Category Archives: Global Missions

Seven Fields Strategy For Gospel Movements

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Great Commission Movements

Seven Fields Strategy For Gospel Movements

Introduction: We shared a vision a few months ago for re-organizing our church planting movement strategy around a “Seven Fields” strategy instead of a “Four Fields” strategy. We have not actually changed any content by adding “three” fields to the original “Four Fields” strategy; instead, we simply made “Endvision” it’s own field, added “Leadership Empowerment” as a field, and added “Great Commission Movements” as a field. Here is the original Four Fields multiplication strategy:

Four FieldsThis Four Fields strategy has been used primarily in the 1040 window to train networks of indigenous leaders to sustain Great Commission movements in different harvest field contexts representing the most hard-soil places on the planet.

Here is the Seven Fields re-structuring of this multiplication strategy:

Seven Fields fullAs you can see, we have placed “Endvision” or “The Father’s Heart” in the center of the missions paradigm. You will see arrows pointing back and forth between the rest of the fields as they circle around “Endvision.” Endvision, as one of our trainers taught us, is the only strategic field that answers the question, “Why?” The other fields answer the questions, “Who,” “What,” and “How.”

The purpose of today’s blog post is not to provide a commentary on the content of each field, but simply the Scriptures and functions of each field. Down the road, we will add commentary blog posts to dive deeper into the biblical foundations and missiological structure of each field in its relationship to the complete Great Commission movements paradigm.

Field One: Endvision

Seven Fields 1

This field is entitled “Endvision” or “The Father’s Heart.”

  • Scriptures: Matt. 24:14, Acts 1:8, Matt. 28:18-20, Matt. 13:37-38, Mark 16:15, 1 Tim. 2:4
  • W.I.G.take Question: “What’s it going to take to reach [your harvest field]?”
  • Indigenous church planting pattern
  • Core values: 1) Accountability, 2) Obedience, 3) Multiplication
  • 4th generation multiplication

Field Two: Entry

Seven Fields 2

This field is entitled “Entry” or “Prayer-walking.”

  • Scriptures: Matt. 25:32, Mark 2:15, 1 Cor. 9:22
  • Identify your: 1) population segment, 2) people group, 3) planting team
  • Intercessory kingdom prayer and fasting; tearing down spiritual strongholds in prayer
  • List oikos (relationship network) and begin to pray for salvation
  • Community surveys
  • Friendship-building
  • Language/culture learning

Field Three: Evangelism

Seven Fields 3

This field is entitled “Evangelism” or “Persons/Homes of Peace.”

  • Scriptures: 2 Cor. 5:20, Mark 4:26, 1 Cor. 3:6, Rom. 10:14, Rom. 1:16
  • Fishing for people (of peace) [people who receive you AND the gospel]
  • Sowing gospel seed
  • Key qualities: 1) faith, 2) obedience, 3) boldness
  • M2E Evangelism strategy (“Mouth-To-Ear”)
  • Contextualize Bible storying for each H.O.P. and/or P.O.P.

Field Four: Equipping

Seven Fields 4

This field is entitled “Equipping” or “Discipleship Cultivation.”

  • Scriptures: 2 Tim. 2:2, 1 Peter 2:2, Heb. 5:14, Matt. 28:19
  • Growing mature followers of Jesus
  • Short-term discipleship plan: critical DNA lessons, most important training first! (10 weeks)
  • Long-term discipleship plan: overview of Bible, apologetics, spiritual warfare, persecution/suffering. (1-3 years)
  • 3/3 T4T training process: 1) Heart, 2) Head, 3) Hands
  • Spiritual C.P.R.: 1) Confess sin, 2) Plant God’s Word, 3) Reach the lost
  • DBS training (Discovery Bible Study): Model to Assist within one week

Field Five: Encouraging

Seven Fields 5

This field is entitled “Encouraging” or “Church Planting/Formation.”

  • Scriptures: Acts 2:42-47, Eph. 4:2-6, Heb. 10:22-25, Col. 1:18
  • Gathering disciples in local churches
  • Every church focus: 1) healthy growth, 2) generational reproduction
  • No money, property, or clergy
  • Three-selfs: 1) Governing, 2) Sustaining, 3) Multiplying
  • Five NT church functions: 1) Worship, 2) Fellowship, 3) Discipleship, 4) Ministry/Missions, 5) Leadership Development
  • Indigenous church formation

Field Six: Empowering

Seven Fields 6

This field is entitled “Empowering” or “Leadership Training.”

  • Scriptures: Mark 6:34, Mark 4:20, 2 Tim. 2:2, 1 Peter 2:9, John 16:7-8
  • Every disciple a leader!
  • Spiritual gift strength identification and empowerment
  • Ephesians 4 A.P.E.S.T. leader roles mobilized in harvest field mission teams
  • Leader training process: 1) Identify, 2) Equip, 3) Empower, 4) Release
  • Time: focus on training leaders who consistently 1) bear fruit and 2) fish for people

Field Seven: Exponential Multiplication

Seven Fields 7

This field is entitled “Exponential Multiplication” or “Great Commission movements.”

  • Scriptures: Luke 24:47, Acts 4:13, 1 Cor. 9:19-23, Col. 1:9-12, 2 Cor. 4:7-12, Mark 1:15
  • CPMM/DMM process (Church Planting Movement Multiplication/Disciple-Making Movement)
  • S.O.I.L.S. movement stages: 1) Spirit, 2) Outsiders, 3) Insiders, 4) Leaders, 5) Segments
  • Catalytic movements DNA: 1) White-hot faith, 2) Commitment to the cause, 3) Contagious relationships, 4) Rapid mobilization, 5) Adaptive methods
  • Strategic affinity mobilization and accountability

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We hope you enjoyed this blog post on the prototype sketch of one of our next info graphic projects. Our hope is to work with our team of graphic designers to add color and pictures to represent the content of these Seven Fields and publish the info graphic on the back page of the next edition of the Harvest Field Handbook.

Please pray through the changes we are implementing to our Nashville harvest field GC strategy, and feel free to leave a comment with any encouragement, advice, concerns, or clarifications.

For more information on our church network or resources, please send us an email: woodbine4thenations@gmail.com.

Barriers To North American Missions

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North American Missions

Barriers To North American Missions

Greetings! We want to share with you a few things that we are learning in Nashville that will hopefully speak into what you’re experience in other parts of the world and may help you in your cultivating an effective, comprehensive strategy for completing the Great Commission task in your context.

North American Context Barriers:

  1. A lack of understanding the priesthood of all believers
  2. A lack of modeling prayer walking and evangelism by experienced church leaders
  3. A lack of focus on multiplying generations of new believers
  4. A lack of understanding spiritual gift and leadership style strength sets

1) A lack of understanding the priesthood of all believers

In the last five years of casting vision and attempting to see break through in indigenous church planting, we see a lack of understanding both with Anglo Christians and immigrants in the community of the kingdom priesthood. We have developed a Bible story set for this to begin piloting in our cell groups, neighborhood groups, house churches, and discovery Bible studies: Seven Core Values Of The Disciples Priesthood

We desperately need especially our church senior pastors and staff to continually cast vision for and give permission for lay leaders to rise up as kingdom priests. It feels like a real threat to the financial and career stability of paid church staff to unleash laity for priesthood leadership, but it’s undeniably biblical and absolutely essential in order to finish the Great Commission task instead of doing some good ministry and planting a few churches.

There is a church planter from Willow Creek moving to Nashville who is beloved by many Millennial Christians. His name is Darren Whitehead. His vision is planting 20 churches in 20 years. 500 people per church. Based on his vision, and if God gives him the #’s he’s looking for, that’s only 10,000 people reached by his church plants in 20 years. Meanwhile, we have a harvest field of 1.2+ million unchurched in Nashville. Our visions are tiny and our strategy is not all-encompassing. Darren has a good heart, but our vision must be birthed from the Bible rather than some random number we come up with that looks good on paper.

2) A lack of modeling prayer walking and evangelism by experienced church leaders

Most leaders I know in the church do all of their teaching and training in church facilities. This focus on teaching/training in modern day synagogues MUST shift immediately to the harvest fields. We have to have church leaders and staff training everyone willing to be trained in community prayer walking and harvest field evangelism. I’m finding that most church leaders don’t do this because they themselves don’t have a personal evangelistic lifestyle.

This fact is due mostly to two issues:

1) They never had anyone to model evangelism for them, so they don’t know how to do it and aren’t personally experienced in it.

2) Their churches expect them to lead inside their facility, on their ministry campus, and from behind the pulpit rather than in the harvest fields.

These expectations must shift soon if we are going to impact lostness. Rejuvenate conference really backed this up for me personally, but just because world famous speakers say the shift must happen does not mean it actually will until some church leaders actually begin taking men, women, and teenagers out into lost communities prayer walking and house church planting.

3) A lack of focus on multiplying generations of new believers.

Most of our functional church strategy is focused on assimilating people in local communities into the life of existing church campuses. This should not be. I personally evaluate our church’s health by how our community groups reproduce themselves, and right now, most of our house churches and cell groups are sick. They gather for Bible study and worship without any evangelistic impact in their local neighborhoods.

Let’s at least admit it: most Christians are scared to death of lost people and are ashamed of verbally declaring the gospel to the lost. True evangelists are rare, but they’re out there. We have to find ways on a consistent basis to get our church folk out of church campus ministry AND out of internally-focused house church ministry. Prayer walking is always the start. Ask Curtis Sergeant.

Once we begin planting groups and house churches in the community, Satan’s first attack is to distract every group to become immediately inward focused rather than outward focused. A house church is no different than a mega church unless their focus and heartbeat is salvation intercession and prayer walking with a strategy for penetrating local lostness.

As groups are planted, indigenous leaders must be identified, equipped, and given leadership roles as soon as possible. Model, Assist, Watch, Leave must be the process, and moving to assisting must be done rapidly.

Every new group should try to focus on reaching 5 lost people for Christ and baptizing them, and every group should try to reproduce itself into a strategic area of the city every year.

4) A lack of understanding spiritual gift and leadership style strengths

In North America, we keep trying to cast vision for prayer walking and church planting with shepherds. Shepherds and teachers are designed by God to work with and lead existing Christians in the body. So, we keep setting our churches up to fail. We keep trying to get our administrators and mercy and helps gifted folk to do apostolic work and that approach will rarely work.

T4T is a great strategy; however, it’s not the whole sha-bang. T4T is only going to work in North America if we can identify our apostolic-gifted lay people in each church and group. For every Bible study, Sunday school class, and cell group we start, we have to identify and equip appropriately the shepherds and apostles.

The shepherds are going to care for the flock. They aren’t going to prayer walk and they aren’t going to share the gospel verbally with people at first. Some people with more experience will probably disagree with me on that, but in my five years of ministry experience, this is what I have seen to be true across the board in every church I’ve been on staff.

The apostle, prophet, evangelists are the only ones who are going to hit the streets of our businesses, neighborhoods, and communities proclaiming the gospel verbally, and we’ve got to find them, equip them, and expect them only to do these things because, though all followers of Jesus have the Great Commission task on our hearts, it is the A.P.E.s who are the ones designed by God to do this work of the evangelist.

I know that Jesus told ALL of his disciples to go make disciple makers in Matthew 28; however, in North America, we have a ton of baggage in the “Come and See” strategy department.

To get things up and running in a city to reach a city, you’ve got to let the shepherds shepherd the existing kingdom of God, but you’ve got to identify, equip, and unleash the apostles to finish the Great Commission task in the city. These apostles need their feet washed, they need to be anointed with oil, they need to receive the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands by elders, and they need to be sent out to start new groups across the city.

As they are sent out, shepherds need to be prepared to minister to the apostles, and to shepherd the new believers reached by the apostles. You’ve got to have a Barnabas for every Paul. And every Paul has to have a Timothy, because we have to raise up leaders as quickly as we raise up groups, or our groups will die. John Maxwell says everything rises and falls on leadership, and that’s why leadership development is at the heart of the four fields paradigm in Mark 4.

Our greatest weakness in Nashville is that we don’t identify and develop next generation leaders effectively. We reach a lot of lost people with our trained “mother church” or “generation 0″ leaders, but we lose a lot of new believers, and we haven’t seen a dime of 2nd generation break through or much obedience in believer’s baptism.

