Boston Situational Leadership

The Chinese church I attend is an independent church. Since most of the people from mainland China do not have a denomination, and the other people from Taiwan, Hong Kong or other places have different denominational backgrounds; most of the Chinese churches in the United States are non-denominational independent churches. Therefore, Bible is the foundation of our faith. It makes sense that Bible study is the main ministry in our church.

Our church is a city outreach ministry (COM) of the home church in Lexington. The purpose of COM is to serve the Chinese students in the Boston area. The majority of the congregation is the student. These students are undergraduates, graduates and Ph.D. candidates from most of the universities in the Boston

Because of the visa limitations, most of the students in our fellowship only stay in Boston for less than four years. In every graduation season, there will be around thirty students leave Boston. Every summer, we will have many new students come to visit the fellowship. The members of the Bible study groups are always changing. The small groups are always changing. The co-workers in the student fellowship change once a year. General speaking, the Bible study groups are not fixed groups with fixed members like other fellowships in other churches. This is a big challenge for leadership. Every year, it is a routine to have new small group leaders and other administrative co-workers. This means that it requires the orientation sessions for the new co-workers every year. The leader needs to build up connections and bonding with the new co-workers, and learn how to work with them without having conflicts. Every year, the leader needs to recognize new people and try to remember their names in order to take care of them. The leader also has to know the newcomers well so that s/he can prepare human resources among the students so that some of them can become co-workers for the next year. This specific situation requires the leader to adjust himself/herself to be situational in

However, a leader is not supposed to change blindly to meet the needs of the changing situations. Transformational leadership is “a process that changes and transforms people”. A leader in a Bible study fellowship, which is grounded in the teaching of Jesus, is supposed to have a clear vision for the fellowship. By holding the core values and the vision of the fellowship as sharing the Gospel and making disciples, a leader in the Bible study fellowship transforms the students through Bible