Here at the Bakubung Bush Lodge in South Africa we woke early to catch the sunrise. Under a brilliant orange sky we saw and heard the wilds of Africa come to life, with exotic birds bursting into song and a herd of wildebeests wandering by.

In this remarkable setting I took the time to reflect on this two-week South African odyssey I’ve been privileged to experience. With our World Vision hosts and a group of Canadian pastors, I spent time in some of this country’s most beautiful and affluent areas, as well as her most desperately needy regions.

I thought back to the days leading up to this journey, and specifically to the ways in which I believe God was preparing my heart. I had sensed a very real challenge from God’s Spirit to not simply come and look at what’s happening around me, but to really see things in and through God’s perspective.

So, what did I see?

• I saw people who’s annual earnings most of us will spend on a month of Starbucks coffee, but who are rich in their love for God. To have had the privilege to worship with these people was to experience a freedom in worship I’ve rarely seen before.

• I saw people whose generosity was not contingent upon their level of income. Among communities of people with very little of what the world would call “wealth” there was a consistent spirit of looking out for those with even less.

• I saw in the hearts of the Canadian pastors on the trip a spirit of compassion and mercy that should inspire all Canadian Christ-followers. Their genuine love for the people we met should come as no surprise, but it was nonetheless affirming to see such care demonstrated.

• I saw God do a work in my own heart. I was challenged to examine my own life and my own priorities. I found God changing my definitions of words like “necessities”, “security”, “possessions” and “needs”.

My final reflection would be that, as a result of this life-changing trip, I find that my resolve to see the Church in Canada become stronger, healthier and more vibrant to be more intensified than ever.

Because I believe to the core of my being that God has a truly global role for the Canadian Church to play. And the more we can see our churches prevail, the more we will see God work through us to truly make a global difference.

I can’t wait to see what the future holds. For all of us.

Perhaps you’re a youth leader who needed to round up extra drivers for that youth ministry outing, and you phoned all those parents to bring their mini-vans to run these kids across town.

Maybe you’re a senior pastor who needed to clear the church calendar for an important church-wide event, and you met with several key staff to get them to move or cancel their previously scheduled functions.

My question for you, and the one I’ve been challenged with today, is “How consistently do you remember to close the loop?”

South Africa Township

My journey through South Africa continued today with a stop at World Vision’s Umvoti Area Development Project office. Here our group of Canadian pastors met with the Umvoti World Vision staff, along with a group of local pastors.

As part of the meeting’s agenda we showed a video which we had shot in this region in April of 2009, and which we had shown at Canada’s Leadership Summit sites later that year. In filming the piece we had visited many area homes and interviewed many families and community leaders. In showing the video to some 7000 leaders at the Canadian Summit it had raised a great awareness of the needs in this region, along with an opportunity to respond through World Vision.

After showing this seven minute clip to these Umvoti leaders, one of the pastors rose from his chair and spoke words which I immediately processed as an important leadership principle.

“Thank you for showing us this video,” he said in his native Zulu through an interpreter. “Many times people visit us, and many times they take videos of us. Then they show their videos in other countries, but we don’t know what they have said about us. We don’t know what people are being made to think about us through their videos. But you have come back to us. You have shown us the video. This honours us. And we thank you.”

The eruption of applause confirmed that he was speaking on behalf of their entire community.

His comments reminded me that these people were not merely subjects in our video. They had given of themselves to make our project a success, and to show them the finished product was just the right thing to do.

Because when you call in favours, it’s incumbent upon the leader to close the loop. It’s just a part of leadership to go back to those you asked for help, and let them know how things turned out.

Tell the parents who drove the kids what happened as a result of getting all those kids to the event.

Tell the staff how in moving their ministry function to a different night your church-wide event had impacted the entire church.

I had to come half-way around the world to be reminded of this leadership principle. But it’s one I’ll be emphasizing with greater vigour upon my return to Canada.

How consistently do you remember to “close the loop”

I’ve filed that lesson away, remembering it in the form of an axiom, “Leaders must be Thankers”.

Today, God used an eight year old girl from the KwaMaphumulo area of South Africa to remind me of the power of this axiom.

As we continued our journey through South Africa along with a group of Canadian pastors, we were given the tremendous privilege of visiting our eight year old World Vision sponsor child at her home. I had visited her last year, but now with my wife Nora along, and with a year’s more relationship established through our correspondence, anticipation was running high on both sides.

Our reunion, and Nora’s first meeting with her, was everything I could have hoped for, and then some. Through hugs and tears of joy, Nora opened a bag containing simple gifts we had brought along for her, and her two sisters; pencil crayons, stickers, photos, and writing pads, which our girl accepted with Christmas morning-like joy.

