“Don’t be afraid of us. We need the gospel”

TimothyChurch Planting Movements / Disciple Making Movements / Evangelism

Elias was an East African missionary living in the crowded Somali refugee quarter of a large city in the Horn of Africa. As Elias prepared his dinner alone, after a long day of ministering to refugees, he was startled at the knock on his door by a 65- year old Somali sheikh named Abdul- Ahad. The sheikh had come from the war- torn city of Mogadishu, Somalia. Elias was nervous, wondering if this would be the night that Al- Shabaab (Somali militants) chose to extract their revenge on yet another Christian. When Elias opened his door, the sheikh abruptly demanded,

“Yes or No. Jesus’ blood paid for the sins of everyone in the world?”

Elias replied, “Yes.”

The sheikh responded adamantly, “You’re lying!”

Then he hesitated before saying, “The blood of Jesus cannot forgive my sins.”

He told Elias of the violence he had committed in Mogadishu. The old sheikh began to tremble and weep.

“I need relief from that,” he said.

Elias told him, “If you and I agree tonight, then God will forgive you.”

The old sheikh prayed with Elias, and Abdul- Ahad was saved that night. Before he left, Abdul- Ahad turned to Elias, grasped his arm, and said to him,

“When you look at me on the street, you see my Muslim hat and my beard, and you are afraid of me. And, to tell you the truth, that is why we dress this way, to make you afraid of us. But you need to know— you need to know that inside we are empty. Don’t be afraid of us. We need the gospel.”

Excerpt from A Wind In The House Of Islam: How God is Drawing Muslims Around The World to Faith in Jesus Christ by David Garrison.

CPM works where nothing else has

TimothyChurch Planting Movements / Disciple Making Movements

I lived in Thailand for 16 months, and am very well aware of the difficult challenge that country has been for the missionary community. There is no shortage of missionaries there and there are Bible Colleges and Seminaries built by missionaries, but I’ve seen estimates of the Evangelical Christian population ranging from 0.01% to 1.0% of the population. That may be changing now as a result of CPM. Watch this video of an interview with Lorraine Dierck, and then I’ll make some observations.

I see Four things in this video that are characteristics of every CPM/DMM.

1. It all starts with Prayer. She tells how she was burdened to see churches planted, and prayed for church planters for various communities with populations in the hundreds of thousands that had no church.

2. Anyone can be the catalyst that starts the movement. After all this praying, Lorraine said,

“Finally God said, ‘You, I want you to do it’ I was so shocked. I was horrified. I didn’t tell anybody. I’m a children’s worker! I’m not a church planter.”

If you google Lorraine Dierck, you will come up with numerous web pages that detail her work as a children’s worker in Thailand because she has been doing that work for many years. You will find almost nothing except 3 youtube videos on her CPM work.

3. The emphasis was on training others to do the work. Not seminary or Bible college type training, but the MAWL (Model, Assist, Watch, and Leave) CPM methodology is seen clearly in her approach.

“You lead somebody to Christ, and then you train them how they can lead somebody to Christ. You baptize them, and then you train them how they can baptize somebody. So it becomes like a chain like that. And in the early years I might have been involved in leading a few people to Christ, but pretty soon it wasn’t me doing the evangelism, it was them doing the evangelism.”

4. The LEAVE in MAWL is seen clearly in this video, even though she has not left the country yet.

“I just keep myself totally in the background and normally you would never see me. You just see the Thai’s, John and Nok and….”
“Now they are totally responsible for their own work. They are leading their own work. They are like apostles, they are like pastors, so they are leading their own work. So I think it is really good because it has taken the westerner and the foriegner out of the picture.”

Street Deacons

TimothyChurch Planting Movements / Disciple Making Movements

The most important central theme of both CPM and DMM is the determination to push ministry out of central control or central leadership to every believer.  Every time I come across another story of a leader who entrusted others with ministry opportunities, it illustrates how embracing the principle of 2 Timothy 2:2 always leads to significantly greater impact of the gospel.  This little story comes from the book Misfits Welcome by Matthew Barnett, who started a ministry to street people in Los Angeles.  Obviously this is a very different type of ministry than CPM / DMM, but the principle of 2 Timothy 2:2 is illustrated none the less.

Let me tell you about some people God used. When my church finally started to grow, we were hitting an attendance level of around fifty people. The challenge is that more than forty of those fifty were people who came on our buses from Skid Row. Skid Row is a place where people line both sides of several streets in the Los Angeles business district, sleeping around bonfires, cardboard boxes, and tents. Sadly, women and children occupy these cold, dark streets. There are pockets of Skid Row where people line up against walls and practically inject needles until they die— hence the name Skid Row. Many years ago, our church received its first donation of a brand new bus. We were so excited. We took that bus down to Skid Row, and during the course of a few months forty homeless people began regularly meeting us for rides to church. Can you imagine looking out on Sunday morning and nearly every person in the church being homeless? I was a pastor who didn’t understand anything about homelessness, and I had a congregation of homeless people who just came for the free food after every service. A misfit pastor and a misfit congregation. We were all out of place. Shockingly, the people started to come to church and bring their friends. Since 80 percent of the people in our church were homeless, we didn’t have many volunteers, so God gave us an idea for a position called “Street Deacons.” (Don’t judge. You have to work with what you have!) I appointed these guys as church staff to help me get as many people on the bus to come to church as possible. You should’ve seen the smiles on the faces of some of these men. They couldn’t believe someone would love them, believe in them, and give them such a great title. One man cried when I told him that he could be a Street Deacon. Several of the men stopped drinking because they were so honored that they would have this chance. Many of the guys sobered up, dressed up, cleaned up because a pastor had given them a chance to have a role in the church. They went out on the streets and gathered up friends. Every week they would check in with me and give updates on their progress. They lived for this chance and they made the best of it. They just needed someone to believe the best in them. The first staff members who joined me were an interesting collection of individuals. However, they were the seeds that would later grow into the miracle we now call the Dream Center.

