Paul & Henri Duncan
Paul and his wife Henri have been part of Riverside since 1986 and they have worked for Agapé UK in a number of different roles over the years. Henri works in the Agapé office in Birmingham as the UK HR director and Paul is part of the European Regional Leadership Team.
Over the past 25 years, Paul’s passion has been to develop leaders through coaching so they will leave a greater, lasting legacy in the lives of the people that they work with. He has had the privilege of coaching a number of National Directors in Western Europe. Here’s Paul’s story about how making a long-term investment in someone led to a legacy impact in God’s story.
I (Paul) would like to introduce Pedro Barbosa to you. I first met him at an emerging leaders programme in 2002. At this point I was the European High School ministry coordinator for Agapé, and he had just joined the High School ministry in Portugal; he was shy, he didn’t speak much English and was feeling intimidated by the environment he found himself in.
However I sensed there was something about him that meant I wanted to take the time to get to know him better and time has proved that intuition was right!
Over the past 20 years I have been investing in Pedro’s life and seen him grow from that uncertain young man to the National Director for Agape Portugal. Apart from monthly coaching calls, I have been to visit him and stayed in his home and he has stayed with us in Birmingham. I have taken him on ministry trips with me, I have encouraged him to take part in leadership development programmes that I have run and I have connected to him other people or resources that would be helpful for him and the ministry. Alongside this, Henri and I have become good friends with him and his wife Junia. Pedro would say one of the greatest pieces of advice I have given him is to take time to think, reflect and listen to God. As he has committed himself to this he has become an avid learner and more effective leader of people.
A couple years ago he wrote me a letter talking about the impact that I had had on his life. It is extremely humbling and a bit scary to receive a letter like this. One thing he said in his letter was “God chose you, to choose me and be my friend and my teacher and my discipler, you have been the keystone in the construction of my learning process. I learnt from you that we can be ourselves AND do great things.”
Under Pedro’s leadership Agape Portugal has grown to be one of the largest Christian mission organisations in Portugal and they now have thirty staff from eight different countries. There are seven different field ministries in three cities taking the Gospel into different parts of Portuguese society to help reach the whole country.
To find out more about Agapé UK or the work that Paul and Henri are doing you can contact them via: e-mail: paulduncan@agape.org.uk or henriduncan@agape.org.uk. You can also learn more about Agapé UK from their website: agape.org.uk