Thoughts Along The Journey

I was talking today with a young church planter from Asia, working with a national organization in country.  He had just returned from facilitating a training session on launching and building discovery Bible groups or small house churches.  National pastors, Christians in professional jobs and students attended this training.

I asked him how he helped these different groups of people to adopt or own the idea of small groups that multiplied themselves in a given area.  His response was simple and straightforward: “Up, in and out”. 

Jumping off from Acts 2:42, he shared that his goal was to lead people to first begin by praying (‘up’) to God about whether He wanted them to move in this direction. I found that so refreshing that he shared an idea, and then let the participants be convinced by God that this would be the direction in which they should now go.  Then the current group (‘in’) would solidify their own fellowship and community through time spent together in ‘teaching, fellowship, and prayer’.  This would then lead the group members to move towards others (‘out’) and offer an opportunity to others to look into the Bible and discover God together.

I know I may have heard this phrase before, but it had a fresh ring to it this time, coming out of the mouth of a brother in Christ from another culture and country.  Prayer, fellowship, and outreach.  This is part and parcel of our life and ministry. 

Let’s learn fresh ideas together and then turn to God to see if and how He wants us to apply them.

Filed under: Community, Prayer, Training |