This work of multi-generational church planting is difficult work, but it’s the greatest threat to Satan’s plan for Birmingham and Nashville and beyond, and we are developing a lot of simple, practitioner-based resources for a North American context to help break through these barriers to effectively penetrating the vast lostness of our cities.

I hope this helps rather than hinders, and please measure everything I have said with Scripture. Our handbook for training missionaries is both in blog form as well as a smart device app, all free on our blog.

We love our faithful blog readers and pray that God blesses you and grants you the depths of his wisdom as a blessing for your faithfulness and obedience to him!

- James Harvey, CCW Associate Pastor

Rough Draft Church DNA Infographic

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Rough Draft Church DNA Infographic

Here are some screenshots of our latest infographic on church multiplication D.N.A.

The purpose of this infographic is to train church planters and missionaries in simple, effective church multiplication principles from God’s Word.

Church DNA

Disciple Making DNA5 Church FunctionsChurch Action Tree

Church Core Values RootsChurch DNA Tree——-

Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

CPMM Series #6: Kingdom Prayer

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Kingdom PrayerOur series on church planting movement multiplication continues with this article on Kingdom-Centered Prayer. God is not interested in small prayer. God wants serious prayer and series prayer warriors. Prayer is work; and Ephesians 2:10 says that we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which the Father has prepared for us to do. If you study the pattern of how the Holy Spirit births church planting movements, the first activity of CPM-seekers is persistent, kingdom-centered intercessory prayer and fasting.

Matthew 6:9-10 “Our Father in heaven, may your holy name be honored. May your Kingdom come, and may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (GNB)

Kingdom-Centered Prayer

People typically think prayer is a means to get their personal needs met.

However, prayer is actually a means to worship, know, and be transformed by God.

If we expect answers from God, we must devote time and energy to what Andrew Murray termed the “School of Prayer.”

Biblically and historically, the one non-negotiable, universal ingredient in times of spiritual renewal was communal, consistent, and intentional prayer centered on the kingdom of God.

What are the essential elements of Kingdom-Centered Prayer?

1) Kingdom-centered prayer places the focus on God’s presence and kingdom.

Jack Miller explained the difference between “maintenance” and “frontline” prayer meetings.

A) Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical, and totally focused on physical needs inside the church.

B) Frontline prayer has three basic traits:

  • A request for grace to confess sins and humble ourselves
  • A compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church
  • A yearning to know God, to see his face, to see his glory.

One of the best ways to see kingdom-centered prayer in action is to study prayers for revival in the Bible. Consider Exodus 33, Nehemiah 1, and Acts 4. In each case, we clearly see the three basic traits of Frontline prayer. In Acts 4, the disciples lives had been threatened; however, their specific prayer request was for continued boldness to continue preaching the gospel rather than protection for themselves and their families!

2) Kingdom-centered prayer is bold and specific.

The A.C.T.S. model has always been a helpful guide for praying with the right motives from the right heart.

A: Adoration

Everyone has heard someone else pray without taking time to worship God for who he is. For this reason, kingdom-centered prayer can only begin with a focus on the God whose kingdom we are desiring to come to our community and social networks.

C: Confession

If we begin prayer with a focus on God’s character and role in our lives, then the next step is to confess our sins. In Isaiah 6, the prophet Isaiah has a vision of heaven, and for the first time, he experiences the radical nature of God’s holiness. Pastor David Platt teaches that, at this moment, his reaction is not “Wow, God is so great!” but “Woe to me! I am ruined! I am a sinner!”

We cannot remove ourselves from the essential nature of daily sin confession before the perfect King of kings. In James 5:16, we see why regular sin confession is such a vital element in the process of kingdom-centered prayer, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

So, the big question for those who desire to see God’s kingdom come in their heart, their family, and their community is: Are you willing to expose your personal sin to the light of God’s healing touch? Are you willing to enter into an accountability covenant with some brothers or sisters in Christ so that you may be healed. The power of God’s kingdom comes arrives after healing, not before.

T: Thanksgiving

After focusing on God and worshipping him for his mighty works, our natural response is to accurately see our weakness and sin. The next step is to humble ourselves, seek his face, and turn from our wicked ways. Once we have confessed sin and asked God to heal us, the next step is to thank him for revealing sin and filling the void with a flood of his endless grace!

As the song goes, “When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed, when you are discouraged thinking all is lost, count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”

So often, we enter into prayer with a selfish mentality and that is why our prayers are ineffective. We are praying with the self rather than asking God to overcome the self so that we can be obedient to God’s calling on our lives.

Jesus taught us to pray this way in Matthew 6:9-10 “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done one earth as it is in heaven.” Built into kingdom-centered prayer is a heart for God’s will to be done rather than ours. How many times have you and I prayed for our will to be done instead?

S: Supplication

Only after we have worshipped God, confessed our sin, and counted our many blessings will we be capable of asking God for anything kingdom-centered. Since Jesus taught us to pray for his kingdom to come in and through our lives before we pray for anything else, we can see why this process is so critical to maintaining a God-centered prayer life.

The pay off for this kind of devotion to God and dedication to seeing his will accomplished in and through our prayers is incredible joy in knowing we have freely surrendered to God for the purpose of unleashing the Holy Spirit’s power to change our hearts and transform the lives of those we love and want to see reconciled to him.

We can see this process at work in Exodus 33. Israel has sinned greatly as a nation before Yahweh in the story of the Golden Calf. God is ready to kill all the people he delivered out of Egypt and start over with Moses as the neo-Abraham. But Moses stands in the gap between the sinful people and their perfect God.

  1. Step One: All the people have to strip off their idols, burn them with fire, and drink the ashes. (32:20)
  2. Step Two: Moses implores God to have mercy on the sinful people. (32:30-32)
  3. Step Three: Moses begs God to have favor on him and the people. (33:12-13)
  4. Step Four: Moses asks God to reveal himself to the people so that the nations will know who God is and who his people are. (33:15-16)
  5. Step Five: God grants Moses’ requests because he prayed with a kingdom-centered heart. (33:17-19)

Spiritual lesson: When we pray with a kingdom-centered heart, we obey Jesus’ teaching on how to pray. We demonstrate to God a clear understanding that this life is about him and his will and not about us. We prove that the source of our trust is in him and his provision rather than in our self-sufficiency and independence.

3) Kingdom-centered prayer is prevailing and corporate

Prayer should be consistent and constant. Prayer is not designed to be sporadic and brief. Why?

Sporadic and brief prayers reveal a lack of dependence on God as well as a lack of desire to walk with his Spirit.

We must pray without ceasing, pray with conviction and desperation, and only then will we find that the very process of kindom-centered prayer is enabling God’s kingdom to come according to the way God has revealed it operates: to have our hard hearts melted, to tear down spiritual strongholds of sin, and to have the glory of God break through and multiply in and through us to a world that needs to meet and embrace the King.

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Leave a comment and let us know what prayer/fasting resources are useful in your ministry.

Click here to read more about church planting movements

What Is T4T?

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Reach The World!

What Is T4T?

T4T is an missional strategy acronym that stands for “Training For Trainers.”

A T4T training session is a one-hour gathering of trained trainers training trainers.

3 T4T Core Values:
1) Obedience
2) Accountability
3) Multiplication

4 T4T meeting basics:
1) Begin with Accountability: Who did you share with last week? What happened?
2) Tell the new Bible story twice.
3) Small groups of two. Practice telling the new Bible story (2x).
4) Map relationship network. Who will you share with this week? Pray for faith, obedience, and boldness.

The biblical basis for this strategy is 2 Timothy 2:2. The apostle Paul instructs his disciple Timothy in how to multiply generations of new leaders for the Great Commission task, “Pass on what you heard from me to reliable leaders who are competent to teach others.” (MSG) In this verse, we can see four generations of teachers: 1) Paul, 2) Timothy, 3) Timothy’s disciples, 4) the disciples of Timothy’s disciples.

If we examine the Great Commission command in Matthew 28:18-20, we see that, in order to effectively make a mature disciple, we must equip every follower of Christ to make disciple makers, and this focus on training trainers is the DNA of T4T.

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Click to check out our T4T web app!

How are you using the biblical T4T leadership training pattern to reach your community?

RESOURCE: Free Ebook Be The Church

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RESOURCE: Free E-Book Be The Church

Thank you Caesar Kalinowski and Seth McBee at Verge Network for this great new vision-casting missional community resource!

Sometimes the simplest things can get lost in tradition or become over complicated due to confusion or lack of practice. Sometimes we are just too smart for our own good. The reality of who we are as Christians, the Church and as disciples, while having historical and eternal importance, has become somewhat muddled in our modern understanding and dialogue.

As the conversation around being “missional” has come front and center within certain church circles in recent years, it seems that many of us struggle to grasp and/or explain the basics to others. This short book of simple pictures and conversations is meant to offer a starting point–a way to get, or keep, the dialogue going around some of the key issues surrounding who we are as the Church and what our mission really is.

Drawing from Seth McBee’s Napkin Theology, you can use this free resource to understand, explain and illustrate the simplicity of discipleship and mission.

Click here to download the E-Book!

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For more information on disciple making and church planting tools, visit our website!

Leave a comment and let us know what tools you use for casting vision for missional communities.

Dreams And Visions

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Dreams & Visions

Dreams And Visions

A Great Commission Story by a North American Missionary

Moses saw the back of God Almighty and was changed. Isaiah saw the LORD seated on his throne and was changed. Paul saw the risen Christ and was changed.

An encounter with God has the power to transform a soul in an instant. We all hear stories about how God reveals himself to Muslims through visions and dreams of Jesus. Do we really understand the significance of what it means for our missions work?

Recently the LORD told me that I needed to start asking Muslims that I meet if they’ve had dreams about Jesus. Sometimes the topic comes up naturally; other times I’ve had to work up the courage and just ask, even if it’s awkward and they think I’m strange. A great way to introduce the topic is to ask if they believe God speaks to us through dreams. Any good Muslim will say “yes,” and that opens the door to ask if they’ve ever met Jesus in their dreams.

The other day I was prayer walking with my friend and we met two Kurdish men in an international market. After chatting for a while I asked one of them if he’d ever had a dream about Jesus. He laughed and said he never dreamed about anything. I could have left it there but I felt God pressing me to go deeper. I asked him if he wanted to meet Jesus. He said he loved Jesus very much but Jesus would never come to him in a dream because he was not good enough, worthy enough. I told him it was true that he wasn’t worthy, but that Jesus loved him anyway and wanted to take away his sins.

I asked him, “If Jesus came to you in a dream and told you He was the only way to heaven, would you follow him?” He hesitated, then countered with, “If Mohammed came to you in a dream, would you follow him?” I told him Mohammad wouldn’t come to me because he wasn’t alive anymore, but Jesus is alive and wanted to meet with him. “If Jesus comes to me in a dream,” he said, “then we could talk again about this.” The other Kurd who was with him eagerly admitted he wanted to meet Jesus, so my friend and I prayed for them, and we continue to pray. Every week we go back to that market to ask about them, to see if they’ve had a dream about Jesus.

We have to believe that God is already working if we are to have the faith to ask these kinds of questions. We have no idea what God is doing in the secret places, but unless we ask with expectation, we may never know and never understand the depths of his love for these people and his ability to transform them as they see Jesus face to face.

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Leave a comment to encourage this missionary, and we’ll make sure they get it.

What effective resources are you using currently to see salvation fruit in your local Muslim community?

Disciple Making Movements

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Disciple Making Movements

Disciple Multiplication Movements

Guest Blogger: Curtis Sergeant, www.metacamp.org. This blog post comes from the DMM training notes of a breakout session at the 2013 Rejuvenate Conference.

In the church, we hear so much about the Great Commission, but the great disconnect with all disciples in churches is that most disciples don’t view the Great Commission command as their personal responsibility of obedience to the One who has all authority.

What is built into the DNA of effective discipleship?

  1. Obedience
  2. Accountability
  3. Multiplication

A) Discipleship

“Disciple” means “follower.” God is not asking us to be the Christ. There is only one Jesus Christ; therefore, being a disciple means making disciples in a way that they learn to follow Jesus, not try to be like us.

So, every follower of Christ, no matter their lack of experience of maturity, are experts in discipleship compared to the lost. (2 Timothy 2:2)

B) All Believers Participate

The Marines have a saying, “Every Marine a Rifleman.” This concept carries with it the DNA that no matter your assignment in the Marine Corps, every one must be able to defend themselves.

