Benevolent Leadership: Demonstrated Results in 350 Villages

• In Event: Benevolent Leadership: A Practice Demonstrated Model for Non-Profit & Faith-Based Leadership

Short Description

When operationalized, benevolent leadership has the power to save lives and transform communities. The presenter will share a powerful case study of a faith-based organization that has intentionally leveraged benevolent leadership competencies to provide clean water, eradicate malaria, plant churches, and provide educational opportunities in more than 350 remote West African villages.

Detailed Abstract

To unleash the full potential of human beings, we must tap into the great motivating, activating endowments that reside within the human heart. When this occurs the passionate response and actions that emerge are the stuff of legends and the bedrock for the panoply of human greatness that has changed the world (Carter 2016). Carter also reminds us that the universality of the ‘golden rule’ is indicative of a theological reality observed by Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Jews, Muslims, African and American Indian tribal ancestry religions, and, also, Christians.

The the practice of an individual benevolent leader is necessarily conducted in a social sphere, as described by Peterson and Seligman (2004):

However, the practice of leadership can be distinguished from leadership as a personal quality. Leadership as practice includes (a) defining, establishing, identifying, or translating a direction for collective action by one’s followers; and (b) facilitating or enabling the collective processes that lead to achieving this purpose (Zaccaro & Klimoski, 2001). Leadership as a personal quality reflects the motivation and capacity to seek out, attain, and successfully carry out leader roles in social systems. (p. 414)

Karakas (2009) defines benevolent leadership as the process of creating a virtuous cycle of encouraging, initiating, and implementing positive change in organizations through: a) ethical decision making and moral actions, b) developing spiritual awareness and creating a sense of meaning, c) inspiring hope and fostering courage for positive action, and d) leaving a legacy and positive impact for the larger community.

When fully inculcated into an organizational system, Benevolent Leadership (BL) has the power to operationalize the ‘golden rule’ to literally save lives and transform communities. This session presents a powerful case study of a faith-based organization that has intentionally leveraged the competencies of BL to provide clean water, eradicate malaria, plant churches and provide educational opportunities in over 350 rural villages in Ghana over the past five years.

The story of GlobeServe International starts many years ago with a young boy named Sam:

Sam grew up in a Christian home in a town called Kade in the eastern region of a West African country. When he was twelve years old, he had an opportunity to travel with his father to a village called Adidome, where his grandfather grew-up. When Sam got up on Sunday morning, he did as he always did: went out, fetched water in a bucket, bathed, and got ready for church. When he went into his father’s room, he was baffled by the fact that his father was still in bed. So Sam tapped on his father’s shoulder and said, “Daddy, it is time to go to church.”

His father looked at him and said, “Son, in this village there are no churches.”

Sam was mortified. For the first time in his life, he was going to miss church on Sunday. So Sam told his father, “I am ready. I must go out share the Gospel of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

His father looked at him, smiled and said, “Son, you’re only twelve years old. Wait ‘til you grow up. And when you grow up, you can come back to Adidome and plant a church and share the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to the people.”

And that’s exactly what he did.

GlobeServe’s strategic plan is to continue to use the BL competency models as the framework for training 7,000 leaders, planting and additional 700 churches and reaching 700,000 people in Western Ghana over the next ten years. The case study of Pastor Sam Dunya’s story is an inspirational illustration of the power of Benevolent Leadership.

Participant

• Gus Gustafson, Benedictine University