Leaders involved in pastoral ministry are expected to do a lot more work than others. Most of the time, they need to sacrifice many personal desires to serve their flock, even in the middle of a challenging situation like a pandemic. Dr. Tracey Jones sits down with Dr. Richmond Wandera, the President of Pastoral Discipleship Network, to look back on the accountant-turned-pastor's ministry in Uganda. Dr. Wandera shares the importance of connecting deeply with the sheep under your care to dismantle loneliness, and how pastors must always revisit their churches' purpose to reinvent them according to the demand of society. He also explains how every sheep under a pastor must be given a chance to lead on their own in order to grow, and how this small step can make churches shine brighter than ever.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Richmond Wandera – Leaders On Leadership
Our guest is Dr. Richmond Wandera. Richmond is the President of Pastors Discipleship Network. Richmond trains up pastors in Kampala, Uganda. Richmond is a leader, speaker, advocate, and visionary. You are going to love what he has to share about what it takes to pay the price of leadership.
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It is an absolute and tremendous honor to have the one, the only, Dr. Richmond Wandera as my guest. Dr. Wandera is the President of the Pastors Discipleship Network. He is the Pastor at New Life Church. He is a leader, speaker, advocate. He's located in Kampala, Uganda. I met Richmond years ago in our cohort, in our PhD program through Lancaster Bible College. This is a great leader that I have had the joy of serving, worshiping, and learning from. Dr. Wandera, it's an honor to have you.
Thank you so much, Dr. Tracey Jones. I've been looking forward to this. A lot of the literature has a lot from the Western perspective. I'm honored to reflect on some of the themes from an African perspective and use some African illustrations to hopefully communicate some useful content if the readers find that useful.
For our readers out there, I had the benefit of going out and visiting Richmond before all this hit. I'm glad I got to do that. That was a week that truly changed my life. I got to worship and preach with the women out there. I got to see his beautiful country. I want you to tell them about what you're doing out there with your ministry, Richmond. My father gave a speech called The Price of Leadership. In it, he talks about the four things that every aspiring leader is going to have to pay pretty much every day, as long as they're in the leadership chair. Leadership is not for the faint of heart. You're going to get your nose bloodied, your knuckles bloodied, but it is a beautiful thing. We are called by God with the God seed in us to be leaders.
Richmond, the first price that my father said is that the price you're going to pay is loneliness as a leader. We've all heard that said, “It's lonely at the top.” You're the one at the top that it all rests on. Can you explain to me in your leadership journey and your evolution as a leader, in your growth, what loneliness has meant for you? Were there seasons of loneliness? What would you recommend to some of our other leaders out there that may be in a season of loneliness?
I'll begin by sharing a little bit of my journey. I'm an accountant by training. I worked at KPMG in Uganda and had a wonderful career in accounting. I had a different vision for my life until I got the invitation from our pastor to join their pastoral team because I was active in the church, but I was also diligent in studying the Word of God. I desire to explain, especially that which many of my friends or people who were seeking and are not able to understand. I moved a lot towards pastoring without knowing because I never wanted to be a pastor. I thought, “The pastor is a guy who's carrying everybody's burdens on his shoulders and he can't even carry his own. That's a bad career.” There I was, being invited to leave accounting and to join the pastors.
There's something that happened in my own family that made it a little bit of an easier decision. My mother had become a Christian. After she became a Christian, I could see a difference in her life. I have a mom who is completely downtrodden and constantly in a place of darkness and missing my father who had gone to be with the Lord when I was eight years old. Every time, she’s saying, “This will not be happening to my children if,” my dad, her husband, “Was around.” I could see this change happening in my mother's life. She began telling me and my siblings about her favorite verse which was, “The Christ is the Father to the fatherless and the husband of widows.” In my mother's loneliness, she found comfort in that verse.
I began to look around the community that I stayed in and many people were lonely and struggling. Those that were at the top of leadership were twice lonely because they had to somehow find solutions to help those who are struggling, but they themselves need a drink of their own medicine. It was in that time that I began to realize the gospel has, within it, an answer to a lot of my community's questions. That made it a little bit easy for me to begin to slowly move away from accounting and into the pastoring.
I went into the pastoring. I encountered a unique form of loneliness that is caused by limited skilled people around the leader. I was embraced by the church as their pastor, but I wasn't trained to be a pastor. I live in a country which over 70% of our population is below the age of 30 years and 15% of the 70% is below the age of fifteen. It's a young country, the second-ranking youngest country in the world. I began to realize I have limited skilled people around me. I also have limited people I can go to asking for help.
