'Oogley' helps explain leadership training

SAN ISIDRO, Heredia, Costa Rica -- Gail Drake and Debra Snellen, the founders of LEAMIS International Ministries, developed a leadership training curriculum designed for pastors from Third World countries.

Many such pastors, especially those at remote, rural churches, have had very little training and have responded enthusiastically to the leadership principles contained in the LEAMIS training. The training draws from a variety of sources, including the Bible and leadership experts like John C. Maxwell.

Last year, in Bolivia, Debra and I tried to conduct a leadership workshop, but the church that was our host for that trip didn't have a clear understanding of what the curriculum was all about and didn't make any attempt to promote the training or invite other pastors. We had only a small handful in attendance.

This year, for the LEAMIS trip to Costa Rica, team leader Frank Schroer and I were to conduct the leadership training. But our work site in Costa Rica is neither remote nor rural, and -- like last year -- not many outside pastors had been invited. However, unlike last year, a number of church members attended the training, and so we tried to emphasize it as a general course on leadership, with the reminder that all of us are leaders in one sense or another.

The teaching was enthusiastically received. Most of the content was straight teaching, but we did use one visual aid: "oogley."

Oogley is a mixture of ordinary corn starch and water. If you get it in just the right proportions, it will have a bizarre property: when kneaded or handled, it will feel like a solid, with the consistency of, say, Play-Doh. But if you leave it alone, it will immediately liquefy, so much that it will drip through your fingers. We use it in the training as a reminder that relationships, like our faith, require constant care and maintenance.

An oogley demonstration involves demonstrating the stuff and then handing it to various audience members, who pass it around among themselves. Everyone has a great time, although of course you get globs of cornstarch all over each other and the floor.

Frank Schroer and I took turns presenting selected content from the leadership workshop, and Megan Siegrist helped out with the oogley demonstration. We hadn't been given enough time to present the entire curriculum, but what we chose to present seemed quite well-received and we got good comments about it.

Personal experience

I also got good comments about a program I led on Tuesday for a group of pastors and their spouses that met in Heredia. When Frank first asked me to come up with this program, neither he nor I was certain exactly what our hosts wanted, but Frank said that, being a pastor's son, perhaps I could come up with something useful and relevant.

I borrowed a terrific book about the struggles faced by pastoral families from my pastor's wife (who is also a pastor's child herself), and supplemented it with my own personal observations. The program ended up being about a pastor's need to balance his obligations to the church against his obligations to his family, and about the sometimes-burdensome expectations placed on family members by the congregation.

The program was very well-received, and I got good, specific feedback on it from some of those who attended.

No place for profit

One morning, we attended a breakfast meeting at the offices of Christ for the City International in San José. CFCI is a much larger, international missions agency with which LEAMIS has a cordial and cooperative relationship. The first LEAMIS trip I ever took, to Nicaragua in 2003, was done in cooperation with CFCI, and one of CFCI's long-term, in-country missionaries worked with us during that trip. CFCI has also referred LEAMIS to some of the host pastors and churches with whom LEAMIS has worked in various countries.

CFCI had no formal involvement with this year's Costa Rica trip, so our visit to their offices was just a courtesy call. I was never clear on the exact nature of the breakfast meeting; it appeared to be some regular gathering, and wasn't anything arranged on our behalf. I'm not sure if everyone there was with CFCI or if some of them were other local pastors or laypeople.

The program started, innocently enough, with praise songs and a devotional about our bodies being God's temple and the need for us to be good stewards of our health. (I'm guilty enough on that issue, but I know it's an important point and I'm trying to do better.)

The pastor who was delivering the message had a slight problem with the computer projector, and a woman who had been waiting outside the room came in to help him with it. I noticed that she was wearing a polo shirt with the logo of a well-known (and, at times, controversial) multi-level marketing firm which sells dietary supplements for weight loss. I hoped that the meeting wasn't going to turn out to be just a commercial for this company's products.

Sure enough, the innocuous devotion was followed by a documentary about colon health, and then out came Polo Shirt Woman with samples of -- surprise! -- various products designed to address the health problems in the "documentary."

I sat in my chair and steamed. To me, this was a bait-and-switch. There's nothing wrong with business, and certainly nothing wrong with a worship gathering, but to start something out as a religious meeting and then have it turn into a commercial enterprise infuriated me. The greatest display of physical outrage Jesus ever showed was against people who were trying to make a profit in the temple.

There was no price information or buying and selling during the meeting itself, but it was made clear that Polo Shirt Woman would be available afterward for anyone who wanted more information.

My two teammates, neither of whom had heard of this particular company and its past legal challenges, were completely unoffended by this. Even when I explained my outrage, they didn't quite see my point. To them, it hadn't been a sales pitch, just sharing of information. They obviously felt I was overreacting.

I probably was overreacting, but I think my basic complaint was still valid.

TUESDAY: A wood stove and a food processor