Naomi Dowdy - Naomi Dowdy Ministries - Global Leadership Network

Dr. Naomi Dowdy answers your questions about raising up leaders.
Interview By Jennifer LeClaire

The Lord sent Dr. Naomi Dowdy to Singapore 30 years ago, when the Asian city was known for its rough-and-ready opium dens and heroin subculture. Singapore blends Chinese, Malay and Indian traditions. Feng shui and ancestor worship are still part of the nation’s culture, despite the modern concrete and glass towers and high-tech wizardry.

In 1976, an American Dowdy took the helm at Trinity Christian Centre and incorporated a cell group model that has been well received in Asian countries. It has also liberated women to become equipped and trained for the work of the ministry. In fact, her ministry includes the mentoring and raising up of strategic men and women leaders in key ministry positions globally.

As founder and president of Global Leadership Network (GLN), Dowdy travels around the world encouraging leaders in their calling. As founder of Care Community Services Society, she helps the needy. And as founder of the Theological Centre for Asia, she provides Bible-based educational resources. But above all, Dowdy’s passion is to see the Great Commission fulfilled.

The Voice magazine caught up with Dowdy to discuss transitioning the local church, the importance of equipping believers and raising up strong local church leaders.

The Voice: I understand you just transitioned your church to your spiritual son after 30 years as senior pastor. Tell our readers how you approached this.

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: Here is the passing of the baton. There really has not been any model. Let me explain. There have been people who have handed over their church to a younger generation, however there have been many bumps along the way because there was no model.

The Voice: Tell me about your model. I am sure you have many spiritual sons and daughters after 30 years in ministry. How did you begin to identify to whom to pass the baton?

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: That was a long process. You must have clear criteria and know what you are looking for. It’s not just about seniority. You have to look for those that have a heart and a vision for ministry. You need someone that has something outside of the pastoral anointing. You need an apostolic-prophetic anointing that will then bring in all the other five-fold gifts.

The Voice: Besides a heart for ministry, what practical aspects of leadership do you look for?

Dr. Dowdy: I have a whole list of criteria, from character and integrity to spirituality and the ability to hear from God. Then some of the basic natural skills are also important, like how do you handle money? Are you a giver or an accumulator? What’s your family life like? Are you a team builder or a super star? There are many criteria to look for.

The Voice: How do you actually begin to transition the church to the spiritual son?

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: Well, the next generation cannot depend on the elder pastor to make all of the decisions anymore. For example, one day they asked me, “Pastor, what’s your vision for the next 10 years?” And I said, “Hey guys, wrong question.” It’s not what is my vision; it’s what is your vision. I am passing it down. I know that the vision will not change, but their methods must change in order to accomplish the mission because people change, demographics change and society changes. I’ve said, “Moses is not going to the mountain for you anymore.” You go to the mountain, you hear from God and you come back. Then I’ll let you know if you heard right.

The Voice: How about from the pastor’s end? How did you prepare yourself to transition the church and take on more of an oversight role?

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: There is a preparation that takes more than five years. The old paradigm says, “I’m going to retire. I’m going to leave my church.” Then you give them three months notice and you are out of there. Then you turn it over to a lay board or a counsel or elders and say, “It’s your problem. Go find a pastor.” That is not good. That is the old wine skin. Each leader should be praying for successors, knowing that those successors will not follow exactly what we are doing method-wise. But we give them a blueprint for the future and then trust them to do the works and keep our nose out.

The Voice: What are the biggest challenges with transitioning?

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: Well, emotionally for the older ones it’s a roller coaster of acceptance. How will I live? Will I have an income? Many churches had no provision for the founders or for those long-time ministers that have been there for ages. Then there’s the old paradigm that says, “I am a pastor here until I die and I’m going to die in the pulpit.” That old mindset cannot work because even if you have a church of 500 or 1,000 people and the pastor drops dead in the pulpit, then think of the trauma it would cause. So that is a selfish mindset that comes out of the old paradigm. Being a burnout for Jesus was ingrained in the old wineskin.