There’s a lot of pedestalling or putting leaders on a pedestal. You don't want to go asking for help too much. That was the first time that I began to feel alone. I began to feel a little bit lonely. This is a unique form of loneliness that is caused by the limited skills of people around the leader. I experienced that, Tracey. That almost drowned me because it took away my confidence and then it took away my sense of acceptance. Even though the people I was living with accepted me, I began to feel, “Am I skilled enough to lead them? Am I the right person for them?” This internal conversation mysteriously led me to a unique form of loneliness. I began to feel alone and feel, in some way, strangely lonely.
I began to crave then. I began to pray, “Could you provide people along, not just the company, but people who can understand what I'm talking about and people can speak into my life?” I didn't need people. I needed people who understood where I was at and people who could speak directly to me. Tracey, that was my first entrance into a unique form of loneliness I hadn't ever considered. Within that, there was the next layer, which was a cultural form of practice and expectation of the leader.
In Uganda, we celebrate what in the West would be looked down on, this idea of power distance. When a leader is installed or accepted as a leader, they expect them to be a little bit removed and not easily accessible. You don't walk to your pastor and greet them. You don't come and give them a hug. You expect some distance. It’s like, “This is the anointed man of God. He's our leader.” You don't come taking things casually and greet them, walking their presence without them summoning them. It's that idea. Culturally, I began to be treated that way.
What people thought was to my benefit or what would make me feel good began to make me feel lonelier. I felt alone more and more. Other people that I casually talk to or make jokes, we even go out for a bite, I can't do that anymore. I began to be stripped off of the people that I valued and the company that was quite enjoyable for me as a leader. That was another form of loneliness that began to enter my life.
To stretch this out a little, a leader has to redefine their relationships. They'll give their time. Once they decide that this is the person I will give my time to, that is a choice that the leader makes. If that choice is not made carefully, it could lead to loneliness. I have seen friends who have attended a lot of talks on, “As a leader, you've got to choose carefully who you hang out with. You don't need more than this number of people. Slim this number down.” As they practiced that and begin to delete numbers from their phone or take people out of their lives and think, “Jesus had twelve. That was Jesus. Now I have three. These are the three people I hang out with.” There is a place for that.
Pastoral Ministry: Leaders are rarely seen as lonely individuals since they are constantly making presentations and in the company of people.
Sometimes, that vision takes away a variety of all that you need as a person for life and for godliness. I believe in selection. I believe in choice of company. I believe that extreme care has to be taken. You're not taking away that which you need. Sometimes we think we need the top skilled people only in our lives. We forget that we don't need people who are aligned with what we are. We need people who make us better, who can show that we can be better. As we're speaking into their lives and as we are helping them grow and get stretched, we too are getting stretched.
Someone once said to me, “The person who teaches learns twice.” We need the weak. We need the uninformed and those who need what we have. Sometimes, there's an off chance that the person who you think you don't need knows something that you don't know. Elements of that come together. If you don't have that, your inner self knows it. Loneliness is extremely hard to define. It's not a relation of loneliness. It's a skill. Your body can tell you because your body is not interested in lying to you. It will tell you, “I feel lonely. I may have everything else, but I do feel lonely.” I did feel that.
Skill-wise, I had a few people that I could interact with at the level that I was leading. Culturally, I had been removed and put on this pedestal. This colleague, this naturally themed the number of people I was hanging out with. Relationally, I also began to change my posture to adapt to my new position. I began to see that relationships throughout people that I did not know I needed. The literature did not tell me I needed those people. I thought, “You've got to choose high.” I discovered I needed low so that it would keep me reminded of so much that my inner self needed in order to feel complete. You need that reality. The world is in a particular way and you need to see it accurately. It helps your leadership. I struggled.
Tracey, you know that my dissertation was on how people in Uganda who are living in a country that does not have a lot of mentors, a lot of the older generation that can pour into the younger generation. These emerging leaders who have to figure out life on their own, what are they feeling? The number one sentiment was loneliness. They are feeling lonely. They felt alone and abandoned in a sense. That's why loneliness and abandonment, in my mind, are connected. The key is some of what I've already talked about. Some of the solutions that come to my mind are intentionally seeking to come up with a right clear view of the world, a good, accurate, biblical worldview. The world is broken and you need to see it. You need to keep in that space of brokenness if you're going to engage with the world in a place that not part of you feels lonely.
