All such power regimes deteriorate and crumble in the end, yes, but almost all of them started with good, noble and even pure desires.

In fact we are still influenced by some of Hitler’s work today, such as the Volkswagon automobile.

@ Chris, I love the way you write and express yourself and I basically agree and think that you are quite spot on with your assessment of SL and UBF’s faulty flip flop inconsistent and unbiblical way of celebrating and taking credit for successes and for avoiding blame or blaming exUBFers for their abusive practices.

As much as you would like not to give any credit to SL for UBF’s “success” (or failure), it is undeniable that SL influenced and shaped what UBF is today in almost all of its good and bad aspects.

In my opinion, SL virtually single-handedly gave a generation of Korean Christians a deep sense of identity, calling, nationalistic pride and self-worth that is still quite evident in today’s missionaries, which sadly sometimes comes across to indigenous people all over the world as though they are superior untouchable human beings toward whom we must always be deferential as though before a king.

Hitler influenced Germans out of pure evil, while SL attempted to do it for the love of God as a good and evil man like all the rest of us Christians who are saved only by the grace of God.

I always wonder why credit for this is given to either Lee or just God, but not to those 1500 missionaries. Lee went to a rich country, never had a proper job and lived from the aid and money of UBF members. He was like the queen in a bee hive. Those who really went out into foreign countries (not only the US but also poor countries) in the face of financial insecurity, those who really went on the campuses and into the dormitories and made Bible studies, wore the lower level missionaries, not the leadership.

Also, in relation to the effort in terms of heart blood, money, time, energy, man- and woman-power, UBF mission is a big failure. Just imagine how many precious years of their life the UBF worker bees invested in UBF mission! I alone gave the best 10 years of my life, when I was still full of energy and healthy. Let’s be honest about that. UBF always ebbs between recognizing that it’s a failure (they would call this “manger ministry” or refer to Isa 6:13 to make it sound like that this failure is a sign of spirituality) and bragging about what a huge success it is and that it is the biggest movement of our times (which is then also seen as a proof of its spirituality). I wished they could make up their mind about that aspect.

Personally I don’t think that either failure or success is a proof of spirituality. There are movements and cults which grew much faster and larger than UBF. You cannot rate a leader through the devotedness and number of his followers. Quick growth and unusual amount of specific devoteness rather make me suspicious.

In the book of acts, you never see such numbers “we sent 1500 missionaries” mentioned, because nobody cared to build and organization under which this was done and which would get the credit for this. Neither did they have hierarchical leadership structures of apostles, where the top apostles like Peter or Paul would get credit for all the missionaries that were sent out. Quite to the contrary, Paul made it so clear in 1 Cor 3 that it was a community effort, that no leaders should be given credit, and no leaders should be followed except Jesus Christ. The dangerous thing about UBF is that everything good that happens in UBF (because people read the Bible and find God) is accredited to the organization and its leader, which therefore bloats infinitely with pride and uses it to control people. The only possibility to counter this development is to openly admit the horrible mistakes in the past, both concrete wrongdoings of the founder and top leadership, and the fundamental mistakes in practice and teaching. As long as UBF is still celebrating itself, they haven’t understood anything.

Another option would be to stop seeing UBF as a separated organization, but part of the larger body of Christ. UBF should stop considereing themselves as a fully-fledged church when they clearly are not, and intermingle with real churches instead. E.g. UBF could provide Bible study for students, but let people be members of ordinary churches and attend their Sunday worship services. Then this whole separation and elitism would stop, and the cult practices and teachings would stall, because they prosper only in closed groups and environments.

So no matter what our strengths are or what our leadership themes are, a leader needs to instill/invoke/give/build the qualities of trust, compassion, stability and hope in their followers. This doesn’t just apply to positions of authority, it applies to parents and children, and to friends and maybe even to strangers.

Perhaps Jesus is a special case. Being God, he seems to have embodied trust, compassion, stability and hope, as well as giving such things to His followers.

The 4 themes are: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking. In my observation, SLee and many ubfers are likely to be high in the first two themes. And no doubt, SLee had the strength called “woo”. For me, I am high in the last two themes, which means that me and Korean ubfers should actually have much to offer each other, if the ubf ideology could be removed from the context.

However, when the “executers” and “influencers” fail to use their strengths positively, these strengths degenerate into spiritual abuse in a religious setting. And when I fail to express my “relationship” and “strategic” strengths in a positive way, I am not able to move on and we end up with some of the blogging situations :)

This also explains to me some reasons why I was not happy as a “ubf director” and “pioneer”. I am not that kind of leader. I believe these things make knowing our self and our story very important in a religious setting. And because our strengths as a leader can be used negatively so easily, submitting to the Holy Spirit as our Director is vital to a healthy church.

By the way, your post from a while ago is very much related:

What kind of leader are you?

Instead of slamming different shaped people into a small round hole, ubf ought to take time to find out what kind of leader people are and listen to what followers want.

This is perhaps a digression, but Samuel Lee did demonstrate the excellent leadership traits you mentioned, which could account for UBF expanding to 80 nations and sending out 1,500 missionaries in 50 years. This is a Herculian feat that not many can accomplish. Of course, I am not just giving credit to him, but acknowledging God’s good mysterious sovereign purpose.

Personally, Lee did expresses clearly to me the four traits of trust, compassion, stability and hope, for which I still cherish and wish to emulate.

When he was alive and mentoring and discipling me, I “overlooked” his faults and weaknesses. But now I see the fruit of his weaknesses and brokenness in many UBF chapters, both big and small, which has been openly discussed on UBFriends, and hopefully making a slight difference by God’s grace.