Reflections on Redeployment to Coaching

I loved serving as a local church pastor for 18 years and working as a district superintendent for 27 years.  We have completed our work and now we are deploying to coaching, consulting, and being available to serve churches.  We are so thankful for Brett and Stephanie who can lead the Great Lakes District of the Evangelical Free Church for the next twenty years!  The GLD is fruitful and fulfilling.

As a highly relational leader, our board and our staff relationships have never been stronger. Our general fund balance is higher than in any time in the last decade and our fair share contributions are solid. Our greatest financial expansion has come through church planters raising personal support with Brett’s help. We have a compelling mission and vision, a strong strategy, and real measurements that empower gospel centered results.  To God be the Glory in the Great Lakes District of the EFCA!

Reflections on The Gospel

As a child in Sunday school, I was taught this tune: “Love, love, love, love / The gospel in a word is love / Love your neighbor as your brother / For God is love.” But, the gospel in a word is not love, it is Jesus. The gospel in two words is Christ crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). The gospel in a phrase is “the declaration of what Jesus Christ has done to save us” (Keller, Center Church, 33). The gospel in a verse is John 3:16. The gospel in a paragraph is 1 Corinthians 15:1-6. I love Paul’s summary: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel...” (2 Timothy 2:8). The gospel is the good news that by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, we have eternal life and that faith is not alone demonstrated by doing good works. (Ephesians 2:8-10).

I grew up spiritually lost in a loving family that attended a large liberal church. After my freshman year in college, a high school friend invited me to a summer Bible study in his home. A Christian insurance man opened the Scriptures and showed us Old Testament prophesies of the Messiah and how Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled them. My mother and my grandparents lived authentic Christian lives, now, in my friend’s home, I experienced Christ among my own peers. In July of 1972, I trusted Jesus as my Messiah on the infield of Cleveland Stadium during a Billy Graham Crusade. The gospel changed me completely. In college, The Navigators discipled me. God established me in the spiritual disciplines of a daily time in his Word, prayer, a commitment to the local church and sharing my faith.

Reflections on the Thompson family history

God opened the door for my wife and me to serve for 35 years in the EFCA (1979-2014). After graduating from TEDS in 1979, God called us to the Hope Evangelical Free Church of Dubuque, Iowa. During the 1980’s, our city of Dubuque, Iowa lost 7% of the population; but by the grace of God our church grew from around 50 people to around 250 people. During our 13 years in Iowa, the first opportunity for district service came with the Central District Church Planting Board. During these years our family enjoyed EFCA conferences.

Hope EFC church sent our family to Moscow, Russia with the Evangelical Free Church Mission to serve as missionaries from 1992-1997. After a year on the field, the executive director of our mission asked me to serve as on the senior leadership team. As the EFCM Eurasia Director, I oversaw the deployment of around 20 EFCA missionary units into Eurasia (Moscow, Kazan, Kiev, and Tashkent). At the same time I led a staff of five Russians and Americans as the senior pastor of Moscow Bible Church, a church of 500 (two-third Russians). Today Moscow Bible Church is fully indigenous with Russian members and Russian leaders. God provided the way for me to return almost every two years to encourage them (most recently 2019). Constantin Lysakov, senior pastor of Moscow Bible Church, and I have known each other since the 1990’s and now we enjoy continuing our partnership in the Gospel with regular telephone calls.

Returning to America in 1997, the Texas district called me to serve as superintendent from 1997-2004 and then God called us to work with the Great Lakes District of the EFCA for twenty years (2004-2024).

Reflections on our Mosaic Ministry

The churches I served as a superintendent have amazing diversity. Since 2006, we started 20 new churches and serve many that are over 100 years old. There are 100 churches with under 100 people, 11 K-Club churches and over 30 Team 500 churches. We have a Congolese, a Haitian, a Japanese, a Chinese, a Filipino, a Burmese, a Laotian, an Indian, a Southeast Asian, and 13 Hispanic congregations. One of my great joys is preaching in these churches and meeting with their leadership.

The Great Lakes District enjoys a staff with wonderful diversity in age, race and ethnicity. Our church planting director, Brett Gleason, started in his mid-thirties. We are true partners in ministry. I mentored him and he moved far beyond my initial insights, building a team of church planters who impact whole regions.