The other part is intentionally seeking out fellowship. I had to do this, Tracey. I had to seek out fellowship. In the West, when I was in the United States, I see that there were some meetings or gatherings of CEOs and there are some clubs and some groups which, in Uganda, we did not have. I had to seek out the few that existed so I could be a part of some of these clubs or part of these CEO groups. Some people take that lightly. They shouldn't. If they do, they will miss out on what that provides. That could easily thin out some of the loneliness. Leaders sometimes think that they're the only ones who are going through what they've gone through until it's somebody else and they realize, “It's not that bad.”
I'll tell you a side story. When I was leading Pastors Discipleship Network, some things were working and some things were not working, no matter how hard I tried. I thought I was the problem and then I thought all my senior staff were the problem. I thought, “God, if you provided different people to me, this organization would be so much better.” Until I began to be part of this group of people, they reflect on the organization and I realized that we were at that stage in the organization's growth that was inevitable. It had to happen to force change from within. I could never know that I would keep suffering from the pains of loneliness and the consequences of staying in that place if I hadn't sought out deliberately these fellowships.
I'm speaking of professional fellowships here. There are other kinds of fellowships that are not necessarily with people that might be speaking business but are able to remind us of the world in which we live in. The Bible has this old Hebrew word, koinonia, fellowship. Paul talked about both leader and loyalty alike and said to them, “Do not give up the habit of meeting together.” This is a deliberate and intentional move every leader has to make. They have to decide, “I will gather with fellow believers. I will gather with people and be among people.” It's a choice. It’s so much in our African space. I know that in a fairly individualistic culture where people need appointments for coming or for meeting someone, it's a little bit difficult. That's all the more why people have to make the choice.
Lastly, for me, it's the God's promises. Tracey, there is a loneliness that no presence of a human being can fix. That kind of loneliness is deep. You need the one who created you to say, “I am here for you.” You can look over and over through the Scriptures. Even the name Emmanuel, “I am with you.” God knew that would happen. At every point in a person's journey, they will feel alone. We cannot always seek out people because people will let you down at some point. Pick out God. It’s the first, it's the middle and it's the last thing we must do that will bring all this together. I wish I knew some of this before. It would have saved me nights with my leadership.
I love how you brought out the dual nature of, yes, we are coded for attachment. We are made to be in community, but we can only always go back to our maker because we will always let each other down. What a beautiful way on how you hit both sides of that.
Loneliness is one of the most common struggles of leaders. It's not always obvious to the lonely leader that they are lonely because they're constantly making presentations and constantly in the company of people. They're constantly being praised. They're constantly being told, “You're making a difference. Without you, this would not happen.” It's easy to feel, “I'm around hundreds of people.” You are not until it becomes clear to you that you've got to seek it out and ask that question, “Am I lonely? How am I lonely?”
You know you bringing that up, I can remember my father. I would have been a teenager so he would have been mid-60s and successful. I remember coming down to his office one time and he was sitting there with his head in his hands and he was like, “I feel alone. I'm not sure if this is worth it.” I was like, “Are you kidding me? You're on stage all over the world. People love you. You're making this happen.” It’s still is that deep loneliness you talked about.
The leader has to take great times to weariness. He obviously was quite weary, the phase of being all these things to all these people. The next price my father talked about was weariness. If you're not careful, that can be quite insidious and sneak up on you and burn you out. How do you stay replenished, Richmond, as a leader? It is tough. We've got these resources. God doesn't call us to do anything that he is not going to equip us to do. How do you stay constantly recharged and replenished?
Tracey, I hit the bottom rock of weariness. We’re already in the total lockdown as a nation. People are starving. Children are starving under their roofs. The government is not providing help. In the midst of this massive lockdown that people are confused about, we have this avalanche of rocks that slides down Mount Rwenzori in Western Uganda. Hundreds of acres are destroyed. Hundreds of acres of food. People's gardens are destroyed. Bridges are torn down. Hospitals are messed up. Everything is utterly destroyed.
I remember Pastor Geneva looking at me when I went to visit them. She had no home. She was stranded with her six children. She had lost her husband. Pastor Geneva said, “Richmond,” meaning Pastor Richmond, “I thought that it was the end of the world. The rocks that rocked our house, I knew that this is something from heaven that has come down.” Here I am listening to Pastor Geneva. I listen to different individuals. I'm looking around and I'm wondering, “There is not enough help in this nation for this situation.” There is physical wreck, but then there is spiritual, social, and emotional wreck. I was at that rock bottom.