All disciples of Jesus should have in their DNA Jesus’ expectation that they make disciples.

C) Self-feeding

A key element to a movement is that disciples are characterized by their ability to feed themselves. They take responsibility for their own spiritual growth.

Most churches in the West are defined as a place where we go to get spiritually fed. But in the New Testament, each disciple is responsible to go directly and intentionally to Jesus for their spiritual nourishment, not the church.

Qualifications of being an effective self-feeder

  1. Able to read, interpret, and apply Scripture
  2. Prayer
  3. Participation in the body of Christ – spiritual gifts, leadership styles
  4. Persecution & Suffering

Helpful prayer acrostic for praying for God’s blessing with people

  • B – Body
  • L – Labor/Work
  • E – Economics
  • S – Social
  • S – Spiritual

This prayer acrostic is very effective in prayer walking. “Bless” people you pray for and see how God uses your prayers to open the hearts and lives of people you encounter during your prayer walks.

In China, the believers refer to prison as seminary.

In baptisms in other countries, here is the question set leaders ask at someone’s baptism:

  1. Are you ready and willing at any time to suffer for Jesus?
  2. Are you ready and willing  at any time to go to prison for Jesus?
  3. Are you ready and willing at any time to escape from prison for Jesus?
  4. Are you ready and willing at any time to die for Jesus?

D) Training

  • Whom: new converts and those willing to be faithful and obedient
  • When: immediately; just-in-time
  • How: small group; interactive; dual accountability; Scripture; role-play
  • What: self-feeding; commands of Christ; immediate obedience

“Delayed obedience is disobedience.” – Curtis Sergeant

The more that we obey God, the more we are able to hear the LORD the next time that he speaks and reveals himself. Besides, God does not desire lip-service. He desires obedience!

James 2:26, “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” (HCSB)

The more that God reveals himself regularly, the more intimacy we have with him.

It’s not loving for me to allow someone to hear from God and not obey it and pass it on to others. That’s the worst thing that can happen. Spiritually, we are dead unless we are conduits for God’s revelation and truth through us to others.

New Believer Checklist

As soon as someone gets saved, we need to explain to them three important blessings God wants to give his children:

  1. Blessing: to lead others to become children of God
  2. Greater Blessing: to lead others to form spiritual communities of God’s children
  3. Greatest Blessing: to train/equip others how to form spiritual communities of God’s children

The core DNA of discipleship

  1. What do I learn from this Bible story?
  2. How do I share this story with this week?

When disciples meet together for accountability, we check for two things:

  1. Did you apply last week’s story to your life?
  2. Did you share with the people you committed to share with last week?

Small Group Structures:

P.O.U.C.H. Churches

  • P: Participative
  • O: Obedience
  • U: Unpaid
  • C: Cell Groups
  • H: Houses

Read David Garrison’s Blog Post on POUCH Churches

C.H.A.T. (IMB version of Neil Cole’s LTGs. Groups of 2 or 3, gender specific, reading 25 – 30 chapters of Scripture per week, and meeting for accountability)

  • C: Check your progress
  • H: Hear the Word
  • A: Act on it
  • T: Tell others

Training Cycle: M.A.W.L. (Can be done in one day/training session)

  1. Model
  2. Assist
  3. Watch
  4. Leave

It’s the same plan as learning to ride a bicycle. People cannot learn to do ministry until they sit in the seat and take hold of the handle bars and begin pedaling.

Paul’s pattern in planting churches was an average of six months or less per church network in the Model and Assist stages, and then he would spend years even decades in the Watch stage, and then eventually he would leave and tell them he would not return and charge them to be obedient to what he trained them to do.

In a disciple making movement, every disciple should be involved in two churches:

  1. Your primary spiritual community
  2. The new church that you are personally investing in the Training Cycle

What to do with new believers?

  • In the West, we incorporate them into existing churches
  • The best practice is to start new churches

When we continually gather believers into larger and larger groups led by super-mature Christian leaders who almost no one can effectively emulate, then we have lost the DNA of multiplication.

The New Testament way is to plant new churches every time people come to Christ so that they can do ministry themselves and own the Great Commission.

Reproduction Rate Matters!

  • In the West – Time is money
  • In the Kingdom of God – Time is souls

Currently in our generation, more than one person dies every second apart from Christ, and God is robbed of his glory. That’s the pace of multiplication. That’s the reason why a disciple making multiplication strategy is so essential!

It’s the example of Elephants vs. Rabbits in terms of multiplication. Elephants have one baby in a year to 18 months, and it takes many years for the single elephant baby to grow into sexual reproduction maturation so that it can reproduce. Rabbits reproduce every six months, and every baby rabbit achieves sexual reproduction maturation in four months! We need to build into the DNA of every local church around the world the DNA of disciple making multiplication strategy if we are going to successfully complete the Great Commission task in our generation.

If we will follow these disciple making multiplication principles by putting them into practice, we can reach the whole world in one generation, around 10 years.

We have a false assumption that things done quickly retain less quality.

Furthermore, we are pursuing simultaneous rather than sequential church planting qualities: One process. Vision casting, Pre-evangelism, evangelism, discipleship, church planting, leadership development, and gospel movement cultivation can all happen at the same time during the same process if we focus our energy and time on putting into practice these disciple making best practices.

  • All of the seven fields can happen at the same time when birthed and bathed in prayer
  • Discipleship multiplication DNA is built into the pre-evangelism process, so that you’re viewing everyone as a potential trainer of trainers (The Greatest Blessing from the BLESS prayer walking strategy)

The resources are in the harvest field! Let’s not forget that the laborers we are praying for are most likely already in the harvest fields waiting to be told the gospel and trained to be trainers. Stop building your core teams and raising a massive budget and preparing for the launch of an organization! Look up and see that the harvest fields are ready for the harvest, and let’s go multiply trained disciple makers!

——-

Much thanks to Curtis Sergeant and his love for and commitment to the LORD.

Leave a comment and let us know what you think about this training.

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Rejuvenate Conference
Day Two Morning Session
Dr. Al Henson
Compassionate Hope Foundation

Topic: The Glory of God

What is at stake?

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” (John 20:21 ESV)

God is after his glory going forth in the world through rescuing those in darkness and delivering them into the light, into his kingdom, into his glory, and then we see God’s strategy for accomplishing this vision, and it’s through us, his church! Wow!

1) The Father sent the Son, and his faithfulness was characterized by his obedience.

2) Jesus sends his church, and he is measuring our faithfulness and devotion by our obedience.

So, what’s at stake is the glory of God among those who do not know him and have not experienced his love. So the next question is, are we going and obeying? Are we being the instruments of redemption that God has redeemed us to be? He desires no less commitment and obedience from us than he did from his Son.

What’s at stake is the glory of God.

Consider the ramifications of your “No.” What does it mean to say “no” to God? And we need to remember that any response to God other than “yes” is “no.” People will say, I didn’t say “yes” to God, but I didn’t say “no” either. But we don’t have that luxury when it comes to the LORD. Our only options are “yes” or “no.”

Consider the potential ramifications of your “yes.” Imagine if God’s people simply surrendered fully to the call and commands of the LORD as a pattern of our lifestyle, and the answer we always gave to the voice of God is “yes.”

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27 ESV)

What does the word “glory” in the context of Colossians 1?

1) Essence

The idea of “glory” is “essence.” So the glory of God is the presence, the essence, the nature, and the character of God. The perfect love, wisdom, and purity of God is a part of his essence, and that is God’s glory.

We often associate our response in repentance and faith to an encounter with the glory, the essence, of God. Encountering the glory of God means to encounter the person of God, and when you look at Scripture, whether it’s Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, or Daniel, when encountering God’s glory, they became mute or incapacitate physically at the awesome magnitude of who he is.

Everyone of us are moving in relationship to our choices and decisions. What we do in our lives ought to reflect the glory of God, because we are the bearers of Immanuel, which means “God with us.” We are now the temple of God, the priesthood of God, and when we go forth, we go forth bearing the name, the authority, the presence, and the power of the Almighty God. This truth helps us understand our role in the lives of those who have not encountered the glory of God: helping them understand and experience the glory of God.

What is our greatest need? The greatest need of believers is to have the revelation of God revealed to those who are not believers.

And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 16:17 ESV)

When Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus speaks clearly to him that God’s glory was revealed to him by his Spirit.

That’s why doing Bible studies is not enough. It’s not enough to read and study the Bible and learn knowledge, because the greatest need is not knowledge but obedience to the revealed will of the Father through his Word.

When the glory of God is revealed among us, and we begin to submit to his revelation and obey what he reveals about his will, and more people begin to experience personal revelation and encounter the glory of God, then a movement birthed in the power of God among his people makes it easy for his people to say “yes.”

The glory of God is the only power that can melt away our fears, our excuses, our sin, and our disobedience. And when we see churches fighting and dividing, we can understand that they have not encountered the revealed glory of God.

2) Essence manifestly expressed

From the prophets bearing the Spirit of God, to the mountain top cloud where Moses saw the face of God, to the tabernacle that bore the presence of God, to the temple Solomon built where the glory of God dwelt, we see so many examples in the Old Testament where God’s plan from the beginning was to manifest expressly the essence, the glory, of God.

Now in Jesus, we see that the image of the invisible God, is in Jesus, and when Jesus spoke and healed, talked and walked, we were encountering the essence of God manifestly expressed.

Now in the church, the body of Christ, the children of God, we now go and show the glory of God to the nations.

Following John 20:21 we read:

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 20:22, 23 ESV)

So how is Jesus able to breathe on his disciples and give them the essence of God? Because God’s will has always been to dwell with his people and shine his glory through his creation, which is why Paul is able to say:

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:20 ESV)

So our role as the church is to bear the glory of God and manifestly express his glory to those who have never received his revelation and who have never encountered his glory, and that is what is at stake.

God’s hope is our hope: Christ in me, Christ in you, and Christ in us.

The pay off of encountering God’s glory is hope, because apart from the glory of God we have no hope. And at the beginning of brokenness of the world came immediately hope through the promise of the coming Messiah. And now the Messiah has come, and he has given his hope to his church, and now our task, because of what is at stake, is to run into the places and people of darkness and bear the light and revelation of God’s glory.

Glory expressed in Suffering

God said “yes” to fallen humanity who had no hope. God said “yes” to Satan who wanted to destroy the Son. God understands suffering, and his glory is birthed in the fires of suffering and death. And he calls us to bear his glory through the fires of suffering, because once people encounter, receive, and bear the glory of God, the the love and hope of God is complete because it began when God brought his glory to his fallen humanity, and now through Christ, fallen humanity now receives and multiplies the glory of God back to him as an offering of sacrificial worship.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. (John 13:34 ESV)

Jesus tells us in his new commandment to base the love we have for one another and the nations on the type of love that he demonstrated to us. So, what kind of love did God demonstrate?

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8 ESV)

The demonstration of the glory of God in the church manifested expressly through the sacrificial love of the church to those whom God sent his Son to save is when we die and live as bearers of God’s glory to our local communities.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1 ESV)

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Peter 2:9, 12 ESV)

What’s at stake? The glory of God seen, manifested, and proclaimed one day by those who do not know the LORD yet.

The glory of God manifested through his Son, then through his church, then through the pagans that glorify his name because they encounter him personally is complete when the church manifests the glory of God. When we don’t proclaim the glory of God and say “yes” to the call and commands of the LORD, we are preventing the glory of God from going forth into the places and people among whom God desires to shine forth his glory. But he is waiting for his church to say “yes.”

Conclusion: Is it worth it?

We can ask this question and debate it all day long, but this question is the wrong question. The right question to ask is, “Is He worthy?” And the answer to this question will always be, “Yes.”

When discerning the will and the calling of the LORD, we tend to be so focused on the small issues: what I must give up, what I must do without, what comforts I must surrender, what struggles I might face. But when we remember the glory of God and we allow his glory to fill us to overflowing, we will stop asking the wrong questions, and simply say “yes” to the power of God manifestly expressed through the glory of God.

We do not have a difficult choice once we understand the glory of God demonstrated through the love of Christ for us.

