focused interviews for the research behind this theory (shared in Chapter Five) primarily on the Lausanne Movement because it provided a rich ecosystem for studying leadership in global mission. The Lausanne Movement is a remarkable story that is filled with ebbs and flows, yet one that has helped to form the contours of world mission during the current era. Lausanne has been shaped by a wide variety of leaders from different backgrounds and styles, providing a unique laboratory within which to review theoretical models for leadership in mission. Beyond the influence of leaders, the movement draws from an array of networks and organizations committed to the same cause, which adds to the complexity of the leadership dynamic, providing further dimensions to review for theoretical testing.

My assessment of the influence of the polycentric model was done primarily in the context of the Lausanne Movement. The movement began when charismatic leader Billy Graham partnered with John Stott, a reflective practitioner, and Jack Dain, a strategic coordinator. The movement ebbed and flowed with the