Welcome to the website of Leading Edge Christian Ministries. Founded by Bert Watson in 2000, LECM seeks to glorify Jesus and further his Kingdom purposes by promoting and facilitating the training and development of Christian leaders in the Majority World.
The gospel of Jesus Christ continues to spread rapidly in the nonwestern world. By God’s grace, over 30,000 people come to the Lord per day in Africa. China is experiencing the same rate of growth. Other regions are also experiencing a wonderful response to the Good News. With 3500 new churches being planted each week, the need for leader development has never been greater.
Dr. Howard Hendricks once said, “The greatest need in the church around the world is quality leadership at all levels”. Not only is there a shortage of leaders, but research has shown that about 90% of emerging and existing church leaders in the Majority World lack much of the theological and practical training they need to lead God’s people effectively. Eager to learn, most of these church leaders deeply appreciate initiatives that better equip them to serve God and His people.
In response to the biblical mandate, through the enablement of the Spirit, and in cooperation with churches and other ministry/training organizations, Leading Edge Christian Ministries seeks to address the church leadership gap in the Majority World through the creation and facilitation of transformational leader development processes that honor the Lord Jesus as head of the Church, ground church leaders in biblical truth, build Christlike character, develop a missional mindset, and instill the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to lead, shepherd, disciple, and equip God’s people effectively.
We seek to help address this leadership gap through the following long-term projects.
- Developing and facilitating accredited transformational church-based leader development processes through South African Theological Seminary (the largest online seminary in the non-western world).
- Developing an online teaching, equipping, and learning community that utilizes rapidly advancing technology to create, distribute, and facilitate cost-effective leader development processes among church leaders in Majority World nations.
- Creating and facilitating microlearning teaching and training sessions through our YouTube channel ‘Five Minutes’.
- Creating, publishing, and distributing cost-effective leader development resources, workshops, and other processes.
Like the apostle Paul, our desire is to see all God’s people, especially emerging and existing leaders, ‘fully developed’ in Christ (Col. 1:28).