Mission Frontiers

March-April 2014:

4X4 Movements

Contents:

From the Editor

Embrace the Brighter Future of 4X4 Movements

by Rick Wood

4X4 Movements

Coming Soon to an Unreached People Near You!

by Jeff Sundell

Introducing… “4X4 Movement Starts”

Movements are Distinguished from Ministry by Training Members to Multiply Rapidly

by Robby Butler

No Longer “Business as Usual”

by Fred and Melissa Campbell

No Longer “Church as Usual”

by Gary L. Stump

No Longer “Discipleship as Usual”

by Chuck Wood

Growing U.S. Movements to the Lost and the Unreached

by Curtis Sergeant

Fostering Multigenerational Movements by Equipping Believer-Priests

by Mike Shipman

Disciples Unleashed

by Dave Campbell

What Makes a CPM Training Fruitful?

by David White

Leave a Lasting Witness by Illustrating the Gospel as you Present It

by Robby Butler

It’s Hard to ‘Go to Hell’ in Bugger Hollow, North Carolina!

A true story of how the CPM process is practiced in the harvest trenches

by Rich Hagler

Solid Grounding Transforms Worldview to Bring Forth Multiplying Fruit

by Bob & Koleen French

Antioch

How One Church is Growing

by Drew Steadman

Learning by Example (A Book Excerpt)

by "James Nyman"

Come Quickly Dawn

From George Patterson’s book Come Quickly Dawn (William Carey Library: 2012)

by George Patterson

Organizations and Coaches to Help You Pursue 4x4 Movement Starts

by Robby Butler

Kingdom Kernels

The Engine That Sustains Movements

by Steve Smith

The Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies

Equipping Christians to Understand and Engage Muslims with the Gospel for 35 Years

by

Hope for the Nations

A Review of Wayne Grudem and Barry Asmus' book The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution

by Robert Osburn, Ph.D.

Raising Local Resources

30 to 50 Years From Now

by Jean Johnson

The Final Assault: Hastening

by Steve Smith

Further Reflections

Age-Related Retirement

by Greg H. Parsons

Editorial

From the Editor

Embrace the Brighter Future of 4X4 Movements

by Rick Wood

We live in remarkable times. Knowledge is growing at an exponential rate in every field of endeavor. One article I googled noted:

Buckminster Fuller created the “Knowledge Doubling Curve”; he noticed that until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II knowledge was doubling every 25 years. Today things are not as simple as different types of knowledge have different rates of growth. But on average human knowledge is doubling every 13 months.1

If the total sum of human knowledge is now doubling almost once a year, then how are we doing in the world of missions? Is our understanding of how to disciple all nations increasing at the same rate as the rest of human knowledge or are we lagging behind?

At least in understanding how the Holy Spirit births multiplying movements of disciple makers, the base of understanding and practical application is increasing dramatically—and with remarkable results. For a few years now we have been reporting on growing movements to Christ that are taking place around the world including a growing number of breakthroughs in the Muslim world. (See the July-August 2013 issue of MF and the new book, A Wind in the House of Islam by David Garrison for more on this.)

Field workers like Jeff Sundell and Curtis Sergeant, who have pioneered movements among unreached peoples around the world, are now applying their expertise in the U.S. in pursuit of similar movements among unreached peoples here. These leaders have coined the term “4x4 Movement Starts” to describe a minimum goal for movement starts where 4 lineages of disciple-makers are developing 4 or more generations of disciples. These 4x4 movements are now emerging in 27 areas across the U.S. As these grow, the number of trained and experienced leaders is also multiplying, and the movement starts are beginning to penetrate every segment of society—including unreached peoples. Some of those reached are already going back to their homeland to start movements in their people group.

Jeff Sundell is inviting others to rally around the 50-5-50 Vision which you can read about on bottom of page 9. The vision is to raise up 50 trainers in 5 years (2013-2017) to start 4x4 movements in each of the 50 U.S. cities that will soon be majority-minority cities (the majority of the people in these cities will be from minority ethnic groups from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, etc.). This means the training of 2,500 movement catalysts to be deployed in 50 U.S. cities to reach the various minority groups and unreached peoples within each city.

Missions to the unreached are no longer simply a geographical challenge, i.e. going outside the U.S. or our home country to somewhere else where the unreached are. The unreached peoples are increasingly from everywhere to everywhere. God is bringing the unreached to live in our midst so we can bring the gospel to them. Our opportunity is to cross cultural barriers to start disciple-making movements among them. This issue of MF is your resource for sharing inspiration and information to enlist others to work with the Holy Spirit in starting these 4x4 Movements to transform your communities. In this issue we present a number of case studies describing movements emerging here in the U.S. Our goal is to inspire you to “try this at home.” Learning to make disciples who make disciples should be the privilege of every believer. It is what Jesus commanded us to do.

Refining the “Technology” of 4x4 Movements.

The missions effort has often been known for its pioneers such as William Carey, Hudson Taylor, etc. But like every other field of endeavor—from aircraft design to medicine—progress today is increasingly made through the sharing of fruitful practices among those most involved in trying to improve their craft. The development and refining of the “technology” of 4x4 movement starts is no different. Through vehicles like Communities of Practice and Iron on Iron, (see pages 7-9) the leaders of these movements are coming together to share case studies and models of ministry with each other. In the 18 months after one such meeting, the pace at which new movements emerged increased significantly.

“Business as Usual” Won’t Work

All the great inventions of history have also led to great “destruction.” The invention of the automobile destroyed the horse-drawn carriage business; the telephone destroyed the telegraph; the light bulb made gas lamps obsolete. Economists refer to this process as creative destruction. When I was a kid, all we had were rotary dial telephones. I haven’t seen one of those recently.

If managed properly, this process of creative destruction can lead to a brighter future for all of us. But there are always those that want to hang on to the past because it is comfortable and familiar. Change is often difficult. But change is necessary for us to embrace a brighter future, especially if the status quo is keeping us from doing what God has called us to do.

It will require a willingness to change the way we typically think about making disciples and doing church for this new technology of 4x4 movement starts to gain widespread acceptance and use.

Pastor Gary Stump of Fishers, IN has started an emerging 4x4 movement through his new church plant. In his article starting on page 15 he writes,

I realized that in my 22 years as a pastor I had encouraged, challenged, rebuked, motivated, inspired and even scolded Christians toward disciple-making. But I had never taught them how to make a disciple. It had never occurred to me that my first responsibility as a pastor in “equipping the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph 4:11-13) was to teach them how to make disciples who were able to make disciples (2 Tim 2:2).

Many millions of  believers have never developed the confidence and the competence for making disciples because they have never been taught this essential skill. Listening to lectures on disciple-making is not enough. The reality of our human nature is that we learn by doing, not just listening or watching. Jesus understood this.

Jesus trained his disciples by taking them along with him and then sending them out to practice. When they returned, they were debriefed and Jesus gave them correction before sending them out again. This was an apprenticeship type model of training in which the disciples learned by doing. Applying this “hands on” model of discipleship is the only way to effectively train disciple-makers. 4x4 Movement Starts are based on this reality.

We can stick with the comfortable status quo, where most believers do not make disciples and churches do not plant new churches, but the price we are already paying for this passivity is high and will only increase with time. The Church is in decline in the West and there are still over 7,000 unreached peoples waiting to be reached. Let us instead embrace the brighter future of 4x4 Movement Starts where disciples make disciples and plant reproducing churches.

Sabbatical

For the first time in 24 years of ministry with the U.S. Center for World Mission, my wife and I will be taking a short, six-month sabbatical from my work with Mission Frontiers. I have arranged to have three great people stand in for me as guest editors during this hiatus. You will have the opportunity to meet each of them on these editorial pages over the next six months. Unless the Lord intervenes, I will be returning to these pages for the Nov-Dec 2014 issue. I will be spending these months reading, resting, researching new models of ministry, traveling and working to raise my full financial support from churches and friends who believe in this ministry. (Donations to MF do not cover my salary. I must raise that separately.)

I would appreciate your prayers for this sabbatical to be a great time of renewal and reflection as I move into the next season of ministry on behalf of our Lord Jesus. I also want to give a special shout out of thanks to Robby Butler for his help with this latest issue.

See you next in the Fall.

About The Author

Rick Wood

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Feature

4X4 Movements

Coming Soon to an Unreached People Near You!

by Jeff Sundell

The Holy Spirit is birthing an increasing number of generational movements around the world among previously unengaged and unreached peoples. In 2009, God led Jeff Sundell from helping launch those movements in Asia to pursuing them here in the U.S. MF has covered this story in several past issues (Mar-Apr ’11, Jul-Aug ’12, and May-Jun ’13). What follows is a sampling from Jeff’s latest report.

In Someone has to be First: The Power of Precedent,1 Steve Smith explains the essential role of precedent in imparting vision for God’s people to apply His promises. Jeff’s success provides such precedent as U.S. “4x4” movement starts are now developing toward reaching the unengaged among us.

Do “try this at home,” but don’t try this alone—without guidance from the Holy Spirit and coaching from others.

T4T & DBS Merge in the US

In Jan/Feb 2011, MF first introduced readers to the T4T (Training for Trainers) model of Church Planting Movements, and in March the book^2 was released here in the U.S.

Since then, this “re-Revolution” has multiplied steadily in the U.S. with an ultimate agenda of reaching all of the unengaged and unreached peoples represented here (see the 50-5-50 Vision sidebar at the end of this article). As of December, 2013 Jeff Sundell reports these developments:

- 30 solid leaders, and 20 emerging leaders,

- 27 cities with T4T multiplication, some with 3rd or 4th generation reproduction. In 13 of these, churches are mostly planting new churches; in the other 14, disciples are mostly multiplying disciples within existing churches.

- These developing movements are using a hybrid of T4T and Discovery Bible Study (DBS)3—disciples are taught a simple gospel presentation to share with friends, family and strangers. Some become Christians immediately, while others show spiritual hunger or apathy. New Christians and the spiritually hungry then engage in Discovery Bible Study together in the central third of the T4T 3/3rds format.

Some Emerging 4x4 Movements in the U.S.

Austin, TX

Multiple streams of 3rd generation discipleship have developed just since April 2013, when the first 40 teams of two identified 400 potential houses of peace. Sixty groups were formed in 60 days, and by December more than 100 groups had formed in 36 communities, with more than 250 professions of faith in a variety of ethnicities. Read Fred & Melissa’s Story on p.12: “No Longer ‘Business as Usual.’”

Memphis, TN

Zach and Ron are seeing young African American males, Caucasians and Hispanics coming to Christ and sharing at the 4th generation and beyond. They also work with a medical doctor who has 4th generation and beyond disciples among medical students.

Zach and Ron started training four groups the second week in February. Within eight weeks they had 32, in 12 weeks they had 50 groups, with two in the 4th Gen. As of December, 2013 Zach and Ron had ten 4th Gen disciples and two 5th Gen groups. They held trainings in nine countries in 2013, and are now doing trainings within a prison and a college campus.

San Antonio, TX

Chuck is training others via Google Hangouts, and has a global, on-line network of collaborators.

He reports...

In San Antonio:

- 17 New Groups

- 11 2nd Gen Groups

- 1 3rd Gen Group

and around the world: (from voluntary reporting by one third of Chuck’s network):

- 128 New Groups (22 Churches)

- 60 2nd Gen Groups

- 14 3rd Gen Groups

Read Chuck’s Story on p.16: “No Longer ‘Discipleship as Usual.’”

Nashville, TN

David and James are focusing on Unreached People Groups (UPGs) and Unengaged Unreached People Groups (UUPGs). Last October they hosted 50 trainees to go into UPG Communities and share the gospel with 400. About 50 decided to follow Christ, leading to 12 new groups involving immigrants from: Iraq, North Sudan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Nepal, and Congo.4

Fishers, IN

Gary’s Onward Church is a late 2011 church plant in the T4T model. By late 2013 it had grown to 200 groups with more than 1,000 people and five generations. And more than 50% of participants were non-Christians before joining one of these groups. Read Gary’s Story on p.14: “No Longer ‘Church as Usual.’”

The Catalytic Power of Collaborative Learning Communities of Practice (CoPs)

The goal of CoPs is to create a holy discontent with the status quo, so that we count the lost rather than the saved.

In 2006, Southern Baptist missionaries working around the world with emerging movements met for three days to discuss their various training models.

Each brought a case study of their own work to guide others in asking questions and suggesting insights, testing everything against God’s Word. The resulting cross-pollination in the light of Scripture increased everyone’s fruitfulness and shaped emerging “Training for Trainers” (T4T) movements. Over the next 18 months, the pace at which movements emerged and matured increased significantly!

So many great ideas emerged that later gatherings were expanded to include YWAM, Discovery Bible Study (DBS), Movements.net, Act Beyond (formerly Mission to Unreached Peoples), Antioch Church in Waco, TX, and others. This CoP had a dramatic impact on me and several others I know, and on accelerating movements.

Movements Birthing Movements

The experience of this first CoP has led additional peer CoPs to emerge among those at similar stages of pursuing movements among unengaged and unreached people groups in the U.S and around the world.

These CoPs complement traditional coaching from successful practitioners as a powerful, catalytic dynamic to inspire and accelerate new and emerging movements.

The most powerful fruit of such CoPs is their potential for birthing new movements. As a movement matures, thousands of leaders are developed from potentially diverse backgrounds who know movement dynamics from personal experience. A simple list of unengaged people groups presented in a CoP invites everyone to consider “Who in your movement could become intentional about launching a movement among some of these other groups?” This has led repeatedly to experienced trainers in existing movements helping launch other movements across Asia!

Personal relationships developed through CoPs also facilitate the launching of additional movements. One of the first nationals we worked with who became a 4G trainer—successfully cultivating multiple streams of 4th Gen disciples—has presented his case study in a variety of CoPs and other contexts, and met and influenced 80-90% of the 40+ 4G streams we are now tracking today (beyond the 10–12 4x4 movements led by others this trainer has trained.)

Now these dynamics are unfolding here in the U.S. as well.

CoP Dynamics

This is the most fruitful CoP model I have witnessed:

- Involve only a small, intimate group of 15–25 practitioners who are pursuing full-blown Movements, with no observers. (Otherwise the conversation drifts from what we have learned from the Word of God and case studies to theory and conjecture.)

- Focus on overcoming obstacles as the greatest opportunities to see God work.

- Create an atmosphere for submitting plans and strategies to the Holy Spirit and inviting other practitioners to speak into them.

- Produce action plans which lead to clear outcomes.

Cross-Pollination

CoP participants don’t try to convert each other to “their” approach. Instead they respect what others are doing while reevaluating what they themselves are doing. They gather to discover practices which can lead to more fruit,5 with the result that former “distinctives” are becoming adopted as “fruitful practices.”

For example emerging U.S. movements:

- build on the “7 Commands of Christ” from George Patterson’s “Obedience-Oriented Discipleship,”6

- utilize T4T evangelism to identify Persons of Peace,

- employ DBS (in a T4T three-thirds format) to disciple seekers and new believers into reproducing leaders,

- involve Bible Storytelling to accelerate the resulting movements, and

- make use of Generational Mapping^7 for reporting
and diagnosing.

Iron on Iron (IoI) sessions

IoI is another important development, in which peers gather to discuss what they can do differently in the next two weeks to see a breakthrough.

Conclusion

If God leads you to seek Him for a movement, don’t neglect these powerful CoP and IoI resources.

Explore these online communities, then join one or start
your own:

- http://www.T4Tusa.com

- http://www.movement.net

- http://www.facebook.com/groups/278251675548545

- http://www.facebook.com/citychurchwoodbine

- http://www.CityChurchMovement.com

The 50-5-50 Vision: “No place left” (ROMANS 15:23)

- 50 G4 trainers (who have launched a full “4x4” movement),

- raised up over 5 years (2013-2017),

- in 50 U.S. majority-minority cities (2,500 total trainers).

No longer are the ends of the earth only thousands of miles away. God is bringing Acts 1:8 to our doorstep.

In the next 10 years, an increasing number of U.S. cities will be majority-minority (the majority of residents being minority peoples from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America).

This creates unprecedented opportunity for U.S. disciples to train and multiply among Unreached People Groups (UPGs) and Unengaged Unreached People Groups (UUPGs) here at home, then take or send experienced disciplers from within these groups back to their homeland.

For example:

- A high caste Hindu, recently won to Christ and trained in generational discipleship among his people in South Carolina, has gone to work with a team serving directly among high caste Hindus in his homeland.

- In late 2013 a team started a dozen multiplication groups among UPGs and UUPGs in Tennessee.

Early adopters of the 50-5-50 vision include E3 Partners and a variety of emerging U.S. T4T 4x4 movements. And participation is open to any group or individual pursuing 4x4 movements among UPGs and UUPGs.

To learn more or join, visit http://www.50-5-50network.com

About The Author

Jeff Sundell

My background includes several entrepreneurial businesses in the States. After serving two years in India and Nepal as part of an innovative program with Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, I graduated in Dec. ’01 with an MDiv in Church Planting and an MA in Intercultural Studies. Most recently, I served with the International Mission Board in South Asia as a Strategy Associate for Northern India, Nepal and Bhutan. My passion is to see people
far from God reached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and and develop reproducing
disciples one life at a time, who gather into healthy reproducing churches!

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Feature

Introducing… “4X4 Movement Starts”

Movements are Distinguished from Ministry by Training Members to Multiply Rapidly

by Robby Butler

Ministries

Ministries aim to grow wide (a regular audience of many members), but not deep (many generations).

Ministries urge: “come to our meeting,” “listen to our message,” “read our materials,” or “visit our site.”

Ministries ask members to invite others rather than training them to reproduce.

Ministries tend to overextend leaders while leaving disciples dependent and underdeveloped.

From Ministry to Movements

Movements equip members to obey and teach what they receive, often with little interaction two or more generations away.

Nik Ripken observes:

[In China those who have been baptized, attend church regularly, and give faithfully are called “members.”] But we do not consider them “followers of Jesus” until they have led others to Christ and helped plant a house fellowship which has planted other house fellowships.1

Gary Stump describes his shift as a minister “from gathering a crowd to making disciples.”2

And Navigator Jim McKnight observes that laborers tend to bring their new births to the ministry that trained them, so movement leaders must teach their disciples to train their own “children.”3

Jesus Launched a Movement

Jesus welcomed crowds but didn’t seek to retain them. Instead He prayerfully selected and trained several whom He:

authorized to do what He did,

- pointed to the harvest,

- sent out to practice then debriefed,

- assigned to reproduce, and

- left to the Holy Spirit.

He then empowered His disciples to call others to

- receive the same Holy Spirit,

- learn together to obey Him, and

- continuing reproducing.

Proliferating Movements

In recent decades, significant interrelated trends have reinforced each other for the rapid proliferation of discipling and church-planting movements among previously unreached and unengaged peoples:

1. Movement leaders are interacting intentionally to study, learn from and speak into each others efforts. This helps “stuck” movements get quickly “unstuck” to become even more fruitful.

2. Leaders developed within movements—who have first-hand experience in movement dynamics—are accepting invitations to start movements among other unreached groups.

3. These movements are now spilling over to the U.S. and other “Christian” lands, renewing the Church and mobilizing laborers for movements among local communities of the unreached.

4. Published case studies, such as those in this MF, are mobilizing many more to seek God’s help to launch movements.

4x4 Movement Starts

Movements can start with skills any believer can develop:

- learning to frequently share their own testimony (incorporating the Gospel),

- listening to the Holy Spirit in seeking out Persons of Peace, and

- training those who receive Christ to do the same.

