This is part 4 of a series exploring Novo’s foundational influences and 40 year history. You can read part 1 here.
The vision of the original founders of CRM (Novo) was focused on discipleship and leadership development for followers of Jesus in local churches and how to multiply discipleship ministries and mission around the world. For years, CRM’s tag-line was “Empowering Leaders.” This emphasis on leadership development—the fourth critical component of gospel movements—has always been central in our philosophy and practice, and takes many forms. Today, instead of the phrase “empowering leaders,” we talk about being “fire-starters”:
We are fire-starters—multiplying our impact by equipping and empowering others. We envision movements of God that extend far beyond what we can accomplish alone. We find and equip men and women who will make this vision possible and empower them to go. We mobilize those Jesus has called—sparking wildfires of Kingdom redemption and transformation across the globe.
Leadership development is, and always has been, essential to the healthy growth of the overall Christian movement around the world—and we’ve been fine-tuning our methods in developing such leaders for 40 years!
Early Growth in Leadership Development
While Novo-US President Sam Metcalf was studying at the Fuller School of World Mission in the 70’s, he had the opportunity to be part of pilot-courses on leadership emergence with Dr. J. Robert Clinton. “Bobby” Clinton is considered one of the leading authorities in ministry contexts regarding leadership. Sam said he felt like he’d struck gold as he studied Clinton’s concepts on leadership development and organizational change theory.
Bobby Clinton joined the Novo Board of Directors in 1985, expanding his influence in the organization, working to shape and develop the board, and bringing his perspectives on leadership development into the organization’s values and decisions. Over the years, many staff read his books (such as The Making of a Leader), attended training he led on leadership development, or enrolled in graduate level courses he taught.
In our early days, Novo staff were primarily focused on developing ministry leaders, pastors, and lay leaders in local churches. Novo created tools, such as Focusing Leaders, The Missional Pathway, and Life Compass (personal timelines) to help these leaders and churches define what God was calling them to be and do in the world. This training around missional calling, both collectively and personally, continues to inspire followers of Christ to step into new forms of ministry and share the good news in creative ways. Novo’s leadership tools and processes have been used in over fifty denominations throughout North America and have impacted tens of thousands of people.
Developing and Caring for Leaders
Following Novo’s first World Wide Staff Conference in 1998—where all the Novo staff worldwide gathered for a week—the Novo Board of Directors was concerned about the difficulties many of our missionaries were facing around the world. As a result, Novo’s Staff Care and Development Team (now called SentWell) was formed. SentWell is a team composed of counselors, spiritual directors, therapists, trauma specialists, and other support staff focused on helping missionaries around the world to thrive, not just survive, in challenging global contexts. The mandate of SentWell is to encourage and empower leaders (both Novo missionaries and others) to live from a spiritually, emotionally, and relationally healthy place. This strategic support has not only enabled many missionaries to be sustained on the field and find healing from painful life situations, but also to offer a deeper level of relational care and ministry to others.
In the 2000s, Novo began to purposefully expand into the field of spiritual formation, recognizing that leaders (including our staff) could only take others as deep with Jesus as they have gone themselves. Today, Novo has entire teams dedicated to introducing those who follow Christ to ancient pathways of spiritual formation that can deepen their intimacy with God and offer spiritual care (such as spiritual direction, retreats, and sabbatical coaching) to pastors, missionaries, and others in ministry. This leadership development has helped countless people in ministry avoid burn-out and stay connected to Christ in the midst of difficult and rigorous ministry challenges.
Perhaps more than any other kind of leader, Novo has had a strategic role in developing people with apostolic calling. Sam Metcalf’s book, Beyond the Local Church: How Apostolic Movements Can Change the World, describes the unique gifts and calling of apostolic people—the pioneering, “sent” leaders of the greater Christian movement. This book specifically affirms, legitimizes, and validates those called to ministry outside and beyond local church structures.
Such apostolic leaders are always catalytic within gospel movements and mission endeavors, but often they don’t feel understood or supported in local church contexts because they may not fit in. Novo is made up of many of these apostolic leaders—people with a vision for transforming peoples and nations, and a willingness to take risks to carry the good news across cultural, social, and geographic barriers. As a result, we’ve had a unique role in coming alongside other apostolic leaders, legitimizing their calling, and helping them to move forward into effective ministry.
Growing Leaders for Gospel Movements
When it comes to creating and multiplying movements of the gospel, Novo staff seek to be practitioner-trainers. This means they are always seeking to equip and empower others toward gospel movements—whether it be students in South Africa, stay-at-home moms in the US, or Muslim-background-believers in the Middle East. In this way, the work is multiplied over and over again. Many of our staff have discovered that coaching and training others in gospel movement processes and tools is the best use of their time, because trained lay-leaders are able to expand the ministry impact far beyond what these staff would ever accomplish themselves.
In the last twenty years as Novo has worked and ministered in the Middle East—where various gospel movements are multiplying at astonishing rates—we’ve seen new evidence of the necessity of leadership development. Without a focus on developing leadership, such movements implode under the weight of their own success.
As these gospel movements have grown, the number of Discovery Bible Studies and new followers of Jesus has increased so exponentially that the breadth of the movements threatened to overwhelm the depth and maturity of the emerging leaders, many of whom were new followers of Christ themselves. We realized we needed to invest more time to develop key leaders in these movements, so that the biblical depth and ministry abilities of these leaders would keep all the new groups and believers grounded and growing in spiritually healthy ways. Investing in leaders who multiply is critical even in the organic, scripture-focused, and Holy Spirit led contexts of gospel movements.
It’s been a true privilege to offer the knowledge and experience God has poured into us to these movements and movement leaders around the world.
Continue to the 5th and final post on Novo’s 40-year history.