According to Wikipedia,

“When the church began in September 1994, there were 39 members. The congregation grew from an average attendance of 48 on Sunday morning to reaching more than 35,000 people each week in the Center’s 40 services and 273 ministries and outreaches.”

So giving ministry to skid row “misfits” seems to have worked!

The Importance of Obedience Based Discipleship

TimothyChurch Planting Movements / Disciple Making Movements / Discipleship / Evangelism

In this video (part 2, see part 1 here) Jerry Trousdale (author of Miraculous Movements) covers counter intuitive aspects of Disciple Making strategies. Some highlights for me were:

  • discussion of the importance of obedience based discipleship (starting at 18 minutes)
  • “This is what a Discovery Bible Study looks like…” (starting at 24.5 minutes)
  • “David Garrison is the author of Church Planting Movements.  David and I were together comparing notes as he was writing his new book A Wind In The House of Islam.  As we compared our data, we realized that from Indonesia to Africa and all over the world the same thing is happening.  And then David said, You know Jerry, since I wrote Church Planting Movements people often ask me to come and see the movement that is happening where they are.  And often times I’ll go and discover that it is not really a movement, because it is not really multiplying rapidly.  It is more like church growth on steroids.  It’s good, but its not really a movement.  You know what is the one thing that makes the difference, the one thing that makes the difference between a church planting movement and church planting on steroids?  It is obedience.  When you have the obedience [based discipleship] DNA, you get movements, but when you don’t have it you can have good church planting but you’re not getting multiplication because you’re not having the dramatic transformation.”  (from 34 to 36 minutes in)

“Now the side benefit of this is, that this makes enormous numbers of disciples” (starting at 29 minutes)

“Replication and multiplication happen very naturally” (30:30 minutes)

Rapid Multiplication of disciples among Muslims in Africa

TimothyChurch Planting Movements / Disciple Making Movements

In this video Jerry Trousdale tells stories from Church Planting Movements in Muslim countries of Africa, including his own journey from preaching and teaching to becoming a catalyst for Disciple Making Movements in Africa. His book Miraculous Movements is one of my favorite books on DMM/CPM, but he fills in some of the gaps in this video.

“In this process, maybe 300 people have lost their lives.
Many of those were only one or two days old in the Lord.”

“Often the most difficult places yield the greatest results”

Giving Up Control: Why Movements Are Preferable to Revival (Book Review)

TimothyBook Review / Church Planting Movements / Disciple Making Movements / Discipleship / Evangelism

givingupcontrolThis little e-book is available on the Kindle for only 99 cents, and it may be the best money you’ve ever spent.   Author A.J. DeJonge was a staff member with Cru (Campus Crusade) in Australia, and this book details his own journey from the traditional Cru approach of staff led campus ministry to the Catalyzing of student led movements on campus. Although his ministry context is the university campus, the principles that drove this change were derived from the CPM and DMM approaches to cross cultural ministry, and he mentions various authors that anyone with knowledge of CPM / DMM would be familiar with.

One of the counter intuitive practices of DMM / CPM is the necessity of giving up control. In most churches and ministries, the mindset is that control is necessary to prevent heresy and enable growth to maturity of babes in Christ. But control leads to several problems that most of us in ministry are blind to. For one thing, control limits the size of the ministry. If you need a Bible College or Seminary trained man to be a pastor or to plant a church, the growth of your movement will be severely limited. There are a very limited number of them.   DeJonge saw this in his own campus ministry. The growth of the ministry was directly constrained by the number of people they had on staff to disciple students, lead Bible Studies, and organize activities. The ultimate goal of multiplication wasn’t happening, and would never happen unless they had access to hundreds of full time staff (they had 3).

Giving up control is scary. Giving up control means there will be a lower level of quality and professionalism. It means giving people room to make mistakes. In our western business mindset, control is good. If we want to produce a high quality product, we need strict quality control to make it happen. And we want quality. High quality is good. But ministry is not business. The Holy Spirit fills and works through weak people.

Strong quality control can lead to a big ministry, but it cannot produce a movement. Consider the mega church. If you’ve ever been to Willow Creek (or similar mega church), you know that everything is done at a high level of quality and competence. The weekend service is a production, and a very good one at that. It is polished. But it isn’t reproducible. At least not for most of us. There are a few people in this world who have the natural leadership talents and intelligence to take Bill Hybels’ model and implement it in a new city with success. Bill Hybels and Andy Stanley are what business writer Jim Collins would call a “Level 5 Leader”. Since there are very few leaders of that caliber, we will never win the world to Christ that way. Most people who visit Willow Creek will go home saying “If that is what an effective church is, I could never start a church”. High control means low reproducibility.