Movement leaders have identified four or more “lineages” of disciples, of four or more generations, as an important foundation for maturing movements. For discussion, practitioners have proposed this definition:

4x4 Movement Starts grow as the Holy Spirit leads disciple-makers in birthing four or more unrelated lineages of four or more generations of reproducing disciples, each training new disciples within days or weeks in loving obedience to Jesus. This training includes gathering new disciples to form churches which multiply through the disciples’ fruitful witness to their families and friends who are “far from God,” and to new “persons of peace.” Such “Movement Starts” can lead to full Church Planting Movements.

This definition seeks to guard against common temptations in ministry:

- delayed obedience in witnessing and discipling

- witnessing only to family and friends

- neglecting to witness to family and friends

- rearranging Christians without engaging the lost

- going wide (disciples) but not deep (generations)

- going deep (generations) but not wide (disciples)

Measuring 4x4 Movement Starts

(Proposed for discussion) 4x4 Movement Starts can be described as:

L1—(or “aspiring”) when...

a. I affirm a sense of God’s leading to seek to cultivate a 4x4 movement start.

b. I am training a person of peace (PoP) outside my own family and friends to start a new church, and

c. I am receiving coaching from others with more experience.

L2—when my lineages contain 2 L1 4x4 starts unrelated to each other.

L3—when my lineages contain 3 unrelated L2 4x4 starts.

L4—(or “emerging”) when my lineages contain 4 unrelated L3 4x4 starts, etc.

This scale of measurement maintains a balanced emphasis on growing both wider and deeper.

To join the discussion of how best to define and measure 4x4 Movement Starts, comment on the on-line version of this article, or email 4x4Movements@gmail.com.

4x4 Essentials

Only the Holy Spirit can birth a movement. We can “put up the sails” but only God provides the wind.4

Each disciple-maker must train their disciples to pray for and map their generations with as much interest as they would their own grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This leads to rejoicing in fruitfulness and timely attention to trouble spots.

For personal interaction and a “getting started” guide, email 4x4Movements@gmail.com .

About The Author

Robby Butler

Robby Butler served at the U.S. Center for World Mission from 1980 to 2004. He now serves as a consultant to church and mission leaders, and an occasional writer for Mission Frontiers.

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Feature

No Longer “Business as Usual”

by Fred and Melissa Campbell

I just spent the weekend hosting Fred and Melissa. They are experiencing the same things we have seen overseas, and touching every people group in their communities—Muslims, Hindus, Latinos, and African Americans. They are seeing great success in the lower and middle classes, and are beginning to reach the upper class. They are forming groups in the inner city and the suburbs. They are touching everyone.

These movements are also branching out into Detroit, Miami, Kansas City, New York, Houston, and Chicago, and God is using them to mobilize the sleeping army in many churches—doctors and business people, young Christians and old believers, everybody. While laity is the primary workforce, a number of pastors are joining them, dissatisfied with the status quo.—Jared Houk, Field worker

Early Experiences

As a family we have witnessed door to door for decades, using whatever model was favored by our current local church—Continuing Witness Training (CWT), Becoming a Contagious Christian, The JESUS Film videos, Got Life, Share Jesus Without Fear, Marketplace Evangelism, and FAITH evangelism. And when I had extended business travel I would find a local church and ask to join them in witnessing. They were always encouraged, and the people to whose homes we went seemed more responsive with someone from out of town. And as we shared the gospel, we joyfully experienced GOD!

But after we, with others, helped add 1,200 people to one church, these people eventually wandered away because there was no structure for discipleship and leadership development to equip the fruit of these evangelistic outreaches for multiplication.

Ministry through Business

In 1999 God led us to start a manufacturing company which became a vehicle of ministry to employees, customers and vendors. With many we met, we looked for spiritual interest. Many came to Christ, and we plugged them into local churches. We also energized and emboldened many Christians. God gave us several product designs which proved quite valuable, and the company grew rapidly through multiplication. We also witnessed in other contexts, but generally found people most responsive when we went to their home or had relationships through work.

In knocking on doors we found that about 1 in 20 would receive Christ. But even when people came to faith and joined the church they did not reproduce.

Passion for Austin

From February 2007 to the present we have been praying “Lord Jesus, Give us Austin or we die!” When God arranged for the sale of the business in 2011, we took this as God’s provision for us to pursue full-time the prayer He had placed in our hearts.

We spent 2011 and 2012 surveying, praying, and serving in the spiritual battlefield of Austin, TX, and learned that 90% of the 1.9 million people in our metro area are unchurched. Everywhere we found many far from God, so we prayed daily for God to show us a leadership structure scalable to any size. We also met with pastors to share what God was revealing to us.

Breakfast Burrito Breakthrough

One insight God gave us was to demonstrate God’s grace by offering a free gift of value (breakfast burritos)1 to the homes we were visiting, then get their first name and ask to pray for them: “Joe, if God could do a miracle to meet a need you have right now, what would that need be, and could we pray that for you right now?” Nearly half began responding positively (up to 70% on Sunday mornings in the suburbs), and we would pray with them. Then when we were out of sight we would note these homes as “potential houses of peace” for later follow up.

Two weeks to two months later we would return, identify ourselves as the ones who brought breakfast and prayed for them, and say “We’d like to share a story with you.” In their living room or on the front porch we would then share a Bible story, our personal testimony and the gospel.

With this approach we found that 80% would either accept Christ or accept our offer to return in a week and tell another story. Again we found believers energized and emboldened by our interaction, but we still didn’t have a scalable model for training, for leadership, nor a continuous improvement process inherent in the model.

T4T Time

Then in February of 2013 a pastor invited us to a T4T training offered by Jeff Sundell. There God gave us an “Entry Plan, Gospel Plan, Discipleship Plan, Group/Gathering Formation Plan, Leadership Development and Multiplication Plan, and Troubleshooting Plan.” We saw that God had entrusted a great deal to us, and we began passing on all these tools to everyone we knew. Listen to our 60 minute interview with Steve Addison.

First Fruits

In April of 2013, after mapping the greater Austin area into regions, we sent out our first 40 teams of two to search for potential houses of peace in 12 areas. They found 400!

We formed more than 60 new groups within 60 days of this first search, and additional searches in August and November identified 150 more potential houses of peace. As of December 2013 we had more than 100 groups. Most are reproducing disciples, and one is reproducing churches!

Five weeks after this first search we took a pastor along for follow up. At the first home the mother came to Christ. The next man wasn’t ready to receive Christ, so we asked, “Can we come back next week and tell you another story?” He replied, “Yes! You would do that?”

The third resident had just flown in the night before from Iran, where he had became a Christian. There he had been imprisoned for a year and tortured. He told us, “Last night I dreamt someone was knocking on my door. I came and opened the door, but no one was there, so I went back to sleep. A few hours later I had the same dream, so again I came downstairs. And here you are!” On the plane he had prayed, “Jesus I will suffer more for you, or do whatever you want me to do, but will you please give me at least one friend in the U.S.?” Later that day, he came with us into his community and watched us bring an entire household to Christ! He was overjoyed, and his home became the base for daily gospeling in that community.

A Church is Born

The pastor accompanying us then asked, “How many people have you seen come to Christ here?” We told him there were over 60 in this one housing development, and he said, “We could plant a church here right now!” And we did. This church has been meeting outdoors in their green belt twice a week since mid-July. Their first offering was $200, after which the pastor asked who had a need and distributed the $200 to those who needed it. A new believer remarked, “I had no idea it was this wonderful to give to God!”

Two weeks later this church asked, “What can we do for our community?” They saw a fallen fence that needed fixing to deter children from wandering out of the community toward a major highway, and asked the management of this 420 unit complex if they could pay to fix the fence. The management was so impressed they invited, “Do anything you want here, just don’t amplify with speakers.” By October the gathering grew to more than 100 adults and 50 children. At Thanksgiving, with no outside assistance, the new believers organized and funded a feast for all community residents! This church has raised up 20 leaders to receive further T4T training. And now these new believers are saying, “We want to go and help other communities experience what has happened in our community!” And they did in, four more communities in 2013.

College Outreach

Our 21 year old daughter Rebecca is leading multiple searches to college students near the University of Texas. Before December 2013 finals she led 50 people in teams using the breakfast burrito strategy. We asked, “Rebecca, how are you going to follow up with all those whom God shows you He is working?” She said, “Daddy, God will provide!” Within a week a local Austin pastor heard about this and said, “We’ll bring 150 people to reap the harvest.”

Lessons

We learned a lot following up on our first “search.” For example, the bonding in the first weeks goes very deep; once someone comes to Christ, we need to either plan to stay with them 9 to 18 months or immediately bring in someone else to train them.

Everything has changed from when our family first went knocking on doors.

Now, in the tools God has given us, we have a reproducing entry strategy, a reproducing gospel which new believers share right away, reproducing discipleship, reproducing gatherings of new believers, and multiplication of leaders.

Now we have simple tools for working with the Holy Spirit to lovingly train many believers into effective, reproducing soul winners who train others. The army in our churches across the city is coming alive!

Now, our relationship with a person far from God does not end if they say “I’m not ready”; these Bible-centered tools sustain the relationship for weeks as the Word of God sinks in and the mentoring process pursues Pastoral Care, Loving Accountability, Vision Casting, Practice telling God’s Word, Setting Goals, and Praying specifically that God would help us.

Now—within minutes of someone coming to Christ—the Word of God empowers and equips the new believer to share their story to everyone in their social network who is far from God. Within days the new believer is trained and practices telling their story with the gospel to lost friends and relatives. And we are training people to use generational mapping for reporting and diagnostics.

Looking Ahead

For 2014 God has raised up a number of churches to help send out 100 teams each month toward a goal of identifying 10,000 potential houses of peace, and we are supporting similar efforts in Houston and other cities.

For a “getting started” guide and personal interaction, email 4x4Movements@gmail.com.

About The Author

Fred’s background is in underwater video, sonar, and acoustic positioning systems, and the company he founded produces force measurement systems for harsh and hazardous environments. Melissa was an ICU nurse afraid to talk about Jesus, but God has turned her into a reproducing disciple in English and Spanish! God has blessed Fred and Melissa with Elizabeth, Rebecca, Sarah, and Joshua. They love their pastor, Dr. Danny Forshee, and Great Hills Baptist Church!

Contact the Campbells at T4TCentralTexas@yahoo.com

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Feature

No Longer “Church as Usual”

by Gary L. Stump

Adapted with permission from http://www.OnwardChurch.org/vision

In December 2011, Gary Stump started Onward Church in Fishers, IN in the T4T model. As of December 2013 they reported 1,000 people meeting in 200 groups with 50% non-Christians or newly baptized, and some 5th generation groups. In 2013 alone they celebrated 300 decisions for Christ.

“I’m too old to play church!”

I started my ministry as a pastor in 1990 in the usual way of “attractional” church. The traditional idea of “doing church” was to develop a program on Sundays that would draw those who were far from God to hear the Gospel and connect with the Lord and His people. But after more than 20 years doing it this way, something seemed very ineffective to me with this approach. I’ve said for a long time, “I’m way too old to play church!”

T4T: Training for Trainers

About that time I was introduced to the story of Ying Kai. In 2001 Ying was assigned to an unreached people group of 20 million people in a country in the Far East. For the five years prior to this new assignment, he had been effective in planting one new church per year, and personally discipling about 60 people per year. He was receiving accolades for his effectiveness.

But as he considered the overwhelming responsibility of trying to impact 20 million people, he realized he would never make a dent in reaching these people if he kept doing what he had been doing. As he turned to the Lord in prayer and meditated on the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20), he found the Lord’s instructions for pursuing his new assignment.

The Great Commission instructs us that

- we are to go, not invite them to come to us;

- everyone is to be engaged in attempting to reach everyone, everywhere; and

- we are to make disciples, not church members or converts.

With these marching orders, Ying began teaching a group of 30 Christians how to make disciples who would know how to make disciples. During the next 10 years, he was used of God to begin a movement that planted more than 158,000 churches and baptized 1.7 million people.

This story was overwhelming to me. For the ten years prior to hearing Ying’s story, I had served in a new church plant that was among the 1% most successful church plants in America. Yet my church had only baptized 1,000 people in the same 10 years that Ying’s movement baptized 1.7 million.

As I reflected on this I saw that we Christians in America have generally abdicated our responsibility to make disciples and found ways to rationalize our habitual disobedience to the Great Commission. But in our defense, few of us have any idea how to make disciples—we have never been taught.

Furthermore I realized that in my 22 years as a pastor I had encouraged, challenged, rebuked, motivated, inspired and even scolded Christians toward disciple-making. But I had never taught them how to make a disciple. It had never occurred to me that my first responsibility as a pastor in “equipping the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph 4:11-13 ESV) was to teach them how to make disciples who were able to make disciples (2 Tim 2:2).

I asked the Lord for forgiveness and determined to train everyone in disciple-making.

So I started Onward Church with this mission: to teach God’s people how to make disciples—and not just disciples, but disciples who know how to make disciples. Ying called these people “trainers.” The idea is to train trainers who can train trainers. It is in the multiplication of trainers that we will see God multiplying workers for His harvest (Mt 9:37-38). Therefore with assistance and coaching from others implementing T4T in the U.S. we are training all of our people to make disciples using the biblical principles Ying identified in T4T.

What can God do through us in the months and years ahead if we can learn to be effective in making disciples who can make disciples?

Keeping It Simple

The modern, “relevant” church growth movement in America focuses on the Sunday morning program. This often leads to complicated programs that require enormous resources—both human and financial. It just seems too complicated. In Onward Church we felt the Lord asking us to keep it simpler. So our worship on Sunday is genuine, simple and organic.

Obedience-Based Discipleship

Modern church “discipleship” is generally knowledge-based—teaching people what Jesus commanded—not obedience-based—training people to obey what Jesus commanded.

Jesus commanded us to train “them to obey everything I have commanded” (Mt 28:20a NIV). Knowledge-based discipleship teaches information. Obedience-based discipleship teaches obedience. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1b ESV). Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15 NIV).

Our focus is training Christians to obey Jesus—especially  as it relates to disciple-making.

“Building-less” Church

Many churches spend 40% or more of their offerings on their church buildings and facilities—from construction to upkeep, yet use their buildings only a few hours per week. We have decided to rent a meeting place whenever and wherever we need, and meet mostly in homes. This increases the involvement of our members and reduces our facilities cost below 8% of our offerings, leaving substantial resources to fund missions and outreach.

For personal interacztion and a “getting started” guide, email 4x4Movements@gmail.com.

About The Author

Gary L. Stump is pastor of Onward Church in Fishers, Indiana. He was in the business world for almost 20 years, but after a drunk driver killed his wife and left him with four children to raise, God eventually led him to become a pastor. He remarried in 1989, and he and Kathy added a son in 1998. They now have fourteen grandchildren. Gary Studied at Indiana University, Crossroads Bible College and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. You may contact him at gary@ garystump.org.net.

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Feature

No Longer “Discipleship as Usual”

by Chuck Wood

Distilled from http://www.tinyurl.com/2013WoodCaseStudy

Background: (2010-2012)

By 2010, I had been discipling others for 30 years and risen to national level leadership with the Navigators. Then a speaker introduced me to Steve Addison’s book, Movements that Change the World.1 I was more than curious. This launched me on a three-year study of what God is doing around the world, which I shared with my friend Jim McKnight who is a Navigator leader at Fort Benning, GA. Jim and I picked up various movement principles along the way and began applying them in piecemeal fashion.

I desperately wanted to see God do here in the U.S. what I read He is doing around the world. So as recommended in the books I was reading, I spent hours each day in prayer, read through the Bible twice a year and studied Luke and Acts extensively.

We moved to San Antonio at the Spirit’s leading and quickly developed a disciple-making ministry similar to what I had had in recent years. But three separate disciples told me privately that they were thankful for what I had done for them but they didn’t have the confidence or competence to do the same for someone else. I knew we wouldn’t see a movement unless I adopted a new approach.

The New Beginning: (December 2012)

The final book on my reading list was T4T: A Discipleship Re-revolution by Steve Smith and Ying Kai.2 As I started reading a voice in my head said, “Humble yourself and do this.” By now I had read hundreds of books on discipleship methods, and I wasn’t about to blindly start doing new stuff. But the Holy Spirit persisted in speaking to me, and I determined to obey.

The next thing I read was how to develop a vision statement around the question, “What would it take to reach San Antonio for Christ?” A few days later I shared the vision and T4T book with my friend Jim. As he read T4T and put it into practice, he quickly saw result.3

I shared T4T with a guy who didn’t feel equipped to reproduce, and he led several people to Christ and started a group at Fort Sam Houston which grew from five to 35 people in three weeks. On three separate occasions, I witnessed four-week-old believers leading a Bible study. God has given us a highly reproducible model of discipleship.

This has become a “family affair” as families work together. Discipleship is bringing families together and saving marriages through obedience to Jesus’ commands and laboring together in the kingdom. The ministry is so simple and fun, it’s easy to include kids. One person in Washington, DC has a second generation group of 17 children led by his 11-year-old son. In my own family, three generations are actively participating in T4T groups.

Our Jesus-Up-In-Out Network was formed through recording the vision on tablets, so that those who read it may run. (Hab 2.2). The “tablets” I use are a simple website^4 and Facebook page.5 I trained many through Skype and Google Hangouts, starting with friends and ministry relationships from the last 35 years. By the end of 2013 we saw Jesus start groups in 50 U.S. cities and four countries.

Insights Gained in 2013

- God is in charge of movements, so persistent and passionate prayer is essential (Ps 127:1)

- Our role is following Jesus and His ministry model. (Study Luke and Acts repeatedly.)

- Discipleship must be obedience-focused, not knowledge-focused.

- Be patient and adapt movement principles to your context.

- Jesus’ church comes in all shapes and sizes, and meets any place at any time.

- The T4T 3/3rds process relies on biblical principles and is the catalyst for what we are seeing.

- Simplicity is essential for reproducibility.

- Our Accountability Teams (A-Teams) take disciples much deeper in their relationship with Jesus and others.

- Storytelling is very effective for both teaching and witnessing.

- Young disciples learn to labor by laboring.

- Most young laborers must “stick to the script” to see generations.

- Be persistent through lots of failure. (2 Ch 15:7, Lk 8:15)

- Most of my early adaptations to T4T became obstacles to generational movement.

- Modeling and intentional training are key.

- Disciples need to stay in their original group for continued training while starting and leading their own group on another night.

- The “Person of Peace” strategy is key to effective evangelism.

- You are the Person of Peace for your own relational network. Start there.

- Baptism is the best way to celebrate and measure “decisions.”

- Working with a larger network facilitates cross-pollination and encouragement.

- Front-end learning goes deeper after a laborer has applied the lesson and returns with questions.

Conclusion

T4T works! Never have I seen God do so much so quickly, nor to such depth. But T4T only works as a means of obedience to the Holy Spirit.

The story of Naaman the leper in 2 Kings 5 illustrates this. Naaman was a captain in the Syrian Army when he heard the Israelite prophet Elisha could heal him. When Naaman went to see Elisha, he had his servant tell Naaman to dip seven times in the Jordan River and he would be healed. Naaman was angry that the prophet didn’t speak with him personally and felt he could wash in cleaner rivers back home. But after his servants calmed and advised him to obey the prophet, he dipped seven times in the Jordan and was completely healed.

Now there was nothing magical in the Jordan River or dipping seven times. Naaman had to do three things in order to see God’s healing: humble himself, trust God,
and obey Him.

This is what God had me do to see results this past year—humble myself, trust Him and obey Him. To God be all the glory!