May you look and see what is at stake and be broken to the depths of who you are. May you encounter the glory of God in your heart and be overwhelmed by the awesome love of our Savior King. And may you ask the right question, “Is He worthy?” And when you know the answer, may you humble yourself and pray and seek his face, may you turn from your wicked ways, and turn to him, trust him, surrender to him, and be free to say “yes” from a heart broken and restored with the hope of God ready to bear the glory of God in the suffering that faces those who obey until every people group in the world encounters the glory of God and joins us as, together, we all face our God and say, “Yes!”

2013 Rejuvenate Conference: John Perkins

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Rejuvenate Conference
Evening Session 1

Keynote Speaker: John Perkins
Revelation 2:1-7

Jeremiah 29:7 – But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:7 ESV)

The church today is, in many ways, like the church in America; it has done so much but lost its first love.

The gospel coming forth in the world manifests itself through crossing all barriers of injustice and brokenness, of sin and selfishness, and of culture and language and breaks through by shining the love of Christ.

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. (Revelation 2:4 ESV)

The church is primarily called to be a community of love that ministers to its neighborhood. We are to be salt and light locally. This is where we will see movements birthed.

God uses individuals to make initiatives, but he works his power through Christians in community with one another, ministering first to each other, and then being salt and light to the local community.

We have to have impact. It’s not enough to have a few communities doing this; it must be a movement globally; planting people all across the nations, reaching across racial and language and cultural barriers with authority and power.

What’s holding us back? We’re afraid that we cannot preach the gospel with relevance. But we forget the call of the gospel is to love God and love people well. This is the Greatest Command of Jesus! Love is what breaks through. Love is what takes us to the streets with a message of reconciliation, which is what’s missing so much, especially the joy that Christians have to go and make disciples.

We have turned the church into an individualistic and selfish group. We are focused on individual therapy and prosperity. But God has called us to go forth with peace and joy into a community that desperately needs to see what real love looks like.

Sin is where we turn away from God and fall into a twisted love with ourselves. We turn away, not as victims, but as rebels against God’s holiness and Lordship.

Process of Transformation:
1) Genuine Love
2) Powerful Impact

No Impact without Love

Our entire society is based around gradual individual significance: steps of education through seasons of maturity lead us to a career where we individually contribute something to society. But God’s design has always been for a Christian church community to bless and reach the lost in their local harvest field.

We keep trying to get into neighborhoods with an agenda to change our neighborhoods, when the people in each neighborhood are your best resource for not only knowing what the real issues are in the neighborhoods but also the best way to solve them. Our role as community-focused church networks are not to come in and solve problems, but to go into a community, plant our lives there, get to know the people, love them, learn from them, and facilitate the power of the gospel being birthed in their hearts and empowering them to see radical and lasting change transform that community for the glory of God, and then see that transformation reproduce and spread to other communities, nations, and peoples.

God is an investor, and he’s looking for good stewards who will be faithful with the little things so that he can give us more. The resources we have, the life we have, and the times we have all belong to God, and it’s always an issue of stewardship. Are we good stewards of what we have, or are we trying to take the place of God like the slave who received the resources from the Master and buried the resources in the ground until he returned?

We need to come back to the basics, because it’s in the basics that we discover again the power of God’s love, and then we are able to repent, reconcile, restore, and remember our first love! The church is always trying to move past the basics, but the gospel has always been simple and basic, so to move beyond the basics is to move beyond the gospel!

The Power of the Gospel in Romans 1

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. (Romans 1:8 ESV)

Basic Principle: When we proclaim the gospel verbally, people get saved. Period.

Basic Principle: When people get saved because of the power of the gospel, word spreads and people hear about the faithfulness of God.

So here is the step-by-step pattern for a New Testament church to see a Great Commission movement birthed in their local community:

1) Proclaim the gospel verbally. Payoff: People get saved
2) Promote the good news of God’s faithfulness. Payoff: People in other communities hear the good news and follow your example.
3) Plant this same biblical pattern in the hearts of everyone we disciple. Payoff: the gospel multiplies organically at a grassroots level until the whole world hears about Jesus’ love!

that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. (Romans 1:12 ESV)

Basic Principle: There is great power in the gospel proclaimed verbally in the context of community, which is the church.

Basic Principle: God desires to reveal his truth and power to people in community with one another. He longs to educate, equip, and empower his body, which is the church.

John Perkins: I know what makes terrorists. When governments and nations set people free and then try to enslave them again. Freedom is too precious to give away. Once you have tasted and experienced what it means to be free, you’ll never be willing to be enslaved again. So when the gospel brings true repentance and freedom spiritually, it is manifested through the physical obedience of the church in their local community.

What is the gospel?

Definition: it’s the incarnated presence of God in our lives. The gospel begins spiritually with the transformation of a heart, but the gospel is not complete in a heart until it is lived out boldly and freely through the life of the body holding that transformed heart. In this way, people will see the gospel rather than just hear about it. But people need both a spiritual and physical gospel.

The gospel is the visible demonstration of God’s love. Jesus’ death on the cross was both a spiritual and a visible act; a demonstration of God’s love in the heavenly realm and the physical realm where angels, demons, and humans all witnessed the complete love of God for his creation through the destruction of his Son.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 ESV)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:16, 17 ESV)

The first sign of God’s love in his church is not actions of love but words of love through a verbal proclamation of the Word, which is Jesus, because when we are no longer ashamed of the gospel, we will gladly, boldly, and joyfully proclaim the gospel verbally to people in our community, because not only are we no longer ashamed of the radical message, but we carry with us wherever we go the expectation that the Holy Spirit uses the preaching of the Word to demonstrate the love of God to a godless society.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12, 13 ESV)

So the Word of God is what penetrates the heart, not our actions, which is counter intuitive according to the prosperity gospel and social gospel movement. It’s not our actions, but the Word proclaimed that penetrates darkness and brings kingdom breakthrough. As Hebrews 4:13 teaches, the Word is what exposes the heart and tears down walls and opens blind eyes and deaf ears and dead hearts and brings light and life.

The church is trapped in a culture of liberalism and and materialism. We are stuck in a worldview of success related to money which then leads to a church that is measured by success in terms of finances and numbers, and God’s justice demands the ultimate destruction of anyone that bows down and worships the god of money and engages in cultural idolatry. God is not interested in our money or our numbers. He is interested in our hearts, and he is looking for ambassadors who have died with Christ and live according to their love and devotion to the man who called them to die and live in him.

The church must return to a three-fold love given by God:
1) Our first love: Jesus
2) Our second love: our family
3) Our third love: reaching our local communities so they can share in the joy of our first love and join us in the movement

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This blog post comes from John Perkins’ message on the opening night of Christ Church’s Rejuvenate conference in Birmingham, AL.

Ten Tips For Evangelism With Hindu Peoples

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Ten Tips For Evangelism With Hindu Peoples

hinduism

CAVEAT: This article is recommended by our missionary organization only in terms of helping you think through how God wants to break through spiritually among the Hindu peoples you are called to engage with the Gospel. While some of the advice is well and sound, we are still called ultimately to the true battle at stake, which is not catering to Hindu peoples, but the spiritual war we are called to fight on behalf of the lost people of all nations and tribes. There is not a pattern in Acts for catering to lost people. They are lost and do not know what they need. The biblical precedent in Acts is to fast and pray a lot corporately, and then to send apostolic teams to boldly proclaim the Gospel to all peoples in love and courage. Ultimately, we must call all peoples to repentance and faith in Jesus. They must turn from their wicked ways. They must renounce all foreign gods and destroy their idols. They must run to Jesus and turn fully to him in both faith and practice (obedience). After all, we are calling Hindus to become followers of Jesus, not simply to adding him to their pantheon of gods. Furthermore, we are calling them to full discipleship, which means becoming fishers of men. Hindu converts to Christianity cannot make disciples unless they have fully repented of their false religion and idolatry, turned to Jesus Christ as the sole King of the cosmos, and committed to obedience through believer’s baptism and his Great Commission command to make disciples of all nations. (Matthew 28:18-20)

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Ten Tips For Effective Evangelism With Hindu Peoples

Friendship evangelism is usually easy to initiate with Hindus. Most Hindus esteem religion in general and are free and open to speak about it. A sincere, nonjudgemental interest in all aspects of Indian life will provide a good basis for friendship. Personal interaction with Hindus will lead to a more certain grasp of the essence of Hinduism than reading many books.

A consistent, Christ-like lifestyle is the most important factor in sharing the Gospel with Hindus. The suggestions that follow should help to break down misunderstandings and help to build a positive witness for Christ. But learning and applying these points can never substitute the need for a transparent life of peace and joy in discipleship to Jesus Christ.

Ten Tips For Effective Evangelism With Hindu Peoples

1. Do not criticize or condemn Hinduism. There is much that is good and much that is bad in the practice of both Christianity and Hindu­ism. Pointing out the worst aspects of Hindu­ism is hardly the way to win friends or show love. Criticizing Hinduism can make us feel like we have won an argument; however, it will not win Hindus to Jesus Christ.

2. Avoid everything that hints of triumphalism and pride. We are not the greatest people with the greatest religion, but some Hindus are taught that we think of ourselves in this way. We do not have all knowledge of all truth; in fact, we know very little (1 Cor 8:1,2).

3. Never allow a suggestion that separation from family and/or culture is necessary in becoming a disciple of Christ. To insist or even subtly encourage a Hindu to leave his home and way of life to join the “Christian” way of life in terms of diet and culture, etc., is a denial of Biblical teaching (1 Cor. 7:17-24).

4. Do not speak quickly on hell, or on the fact that Jesus is the only way for salvation. Hindus hear these things as triumphalism and are offended unnecessarily. Speak of hell only with tears of compassion.
Point to Jesus so that it is obvious He is the only way, but leave the Hinduto see and conclude this for himself, rather than trying to force it on him.

5. Never hurry. Any pushing for a decision or conversion will do great harm. God must work, and the Holy Spirit should be given freedom to move at his own pace. Even after a profession of Christ is made, do not force quick changes regarding pictures of gods, charms, etc. Be patient and let a person come to fuller understanding and conviction in his own mind before taking action.

6. Work traditional Hindu (and biblical) values into your life, like simplicity, renunciation, spirituality and humility, against which there is no law. A life reflecting the reality of “a still and quiet soul” (Psalm 131) will never be despised by Hindus.

7. Know Hinduism, and each individual Hindu. It will take some study to get a broad grasp of Hinduism and patient listening will be required to understand where in the spectrum each Hindu stands. Both philosophi­cal and devotional Hinduism should be studied with the aim of understanding what appeals to the Hindu heart. Those who move seriously into work among Hindus need to become more knowledge­able in Hinduism than Hindus themselves are. Some study of the Sanskrit language will prove invaluable. Remember the biblical pattern from Acts 17 of introducing truth to the Hindu from his own tradition, and only secondarily from the Bible. For example, the Biblical teaching on sin is repulsive to many modern Hindus, but their own scriptures give an abun­dance of similar testimony. Bridge from Hindu scriptures to the Bible and Christ.

8. Be quick to acknowledge failure. Defending wrong practices in the church and Western Christianity only indicates we are more concerned for our religion than we are for truth.

9. Share your testimony, describing your personal experience of lostness and God’s gracious forgiveness and peace. Don’t claim to know God in His majesty and fullness, but share what you know in your life and experience. This is the supreme approach in presenting Christ to the Hindu, but care must be taken that our sharing is appropriate. To shout on a street corner, or share at every seeming opportu­nity is offensive. What God does in our lives is holy and private, only to be shared in intimacy to those who will respect the things of God and his work in our lives.

10. Center on Christ. He alone can win their hearts’ total loyalty to Himself. In your life and speech, so center on him that all see in your life that God alone is worth living for. Hinduism is often called “god-intoxicated,” and the Hindu who lives at all in this frame of mind is put off by Christian emphases on so many details to the neglect of the “one thing that is needed” (Lk. 10:42).

A Hindu who professes faith in Christ must be helped as far as possible to work out the meaning of that commitment in his own cultural context. Often a new follower of Christ is ready to adopt any and every practice of Western Christians, and needs to be taught what is essential and what is secondary in Christian life and worship. For example, it can be shown that the Eastern practice of removing shoes in a place of worship has strong biblical precedence despite the fact that shoes are worn in Western churches.

