After five years of leading a fast-paced and growing ministry in Mongolia I’m just beginning to learn what may be my most important lesson in leadership—how to take a back seat.

In today’s media-centric age we view leaders as the people out in front, taking charge. Leaders carry the vision, motivate followers and staff, and stay in the public eye. Isn’t that what “leading” is all about?

After five years of leading Eagle Television in Mongolia I had the privilege of hiring a new Station Manager to replace me in my daily management duties so that I could begin focusing my efforts in other areas of ministry. At the same time I installed a new leader in our Ministry Department, responsible for our Christian television programming. As I watched these two smart and capable women take to their roles I quickly realized that they weren’t doing things the way I would do them. In fact, they were doing some things that I wouldn’t even think of doing. Ladies! What are you doing to my ministry?

Making it better.

As a leader it can be difficult to hand over what you’ve built to someone else. When they begin to restructure what you’ve built, even in small ways, you sometimes feel the urge to step forward and tug the reigns back a bit. Yet there is also a joy in shepherding quietly from behind. Standing behind a new leader and occasionally walking beside him or her in support has its own reward—the reward of multiplication.

Watching someone else take the reigns is exciting, but not without an occasional pang of jealously. I wonder if John the Baptist felt this in even the smallest way when he watched Jesus’ ministry unfold into something other than what he expected (Matthew 11:2-6). What went through Paul’s mind as he left each new church under indigenous leadership that had not yet walked with Christ for even one-tenth the length of his experience? One only needs to see these men’s willingness to step back and let others increase while they decreased to see the result. The new leader you raise up may not walk the road the same way you do, but take heart, for you will “have no greater joy than to hear that [your] children are walking in the truth” (III John 4).

In addition to the management changes that were announced for Eagle TV on Monday, we are also in a month-long strategy planning session for our Steppe-by-Steppe project. SBS uses movies about Bible characters along with matching Bible studies to help disciple Mongolian believers, and expose new people to the claims of Christ. As part of our planning for the next year we are taking a hard look at the past year to see what’s been accomplished. That’s where this map comes in.

85 communities have had SBS presentations in the last year. With an average of 2,200 attendees a month they’ve impacted nearly 20,000 lives nationwide. Not bad for only 6 guys. Up until two months ago they didn’t even have vehicles for transportation.

As soon as I saw this map I thought of the Apostle Paul. He traveled across Europe sharing the Gospel on foot and by boat. I’m sure he had access to a horse once in a while too. Paul’s journeys were slower, and he hit fewer actual communities while on the road, but the effect he had was tremendous. Paul planted the seeds that changed the empire.

Our guys aren’t exactly Apostle Pauls. But they do have distinct advantages that Paul did not have—like modern transportation and technologies. Yet their seed planting is no different than Pauls. More importantly, their discipleship work is also extremely important. In most places the teams go the vast majority of people have given up reading the Bible. People report they can’t understand the way its written, or have trouble with some of the concepts. But the SBS movies and Bible studies show people the historical nature of the Bible and Christianity. The resulting new understanding helps people push aside the mystical and superstitious approach some take to the scriptures and it radically changes their perspective. A new passion for the Bible ignites!

I can’t wait to see what happens next year.