Pastoral Ministry: Sometimes, leaders think they need the top skilled people only in their lives. They forget that they also need people who can make them better.
The ministry I lead called Pastors Discipleship Network, which exists to bring training to untrained pastors, in order to deepen the church and advance the gospel for healthy churches, we want the church to shine. We want the church to shine so bright that their communities will see that even though this church might be opposed, there is something there that comes from God. It’s love. We try to cause the church to shine and many of our pastors had been affected. Their churches had been torn down and we were bringing food and support.
We had 486 homes that were destroyed in that immediate community. Down the river, there were about 1,000 homes. We're talking about 15,000 families that all together were affected in one shape or form. We're trying to bring support and that's been going on. I'm there. It's been nights of cold because hotels were not functioning. Electricity lines have been cut down. We were there and I'm weary. You listen to all these stories. Even though you consciously make a decision, you're not going to carry it on to yourself. You can't avoid it because this is life. This is a person. It's not like you're watching the news. You're listening to live the experiences.
As a leader, you can't avoid it. The nature of leadership is that you are a shepherd. A shepherd cares about his or her sheep. You can't avoid that. The shepherd calling is inescapable. You bear it. You're willing to leave the 99 and look for that one sheep that's lost. That is true leadership. You can’t become weary through all that process until you learn to do some things that leaders do in order to not be weary. I wish I could say I have done a good job with that. I haven't. I kept listening to one story after another. I can’t take a break. We were distributing food. We're distributing clean water. We're distributing blankets. We are trying to put some makeshift structures for people to stay in. People are sick and none of us is a medical expert. We're trying to ask for help from other nonprofit organizations, which, for one reason or another, are either slow or not moving as fast as the need needs them to move. I can't avoid it.
I'll tell you what happened. This came from my wife, Rosette, who asked me, “Richmond, who is on your team? Are you letting them shine?” That's an awkward turn to it because it was a weird question. I said, “This is not about shining. These are lives.” Of all the pictures that were on social media, on all the press who was recording all the videos, that was my face. All over all of it. She said to me, “You’ve got to let Ben, you've got to let Martin, you've got to let Rose, you've got to let these people handle what they must handle. You can’t handle all of it.”
Sometimes, as leaders, of no evil intent, we are driven by love. The tension between what is and what should be, we end up sometimes biting more than we can chew and not realizing that we have help that's already supplied. Ben, Rose, and Martin, these guys are there. They're happy to be stretched. I'm not describing them like they're not doing anything. They were working, but they could do a lot better than what I was doing. Tracey, I realized that I had to take a step back and look at what is needed, what must be done, and what is in my hands. What do I have? Who’s the team?
This was magical and I use the word magical because I have no other word for it, realizing that a team is better than an individual effort. Two are better than one. This is an old philosophical thought. It was painted metaphorically in the scriptures that one can put 1,000 to flight and two will put 10,000 to flight. It was what rescued me. Realizing that a team is so much better than however gifted or skilled you might think you are. I took a step back. I didn't walk away from the site. I didn't drive back to Kampala. I stayed. Our deep, brief sessions became more intentional. I volunteered and said to the team, “I'm weary. I'm done. I don't have anything more to give. I have nothing more to give.” The team was able to pray for me and said, “Richmond, let's do this.”
We devised a plan, which I wasn't going to see most of the homes. I could spend enough time with a family and let others do what they were doing. I wanted to get these stories because I'm a shepherd like that. I'm a pastor at heart. I wanted to pray for these people. I believe in the calling of the pastoring. I believe that as a pastor, you see, understand, and practice presence differently from everybody else. I wanted every family to be able to benefit from the pastoral calling that was present. That was good, but it was false in a way that it caused weariness where weariness should not have been.
Christ gives us wisdom and saying, “There is great need, but enter the boat. Enter the boat and cross over to the other side. All these people want you to talk to them. All the sick that needed to be healed and all these lepers that have been brought to you, get into the boat. Let's cross over to the other side and rest a bit.” That came to me full circle. I realized, “God has given me people.” I might be gifted differently from them, but taking a step back, it causes them to shine. It stretches them. It causes them to step into places they have never been.
There is a book by Dave Ferguson called Hero Maker. In this book, he unpacks this idea that when a person leads in such a way that everything is looking to them to get done, such a person becomes the hero of the company, the hero of the ministry, the hero of the community. That is not sustainable. That causes weariness. What the goal and the vision of the leader must be is to be a hero maker. Even though you have the solution and the answer, make heroes of others. If you make that your goal, you will be amazed at how skill rises up around you. When you launch the scale, how much more gets done?