A new believer should be warned against making an abrupt announcement to his or her family, since that inflicts great pain and inevitably produces deep misunderstanding. Ideally, a Hindu will share each step of the pilgrimage to Christ with his or her family, so that there is no surprise at the end. An early stage of the communication, to be reaffirmed continually, would be the honest esteem for Indian/Hindu traditions in general that the disciple of Christ can and does maintain.

Approaching Hindus on these lines does not result in quick conversions and impressive statistics. But a hearing will be gained from some who have refused to listen to traditional Christian approaches. And new disciples of Christ can be taught to deal more sensitively with their contexts, allowing them to maintain an ongoing witness to their family and society. As the leaven of the Gospel is allowed to work in Hindu minds and society, a harvest is sure to follow in God’s own time.

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CAVEAT: This article is recommended by our missionary organization only in terms of helping you think through how God wants to breakthrough spiritually among the Hindu peoples you are called to engage with the Gospel. While some of the advice is well and sound, we are still called ultimately to the true battle at stake, which is not catering to Hindu peoples, but the spiritual war we are called to fight on behalf of the lost people of all nations and tribes. There is not a pattern in Acts for catering to lost people. They are lost. The biblical precedent in Acts is to fast and pray a lot corporately, and then to send apostolic teams to boldly proclaim the Gospel to all peoples in love and courage. Ultimately, we must call all peoples to repentance and faith in Jesus. They must turn from their wicked ways. They must renounce all foreign gods and destroy their idols. They must run to Jesus and turn fully to him in both faith and practice (obedience). After all, we are calling Hindus to become followers of Jesus, not simply to adding him to their pantheon of gods.

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Adapted from Evangelical Missions Quarterly, April, 1994. Box 794, Wheaton, IL 60189.

Leave a comment and let us know about your missionary work with Hindus. How is it going? What are you learning? What resources have you found to be helpful in terms of actual fruit of new believers?

Multiply!

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Go Multiply, India!

Berean India Mission Update

“Go Multiply!”

It has been a tremendous trip to India:  the joy of seeing friends, of teaching the youth, of enjoying the beauty of the sunrise over the Bay of Bengal with my wife.  The list could go on and on.  However, if I did not got to do anything other than what I had the privilege of doing the last day of the youth conference in Tamil Nadu it would have been worth the trip.

At times, the ministry in Tamil Nadu has struggled.  Over the ten years that we have been involved, local leadership has changed a half a dozen times.  Some men have gotten discouraged and left the ministry while others have transferred to different areas and ministries.  Of all the men we have trained, we only have 13 pastors remaining.  However, on Tuesday morning I got to pray a prayer of dedication over eight young men that were being commissioned for ministry.  They have been given the title of “lay pastor,” but they represent another generation of Berean pastors to reach the villages and lost of Tamil Nadu.

Jesus made clear to His disciples the task of the church, “going, MAKE DISCIPLES of the nations.”  Yep, this is it.  This is what it is about.  Multiplication!  Jesus was saying the way we evangelize the world is to MULTIPLY!  So, Pastor JD, who I have had the privilege of teaching and encouraging over the last ten years has taken that to heart.  He has trained and equipped three young men to carry on the ministry, to make disciples.  It has not been easy.  In those ten years he has had a mentally handicapped son, who requires constant care.  He had young twins, one of which was electrocuted as a young child.  But when I gave the charge to these three young disciples and commended him for his faithfulness, the joy in his heart and on his face was palpable.

How will India be won for Christ?  Through discipleship.  JD has built several church buildings to minister in.  They give him cred, allowing him to be considered viable in the eyes of the locals.  I concede that, but buildings will not reach India, discipleship will.  Multiply!  That’s what Jesus said.

How will the United States be won for Christ?  Through discipleship.  Who are you discipling?  Investing in?  Pouring what you have learned into?  The command remains, MULITIPLY!

Your brother,

Tom Walker

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Please leave a comment and let us know how God is using your church to raise up indigenous harvest field laborers in other contexts!

CPMM Series #5: Abiding In Christ

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Church Planting Movement Multiplication Series #5: Abiding in Christ

Abiding In Christ

Our series on church planting movement multiplication continues with this article on Abiding in Christ. God wants to break through in North America with his power and the purpose of His risen Son’s Great Commission! Do you believe that today? We cannot do the work of the ministry to which we are called unless we surrender FIRST to the ministry of the Holy Spirit in each of our lives, namely, to shepherd us throughout each day with the Father’s heart for the unreached and unengaged people groups of the world. Furthermore, we need the fire of Jesus’ passion and zeal for absolute faith in the Father, obedience to his simple commands, and boldness in the verbal proclamation of the gospel to everyone!

Scriptures to consider:

  • “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5
  • “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17
  • “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” James 5:16
  • “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” Galatians 5:25

Our Heavenly Father desires for every disciple of his Son Jesus to experience a full LIFE. And LIFE as a Christian is only sustained by the Word of God, Jesus Christ. “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” (Deuteronomy 8:3)

Our lives are sustained daily and throughout each day by the pure Word of God. Our LORD wants to remind us today that people do not LIVE by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD. God’s words are the bread and drink by which we LIVE!

When we read God’s Word, and we cultivate a pattern of feasting upon the rich and satisfying words of our LORD, He will give us faith! “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” (John 5:24) And that faith is what gives us LIFE eternal. We are under condemnation before God births faith in our hearts because we have not repented of our rebellion against his perfection and lordship through our disobedience and rebellion. But if we hear his words and believe in Jesus Christ, we receive eternal LIFE, and we will never die!

When we repent of our sins and confess Jesus as LORD, an amazing shift happens in our daily lives: we no longer LIVE for ourselves but for Christ. Jesus Christ is the Supreme Object of our lives. “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21) When we live for him, we know that our time, our talents, and our treasures are invested in a kingdom not of our own sinful creation, but THE Kingdom of the King of the universe to whom God has given everything forever!

To demonstrate this LIFE that we receive, we love! “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.” (1 John 3:14) The sign of true disciples of Jesus Christ are those who choose love and love openly and compassionately without end because they are filled daily with the overwhelming and overflowing LIFE and LOVE of Jesus Christ through Abiding in Him! When we withhold love and retain bitterness and unforgiveness, we have surrendered to Satan and his kingdom, and the devil’s kingdom has already been defeated on the cross through Jesus of Nazareth’s death, burial, and resurrection in LIFE!

To Abide in Christ, we must hunger and thirst for God’s pure Word every day. There are myriad daily devotions for all types of readers and interest categories; however, many of these devotions are anemic on Scripture! Don’t study someone else’s words, and don’t spend all your time studying yourself. Run to the Word and feast upon the riches found in the Bible. Read chapters at a time, read the Psalms, and read story after story of Jesus’ kind love for people. Read Paul’s letters and read the warnings of the prophets. Read the stories of the beginning of time, and read the stories of how the world will end. Are you not tired, Christian, of reading everything everyone has written except the LORD’s words that will never die? Let the LIVING water of Jesus Christ flow into you through His Word, and then open your mouth and unleash His WORD to the nations all around you!

We came across Neil Cole’s pattern for Abiding in Christ called “Spiritual C.P.R.” in his book “Search & Rescue.” We highly recommend this pattern for weekly gathering with other followers in groups of two or three and engaging in sin confession, planting God’s Word, and reaching the lost. Spiritual C.P.R. stands for:

  • Confession of sin
  • Planting God’s Word
  • Reaching the lost

What if all the true disciples of Jesus spent one hour each week in this pattern of discipleship rather than pew-warming and note-taking? What if we cultivated a pattern of seeking the LORD’s face through obedience and accountability in small groups and house churches rather than paying professionals to be our middle-man priesthood?

May 2013 be a year of LIFE for you, your family, your church, and your context of God’s mission! We hope you will continue to pray through this blog series of church planting multiplication as we pursue the last unreached people groups on the face of the earth and, together, be the first generation in human history to complete the Great Commission task!

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Please leave a comment and let us know what you think!

What has God taught you recently about the value and critical practice of daily abiding in Him?

Four Fields To Seven Fields

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Four Fields To Seven Fields

Seven Fields of Great Commission Movements

Many of you are familiar with the Four Fields of Multiplication disciple-making tool:

Four Fields

This tool has been developed and used all over the world and in countless contexts for helping uneducated, indigenous missionaries and church planters see the process of how Christian ambassadors enter a community, evangelize the people, disciple the converts, and gather the disciples into covenant communities.

When we received the “Endvision” and “Four Fields” training documents, we were very excited; however, there is another training document called the “CPM Continuum” that explains the process of movements of church plants and disciple making. These two documents are separate, and all last year we were praying for wisdom in how to bring the two training documents together. We believe the answer is the “Seven Fields.”

This diagram incorporates the two “missing pieces,” at least for us, in the Four Fields that we wanted to include for training and simplicity purposes. In the Four Fields is often a “fifth field” that isn’t really considered a “field,” which is Leadership Development. We believe very strongly that Leadership Development has to be its own field, because the function of the church is different for leadership training than it is for disciple-making.

The Seven Fields, therefore, gives Leadership Development/Training its own field, and we have added Endvision and Great Commission Movements into the Fields diagram in order to put all of the pieces of a gospel movement into one diagram. Rather than having Leadership Training at the center, we have Endvision in the center as the core foundation for simple, reproducible patterns of disciple-making multiplication in each field. If God’s heart for the nations shapes everything we do in the church, then we will always be trying to give away our leadership and authority to others, because that leadership and authority belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of His Holy Spirit!

We have been recruiting friends in our missionary network that we respect and who have experience in cross-cultural missions to look at the new Seven Fields structure and help us figure out if it is helpful or too complicated. One of those missionaries is Karl; a good friend and a strategic thinker. We asked him to write a short article on his thought process through our Harvest Fields Handbook and the Seven Fields, so here are his thoughts:

“It started a couple weeks ago, when I first got James’ third revision of the Harvest Field Handbook. I looked at it and said to myself, “Wow! What great concepts and content! I just don’t know where to find everything. If I don’t fully understand it, how is someone from an oral culture going to? If they can’t read this, then what are all the diagrams going to mean? Besides, is all this stuff really from the Bible? Aren’t we supposed to be learning everything from the Bible, not from a disciple-making guru? What about the Discovery Bible Study method? Can it really train a person in all they need to know? So, I decided to go through the whole handbook, concept by concept, to try to match them with stories, or direct instructions, from the Bible. That way, someone can be trained in the whole resource by using a series of orally-communicated stories and homilies. So far, I’ve divided out the whole handbook into groups of concepts that fit in the Seven Fields.

Seven Fields of Great Commission Movements
Now for the hard part; actually finding all the stories to match each concept and deciding when to give up and throw out a concept I can’t find a story for. Or worse: trying to find any missing concepts in the training set. Please pray for me through this process. More blog posts to come!

Karl

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Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

What resources are you using for simple, reproducing disciple-making and church-planting?

World Persecution Watch List

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World Watch List Countries (Persecution of Christians)

World Watch List for Persecution

Top Ten Countries in the World for Christian Persecution

  1. North Korea
  2. Saudi Arabia
  3. Afghanistan
  4. Iraq
  5. Somalia
  6. Maldives
  7. Mali
  8. Iran
  9. Yemen
  10. Eritrea

Top 50 Countries for Christian Persecution

Who Is Open Doors USA?

Open Doors USA

How Can I Pray For Persecuted Christians More Effectively?

Take the Five Minute Challenge:

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Leave a comment and let us know how you and your church/ministry prays for and reaches out to the global persecuted church!

If you’re reading this blog post from an area of persecution, please leave a comment and tell us how we can pray more effectively for you and your faith community!

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Harvest Fields Handbook

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Harvest Fields Handbook

We have been developing a field guide for missionaries, church planters, and disciple makers over the last year. Ever since we went to Singapore and received some amazing training resources for accomplishing the Great Commission task, we knew that the greatest need in our generation was a simple tool for reaching the nations in any context, and that’s what the Harvest Fields Handbook is.

What Does God Want?

Our role as the current generation of Christians is to complete the Great Commission task. That’s why David Platt and Francis Chan pulled off a Multiply Movement webcast this past Fall. That’s why E3 Partners’ theme this year for their annual convention is “Reach The Rest.” I got excited about this year’s Passion Conference’s website entitled “End It Movement” until I realized that it’s about ending human trafficking in our generation. Don’t read us wrong; this cause is extremely courageous and noble. However, as believers, we have a different cause to which we must commit ourselves.