His own journey into experimenting with the catalytic approach to campus ministry resulted from his own disillusionment with the results of his ministry and his experience of burnout in having to make it all happen. These opened him up to exploring other options, which were at the time being encouraged by the leadership of Cru. In addition, he sort of discovered the effectiveness of the student led model by mistake when he gave his wife permission to develop an international student ministry on the side IF she only gave it 4 hours of her time each week. That necessitated giving control and responsibility for that ministry to the students, and relegated her involvement to a training / equipping / support role. The result was a dynamic and growing ministry among the international students that far exceeded their expectations.

DeJonge details in the book how he applied the principles of CPM/DMM to campus ministry. He borrowed the concept of MAWL (Model, Assist, Watch, Leave) from Curtis Sergent and tells stories of how they applied this and the challenges they faced in doing so. It became clear to him that many of their discipleship or Bible study methods were not very reproducible. Church planter Peter Roenfeldt told him:

“When I started teaching church planting to people, I wrote manuals on the topic that became thicker and thicker over time. But the complexity became their downfall, and I realised that if what I want to impart is going to be transferable, it has to be simple. So simple that one could fit them on a bookmark. So now I limit myself to a bookmark and use the Bible for our manual.”

DeJonge took this to heart and applied the same thing to their campus ministry. Roenfeldt also challenged him to think wider and deeper than just evangelism and discipleship. What was the ultimate goal, and how would they get there? He says:

“In Cru we often speak of WIN- BUILD- SEND as a strategic progression for spiritual multiplication and the path to seeing every University student reached with the gospel. But for many years of my staff career, I saw SEND simply refer to the process of graduating students into the workforce as more mature believers. Catalytic methodology is in my mind a sharpening of that focus on SEND – recognising the need for students to be empowered and released not at the point of graduation, but during their University careers.”

How many churches are doing the same thing? So much energy is focused on Bible Studies and preaching and worship services and programs, but where is the reality of sending people out in ministry?

Another core principle of CPM/DMM is to invest time and discipleship energy into those who put the training into practice.   Some DMM practitioners call it “Obedience Based Discipleship”, and wait for the disciple to put what has been taught into practice before teaching the next thing. This principle is seen in the book as well, but possibly not to the extent utilized in most CPM / DMM contexts. The Cru catalytic approach that he was learning (or developing on the fly) was certainly a hybrid of historic Cru programs and practices and CPM/DMM philosophy, and this was one of those areas that they had to wrestle with. In my opinion, from what he described in the book it appeared that this area needed more work.

Along the way, DeJonge faced some significant challenges in the transition. These included questions such as:

  1. How do we staff pull back and get students to step up?
  2. When they did pull back, they made mistakes in how to communicate to the students the new approach
  3. They made mistakes in selecting, retaining, and training leaders. He shares lots of real life experience in this area.
  4. When they did pull back, they had to redefine what their job as full time ministry staff was. What would they do with all the additional time they now had on their hands?

In his 1927 classic The Spontaneous Expansion of The Church, Rolland Allen discussed at length how the fear of losing control hindered the spontaneous expansion of the church that Paul and the apostles experienced:

By spontaneous expansion I mean something which we cannot control. And if we cannot control it, we ought, as I think, to rejoice that we cannot control it. For if we cannot control it, it is because it is too great not because it is too small for us. The great things of God are beyond our control. Therein lies a vast hope. Spontaneous expansion could fill the continents with the knowledge of Christ: our control cannot reach as far as that. We constantly bewail our limitations: open doors unentered; doors closed to us as foreign missionaries; fields white to the harvest which we cannot reap. Spontaneous expansion could enter open doors, force closed ones, and reap those white fields. Our control cannot: it can only appeal pitifully for more men to maintain control. There is always something terrifying in the feeling that we are letting loose a force which we cannot control; and when we think of spontaneous expansion in this way, instinctively we begin to be afraid. Whether we consider our doctrine, or our civilization, or our morals, or our organization, in relation to a spontaneous expansion of the Church, we are seized with terror, terror lest spontaneous expansion should lead to disorder. We are quite ready to talk of self-supporting, self-extending and self-governing Churches in the abstract as ideals; but the moment that we think of ourselves as establishing self-supporting, self-governing Churches in the Biblical sense we are met by this fear, a terrible, deadly fear.

Pastors, missionaries, and Christian workers of all varieties will have to choose between control and greater fruitfulness.

This is not a long book, but anyone interested in DMM/CPM practice will enjoy reading about AJ DeJonge’s journey into Catalytic Student Led Movements. The book appears to be written primarily for Cru staff, but anyone in ministry from pastors to missionaries in any context can learn from this book. It is an illustration of how the principles of CPM / DMM being rediscovered in our generation (previously well known to Roland Allen and John Nevius) can be applied in other ministry contexts.

DMM vs. T4T

TimothyChurch Planting Movements / Disciple Making Movements / Discipleship / Evangelism

Two approaches to Church Planting movements have emerged.  When I was just beginning to learn about CPMs, I learned about both and since the whole CPM paradigm in general was a new way of thinking, it took me some time to really sort out the difference between the two different approaches to Church Planting Movements.  The first is DMM (Disciple Making Movements) pioneered by David Watson in India and now being used extensively around the world by several organizations, especially CityTeam.  The book Miraculous Movements by Jerry Trousdale is an excellent introduction to this approach, as well as Contagious Disciple Making by David and Paul Watson.  The second is T4T (Training For Trainers) pioneered by Ying Kai in China and explained in the book T4T: A Discipleship Re-revolution by Ying Kai and Steve Smith. Both have been extremely effective and have much in common, but also have some significant differences. This little video is an excellent explanation of the two approaches.

