The Theophilus Reports

Imagine you are a well-known and experienced LDHR consultant in the first century. A good friend of yours, Theophilus, has contacted you to give your wisdom and professional input on an exciting new spiritual movement that is emerging. Although it’s exciting, Theophilus has heard of some significant difficulties and dangers the new believers are facing. Your role is to put on your full four-LDHR-quadrant thinking hat and identify and analyse the LDHR implications of the growing movement.

This situation was the premise set for a group of European LDHR leaders at a recent gathering hosted by Mike Maney (Regional LDHR Leader for Europe) We were exploring all the events in the Book of Acts that would have had LDHR implications. The outworking of the time was three resources we thought might interest you:

• The first resource is a “speed dating” approach to case studies. The case studies are all taken from the first half of the Book of Acts. They each include a little (fictional) intro from Theophilus, a passage from Acts, and three questions to help you engage with the people issues the early church would have faced. (Ideas: use these as an interactive exercise with small groups – at a gathering, training, or for online meeting breakouts.)

• The second is a deeper dive into four Biblical case studies in Acts – one for each of the four LDHR quadrants. (Ideas: excellent for group or personal devotion times, team development, etc.)

• The third resource is an overview of all the People Management issues in the Book of Acts. There are 49 that we could find. What else would you have noted? The issues are tabulated in rough note form with comments and implications. (There are so many possible uses—let us know what you do in the comments!)

As much of the Book of Acts is descriptive rather than prescriptive, there is a lot of scope for engaging with it in a way that asks questions like, “How would I have done things differently?” knowing that even these spiritual giants might not have done everything perfectly!

Maybe you have a gathering of LDHR leaders coming up or want to work through some development resources with your team or others. Maybe you would like to explore some of these issues for your own thinking and development. Either way, we hope you enjoy them!