For a “getting started” guide and personal interaction, email 4x4Movements@gmail.com.

About The Author

Chuck and Deb Wood have been making disciples of Jesus for 35 years. In 2012 they were introduced to T4T and trained by Jeff Sundell in CPMs. Chuck and Deb immediately put these principles and training into practice and have seen an incredible impact. In their first year, Jesus used them to start a network that has seen 60+ baptisms, 106 groups and 22 churches. Chuck has been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) so much of their training is done online. They are available to train others and can be contacted at charleswood1@gmail.comhttp://www.jmovement.net

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Feature

Growing U.S. Movements to the Lost and the Unreached

by Curtis Sergeant

The Jan/Feb 2012 MF article about Curtis’ work in Asia described the transformation of a “heartless place with no hope” into a place where “every village has churches. The worship is phenomenal. They’re sending out missionaries! The government formerly persecuted the Christians, and now they are encouraging churches because the crime rate is down.” Now the same dynamics are unfolding here in the U.S.

We started our house church in October 2012. We just called it “porch church” since we started by meeting on our porch. We started with eight folks but only have seven now. We’ve intentionally not added new members but seek to start new churches with new folks. As of December, 2013 we have multiple streams to the 5th generation or beyond and well over a dozen more to the 4th generation. All told there are about 200 downstream churches in the USA and 162 overseas, including several among previously unengaged people groups. The total number of new professions of faith is now over 10,500. Some of those have chosen to join traditional or legacy churches rather than the house churches.

Our vision is to make it the norm for followers of Christ to become multiplying disciple-makers. To expand that a bit, we want to see people obeying the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Our shorthand for that is “obey GC^2.” If the task our Lord left us is ever going to be finished, it will require His followers to be of that sort.

When someone decides to follow Christ we immediately ask them to make a list of 100 people they know and pick 5 of those who are not followers of Christ whom they want to tell about their decision right away. We then work with them right then and there to learn how to share their testimony (about how they came to their decision) and the gospel. We have them practice doing that five times, role playing once each for each of the five. We then try to set an appointment for a couple of days later to get together with them and see how it went. If any of those people decide to follow the Lord then they are also directed to make a list of 100 people they know and follow the same pattern. The goal is to try to get a few people from the same network of relationships among whom a new church can be started.

We then begin to coach the new believer in basic discipleship patterns which he can begin to share within his or her list of 100 whether or not they are already followers of Christ. These include participative Bible studies, accountability groups, and prayerwalking among others.

The participative Bible studies are the heart of the house church weekly meetings (although quite often there are other times they get together as well since they consist of people who are within the same network of relationships). The first part of the time is spent in “catching up” with everyone, praying together, singing, and then seeing how the obedience points from the week before were carried out. These points include what the Lord specifically asked each person to do in response to the Bible passage studied, who the passage would be shared, and with whom the Lord was leading them to share their testimony and the gospel. Then there is a reminder about the “big picture” task and vision which is usually very brief. Then a passage is read and some basic questions are discussed among the group. These include: “What do you like about this passage? What is confusing or challenging about this passage? What can we learn about people? What can we learn about God?” The scripture will be read again or in some groups it will be paraphrased or quoted between questions. Then the group spends some time in individual prayer asking for guidance from the Holy Spirit in how to apply the passage personally (and specifically: when, where, and how) and with whom they are to share the passage. They also ask with whom they should share the gospel in the coming week. After the prayer time, people share what they heard and what their commitments are. These are written down for use at the next weekly meeting. The group then shares a meal together.

The accountability groups are an adaptation of Neil Cole’s Life Transformation Groups. They are groups of two or three people of the same gender who read about thirty chapters of scripture each week and then discuss a list of general life accountability questions. This is a different set from Neil’s but has some similarities. We have a separate list of questions for children.

Prayerwalking is used to help people develop a constant sense of God’s presence, to help them learn to look at their surroundings with spiritual eyes, and as a great opening for evangelistic opportunities as they pray for people in their presence.

There is an expectation that every person will be involved with two house churches at a time. One is their primary spiritual family. This remains constant. The other is one they are helping to launch. With that second church they serve as a model and then in coaching or assisting that new church to learn the above practices and begin to pass them on to subsequent generations. Once that process is successfully underway in the second church then the relationship backs off to a more consultative and periodic contact which we call ”watching.” Because of the relatively light responsibilities in this phase, one person can “watch” a number of churches at the same time. We suggest they only model or assist one church at a time, however.

In addition, we seek to help disciples develop “eyes to see where the Kingdom isn’t.” In other words, they look for gaps between what is and what the Lord desires. They look for the darkest places. They look for the least, the last, and the lost. They look for those without access to the gospel. This means they not only seek to help all the people on their list of 100 take their next step in their spiritual journey, but they also look for persons of peace among those who need the gospel most desperately. They then follow a Luke 10/Matthew 10 type of approach to seek to launch new churches among these communities.

We focus on equipping all followers of Christ to be self-feeding in terms of interpreting and applying scripture, prayer (speaking, listening, teaching, reaching, etc.), body life (such as through practicing the “one another” passages and utilizing spiritual gifts), and persecution and suffering (being intentional in order to develop character, increase faith, equip for ministry, glorify God, etc.) The point is to make everyone a producer and not merely a consumer in living out their spiritual lives.

One of the streams from our little church was started in Tampa, Florida. Within eight months it had fourteen streams, twelve of which were at least third generation, from it (and fourth from our church). Several were an additional generation. There were streams among former Hindus, former Muslims, homeless people, prisoners, and mental hospital patients, as well as more “typical” middle class white folks. This was all initiated by a brother who has a nutrition counseling company.

To me, one of the greatest challenges to doing this in the USA is that people assume they know what it means to be a Christian and what a church looks like. Thus, finding people who are dissatisfied enough to make significant change can be difficult. Generally, the “known” approach does not result in great fruitfulness or life change.

In 2014 I am running several workshops here in Dadeville, Alabama to equip others to follow this same sort of pattern and help them develop a three-month implementation plan with three months of coaching access and an option to continue longer. I find this the most efficient and effective way for people to understand this approach at a level where they can and do implement it. These workshops are scheduled Mar. 17-21, Jun. 2-6, Jun. 30-Jul. 4, and Jul. 28-Aug. 1.

For more information, contact me at 214-802-6850 or obeygc2@gmail.com.

“New Water Ministry” Training Disciple-Makers

http://www.newwater.com

Dave Treat recently learned a question that he says will drive the rest of his life: “Am I a disciple worth reproducing?”

He started asking this question while at New Water Ministry, a new training center in Dadeville, AL that teaches Christians to make disciples who make more disciples and eventually multiply house churches.

“I went with the feeling that a lot of what I knew about discipleship was incomplete or downright wrong and was ready to have my assumptions and practices challenged. I was not disappointed,” said Treat, director of missional communities at Asbury United Methodist Church, Madison, AL.

After his time at New Water Ministry, Treat said he let go of a lot of theory “in favor of the reality of changed lives.”

That’s what Curtis Sergeant said he hopes New Water Ministry does—take Christians from a mindset of “we’re a Christian nation, we already know how to do all this stuff” to a lifestyle of active disciple-making.

The command to “make disciples” demands obedience from all Christ followers, but “if you look around, you don’t see a lot of multiplying disciple makers,” says Sergeant—a former International Mission Board (IMB) representative who founded New Water Ministry. “We want to equip people to be fruitful disciples for the Kingdom.”

So far, the numbers show that this is happening.

(Adapted from Dadeville training center teaches Christians to become multiplying disciple makers by Grace Thornton (Jan 2, 2014). http://www.theAlabamaBaptist.org/print-edition-article-detail.php?id_art=30184)

About The Author

Curtis served with the IMB as a church planter among an unreached people in China and as a global trainer of hundreds of people in rapidly multiplying churches. Collectively those trained have planted several hundred thousand churches. He went on to serve as the Director of Church Planting for Saddleback Church where he was instrumental in initiating church planting in nearly 100 previously unengaged people groups. He then served with e3 Partners as an International VP for three years. He now lives in Alabama where he runs New Water Ministry to train others. You can contact him at Curtis.Sergeant@e3partners.org

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Feature

Fostering Multigenerational Movements by Equipping Believer-Priests

by Mike Shipman

In Jul/Aug 2013 MF reported on the Any-3 model of evangelism adapted for Muslim contexts from Jesus’ example in John 4. What follows is a complementary insight from this same movement among Muslims.

I moved from traditional church ministry to pursuing a generational church movement in January 2005. A desire to reach the lost and an honest look at how the first-century world was discipled in reproducing churches inspired us to “Re-en-ACT” our approach to the Great Commission. As a result we’ve had approximately 1000 generational groups and churches started in our people group, and by our friends using basically the same approach we’re using.

We live outside our people group, but I have personally led two to faith who have started generational church streams. Also, a volunteer team I was with led another person to faith who started a large generational stream. As a result, my primary role shifted from evangelism to training.

Discipling these new believers as partner-priests rather than students has fostered generational growth. A 2010 study of our movement showed that more than one third of all groups and churches were G4 and beyond (four or more generations beyond the church planting team). The percentage of G4+ groups and churches has probably increased since that time. At least one church is G10.

We focus on training disciples to abide in Christ in order to disciple the world through reproducing churches. In everything we model, we assist the new local believers to begin doing themselves as soon as possible.

While abiding in Christ, we boldly and relationally seek to lead people to faith using the Any-3 (Anyone, Anywhere, Any Time) approach.1 We teach them obedience in immediate baptism, following the pattern in Acts. And we teach them obedience in multiplying while they are being discipled. This results in groups started and temporarily led by the new believer until the churches appoint leaders (Titus 1:5). Most groups efficiently become churches.

Routine worship occurs at least weekly in the 3/3rds process of T4T.2 This encourages believers in obeying all of Christ’s commands and becoming complete in Christ. Discipleship naturally occurs as believers study and apply the Word together, with goals and accountability for obedience. Once churches form, our attention is given to developing the churches and equipping the leaders in a reproducing way.

Leaders of churches receive on the job training through bi-weekly meetings, led by teachers from the local networks.3 These meetings focus on accountability (going) and a deeper lesson (growing). Leadership training is the key to sustaining multi-generational growth and going deeper in the Word. Going further and growing deeper must be accomplished simultaneously in leadership development to insure a healthy growing movement.

The key to multi-generational growth is simple obedience to the Great Commission. Treat every new believer as a 100% priest, who has Christ’s authority and presence for the three tasks of the Great Commission—going (proclaiming the gospel), baptizing, and teaching them to obey all of Christ’s commands (beginning with the Great Commission itself).

Every believer is a priest, who does every one of these tasks in order to disciple and plant churches among every kind of people. The key to generational growth is training the new believer as a priest, rather than as a student.

As long as believers are discipled as 100% priests and they obey the Great Commission, generations of new believers and churches can follow indefinitely. Except for Christ’s Second Coming, only two realities stop the Great Commission: 1) The new believer doesn’t obey it, or 2) The person who led them to Christ doesn’t train and send them to obey it.

Training the new believer-priest to abide in Christ and His Word while obeying the Great Commission connects the branch intimately to the Vine, guaranteeing increasing fruitfulness (Jn 15:1–8).

Abiding in Christ through prayer, His Word and His works empowers the new believer to experience Christ intimately and powerfully as He accomplishes His work through them. One of the greatest joys of experiencing an Acts-type generational church movement is seeing ordinary new believers become apostles, evangelists, prophets, pastors and teachers (Eph 4:11–12) as they grow in grace and come to maturity.

I smile as I recall the faces of ordinary people who have become outstanding believer-priests since surrendering themselves to Christ. I know several octogenarians with a godly ambition to live the remainder of their lives in holiness, with great zeal to see their Savior glorified. When they came to faith, they were stained by past sins and had wasted the majority of their lives. Now, they live with relentless zeal for Christ and the spread of the gospel, willing to die for Him if called upon to do so. They have started house church networks which are leading hundreds of others to Christ. Their lives and the lives of their families reflect Christ’s character, and when they speak they are filled with the wisdom of God.

Since changing to an Acts-type church planting paradigm, we have experienced God’s power in many Acts-type miracles. But the believers are quick to remind us, “It’s about the gospel, not the miracles.” Seeing the gospel flow from person to person, and churches multiplying from house to house, glorifies Christ in the 21st century in the same way that the works of Acts glorified Him in the 1st century.

About The Author

Mike Shipman is a Church Planting Movement training specialist who lives with his wife and children in Asia. Having experienced firsthand a multiplying movement of new believers and churches among his Muslim unreached people group, Mike trains others to implement productive, field-proven methods. Mike’s greatest joy is seeing those he trains experience increased fruitfulness as they abide in Christ and do His works (John 14:12).

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Feature

Disciples Unleashed

by Dave Campbell

The Jan/Feb 2011 issue of Mission Frontiers featured the remarkable discipleship model of Real Life Ministries (RLM). Over just a dozen years, two couples in a rural town of 30,000 in Northern Idaho, had birthed a discipling church to involve 8,000 members in small discipleship groups which had baptized 700 new believers in the previous year. RLM had also planted six other churches. (See Avery Willis’ “Last Dream”)

Since that report RLM has equipped its members to travel to other countries and share the biblical discipleship principles which God has blessed in their ministry. The results are amazing: 23 new believers baptized in a river in Uganda. Hundreds of pastors united to work toward a common goal in Fiji. A church “resurrected” in Ethiopia—saved from closing its doors to produce growth and new life. Small groups formed or reorganized in Colombia with a new, clearly defined purpose. Pastors rejuvenated in Mexico. And a humble pastor in Burundi traveling to many cities, villages, and even other countries to share the “Jesus model” of discipleship.

Ronald Kizitu ministers in Uganda, Africa. He joined pastors from four African nations at a conference hosted by RLM in neighboring Burundi. Together they experienced what it means to be true to both Jesus’ message and His model. And they became motivated and equipped to make disciples of Jesus who make more disciples.

The tools shared with Ronald and dozens of other pastors in Burundi are not new. RLM’s focus has been studying the way Jesus made disciples and applying those principles in today’s church: 1) Be a true disciple of Jesus, 2) Personally make disciples of Jesus who make more disciples, 3) Create and build real relationships in your disciple-making, 4) Be an intentional leader, 5) Use a process that is reproducible, and 6) Be aligned and unified as a church.

What Ronald learned impacted his personal relationship with God, his family and church, and those who were not yet saved. Resulting fruit included salvations, baptisms, multiplying discipleship-focused small groups, and a rapid increase in the number of people attending the worship services.

Ronald subsequently gathered 326 other Ugandan pastors. Believers and unbelievers alike had previously known these pastors as a divisive group, with much in-fighting and contention. But as they met and turned their focus to Jesus and His simple but powerful model for making disciples, the Holy Spirit touched their hearts. A time of repentance was followed by an outpouring of love and a new unity. Now these pastors are working together to grow God’s kingdom in Uganda.

In Honduras, Kenya, Guatemala, Israel, Congo, Pakistan, and many other nations, the Body of Christ is stirring in a mighty way, hungry for God’s work. Pastors and church leaders all over the world are hearing the call to return to “the Jesus model” of making disciples. Applying the tools Jesus modeled for us is resulting in the church becoming an army of disciples unleashed to impact the world. Let me elaborate on the six principles listed above:

1. Be a true disciple of Jesus.

As RLM shares principles of relational discipleship with pastors and leaders from many churches, some put it into practice and bear much fruit. Others make an attempt but see no significant change. One key difference is whether pastors and leaders live and model being a true disciple of Jesus, or merely teach about it. This is easy to ignore, but there is no greater factor in becoming a disciple-making church. Are the pastor and core leaders of the church willing to live out and personally model how to follow Jesus, how to be transformed by Jesus, and how to be “on mission” with Jesus? Being a true disciple of Jesus should be evident not only as we minister but also in how we relate to our spouses, our children, our church family, the lost, our neighbors, our co-workers and our communities. A one dimensional, at-church-only type discipleship accompanied by hollow words is not really following Jesus at all. To lead the church in change we must be willing to be changed ourselves (Matthew 4:19, Luke 5:1-11, Romans 6:8-19, Galatians 2:20).

Bill, a pastor in the Pacific Islands, tells how the biblical principles of relational discipleship impacted him on a very personal level. One of our small group facilitators asked Bill how he could apply “following Jesus, being transformed by Jesus and being on mission with Jesus” (Matthew 4:19) in his own life. Bill gave a general answer, but the facilitator wouldn’t let him off the hook! “Bill, what would that look like, could you give us an actual example in your own life?” This leader of a large church, and director of 141 pastors for his denomination, finally responded with tears in his eyes, “I could cook dinner for my wife and family and serve them. I’ve never done that before.”

Personally journeying with our Savior, getting to know him (Philippians 3:8), allowing, even asking him to change us, is the critical first step if we hope to lead others down the same path.

2. Personally make disciples of Jesus who make more disciples.

If we want a disciple-making church, the pastor and church leadership must themselves be making disciples, not just “training others how to do it.” This is an essential question — “Will the leadership model and live out what it wants the body to do?” (2 Timothy 2:2, 2 Corinthians 3:1-3)

In one of the largest cities in Mexico, pastor Hiram had for several years led a successful, growing church. However he observed that people came and went and, although the congregation was growing numerically, there was little spiritual maturity. Meanwhile he and a handful of leaders were doing all the work of the ministry and were close to burnout. When another national pastor and RLM team shared the biblical model of making disciples, the Holy Spirit confirmed its truth to Hiram. He began making personal changes and passionately seeking to follow Jesus. Then he prayerfully started to invest in a few key leaders. By making disciples who make disciples, Hiram began to see true growth in his church body. Soon, more and more members of the church were actually following Jesus personally and being equipped for the work of the ministry. The leadership load became lighter, and the joy of salvations and transformed lives changed the entire culture of the church. Paco, one of the men Hiram was discipling, soon felt a call to plant a new church. With prayer, approval of leadership, more investment of time and resources and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, Paco was raised up and released. He now leads a new, healthy, disciple-making church in a nearby area. Hiram is still Paco’s mentor, coach and older spiritual brother. Now Paco is prayerfully raising up the next generation of leaders and church planters from his congregation.

3. Create and build real relationships in your disciple-making.

We often see good, biblical teaching given to new converts, yet the new believers show little growth or spiritual maturity. Often our back door is as busy as our front door. People pass through our churches yet they never become the church. (Ephesians 4:11-16)

In Ethiopia, Muller was hired as an administrative assistant to a pastor. He was very gifted and dedicated, but it soon became clear that, more than anything, he had a passion for making disciples of Jesus. Muller does something that is key to making disciples; he loves people and invests in them. He cares about them, shepherds them, teaches them, stretches them, corrects them and coaches them. Talking with the people Muller is discipling reveals that he is in a deep and transparent relationship with each of them. Real relationship gives strength to the process. Muller, like Jesus, is modeling for his disciples a willingness to invest in their lives.

4. Be an intentional leader.

“Can I be a disciple of Jesus by accident?” “Can I make a disciple of Jesus accidentally?” By definition of the word, and from the model that Jesus left for us, the answer to both questions is “No.” It is essential that our churches be fully intentional in being disciples of Jesus, making disciples of Jesus and leading disciple-making churches. (Matthew 28:18-20)

In Burundi, Africa, Peter is the humble, quiet pastor of a local church. God orchestrated a series of events which led to Peter attending a discipleship training hosted by RLM in Ethiopia. Due to financial pressures Peter was basically “stuck” with the training team for over two weeks.