A majority of Sub-Saharan Africa live in a no vacation culture. When we were doing the foster research on the need for interim pastors in Uganda, which ministry doesn't exist in our country. Interim pastoring doesn't exist. We're thinking about logic. We did a research under the foster foundation. Do we need the interim pastoral ministry as a nation? The obvious answer was yes, but there was a hypothesis and we wanted to test it and answer the question of contextualization and all of that. As we were going around, we interviewed several pastors.
I met a pastor. The pastor said, “For fifteen years straight, I have not missed a single Sunday preaching. Fifteen years straight, no vacation, no time with my wife, preaching straight.” He obviously went and unpacked the reasons for that. There was a lot of insecurity. There was a lot of fear. There was a lot of belief that he was the only one skilled enough to preach in such a way that no one from the congregation would believe. There were eight reasons for that. There's also obviously the poverty, the inability to afford a vacation. There are all these things.
The element that came through was it's not within our culture to plan for a vacation. Vacation may not be the only answer to it, but it's helpful and it looks different. It's not a matter of planning some ways to let out or to lose yourself or to refill your bucket. Tracey, there are many people who go on vacation and they never rest. They become weary. Probably even more weary as they feel, “If I had stayed home, I would have done more emails.” Tracey, that's where we find ourselves.
I believe that what we've described before, the idea of a team, and not the illusion of a team or the theory or the structure that shows you have teams, but you use the teams and make the teams functional. That has been practical for me and it helped me when I was in Kasese. I'm doing this from my house but there's a team back in Kasese that's doing so much more than I’ve ever done. My weariness has come down. I wish I knew this before. That's extremely important.
How far is that from where you're at?
Pastoral Ministry: Pastors must always want churches to shine so brightly that their communities will be seen despite various oppositions.
It's 8.5 hours.
You can't bug out there and see what's going on. Richmond, thank you for sharing that real-world about what's going on with weariness. It doesn't do any good if we deplete ourselves. Your wife is wise.
I'm grateful. Within our culture, sadly, most men will not listen to their wives. I'm privileged to think differently and to benefit from that. Tracey, the scripture that comes to mind is, “Come unto me, all you who are tired and heavy-laden, who are weary and I will give you rest.” The verse in Isaiah that says, “Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord.” I prayed into that verse a lot. I’m saying, “God, I need strength. I need to wait on you.” Everything in me says, “Run now. Go back to Kasese.” Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord. We've got to go back because He’s our maker. It's like taking a car that's driven hard and gone through these bad roads and you take it back to its maker and be able to change the oil and be able to diagnose it right. There's potential that if you leave this car to self-diagnose, it might diagnose itself wrongly. That's us. It’s mostly the case.
The next price that my father talked about is abandonment. When he would talk about abandonment, he would say, “We need to stop thinking about what we want and like to think about in favor of what we ought and need to think about.” For him, abandonment was this hyper-focus about when you see what has been put before you as a leader, you need to track and stay on point so you don't get into this mission drift. How do you stay with everything going on? You didn't expect the rock to happen. There are natural disasters, pandemic, unprecedented things. How do you still stay focused on what you need to stay focused on?
I do think that a lot of mission drift that happens is people abandoning their past and getting caught up in all other things. Sometimes it starts from the beginning of the effort or the endeavor that they embark on. Simon Sinek talks about this idea of starting with why. That's extremely important. If a person doesn't start with why and if it's a good idea or an opportunity to make money or an opportunity to look good or to act responsibly or to be accepted, the reason someone is a CEO in a company or in a leadership position is because of their skill.
Skill is not good enough. Skill is not good enough to keep you afloat when the storm comes. It's not good enough. Most people will shift through several seasons of the temptation to drift from mission and they will slip through that. If they haven't answered the question of why, chances are high that they'll abandon their cause. It will not be the kind of abandonment. Give yourself, soul, spirit, and body and tell it, “Do something until it's clear why for me.”
I'll tell you how I give myself to Pastors Discipleship Network. I'm an accountant by training and I was earning a good salary. I felt God was calling me to help bring health back to the church by training pastors. I believed deeply that a healthy pastor will lead a healthy church and that a healthy church will give birth to a healthy community. A healthy community has the potential to lead to a healthy nation. I wanted to make a dent in history, at least all of my nation, by training one healthy pastor. I began to think about that, but it wasn't strong enough. It wasn't strong enough having the vision to produce healthy pastors so that they can produce healthy churches and so that they can produce healthy communities and thereby healthier nations. That was not strong enough.
