• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

What are you learning?

Posted on March 11, 2024 by wtdavid

We have often said to participants in the Leader cohort or Leader intensive trainings that most cross-cultural workers stop learning at age 40.  J. Robert Clinton insisted in his work on leadership that most leaders, from age 40 on, rely on what they have learned up to that point in their life and ministry.

In the global WT community, we talk a good deal about lifelong learning. However, I would guess that most of us are “sporadic” lifelong learners at best. We lack consistency and direction.

To get us started again towards consistent and regular growth, might I suggest the following ideas?

  1. List 1-3 books, articles, podcasts, or training videos you would like to read, listen to or do in the coming month. Ask some trusted friends for their advice. Then prioritize your list.
  2. Make a plan. Many of us resist this part, yet we do this most days of our lives. We make a plan for how to visit our supporters and supporting churches. We make a plan for our outreach events this coming year. We make a plan for going away on vacation. We should be able to the same with our lifelong learning.
  3. Share with another an insight you gain from any of the materials you read or listen to.  Tell the person what you learned and how you see it applying to your life or ministry. This is an under-rated part of the learning process.  Capturing in your own words what you have learned from a book or a podcast will reinforce the principle or insight you gained.
  4. If the book, article, podcast or training video caused you to grow, share it with another person and tell them why you think it would be helpful to them and their lifelong learning and growth.

If you are looking for an example of how this might look, drop me a note and I’ll share a recent personal example from my read of the book, Insight, by Tasha Eurich.

If you have other thoughts or ideas, feel free to share them by commenting on this post.

Filed under: Community, Lifelong learning, Planning | 3 Comments »

There is a vision and there is a plan

Posted on September 19, 2022 by wtdavid

Vocabulary.  How we say or express things is important. Important not just for clarity, but also for helping us to focus on what we are called to do and how we are called to carry out that calling.  If we mix up the “how” with the “what”, we risk missing the mark of the right motivation and purpose of our good efforts.

There is a vision and there is a plan.  A vision is that dream, that larger purpose that gets you out of bed every morning.  A plan tells you how to carry out that vision in that context or situation your find yourself.  To put it in other words, it puts ‘feet’ to the vision.  A vision inspires, a plan actions.

A difficulty arises, as we said, when the vision and plan are made synonymous with one another; when they are used to mean more or less the same thing.

Two things happen when plans and vision are confused.  First, we begin to think that we can make this project, this work, this vision happen. Self-sufficiency can easily rear its head and distract us from the Author, the Driver of His glory being declared to the nations.  Nehemiah is a classic example of one whose heart was first captured by the vision, from which flowed a plan (Nehemiah 1 -2)

Second, we may think that a plan can be applied anywhere; that the vision can be worked out in the same way in Singapore as it was in Melbourne.  A cursory reading of the book of Acts will help us see that God’s vision, God’s Gospel proclamation was explained, demonstrated and carried out in different ways, in different contexts and cultures.

World Team has a vision. It is clear and pushes us to rely solely on God to see it happen. World Team has numerous plans, innovative plans to carry out the vision.  May God drive the vision deeper and deeper into our hearts, and may the fruit be actionable plans carried out by His Spirit’s work in us to declare His glory to the nations and see communities of believers raised up and multiplied!

Filed under: Planning, Vision | 2 Comments »

Getting things done

Posted on August 24, 2017 by wtdavid

It’s the title of a book I read several years ago that has some very helpful ideas for organising one’s day to day work to accomplish ministry tasks.  I have often recommended it to others.

getting things doneYet, how do we ‘get things done’ while depending wholly on God?  We could put the same question in other ways, such as ‘how might planning run counter to the Spirit’s work in our lives?’ or ‘where does the importance lie: with prayer or with planning?’

I believe we do ourselves, and the discussion, a disservice by putting prayer and planning in opposition to one another.  The biblical text calls us to pray about everything (Philippians 4:6) — our calling, our finances, our plans and all the other elements that make up our life.  At the same, the biblical text exhorts us to consider, plan well and act on the projects and plans we put together (Luke 14:28).

So which comes first?  Which is more important?  Both!

Prayer leads to good plans and planning leads to much more prayer.

Sometimes, it’s just good in the midst of a planning session to stop and turn the discussion over into God’s hands asking for His wisdom and insight.  Sometimes, after a time of prayer, it’s just good to start jotting down ideas of how a new ministry project that is forming in our hearts might get worked out in reality.

The World Team Global community is working on a new ‘three phased approach’ to launching new CP projects among the unreached that would include prayer, research and mobilisation. It’s our way of trying to put into practice this idea of prayer&planning.  More on this new project in the coming weeks.

Filed under: Planning, Prayer, Projects | Leave a comment »

We know what to do

Posted on January 11, 2017 by wtdavid

I remember well one of our first groups of interns serving at the Paris Prayer Conference. They were given several days to ‘figure out’ the Paris metro system before taking a group of participants to different sites each day for prayer.  On day one of the conference, they brought all the participants from their hotel to our mparis3ain meeting place.  When they arrived, I ‘tested’ them by asking what metro line they had taken to get to the meeting place.  “You took line 6, right?” Their reply caught me by surprise: “No, we took line 3!  It looked like a shorter route.”  I had always taken line 6 to get to the meeting place.  I knew what to do to get to the meeting place.  Where in the world did they come up with the idea of taking line 3?