Peter’s English is passable, but it takes a great deal of effort for him to understand English. After two weeks of training, struggling with language, traveling with “strangers,” and being away from home and family, I found Peter crying in the dark near our bunkhouse. Feeling it must all be too much for him, I gave Peter a hug and asked if he was OK. Peter told me, “These have been the best two weeks of my life. I am so much closer to Jesus and I see how he wants me to lead my church when I return to Burundi.” Peter then returned to Burundi and began becoming the leader Jesus was asking him to be, living as a true disciple and prayerfully selecting a few men in which to invest. He started casting vision for his church from the pulpit each Sunday, then living it out himself during the week. Peter led a small group, chose an “apprentice,” and led people to the Lord. As his group grew, he continued discipling others intentionally. When his apprentice was ready, Peter took his group step by step through a branching process. Then he continued to coach his old apprentice as the leader of the newly branched group. Peter has been a great example of an intentional leader. He has not hurried the process, but continues one step at a time to thoughtfully and prayerfully lead and disciple. Now his church is experiencing steady growth. Groups are branching, people are being led to the Lord and then discipled, and new leaders are being raised up and released to make more disciples. Peter has truly responded to what God showed him about “being the leader He wants me to be.”

5. Use a process that is reproducible.

Jesus, the master discipler, left us with an effective and reproducible model. If I disciple fifty men but the way I do so is not reproducible, the impact ends there. Jesus’ perfect way to reach the world was given in a form that is highly reproducible.

After attending a training hosted by RLM in a neighboring country, Ronald (mentioned earlier), returned to the church he pastors in Uganda with a determination to equip the members to make disciples. Ronald began to invest in several men. He was excited to see them respond. But he was a bit discouraged when, several months later, he tried to get these men discipling others. Through prayer and coaching, Ronald realized he was missing a key ingredient — having a reproducible process. Ronald had used gifts, experience, abilities and training that the typical member of his church did not have. Knowing that Jesus had taken 12 “regular guys” to be his disciples, not 12 highly trained and experienced religious leaders, Ronald studied both the message and the method Jesus used with his disciples. He began to search out the simple yet powerful principles for making disciples—things that could be taught, modeled and caught by “regular” members. This became exciting to Pastor Ronald and to those he was discipling. Not only were they able to understand and follow the model, but they could easily pass it on to those they were discipling. The discipleship “chain” Paul describes in 2 Timothy 2:2 became a reality! Now, instead of one excited pastor trying to do all the work, Ronald is leading an army of disciplers who know how to reproduce. The impact is clearly visible—in his own church, in other churches he has helped, and throughout the nation of Uganda.

6. Be aligned and unified as a church.

As Jesus taught many times and in many ways, unity and alignment are essential in God’s ministry. Skills, gifts, talents, organization, materials, resources, and strong leaders are all wonderful assets to making disciples of Jesus. But without alignment and unity in a church, among both leadership and members, results will be minimal (Mark 3:24-26, John 17:21).

Jasa, pastor of a church of 200, attended a two-day discipleship training RLM hosted in Suva, Fiji. Not only did the biblical principles of discipleship impact Jasa deeply on a personal level, but he was led to bring these truths to his church in a very intentional manner. Jasa started with his own life, making changes as led by the Holy Spirit. He shared his journey with his wife and family, modeling what it means to be a true follower of Jesus. Next he and his wife began to disciple another couple who were in a leadership role in their church. He shared with the church board what he was learning and experiencing. They could see the transformation and the fruit of Jasa’s pursuit of Jesus. After several months the board decided this was the path for the whole church to follow. Intentionally, they began to speak, teach, model and champion biblical discipleship. This moved the church membership to respond and emulate — being disciples of Jesus and making
more disciples.

The road was not without obstacles, but an intentional leader and a unified church leadership was a huge factor in successfully turning the ship.

With God’s help, these six principles can help a stagnant church or Christian leader to experience multiplication. Jesus is the God-given model for making disciples with the power to fulfill their responsibilities. This power is enough to storm the gates of hell. The potential for opening our church doors and releasing his followers is earth shaking! People all over the world are experiencing a stirring within, a calling to become disciples unleashed. Do we want anything more than to be his true disciples?

About The Author

Dave Campbell is the World Missions/International Discipleship pastor at Real Life Ministries (RLM) in Post Falls, Idaho. He and his wife, Janelle, spent over a dozen years in Mexico serving a network of sixty churches where they focused on helping equip national pastors in Mexico to lead disciple-making churches. Three years ago, Dave was asked to lead the world missions efforts for Real Life Ministries. You may contact Dave by email at dcampbell@reallifeministries.comhttp://www.reallifeministries.com

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What Makes a CPM Training Fruitful?

by David White

Some Church Planting Movement trainings produce massive fruit. Other trainings appear good, but produce little fruit in the long run. What makes the difference? Why are some trainings so fruitful and others not? The content of training is important, but good content is not enough. Other crucial factors must be considered in our trainings.

Do your own self-evaluation. Which of these factors are present in your training?

Remove financial obstacles

Many church leaders think they cannot plant churches because they lack sufficient finances. Remove this obstacle by showing very inexpensive models of church planting.

Schedule for lay people

All revivals recorded in church history in which the fruit remained were accompanied by church planting lead by lay people.

—Dr. Paul Pierson Professor of Church History Fuller Theological Seminary

Because of the essential role of lay people in church planting, we must schedule our training to accommodate the schedules of these lay people.

Train and mobilize coaches

The fruitfulness of church planters is greatly increased when they have a coach.

Train teams

Church planting teams have many advantages over solo church planters. Training teams together enhances these benefits.

Train pastors WITH lay people

When only pastors are trained for church planting, they sometimes do very little. When only lay people are trained for church planting, they sometimes feel they lack authorization or authority to apply the training received. When lay people and pastors are trained together it makes a more effective combination.

Train “team leaders,” son “church planters”

Many lay people are hesitant to become a “church planter.” They are much more likely to become a church planting “team leader.”

Contextualize

Church planting materials from elsewhere must be adapted. In your training materials, show how the principles from other contexts apply in yours, and develop many local examples of these principles.

Move trainees toward CPM-type churches

Those with a background in traditional churches often feel that CPM-type churches are NOT “real” churches. It is better for them to plant traditional churches than no churches. But as they do so, push them toward planting more CPM-type churches.

Make training practical

While theory is of some value, practical how-tos are far more valuable.

Involve active participation

Keep lectures very short. Use lots of brainstorming, role playing, action planning, practice (with one another and in the local community), and prayer.

Use Just-In-Time training

Training provided too early is mostly forgotten. Too much training material at once creates information overload. Provide training in small units with immediate application. After one topic is applied, bring trainees back for review (if more attention is needed), or for the next unit.

(Many have found one day per month to be effective. Some meet as often as once per week.)

Cultivate peer coaching

Trainees can learn a great deal from one another as they work together to identify and address shortcomings in each other’s approach.

Keep the geographical radius small

A one hour radius works well in our context for providing Just-In-Time training and cultivating peer coaching.

Mobilize more trainers

Just-In-Time training becomes impractical when experts must come a long distance to provide content over several days. Develop local trainers to provide training as necessary.

Intentionally develop trainers from trainees

Be on the lookout for fruitful reproducers who can become trainers, and have them share in leading training sessions. Also provide special training to empower them to become trainers.

Develop simple tools for new trainers

Provide training materials that new trainers can easily use to train others.

Share success stories

One success story from a trainee can encourage many. Structure such sharing into every training.

Solve problems together

Gaining input from others can help solve many problems faced in church planting movements.

Diagram progress

Have trainees diagram the generational multiplication of their disciple-making groups. Sharing these with one another accelerates vision for multiplication and provides much excitement and encouragement.

Include action planning

Make time for all trainees to develop and discuss specific action plans. This greatly increases fruitful action afterward.

Provide accountability for action plans

People do what we inspect, not what we expect. The more we inspect, the more we can expect. At each training, make time to explore how the last training session was applied.

Only provide “doers” with advanced training

Training received must be applied. Do not offer advanced training until earlier trainings have produced fruit.

Include collaborative learning

Provide time for trainees to share what they have learned regarding whatever specific facet of church planting is being discussed.

Use a variety of prayer models

Introduce trainees to a variety of forms they can apply in their work.

Balance inspiration with practical instruction

Some seminars are high on inspiration but lack practical training, while other seminars provide great how-tos but fail to inspire. Provide a balance.

Use instructors who are also practitioners

Many pastors attend church planting trainings and love to immediately teach what they learned without first applying these things themselves. Only use instructors who are currently fruitful in planting churches. Ministry illustrations should be current, not from many years in the past.

Make the training financially self-sustaining

Trainings can multiply indefinitely when they are financially self-sustaining, and delegates have a greater appreciation for what they pay for. Rather than raising money for trainings, let delegates raise the funds to cover training received.

Measure results in new churches planted

Success should be measured by how many new churches are planted in how many generations, not how many attended, or finished the training.

In each training, multiply new networks

Always ask who has contacts that would like to receive church planting training.

Constantly evaluate and improve

Compare notes with other trainers and learn from one another. Fix what’s not working well. Experiment. Keep improving.

Conclusion

Are any of the items suggested not yet a part of your training?

What adjustments could you make to build in these missing or weak components?

About The Author

David White is originally from Redondo Beach, California. He has served with OC International in the Philippines since 1985 with a focus on nationwide saturation church planting and, more recently, CPM. He develops contextualized training materials for use in church multiplication and uses these materials to equip, mobilize and multiply trainers. He works with denominations and city-wide Ministerial Fellowships. He is also involved outside of the Philippines through the Global Church Planting Network. He can be reached at DaveWhite@oci.org

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Leave a Lasting Witness by Illustrating the Gospel as you Present It

by Robby Butler

While working with a team to start a T4T movement^1 among Muslim immigrants in a major European city, Tim asked God, “How can I turn a verbal presentation of the First and Last Sacrifice Story^2 into a visual Gospel I can leave with a person I talk with?” Here is the result:

•  Draw a circle filling the top portion of a page. Write “Kingdom of God” inside in large letters, then describe and list various attributes: perfect relationships, justice, peace, love, etc. Write opposite attributes outside the circle. Let the other person add their ideas.

•  Draw a crude tree and initials for Adam & Eve inside the circle as you describe the original paradise God gave them to manage, and the one rule by which they were to show their love—not eating fruit from this one tree. (Some find stick figures of prophets offensive, so we use initials.)

•  Draw a snake entering the picture as you describe how a rebellious fallen angel took on this disguise to trick A&E into disobeying, and an arrow from the tree with A&E now outside the circle as you explain that we don’t know how many good things they had done, but just one sin broke their relationship with God.

•  Draw a lamb next to the arrow as you describe how God sacrificed an innocent animal to cover A&E with its skin. This was the first sacrifice made by God on Man's behalf

•  List Old Testament prophets and note they taught and practiced sacrifice: Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, etc. Draw an upward arrow by each name as you note these prophets all pointed people back to God.

•  Draw a doorway marked with blood on the top and sides as you describe how God sent judgment on the Egyptian oppressors but spared the Israelites who sacrificed a lamb. Say “Shed blood saved life. No shed blood left death.”

•  Write “Lamb of God = Jesus” as you tell how John declared him “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

•  Draw a cross as you explain that Jesus, the Word of God, came to earth through a virgin and lived a sinless life, then provided the perfect and final sacrifice for all sin. Now God forgives all who trust His finished work and stop relying on their own efforts to be good. “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” He 9:22 (ESV).

•  Draw an arrow rising into a cloud as you tell how God raised Jesus from the dead to sit at God’s right hand until He returns to judge the earth.

•  Draw an arrow bringing humankind into God’s Kingdom. Label it “Jesus,” “God’s Straight Path,” and “FREE GIFT” and say “The Injil says Jesus is God’s free gift—perfect sacrifice to provide us the straight path back to God and His Kingdom.”

•  Ask in conclusion: “Does it make sense that God saw we can never be good enough, so He provided a straight path into His Kingdom that doesn’t depend on our efforts?”

•  If they agree, ask “Do you believe this?” If yes, have them read Ro 10:9-10, then pray with them.

•  In any case, ask “Would you like to meet again to discuss stories about Jesus?”

Add your contact information, get theirs, and leave your drawing with them.

About The Author

Robby Butler

Robby Butler served at the U.S. Center for World Mission from 1980 to 2004. He now serves as a consultant to church and mission leaders, and an occasional writer for Mission Frontiers.

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It’s Hard to ‘Go to Hell’ in Bugger Hollow, North Carolina!

A true story of how the CPM process is practiced in the harvest trenches

by Rich Hagler

My new redneck buddy Clint Harrill is a gifted, tireless personal evangelist. Jeff Sundell calls him “a super-spreader.”

Up until 2 years ago, Clint partied hard with the best of them. Though “saved” as a child in church, he clearly wasn’t following Jesus into his mid-30’s.

Providentially Clint was radically saved (or born again—AGAIN) and reconnected with Jeff (his old church youth leader), who has been training him as a Reproducing Disciplemaker ever since.

Under Jeff’s tutelage Clint immediately learned four of the 5 Simple Skills for training Reproducing Disciplemakers (listed at the end of this article)

1.    Share “The Miracle Question,”

2.    Share “Your Story,”

3.    Share “Jesus’ Story,” and

4.    Make a List of all your family, friends, and circle of influence who are “Far from God.”

Clint then began praying daily over each person on his list, asking the Holy Spirit who to share Jesus with this week. It wasn’t long until God highlighted Mark, his old childhood friend and partying buddy.

Mark Mitchem has been married to Tracey for over a decade and together they have a 13-year-old son Hayden. Sadly, marriage and fatherhood has not prevented Mark from carrying on with his partying ways.

So 2 years ago Clint contacted Mark and shared everything Jesus had just done to radically save him, using “The Miracle Question,” “Your Story,” and “Jesus Story.” But given that Mark had known Clint and his former partying ways for many years, he was initially skeptical—and understandably so. But as time passed and Clint words and life witnessed to his miraculous transformation, Mark came to believe in Clint’s radical life-change, but not in Jesus—yet.

Meanwhile throughout their marriage, Tracey had been praying for Mark’s salvation, in large part because his addictions had taken their toll. So while Clint was sharing with Mark, he was also sharing with Tracey. She saw this as an answer to her prayers and agreed to host a Discovery Bible Study (DBS, the 5th simple skill) in their home.

On Thursday evening, October 10th Clint facilitated us through the DBS process (I had just arrived from California for a month long visit). We began by each of us sharing our lives and recounting with whom we shared the previous weeks Bible story.

Clint then orally retold the story of “The Pharisee and the Publican” from Luke 18. A volunteer then retold it again, following Clint’s example. Then 2 other people read the passage from 2 different translations. A wonderful Spirit-led Bible study ensued, as we discovered who Jesus was and what it meant to be a follower of His through the basic inductive questions that Clint posed.

The study concluded with each of us

•   making “I will ….” obedience statements,

•   more practice retelling the story (as needed), and finally

•   identifying the person(s) we believe the Holy Spirit was highlighting for us to share this story with this week.

We ended with a prayer of blessing and commissioning.

Following the study, Clint and I ended up on the back porch with Mark, talking about both the conviction he was under and his reluctance to give his life to Jesus because he was afraid he would screw up again and give in to his addictions. We assured Mark that was not Jesus’ Gospel, with Clint quoting Romans 8:1 (”there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus”) and I laid my hands on Mark and prayed for deeper conviction and deliverance.

About that time, Tracey showed up and informed us that while we had been talking with Mark, Hayden had been convicted of his sins, was crying hard in the living room, and was ready to give his life to Jesus.

So in we went to meet with Hayden, with Clint asking this rather shy boy what God was doing in his heart? After some dialogue, we invited Hayden to pray a prayer, telling Jesus of his repentance from sin and giving his life to Him. We bowed are heads and then—silence—for many minutes.

After a little gentle coaching back to prayer we went, and slowly Hayden choked out a few words of blessed repentance and faith in Christ. He closed with an “Amen” and we all exploded in hugs, tears, praises to Jesus, and congratulations to Hayden and all around!! What a night!!

Much excited conversation followed and Clint suggested we hold a baptism party in the backyard pool the following Friday evening, inviting family and friends and believing God for a few others to be saved and baptized. That included Mark, who Clint and I prophesied that “this was his day of salvation” and that he should “seal the deal” this week so that after he got baptized next Friday, he could then baptize his only son Hayden!

The following morning as we are packing for a week of Reproducing Disciplemaker trainings in Tennessee, Clint received a phone call from a “Nick,” who Clint had been in Gospel dialogue with ever since they met on Facebook a few weeks before. Already Nick was a 25-year-old military veteran of the Afghanistan war whose immediate family was very messed up on drugs, as was he before getting clean recently. Nick was under heavy spiritual conviction and wanted to talk ASAP! Knowing that we were due at Jeff’s house in under an hour, Clint postponed meeting with Nick until after we returned.

But as soon as Clint stepped in the shower, the Holy Spirit convicted him with his own words, “You mean to tell Me ‘You don’t have enough time to help this young man get saved???’” Appalled by his own lack of spiritual urgency, Clint immediately called Nick back, repented, and we agreed to meet in a convenience store parking lot on the way over to Jeff’s.

We met Nick on the hot pavement in the middle of the lot, where he told us he had “the call of God on his life” to witness to his generation “who are clothed in darkness.” However, he was not saved yet! This seeming contradiction is possible in the Bible Belt, as Nick had alot of head knowledge about Jesus from attending church growing up, but had never known Him personally because as Nick told it, the church basically buried the real Jesus under programmatic religion.

Clint asked a few pointed questions about Nick’s faith, which brought him to the point of salvation. We laid hands on Nick and he prayed a prayer of repentance and asked Jesus into his heart, through a veil of sobs and tears. It was a very moving scene—both for us, and especially for those eager on-lookers parking their cars and getting gas! Following Jesus is so much fun, isn’t it? Nick quickly agreed to be baptized the following Friday night and we were off to meet Jeff.

Meanwhile the following Sunday while we were gone, Mark’s conviction finally overwhelmed his reluctance and he gave his heart to Jesus, also wanting to be baptized on Friday. Tracey and Hayden were ecstatic!!

We arrive back home late Thursday night tired. Early Friday morning Clint received a text from a woman named “Abreainn” who he had witnessed to on Facebook for a few weeks. Abreainn was a sweet woman of 33 years, who unfortunately was in a very bad living situation, struggled with drug addiction, and whose immediate family was all torn apart. Not a pretty situation, but increasingly common in American today.

It’s important to note that Mark, Nick, and Abreainn are 3 of the 60% of the US population who missiologist Alan Hirsch notes are “un-invitable to church.” By that he means that even if they were invited to an existing church, research shows they wouldn’t go for a host of reasons. Not least of which is they almost-for-certain wouldn’t be invited, because as Bill Bright often said, “only 2% of evangelicals share their faith in any given year.”

So off went Clint to meet with Abreainn and I was off to the store for foodstuffs for the baptism celebration. In the meantime, Abreainn got wonderfully saved and invited some family and friends to join us at the baptism. Mark & Tracey did the same with their friends, and we all convened at their place that evening.

The evening began with everyone gathered poolside in the backyard singing “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” Clint then retold the amazing Acts 8 story of Phillip explaining Jesus to the Ethiopian Eunuch and then immediately baptizing him in nearby water.

Next all 4 of our new believers briefly shared their testimonies of how Jesus saved them and then got joyfully baptized, with Mark experiencing the unique pleasure of baptizing his only son Hayden, now that he himself had been baptized just moments before!