Let us go ahead and give you some bad news: human trafficking is never going to end until Jesus comes back. No matter how hard we fight, no matter how many sacrifices we make, and no matter how many dollars we spend, fallen man will find ways to exploit his brother until the end of days. And, as a missionary from southeast Asia recently told us, “The worst kind of persecution in the world isn’t human trafficking; it is no access to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

So, please visit our website, download the digital handbook, and read it for yourself. As we recommend on the website, please pursue a training with us either in person or online. The training we have to give is more important than the resource itself, because without a background in these T4T discipleship principles, it is difficult to understand how the handbook functions.

May God use this resource to equip our generation for the completion of Christ’s command to make disciples OF ALL PEOPLE GROUPS!

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Email us at woodbine4thenations@gmail.com in order to set up an online training via Skype or Google +!

Leave a comment and let us know what you think about this resource or how you have used it!

Multiply Movement

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What is the Multiply Movement and Its Purpose?

From MultiplyMovement.com:

Jesus’ command to make disciples in the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20) was not intended solely for the early disciples, nor is disciple-making the responsibility of a special class of Christians. Rather, all followers of Christ are called to make disciples, to fish for men (Matthew 4:19). Many don’t actively make disciples because they don’t know what it means to be a disciple.

On a practical level discipleship means that we look at other people and say exactly what Jesus said to his disciples: “Follow me.” To make disciples is to intentionally show the life of Christ before others, to share the gospel of Christ with others, to teach the Word of Christ to others, and to do all of this with a view toward reaching every people group in the world with the gospel.

Our desire is to come alongside local churches by emphasizing this glorious and much-neglected aspect of our calling as followers of Christ. With Multiply we want to encourage because some are unaware of their biblical responsibility to make disciples, and we want to equip because many do not know how to make disciples.

We want to help make disciples by providing resources and materials that introduce foundational biblical topics for those seeking to learn God’s Word with the intent to disciple others. Multiply does this in several ways:

The Multiply website is a central hub that contains resources to help you as you make disciples.

The Multiply Material is a 24-session discipleship experience where one person helps another understand what it means to follow Jesus, study scripture, and be the church. This material will be available online October 4, 2012 and includes coaching videos and additional resources to assist you as you study through the course.

The Multiply Gathering is a once-a-year simulcast with Francis Chan and David Platt that fuels the purpose of Multiply. We want to gather together with other followers of Christ in their local churches and homes and encourage one another in the disciple-making process.

The Multiply Blog hosts on going Resources for disciple making written by a host of well seasoned Christian leaders from around the world.

Multiply Promo Video Statements by David Platt & Francis Chan

Chan: Sometimes I don’t feel like people understand the weight of some of the things that are written in this book, “All authority in heaven and on earth, every bit of authority that exists, has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

Platt: There were twelve men who said “We’re gonna abandon everything to follow after Jesus as our Master.” And so they did, and as they did Jesus transformed everything about them.

Chan: Everyone who calls themselves a “follower of Jesus” needs to obey that Great Command.

Platt: So it starts with Jesus saying, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” At the end, Jesus says, “Now go and make disciples of all nations.” This is what you were created for.

Chan: A lot of people have memorized this passage but are they doing it?

Platt: You and I are intended to have life in following Christ and in fishing for men; in being a disciple of Jesus and in making disciples of Jesus.

Chan: What’s at the heart of “Multiply” is: to make sure people are actually doing it.

Platt: You were created to make disciples who make disciples who make disciples.

Chan: We are trying to help people get a good, basic foundation of understanding so that we can go out with confidence.

Platt: Let’s encourage one another as disciples of Jesus: everyone of us. Let’s make disciples.

Chan: And the beautiful thing is, Jesus says, “And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.”

Platt: What we want to do is help equip people to give their lives to making disciples who make disciples who make disciples so that together, we can be a part of the accomplishment of the greatest mission on this earth: Disciples made in every single nation.

What is Multiply Promotional Video Statements by David Platt & Francis Chan

Chan: The thought of someone rising from the dead and saying, “All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me.” That’s a huge statement. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

Platt: So it starts with Jesus saying, “Follow me, I’ll make you fishers of men.” At the end he says, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” This is what you were created for.

Chan: A lot of people have memorized this passage, but are they actually doing it? Is it actually happening. We’re all afraid. We all have insecurities. Can we work together to get rid of those and pray that God gives us power over those things and then actually observe, go, and do what he commanded us to do?

Platt: So the heart behind Multiply is to help us remember and remind each other, “Hey, we’re disciples of Jesus; that means we make disciples of Jesus.” This is not just for the super-gifted or super-talented.

Chan: I really believe as we’re doing this, we’re really going to experience the presence of Christ with us in a much fuller way, in a more real and tangible way. That’s why he gave us the Holy Spirit. He says, “Look, I’m gonna give you this Holy Spirit, and when he comes, you’re gonna receive power to be my witnesses.”

Platt: The heart behind Multiply is saying, “How can we encourage every single follower of Christ to fish for men; every single disciple of Jesus to make disciples of Jesus.” And then along the way equip one another; help give one another tools that can be helpful in the process of making disciples so that you and I together can be a part of accomplishing the greatest mission on the planet: seeing disciples being made in every single nation among every single people group.

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We would love to hear from you. How are you making disciples effectively in your context? Leave a comment below.

Want some good disciple making resources? Check out our website.

Church Planting In The 21st Century

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Church Planting In The 21st Century

By Bob Vajko

“We stand on the threshold of a new century, indeed a new millennium. Never has the challenge been greater; never the church larger; never mission involvement more diverse; never the need for divine direction more evident. But one of the most important would be the missionary task of planting and growing New Testament churches.” –David J. Hesselgrave, Missions conference in Kyoto, Japan

I. Church Planting Biblical Foundations

What is a local church?

  1. A gathering where God is present
  2. A group of baptized believers committed to meeting regularly
  3. Under the authority and teaching of God’s Word
  4. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper
  5. Practice discipline according to biblical standards
  6. Leaders that conform to God’s standards
  7. Great Commission vision and obedience

What is church planting?

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (The Apostle Paul, 1 Cor. 3:6)

Charles Williams’ translation: “I did the planting, Apollos did the watering, but it was God who kept the plants growing.”

The relationship of God’s role and the planter’s role working together for God’s purposes.

II. Church Planting Theology

According to Stuart Murray, a theological framework for church planting includes three categories:

  1. Missio Dei
  2. Incarnation
  3. Kingdom of God

1) Missio Dei (Mission of God)

God’s mission in the world directed toward the world.

Stuart Murray: “Paul’s primary mission was established when the gospel was preached, people were converted, and churches were established.”

Christopher J.H. Wright: “The only concept of mission into which God fits is the one of which he is the beginning, the center, and the end…And the only access we have to that mission of God is given to us in the Bible.”

In church planting, God is the insider: He is the one working in the world. We are only his instruments.

A biblical Great Commission vision focuses on evangelism leading to multiplying disciples and then, as seen in Acts, the multiplication of gatherings of these disciples in church planting.

Stephen Neill: “When everything is mission, nothing is mission.”

A too extensive definition of missions leads to a less intensive ministry in missions.

A biblical definition for missions: The lost condition of man and his need for supernatural life from God.

Vajko’s definition of church planting: The mission of God towards the world flows out of planting churches that become powerful agents for change in culture today.

2) Church Planting Incarnation

Church planting must be related to Christ’s life and teaching as reflected in making disciples who reflect the Great Commission. (Matthew 28:18-20)

Churches that are planted and are faithful to the Word of God will have Christ’s discipleship vision strongly rooted in them and will be teaching incarnational truth in their midst.

If discipleship is separated from church planting, it can only lead to the planting of superficial churches that will not make the salt and light impact that they should.

Incarnational discipleship is the great emphasis of the four Gospels where Christ is the great disciple maker.

Incarnational discipleship also emphasizes the book of Acts where the result of evangelism is always the making of disciples.

The failure of not linking church planting to discipleship leads to weak churches with pew-sitting instead of powerful change.

3) Church Planting & The Kingdom of God

Murray’s Three Perspectives on the Kingdom of God:

  1. The church is a community. The kingdom of God is an activity whereby God extends  his rule throughout creation.
  2. God’s Kingdom is bigger than the church because the church learns how to function according to a “kingdom of God worldview.”
  3. The kingdom rather than the church defines the scope of God’s mission.

George Eldon Ladd: “The Kingdom creates the church. The dynamic rule of God, present in the mission of Jesus, challenged men to response, bringing them into a new fellowship.”

The Kingdom and the Spirit work together but the emphasis in Acts is upon the Church’s ever increasing outreach as the Holy Spirit led church planters into new horizons. The emphasis in the book of Acts is upon the Spirit of God constantly moving God’s servants to new horizons.

Two Additional Theological Perspectives on Church Planting:

  1. The gospel is the content for every church that is planted.
  2. God’s glory is our goal.

III. Is There a Biblical Mandate for Church Planting Today?

Five Pillars for Church Planting:

  1. It is the will of God that his people multiply. (Matthew 16:18)
  2. The activity of the Holy Spirit is the birth process. (Acts 13)
  3. The Church is an organism or body. (1 Corinthians 12:12-31)
  4. The Church functioning according to God will manifest a  ”Your-Kingdom-come yearning.” (Acts 1:8, Matt. 6:9-10)
  5. The wonderful power of “spontaneous expansion” within the church. (Acts 8:1-4)

Roland Allen on spontaneous church expansion: “The expansion which follows the unexhorted and unorganized activity of individual members of the Church explaining to others the gospel which they have found for themselves; the expansion which follows the irresistible attraction of the Christian Church for men and women who see its ordered life and are drawn to it by desire to discover the secret of a life which they instinctively desire to share; the expansion of the Church by the addition of new churches.”

IV. 21st Century Church Planting Paradigm Shifts

1) A shift from expatriate church planting to national (indigenous) church planting

There are places where someone must come from the outside and initiate evangelism and church planting in an unreached or unengaged context; however, in so many regions of the world today, national (indigenous) church planting is the key. (An intentional movement from “outsider” Great Commission initiative to “insider” Great Commission initiative.)

2) A shift from church planting to church multiplication

3) A shift from church planting to church planting movements

David Garrison: “ A church planting movement is a rapid multiplication of indigenous churches planting churches that sweeps through a people group or population segment.”

Ten universal elements in every church planting movement (CPM):

  1. Extraordinary Prayer
  2. Abundant Evangelism
  3. Intentional Planting of Reproducing Churches
  4. The Authority of God’s Word
  5. Local Leadership
  6. Lay Leadership
  7. House Churches
  8. Churches Planting Churches
  9. Rapid Reproduction
  10. Healthy Churches

RESOURCE: www.churchplantingmovements.com

4) A shift to a greater understanding of church health and its relation to church multiplication

Christian Schwarz’s Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy, Growing Churches:

  1. Empower leadership
  2. Gift-based ministry
  3. Passionate spirituality
  4. Effective structures
  5. Inspiring worship service
  6. Holistic small groups
  7. Need-oriented evangelism
  8. Loving relationships

“Hardly anything demonstrates the health of a congregation as much as the willingness and ability to give birth to new congregations.” –Christian Schwarz

Conclusion: As church planters, missions, churches, and leaders advance in this 21st century, amazing advances in planting healthy churches that focus on evangelism and church planting multiplication may take place for the glory of God. May it be so!

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Our blog is designed to equip this generation for Great Commission obedience. Please check out the different categories of blog topics including “T4T,” “Movements,” and “Discipleship.”

Church Planting Movement Multiplication Infographic

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Our church discovered a Church Planting Movement Endvision document that has gone viral all over the world. We felt that the principles in the Endvision plan for reaching the world are simply pure New Testament disciple making strategies. Therefore, with permission from our friends who developed the CPM Endvision document, we revised it for a North American context and commissioned this infographic.

We are truly grateful to our talented friends @ Pelhaus for their creative graphic design skills, and we look forward to how God is going to continue this strategic plan to reach the world for Christ in our generation!

 

The Timothy Initiative

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Mission

The Timothy Initiative (TTI) is a reproductive, multiplying church planting movement that works with other national movement leaders to penetrate the nations and cultures with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Vision

TTI’s vision is to plant millions of reproducing and multiplying evangelical churches in partnership with other like-minded ministries.