The GLD moved to “regional superintendents” in 1997. It was a wise decision. Our regional superintendents are mature men in their sixties and seventies. My first challenge in the GLD was being the leader and the youngest man on this team. We learned to work together and gradually we transitioned some of these men into a younger team of area superintendents in their early 40’s to build our bench of next generation district leaders. Our GLD staff includes young and old, male and female, and people from many ethnic backgrounds reflecting God’s glory. The Great Lakes Board of Directors includes several pastors, two godly women, one African American pastor, and a variety of older and younger lay leaders.

I served with the Spiritual Care Team of Samaritan’s Purse traveling for short trips to Sri Lanka (2008), Myanmar (2009), South Sudan (2009), Haiti (2010-just after the earthquake), Mozambique (2012), Kenya (2012) and Niger. Jan and I served together in Mongolia (2010).

Relections on leadership styles

“It is enough for the student to be like his teacher...” (Matthew 10:25). As a Christ follower, my prayer is to be humble and gentle in heart like my Lord and full of grace and truth. Jesus is relational and missional; and he leads me to seek to love “the least of these my brethren” and to do the least of these my tasks. Here is a short summary of leadership styles I seek in five areas.

• ·  Spiritual Leadership

• ·  Servant Leadership

• ·  Strategic Leadership

• ·  Situational Leadership

• ·  Catalytic Leadership

Spiritual Leadership: The Pastoral Epistles say learning to be a spiritual leader begins at home. “(If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)” 1 Timothy 3:5. The proving grounds for spiritual leadership is the family and our great joy is three believing children who love the Lord and his church. My greatest job recommendation came from our second son a few years ago.

“Some of his great strengths are developing leaders, providing a firm Scriptural foundation for leading and a shepherd’s loving hand. I've been a beneficiary of this as he's always made our family a priority. I've also seen him do this as a lead pastor, missionary pioneer into the former USSR, church planter and organizational head to name just a few. The most striking aspect of his leadership is the Christ-centered humility that has allowed him to serve well regardless of the position God has placed him.”

Servant Leadership: A huge side of servant leadership for me is being a good listener and asking insightful questions like Jesus did from the time he was twelve (Luke 2:46). Jesus Christ led a team of apostles to be with him and to live on mission. My commitment is to build a complementary and collaborative team of leaders of leaders. As a young pastor, I worked well with seven deacons to serve one church; today I serve a staff of 16 full and part time people. I remember: “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have done our duty’” (Luke 17:11).

Strategic leadership: “Vision has little value without a strategy to fulfill it. Strategies are systematic choices about how to deploy resources to achieve goals. Effective strategies are not always entirely new, but success is usually the result of creatively analyzing the problem and discovering a fresh way to get the most benefit from the resources you have at hand (Saffold, Strategic Planning, 12). Strategic leadership sees next hills we need to climb for vision fulfillment.

• In Russia, strategic leadership meant developing our own training ministry- Trinity Seminary led by Jim McNeil-that today is Trinity Video Seminary.

• In Texas, strategic leadership meant wisely using $400,000 in our district church planting fund to work with EFCA leadership in developing a systematic approach to planting: Assessment, Coaching, Training, and Support (ACTS).

• In the GLD, strategic leadership meant concentrating for five years on GLD church planting systems (ACTS). Then, it meant changing full time regional superintendents to part time area superintendents and a growing staff.

Situational leadership: Ken Blanchard explains it. “There are four basic combinations of directive and supportive behaviors that a leader can use: From directing-high direction, low support, coaching-high direction, high support, supporting-low direction, high support, delegating-low direction, low support” (Blanchard, The Servant Leader, 73). I measure the maturity of the person and fit my leadership style to them. With this approach, we commit ourselves to a culture of developing leaders from the novice to the mature man and woman of God. Micro-management of the mature is out and delegation to the unprepared is gone as we measure our leadership to fit the situational maturity of each leader. One of my joys is developing young eagles to be potential superintendents and empowered leaders in new skills and systems.

Catalytic leadership: Catalysts must be in close proximity and create new connections without fusing to that reaction. With nitrogen and hydrogen in a container, nothing happens. Add iron as a catalyst and you get ammonia.
The GLD team catalyzes a search committee to find a new pastor and an elder board to discover new direction. We catalyze fruitful church leaders to start trios, teams, mentoring groups, and learning communities. We also catalyze fruitful churches to create new ethnic congregations, new multi-sties, and new churches.

• Catalytic leadership is not a star on the stage, it is a guide from the side (close proximity and strong interpersonal relationships).

• Catalytic leadership is not casting vision, it is creating new connections (with those who share a common affinity, a common need, or a common vision).

• Catalytic leadership is not creating new organizations, it is new building upon organizations a new layer of collaborative partnerships.