What a great night for Jesus, for His ineffable Glory and advancing Kingdom, and for these dear friends who are now sons and daughters of their Most High Papa God—Forever! Fabulous!! Words fail!! The ear-to-ear smiles on everyone’s faces tell the whole story!!

But the evening was not over yet. Because we all now adjourned into the house to share in the Body and Blood of Jesus through the Lord’s Supper. As we gathered in a circle around the kitchen Clint retold the story from Luke 22 of Jesus’ Last Supper with His disciples, and then invited all of us who felt so led to partake of the bread & wine of Jesus.

But before doing so, he suggested that this would be an appropriate time to verbally ask forgiveness for any sin, to reflect on the just transacted miracle of baptism, to share a memory, etc. Not surprisingly in this overwhelmingly powerful “Jesus moment”, virtually everyone not only shared, but most broke down in tears as secret sins were confessed, as stories were told of long and agonizing prayers for family members being answered tonight, and as others rejoiced in new levels of freedom from sin and addiction and their new identities in Christ.

What was apparent was that we all had been touched by the miraculous Love of God through the Holy Spirit! It was a hushed and holy moment… as the relational walls gave way to first vulnerability, then transparency & intimacy, and finally a unity like I have rarely experienced.

Providentially, I was the-second-to-last to take communion and the Lord gave me a word to share from Act 2:38-47. Starting from that Day of Pentecost passage and under the Holy Spirit’s leading, I was able to summarize what had transpired this past week culminating in that night—from repentance & salvation, the public confirmation of baptism & the forgiveness of sins, the receiving of the Holy Spirit, and then an exhortation to follow the example of these new 1st Century believers who gathered together in discipleship under the apostles and in unity & charity with one another—“praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47)

Clint was the last to go and seized the opportunity to suggest that next Thursday evening would be the first meeting of “the Church that meets in the Mitchem’s house.” Of course, each of these newly baptized followers and their friends, along with those of us who had been following Jesus for many years, were invited to come and participate. Given the power of the evening, everyone was very positive about the invitation and committed to attend.

Here we see a significant milepost being achieved in Jesus’ overall End Vision :

Salvation + Baptism + The Lord’s Supper = a newly planted “Church that meets in the Mitchem’s House”—Book of Acts style.

As none of us wanted these transformational and transcendent moments to end, we all lingered in the afterglow. But the evening finally drew to a close, but not before a sumptuous meal was consumed and much joyous conversation was exchanged about the events of the night, which would long be remembered by all—and recorded in the annuals of heaven forever!

As you can see, It’s Hard to ‘Go to Hell’ in Bugger Hollow, North Carolina!!

Followup Note: 10 people participated in the first church gathering at the Mitchem’s house on Thursday, October 24 and 17 the following Thursday, a number of them not-yet-follower friends of the newly baptized.

And just like Jeff did with Clint, we immediately trained everyone how to use the Reproducing Disciplemaker skills listed below.

Please keep these new disciples of Jesus in your prayers as already we have been planning for a 2nd Generation DBS to start in their home, with their friends, with one of them leading it ASAP.

5 Simple Skills to train Reproducing Disciplemakers:

- Ask The Miracle Question—to start personal/spiritual conversations

- “If God could do a miracle in your life right now, what would it be?

- “May I pray for you right now?”

- Share “Your Story”—Your testimony in 3 minutes

- Share “Jesus’ Story”—A succinct way to share the Gospel

- Make a List—A Prayer List of all the people you know who are Far from God

- Discovery Bible Study—A simple, non-threatening, powerful process for discovering Jesus and making Reproducing Disciples.

About The Author

Rich Hagler is a former church planter and pastor in cities along both U.S. coasts. For the past 20 years has been a missionary trainer of Reproducing Disciplemakers of Jesus. His twin passions are greater intimacy with Jesus and seeing Church Planting Movements (CPM) throughout Western North America and the nations. Rich lives in Redding California, where he also helps lead the local missional outreach of Risen King Community Church. You can contact Rich at RichHagler@icloud.com

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Solid Grounding Transforms Worldview to Bring Forth Multiplying Fruit

by Bob & Koleen French

(originally printed September 2009 in eLINK—Magazine of World Team, under the title GO SLOW TO GO FAST: Cell and House Church Multiplication in the Philippines. The article has been updated for this publication.)

Are we in such a hurry to save people that we fail to give an adequate foundation for the gospel?

Preaching New Testament truths without placing them in the larger context of the Bible’s story can result in pasting New Testament teachings on top of the prevailing culture’s world view. Could this be why syncretism, unchanged lives, and resistance to biblical truths are common in many churches?

In planting churches in the Bicol Region of the Philippines from 1991 to 2007, we observed that:

•   Converts from traditional methods of evangelism rarely joined evangelical churches.

•   Few believers shared the Gospel, forgave others or resolved conflicts biblically.

•   Churches typically grew to 30-50 people and did not reproduce.

In 2001 we tried an experiment. We studied Genesis inductively, chapter by chapter, with a small group of seekers, with these results:

•   The flaws of the patriarchs convinced them that the Bible is truly God’s Word.

•   Relational bonds deepened.

•   God spoke to their hearts.

•   Lives changed dramatically.

•   One couple on the brink of separation committed themselves first to Christ and then to each other.

•   Nearly every person in that cell trusted Christ by the end of Genesis.

•   We were also changed and deeply bonded with the participants.

•   That group started two more groups within 9 months.

The tortoise beat the hare

We are pursuing a church multiplication movement, but the approach we recommend is slow. It takes a year to study all of Genesis and Exodus, and two years to study all of Genesis, Exodus, Galatians, the Gospel of John and Ephesians.

Because Genesis and Exodus present the foundation of the Bible’s world view, this slow process enables the Bible’s story to revise people’s view of reality. Evangelism, discipleship and leadership training take place simultaneously.

By the time the first cell groups in Naga City completed Genesis and Exodus, their world view had been foundationally re-shaped. They applied the Gospel and NT teachings to their lives. Within 2 years, these cells reproduced many new cells. Nearly all members were baptized, endured persecution, repaired relationships, and burned their idols and ungodly books.

We tried in one cell to speed up the process by studying only selected Bible texts, but:

•   fewer people trusted Christ,

•   believers’ lives were not as deeply changed,

•   fewer of them reproduced a cell, and

•   it took longer for them to do so.

We gathered these statistics from our six years (2001–2007) with the Naga Community In Christ (NCIC):

•   All cells began with unbelievers.

•   All but one cell studied all of Genesis, Exodus, Galatians, the Gospel of John and Ephesians before studying other Bible books and topics.

•   By November 2005, less than 5 years after the first cell started, six elders were ordained and took charge of leading the church. We then started training groups outside Naga.

•   After we left the area in July 2007, more cells had reproduced increasing numbers of leaders and cells.

•   The most recent cells were started by  fourth and fifth generation leaders, some of whom are the sons and daughters of NCIC leaders.

•   NCIC members recited their own vision of having 100 cells by 2010. They revised this in 2011 to 1000 home churches by 2020.

•   Cell reproduction normally took place within 1.5 to two years.

Church Multiplication Movement advocates consider 6-9 months the ideal rate for reproducing groups. But our slower approach had an unusually high percentage of reproduction in couples’cells:

•   90% of those who entered cells as unbelievers were baptized within two years.

•   100% of the couples in which both spouses were baptized have reproduced cells and become church leaders.

•   100% of the children from baptized couples have also believed and been baptized.

•   70% of the cells these couples lead also reproduced evangelistic cells.

Lessons we have learned

1.  Discovering is better than being taught.

I was trained in seminary to preach and teach. In Naga we discovered that adult learners grow the most when they discover biblical truths while studying Bible books:

•   We learned to ask questions and not give answers.

•   We wrote Bible discovery guides to make it easy for most people to lead.

•   We trained everyone to lead as facilitators before they trust Christ.

We told people:

•   The Bible is the teacher.

•   The leader’s job is to gather people and ask questions.

•   The group’s job is to find the answers in God’s Word.

In this model:

•   Wrong answers are corrected when the group finds the correct answers in the Bible.

•   Leaders can be trained quickly.

•   Reproduction takes place naturally.

2.  Study with couples or families.

When married people wait for their spouse before studying or getting baptized, they wrestle with God’s truth together. This brings unity rather than alienating spouses, children and relatives. A community of faith emerges.

3.  Involve multiple streams (i.e., many different groups).

In 2006, Koleen and I modified our training manual to reflect the idea, promoted by Southern Baptists, of starting multiple streams in cell and house church multiplication. We started training believers in other areas to apply the approach and materials developed for NCIC.

In one denomination, we trained top regional leaders. They in turn trained trainers, who started five Church Planting Schools in 2007. The number of these schools multiplied to 15 and the number of their students starting new churches has tripled. We continue to help lead seminars for the leaders when requested.

As a result of training people in multiple streams, the number of evangelistic Bible studies, cells and house churches using this approach doubled yearly throughout the Bicol Region for 5 years. Multiplication plateaued in the third and fourth generations in the Bicol, but it is still on-going. Disciples and churches are now also multiplying in some other places in the Philippines and in a few other countries.

We praise God for what He has done. We love to watch the Spirit of God transform people’s lives as they discover what the Word of God says chapter by chapter, book by book.

About The Author

Rev. Robert A. French and Koleen M. French serve in the Philippines with World Team. For most of 25+ years they have planted churches in provincial settings. Bob also writes and publishes discovery guides for books of the Bible and facilitates trainings in church multiplication principles, both live and online. Koleen coaches missionaries from various countries in language (Tagalog) and culture learning. The French’s shared passion is to multiply disciples and leaders to multiply communities of believers. Currently the Frenches are testing an approach to multiplying disciples and churches among the reading-impaired. Robert and Koleen can be contacted at Frenches5@aol.com

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Antioch

How One Church is Growing

by Drew Steadman

Our History

Antioch started in 1988 as a discipleship school based around three simple concepts: encountering God, life-on-life discipleship and missions through the local church. Our goal has always been simple obedience to the next thing in which God leads. Over time, this led us to sending church planting teams to the unreached (169 adults living overseas), starting our first American church in Waco, TX and eventually planting churches across the United States (25 as of December, 2013)—each with a vision to also be a hub for training and sending.

Our Ministry

We believe the local church has a primary role to play in fulfilling the Great Commission. Churches can be epicenters for discipleship movements and can be a home base that sends members out to the unreached and unengaged. We want everyone to live as a church-planter regardless of their location.

We are deeply motivated by the Great Commission and believe every believer has a part to play. For some it will be the other side of the world while for others it will be the other side of the cubicle. Simple obedience leads to some being sent out to the Middle East and to others making disciples among their co-workers.

Our discipleship schools—a year of growing personally in the faith and learning how to reach others—play a key role in training our church members. This is the main place we equip both overseas and domestic church planters, but also how we train the rest of our church to live on mission in their unique sphere of influence. We now have 14 schools at our various churches in the U.S., and a few internationally.

Connect with our discipleship schools at AntiochCC.com/schools

Discipleship isn’t necessarily complicated, but it is often difficult because it requires

- laying down your life for others,

- taking risky steps of faith, and

- living in obedience to God’s Word.

But when a discipleship culture is created in the church, and when churches start planting other churches, then there is an exponential increase in laborers for the harvest field that will touch the ends of the earth and everywhere in between.

We ask every Antioch member to learn to share their testimony with a simple gospel presentation. I’m not the most gifted evangelist, but I have led many to Christ over the years. Our primary evangelism strategy is each member reaching out to their sphere of influence (Oikos). The Gospel spreads most rapidly along relational lines, and this allows for a natural transition into discipleship relationships. We use a variety of different cultural approaches, but the core message of the Gospel and the focus on each person reaching their sphere of influence remains consistent.

Hunger is an essential ingredient for discipleship, and we look for hunger among both believers and unbelievers. Our church is in Waco, TX, home of Baylor University, so we get quite a few believers coming through our door. Whenever a believer comes, we work to see them discipled and equipped to reach back out into the world around them. Rather than an obstacle to reaching the lost, we see believers as partners to fulfill the Great Commission.

We are also aware that, at last count, there were 150,000 unchurched and lost in our own city. So we are consistently looking for ways to rally our church and partner with other believers to reach our city. We have done short-term trips to our own city in which we broadly sow the Gospel message, including mapping off a section of town and reaching out to every home. But what we find most effective is empowering and training our church to simply reach out to co-workers, neighbors and friends.

Even if we aren’t always fruitful, we all try to live a lifestyle of sharing Jesus because this creates a culture in which boldness is normal. We will train and disciple anyone who is hungry, and many times have found that it is relatively new or previously disconnected believers who are the most fruitful. Most of our work overseas which has developed into a CPM or near CPM started with an immature believer that our teams discipled and trained.

Measuring Our Movements

Antioch Church started in 1999 and has grown to around 3,000 in about 175 groups at our Waco base and 5,500 attending Sunday service in our 25 U.S. church plants. Most attendees are in small groups and discipleship across all our churches, since this is the core of everything we do.

Internationally we work in 23 countries. All are focused on seeing church planting movements catalyzed.

Our two Middle East movements each estimate members in the thousands. Numbers of decisions would be higher. Streams have spread to at least 4 countries. We can fully confirm one stream beyond 4th Generation, and are fairly confident there are others as well.

Our India movement is in at least 6 locations spread across two countries, though not all are at 4th Generation. This group started with a few men and grew to 50 house churches with basic CPM methodology around 2004. The two national leaders were then trained in aspects of T4T and the movement doubled in 9 months to around 2,000. In 2013 they received a month-long intensive T4T training and doubled the number of groups to around 250, involving 3,000–5,000, and at least one instance beyond 6th Generation.

Our movement in Southeast Asia is among the hardest to track because it has spread across multiple islands and is not easily accessed by Western trainers. I am told this involves over a thousand people, all engaged through small discipleship groups.

Our other teams overseas are also working towards movements. One is working in a partnership that has several streams and just hit 4th Generation. I think 4–5 others are at 3rd Generation.

Our US churches are also multiplying. Because each church also has Sunday services, our movements are a mix of people coming through traditional means and those coming directly through discipleship relationships. A weekly service offers an opportunity for teaching people and for connecting with people who are otherwise isolated. The larger the church, the more people walk in off the street. This provides a great opportunity for starting new groups, but makes it harder to track generations. Because there is a centralized church, some groups form through rapidly reproducing existing groups while others were formed through the church structure. And because we operate in several areas and many streams, it is hard to track what all is at 4th Generation, but we have several 3rd Generation churches in the US, and at least four international locations beyond 4th Generation discipleship groups.

Connect with our mission efforts at AntiochCC.com/missions

Our Discipleship Culture

One thing we have learned along the way is the power of a discipleship culture. A discipleship process is also important, but if you do not first establish a culture of discipleship then most processes will not work. We want it to be normal to hold one another accountable, normal to spend time daily with God, normal to share the Gospel and normal to make disciples.

This is hard to quantify. When people want to learn about us they first ask questions about our processes. While these are important, we always point them back to our discipleship culture first. Our senior pastor, Jimmy Seibert, has a book coming out that tells the story of building this discipleship culture in detail. The book will be titled Passion and Purpose, and should be available in March: ClearDayMediaGroup.com/products/passion-purpose

When Christians are urged to share the gospel, they instinctively reach out first to strangers and overlook people already in their life. We have to train them to live as ambassadors in the places where God has already put them—work place, neighborhood, social groups, family and friends. We must be trained to share the Gospel boldly, and in a way that translates culturally to our own sphere of influence.

Imagine the power of each person simply praying for 5 co-workers daily and seeking an opportunity to share the Gospel over the course of a few months. So we aim to share boldly with strangers, but not at the expense of starting where we already are.

Our primary discipleship environment is Lifegroups. Over the years Lifegroups have been a powerful instrument for making disciples. One group in the 1990s took discipleship seriously and the call to preach the gospel to all nations, and sent the first leader overseas with his family. Many went with them. New leaders were raised up who did the same. Out of this one group, four separate church planting teams were sent to some of the least reached people groups of Central Asia.

Another Lifegroup built a strong culture of discipleship and prayer. The couple initially leading the group took several members and started a church in Wheaton, IL. From there another couple launched a team to India. Another couple planted a church in Ft. Collins, CO. Another went to Seattle, WA. Another went to Baton Rouge, LA. And we currently have a couple in training to go to Japan. Members of this group have also launched several Kingdom businesses in the U.S., and a large number are actively involved in making disciples here in our own city. All this came from one group which took discipleship seriously.

The hardest part of multiplying is doing it yourself. It is easy to theorize and it sounds exciting. But the process is tedious. For every person that is hungry, several more are not. For every great meeting, there are many more in which I get stood up. Even more difficult is being a disciple myself, but if I want to influence others I need to live it myself. I need to spend time with God, I need to walk in holiness, I need to invest in my family, I need to be a faithful witness. It’s simple obedience that is so difficult—not complicated, just difficult. But if we are willing to take that step and faithfully invest in others, we will be able to look back over time and see a move of God.

About The Author

Drew Steadman has served on Antioch’s staff for the past 10 years in a variety of areas. He currently serves as Executive Director and Director of U.S. Church Planting for Antioch. He is passionate about discipleship and loves mobilizing people to reach their city, our nation and the nations of the earth S all through the local church. Drew and his wife, Bethany, are glad to call Waco, Texas home with their three daughters. Drew can be contacted at drew-steadman@aminternational.org

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Learning by Example (A Book Excerpt)

by "James Nyman"

This excerpt is from the forthcoming book Stubborn Perseverance: How God is initiating Church Planting Movements Through Storying Among Indonesian Muslims. Projected release: 2nd quarter of 2014. For notification of availability, or to inquire about advance order discounts, email StubbornPerseverance@gmail.com.

This training novel aims to equip others to apply insights from God’s work among Indonesian Muslims

The story: Gripped by a vision to develop a Church-Planting Movement among their fictional people group, Faisal and his wife Fatima enlist and train their friends Yusuf & Nur and Nasrudin & Amina to join them in pursuing God’s blessing on their Muslim group. Together they embark on a quest for God’s blessing on their people. This excerpt demonstrates how the story models simple, reproducible means of training households (oikos) to reproduce by learning together from God’s word.

“Before we start, I think it is helpful to tell God what we are thankful for. I’d like us to go around the room and state one thing we are thankful for. I’ll start. I’m thankful that God gave me a good friend like Ahmad. I have so many memories of us growing up together and I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have finished teacher’s college if Ahmad hadn’t been there.”

Ahmad spoke next. “I’m thankful for a friend like you too, Faisal. I’m glad we could meet yesterday. You gave me a lot to think about. It makes me wonder if I have been searching for something and didn’t even know it.”

…

“I have another question for us. What are some challenges or struggles you are facing right now? Since I’ve had time to prepare I’ll go first again. I hit a dog and fell off my motorcycle a few weeks ago. I’ve pretty much healed but my shoulder is still sore.”

Precedence had been set, so Ahmad went next. “One of the teachers at my school is out on maternity leave. Since we teach the same grade, now I have to teach her class too.”

…

Faisal pulled out the piece of paper that he had brought along. “This story is comes from the Taurat, but I find it is easiest to print the story out front and back on a piece of paper. Ahmad, would you read the story?”

Ahmad took the piece of paper and read the story of creation and Adam and Eve’s fall into sin.

“Thanks, Ahmad. The story is kind of long and it has a lot of details. Hajar would you mind reading the story again?”

…

“In my family we take turns retelling the story. It helps us remember the story and brings it alive. Hajar, would you like to give it a try?”