I would constantly look back into the Egypt of accounting, so to speak. As a pastor I’m trying to raise money. The nations are going low. This staff member is annoying. This person is this. The government policy is not in my favor. There's this all this going on. I realized it wasn't strong enough until I began to look again at my community. I looked at my community with different eyes. I said, “What is the problem? What's going on? Why do churches in my community not have the influence that the Bible promises they should have if they follow Christ? Why is there such brokenness and the church is helpless to help? Why is there such depravity in the presence of all these charges in my community? Why is everyone walking past the church?”
I said, “If I can make a small contribution to changing this so churches can become healthier. Churches can become more efficient and more effective.” My brother, my sister, my relatives, my friends, these children that I care about deeply, will know a God who loves them. We will not continually have a Sunday school where children come in all these numbers and they grow empty, not having met the one who died for them. We will not have people walk one hour to church and have a pastor show up on Sunday morning. He's not prepared and he's praying, “God, in all that you speak, give me the Holy Spirit. Give me a word for this Sunday.”
If God says nothing, he asks the worship team to sing one other song and one more song and now he's getting embarrassed. He gets up and tells people, “Hold your chairs and lift them up because I sense God is going to do something today.” At the end of the day, God has not done that. People are walking and saying, “God lied. The pastor lied. Did he hear from God? Is this a man of God?” We’re having all these things going on in our community. I said, “That has to stop.”
It became clear to me that it's not about programs, it's about people. It's about making this world a better place. It's about what happens when one pastor is trained and equipped. I began to tear up thinking about what I was processing. I’m looking at all these faces. We’re mostly to encounter what Christ must have felt when he looked at Jerusalem, walk into Jerusalem and he saw Jerusalem and said, “All of Jerusalem, if you would only know the day of your visitation.” He looked at them and there were sheep without a shepherd. I looked at the people in my community and I saw that they were like sheep without a shepherd in the midst of all these churches. I said, “No. We will produce one healthy pastor if we work hard.” If by God's grace we work a little bit more, we will produce two healthy pastors and then three. If by grace we can produce five, this community will not remain the same.
We've had many challenges. We've had resistance from Muslims. We've had resistance from pastors who feel they are prospering in their prosperity gospel that they don't need any training from us. We've had all kinds of resistance, but we've stayed on task. That abandonment is happening became a why became clear. That abandonment happens when someone finds their why, when the tension between what is and what should be becomes intense that it consumes them and it forces them to say, “For this, I'm willing to lay down my life.”
I've never heard it explained like that, Richmond. That was absolutely beautiful. It's good to want to train. Drilling into the why and getting into that and seeing the people as Christ would, you helped me with a lot of things that I've been struggling with too. Thank you for that.
One thing to add is the idea of doing too much. Spreading one so thin fails the calling of a leader unto abandonment. It does fail because you become like butter spread on too much bread. Everybody's eating a piece of you and testing a piece of your words and all that, but they don't quite feel the impact. Abandonment is a topic all leaders must engage with and go deeply with. “How given am I to this that I've been persuaded? It is my calling in life.”
Hero Maker: Five Essential Practices for Leaders to Multiply Leaders (Exponential Series)
The last one that he talks about then is vision. The fourth price of leadership is vision. My father referred to vision as simply knowing where you're going, you talked about that in abandonment, and then seeing what needs to be done and doing it. Sometimes we think, “I'm not a visionary. I don't get that call from on high.” My father was, “Look, if you know what your why is, you execute.” A lot of people have these lofty plans, but they never execute. They never integrate. How do you flesh out your vision, Richmond? How do you share that? How do you hone that?
First, let me state that vision clarity, for that matter, is probably one of the most important things for a leader to engage with, wrestle with, and articulate. I wish I would say that once it's clear, you don't need to visit it again.
Thank you for saying that.
You've got to go back to it. My practice, Tracey, is every six months, I take off and I go to prayer mountain. I have a vision statement. It's not the statement, but it's also what the statement means. I have that. I have to go back to it. Sometimes I would go by myself or sometimes with my wife and sometimes with some of the leaders. Do we still feel as passionate about this as in the beginning? That has helped me. All too often, vision suffers the same fate as motivation and anything you can think about because all those things leak. Vision leaks. Motivation leaks.
