Leadership Development for Implementing Everyday Leadership Academies in At-Risk Commnities

The subject of this dissertation is about personal and social transformation coming through ordinary people. The project provides the content for teaching on everyday leadership - filling whatever gap one sees at-risk neighborhoods and cities with moral and ethical behavior that models the Golden Rule of Jesus Christ.

Within the grasp of every Christian lie all the resources of God, plus the leadership and social technologies to bring deep change into the most problematic areas of the world's cities. How does one bring about this deep change? This type of transformation requires a Christian leadership team firmly convinced of the reign of God, fully committed to building both vulnerable and authentic relationships within the team and the at-risk community in which they are serving, and competency practicing transformational and relational leadership skills.

This dissertation specifically relates to developing a Reckoning leadership team, but will also have general application to social entrepreneurs who want to develop similar initiatives. Chapter 1 states the problem and traces the background of how the Reckoning Foundation evolved into establishing an Everyday Leadership Academy. Chapter 2 looks at how other scholars have attempted to deal with character development, missional transformational leadership and leadership in children, an appropriate theology that will provide a biblical worldview consistent with the mission of Reckoning Everyday Leadership Academies (RELAs), and the rational for using art to initiate RELAs. Chapter 3 describes the contextual factors that shaped this project. Chapter 4 establishes the critical biblical and theological argument for the RELA's prescriptives in the media piece, On the Mend in a Broken World. Chapter 5 reviews the different methods of research available and zeroes in on the methodology framing this project. Chapter 6 explains how I conducted this research and shows the results. Chapter 7 summarizes the lessons I learned from my research and suggests how one might best use them in effectively implementing and sustaining RELAs globally.

On the Mend in a Broken World, A Leadership Handbook for Implementing an Everyday Leadership Academy for Adults and Children in Global At-Risk Communities puts forth the prescriptives necessary for implementing a RELA.