“I’ll try as long as the others help me out,” she said shyly. Hajar slowly recounted the story, chuckling as she imagined a snake speaking to Adam and Eve.

“Excellent. Who else would like to try?”

…

“Now I have three questions for us to consider. First, what do we learn about God’s attributes from this story?”

“God is all powerful. He created heaven and earth.”

“He’s also all-knowing because He knew Adam and Eve had eaten from the Kholdi tree.”

“We know He is just because He punished Adam, Eve, and the serpent, but we see that He is also merciful because He didn’t destroy Adam and Eve and He provided animal skins for them.”

“Good answers!

“Now for the second question. How can we apply this story to our personal lives?”

“If you meet a talking snake, run!” Ahmad quipped.

Hajar was more thoughtful. “For me, it is a reminder that nothing is hidden from God’s sight.”

“Any other comments?” Faisal looked around the room.

“Okay. Here is the third question: How can we apply this story to help someone else? It is important that we not only obey God’s Word for ourselves, but obey it to help others.”

“I’m not sure if this is the right answer, but this would be a good story for my friend who is facing temptation right now.”

As their discussion wound to a conclusion, Faisal said, “This has been a very enjoyable time, but I should be heading home.

“I have a story about Noah. Would you like to hear it next week?”

Ahmad smiled as he stood up. “Sure, why not?”

“Is there anyone else you’d like to invite?”

Hajar nodded. “My mom will be here. Can she come?”

“Well, of course!”

About The Author

James Nyman (pen name) and his wife have lived in southeast Asia for 22 years. They are ministering alongside national colleagues to facilitate CPM among three UPGs.

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Come Quickly Dawn

From George Patterson’s book Come Quickly Dawn (William Carey Library: 2012)

by George Patterson

Become Holy by Nurturing the Fruit of the Spirit with Others’ Help

(pp 89-90, 92)

Julio groaned. “Leaping over Mount Silverado would be easier for me than to be holy. I can’t live with purity like you guys do.”

“You will soon, son.” Jethro clasped his arm. “When you were baptized, you died with Christ to sin and were raised with Him to new life. God is working in you, transforming you into the image of His Son. In His sight, you’re a saint.”

“A saint! Wow! Kiss my ring, guys! I’m a saint, Pastor Jethro? That’s crazy!”

“Scripture says you are. You’re a spiritual baby and you still dirty your spiritual diapers ─ a soiled saint, like all of us! Take heart, Julio; you’re growing and God watches your faltering steps with joy. Join a group that makes disciples as Jesus said, and you’ll grow faster than that papaya out there.”

We prayed for Julio and I exhorted, “Let’s deal with holiness in small groups just like we’re doing now and the Lord will grant victory. There’s tremendous power in a cell group that’s also a real church.”

Colombo asked, “How can a cell group be a real church, Tiger?”

“Just let your group do what God requires of a church. What more can God expect of your group if it follows His orders? Call it what you may, small group, cell, flock, house church, congregation or simply ‘Colombo’s Cluster’.”

Jethro sighed. “The word ‘church’ has been so abused! Define it, Tiger.”

“We know it means both the Universal Church and a local congregation, but the New Testament also uses the word for the closely-knit groups that met in homes in a city or area ─ the regional body. Church history mentions no buildings used solely for Christian worship until nearly three centuries after Christ.”

“Are buildings bad?” Colombo asked. “Have you read about that, too, Tiger?”

“No building is intrinsically good or bad; that depends on how people view and use it. Excess institutionalism and professionalism weaken churches, and buildings can reinforce those excesses. Common sense and financial reality forbid forcing all churches to build; it would kill church multiplication in our field.”

Roger clapped. “God has given ‘professor’ Tiger the gift of wisdom!”

“For sure!” Arturo agreed. “Let’s name him as a shepherding elder.”

“You’re joking! Me, a shepherding elder?” A cyclone of doubts assailed me.

“Tiger’s new in the Faith!” Pacho sputtered. “You forgot that, Arturo!”

“Does mere time produce spiritual maturity? Or living in the Spirit, obeying Jesus? Tiger’s grown more in a few months than most believers do in a lifetime.” Pacho pondered this, agreed, and they prayed to commission me there and then.

“In conclusion,” Arturo ordered, “all elders will lead a cell for new believers.”

…

“Ahoy!” Julio called to me across the square that night; he and his grandfather Gerardo came bearing a treat ─ a bowl of berries! I tried some and they were superbly sweet. The old man used them to illustrate how to extend mentoring chains as the apostle Paul told Timothy to do. “Anna planted them and they sent out runners that started new plants. We give the surplus to our neighbors and tell them the gospel.” Gerardo drew a plant in the dust with his toe. “Jesus likened growth in His Kingdom to that of plants.” He drew more plants. “Its creeping runners take root, sprout and new plants send out more runners. A church sends out runners, too, with its God-given DNA.”

Julio asked, “Can we multiply churches like this in the villages, Tiger?”

“We can if we train leaders the way Paul told Timothy to do it: one trains others who train still others at the same time. Jethro’s church multiplies that way. Leaders break the chain if they wait until every church can afford an academically trained pastor. There are never enough new leaders then, to keep multiplying.”

Gerardo remarked, “Inflated egos also wipe out the runners.” He rubbed out a plant with his foot. “I’ve seen plenty of ‘em! Proud leaders won’t share real authority with apprentices. They got to run things, loathe to let the work grow beyond their control. They just want their own flock to grow forever bigger and start no new ones. They’d win hundreds more to Jesus if they did.”

After I ate the last berry, Gerardo clasped my shoulder. “Tiger, I been watching you. God will use you to extend His work. He gave you the vision. Others are too busy griping to step out but you will surely lead them out of that darkness.”

They left and I puzzled over Gerardo’s prophecy that I’d extend God’s work.

Tiger Shuns Popular Trends that Lead Churches into Mediocrity

(pp 280 - 283)

We returned on foot to Arenas to buy oil, and Fred looked like he was ready to cut and run back to the States. Such woes were routine for Gadget and me, and Roy enjoyed the adventure, but I pitied Fred; he was sweating in spite of the cool air, clearly unused to physical exertion.

Back at the car, the oxen’s owner came to say, “You gentlemen are soaked and shivering. Stay in our house tonight. You can’t cross the river yet, anyway.”

Ernesto’s two-room house had mud walls whitewashed with lime, a roof of palm fronds and glassless windows with rustic wooden shutters. His wife roasted coffee mixed with corn and raw cane sugar on an outside, earthen stove until the mixture was almost ash; the process was too smoky to do inside. The potent brew penetrated to our bones and we stopped shivering. I was grateful, but Fred spit the black stimulant back into the cup. “Bitter!”

“Add sugar, man!” Ernesto laughed. “No one can take that stuff plain!” He shaved sugar from a brown block into Fred’s cup.

“You call that sugar? It smells like molasses.”

“The best!” Ernesto pointed at an apparatus outside. “We squeeze cane with that ñongoté, and then boil it down in a round mold.”

“Ñongoté?” queried Roy. “How does it work?”

“I’ll show you; the rain’s quit.” Ernesto sat bouncing on the end of a pole while his ten-year-old daughter Rina inserted cane stalks under the pliers-like lever, squeezing out the sweet juice, and we all drank the raw beverage. To warm us, Ernesto built a small fire on the mud floor in the middle of the room. We tried to sleep on the floor but even with our exhaustion, we couldn’t ignore the floor’s unforgiving hardness, the smoke that stung our eyes and odorous emanations from an obese sow that accompanied us. Fred griped, “You’d think they’d at least get some decent furniture.”

“They have what they can afford,” I replied. “Poverty’s extreme in these villages, and yet they share with us what they have. Be grateful, sir.”

Roy affirmed, “I’m grateful; such hospitality to strangers warms my heart.”

The next morning Rina petted the pig and boasted, “She’s mine!”

“I’ll buy her from you,” Gadget teased. “She’ll make tasty bacon.”

“No!”

“I’ll pay to you ten times the value of a big pig, Señorita.”

“No!”

“Let’s swap, then, Rina. My luxury car out there for your fat sow.”

“No!”

Ernesto’s wife brought beans and tortillas. There were too few chairs for all of us, so we took turns eating. Rina watched for a while, fascinated by Fred’s red hair and freckles. “You’re awfully pale. You been sick? Your skin’s ugly.”

“Rina!” her mother scolded, “Don’t be rude! That’s the natural color of the gringos. Their skin lacks normal pigment, and they can’t help it.”

“Maybe if they’d eat chocolate or licorice…”

“That’s enough Rina. Finish your tortillas.”

I told Ernesto, “We follow Jesus Christ, and it’s our practice to pray in His name for folks’ needs. Is there something you’d like us to pray for?”

“Oh, yes! Our corn. Animals got into it and ruined half of it. Tapirs, maybe. And my aunt who lives in the next village up the river is down with malaria.”

We prayed for these, and asked God to bless each family member; Ernesto thanked us heartily. Fred muttered to Roy, “I’m surprised how they welcomed your prayer so readily; it didn’t seem at all unusual to them. Most of the Americans I’ve been around would’ve been uncomfortable.”

“Not here, Fred, and not in most of the world’s major societies. They’ve escaped Western rationalism; Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even many Communists respond readily to an offer to pray for them or their families.”

I asked Ernesto, “Do you pray with your family?”

“No. We’re rather out of touch with God. Haven’t been to a church for years; it’s a bit far to town. Your prayers are different from what I’ve heard in Mass. You pray like you’re talking right to God, like to a friend you know.”

“I used to find prayer hard; my sins made it unpleasant to talk to God. But Roy here and his family led me into the Presence of Christ and I discovered His forgiveness. He died on the cross for us, as you know, rose from the dead and promised followers forgiveness and new life. He called it being ‘born again’.”

“I’ve heard that, but never understood it.”

“He gives us a new, loving heart, a desire to obey Him joyfully and eternal life as part of His heavenly family. He’ll give you and your family the same assurance. We don’t earn this blessing by doing good works; it’s all by His grace.”

To illustrate grace, Roy related the parable of the Prodigal Son and other Bible stories. The entire family listened, their eyes reflecting intense interest. Fred started to expound the doctrine of salvation in an abstract way; those eyes lost their luster, and Rina followed her mother away to do chores.

The next morning Ernesto was all smiles when I offered to return another day to talk again, pray together, and have worship with his family and friends.

“We’d appreciate that very much, Tiger. Most of our neighbors, too.”

On our way again to Bat Haven, Fred remarked, “You were rushing things, Tiger, to offer to have worship with them on your next trip.”

“They’ll be ready for it, and we might baptize them.” Fred looked shocked at this, and I explained, “Where the Holy Spirit brings families and social networks to Christ, things can move lightning fast compared to where a traditional church like ours once was demands a slower speed. Don’t doubt the work of God in those folks’ hearts. If you do, such doubts become contagious and discouraging.”

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Roy. “I feel like I’ve stepped into heaven!”

“You’re blind then,” Fred growled. “I feel like I’ve fallen into hell!”

This dampened conversation until Fred remarked, “Few Americans are that receptive to the gospel, and I wonder why not.”

“Some are,” Roy replied, “especially among the poor. Fred, in America you’ve been trying to push ‘camels’ from the middle class through the needle’s eye, as Jesus put it. Rationalists say religion is for the poor and uneducated, and in a sense, they’re right. God wants to save everybody, but the poor respond quicker; Jesus said it would be that way. Poverty helps people face reality and trust in God; wealth lures people to trust in themselves.”

I asked Roy, “Is that why God allows so much poverty?”

“Widespread movements have always begun with the poorer working class, Tiger. It trickles up; poor believers’ children become the next middle class.”

“Did you notice how much easier it was to talk with Ernesto and his family about the Lord after we’d eaten in his home? Some Christians try to theologize too soon, before the Holy Spirit has awakened seekers’ thirst for God, and they act superior because they know Christ and theology; this deters seekers. The apostles never witnessed in a theological way; they simply related the Good News ─ the historical facts ─ and let the Holy Spirit convict and convince.”

“You dealt with the entire family as a unit,” Roy said. “Most Americans tend to view salvation as an individual affair, and aim for one to make a decision on his own, to receive Jesus as his personal savior.”

“You said ‘decision’ and ‘personal’ ─ two enemies of evangelism; Scripture uses neither word in connection with it. Mere decisions rarely include repentance; most folks who merely make decisions fall away. Faith is personal only in that one’s heart consciously embraces it, and not simply because one is a member of a social group; the word is fatal for a movement if we add the Western spin to mean private. God doesn’t see a person as an isolated individual, but part of a network. The apostles dealt with the networks of the jailer, Cornelius, Lydia, and Crispus. People repent more readily along with their friends and kin.”

“Very true,” Roy replied, “now that I think about it. I came here to learn.”

“Well, I didn’t come as a pupil,” Fred grumbled. “I came to start churches.”

I told him, “If you’re looking for neglected fields, then you’ll have to travel a ways from Bat Haven. We already have churches in the villages nearby.”

“So you’ve got the area all sewed up, have you?” Fred sneered.

Folks smiled and waved as we drove slowly through a mountain village, and Roy waved back. “This culture fascinates me. It’s delightful, except the poverty.”

“It doesn’t impress me,” growled Fred. “I’m going to change things.” The stark contrast between the two Americans stirred anxiety in my mind.

“Wow!” Roy exclaimed. The sun goes down fast in these high mountains!”

“The brief twilight is not due to the altitude,” I explained. “It’s because we’re near the equator where the sun does not cross over the horizon at a slow slant as you’re used to in the north; it swoops almost straight down. The morning’s the same; dawn, once it makes up its stubborn mind to emerge, leaps up boldly!”

About The Author

Dr. George Patterson trained pastors and planted churches in Central America for over 20 years. Since then workers have used his writings and strategies for church multiplication in many fields, and for simple “2nd tracks” in the USA. He taught church planting at Western Seminary, and currently mentors any field workers who seriously want to follow New Testament guidelines to sustain church multiplication. He is also the author of Church Multiplication Guide (WCLBooks.com), Train And Multiply (pastoral training by extension, TrainAndMultiply.com), and Paul-Timothy pastoral training (co-author, http://www.Paul-Timothy.net) You may contact Dr. Patterson by email at GPatterson@cvi2.org

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Organizations and Coaches to Help You Pursue 4x4 Movement Starts

by Robby Butler

These organizations and coaches have indicated involvement in developing multiple lineages of multiplying generations, as the foundation for producing full church-planting movements:

e3 Partners Ministry is a church planting ministry integrating 4x4 best practices into its US and international ministry. e3 provides 4x4 / T4T training in different formats. It hosts e3 US Expeditions, which combine 4 or 5 day T4T training with practice doing outreach. e3 also conducts 2 day T4T trainings. Get info or registration at e3partners.org/USA under the “Go” and “Training” tabs.

e3 Partners also facilitates the 50-5-50 Network. It’s goal is to develop 50 4x4 trainers within 5 years (by 2017) in the 50 largest US cities (2,500 total trainers), all focused on reaching UUPGs and UPGs now living in the US. Get more info and join the network at <50-5-50network.com>

For more information, email Mike.Jorgensen@e3partners.org, or call (214) 440-1136.

New Water Ministries provides a variety of training options.

Immersion will teach you how to be, and how to make, multiplying disciples and immediately have the skills and confidence to begin multiplying simple churches.

Overflow will teach you how to work with primarily oral learners, those who can’t, won’t, or don’t read. We equip you to bring the Bible to life for such people.

Wave will teach you to work with networks of simple churches and how to manage ongoing leadership training.

Kairos is an adaptation of the Perspectives course.

Refresh will teach you community transformation, equipping you to go into a community and teach them about drip irrigation, food, health, and disciple making.

NewWater.com

curtis@newwater.com

(214) 802-6850

Act Beyond joins with Great Commission Christians (GCCs), churches, and ministries across the globe to equip, send and support Strategy Teams who prayerfully and strategically serve among Unreached People Groups(UPGs). We stimulate transformational Church Planting Movements(CPM) among UPGs, as well as help other GCCs to catalyze movements to Christ among UPGs.

Teams follow the Holy Spirit across the globe to create and implement strategies that are intentional in their focus on stimulating a CPM. These strategies require massive prayer focus and living out the Gospel abundantly in word and deed. The results transform individual lives and communities.

Beyond.org

info@beyond.org

Vimeo.com/84442681

Dacey Hodges, Director of Recruiting (469) 814-8232

Office: (469) 814-8222 or

(888) 847-6950

Global Church Movements (Campus Crusade for Christ Southeast Asia) exists to expand God’s Kingdom among the 679 unreached peoples of Southeast Asia by building movements of sustainable, multiplying churches.  Our staff are both initiating these movements and helping to mobilize and train others who have a heart for reaching the unreached places of SE Asia.  As we work with the Body of Christ, we are trusting God to raise up 500,000 multiplying churches so that every people group in Southeast Asia will be engaged with a movement plan by 2020.

We can offer training and would also like to collaborate with others who have a similar vision and calling.

gcm@ccci.org

Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship mobilizes Presbyterians for frontier mission involvement.  This includes encouraging them to support training in various places that seeks to facilitate and encourage 4x4 Movements.  PFF seeks out such training opportunities and channels funds to their support.

PFF.net

612-869-0062

info@pff.net

Action–SCM provides training and mentoring for Sustainable Church Multiplication.

We travel in 20+ countries to mentor new “churches planting churches,” anywhere hosts will gather small clusters of 20. Our curriculum is NT action verbs, and produces disciples making disciples. By God’s grace many new “chains of churches” have been birthed. Our trainers have experience in harvest fields around the globe: western Honduras; Equatorial New Guinea; Bulgaria and Uganda.

SCM-action.org

SCM.123.web@gmail.com

OC International serves partners to help them be more effective in discipling nations (1 Co 4:2; Mt 28:19–20).

Multiplication of godly Christian leaders and healthy reproducing fellowships is one of our core values. Thus we have been actively involved in facilitating church-planting and/or disciple-making movements for many years.

Contextual research, training and coaching church planters, and networks of ministries committed to multi-generational church planting have resulted in tens of thousands of Christ centered communities among Muslim, Hindu and Roman Catholic religious blocks.

OneChallenge.org

kimfarmer@oci.org

719-592-9292

The LK10 Community aims to fulfill the Great Commission the way Jesus did.  That is, by producing a vibrant family of Jesus (i.e. house church) within easy reach of everyone in every people group and region.  Following Jesus’ instructions, we relentlessly

•   pray the Lk 10:2b Prayer,

•   look for God-prepared people of peace,

•   impart the “virus” of the Kingdom in those homes, and

•   invite the leaders (spiritual moms and dads) into a “community of practice.”

The heart of our discipleship program can be conveyed in nine words:  “Listen, obey and teach others to do the same.”

Contact John White at John.lk10@gmail.com

LK10.com

Missional Challenge helps you Live the Mission by making disciples who make disciples who make disciples. Here are some ways we can serve you:

•   Discover principles and learn skills that enable you to make reproducing disciples that lead to 4x4 Movements.

Contact us about The Multiplication Workshop, our virtual Disciple Making Movement Café, or the Cultivating Missional Movements Workshop.

•   Define and accomplish your disciple-making goals.

Contact us about individual and group coaching for Disciple Making Movement practitioners, team leaders and catalysts.

•   Discern growth areas in your disciple formation.

Contact us about our Disciple Assessment, and discipleship guides.

http://d-dv.us/4x4MC

disciplemakinginitiative.org

Dr. R. Bruce Carlton trains and coaches individuals and organizations. Has been involved in church-planting/disciple-making movements for 20+ years, including several in Asia. Has trained church planters and cross-cultural workers on six continents; several of whom have catalyzed church-planting movements among previously unreached people groups.

acts29@pobox.com

@GlobalBruce (Twitter)

To be added to this list or to receive an updated version of it, send an email to 4x4Movements@gmail.com.