For those interested in a more in depth analysis, Ted Esler’s article Coming to Terms With Two Church Planting Paradigms is also a good analysis.

Discipleship in 3 Simple Steps (Part 3)

TimothyDisciple Making Movements / Discipleship / Small Groups

Yesterday I promised that I would explore further the issue of questions and their power.  As I was investigating this some time ago, I somehow ran into the discipline of Coaching.  I confess that I had heard the terms Life Coach or Executive Coach, but I didn’t really know what it meant.  I assumed it meant a mentor, but as I was reading on the issue I discovered that is not at all what a coach is.  Coaching is a fairly new discipline that has some similarities to counseling, but is focused not on problems, but on healthy people who want to move forward.  Sometimes healthy people just get stuck, and don’t know how to move forward toward greater productivity or effectiveness.  This is what coaches specialize in, and there is a growing number of Christian coaches who apply this discipline to the Christian life and ministry.  Tony Stolzfus is one of the best in that category, and I’ll be quoting extensively from one of his books in this article.  When I read his book Leadership Coaching: The Disciplines, Skills, and Heart of a Christian Coach, at many points I felt like I was reading a textbook on discipleship.  He used the language of Coach / Client because he does this for a living and charges a fee much as a counselor does, but what he is really doing is discipleship.

The secular coaching community often has a very “new age” feel to it, with the presupposition that you have everything within you to be a success, you just need to draw it out.  And the way the coach draws it out is through asking questions.  Christian coaches recognized the kernel of truth in that and endeavored to separate the kernel from the husk.  Christian coaches start with the presupposition that as a believer, you have the Holy Spirit living in you, and He is there to speak to you, and lead you and guide you into a life of greater holiness and spiritual effectiveness.  He is always speaking, but we are often not listening.  The Christian life or ministry coach asks you questions to help you discover what the Holy Spirit is saying to you, and then asks you to decide what you will do about it (does that sound familiar?).  At the center of this is this basic truth:

Change is more a function of motivation than information.

That is a paradigm shift.  Our Christian Discipleship programs have historically been heavy on education, with a curriculum or using a book to study together.  Christian education is an obvious necessity, but the problem I see in the American Church (I currently live in a foreign country but attend an American Church) is that we have far more information than obedience.  What we need is life change, not more theological knowledge.  Our American Church system has pretended that if we just preach good expository sermons and teach solid doctrine, it will lead to spiritual maturity.  But that is clearly not true.  Some may indeed assimilate that information into life changing action, but many (most?) do not.  So the question for discipleship is how to bring about life change in accordance with Biblical truth.  The discipline of Coaching has something to teach us about discipleship.

A mentor gives advice, but the person receiving the advice may not be motivated to do what they mentor is telling them.  They may even know the mentor is right, but if they are not motivated to make the change, it won’t happen.   Tony says,

“Most of the time we have a pretty clear idea of what God is asking of us.  God initiates change in our lives — He has a personalized change agenda for us and is always speaking and arranging circumstances to bring it to our attention…. when we believe the most important factor in change is motivation, we ask questions and encourage people to come up with their own solutions, because we know that buy-in and motivation are highest for steps that we develop and choose on our own…. Coaching prioritizes buy-in and motivation over giving people the right solution.”

“And as for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as his anointing teaches you about all things…. abide in him.”  I John 2:27

“The gulf between God’s holiness and yours is larger than the universe.  If we saw a true picture of God’s holiness alongside our own depravity, it would literally kill us (See Exodus 33:18-23).  Yet of all our infinite number of shortcomings, how many is God explicitly prompting you to work on right now?  My experience is that I can count that number on the fingers of one hand.  Of all that God sees in me that needs to change, He only chooses to reveal a few things at once.  Applied to coaching, I call this the See/Say principle: Just because I see something doesn’t mean I’m supposed to say it.  Seeing a problem in a client’s life doesn’t make me responsible to address it.  At any moment, God sees many things wrong, but asks for change on only a few.  Therefore, I need to figure out what things God is speaking to the client about and limit my agenda to match His.”

“People are most motivated to act on their own plans and ideas.  Therefore, if you want to maximize growth, you’ll allow people to set their own agenda, because that’s where the motivation is the highest.  Letting the client lead is also an expression of faith in God’s work in the person’s life.  God initiates change.  That means God was at work in this person’s life before a coach ever came on the scene, and He is actively leveraging every circumstance in the person’s life to bring him or her to maturity…. When you believe that God is already at work in a person’s life, it follows that the one who has the best handle on God’s change agenda is that person.  Therefore, the most dependable way to get in line with what God is doing is to let the client set the agenda.”

