Hello Friends,

I thought I'd send along a short paper that I wrote for the International Ministries WMO 2007 Guide. Next time I will write something a little newsier.

The Mekong Minority Foundation is a young organization made up primarily of a small group of Christian ethnic minority people. Together, the team has been seeking the niche that God has for the foundation to fill in the scheme of things when it comes to serving the ethnic minority people of the golden triangle area (or the upper Mekong sub region, which includes northwestern Lao PDR, eastern Myanmar, and southern China.) Feeling the call to become a resource for developing the leadership capacity of tribal community leaders in the area, the MMF has embarked on a hard road of trying to encourage Christians who are in positions of community leadership to explore the biblical models of servant leadership and what it means to apply those teachings to their everyday roles.

Our hope is that the leaders we come alongside and support can gain renewed interest and determination to lead their communities in such a way as to bring about greater concern for the poor, higher moral integrity, and to play a part in bringing the Kingdom of God to their community.

This first year of 2006 has been a little uncertain. We haven't really felt that we had any answers or that we are in a position to ‘instruct' anyone, as none of us are community leaders, but we did try to facilitate a course on ethnic leadership building, which involved meeting and sharing amongst a group of 10 ethnic minority community leaders from the surrounding area (in Thailand) eight times throughout the year. In addition to learning about social economic development trends and about the Thai civil law, such concepts as inclusiveness, community participation in decision-making, reaching out to the poor and moral integrity were discussed through our regular Biblical reflections with the community leaders.

After one year of meeting together, the results are not such that we can actually see any major changes in communities, so we rely on the responses of the community leaders themselves to gauge whether what we have been doing is making a difference. Based on what they have said we felt somewhat reassured that the "course" was useful. However we didn't really know. We have ultimately planned to carry out a similar process of learning and sharing with community leaders in Christian tribal communities in neighboring Myanmar. We've been working through the Myanmar Baptist Convention to do so.

Given that Myanmar – a system of "power over" where oppression and military dominance are the norm, the society has become permeated with a specific understanding of leadership roles. The Christian church appears to have been greatly influenced by the greater society. Those in authority in the church are not expected to be accountable to the churches and appear to be in positions of total authority over their membership. So we have been concerned that our servant leadership concepts and learning together about the Biblical teachings of leadership might be totally out of place in such a setting.

Then, at a recent meeting with a group of Christian leaders from Myanmar, we heard Rev. Saboi Jum, an experienced Kachin elder who has been leading peace and reconciliation activities in Myanmar for many years, give his perspective on how change was going to take place in Myanmar.He essentially said that the only way the country of Myanmar was going to change was for people to change their mindset at the most basic level – at the family and the local community church level. He said through community interventions that encourage participation and living out servant attitudes, the church can be transformed and can be an example for the rest of society.

WOW. In the midst of feeling doubtful that what we were striving to do was really the right way to go about it, it was such an encouragement to hear from an older experienced Christian leader that this is exactly the right approach. We've been praying that God shows us His plans and how he is working to transform hearts, lives and communities, so that we can become a part of it. This revelation was just that.