• 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!

Easy to say, hard to do

Posted on September 22, 2015 by wtdavid

The central and core value of World Team is the Gospel. When asked to talk about the Gospel, the words come pretty easily. However, allowing the impact of those words to go to the very depths of our souls is hard work. It’s easy to say what we mean by the Gospel. It’s hard to live out the truth of the Gospel each day.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in talking about the Lord’s Table wrote this: “It speaks to us of the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand … It confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone. “My son, give me thine heart” (Prov 23:26). God has come to you to save the sinner. Be glad!”easy hard

That quote hit hard. It’s easy for me to see others as sinners; as ‘great, desperate sinners’. It’s a lot harder to view myself that way. However, when I minimize the pollution of sin in my life, I also minimize the work of Christ on my behalf. Christ died for my sins because I had no ability to pay down my spiritual debt, nor any way to restore the honour of God that had been irreparably damaged by my actions.

When I recognize more and more, the great, desperate sinner that I am, the sweeter the message of the Gospel becomes to me.

However, I need others in that battle; to help me remember who I am and what Christ now says about me.

One writer put it this way: “We desperately need to surround ourselves with brothers and sisters in Christ who are truly honest about their sin … they can remind us of the gospel time and time again. These are people who won’t be surprised by your sin when you confess it. They will say, “Of course you sinned … come with me to the throne of grace to celebrate the love of your Saviour and to find help in your time of need.”

Do you have friends like that?

Filed under: Character, Core Values, Gospel | 2 Comments »

Why I love World Team

Posted on September 16, 2015 by wtdavid

Last week, I started one of my posts by saying: “A number of us are complainers by nature.” It wasn’t meant as a criticism. Rather, it was an observation of how much I, we can have trouble celebrating with others when God does something good in our midst as a community.

i love WT teeshirtSo, I decided to start from a different starting point and simply affirm why I love World Team.

I love World Team because the Gospel is at the heart of who we are and what we do. The constant reminder, the constant driving us back as a community to the message of Christ’s unconditional, abundant and unending love of Christ, is what I need to hear again as I start each day. I’m grateful for so many fellow workers who remind me of this truth.

I love World Team because we work in teams. Teams are one of God’s primary means to grow us up in Him as ‘iron sharpens iron’. Teams are a model of the power of working together in sharing Christ with others, making disciples and establishing new communities of believers. We can do so much more together than we can by ourselves.

I love World Team because we are focused on that which will have long term impact: multiplying disciples and communities of believers. That investment is worth the effort expended in crossing a culture, working in serving alongside others from different cultures, and giving away the ministry to others.

I love World Team because of its rich history which still impacts the way we work and minister. One stream of World Team began through the collaboration of a Cuban evangelist and a North American Bible teacher. From there the ministry stretched out from that ‘Jerusalem’ to Samaria and the ends of the earth.

I love World Team because of the people I get to work with every day and who have invested heavily in my life …

 

Why do you love World Team?

Filed under: Community, Vision | 11 Comments »

Learning how to celebrate when we get it right

Posted on September 9, 2015 by wtdavid

A number of us are complainers by nature. Part of the reason may stem from the fact that some of us have a perfectionist streak. Part of the reason may also stem from the fact that we don’t really like it when others achieve what we were hoping to achieve; in other words, we don’t really like it when others ‘do better’ than us.

As a result, we can have trouble celebrating with others when God brings fruit to their ministry. We can struggle to rejoice with others‘ when they get it right’ by accomplishing what we say we are all about: multiplying disciples and communities of believers.celebrate

Recently, I have read about how the community of believers launched by the efforts of Bryan & Jacinda (WT Philippines) and their team continues on in outreach and growth. That news should warm our hearts as we recognize God’s power in the lives of new believers to give them the faith and the capacity to carry out the ministry.

I also recently read about Dan, Lisa, Mike and Becky’s (WT Cameroon) efforts to translate the Bible into the Oroko language. They are within sight of completing that task, thanks in part to the partnership between their team and a number of national workers. Not only are they on the throes of putting the Word of God in the language of another people group, but they have ‘multiplied themselves’ through the number of others with whom they are working.

I’m sure there are a number of other examples I could cite.

I don’t know what ‘celebration’ should look like. Maybe it’s just a word of thanks sent or a prayer offered back to God or a big shout of praise. Whatever form it takes, it should start in our hearts as we learn together as a WT community to rejoice with others at what the Lord is doing among us.