“The purpose in a man’s mind is like deep waters, but a man of understanding will draw it out.”  Proverbs 20:5

“People only do what they want to do anyway.  Push people where they don’t want to be pushed and you’ll only get resistance.  So it doesn’t matter at all what you see, or what great insights you have – the only thing that matters is what the client sees…..Once the client sets the agenda, the coach takes responsibility to focus the conversation and push it toward action.  The coach’s job is to help you think more clearly, to push you to go deeper and reach higher, to provide the structure you need to stay focused on the agenda you’ve chosen.“

I need to pause here and emphasize that in discipleship there is a place for education and confronting the person with the truth.  There are certainly times when they need more information and they need the discipler to point out a scripture passage that applies to their life.  But if the individual has agreed to be in a discipleship relationship in the first place, it is fair to say that they are desiring to do what God wants them to do.  The discipler has the role of coming along side of them and helping them take the necessary steps, but should not become the authority in their lives.  The authority must remain with the scripture and the Holy Spirit.  The amount of time or attention given to education versus asking questions and letting them set the agenda will likely be proportional to the amount of Biblical knowledge this individual has.  A new believer will need more teaching, and a Bible College graduate will need more coaching type of questions.

Tony’s book then goes on to detail how this is done, what kind of questions to ask, how to recognize areas that need to be probed deeper, and how to help the client set appropriate goals that will move him or her toward the ultimate goal of Christ likeness.  It is not a book about discipleship per se, but has much that applies to the discipleship relationship.  I highly recommend it.

Now for a quick quiz. How many questions did Jesus ask as reported in the gospels (excluding those in the parables)?   See the answer to this question HERE.

Discipleship in 3 simple steps (Part 2)

TimothyDisciple Making Movements / Discipleship / Small Groups

Yesterday I started discussing three simple questions for effective discipleship, and got through the first two.  If you haven’t read that post yet, either scroll down to do so or access it here.  I won’t waste your time reviewing what was said there.

After my exposure to Mike Breen’s approach I came across a book on discipleship by Ralph Moore titled Making Disciples: Developing Lifelong Followers of Jesus.  Ralph started a church in Hermosa Beach California that grew into a mega church.  He always had a strong emphasis on personal discipleship through small groups and the system he uses was developed there.  He left Hermosa Beach to move to Hawaii and start a second church in a park that grew into another mega church.  But the important thing is that both of those churches gave birth to many daughter churches that gave birth to other daughter churches.  Here is how Ralph tells it:

Now, many miles down the road, I’ve still only personally started one youth group, planted two churches and had a direct hand in multiplying just over 70 church plants from the congregations that I pastored.  Somewhere along the way, the multiplication process got out of control.  Those few churches have become a movement that keeps generating new congregations.  To date we can identify more than 700 church plants.

The interesting thing about this movement is that Ralph does not go to Bible Colleges and seminaries to find pastors and church planters to do this.  Every one of those pastors and church planters has come out of the churches started by the movement, most of them getting saved and baptized and discipled in his church and starting a new church without formal Bible education.  Hmmm…. that kind of sounds like the book of Acts.  What kind of a discipleship program produces that?

He describes their Small group system in the book, and the description is so simple it only takes up only one page of the book.  Each small group (they call them mini-church) does this every week:

  1. Eats a meal together.
  2. Then each person speaks a word or two (yes, 1 or 2 words) that characterizes the previous Sunday sermon.
  3. Then they go around the circle and each person answers this question, “What did the Holy Spirit say to you while the pastor was talking?”
  4. Then they discuss what they will DO because of what the Holy Spirit said.
  5. Then they close by dividing up into 2’s and 3’s and praying for each other.  But they do NOT take prayer requests.  Instead they restrict the prayer time to praying for help to do what they felt the Holy Spirit was telling them to do.  Along with the prayer comes the promise, “If I pray aloud for you in this meeting I am committing to pray for you for the next 7 days.”
  6. The following week, while they are sharing food, they find themselves asking, “What happened to you since we prayed for you?“

After describing this system, Ralph makes this statement:

“This simple process is at the center of all our organized disciplemaking efforts.  It has birthed more than 700 congregations in four decades.” 

By now you have noticed that this process includes the first two questions that are at the heart of Mike Breen’s especially effective discipleship process in Britain, but Ralph adds one more that is asked the following week.  So here are the three simple steps (questions) that highly effective discipleship revolves around:

  • What is the Holy Spirit saying to you?
  • What are you going to do about it?
  • The next time you meet you start with the question, “You said you were going to do x.  How did it go?”  (or “What has happened since we prayed for you?”)


I see a lot of similarity between Mike Breen’s and Ralph Moore’s approach.  They were developed on different continents without any knowledge of what the other was doing.  But in both cases, they have resulted in exponential growth of churches and movements.  And an impressive part of that is that in both movements, all of the leadership is developed from within, with common lay people getting saved, growing up in their faith, and going on to preach the gospel and make disciples resulting in new churches being planted.

Tomorrow in part 3 I’m going to explore the whole issue of questions, why they are so powerful, and why these questions in particular are so popular.

Discipleship in 3 simple steps (Part 1)

TimothyDisciple Making Movements / Discipleship / Small Groups

Does that promise sound too good to be true?  I am not interested in oversimplification or catchy sound-bite titles, but I’ve gradually come to believe that discipleship is simpler than most of us make it.  It requires no curriculum other than the Bible and a disciple maker armed with 3 simple questions.

 
A couple years ago I was reading everything I could get my hands on by Neil Cole.  I continue to highly recommend his books.  He wrote Search & Rescue: Becoming a Disciple Who Makes a Difference on a discipleship idea he developed called Life Transformation Groups or LTG’s.  An LTG is 2 or 3 people that meet together and do three things:

  1. They read 30 chapters of scripture together each week.  If one of them fails to read all 30 chapters, the group reads the same 30 chapters the next week and each week until everyone completes the 30 chapters in that week.  Repetition is good.
  2. They each pray daily for the salvation of 5 people they know by name who do not know Christ.
  3. They ask each other a list of accountability questions.  Neil has a list of those questions in his books, but different users of LTG’s have added here and subtracted there and come up with different lists, which Neil has no problem with.  Neil emphasizes that the purpose of the questions is not accountability as much as an opportunity to confess sin.

