• 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!

Vital prayer

Posted on January 25, 2017 by wtdavid

I remember reading an article, a number of years ago, about the importance of prayer to church planting.  Well, I found that article today in the archives of Mission Frontiers magazine (http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/the-ten-universal-elements).  This is what the authors wrote in the March/April 2000 issue:

we-pray“1. Prayer: Prayer has been fundamental to every Church Planting Movement we have observed. Prayer typically provides the first pillar in a strategy coordinator’s master plan for reaching his or her people group. However, it is the vitality of prayer in the missionary’s personal life that leads to its imitation in the life of the new church and its leaders. By revealing from the beginning the source of his power in prayer, the missionary effectively gives away the greatest resource he brings to the assignment. This sharing of the power source is critical to the transfer of vision and momentum from the missionary to the new local Christian leadership.”

The authors of this article considered prayer as the ‘first pillar in a strategy coordinator’s master plan’.  Now that statement was written over seventeen years ago.  Yet, David Garrison in his work on church planting movements (CPM), came to the same conclusion just a few years ago when  he observed that prayer was the number one element in church planting movements; where there “was an urgency, passion, and vitality to believers’ prayers.”

This truth is ‘self-evident’, we might say.  However, I wonder if our practice might say otherwise.  Both Mission Frontiers and David Garrison noted the ‘vitality’ of believers’ prayers for churches to be established and multiplied.

Vitality might best be defined as: the power of enduring; and having a lively and animated character.  Prayer that supports and seeks the startup of multiplying communities of believers is prayer that goes the long haul; that regularly pleads for God to call out His own from a people group; and that is full of enthusiasm and hope in the promise that God will build His church.

Prayer is the ‘pillar’ of our work. Figuring out avenues to grow in prayer ‘vitality’ is part of the church planting process.

Filed under: Church planting, Guiding Principles, Prayer | 2 Comments »

Who is your one (bis)?

Posted on January 24, 2017 by wtdavid

The word, ‘bis’, in French is a way of adding an additional thought.  It’s an ‘encore’ if you will.

Last week, I wrote a post about the ‘slogan’ shared by my brother’s pastor in regards to Ephesians 1:1-14:  “Then he shared this slogan via a question: “Who is your one?”  Who is the person God has put on your heart?  Are you close to anyone who is far from God?  Are you in touch with anyone who is wondering how they fit into God’s mission in the world?”

I wanted to cdiscipleship-potential-160526ome back again to that question.  As I thought more about that slogan, I remembered a good friend from seminary (a New Zealander) who used to ask me a similar question every time we met for coffee.  We would sit down at Friendly’s (an ancient version of Starbucks) over a cup of American ‘coffee’ and he would start out by asking: who is your man?  Or later on, the question morphed to: how is it going with your man?

In his language, he was asking about the person that I was reaching out to or discipling.  He was pushing me to get past just talking about people to actually moving towards people and investing in them.

His weekly reminder was the help, the accountability moment I needed.  His weekly question was the reminder that someone was thinking about and praying for me in this regard.  That weekly reminder over a cup of ‘coffee’ was one of the main ways God kept my eyes focused on the His larger mission.

Last week, I asked: “Who is your one?”  Maybe I could state that another way: who are you reminding regularly about God’s mission by asking: Who is your man?  Who is your woman?  Who is the one in whom you are investing?

Filed under: Discipleship, Sharing the Gospel story, WT Ministry Framework | 4 Comments »

Nationals do it better

Posted on January 23, 2017 by wtdavid

Some of us remember this statement from many years ago.  However, it has lost none of its relevance and importance to the work of multiplying disciples and communities of believers.

“Nationals do it better” is meant to focus our eyes on the ‘end’ as well as the process of ministry. prayerart0508_01

The ‘end’ to which cross cultural ministry is directed is a movement of multiplication across a people group. The most fruitful or effective way for this to happen is when national believers take responsibility for the ministry.  One researcher noted that no long term church planting movement has ever been launched or carried out by expat workers.  If that is the case, then more effort needs to be made in investing in others.

Investing in others, particularly nationals, runs into a number of potential hindrances.

First, the hindrance of short term fruit versus long term fruit.  The work of ‘investing in’ others is long term.  You will not see the fruit or results of working to help others grow in Christ in a short period of time. This is why we often prefer to do the ministry ourselves.  Fruit comes more quickly, but may not be the long term fruit needed to see a ministry multiply in the long term.

Second, the hindrance of a limited view of the Spirit’s work in the lives of others.  How many times have we thought our efforts wasted when no discernible fruit was seen in the lives of those we discipled?  Yet, at a much later point that effort finally yielded more fruit than we thought possible. Our efforts were not in vain (1 Corinthians 15), the Spirit applied the truths of Scripture at His appointed time, and we learned that these national believers did a better job of sharing those same truths with others.