Filed under: Community, Joy, Multiplication, Vision | Leave a comment »

Having impact

Posted on September 4, 2015 by wtdavid

While in Australia, I heard a speaker share the following thought: “People want to feel like they are contributing to something. It may not change big things, but they are having impact.”impact bis

My first thought was to think of the people that we work with or the active participants of various community of believers with which we are involved. People want to be part of something. They want to feel that their ‘small part’ is somehow contributing to a larger whole that brings ultimate change. Maybe this is why so many seek community in our days? However, as with a previous post, I wonder if we as workers don’t often stifle that involvement or hinder the impact that others long to have by the simple fact of our doing most of the ministry ourselves.

Then my thoughts turned to us as workers and I realized that we, like anyone else, long to have impact in our world. However, maybe we believe that impact will only come as we ‘do’ the bulk of ministry activity? Maybe we struggle to share, delegate or give away ministry to others because it feels like we will lose impact? Maybe we can’t see how our impact might actually be multiplied as we share it with others?

One step in multiplying impact by ‘sharing work’ with others might be by simply listening to the input and counsel of others. In 2 Kings 5, we read about the Syrian commander Naaman who sought healing for his leprosy. It’s a story that many of us know quite well. However, if you take away the involvement or intervention of the young servant girl working for Naaman’s wife and the servants who traveled with Naaman, the story would take a completely different turn. Their words had incredible impact in the life of Naaman. Despite their low status, he chose to listen to them and the outcome is Naaman’s redemption.

“People want to feel like they are contributing to something. It may not change big things, but they are having impact.”

Filed under: Delegation, Influence, Mission | 2 Comments »

What do we want to see?

Posted on August 31, 2015 by wtdavid

Imagine that you were starting once again in a new area among a new people group to ‘multiply disciples and communities of believers.’ What would you and your team want to see after three years of ministry together?Newton-cradle_0_80_600_320

One scenario might be (and one that I often hear) what we would call: the start up. In many of our minds, not much really happens in those initial years. It’s a building process. “Besides,” we say, “church plants take a long time to get off the ground.” True enough. However, might we be underestimating what God desires to do among this people group?

A second scenario might be what we would call: the leader dilemma. People are coming to Christ and disciples are being raised up. However, there is an apparent lack of leaders; an absence of people that we could call on to take the work further. Once again, this is often the case. However, might we be preventing local leaders from standing up to serve by our very presence and example? Perhaps they feel the task is too far above them as they watch us and don’t see the empowerment for the task coming from Christ alone?

A third scenario might be what we would call: empowerment. After three years, we as a team would be moving into the background; taking a more facilitative stance so as to allow the local believers to grow the community of believers further. This scenario is more difficult as it calls for much humility and the willingness to turn over ministry to others and ‘platform’ them into that work.

 

Three years is a very short time. However, our stance from the outset, the scenario we envision obviously will influence how we carry out that ministry. If one of our guiding principles is facilitation and empowering others, then we need to set our efforts toward that end. Not an easy task, but it’s another reason why we need a team alongside of us. So that we can keep that focus on moving others into ministry.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

Call it what you want

Posted on August 27, 2015 by wtdavid

Rebecca and I recently participated in the Gen12 conference in Australia. The conference was built around the theme of: “Building a culture of discipleship”. The plenary sessions and workshops sought to demonstrate that discipleship was the core task of the believer.discipleship

A quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer set the tone for the day: “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”

What I found interesting was, that in the midst of this whole day on discipleship, people always got around to talking about planting local communities of believers. A ‘lone ranger’ disciple is an oxymoron. In participants’ minds, it is impossible for discipleship not to bear fruit in the establishment of more and more local churches.

Within our agency and numerous other agencies, I have often heard that people have difficulty relating to the term: ‘church planting’; that this vocabulary is somewhat outdated. Yet, during a whole day with students, faculty and local pastors talking about discipleship, ‘church planting’ or the growth and establishment of more communities of believers, kept coming up in conversation.

Perhaps the precise words may not be best suited to communicating who we are and what we do. However, what we are about is sharing the narrative of Jesus with others, seeing them put their trust in Him as their only hope, being discipled to grow up in Him, and coming together with other believers to offer up praise to their Lord and Savior. This is who we are.

We may work through a variety of means to share that message, disciple people and bring them into community, but our ultimate desire is for disciples to be and to live in community.

However you want to say it, multiplying disciples and communities of believers is our purpose; it is our vision.

Filed under: Church planting, Discipleship, Mission | 2 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 205 other subscribers

  • Categories

  • Recent Comments

  • Archives

  • Goodreads