If you would like to be added to the list, please include the following in your email:

•   a 100-word description of how your organization is pursuing 4x4 Movements to the unreached (or you are providing coaching toward this end

•   a web link

•   an email address

•   an optional contact name

•   an optional phone number

About The Author

Robby Butler

Robby Butler served at the U.S. Center for World Mission from 1980 to 2004. He now serves as a consultant to church and mission leaders, and an occasional writer for Mission Frontiers.

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Kingdom Kernels

The Engine That Sustains Movements

by Steve Smith

Imagine that you are responsible to insure the training and personal development of a growing number of new pastors each year. This year it is 500, added to 300 from the previous year and 200 from the year before. However, these leaders must remain on the job, not leaving their locations for any extended period of time, since they are in charge of their flocks. Finally, circumstances dictate that they cannot connect consistently to online education due to the lack of connectivity and lack of resources. What will you do?

This is the primary question that faces Church Planting Movements (CPMs) and discipleship multiplication movements. From time to time we see promising church planting that has grown from zero to a couple of hundred churches based on principles we’ve looked at in previous articles:

1. Finding God-prepared people

2. Reproducing evangelism

3. Reproducing short-term and long-term discipleship

4. Reproducing churches

Yet failure from the beginning to develop a system to train the dozens, then hundreds, of emerging leaders has hamstrung a number of these budding movements. They plateau generally at the capacity of the missionary and initial leaders. Leadership overload, in which these leaders pastor several small churches each without raising up new leaders, stifles the expansion. At this point the missionary and key national leaders work frantically to address the need for more leaders, but it’s often too little too late. The expansion grinds to a halt with the majority of the population unreached with the gospel.

To fulfill God’s vision of His kingdom coming to every neighborhood, town and village, CPM practitioners must focus on a fifth principle prior to the beginning of the first church: reproducing leadership development. Leadership development is the engine the Spirit uses to sustain movements. In fact, sustained Church Planting Movements are by default leadership multiplication movements.

Paul’s Movements as a Precedent for Leadership Development

The church planting and discipleship movements in the six Roman provinces of Paul’s journeys illustrate the importance of developing and multiplying leaders from the beginning and throughout the life of a movement.

- About one third of Paul’s epistles are addressed to leaders he was mentoring (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon). These were men who grew into leadership out of the harvest of his work. While Paul exhorted churches, he mentored leaders.

- The majority of the individuals Paul names in his letters were leaders who grew out of his harvesting work with over thirty individuals who partnered with Paul in his apostolic team ministry in addition to the leaders of churches. From the beginning, Paul held a value of raising up leaders out of the harvest to guide the movements when he moved on.

- Acts 20:4 illustrates the diversity of this group of leaders: Sopater the Berean, son of Pyrrhus, accompanied him; and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy; and the Asians, Tychicus and Trophimus. (Acts 20:4 ESV)

This group accompanied Paul with his gift for the church in Jerusalem. They are an amazing cross-section of the new leaders he developed over his 8-10 years of ministry in three journeys:  Gaius and Timothy the harvest of Journey #1 (~8-10 years earlier); Sopater, Aristarchus and Secundus the harvest of Journey #2 (~6-8 years earlier); Tychicus and Trophimus the harvest of Journey #3 (~3-5 years earlier). In even a few years’ time, Paul was able to point to men who could guide the movements apart from his constant oversight.

- When pressed to spend time with either leaders or an entire church, Paul chose the former. Four to six years after the movement began in Ephesus and spread throughout the entire Roman province of Asia (Acts 19:10), and Paul had time to return for only a short visit, he chose to meet only with the leaders (Acts 20:16ff). Conscious of his time constraints, he chose to develop them as leaders who would guide the movement in Asia. When pressed, Paul chose to develop leaders who could minister and equip rather than personally engage in the work they could do themselves.

- These illustrations provide an expanded perspective on 2 Timothy 2:2. While this verse certainly applies to discipleship, it clearly illustrates Paul’s value to not only develop leaders but to do so in a way that can multiply endlessly. Paul chose to develop an ever-expanding system of leadership development rather than to center the training around his personal finite mentoring capacity.

Principles for Developing Leaders in an Ever-Expanding System

We must have a plan for leadership multiplication before our first discipleship groups and churches ever start. It must be a system that allows leaders to mature quickly in the midst of ministry and brings training to new tiers of leaders with no limits upon how far it can expand.

Movements grow no further than the bounds of their leadership development systems. If your system has a capacity to train 100 pastors, that is the extent to which it will grow. A number of sustained CPMs around the world implement principles to foster continued expansion and maturation of leaders.

- On-the-job training —Recognizing that it will kill the movement to pull leaders of churches and CPM networks out of their contexts for months or years at a time, CPM facilitators devise a system to bring training to locales where the leaders can easily travel. This requires more work on our part to decentralize the locations of trainings. It means we live on their schedule and in their worlds rather than ours. This is a sort of Theological Education by Extension on steroids as training reaches further and further into the expanding edges of the movement.

- Just-in-time training – CPM facilitators bring training to leaders as they need it in the context of ministry rather than mandate that leaders only be trained in one extended period of months or years. CPMs reveal that retention and application is much more effective when leaders receive training more frequently for shorter durations. They are able to apply it to their ministries immediately and receive frequent trouble-shooting help along the way.

o Numerous applications abound of the two previous principles. In one CPM in which the churches are all within a one to four hour ride away from a training site, leadership training occurs monthly on Friday night and Saturday. In another geographically widespread out CPM, fruitful leaders gather for 4-10 days two, three or four times a year in many different cities. Farmers can sometimes gather for ten days whereas city-dwellers sometimes gather for four-day weekends or on holidays. In a third context, a largely rural CPM in addition to monthly meetings, conducts rainy-season training conferences in which hundreds of leaders descend upon a location central to their area for three to four weeks.

- Retain the DNA of a movement – CPM practitioners spend a large amount of every training discussing the vision God has given the movement for His kingdom to come to every locale. Many encourage the leaders to develop generational maps to keep track of the expansion of the movement and identify areas that need to be reached or display weaknesses. The CPM leaders are careful to guard the movement from extra-biblical teaching that might dampen the movement.

o Failure to do this can stall a CPM. A missionary couple were delighted when a movement suddenly erupted through a woman they were discipling. She took the gospel to her home village and that village began evangelizing other villages. The couple was careful to begin training the emerging leaders and encourage the continued expansion. However, when the couple left their country for a couple of months, a traveling teacher got wind of this budding movement. He visited the new churches and chided them for practicing the ordinances of baptism and communion without “properly credentialed” leaders from outside. These young believers naively accepted this and the CPM ground to a halt.

- Focus on fruitful leaders – In CPMs, the leaders that need the most attention are those responsible for multiple churches and multiple generations of churches. These fruitful leaders have much larger oversight. Without giving them the encouragement, counsel and equipping they need at each new stage, they will burn out. Effective CPM practitioners structure their training (“mid-level training”) for these leaders that have greater responsibility. Failure to do so means reducing the depth of training and failing to meet
their needs.

o In one CPM the missionary conducted mid-level trainings with such leaders on a monthly basis. His training was quite extensive in personal, pastoral and theological development. Before long members of churches who did not have the same level of evangelistic fruit or pastoral oversight began to attend, eager for more training. The result was the need to keep going over basic discipleship ideas rather than deeper concepts and the continued expansion of the movement (e.g. 1 Cor. 3:2). The movement began to slow down. When the missionary recognized this situation, he limited this training to only fruitful mid-level trainers while insuring that basic discipleship was carried to the rest of the church members. The engine was restarted and the movement began to expand again.

- Develop a system in which new layers of leadership development can expand without limitations – Effective CPM practitioners have developed systems whereby their top national leaders who have gifts to oversee a whole stream of the movement can reproduce the mid-level training in their stream. CPM practitioners focus on week-by-week mentoring of these top leaders giving special attention to enabling them to become effective mid-level trainers. In time, these top overseers raise up other apostolic leaders with gifts to do the same. The result is a system whereby mid-level trainings can expand endlessly as the movement expands. In one large CPM with over a million believers, over thirty apostolic leaders oversee large streams of the movement. These men empower mid-level trainings in their streams to the extent that there are dozens of mid-level trainings occurring every month in various places in the region. The movement has no limits on how far it can expand.

- Deal with the whole person—In our zeal to see more people come to Christ, it is easy for us to position mid-level trainings mainly as evangelism and church planting training events and often do so in a sterile classroom environment. When this happens, mid-level leaders burn out. Effective mid-level training addresses the whole. They give time to worship, rest, personal counseling of each participant, feeding them from the Word, interpersonal interactions and generally enabling mid-level leaders to encounter God in a powerful way. They address similar issues to those Paul addressed in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus – the whole counsel of God for all of life. The result is leaders who mature in all areas and are able to continue as Christ-like disciples.

- Give deep spiritual truths in bite-sized pieces—One of my early mistakes in mid-level training was to squeeze my entire seminary education into a four week training. After days of confused stares, I saw the error of my ways and opted to give a few deep truths in a way that could be understood. Proverbs 15:2 became a principle of my life: “The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable.” (NASB) A fruitful CPM trainer, Kevin Greeson, prescribes the Straw Principle of Training: “You can provide all the pastoral training you want as long as you divide it into small pieces that can fit through a straw. By giving it in digestible pieces, leaders can grow consistently.”

- Maintain contact with multiple levels of leaders – It is not unusual in the harsh environments of persecution and spiritual assault for the top national leader(s) of a movement to be taken out (prison, flight to another context, death, job move, moral failure). CPM practitioners whose only contact with the leaders of a movement is through one top leader (often because of a noble desire to encourage indigenous leaders not to rely on a foreign teacher) will find it difficult to continue leadership development when he is removed from the leadership chain. It is critical from the beginning to maintain contact with multiple generations of leaders knowing that at any time any leader may leave the movement. It is also critical to encourage mid-level leaders to network together so that they create multiple opportunities for interpersonal development. If these things happen, then leadership development continues without significant interruptions.

These are principles and applications that must be thought through before churches begin. If you begin with an expanding leadership system in mind (which will morph along the way!), you will likely equip the movement to grow for decades to come by the power of the Spirit.

About The Author

Steve Smith

Steve Smith planted a church in Los Angeles and then helped initiate a church planting movement (CPM) among an unreached people group in East Asia. The last ten years he has trained believers in CPM and currently oversees the work of the International Mission Board (SBC) in reaching Southeast Asian Peoples.

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The Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies

Equipping Christians to Understand and Engage Muslims with the Gospel for 35 Years

by

Founded in 1979 at the U.S. Center for World Mission, the Zwemer Institute became a major resource and training center for Christians seeking to engage Muslims with the gospel. This need was highlighted with the emergence of the Lausanne Movement and grew out of a consultation led by Dr. Don McCurry the first Zwemer Director. [See Zwemer beginnings below.]

Multitudes of missionaries, missionaries-in-training, students and scholars have contributed research, studied in seminars and earned graduate degrees in Islamics over the years, facilitated by the renown faculty and adjunct staff. Hundreds of churches have been equipped to understand and relate to Muslim neighbors in seminars conducted throughout North America.

Named for Samuel Zwemer, pioneer missionary to the Muslim world, the Center has sought to win a hearing for the gospel through building relationships of love and respect rather than confrontational encounters and debate. Known as the “Apostle to Islam” Zwemer advocated building understanding. “The Christian missionary should first of all thoroughly know the religion of the people among whom he labors. The Koran, the traditions, the life of Mohammed, the Moslem conception of Christ, social beliefs and prejudices of Mohammedans, which are the result of their religion--ignorance of these is the chief difficulty in work for Moslems,” he was quoted as saying.

The early years of the Zwemer Institute was closely affiliated with the School of World Missions at nearby Fuller Theological Seminary and led and influenced by notable Muslim scholars as McCurry, Robert Douglas and Dudley Woodberry. Later Jim Dretke was named director following almost 30 years of Muslim research and outreach in Africa, including leading the “Islam in Africa Project.” To be more centrally located for training throughout the country, the Zwemer Institute was moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana and affiliated with Condordia Seminary where degree studies and graduate research continued while a network of associates conducted church-based seminars.

Upon Dretke’s retirement in 2003, Don Larson at Columbia International University was chosen as Director and moved the program to CIU along with extensive archives and library holdings that had been accumulated over the years. Renamed “The Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies,” it was a good match with the strong missions focus of the university. Emphasis was given on building the academic aspect of training through an M.A. in Muslim Studies in the College of Intercultural Studies.

Current director, Jerry Rankin, brought to the role 23 years of field experience among Muslims in Southeast Asia. As president emeritus of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, he has led Zwemer to adopt a vision to serve churches and mission agencies with more practical training for those called to engage Muslims.

Rankin voiced a need to fill this strategic niche in observing, “Tremendous progress has been made in planting the gospel among unengaged people groups in recent years, but the Muslim world as well as our understanding and approach to it continue to remain formidable barriers to global evangelization. Yet these are beginning to crumble under the onslaught of social change, global communication and reaction to oppressive political structures and religious radicalism. The influx of Muslim immigrants to the U.S. has left churches and Christians floundering between paranoia and dismay in knowing how to relate to this growing segment of American society.”

Beginning in 2013 the Zwemer Center began an annual Frontline Conference for sharing strategies, challenges and reports among those engaging Muslims in North America and around the world. The 2014 conference will be held July 24-26 at Christar conference center in Richardson, Texas.

Reclaiming the original name, a week-long “Zwemer Institute” has been designed to provide practical training for missionaries and churches in understanding and witnessing to Muslims. The Institute begins with an overview of the Muslim worldview, understanding Mohammed and the Koran, the diversity of Islam, the radicalization of Islam in the 21st century and relating to Muslim women. The training proceeds to a focus on how to engage Muslim cultures, contextualized witnessing and concludes with church planting and discipleship among Muslim background believers.

A 2014 Institute will be hosted by the IMB in Rockville, Virginia May 26-30 and led by Zwemer staff and veteran overseas strategists. July 28-August 1, the Zwemer Center, in partnership with the Ralph D. Winter Research Center, will conduct at training institute at the USCWM in Pasadena, California. This 35th anniversary institute will be led by renowned scholars and missiologists—who will convene for an historic week of training. Presenters featured during the week will include Don McCurry, Robert Douglas, Dudley Woodberry, Warren Larson, Jim Dretke, Evelyne Reisacher, Phil Parshall, Len Bartlotti and Greg Livingstone.

Information and registration for the Zwemer Institutes and Frontline Conference, as well as summer intensive courses at CIU are available at www.zwemerinstitute.com.

35th Anniversary

Zwemer Institute

In partnership with

The Ralph D. Winter Research Institute

USCWM, Pasadena, CA

July 28-Aug 1

FEATURING

Don McCurry     Dudley Woodberry

Robert Douglas      Warren Larson

Jim Dretke           Phil Parshall

Evelyne Reisacher    Greg Livingstone

www.zwemerinstitute.com

The Beginnings

by Don McCurry

While a student at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1976, I was among several students convened by Peter Wagner to engage in a discussion on world evangelization. I suggested there was a need for a major resource training center for folks going to the Muslim World and the need to bring together a world-wide consultation on Muslim evangelization.

Wagner was chairman of the Strategy Working Group of the Lausanne Committee at the time and took the idea to the North American Committee. The consultation was approved, Wagner persuaded World Vision to fund it and turned it back to me to implement. With the help of Ed Dayton at MARC a mini-consultation was held in 1977. Dave Cashin and Casimir Klimashauskas toured the Muslim world from Singapore to North Africa gathering data on workers and projects underway.

In October 1978 150 participants gathered from 26 nations representing missionaries, theologians, anthropologists and mission executives. The 40 papers presented were compiled as a book, The Gospel and Islam: A 1978 Compendium.

This research became the foundation for training in the years that followed.

A task group at the consultation recommended the formation of an institute to provide continued training and research, and Dr. Arthur Glasser suggested it be named for Samuel Zwemer. I agreed to serve as the initial director and, with the encouragement of Ralph Winter, who had been involved in planning and facilitating the 1978 consultation, the Institute was housed on the campus of the USCWM.

Don McCurry served with the Presbyterian Church in Pakistan 18 years. He currently serves the church worldwide through Ministry to Muslims after founding and directing the Zwemer Institute while teaching at Fuller Seminary.

About The Author

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Hope for the Nations

A Review of Wayne Grudem and Barry Asmus' book The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution

by Robert Osburn, Ph.D.

From the Foreword:

“I’ve been waiting for a book like this for a long time. Wayne Grudem and Barry Asmus have brilliantly written a work that is at the same time completely biblical, historical and practical… It should be required reading in every Christian college and seminary, by every relief and mission organization, and by every local church pastor. At Saddleback Church and in all churches participating in the P.E.A.C.E. Plan, this book will become a standard text that we will use to train every mission team we have in 196 countries.

— Rick Warren, Saddleback Church. Lake Forest, California.
Founder, Global P.E.A.C.E. Plan.

Two years from now, in 2016, Niran, his wife, and his five children in a rural southwestern Nigerian community will bow together in family worship without aching, empty stomachs. They will give money at church, dream about a college education for one of their children, and, most of all, transcend a subsistence lifestyle for the first time ever.

Here’s how this could become reality…

Nigerian pastoral, government, and business leaders will have spent the summer of 2014 digesting and applying the remarkable ideas in The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution (2013). As they read the text, they learn to cast off ancient practices. For example, after reading chapter 6, these leaders confront their need for moral virtue (i.e., lives free of corruption), which is necessary for success in the marketplace. As they learn in Ch. 3 about the benefits of the free market, formerly corrupt officials stop demanding bribes for the registration of land titles. Instead, they promote reforms in the capital city, Abuja, thus making property ownership widely accessible.

This discussion in the summer of 2014 won’t be easy. False ideas, many rooted in ancient animism, must be confronted. For example, the old idea that there is only so much wealth to go around—“zero sum” thinking—is exposed as a lie in the book’s section on “Cultural Beliefs That Will Encourage Economic Growth.” It is also hard for leaders to acknowledge that they haven’t used their power for the benefit of their people. And until they do, their communities will remain desperately poor (chapter 7).

Of course, Niran’s pastor will rejoice in 2016 because he and his family don’t have to go to bed with empty stomachs either. You see, Niran and his countrymen learned what government leaders are teaching from chapter 9—that having material wealth should never surpass the desire for spiritual wealth. As a result the offering basket in their church is now full, Sunday after Sunday. Niran and his fellow parishioners finally have an abundance from which to give and fund missionary expansion of the gospel.

Every mission executive and pastoral trainer who wants the preceding possibility to become reality needs to read, digest, and seriously discuss The Poverty of Nations. This one-of-a-kind handbook is ready-made for those who need a blueprint, a roadmap for turning around struggling societies. Nine chapters are devoted to developing 78 principles (sometimes called steps, factors, or laws) that, if taken, can lead whole nations out of poverty. The authors argue that many, if not all, of these principles have been researched and time-tested in nations around the world. The book, thus, is a prescriptive text for the missional problem solver, not a thoroughgoing academic analysis that aims at description. The book is prescriptive and its scope is national. In other words, its unit of transformation is the nation-state. It is rare among writers in this postmodern era to rise above the level of the tribe (or people group) and yet remain below the level of international institutions. The authors justify this national focus by claiming that “the primary causes of poverty are factors that affect an entire nation” (p. 25). Thirdly, the text is comprehensive. Contrary to various reductionisms, poverty remediation requires simultaneous transformation in three spheres: cultural (social), political, and economic. This insight alone makes the book a valuable treasure, in my opinion: The three spheres are interrelated domains of human existence, culture being the most fundamental of the three. The authors seem to agree, as nearly half of the principles are defined by the (misnamed) heading “nation’s values” (p. 369).