But then, far too soon, we realized that we had to leave. But as we turned to go something extraordinary happened.

Our girl suddenly dashed away from us and disappeared inside her house. We simply assumed that she was either overcome with sadness at our parting, or perhaps wanted to start drawing with her new pencil crayons. Either way, we simply turned and began to walk back up the path.

But moments later we heard a small voice behind us yelling something in her native Zulu language. We turned to see our girl running to catch up to us, her face beaming, clutching items she had gathered from her home.

In her arms she was cradling a large bottle of Coca-Cola, an item so large she had to carry it like a baby. Dangling from her hands were packages of cookies.

We met her along the path, not exactly sure what she was doing. She held the pop bottle and the cookies out towards us and spoke hurriedly in Zulu. We were able to make eye contact with our interpreter, who immediately listened, understood, and explained.

“Your sponsored child wishes to say thank you for all you have done,” she said. “And she wishes to show her appreciation with this gift.”

More embraces were exchanged, as we choked back tears in accepting these gifts of thanks; a bottle of Coke. Two packages of cookies.

Obviously, my greatest take-away from this was simply humble gratitude that, as a World Vision child sponsor, I was able to be a part of an encounter as meaningful as this.

But as a leader, my bell was also rung yet again in this simple, yet important reminder of the power of a “thank you”.

Leaders must be “thankers”. And I trust that through this experience this axiom will grow and shape my own leadership.

How do you respond to the idea that a leader must be a thanker?

How do you put this into action in your leadership?

I was reminded of this truth again this week here in South Africa, where our World Vision tour has continued with four Canadian pastors.

Today as we drove through the beautiful countryside of the KwaZulu-Natal province, the question of ministry challenges was raised yet again, and once again similar themes emerged; “Missional” versus “attractional”, weekend service formats, staffing issues, all were discussed with great enthusiasm.

Arriving at the offices of World Vision’s KwaMaphumulo Area Development Project, the conversation was paused as we gathered in a comfortable board room to meet with five pastors from the local area. These pastors, all Zulu speaking, spoke with great passion of their love for God and for the congregations they led. In this sense they were no different than their Canadian counterparts.
But when the conversation turned to “What are your greatest challenges?” well, that’s when things became decidedly more diverse.

One pastor spoke of what we would call “facility challenges”. Their weekly meetings are held under a tree.

Another spoke of what we might call “local social needs”. He described a situation in which two older men in their village were learned to be receiving a monthly government grant. “Now,” the pastor explained, “local girls are prostituting themselves regularly with these men simply to get the money. How can we slow the spread of H.I.V. and A.I.D.’s with all this going on?”

After several such examples of ministry challenges were raised it seemed that each of the Canadian pastors had nothing else to say. How could we respond when the ministry context so far removed from our reality?

But then one of the Zulu pastors spoke up again and said, through his interpreter, “There is tremendous value whenever a group of church leaders can gather to discuss ministry challenges.”

As the meeting ended and smiles and hand-shakes were exchanged, I realized that even though few problems had been solved this day, the fact that they could be discussed was in and of itself of great value to these church leaders.

And I deepened my own resolve to make sure these kinds of forums would continue to be a part of my own leadership journey.

• How have you been able to make these kinds of peer discussions a regular part of your ministry journey?

What benefits have you found from sharing the journey?

As we walked along the dirt path towards the large canvas tent ahead, I was hoping that this misunderstanding wouldn’t create a problem for our hosts.

Our little band of brothers and sisters were walking together towards the gathering place of Hope of Glory Church, located in one of the sprawling slum areas of Durban, South Africa. Four pastors of some of Canada’s most significant churches, along with our World Vision hosts and a couple of us from The Leadership Centre Willow Creek Canada, were all moving towards this Sunday morning worship service with a high sense of anticipation.

But I worried about the misunderstanding.

You see, usually when pastors from North American churches visit a church in a third world setting like this there is an expectation that the visitor will preach. In this case, however, despite the considerable ‘pulpit power’ represented in our group, none of us were either prepared nor desiring to preach. We were genuinely looking forward to hearing the Word of God taught to us by our host pastor, S. D. Chili.

However, she, in turn, had expected that one of us would be preaching. Now that this misunderstanding had been ironed out Pastor Chili had busied herself preparing a message, later telling us that she felt great pressure preaching in front of these distinguished Canadian pastors.

She needn’t have worried.

For as we settled ourselves into our chairs and entered into heartfelt worship with this congregation of about 150 people, I had a clear sense that God was about to do something profound through this humble but powerful woman.

And that He did.

Pastor Chili chose as her text Romans 8: 18-19,

¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.

Could any of us from Canada have preached from this text? Certainly. And each of us likely has.