 I like the system all except for the 3rd part, the accountability questions.  The concept of an accountability partner of the same sex has been around a long time in Christian circles.  Some believers report that they have benefited greatly from the practice, but others complain that it doesn’t work for them.  I’ve always been uncomfortable with it.  Why?

  •  Unless the person really wants to be accountable, it doesn’t work.  People will lie about hidden behavior if they aren’t motivated to change in that area.
  • No matter what list of questions you come up with, it may not be the right questions for a particular person.  There is always a question about viewing pornography on the guy’s list, but some guy’s real temptation may be anger or cheating on his expense form.  No prepared list of questions will nail each person exactly where they are on their spiritual journey.
  • It smacks of legalism.  I’m not saying it is legalism, because encouraging victory over sin is not legalism.  But legalism is whenever we take outward actions in response to spiritual truth and apply the same outward behavior to all believers regardless of what they feel God wants them to do with that truth.  In other words, the focus of these questions is more on the outward behavior than the disposition of the heart.

 
Some time later I was studying Mike Breen’s approach to discipleship in Building a Discipling Culture.  Mike grew an old dead Anglican Church in a worldly and secular town in Great Britain into a dynamic church exploding with growth through his discipleship methods.  I had to know what he was doing, because whatever he was doing it was working amazingly well in a place that is famous for dying churches.  Not only did it work while Mike was there, but it continues to grow at an exponential rate under younger leadership that Mike discipled prior to moving to America over ten years ago.  But honestly, as I studied it I couldn’t understand it.  Mike has this tool called “Life Shapes” which is a series of simple shapes that represent certain areas of life we need to give attention to in order to grow.  But it didn’t make sense to me.  The shapes were supposed to make it simple and memorable, but they only seemed to confuse me.  But I knew he was on to something because what he did worked, and it continues to work long after he left that church to move to another continent.  Then I heard one of his disciples teaching on the subject of the “huddle”, which is the term they use for a small group discipleship method for developing future leaders.  This guy said, “All discipleship comes down to two simple questions.”  My ears perked up.  This sounded simple.  Maybe I would finally get the heart of this thing.  He went on to explain that the two questions that all of discipleship hinges on are:

a) “What is the Holy Spirit saying to you?” and

b) “What are you going to do about it?“

Suddenly a light went on for me.  I have seen how the spirit of God works in my life by zeroing in on different things at different seasons of life.  A prepared list of accountability questions may not hit the areas the Holy Spirit is trying to work on in my life.  And if you ask the average Christian that first question, many if not most of them would not know how to answer.  But in the huddle they ask this question weekly, and the huddle members learn to look at the circumstances of their lives and the scriptures they are digesting and begin to expect the Holy Spirit’s voice, and begin to recognize more and more how he is speaking to their particular sins and life issues.   Eventually they have no trouble identifying at any given time what the Holy Spirit is saying to them.  The second question takes it from the realm of theory and moves it to where the rubber meets the road.  The answer to the second question should be an action step that is specific and measurable.  If the answer to question #1 is, “The Lord has been convicting me of my meager prayer life”, then the answer to question #2 is not “I need to pray more”.  The answer to question #2 might be “I need to set the alarm x minutes earlier to allow more time for prayer every morning” or something equally measurable and specific.  But the key here is that each person sets their own action step based on what is realistic to them and what they believe the real answer is.

I realize that some people are going to be uncomfortable with the subjectivity of asking “What is the Holy Spirit saying to you?”  Some of us (myself included) come from such a strict cessationist background that if we can’t cite a verse of scripture for something then it can’t be God speaking.  But if the Holy Spirit indwells our very bodies, then what is he there for?  Yes, everything has to be evaluated in the light of God’s Word.  The Holy Spirit uses the Word, so the voice of the Holy Spirit may be heard in a sermon, or He may be heard as we dig into God’s Word in our daily time with the Lord.  But He may also be heard through the circumstances of daily life.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit speaks through your spouse.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit speaks through the death of a friend or loved one or some kind of major emotional event in your life.  Recently the Holy Spirit spoke to me quite clearly when I became aware of an area of my life where I had been less than honest.  I was deeply convicted of my sin and had to take some specific action steps that were very costly to me.  That didn’t happen as a result of reading my Bible or hearing a sermon (although my knowledge of Biblical teaching on the subject certainly played a part).  It happened because of a life circumstance that brought something to light in a way I couldn’t ignore.  I have no doubt I was hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit.  If you still find yourself uncomfortable with this concept, consider the fact that this takes place in a small group where input from other members can bring balance and a scriptural perspective that others may need.

OK, so now you know two of the steps (questions) in this successful discipleship system.  What is the third?  Sorry, I’m out of time today.  I promise an extended discussion of the third step and the rational behind it tomorrow in part 2.

Simple Bible Memory System

TimothyUncategorized

This sounds like a good idea.  I haven’t adopted it yet.  I travel constantly, so carrying around a file box of cards doesn’t work for me, but I would work for lots of people.  I kind of wish my favorite bible memory app (fighterverses) would incorporate this system into its design.