Recognizing that economic development is essential to escaping the poverty trap, the authors claim their book transcends others by focusing on the “nationwide laws, policies, and cultural values and habits that determine so much of the course of economic development in a nation”(p.26). Needless to say, the authors are unapologetically committed to free market economics. Research overwhelmingly confirms the effectiveness of the free market model, as opposed to various redistributive schemes in favor with international developmentalists like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University.

The book’s emphases on sustainability, reproducibility, and non-dependence on Western resources align nicely with missionaries’ church-planting objectives. Pastors should welcome the message that salvation is not merely spiritual, but that many of their congregants are called to undertake entrepreneurial initiatives. Government agents in their congregations will learn to adopt policies which encourage rather than dampen economic development.

The single greatest fear of many missionaries, I suspect, will be that some of the ideas, if taught, will be viewed as hostile to the political authority of their host countries. Discretion and discernment will be required, because those who hear and take to heart what is taught will be changed. Most governments, of course, don’t like change that threatens their control. A second concern is that some of those who engage the text will take some of its ideas and shear them of their Christian roots while launching reform initiatives. The risk is real (think of the mid-19th century Taiping Rebellion that led to 20 million Chinese deaths), but the wise Christian interculturalist will admit that the gospel carries inherent political implications, as Vishal Mangalwadi explains in his classic text Truth and Social Reform (1989). Shrewd and effective Bible teachers will need to thread this needle while avoiding heresies. A third concern is that readers won’t understand the ideas sufficiently to teach them correctly (seminars will need to be organized).

Those who use the book with groups as diverse as international students on the one hand, and Venezuela’s Yanomamo on the other, will need to frame their principle-oriented pedagogy so that it takes account of local realities. For example, predictable tensions concerning the superiority of private property ownership over tribal ownership will arise. Educated leaders will need to explain the tremendous wealth development potential of private ownership, while pastors will need to simultaneously teach against the corrupting practice of envy. Ameliorative institutions and mechanisms will be needed to soften the distortions and inequalities of private ownership. On this extremely critical matter, Grudem and Asmus not only offer biblical support for private ownership, but usefully engage authors like Hernando Desoto, Peruvian author of The Mystery of Capital (2003), who makes a strong case that billions of the world’s poor live on valuable property over which they have no legal title. Securing legal title is an essential early step that can then be parlayed for business development loans which are part of the poverty alleviation matrix.

Do I have cautions over the book? Most certainly.

First, the text fails to account for the growing impact of the global regulatory environment (fostered by international agencies) and its impact on national policies the authors recommend.

Second, the book is biblically and theologically thinner than one would expect. (Others can undertake in years to come the task of filling out the theological themes that will ultimately make this everyone’s go-to text on a Christian view of building nations that prosper.)

A third caution comes from a well-developed fear of utopianisms. While this is a very solutions-oriented text, I caution those who employ it to keep close at hand their doctrine of sin. Humans have massive capacities to prevaricate, corrupt, and otherwise diminish truth in order to make utopian claims that enrich themselves. Others will take these principles and impose them on the untaught. Replacing the gospel of Christ with a utopian gospel based on these principles would be no advance for human civilization; in the end, it would be a dark step back.

Fourth, the book risks becoming a formula for national improvement, a 78-step surefire restorative for Sick Nations Anonymous. Our neighbors are human beings, not human test tubes waiting for our scientific prescriptions. These principles should be applied with generous helpings of a Christ-centered gospel that announces a Savior who has come to “reconcile to himself all things, whether in heaven or on earth, making peace by the blood of his cross.” In this context the book can be used very effectively, especially with leaders in all sectors of society.

My last and fifth concern has to do with modernity, social unity, and Christian faith. The authors spend very little time warning that, unless gospel imperatives remain front and center in education, economic flourishing can lead to social diminishment and pathologies (as we have seen in Western countries). The Deuteronomy 8 warning against ignoring God once we become wealthy is as true today as it was thousands of years ago. Alexis de Tocqueville framed his brilliant Democracy in America (1835) around this question: As democratic man becomes established with political and economic freedoms, how will he maintain allegiances to the rest of society? History’s answer in the developed societies of the world is, “Not very well.”

Asmus and Grudem don’t offer an answer either, nor need they at this early stage. But those engaged in Christian mission and development who wisely employ this text around the world—along with Darrow Miller’s Discipling Nations (2001), Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert’s When Helping Hurts (2014 edition), and Acton Institute’s The Poverty Cure video series (2012)—will need to invest great energy in finding contextualized answers to Tocqueville’s question. Only robust Christian faith will provide the enduring allegiances that offer genuine social stability, harmony, and assistance to those dislocated by free market mechanisms. It will be up to us to utilize various strategies that help the larger society to thrive while simultaneously deploying Asmus and Grudem’s text that empowers individuals.

We must remember that the larger end that alone makes sense of such endeavors is God’s kingdom, where “they shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit…and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.” (Isaiah 65: 21-22 ESV) This is a text about human flourishing, and that is what drives Asmus and Grudem.

Tonight, there is a gaping, yawning emptiness in the seven stomachs in Niran’s family. He trusts Christ, and prays daily that their stomachs will someday be full. After the leaders in his community and his nation read this book, Niran and his family will have abundant reasons to thank the God who has not forsaken the righteous or let his children beg for bread. (Psalm 37:25)

About The Author

As the Executive Director of the Wilberforce Academy, Bob Osburn trains college students as redemptive change agents in their home societies and workplaces.  He also teaches on religion and educational policy at the University of Minnesota, where he earned his PhD in international education in 2005.  His ThM is from Dallas Seminary. You may contact Bob by email at bob@wilberforceacademy.orghttp://www.wilberforceacademy.org

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Other

Raising Local Resources

30 to 50 Years From Now

by Jean Johnson

Recently, I saw on television that several women—in their 30s—were diagnosed with breast cancer. Further discovery revealed that the tumors were located exactly where the women placed their cell phones in their bras on a regular basis, and the tumors were similar to the shape and size of the phones. Of course that led to a conversation about potential brain tumors related to holding cell phones up to the ear. A doctor on the newscast explained that in about 30 to 50 years from now, the detrimental consequences of cell phone usage may very well be staring us in the face.

As missionaries, I wonder what will be staring us in the face in 30 to 50 years from now? Are there aspects of our mission work that look progressive and expedient now, but may backfire in the long-term? What changes will we have made around the world that we may regret? Will we find the prosperity gospel running rampant? Will we find that the ability for the majority of the world to show compassion and make disciples in their context is utterly dependent on a few wealthy countries? What if those few wealthy countries have serious economic downturns? Perhaps a type of Christian secularism and consumerism will evaporate spirituality throughout the world.

Missiologist Jacob Loewen was teaching a seminar on worldview in India to Indian teachers and their missionary colleagues. At one point in the seminar, Loewen entered into a dialogue with the Indian teachers. This dialogue is a perfect example of unwanted consequences staring missionaries in the face. The dialogue unfolded in the following manner:

Jacob: Each culture has at its center an “axle” from which radiate all the “spokes” that hold the wheel together and help it to perform its appointed tasks smoothly and without undue difficulty. What is the hub around which the missionaries’ way of life revolves?

Indian Teachers: Money! (was the unhesitating and unanimous response)

Jacob: How can you be sure?

The Indian teachers recounted incidents that in their eyes offered clear proof that money was at the core of all material and spiritual aspects of Western missionary life and work.

Jacob: What about your fathers and grandfathers before the missionary and the white man came? What was the axle of their way of life?

Indian Teachers: War!

The Indian participants explained that their grandfathers had practiced killing because that was the way to get spirit power.

Indian Teachers: Had our grandfathers been Christians, the Spirit of God would have been the center of our lives because God is the most powerful of all spirits.

Jacob: And now that all of you are Christians, is the Spirit of God the axle of your Christian way of life, too?

Indian Teachers: No, our axle is money…because…that is what we learned from the missionaries.1

Jacob’s dialogue with the Indian teachers pressed the missionaries to look at what was staring them in the face after years of missionary life and work. I doubt the missionaries intended to convey that money was the axle to their mission strategies and personal lives. I wonder if much has changed since that day Jacob Loewen recorded that experience in 1975. What images are we spreading along with the gospel? We do have ethical responsibility for the wrong kingdom images and misconceptions we pass along with the gospel. I am convinced that we may very well be treading on a slippery slope in regards to sowing unintended and unwanted changes around the world in the name of the gospel. I have at least two major concerns, which I convey below through preventative actions:

Put the cost of discipleship back into conversion experiences. The apostle Peter’s words to those gathered at Pentecost were exacting: “Change your life, turn to God and be baptized.” The people’s response to Peter was equally heartfelt: “Cut to the quick, those who were there listening asked Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers! Brothers! So now what do we do?’” (Acts 2:37-39, The Message) Poverty has driven many of those who do missions to unknowingly diminish the cost of following Christ. The heavy-handed emphasis on the immediate social and economic perks has often led to self-serving conversion experiences. Offering presents, handouts, free charitable services, and promised tuition fees hand-in-hand with the gospel inevitably draw people to superficial commitments to Christ and those commitments often wane when the “going gets tough.” We don’t want to look back and wonder why freshly reached unreached people groups are slipping into nominalism so quickly. Like Peter, ensure conversion invitations include counting the cost.

Return to the power and simplicity of the Great Commission. As Western Christians, we add on and import so much baggage and non-essentials (which always cost lots of money) to the Great Commission effort and faith experience. As those who do missions from the West come with suitcases, containers, and wire transfers, the majority of the world comes to the conclusion that money is the key and participation in the Great Commission is doable only for the well-to do. According to Jesus’ own words, He is the power source to fulfilling the Great Commission: “Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20, The Message) The more humble missionaries make the Great Commission effort, the more opportunity for Jesus to exert His power, the more every people—from all walks of life— can equally participate in the Great Commission.

As missionaries, we are ethically responsible for the unintended changes we create around the world. What images will we have fostered, knowingly or unknowingly, about God and His kingdom in the minds and hearts of people 30 to 50 years from now?

As mission-minded Christians, we are charged to change the world. Let us commit to make changes that truly reflect God’s will and kingdom, not our own.

About The Author

Jean Johnson served as a missionary with the Assemblies of God in Cambodia for 16 years in the areas of pioneer church planting, on-the-job leadership training, and oral strategies. She is currently a co-director of World Mission Associates and teaches and coaches on church sustainability and multiplication. She can be reached by e-mail at jeanjohnson@wmausa.org

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Other

The Final Assault: Hastening

by Steve Smith

Excerpted from Book One of a Two-part Saga about Finishing the Task.

Projected release 2nd quarter of 2014. For notification of availability, or to inquire about advance order discounts, email theFinalAssault@gmail.com

Christopher Owen sipped his coffee as he watched John and Nic pull out documents and tablets. Where did I find such friends? God, you know I’ve never had too many close friends—just a handful. These two will be there to the end. Such a contrast from me, yet so committed to the friendship, to the journey.

“Guys, when we started Church in the City a few years ago, we began with the express intent of it developing into a kingdom movement that would reach L.A. and the world. Something beyond ourselves, beyond our own church. Something to bless other churches. Something to reach the unreached.”

“You guys know the status of the work better than anybody else.” Christopher took a swallow of his coffee. “Frankly, I’m frustrated with our progress. Are we becoming a kingdom movement? No! I suspect we need some major course corrections.”

“I’m game for any changes you wanna make, buddy,” said Nic. “In the business world, if we don’t keep improving and adapting, we’re history.”

“So, Nic, you have the progress analysis?”

Nicolas Fernandez, entrepreneurial prodigy, located the appropriate spreadsheet on his tablet. “The numbers arrived two days ago confirming your hunch. We are not making significant progress. We’re maintaining, with just a bit of headway.”

“I knew it. I just could feel it in my bones. We’ve settled into maintenance mode. That’s not what we signed up for when we started this thing. Remember?”

John Steward, professor of history at USC, objected. “It’s not that bad, Chris. We are making a difference — what we’ve got
is authentic.”

“And if that weren’t the case, nothing else would matter.  Problem is, I think we’ve focused so much inwardly that we’ve forgotten our outward task — Los Angeles was supposed to be just the starting point, remember? Nic, tell him what you learned a couple of weeks ago.”

“About?”
“Three eras…” prompted Chris.

“Okay, so I’m in this Perspectives on the World Christian Movement class every Monday night with all our wives, right? John, this is incredible — Dr. Ralph Winter summarized the modern movement into three distinct ages — the coastland era, the inland era, and the current era of unreached people groups. What Christopher has been saying about Matthew 24:14 is right. If we can get the gospel to all of the remaining groups, the task is finished! Finished!”

Christopher’s eyes narrowed as he mouthed the promise from Jesus: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all people groups, and then the end will come.”

John wasn’t impressed. “Nic, do you have any idea how many people groups there are? Thousands, maybe tens of thousands. We’re still talking a long time from now.”

“Actually, John, the data disagrees with your impression.” Nic glanced at his tablet. “It took Timothy and me a while to pull down the numbers and I even had to call on one of my data analysts to help me navigate the maze of information. But… the best I could gather from research databases manned by Joshua Project and the International Mission Board was . . .” —he glanced at the report—“three thousand six hundred seventy-four groups, give or take a few. The number varies depending on how you define them. I have a list here with all the names and locations.”

John arched an eyebrow. “Wow, I guess I was wrong. Only 3,674 groups, give or take a few.” He smiled wryly. “Piece of cake.”

Christopher had been staring vacantly at the ceiling in thought, but suddenly jerked his head toward his friends. “Do you realize what you just said? We have names! Locations! As far as I know, no generation prior to ours has ever been able to quantify what remains of the task. You guys! If we can quantify it, we can finish it!”

His mind was awash with fresh possibilities. As he tapped his fingertips together, his two friends waited. They had seen this posture many times and knew he needed time to process. If they didn’t interrupt the process, they’d be amazed with the outcome.

Could it really be? Was it possible? Maybe it wasn’t a pipe dream after all. Maybe, just maybe… Slowly words came to Christopher’s thoughts.

“We can do this. Brainstorm with me! How can we finish the task? How can it happen in our generation? That is, how can we become the last generation in history?!”

“I don’t know, but I do know this,” said John. “Renee told me that the lecturer said there have been over a thousand plans in history, and all have failed. What makes us think we’ll succeed?”

Christopher set his mug down on the table harder than he intended, sloshing coffee out of the cup. “Because we must. We must! Someone must finish this thing. Not finishing it is unacceptable. There must be a way.”

Nic and John stared into their mugs while they digested this.

“Christopher, other plans have failed,” Nic finally said. “I’m not sure of the reasons, though I imagine many of those made great progress. But what if we set a date by which we wanted to finish this thing? A date that forced us to operate differently or fail. A date that forced us into a paradigm perhaps never envisioned before.”

“You may have something, there, Nic. Let’s put everything on the table. What’s a reasonable date that would force us into a new paradigm?”

Dates were thrown out for discussion. “2050?” “2030?” “2040?”

“No, c’mon you guys,” Christopher said. “Dates that far off still allow us to relax — business as usual.”

“What about 2025?” John suggested. “That’s just over ten years from now. A lot can happen in ten years, but only if we radically alter course.”

Christopher’s eyes widened. “Professor Steward. You, the skeptic, proposing the most ambitious date?”

“Ahem.” The teddy-bearish academic dabbed some foam from his beard. “Well, as a student of history, I guess I have the advantage of hindsight. I’ve rarely seen the type of course corrections you’re describing without such drastic — almost draconian — measures. I’m not advocating this date, but offering it as perhaps the only option to accomplish what you are describing.”

Christopher grinned, then placed a napkin on the table and wrote 2025 and 3,674 groups.

“Okay, boys, 3,674 groups to get to in just over ten years. How do we go about finding answers to this challenge? From what I hear you saying from your Perspectives class, progress is being made, but the momentum won’t get us there that fast. 2025 forces us into a radical shift forward in momentum. How do we find the answers?”

About The Author

Steve Smith

Steve Smith planted a church in Los Angeles and then helped initiate a church planting movement (CPM) among an unreached people group in East Asia. The last ten years he has trained believers in CPM and currently oversees the work of the International Mission Board (SBC) in reaching Southeast Asian Peoples.

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Further Reflections

Further Reflections

Age-Related Retirement

by Greg H. Parsons

So many things from our cultural background color our perspective, which makes it difficult to see where we might be wrong. Compulsory retirement at a set age is one. I’m all for having people change roles once their capacity is diminished. I’m all for younger leaders having high-level engagement in any organization.

But I see no clear biblical teaching to argue for what many ministries do when someone reaches 62 or 65, or even 70. In fact, I would suggest that if the Bible says anything, it would tend to illustrate quite the opposite. By way of negative illustration from the OT, it was often (not always) when a much younger king was ruling Israel that the situation deteriorated for Israel—especially when they did not listen to their elders. In the NT and OT, elders are to be honored and respected. Elders in the church are “to lead.”

Here are two examples of policies that lack wisdom:

Several years ago, I met a judge who served the State of California court system. The governor had appointed him back in the 1960s and when I met him, he was almost 80 years old and still serving. While the legal system in California desperately needed (and needs) a wise experienced judge, when he turned (about) 70 he was told he could keep serving, but would have to take a 50% pay cut. He continued and I always enjoyed hearing him tell about some of the significant cases over which he presided. I once read about a very public case on the front page of the LA Times where he was quoted. I was impressed that a younger, less experienced and respected judge could not have done what he did in that case. When I talked with him, I sensed that he felt he had no time to mess around! Age does not need to bring apathy, it can foster urgency.

Just a week ago at church, I was talking to an older “retired” missionary. He is still teaching part time—which he’s done full-time for the last 30 years—after years of serving overseas. He is also continuing to work on technical projects and publishing in his areas of education and strength—often spending months in Asia. His brother is also a missionary. He worked on campuses for many years. At a certain age, he was told that he would have to retire. At the time, he also had a very effective men’s ministry/study at his church. Students and men and other leaders looked to him for wisdom.

So he continues to mentor and teach, traveling around the world with various groups doing training. He is “free” to still do ministry and it sounded like he is seeing more and more impact as a result of his faithfulness, experience and wisdom.

We probably all know of people who have held on to control for too long. Rather than set a year for required “retirement” from a particular role—even top leadership roles—I suggest we have systems in place to effectively evaluate people at various life stages. This could be a great step help to leaders who need to process through their own growth and focus on where God has expressly gifted them for their next years. There are a number of tools to help ministries do this. When the time is right to pass the top role to another, processing it beforehand will help leaders see that continuing to run the day-to-day operations of their ministry (or business) may no longer be where God wants to use them. I realize that sometimes that is not easy to accept.

Our culture of dishonoring those who are older is reflected in much of our marketing and media culture. We’ve bought into it, along with the materialism it promotes. I encourage you to resist.

Do you have an older person who speaks into your life? Is there someone you have sought for wisdom on a regular basis? If not, seek one or two, perhaps with strengths in different areas you feel would help you.

Even as I grow wiser (I hope) at this stage of my own life, I increasingly feel the need for the wisdom of someone older who has walked this way before.

About The Author

Greg H. Parsons

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