But what God communicated through Pastor Chili not only connected powerfully with these desperately poor people from these slums, but also challenged and encouraged each of us from Canada.

She taught us the difference between merely ‘waiting’ and ‘expecting’. When one merely ‘waits’, she explained, we tend to just mope through whatever life hands to us. But when we wait in expectation that God intends to meet us in each and every situation it completely changes our outlook.

This was a powerful truth, delivered with a conviction I doubt any of us from Canada could have quite matched.

She went on to describe a funeral she had recently conducted, in which they had buried the 7^th of 8 family members. The surviving family member, though obviously in great mourning, said at the funeral that her hope was still in the Lord.

That’s waiting with expectation.

As the service ended and we filed out of the tent, I couldn’t help but think how glad I was that none of us from Canada had been called upon to preach that morning. Each of us were incredibly blessed to have sat at the feet of this woman’s teaching.

And I know that as our itinerary now takes us out to the rural areas where World Vision is at work, I trust that God will help me to further remember and apply that I am not only ‘wait’, but to ‘wait with expectation’.

That statement, issued by a black South African leader, served as a defining moment on my first full day in Johannesburg. It’s a statement which I’m sure I will be thinking about long after I return to Canada.

On this day, my friends at World Vision had brought me and a group of Canadian pastors to the world famous Apartheid Museum. In gallery after gallery grainy black and white images filled the walls, each depicting heart-breaking scenes of racially motivated injustice.

Later our group would meet to debrief our experience in the museum. And it was in this setting that I asked the question that had dominated my thinking that day.

“Where was the Church when all this was going on?”

It was then that one of our hosts provided a unique perspective on the role of the Church in his country’s history. “There were some churches who supported apartheid, even citing so-called ‘biblical evidence’,” he explained. “These churches, however, were in the minority. Most bible-believing churches spoke out strongly against apartheid. They were not, however, very effective in their opposition.”

I then asked the question that puzzled each of us.

“Why were the churches so ineffective?”

My friend answered with straight-forward clarity. “The voice of the Church was neutralized by its lack of a shared vision.”

He explained that South Africa’s churches had tended to work in isolation. He went on to say that, as such, rather than the Church speaking as one with power, conviction and authority, its voice was weak and marginalized.

As I thought about this insight, it prompted me to consider four questions we may do well to process in terms of the Canadian church:

• Should the voice of the Canadian Church play a more vocal role in the spiritual life of our country?
• What might future generations say about the voice of the Canadian Church?
• Are there issues on which God might be calling the Canadian Church to speak with greater authority?
• What would it take for this to happen?

Most leaders I talk with don’t believe that the Church in Canada should veer off-course and become a political influence. On this I would strongly agree. But when it comes to influencing our country’s spiritual direction perhaps there are things we can learn from South Africa’s history.

What do you think?

I have, just now.

Have you ever found yourself sitting in a coffee shop, expecting that the latte you just ordered will arrive piping hot, only to have it served to you luke warm?

I have, just now.

Life is full of expectations, which are formed by our culture, our character, and our own experiences.

I’m sitting in London’s Heathrow Airport, where for the past few hours I’ve had a series of hit and miss experiences with my expectations. And while I can honestly say that none of these have been particularly inconvenient, in just a few hours I expect that my perspective will be utterly shaken.

I’m en route with a group of Canadian pastors to South Africa, where my friends at World Vision will be guiding us through the work they’re doing in some of the country’s most impoverished regions. In these communities expectations are very different. They think very little about the consistency of their internet connection, or the temperature of their coffee.

In communities ravaged by AIDS, where there is a lack of clean drinking water and where food sources are scarce, expectations are decidedly different. And I fully expect that in the coming days, as we immerse ourselves in this very different reality, that my own expectations will be turned upside down.

At least, I’m praying this is so.

And so as we board our London to Johannesburg flight I’m praying that God will use this experience to help me identify any expectations I’ve been clinging to that He would have me release.

And in doing so, I trust that my heart will be softened to what He would have for me in these coming days.

What expectations might you be clinging to that God would have you release?

Scott’s corollary to this is that “Character is particularly revealed when you are traveling.”

I have seen airport security lines, Customs and Immigration queues, and waits at baggage carousels reveal some of the most self-centred, boorish and obnoxious behavior known to human-kind.

And I’m not above finding the worst aspects of my own character bubble to the surface when I travel.

Today I’m en route from my home in Kelowna, BC, via London, England, to Johannesburg, South Africa. There I’ll be joined by four Canadian pastors and our hosts from World Vision. My friends at World Vision will be guiding us through the work they are doing in some of the most desperately needy regions of this beautiful country.

