When Delbert Enns describes his idea of equipping others for ministry, he harks back to the example of his father, a missionary leader in Paraguay.
The elder Enns told his impressionable son, “Once a leader has completed his mission, he should have found a successor or teams to carry on what he began.” Other lessons: people have to be led by their own people. Leadership is not dictatorship. If you want to train people, you have to live in their tent.
Enns heads up a media ministry called Family Life Network (FLN), which is supported largely by the Mennonite Brethren. FLN began in Winnipeg 57 years ago and now reaches people all over Latin America, in the Middle East, within the countries of the former Soviet Union and parts of North America, including, of course, Canada.
Much of the ministry’s effort in recent years has been directed toward training and empowering others so they can carry on a witness within their own cultural settings.
Thus, immediately after the fall of the communist empire, FLN brought Leonid Sergienko from Russia to Canada to spend two years at FLN production studios to become thoroughly immersed in both radio and television programming and a vision for communicating the gospel.
Sergienko has since moved back to Moscow where he forms the hub for a growing network of people who’ve been trained to use the media to convey Christian teaching within their cultures. Together with resource people from the missionary radio station HCJB, Enns and Sergienko with their staff are now in the sixth year of working with people from countries that were all part of the former Soviet Union.
“We select 20 young men and women,” says Enns, “and we put them into an annual eight-week training school. They are given technical skills and taught how to set up and manage a radio station.
“Out of that group 10 or so are chosen for a second year. These are given basic tools, equipment to produce programs and computers. In the third year, two are chosen who will be outfitted with an entire broadcasting studio. These can become training centres for others.” There are now 10 studio hubs that serve as training centres for others.
This approach means that FLN is not doing any Russian programming from Winnipeg, though they did at one time. Instead, all programming is done in the former Soviet republics by people from within the cultures. The impact is multiplied and has the potential to keep on multiplying.
Similar direction
Something very similar is happening through another Manitoba-based ministry, Kingdom Ventures International (KVI), founded in 1990 by Dave and Elfrieda Loewen, who had a 26-year record behind them as directors of Lake Winnipeg’s Camp Arnes.
Right after the fall of the Soviet empire, the Loewens felt called to see whether they could assist the growth of Christian camping in those countries. They couldn’t have dreamed what might ensue.
The Loewens were joined by a German group, Christliche Freizeiten Internationale (CFI), and Christian Camping International USA (CCI). This year the three groups will be training camp leaders from more than 300 camps from countries of the former Soviet Union at 13 different training centres. KVI will have at least a 1,000 camp staff at their sessions and the other two groups probably another 1,000. In addition, the camp leaders who’ve already been part of such training, will offer regional training programs for probably another 1,000 staff, says Loewen. These represent as many camps again as receive help through KVI, CFI and CCI.
Such training is given in centers ranging from Latvia and St. Petersburg in the west, to Uzbekistan in the south and Khabarovsk in Russia’s far east.
Recently, KVI and CFI’s Rudi Dueck of Germany began offering an additional specialized leadership skills and management course, taught in 10-day blocs in fall and spring, to 40 selected young leaders. For the young camp directors—many of them also youth and Sunday school leaders, in some cases with oversight over entire regions or denominations—the courses are life-changing.
In a newsletter put out by Kingdom Ventures, Valentina Belyak wrote, “The training changed my life and ministry.” Vyacheslav Bondar added, “No other organization offers such quality training that helps me change from the inside out.” The course has already run two years and will run a third.
One of the leaders, for example, is the Sunday school director for the 2,700 Baptist congregations of the Ukraine. Others come from the Pentecostal movement, which has 1,500 churches in the Ukraine. The materials and skills that the participants gain from the training almost always get passed on to others.
Loewen says while denominations still find it difficult to work together, KVI has always ignored the differences and thus people of many groups participate in their training. Even an Orthodox priest took training for his church’s camps until his superiors put a stop to it.
Training for Arabic believers
Back at the Family Life Network, the training idea is not limited to the former Soviet republics. This summer, Enns, Randy Friesen, a missions leader for the Mennonite Brethren, and broadcasters Samir and Lewiza Youssef, who head up the FLN’s Arabic ministries, will be in Cairo, Egypt where they expect to gather 150 pastors from throughout the Middle East for a week of leadership training. An Arabic staff member at FLN also does weekly training via the internet with 15 mentors who work in pairs with people who are coming to faith in Christ.
Enns has also been directly involved with the creation of a Latin American Association of Christian broadcasters, which now has 3,500 members and holds annual international conferences in various countries to strengthen Christian broadcasting in the region. These have spawned smaller national gatherings for media training.
One of FLN’s main programs is a Spanish language program produced by Ernesto Pinto that is aired on over 800 stations throughout Latin America.
More media
FLN’s Winnipeg headquarters is also home to Avante Records, whose role is “artists’ development and training,” providing coaching in spiritual things, music, performance and production skills and speaking, says Marshall Zacharias, who heads up that department. Avante has helped a number of artists record albums, including Fresh I.E., Amanda Falk and Sherry Ansloos (Shezza).
A connected FLN ministry is V2Live, where the artists are “plugged into an evangelistic program that helps them learn to work in a secular environment. We go life on life with kids who don’t know Jesus,” says Zacharias. V2Live sets up concerts in high schools, on reserves and in other community settings to convey a values-based message as well as opportunities for those who ask, to learn about Christ. A recent concert in Morden, Manitoba, brought out 1,000 kids, a number of whom declared their wish to follow Jesus.
FLN also partners with the Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute, a high school next door to the FLN headquarters in Winnipeg, to offer students a participatory media course. Four of FLN’s staff in creative arts, radio and video production and music are involved. Fifteen to 20 students take the course, learning that people matter to God, gaining skills and absorbing a worldview. They discover all the languages spoken at FLN—27—and learn about what a global community the ministry is. And the students learn how to ask life-changing questions. While it’s only a beginning, Enns hopes that the program implants a “missional” perspective in the students.
Neither Enns nor Loewen see themselves as permanent fixtures where they are. Enns says the average age at FLN has dropped to 28 (from in the 50s some years ago), while virtually all of the leaders Loewen works with are young, and many new believers as well. Both men are driven by an all-consuming desire to plant a vision to be Christ’s instruments of witness in these young leaders. That desire has already borne remarkable fruit and one would be foolish to predict where it will end.
“Leadership to me is a lifestyle, training is a lifestyle,” says Enns. “We just happen to be in radio and television. If the person has experienced the God principle in their life, and comes to the right moment when their vision explodes in their life—matching talent and the right environment—they’ll find out what they are meant to be by their Creator God.”
