Fasten your seat belt, open your eyes, adjust the volume on your headset, and join me for a tour of highly creative leadership laboratories in South America. We’ll discover that there’s no single answer to the question, “What makes a leader?”

Mentoring University Students in Peru

University students today…national leaders tomorrow! But what sort of leaders? And whom will they lead? These questions motivated Mary and Michael Foster to move from Australia to Peru 15 years ago in order to partner with International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, related to the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IFES). “They ate our food, they slept beside us on benches or the floor, and they shared our poverty,” marvels Juan Inocencio, Secretary General of the Peru branch of IFES known as AGEUP. Graduates who were part of AGEUP now lead churches and Christian organizations all over Peru. For more about AGEUP, check out their website.

Training Children’s Teachers in Peru

The roads into Abancay, Peru, are some of the most spectacular in the world—and also some of the most treacherous. The 60,000 Quechuan residents are effectively cut off from the rest of the world. Most of them learned to read Spanish in school, but since that’s not the language they speak, they’re considered functionally illiterate. A few have become followers of Jesus.

When Hannelore Zimmermann arrived from Germany and discovered churches with no ministries for children, she applied her best educational strategies to train the adults to teach the children. But nothing worked. She concluded that people from oral cultures think in unique ways, definitely not in outlines! And so she composed songs and stories to use as part of her training for teachers, and now she finds Christian adults eager to teach the children. Next, she will create biblical songs and stories that the newly motivated Quechuan teachers can easily master and use.

Non-reading teachers? Certainly. Thanks to a creative lover of children who was determined to find a way to train the teachers.

Chris Conti, Pam Liu, and Peruvian staff members like Katty are mentoring students into people God can use to help shape the church in Peru and beyond. Katty herself, while a student, was discipled by the Fosters. AGEUP and SIM intentionally partner with churches that share a vision for ministry with students. “Evangelizing students and training leaders who will enter professional careers is a key strategy for a mature church,” says Helen Heron, Director of SIM Peru.

Internships for Church Leaders in Bolivia

Kep James has high goals for Bolivian church leaders. “I want them to think biblically,” he says, “living mature Christian lives out of pure hearts, with healthy homes and strong churches, dependent on the Holy Spirit.” That objective led him to start Equipping Servants Internship (ESI), now in its third year.

Leaders from various denominations and congregations meet weekly for 30 months. The meetings include teaching and discussion on the assigned lesson, followed by sharing in groups of two or three for personal accountability. After a few weeks of training and demonstration, they take turns leading the sessions, expected to prepare questions good enough to stimulate great discussion. Over time, the leaders become adept at fostering deep thought and lively engagement with spiritual issues.

Before the first groups graduated last year, they had grappled with Bible study methods, principles of interpretation, Bible doctrine, public speaking, answers to heresy, Bible survey, and methods of discipling and counseling. Now some of them have formed teams to start new ESI groups of their own. Says James, “I believe this is the best way to help move the church in Bolivia toward maturity, helping pastors and key church leaders to think the Bible and live the Bible.”