You could motivate your people. You can put everything in place to keep them motivated. Come back after three weeks and one is whining about something. It leaks. Vision leaks. We say it doesn't leak for the leader. It does, even for the leader. After you have gone a long way and you've encountered all these challenges or even the opposite, if you have succeeded way more than you thought, that alone can lead for vision to leak out of you because of atrophy. You get content and you get lazy. You get prideful. You get to feel like it's cheap. Vision leaks. It’s important to realize that vision leaks. If vision can leak for the leader, how much more these subordinates?
I know companies that practice revisioning their entire team and staff every first month of the year. I contend that that's not enough. Vision has to be constantly poured back into the staff throughout the year. That's different for every staff depending on sometimes how vision statements are put on walls or how staff are recruited or the orientation program. There are many ways different companies do it to make sure that people know the why and why they exist. Vision has to be revisited, especially by the leader. The world is changing at a rate nobody would have seen years ago. Ministries that exist to solve particular problems could find themselves hanging in the balance or like a cartoon character of a house flying in the air from one top of the hill to someplace. Why? Because the community is changing.
I'll give you an example. The ministries in Uganda that existed to create water boreholes, let's say that's their vision, to create water boreholes for all communities in the country of Uganda. New technology has come to Uganda. Piped water is reaching communities that were not dreamed to be able to be reached before 2030. In ministry, let's say water was what they were about. They've got to begin to think differently because their strategic plan has fallen through. They do well to read the article, the depth of strategic plans. It has come gone under. The leader has to constantly ask the question, “Are we still relevant? Is this problem still existent? Particularly, in the way that we perceived at the beginning.” They have to update their vision.
There's a church in Australia called Hillsong Church. In 2015, they produced a new vision statement and everyone was confused by that because they thought vision doesn't change. Most people say that, “Vision doesn't change.” We must not write that on a rock. The literature has reasons maybe for that such a strong claim. We've got to look at it again and say, “We got to put the twist into that.” Under what circumstances can vision change? How do we need to redefine this? Any board of trustees or any president or founder who thinks, “We did a good job. Two days of thinking. I'm glad we had this person on the team and that person on the team who is good with their words. Look at this fine vision statement.” Such a person will be awakened when they realize that they would have done better to constantly look at that vision.
If the vision statement is not relevant anymore or if it is not as relevant as it was in the past, then you're likely to suffer four things. One is passion. As the leader, the teams or team heads or team leads and everybody down will suffer in their passion if their vision that painted why is found wanting. This is not a matter of wordsmithing. It's constantly revising it. Apart from passion, they'll also suffer from motivation. Everyone needs a drive. People, at some stage of their motivation, are driven by money or reward or punishment. Ultimately, why comes through. People want jobs that are meaningful. If it's not meaningful anymore, you don't have that. You may have their bodies, but you don't have their souls and their strength.
Direction. People want to ask the question, “Where are we going?” I remember the old statement or story of this person who was found sweeping in a company that was trying to make a rocket. He was asked, “What are you doing?” He said, “I'm putting a man on the moon.” “You're sweeping for crying out loud.” “Yeah, and I'm putting a man on the moon.” It's that idea that drives them. It gives them passion and motivation and direction. The more we can have that, we recognize that vision makes people constantly being envisioned, that's helpful. Obviously, purpose comes through unnaturally there. People want purpose in their life.
It's tough to lead an organization. It's tough to belong to any organization because you suffer whatever that organization suffers. If the vision is clear from the top to the bottom, everybody positions themselves. I've seen that often in our organization. We had a time when we suffered a strong financial hit and part of it was due to the economy. Part of it was due to some changes we had made in our programming and communication wasn't clear and we ended up suffering through this time financially. That's an untold story.
I'll end with the story of how COVID-19 has affected Pastors Discipleship Network. In that old story, we were at that point when motivation went down. We told people that they had to take salary cuts. We told people, “We will not have the supplies that you had to do your job. Figure out a way. Revisit your budget to achieve your goals.” We were in a hard place. Unfortunately, for me as the leader, Tracey, I hadn't looked at vision again. I myself was asking questions. People could see me walking around moping and feeling like, “God, do something.” That was a tough time, a dark time of our ministry because vision had leaked out. People with purpose, why, motivation, all that was gone. People were not willing to take a salary cut.