How I felt then, was how I felt today when Rebecca & I read this comment in the devotional, Saving Grace, by Jack Miller: “Depend on the Holy Spirit.  He is the sovereign one.  If you want to know how to exercise your gifts with love, ask the Father to give you the Spirit with his control, presence, and guidance.  Ask him to humble your heart, to make you depend on him, to help you to listen to him with sensitivity, and to give you an obedient heart.  It is often the case that we don’t listen to the Spirit because we’ve made up our minds that we already know what we should do.”

God does want us to make plans, but those plans should involve daily listening to the Spirit to see if He is moving us in a different direction; to work in a different way or to just do something differently than the way we always did it before.

It’s not a daily ‘throwing out’ of our plans and direction.  It’s a daily re-submitting of our hearts and plans into His hands.

It starts by asking the Father for the Spirit, and listening collectively to His voice.

Filed under: Holy Spirit, Planning, Prayer, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Making decisions

Posted on December 15, 2016 by wtdavid

decisions1

Making decisions is not an easy task.  Sure, some will say that they have no problem making decisions.  However, ‘decision quickness’ can have a dark side when it doesn’t consider a decision’s impact on others.  Others will say that decisions just take time. By that they mean, there are so many factors to consider, as well as prayer to offer, that a decision just cannot be made rapidly.

We as cross cultural workers are, in particular, subject to a certain inertia when faced with decisions, small or large.  We can ‘rush’ to a decision without seeking prayer and needed counsel. Or we can take such a long time to think about a decision that our ‘no decision’ becomes a decision. The time it takes to decide can cause the event or the God-given opportunity to pass us by because we waited so long to decide.

Granted, cross cultural ministry decisions involve both subjective and objectives elements. We see what is in front of us, but we also know that we rely on the Spirit of God to give us the wisdom and insight we need to discern the direction in which we should go.  However, I wonder if the roots of our inertia are really more a lack of skill, and a strong desire to want to look good before others.  To put it another way, we look to avoid the shame of having to take responsibility for our decisions.

Further skill training in decision making would be a good review for all of us; learning again how to prayerfully assess a situation and then create a process by which we can come to a decision.  However, we must not forget the desire that strives within us to gain the acceptance of others. Our decision making process touches more on our character and heart than anything else.

A strong dose of a firm confidence in our faithful God and Father that no creature shall separate us from his love would be  the start of a ‘treatment’ towards healing our hearts. This assurance would remind us that our honour is found in Him first, not in how others judge us based on our decisions.

As we move towards the start of 2017, I would challenge us as individuals, teams and a global community to learn how to better make decisions and how to speak the Gospel to one another in such a way that it actually has an effect on our daily lives.

 

 

 

Filed under: Decision making, Gospel, Planning, Prayer | 2 Comments »

The art of sacrifice in a region (Africa)

Posted on November 20, 2014 by wtdavid

The Mission¹⁴: Vision Forward Africa conference was the second of Area conferences in 2014.  The conference focused on our WT Ethos (purpose, vision, values and ‘culture’) as well as getting input from national leaders about partnering to reach the unreached.  The large group and small group interaction times were fruitful, with many opportunities to talk further about the issues being raised.20140524_123751

As I wrote in the previous post, “I shared a number of challenges with each region or Area.  The purpose was to affirm and celebrate what God has done through us over the past few years as well as to challenge Area members to “excel still more” in their work and ministry for Jesus.”

During the WT Africa conference, I shared the following challenges.

First challenge: learn to say ‘no’. Learn to say ‘no’ to one thing in order to build a heart for a new team.  World Team Africa has historically focused its work(s) in one specific region.  The outgrowths of these efforts have been progress in translation projects, multiplying small groups and leader development.  That good work now needs to be turned towards other projects in other locations and countries. In order to do that, it will mean that workers will need to say ‘no’ to one thing to have the time to give towards researching and building new teams to reach new unreached people groups.

Second challenge: ask the hard question. “When is the time to move on?”  This hard question is not restricted just to WT Africa workers. It is the question that we all need to ask ourselves at certain times.  “When is the time to move on?”  In other words, at what point do we need to transition to a new work and project?  How might our ongoing presence be inhibiting others (national believers) to take leadership of the work?  This is neither an easy question nor an easy discussion.  However, we must help one another to regularly think through this question.

Third challenge: offer and accept outside-in input.  Each of us has experience and wisdom gained from our unique journey with Jesus.  However, we are each easily blinded to our faults and shortcomings.  Offering and accepting outside-in input is a way for each of us to come alongside other workers by investing in their lives.  However, we must be equally willing to accept the same input from those outside our contexts.  I often hear workers, in response to the offer of outside input, say that ‘those people would not understand our context.’ Granted there is an element of truth in that statement, but people from the outside are also able to see things to which we can easily be blinded.

I share these challenges to the WT AFrica workers with all of us both as a reminder of the challenges given, but also as a motivation to pray for one another as we seek to learn the further change and growth to which God is calling us.

 

Filed under: Partnership, Planning, Vision Forward 2014 | 6 Comments »

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