Strategy

We train church planters to start one or more churches in their local community.

We bring the church planters together for one year of training, and each church planter cannot graduate until they have started a new multiplying church.

These new churches meet in buildings, houses, under trees, etc. The average church size is 15 new believers (though many grow much larger) in predominantly rural and unevangelized areas.

We have Continental Directors, Regional Directors, National Directors, and District Teachers that keep on each other accountable to each other and our global leadership team.

We are establishing associational relationships and training with these church planters for their ongoing health in year two and beyond.

Each church plant is designed to be a church planting center.

Current Growth & Statistics

In 2012, TTI will train and equip 20,000+ church planters:

  • Asia: 10,000 from seven countries
  • Africa: 10,000 from 22 countries
  • Latin America: 425 from three countries
  • Caribbean: 700 from two countries

In addition, TTI is currently forming strategic partnership to make an even greater kingdom impact.

By the end of the year, TTI will have trained close to 35,000 church planters in Asia and Africa alone!

How Do We Accomplish Our Goal?

We train church planters to plant one or more churches in their local community.

In order to train the church planters, we start Training Centers where church planters are trained to plant multiplying churches.

What Is Our Definition Of Church?

An organized body of believers who meet together regularly to worship the Lord, make disciples, and reach out to the lost. A church can meet in a building, in a house, or under a tree.

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For more information on TTI, visit their website: Go to TTI website

Email Executive Director Greg Kappas: greg@ttionline.org

T4T Lesson #1: The Assurance Of Salvation

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“T4T” is an acronym for “Training For Trainers”: an effective process used by missionaries and church planters around the world for rapidly raising up mature Christian disciple multipliers.

Each of the seven basic lessons are designed for a trainer working with a new Christian. The goal is to build into the DNA of every new believer accountability-driven and obedience-based discipleship multiplication.

The reason that we use the word “multiplication” in the process is simple:

  • If 1 person makes 5 disciples, that’s a total of 6 mature disciple makers
  • If 1 person makes 5 disciples, and those 5 disciples make 5 disciples each, that’s a total of 31 mature disciple makers
  • If 1 person makes 5 disciples, those 5 disciples make 5 disciples each, and those disciples make 5 disciples each, that’s a total of 156 mature disciple makers.

Following this line of math, 1 faithful disciple multiplier can become the catalyst for a movement:

  • 1
  • 5
  • 25
  • 125
  • 625
  • 3,125
  • 15,625
  • 78,125
  • 390,625
  • 1,953,125
  • 9,765,625
  • 48,828,125
  • 244,140,625
  • 1,220,703,125
  • The whole world hears the gospel in our generation!

For an understanding of the whole church planting movement multiplication process, check out our North American version of the T4T process: Go to document

The following Bible study is Lesson #1 in a series of seven basic lessons any Christian can use to equip a new disciple with a core understanding of the fundamental Christian doctrines.

Each lesson is designed for the mature Christian to train the new Christian in an essential Christian doctrine by:

  1. Studying the Scriptures
  2. Inductive Bible study
  3. Asking questions
  4. Facilitating learning
  5. Memorizing Scripture
  6. Developing a training plan
  7. Committing to the training plan
  8. Kingdom prayer
  9. Obedience to the Great Commission

For more information on church planting movements and the Training For Trainers discipleship multiplication process, please visit our website: Go to website

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Lesson #1: The Assurance Of Salvation

Congratulations on your decision to follow Jesus! Welcome to God’s family. (Ephesians 1:4-5). From this point on, you can develop your new relationship with God, enjoy the benefits of all his promises, and learn to share your story with people who are far from God.

As we study the Bible together, please read each verse and write the answers to every question in your own words.

1. The Preparation For Salvation

(A) What is sin? (Mark 7:20-23)

(B) What is the result of sin? (Isaiah 59:2)

(C) People try many different ways to find God and fail. Why? (Ephesians 2:8-9)

(D) How does God draw us to himself? (John 12:32)

2. The Way Of Salvation

(A) Salvation math: Jesus’ sacrifice + your faith + repentance = salvation (1 Peter 3:18)

  • Has God done what he wants to do? (death and resurrection; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4)  Yes___   No___
  • Have you done what you need to do? (believe and repent; Romans 10:9)  Yes___   No___

If you believed in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and repented of your sins, then you are saved! (Romans 10:13)

(B) What does Jesus promise to give those who follow him? (John 10:28)

(C) Eternal life does not only mean that you will live forever. Life with God also means that you are able to live a lifestyle of holiness, compassion, and courage right now! From today throughout eternity, you are free to enjoy the abundant grace of God.( Ephesians 1:3)

(D) Believing in Jesus Christ not only means that you have eternal life. You also have a responsibility to obey him as Lord. God commands you to go out and make disciples of all nations. (Matthew 28:18-20, 1 Peter 2:9)

3. Your Response To Salvation

What is your response to these biblical truths?

  • ______ I have been saved
  • ______ I have not been saved
  • ______ I am not sure

4. The Assurance Of Salvation

(A) How do we know that our salvation is secure? (2 Corinthians 5:17)

(B) The saved will be changed. What changes have you already experienced?

  • ______ Awareness of sin
  • ______ Inner peace
  • ______ Experience God’s love
  • ______ Joy of salvation
  • ______ Desire to study the Bible
  • ______ Desire to pray every day
  • ______ A new attitude
  • ______ Compassion for people
  • ______ Desire to help people
  • ______ Desire to share the gospel

5. Your Life After Salvation

(A) If you sin again after salvation, are you still saved? (Romans 8:38-39)

(B) What do you do when you sin again? (James 5:16)

(C) What happens when we confess our sins?(1 John 1:9)

6. Memorize This Bible Verse

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)

7. Go And Make Disciples

When you repent of your sins and receive salvation through Jesus Christ, your life is transformed. Now you have peace with God and joy in your heart. You should also experience a burden for those who are far from God and a desire to share the good news with them.

(A) The first thing that you should do with your new life in Christ is share the good news with people you know.

(B) Make a list of five people you know, and tell them your story:

  1. Your life before Jesus Christ
  2. How you met Jesus Christ
  3. Your changed life with Jesus Christ

(C) Teach each person T4T Lesson #1: The Assurance Of Salvation.

(D) Train each person how to share their story and repeat this disciple making process.

(E) Pray by name for the salvation of five people who need to hear the gospel and be saved. Ask God to give you faith, obedience, and boldness for the Great Commission task.

(F) At the beginning of every new training session, you should ask your disciples to share stories of how they are being obedient to the Great Commission.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the best news in the whole world. God’s will is that every person from every culture and language will hear the gospel and receive salvation. (2 Peter 3:9)

Pray. Give. Go.

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Guest Blogger: Lane

The original blog post can be found on Lane’s blog: A Time For Everything

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I continue to be amazed more and more by our holy God. He is faithful, and the more I seek the more I find. The more I seek him, the more I know him better, and he is perfect!

Last year at this time, Matt and I were joining a church plant in Nashville with local Anglos and refugees from among 130 plus people groups. Little did I know at the time how much the Lord would bless Matt and me with getting to know his people in Nashville. The Lord taught us more about his holiness. I am beyond thankful for that time and am so excited to visit soon. If you want to learn more about the church plant, visit their website: http://www.citychurchwoodbine.org.

It was a year ago that Pastor David had Matt and me over for dinner. At that time, I remember talking with him about how my heart was broken for the lost  people in the American church and how I wasn’t yet feeling a strong calling to the nations. I went on to explain how I had been a lost girl in the American church for 25 years and how there are so many lost people that I know with whom I come in contact every day. David said my heart wasn’t broken YET for the nations; however, he was certain that one day that would change. I didn’t really get it at the time, but I do now.

The Lord in his goodness continues to teach me about his heart and his character.  I have learned that none of it is about me! I cannot take credit for anything good I have done. I deserve nothing but God’s wrath, and his wrath is very real. Despite this wrath, he chooses to give us grace! All we have to do is receive it and have faith; just receive the gift of salvation in Christ Jesus and have faith. He makes it easy for us! I have often shared Ephesians 2:8-9 in my blog posts: ” For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.”

I am now starting to get the “nations thing” that I didn’t get a year ago. However, my heart is still not broken for the nations. It is not broken for any people groups. My heart is focused on my heavenly Father, and he is turning me to his people not only here at home but also among the nations. It is not about my desire for a nation, but a desire for him and his glory! It is all for his name, glory, and pleasure! This is good.

The Great Commission has new meaning to me now: Matthew 28:19-20 says, ”Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the  name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” We must complete this task in the power of Christ!

I’m still praying specifically about whether or not Matt and I are supposed to go on a short term missions trip, go on a long term missions assignment, stay here in the U.S. and pray for missions, or give to missions cheerfully. It might be a combination of these options. Please pray that God will give us wisdom to know him better and to discern with clarity his will for our path.

This is my prayer for you as well: Ephesians 1:17-19 says, ”I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation to know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”

wikiChurch

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It is possible that you have never heard of wikiChurch, Steve Murrell, Every Nation, or Victory Metro Fellowship. We hadn’t either until today, but we are excited about what God is doing through the rapidly growing kingdom advancement of globally missional networks like Steve’s cell church.

Steve Murrell is the senior pastor of Victory Metro Fellowship in Manila, Philippines. He is co-founder and president of Every Nation Network and director of the Real Life Foundation.

Follow Pastor Steve on Twitter: Go to Twitter

Check out the Victory Metro Fellowship website: Go to website

Check out VMF’s Facebook page: Go to Facebook

Follow VMF on Twitter. Go to Twitter

Visit VMF’s YouTube Channel: Go to YouTube

Check out VMF’s Flickr photo blog: Go to Flickr

Check out Every Nation’s website: Go to website

Check out Real Life Foundation’s website: Go to website

 What is wikiChurch?

 To accurately understand the concept of wikiChurch, you have to understand the story of Nupedia and Wikipedia.

In 2000, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger started an online encyclopedia called “Nupedia.” Before contributed articles were accepted in Nupedia, they had to go through an extensive scholarly review process. Therefore, this online encyclopedia only included entries from experts.

In 2001, Wales and Sanger launched another online encyclopedia called “Wikipedia.” Thewikipart of Wikipedia comes from the Hawaiian word meaningquick. On this website, non-professionals, non-scholars, and non-experts can write articles that Nupedia scholars would review.

Take the opportunity to be completely blown away by the comparative results of the two online encyclopedia concepts:

  • After three years, Nupedia had only published 24 articles with 74 more in the review process by 2003.
  • After only one year, Wikipedia had published 20,000 articles by non-experts; yet, they were recognized as reliable published information by reviews of Nupedia professionals by 2002.

NuChurch vs. wikiChurch

Unfortunately, most churches function more like Nupedia than Wikipedia. Churches function like the development of traditional encyclopedias. The process requires experts and takes a long time to develop. Only qualified experts are allowed to lead evangelism outreach.

Today’s church needs to be a wikiChurch. We need to learn from Wikipedia’s successful concept that people of all ages, backgrounds, expertise, and culture (especially the unpaid) have something to contribute to everyone else. The core value of wikiChurch is that every believer, not just paid and seminary-trained clergy, are involved in ministry leadership. The wikiChurch models the church growth process in the Book of Acts. The mission of wikiChurch is to involve everyone in discipleship that spawns disciplemaking multiplication.

The Accidental Missionary

Here is how wikiChurch was birthed:

  • Steve and  Deborah went on a mission trip to Manila, Philippines during the summer of 1984.
  • They had no idea what God wanted to do through them.
  • A one-month mission trip turned into 28 years of church multiplication ministry in Manila.
  • They founded Victory Metro Fellowship (VMF).
  • VMF began with 65 American university students working with Filipino university students.
  • The original 165 founding members of VCF has grown into a movement of over 52,000 students, professionals, and families who worship in multiple venues around Metro Manila.
  • VCF has equipped and empowered over 3,500 small group discipleship leaders who meet weekly in coffee shops, homes, offices, and shopping malls all over the city of Manila for Bible study, prayer, and fellowship.
  • VCF has trained and sent Filipino college campus ministers and church planters to serve as cross-cultural missionaries to Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Guam, India, Latvia, Malaysia, Russia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.
  • VCF has sent numerous short term evangelism and medical teams to over a dozen nations.