I remember one of our workers who I appreciated said to us that they were going to try it on their own and try to start a farm. I knew that their skill is not farming. They belong to Pastors Discipleship Network, but they went on to do a farm. My heart ached when this staff member was lost. That's what happens. It would have been different if people were envisioned and are consumed with a why. The reason I say it would have been different is because I've seen what has happened during this COVID situation.
We, Pastors Discipleship Network, exists to try and bring training to untrained pastors in order to get in the church and advance the gospel through healthy churches. Part of how we do that, Tracey, is that we invite teams that are coming from the United States. Tracey, you are invited to come to Uganda as one of our experts who came from the States to help our women leaders get more grounded and to go forth with more strength. We've got 100% consolation. Of all the guests, of all the teams that were coming from the US and come from Australia, all of them done. It's from these guests and the apportionment of how the resources are planned that we're able to support our staff members in salary. That's how we're able to pay for health insurance. That’s how we’re able to abide the support of these teams.
Pastoral Ministry: Vision has to be revisited, especially by the leader. The world is changing at a rate nobody would have seen years ago.
With this team's counseling and they themselves suffering financially, we have taken a hit of up to $300,000. We've got to figure out how do we sustain the 27 staff members, the 85 and program through this season. It’s extremely difficult. We pulled the staff members together and we said, “Two things we're requesting of you, one is that you will understand where we are. Two, you will not abandon your boss.” We shared, “This is why we exist. We need you to be able to walk with us through this system.” Tracey, staff members willingly took salary cuts.
As far as NSSFs concern, NSSF is almost like insurance money that we're obligated to pay, they decided that we're going to be relieved of these several months of paying NSSF. They decided that we are going to stretch whatever resources we have to make sure that our pastors don't feel abandoned. Our frontline clients or pastors that are out there in the islands serving don't feel abandoned simply because we have no budget. Tracey, that kind of buy-in brought me to tears. I’m like, “This is unbelievable.” It's beautiful to see that people are willing. It's amazing what people can endure when they have a why. That's where we are. We are doing the best that we can. I've been pumped up and motivated by all staff members and the students they have met.
That is true leadership, Richmond. That is not surprising. You have covered the loneliness, the weariness, the abandonment, and the vision. I know our readers are going to be blessed and be able to help them get through some breakthroughs. Anything else that you have not touched on that you would want to share with our readers?
We are in a time that is extremely difficult, globally. Uganda has felt the heat probably harder than most other countries, not directly from the COVID-19 deaths but from the total lockdown and its effects. I would ask people to connect to countries that are not their own. Find out what's going on and maybe you can be helpful. Maybe you can make a difference, the kind of difference you would not make if you did not know. Pastors Discipleship Network, my ministry, is doing its best. We are stretched. The more people can engage, they will cease to be bogged down by what's happening in their immediate locale. They will engage in things that are more meaningful out there. Pastors Discipleship Network Uganda and Kenya and Tanzania. Because this is my context, I will talk about Uganda. We need as much encouragement and different forms of interventions. I wouldn't have the words to describe it.
We have many things in the States. If there's a disruption in benefits or work or whatever, there are things that carry you. That's not how it works over there. I can remember when I was there, people would be up at the crack of dawn, sweeping, working. Not only are they the friendliest people, but they are the most industrious people. If you don't get out and work, you don't eat. If you can’t work, you don't eat. For our readers out there, even $100 a month, what that does, what that brings? Richmond, tell them how they can get a hold of you and connect with you and some of the other resources or people that you know out there what giving can do.
First of all, a lot of what we are doing is on PDNAfrica.org, that's my website and that's the ministry's website. Please learn of what we're doing and that space. Tracey, I'll be happy to share how people can get ahold of me, RichmondUG@Gmail.com. Please get in touch and learn more of how God is working in this place and the partnership opportunities that exist and how we can go through this together.
What a beautiful way to wrap this up, Richmond. God bless you. Thank you so much. It has been far too long since we have connected. I'm glad we both came together at a time where we were both a little bit on the down-low. We needed this to convene and commune. Thank you for your heart, for sharing, for your ministry, and for what you're doing out there for people, and for reorienting our attitude towards everything that we're going through.
Thank you so much, Tracey. For all the people that are reading, thank you so much for being part of the tremendous journey. I appreciate it.
Dr. Richmond, God bless you. Lord willing, I'll be back out there. I had such a wonderful time. I miss you guys so much. That was incredible. I have to bring my husband now that I'm married. We would love it.
I'll feed you African foods. I can almost guarantee you a little bit more weight. You'll deal with that when you go back.
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