Five Myths About Oikos

TimothyUncategorized

I previously did a review of 8 to 15, The World is Smaller Than You Think by Tom Mercer.  The catchy title is really about the concept of Oikos, and how each person has 8 to 15 people they can influence.  Somewhere on the web I came across this transcript of a sermon by Tom on the Subject.  I hope you’ll enjoy it as I did.

Five Myths About Oikos by Pastor Tom Mercer

My task today is to redefine why HDC has become such a powerful lighthouse for so many people both here in the Victor Valley and around the world.  At the end of the service, I will close with a proposition, a proposition that we will process for the next three weekends- give us five hours a week and together we’ll change your world!

It’s been said that 80% of what you do could be done by someone else with no training.  That eighty percent contains all the things that all of us do every day.  By saying that, I don’t mean to in any way trivialize those things- many of which are not only important, but essential to our survival.

15% of what you do could be done by someone else with some training.  That fifteen percent contains things like an occupation, things that we and a smaller group of others are all probably pretty good at.  But, the truth is, if we ever quit our jobs, management could probably find other people who, when trained, could do what we did and, in many cases, the new guys might even do it better!  It’s not that the fifteen percent are unimportant, but the things in this category are just not unique to us.

The remaining 5% of what you do can only be done by you.  That’s the area of focus for which God gives us the greatest passion.

You’ll notice that we, here at HDC, help you focus primarily on that 5% because, within that 5% you will discover your unique purpose in the world.  The short of it is this- God has given you a spiritual stewardship of a group of people and you are to expected to manage your life in the light of their proximity.  Notice the number of times that “you” and “your” shows up in the following passage (I counted nine).

Colossians 1:21-25, Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation–if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.  This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.  Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.   I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness.

Paul says that we became part of God’s Kingdom when we heard the Gospel and embraced it.  But if want to be great in the Kingdom of God, then we must be servants.  Life change happens when we become part of the Kingdom.  Worldchange happens when we aspire to accept our assignment as a servant within it.  Are you just in the Kingdom of God, or are you a servant of the Kingdom.

That’s your mission- actually your “commission.”  In Colossians 1:25, the word, “commission,” is the Greek, oikonomia, a compound term combining oikos, “house,” with nomos, “law.”   So God has been given you official (even legal) influence within a specific and relatively small circle of people. The English word accurately frames the intent of the statement- God’s mission becomes our mission.  We partner with Him to “co” that mission together!

Being an efficient servant requires focus, managing life in the persisting shadows of the people who frame that commission.

My belligerence has frustrated some, but I continue to insist that, if the Kingdom is to function on all cylinders, there must be synergy between Christ, the Church and the Christian.

  • Christ died to reconcile people.
  • Christians are given a “co”mission, a certain number of those people to point to Christ.  In fact, Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that Jesus actually “committed to us the message of reconciliation.”
  • Local churches exist to facilitate strategic partnerships with local Christians, to enhance their success in that venture.

In my opinion, where most churches miss the boat is in understanding that role.  Most tell their people to do the work of an evangelist but don’t partner with them in that task.  When I was growing up, my church leaders challenged me to share Christ, but acted as if everyone in our youth group had the spiritual gift of evangelism.  The problem with that assumption is that, in reality, it’s estimated that only 10% of the body of Christ actually have that gift.  For those who don’t, churches have been strategically positioned between the Great Commission and a number of local world changers to form partnerships that better prepare the rest of us for our role.  This church has one purpose- to prepare you to fulfill you!  You’re not here to help this church succeed.  You are the church!  We meet together to help you succeed.

An oikocentric church is a local church that has a ministry strategically centered around the primary relationships of those who attend.  It’s as simple as it sounds and, therefore, greatly misunderstood.  Here are some misunderstandings about oikos:

Myth #1: Oikos is the best evangelism program out there!

That is false.  Oikos is not a program, it’s not an evangelism emphasis- it’s a paradigm, a set of lenses through which we view life.  Some push back, “Oikos is a cop-out- it’s too easy.  Instead, we need to go to all kinds of classes, memorize all kinds of stuff and then go out there on the street and call people to repent, argue with them, if necessary, until they cry “uncle,” give up and surrender themselves to Christ.”  That’s fine, if that’s what you think God’s called you to do, but as strange as it may sound, oikos is not easier, but a more difficult worldchange model that that.  Cold evangelism is complicated, but it’s actually not that difficult.  Find someone to give the bullet points to the plan of salvation, have as meaningful a conversation as is possible and then walk away, probably feeling pretty satisfied about the fact that you had just “witnessed.”

Witnessing goes beyond what we say to people.  Jesus said that we wouldn’t go witnessing, but that we would be witnesses!  Because of your oikos, Christ-like behavior suddenly matters.  The success of your marriage suddenly matters.  Being a good parent suddenly matters.  Learning the Bible suddenly matters.  Intercessory prayer suddenly matters.   And all those things matter all-day, every day, because there is a specific group of people who are not just watching you, they are already being influenced by you.

Having said that, it’s important to understand that oikos isn’t just about being an example to people and keeping your mouth shut.  Oikos means that people who are watching you will, at some point, also want to talk to you- so you better prepare to have something worthwhile to say.  It’s not just about inviting people to church.  If you invite them, we’ll be here with you to encourage them.  But what if they don’t come to church?  What if they just want to meet you at Starbuck’s and talk about faith?  You better prepare to have something to say!

