Transformational Leadership for the Transformation of Cities in India

This dissertation addresses the ministry problem of how the evangelical church in India has often withdrawn from meaningful engagement in urban areas. The church can bring transformation in cities when it engages the community in meaningful ways. The church must first understand the challenges of urban mission and its urgency to transform the cities. This requires transformational leadership.

The project has brought to light the reality of addressing training in urban mission in India. The project has brought out the current ways of the church is doing missions in India. The research has shown that the Indian church has rural lenses and does most of the ministries for the rural community approach. Most of the churches and Christian organizations in India have vision of reaching the villagers in North India. They have focused on rural mission and have neglected the importance of urban mission.

The project focused on Youth With A Mission’s (YWAM) School of Evangelism and Pioneering (SOEP). SOEP has trained and sent many YWAM missionaries to pioneer ministries in many cities of India and few outside. Most the graduates are still working with YWAM and are doing a variety of ministries and most of them have vision of transforming cities of their work. The project showed that though they were trained in SOEP for urban mission, they were not adequately trained in transforming the cities. They were just trained and were sent out, but were not given enough skills and experience to work in cities. They were not equipped enough to transform their places of ministry.

The project has given solution to the training aspect of SOEP. There should be a curriculum change also including a change in the practical aspect of training the SOEP students. The curriculum needs to be adopted and followed to effectively train the SOEP students. The research has brought out a new curriculum to train people to minister in Indian cities. The new curriculum can be adopted in other countries to train workers for cities.