Thoughts Along The Journey

I think it is worth sharing a rather lengthy quote from the book, Global Church Planting, to underscore again what we were talking about in Tuesday’s post.  This comes from a section titled: “New Coworkers Recruited from the Church Plants Expand the Missionary Force”:

“One of the most noteworthy features of Paul’s mission was his recruitment of coworkers from the various churches he planted.  He recruits from the harvest for the next harvest.  “The majority of Paul’s coworkers came from the new churches that he had established .… The ‘home churches’ of these workers acknowledge that they share in the responsibility for the expansion of the kingdom of God by providing missionary workers who help Paul” (Schnabel 2008, 255).  Though Paul’s initial church-planting teams were sent out from Syrian Antioch and were composed of Jewish background believers, he did not look to Antioch alone for new missionary recruits.  Rather he recruited them from the churches he had planted, and the coworkers were increasingly of Gentile, not Jewish, origin (Ollrog 1979, 62).  For example, about three years after the estimated time of Timothy’s conversion in Lystra on the first missionary journey (Acts 14) Paul took him on as a missionary apprentice (Acts 16:1-3).  Soon after that Timothy began working semi-independently of Paul in Thessalonica (Acts 17:14; 1 Thess. 3:1-5), Macedonia (Acts 19:22), Corinth (1 Cor 4:17), Philippi (Phil. 2:19), and Ephesus (1 Time. 3:14-15)”

What made this quote ‘come alive’ for me was when one of the leaders from the French church we attend approached me last week and said that the church should consider ways to send ‘workers’ to work with us.  This is a church that WT had a major part in establishing.

We need to be recruiting from the harvest for the next harvest.

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For the past year, we have been talking about the “crisis opportunity” we are facing in terms of our need for new workers.  We all recognize that there is an urgent need for more workers to multiply disciples and communities of believers.  Ask anyone of our teams and they will tell you that their number one need is for more people to participate in ministry.

Normally, we look to see this need fulfilled by workers coming from one of our Sending Countries: Australia, Canada or the US.  However, while recently reading through the book, Global Church Planting, I was reminded of a mobilization hub that I had been overlooking, that is, the very community of believers we are involved in establishing.  We often hear that “the resources are in the harvest”, but I don’t think I had ever fully made the connection between our need and the possibility of that need being fulfilled by some in our actual church plants.

If discipling is at the heart of what we do, it must include seeking to develop a heart for the world in those we are discipling.  These disciples would then in turn train
others to have this same attitude, this same heart for the world.

So praying to the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers means seeing workers mobilized from Australia, Canada and the US as well as from the very communities of believers we are establishing.

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