When the Murrells began VCF, they had very little experience in ministry and no missions training. Steve and Deborah’s only background was discipling people in small groups. For this reason, Steve refers to himself as ”The Accidental Missionary” because he never set out to build a globally catalytic church planting ministry. All they set out to do was honor God and make disciples. Their roots were a campus ministry with students at Mississippi State University.

This “Accidental Missionary” used an “Accidental Strategy” called the ”leading/leaving” model of organic leadership development. Steve and  Deborah trained people with what they knew, and as a result, their disciples were trained and empowered to multipy from the beginning.

Go And Make Disciples

Everyone is called to be a disciple and make disciples.  Christians inherently know that they are supposed to be a disciple and to make disciples, but most of them do not know where to start.  Discipleship is not supposed to be complicated.  It can be difficult, but it should not be complicated.

Jesus is our model for disciplemaking.  True discipleship is not helping church people become better church people.  True discipleship means finding people who do not know Jesus, introducing them to him, and helping them faithfully follow him.

In Matthew 4:19, Jesus calls his disciples. They were fishermen.  Jesus’ disciples were not the most educated people during that time.

Jesus’ message and method were simple:

  • Follow Jesus
  • Fish for people who do not know him
  • Fellowship with others.

One of the most common reasons people do not make disciples is because they do not feel ready for God to use them.

Plenty of excuses will always be used for not making disciples, but the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 does not say anything about being ready.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus instructs Peter to feed his sheep even though Peter deserted and denied knowing him.  This empowerment model clearly demonstrates an essential multiplication truth that Jesus is much more willing to use us than we feel ready to be used.

An important key to discipleship is not to stray from the basics of grace, faith and repentance.  We must focus on the foundations of the gospel.   The repetition, consistency, and focus on the gospel are more important than finding ”new” ways to make disciples.

Conclusion:

  1. Be a disciple
  2. Make disciples
  3. Train leaders
  4. Empower them to make disciples

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Read the original article: Go to CBN’s website

Planting Churches Or Making Disciples

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Planting Churches Or Making Disciples?

This information comes from Stephen Crosby’s blog post by the same name. We wanted to re-present the principles in a different format.

For the original article, visit Sword of the Kingdom

Follow Stephen Crosby on Twitter: Go to Twitter.

Follow Stephen Crosby’s blog: Go to WordPress.

Introduction

The phrase “church planting” is never used in the New Testament. Jesus never said, “Build/plant a church for me.” Never.

Jesus commanded us to seek his kingdom and make disciples. Jesus said, “I will build my church” in Matthew 16:18.

What did the Apostle Paul do in 1 Corinthians 3:5-9? He:

  1. Planted the gospel seed in people’s lives
  2. Others watered the gospel seed
  3. The Holy Spirit birthed new disciples
  4. Those disciples gathered together based on geographical communities
  5. Local churches were born

Here’s the reason why understanding the biblical values and methods of disciplemaking are so critical to fulfilling the Great Commission: if we are micromanaging what ONLY God can do, then we are trying to replace his power with our feeble works.

The following comparison reveals the inherent differences in the value systems between the system and culture of modern church planting methods versus the biblical worldview of multiplying disciples.

Modern Church Planting

  • Built around inviting people to our church meetings.
  • Leaders often require unhealthy dependence upon and submission to themselves.
  • Modern church planters often micromanage their congregations.
  • The focus is on establishing churches organizationally, administratively, and structurally.
  • The church’s identity is the weekly corporate service and programs.
  • Most of our church plants become little more than eternal classrooms where people are kept in spiritual infancy, functional dependency, and an endless need for counseling/therapy sessions.
  • The focus is on information acquisition.
  • An unnatural perpetuation of a private brand identity (individual church, association, or denomination); franchising a spiritual brand.
  • It’s frequently all about the numbers and the bottom line. Money dictates decisions. Movements and growth momentum depend on quantities of funding.
  • Modern church planters often demonstrate a “death-grip-control” on congregational access based on a “protecting the flock” mentality. The underlying motivation is assuring a long term income stream for themselves.
  • Leaders require loyalty to themselves personally and to the organizational identity corporately.
  • Many modern church leaders lead by position, rank, and carnal authoritarianism. (“It is so because I said so because I am the pastor.”)
  • Modern “church plants” are birthed based solely on a pastor-teacher top-down framework
  • Modern church plant leaders center their leadership on the position of a senior leader, his personality, and his spiritual gifts.
  • Pastor leaders treat “their” churches as if they belong to them like some kind of commodity: “my church,” “my congregation.” Ministry is accomplished based on the leader’s gifts and interests rather than the people’s gifts. Leaders want to manage control rather than release control to God.
  • Members of modern church plants are expected to give their lives (time, talents, gifts, finances) to fulfill the leader’s vision. Honor is an entitlement of spiritual position rather than merited through servant leadership and humility.
  • Modern churches are overwhelmingly dominated by a singular individual; “The Man.” This leader functions as the “jack-of-all-trades” so that everyone else depends upon his performance and reputation.
  • The goal is the quantitative and financial increase of the local congregation. This increase is attained through gathering, corralling, and controlling.
  • Emphasizes “decisions” and “baptisms.”

Disciplemaking Multiplication

  • Jesus’ kingdom goes forth in and through us as we share our experiences and life together in a community.
  • The church belongs to Jesus.
  • The Apostle Paul identified, equipped, and empowered leaders from within each church plant, and then left them so they could lead.
  • The focus is on building relationship with lost people.
  • Loving and living well together in Christ, in community, and serving the local community in practical ways.
  • Equipping every Christian to utilize their God-given spiritual gifts in reaching the lost.
  • An emphasis on the increase of King Jesus’ kingdom coming to every geographical community and unreached people group.
  • Personal financial support was not mandated by Paul. He was a tentmaker. Financial support for volunteer Christian leaders flows from love rather than obligation.
  • Paul enabled local church networks to “cross pollinate” leaders depending on the needs for different gifts in different areas at different times. (Ephesians 4)
  • Requires absolute loyalty to and total dependence upon the Lord Jesus. There is no Plan B.
  • The Apostle Paul led by relationship, influence, and spiritual authority.
  • New disciples are birthed based upon an apostolic horizontal framework.
  • The Apostle Paul’s leadership centered around the person of Jesus Christ rather than his ministry.
  • Based on Jesus’ authority through his death, burial, and resurrection. Servant leaders allow Jesus’ authority to increase in local churches as they decrease. Paul was willing to leave local churches and allow the Holy Spirit to lead them.
  • Paul gave his life and resources for the churches he planted and was willing to face betrayal at the hands of his church plants.
  • Apostolic churches have a diverse expression of spiritual gift manifestation, because the leaders equip everyone to be a disciplemaker based on how God has uniquely created them. Diversity is an asset rather than a problem.
  • Every disciple and church is focused on reproduction. The goal is to increase the life of Christ in the earth through disciplemaking movements. The goal is not to maintain a church forever, but for the church to make disciples of all nations as they live their lives.
  • Emphasizes the transformation of every person into the image of Jesus through discipleship.

Conclusion

The good news is that the depth and breadth of God’s great redemptive plan is enough to sanctify and bless any kingdom effort done in faith for him. He can bless any mess offered to him in relational faith. If methodological perfection were required, we would have no hope.

However, we should not presume upon his great grace and redemption to normalize error and continue unbiblical practices which misrepresent his purpose on the earth and stagnate the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

After all, the heart of a true disciple is reflected in Matthew 6:9-10, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Four Essential Movement Elements

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Life is short, but history is long. When our Lord crashed onto the Jewish scene as a miracle-working carpenter from an unknown corner of Israel, people had almost given up hope that the Messiah would ever come. It had been over three thousand years since theproto euangelion (first gospel) was uttered from the lips of Yahweh when he brought his first judgment upon the first sin, “He will crush your head, and you will strike his heal” (Genesis 3:15b, NIV).

From the moment he defeated Satan’s forty days of relentless temptation, Jesus went out into the villages and cities of Judea and Samaria and began teaching revolutionary truth with authority, casting out demons, and raising the dead.

When it came time for Jesus’ closest followers to identify him as Messiah, Simon Peter declared, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

At this sign of childlike faith, Jesus tore logic to pieces when he, in turn, identified his chosen vessel for the gospel, “I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:16, 18-19, NIV).

Then, Jesus continued his journey to Calvary, was brutally tortured and died, was buried, was risen on the third day, ascended into heaven and sent his Holy Spirit to indwell his faithful followers, enabling them to live a holy life, empowering them to boldly go to every corner of the world with the authority of heaven’s throne and…

And what?

Churches were planted in many cities, spiritual leaders were trained, disciples were reproduced, and the Word was translated into the vernacular of every day servants but no Second Return.

So what is the two-thousand-year-old missing link for Christians in the church today?

Modern missional thinkers believe the answer is in the Greek phrase: panta ta ethne.

Originally, “ethne” was translated incorrectly as “nations” in every English translation of the Bible. The correct meaning of this word, however, is “ethnicities.”

A movement began whereby missiologists from every corner of the planet began to classify and categorize “ethnicities” into “people groups.” When Jesus gave his final command to the disciples, he specified how discipleship was to take place, “All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, as you go, make disciples of all people groups.” (Matthew 28:18-19a)

In America, we have traditionally had four areas of missions:

  • Local
  • State
  • National
  • Global

Our basis was Acts 1:8.

The problem is that the traditional interpretation of this verse’s context is only seventy-five percent accurate. Jerusalem for the Jews was local missions. Judea for the Jews was national missions. The ends-of-the-earth for the Jews was global missions.

The missing link is Samaria.

Samaria is the unreached and unengaged people groups of our world.

Now, the church of the twenty-first century is faced with an enormous challenge.

Will we rise and fall like countless generations before us who have had the same call to radical obedience and failed?

Are we doomed to the same fate as Christians throughout the centuries who have turned away from Christ’s invitation to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him as one, unified, authorized missionary force?

These questions fueled pastor David Platt to pen this challenge: “While Christians choose to spend their lives fulfilling the American dream instead of giving their lives to proclaiming the kingdom of God, literally billions in need of the gospel remain in the dark.”

Laura Story wrote a poem that exposes the relationship between God’s power and our purpose:

“Savior, you can move the mountains

For you are mighty to save

You are mighty to save

Forever, author of salvation

You rose and conquered the grave

Jesus conquered the grave

So, shine your light and

Let the whole world see

We’re singing for the glory of the risen king, Jesus”

Therefore:

Every church should be an intentional catalyst for four types of movements:

  1. Gospel
  2. Disciple
  3. Church
  4. Leader

Let’s briefly examine each type of movement.

GOSPEL MOVEMENT

A gospel movement is the first type of movement we should seek. Our purpose is to sow the seed of the gospel with the power of the Spirit in the hearts representing our community soil.

DISCIPLEMAKING MOVEMENT

A disciplemaking movement is the second type of movement we should seek. Our purpose, as Christ’s body, is to make disciples of all nations. If we make disciples effectively, then our mature disciples will fulfill their purpose to disciple other disciplemakers.

CHURCH MULTIPLYING MOVEMENT

A church multiplying movement is the third type of movement we should seek. Our purpose as fully matured Christians is to gather into covenant communities who live life abundantly together as we fulfill the Great Commission. These covenant communities are born pregnant with God’s heart to reach the unreached, so every church should hunger and thirst to multiply itself to at least the 4th generation.

LEADERSHIP TRAINING MOVEMENT

A leadership training movement is the fourth type of movement we should seek.  John Maxwell stated, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” Eugene Peterson paraphrased Proverbs 29:18 this way, “If people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; but when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed.”

It takes leaders to launch, sustain, and multiply the other three types of movements. Our purpose is to pray for our existing leaders but also to identify new leaders, equip them with leadership training, and empower them with the authority of the Word and the power of the Holy Spirit to go into the harvest fields of our global community and move the gospel, make disciples, and multiply churches.

In conclusion:

May we be motivated to pursue a deeper devotion to Jesus the King.

May we be inspired to embrace a life of true discipleship along the narrow way.

May our hearts discover joy in the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

May we come together as brothers and sisters in Christ and spur one another on towards love and good deeds, and all the more as we see the Day approaching.

May we be daily crucified with Christ so that the life we live in the body may be by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for his beloved church.