The Voice: So what are you doing now? What is your role in Singapore now?

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: I still continue to mentor, to speak into the lives of the leaders and the counsel at the church. I work with the church as far as extending our missions, meaning I go out and spend time with pastors, spend time with apostles, because many people have a title but don’t know how to function. So I spend a lot of time with leaders, training on the prophetic and how to bridge the mainline denominations and the Pentecostal and Charismatic. A lot of the mainline churches are resisting the apostolic because of a lack of knowledge. They feel Pentecostals are traditionally a lot of fluff and stuff with no substantiation.

The Voice: It’s been said that the American Gospel is user-friendly and you can’t take the same Gospel to other nations. What has been your experience in Singapore and the many other nations in which you have ministered? Is it different Christianity?

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: American Christianity is mainly seeker-friendly entertainment. “I’ll give you what you want.” American churches don’t really preach the demands of Christ, and I’m not talking about legalism. If I am in the Kingdom of God there are implications to my being in the Kingdom. There are implications in my lifestyle, implications in my commitment, implications in my finances. I am not a spectator.

We have more churches today than we have ever had before, and we have more Christians today than we have ever had before. But evil is waxing worse and worse. So there is something wrong with the picture, and basically what’s wrong is that believers are not being empowered to function. They don’t know their spiritual gifts. They don’t even know they’re supposed to be doing something. They hear, “Just come, sit, listen, sing, pay your tithe, and go home. See ya next week.”

The Voice: They are waiting to get to heaven for however long we are going to be there.

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: Right. Be good, stay out of the devil’s way until the trumpet sounds. Some of the overseas people realize that the world isn’t so sugarcoated.

The Voice: So this cell model, that’s how you’re transforming the harvest field into a harvest force?

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: That is exactly how you do it. That answers the question, because it moves from what we call the pre-believers evangelism. You don’t just birth that baby. You help that baby grow up and you train them so they imitate you in becoming a leader in the Kingdom and they also go win people.

The Voice: It’s making disciple makers out of disciple makers.

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: Right. Jesus didn’t say “Go ye evangelize to the whole world.” He said, “Go and make disciples.” Then in Matthew and Luke, He said “I want your fruit to remain.” So it’s just not birthing them but having fruit that remains, and they aren’t going to remain unless they have a DNA of reproduction. Otherwise that generation will pass away.

See part of it goes all the way back to the belief that clergy was a special elite group and they did all the work. When they die, whatever they built up to, say 200, 300, 400, 500, or even to the thousands of members, they have not prepared for succession. They have not prepared to pass the baton. So a new guy has to come along, pick up that mantel and try to start from ground zero to build up. But if we prepared them as leaders to think like leaders and not just managers – now we do need both – but if we’ve got managers and no leaders we are going to go around in circles.

The Voice: What is the key distinction between a manager and a leader?

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: Leaders think strategic. They think team. They think territory, and taking the land. So it’s a leadership development track that will bring them into their potential. They can become pastoral care givers because all of the five-fold ministry gifts are placed in them through this training process and practical ministry.

The Voice: There is a leadership crisis in the Body of Christ. How are we going to wake everybody up and say, “Let’s raise up strong leaders”? What’s it going to take?

Dr. Naomi Dowdy: Well, it’s the training. The problem is we don’t train for reproduction; we train for the didactic. I download information in you. You see Jesus, in Matthew 28, said “Go and teach.” That word “teach” means training. Training has two components. One is knowledge. The other is skills. Most of the skills that we have trained people for in the church is how to be an usher, how to direct traffic in the parking lot, how to run the PA equipment, and maybe teach a Sunday school class. Now how’s that going to change us? And you don’t wait until they get old before you start training them. The whole DNA is instilled from the nursery all the way up. The only way you reverse a trend is through training and through equipping. You can preach it, but that gives them knowledge and all they get is “yeah yeah yeah.” But until you give them the skills and the tools to do it, they’re still waiting.

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the voice interviews DR. Naomi Dowdy