Total travel time will be over 30 hours, 21 hours in the air. That’s plenty of time for the basest parts of my character to emerge. I know myself well enough to envision my own impatience spilling out in the form of sarcasm, glaring looks, even an audible “This is ridiculous!” as an interminably slow line crawl along. I can even imagine myself muttering, “Don’t these people understand that I’m trying to get to a part of the world where I can be the hands and feet of Jesus?! Let’s MOVE IT people!”

May God grant me the grace to realize that perhaps those for whom He wants me to be his hands and feet are right here in this slow moving airport line. Perhaps the blessing I am to be is to the scowling agent at the counter; the one who has received nothing but abuse from unruly passengers all day.

Less than a century ago this journey would have taken 6 months to a year to complete. Now, I’ll be at my destination in mere hours. May I be less concerned that my luggage has survived intact, and more focused on seeing my character survive the journey.

In what circumstances do you find your character is put to the test?

How do you ensure your character passes these tests?

Never was this principle more beautifully captured than in this classic exchange between Charlie Brown, Lucy and Linus:

Lucy: If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud’s formations. What do you think you see, Linus?
Linus: Well, those clouds up there look to me look like the map of the British Honduras in the Caribbean. That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor. And that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the Stoning of Stephen. I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side.
Lucy: Uh huh. That’s very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?
Charlie Brown: Well… I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie, but I changed my mind.

Yes, Charlie Brown, there’s a big difference between what you look at, and what you actually see.

When my friends at World Vision Canada graciously invited me back to South Africa again this year, I believe God began to impress this principle on my heart. And my prayer has therefore been to not only look at what is happening in that beautiful country, but to really see what God is up to.

We’ll be traveling with four pastors from churches in BC, Alberta and Ontario, and together we’ll be given a first-hand look at the needs in some of South Africa’s most impoverished regions, and also at what God has been doing in and through World Vision to meet these needs. Based on my travels there with World Vision last year, I know we will also see powerful examples of the gospel changing lives beyond the physical needs of these people too.

But as I prepare to leave I’m very specifically asking God to grant me the grace to experience all of this with His eyes; to see beyond the surface and to perceive what God would have me to understand.

In other words, when I get home and you ask me what I saw in South Africa, I trust I can say more than, “I saw a duckie and a horsie.”

I hope I’ll be able to say, “I saw the hand of our gracious Heavenly Father moving in and through a people He dearly loves.”

May that be true of how each of us perceive our world, wherever we are.

How have you been able to move beyond “looking” and to actually “seeing”?

This refers to the fact that often what we communicate is overshadowed by what people think we have said.

I still remember a confusing conversation I had with a good friend of mine more than 30 years ago when he expressed interest in the well-being of my grandparents. My grandfather had undergone successful surgery to have a pace-maker installed to keep his heart working properly, and around the same time my grandparents had bought a second car; an AMC Pacer.

You can see this misunderstanding coming straight down Main Street.

My friend, thinking he was asking about my grandfather’s surgery, mistakenly asked about his new Pacer. Naturally, I went on to describe their new car. I said it ran great, it had unique styling, and that it was blue.

My friend, still thinking we were discussing open-heart surgery, dropped his jaw in utter disbelief. “You mean…he SHOWED it to you???!!!”

Similarly, even as so much positive response has come in around our announcement that next year’s Global Leadership Summit in Canada would take place in September, the principle of Communicating Between the Lines has surfaced again, as questions have come in that show a need for a certain amount of additional clarity.

So then, here are a few basic F.A.Q.s with respect to next year’s Summit.

Q: Does this change mean we won’t see the content coming from Willow?

A: Summit participants in Canada will enjoy ALL of the content from the U.S. Summit.

Q: So, will Canada now be “on our own” instead of being part of the global experience?

A: Actually, we’re moving CLOSER to the global experience. Outside North America, the global Summit experience has always taken place several weeks AFTER the U.S. Summit. Canada will now be moving into closer alignment with the rest of the world.

Q: Why are you adding Canadian sessions? Aren’t the U.S. sessions good enough?

A: Again, this is a lesson learned from the Summit around the world. Up until now, Canada has been one of the very few Summit countries not to include at least one or two sessions originating from the host country.

Q: So, does this mean we’re just watching videos?

A: No! In addition to the U.S. content this will be an interactive event, being experienced simultaneously across Canada. From the Atlantic provinces to the west coast, Canadians will be engaged in a shared experience. There will be interactive elements and opportunities for full “real time” participation from coast to coast.

From time to time if I become aware of the need for more Communicating Between the Lines I’ll update this F.A.Q. And indeed if you have questions or ideas for next year’s event, note them below or email me at scochrane@growingleadership.com.