Finally, the hindrance of wrongly attributed glory.  We can be unaware of how often the ministry centres on us.  If we listen to our conversations (or read our prayer letters), it is uncanny how often we talk about ‘my ministry’ or ‘the church I am leading’ or ‘the small group I started’.  The glory is being attributed to the wrong person. God seeks for ‘all the saints’ to be participating and ministering in this temple He calls the Church. The glory goes to him as we give away the ministry to those we serve.

“Nationals do it better” means we look long term, we trust the Spirit, and we decide that “whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, we do all to the glory of God.”  (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Filed under: Facilitation, Multiplication | 2 Comments »

Who is your one?

Posted on January 20, 2017 by wtdavid

Last week, I attended church with my older brother. I was taken by a statement and a slogan that the pastor shared with this group of believers.

He read a familiar text from Ephesians 1:1-14, emphasizing these verses: “Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”

Then he made this statement: “I want to talk with you about ‘your story’.  However, ‘your story’ does not start with who you think you are.  Your story begins with who God says you are.”  God set His love on me, on you.  He pursued us ‘one by one’ and chose to make us part of His family.  “Mission,” he said, “starts with knowing who we are.”

That resonated with me.  It was the Gospel applied to or being worked out in mission.  Our story is wone-bisrapped up in Him and our mission flows out of that identity.

Then he shared this slogan via a question: “Who is your one?”  Who is the person God has put on your heart?  Are you close to anyone who is far from God?  Are you in touch with anyone who is wondering how they fit into God’s mission in the world?

“Who is your one?”

As a worker with World Team, your ‘story’ begins with what God says about you, “who is your one?”

It’s another way of stating the Central Ministry Focus of our WT Ministry Framework.

“Who is your one?”

Filed under: Challenge, Gospel, Mission | Leave a comment »

Change case

Posted on January 19, 2017 by wtdavid

Many of us have (or are facing) a situation such as the following:

“A small group has been built as a result of one’s evangelistic and discipleship efforts.  Most of the people attending the small group have been discipled by you.  Your fellow co-wochangerkers have been encouraging you for a while to think about next steps in the church planting continuum.  Now you are feeling that it is time to ‘turn over’ this group to the local believers. 

However, each time you position someone to move into the leadership of the group, you are met with this response: “I just can’t do this.”  It’s either said overtly or it’s implied by the way in which each person avoids the conversation.”

“Foundations are forever.”

Some of the possible ‘faulty foundations’ we may have planted in this situation might be, one, that the ministry centres on us as workers, and two, that to lead in any way one needs to have extensive training and education.  Now, we may not be stating these foundations outright, but our actions are certainly communicating these ideas.

So what can do to change these ‘faulty foundations’?

First, we can admit where we have gone wrong in laying the current foundations.  It’s never an easy step to say that we may have not taken the best steps in launching a group or a church.  Yet, such honesty can ‘level the field’ with local believers so that they (and we) will see that this small group, this work, is God’s doing and that we all have a part to play in its life.

Second, we can pray (and ask others to pray with us) for God to search our hearts and show us a way out of these faulty foundations; and how to build new foundations in the Gospel.  Each of us can be blinded to things that may inhibit local believers from getting involved in the work.  The Lord is gracious to show us our ‘hurtful ways’ and through the Gospel help us to build bridges back to our fellow believers, joining with them in the work.

Finally, we can start by asking others for help from the start.  People do need to be trained in the ministry. However, most of us hesitate from releasing local believers into the ministry because we always think they need even more preparation.  Some of their preparation though will probably come about through real live ministry experience.

Many of us have (or are facing) a situation such as the one above.  However, God works in seemingly impossible situations, both in our hearts and in the hearts of those to whom we are ministering.

Filed under: Change & transition, Church, Church planting | 2 Comments »

Faulty foundations

Posted on January 17, 2017 by wtdavid

“Foundations are forever”.  However, can ‘foundations’ ever be changed?  If those ‘foundations’ are found in our own life and soul, can they be altered?  That is the discussion we’re having around this ‘virtual’ lunch table today.foundations-1

Obviously, our first answer would have to be that ‘all things are possible with God’ and that foundations can be changed by His powerful work in our lives.

Yet, the road to that change may be more difficult than we might imagine because along the way we will confront our weakness, our idols and our own naiveté.

Changing faulty foundations puts us face to face with our own weakness: that is, in our own strength, we are incapable of bringing about the long lasting change needed. Simply put, we need God.

Changing faulty foundations causes us to confront our own idols: the idol of reputation where we strive to have others think well of us; or the idol of self-sufficiency where we refuse to let others serve and help us because we don’t want to appear needy.

Changing the faulty foundations makes us aware of our own naiveté: that is, how little we really understand the depth of our sin and selfishness.  So many of the faulty foundations in our own lives and ministries are the fruit of our shaky grasp of the doctrine of original sin.

However, faulty foundations are also an opportunity to face head on those sinful habits and actions that need to be ‘put off’ in order, by grace, to ‘put on’ those qualities, those elements of character, those new foundations which will cause His name to be honoured in our lives and ministries.

An example of this kind of change would be helpful.  

Filed under: Change & transition, Church planting, Gospel | Leave a comment »

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