Myth #2: Oikos discourages you from witnessing to someone you don’t know.

That is false.  Sharing Christ with anyone, anytime is all of our responsibility, regardless of whether or not they are in our eight to fifteen.  But the fact is, without someone’s permission, you can’t have a meaningful conversation (if you’re married, you already know this).

Cold evangelism experiences can be very exciting, but successful ones are rare because people seldom grant that kind of permission on the spot.  That’s not my opinion, that’s what the research reveals.  For example, in the New Testament:

After healing the demon-possessed man, Jesus told him to specifically, “Go home to your family (oikos) and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” (Mark 5:19)

Immediately following Zacchaeus’ conversion, Jesus reflected on what had just happened by saying, “Today salvation has come to this house (oikos)” (Luke 19:9)

When Jesus healed the politician’s son, John said that “…he and all his household (oikos) believed” (John 4:53)

When Jesus called Levi (Matthew) to be His disciple, Mark recalled that, “while Jesus was having dinner [with] Levi’s house (oikos), many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.”(Mark 2:15)

In Acts 10, we see the first example of a Gentile oikos coming to Christ. Cornelius responded to the Gospel presentation that Peter made and he and his household became believers.  In reporting to the church leaders in Jerusalem, Peter reflected on what the angel had told Cornelius about Peter.  “He will bring you a message through which you and all your household (oikos) will be saved.” (Acts11:14)

The story continued in Philippi with Lydia and the city jailor, both of whom responded to the Apostle Paul’s challenge to place their faith in Christ.  Acts 16 describes how, in both cases, an oikos believed and were baptized.

That’s the data.  Because Jesus designed the relational Universe, Jesus knows where permission is most likely to exist.  What you don’t find in the New Testament is Jesus saying, “Now that you’re saved, go out on the street corner and argue people into My Kingdom.”

As a matter of fact, raise your hand tell me if you received Christ at the result of a cold-turkey encounter…Praise God for the stories those hands represent, but they are few.

Years ago, I heard an incredible story about a guy who was walking through an intersection in a large city and he noticed a police officer directing traffic in the middle of the street.  As he walked by, the man sensed the Holy Spirit telling him to go up to the officer and say that God loved him.  The man dismissed the impulse and kept walking.  Haunted by the continued sense that he had been disobedient to the Spirit, he finally walked back to that intersection, up to the cop and said, “Excuse me officer, but God just told me to tell you that He loves you.”  Tears started to trickle down from under the cop’s mirrored sunglasses.  Traffic stopped.  With a broken voice, the officer said, “I prayed to God for the first time in a long time last night and told Him that, if He was real, the least He could do was to send someone to tell me that He was there.”  Within a matter of minutes, the officer called for backup and then prayed to receive Christ right there on that street corner.  Now, I was mesmerized by that story- it was one of the most amazing and powerful conversion stories I had ever heard.  After the speaker told our group the story, he said, “Now go out and witness to people,” so the whole church was looking for cops all week!  Now some of you have had so many traffic tickets that certain Highway Patrol Officers probably are in your oikos!

There’s nothing wrong with those events.  In fact, they really can be compelling stories.  But they’re rare.  The problem is, when they happen, we put those testimonies on Christian television, write books or use them as the centerpiece of some sermon on evangelism and everybody thinks that’s the way people normally come to Christ.  They don’t, at least not 90% of us didn’t come to Christ that way.

2 Timothy 1:5, I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.

That was not only Timothy’s conversion story, it may be the most boring personal testimony ever written.  The interesting thing is that it sounds just like mine and probably much like yours.  Some may have to exchange the grandmother and mother for a father or a friend or a coworker or a neighbor.  But most testimonies are eerily similar to 2 Timothy 1:5!  No drama.  Just worldchange.

Now raise your hand if you received Christ (primarily) because of the input of someone in your oikos…That’s virtually everyone in the room-  that’s what I’m talking about!

Myth #3a: Everyone in your oikos is a non-believer.

That is false.

  • Some are non-believers.  Since they need Christ, the focus for you is to evangelize.
  • Some are distracted believers who have allowed other important challenges of life to crowd out the most important- their walk with Christ.  They are already in the Kingdom.  They just need to be re-energized for their purpose-driven mission.  Our focus is to pray that they will find their spiritual groove again.
  • Some are believers already focused on becoming better prepared to reach out to their own oikos for Christ.  They will need you to continually pray for them and encourage them to stay the course.

Two points here- (1) know who is in your world and (2) everyone in it will always need your input and support (or they wouldn’t be there).

Myth #3b: Everyone in your oikos is a believer.

That is false.  That may be what many of you who have been a Christian for many years actually think sometimes, but that’s because no one has ever trained you to think oikocentrically.  We are all more connected to non-believers than we realize, but a lack of intentionality has kept our focus inward, seeking to surround ourselves by other Christians who can minister to us, rather than focusing outward, to the relationships that need our encouragement.

Myth #4: You get to decide who’s in your oikos.

That is false.  That is false.  Every member of your oikos has been supernaturally and strategically placed in your relational world.  You may not even like some of those people, but that’s irrelevant- just because you wouldn’t have selected them doesn’t mean they’re going anywhere! You can ask God for an inter-oikos trade, but probably won’t get it.  People will consistently wander in and out of your oikos and those migratory patterns will probably not be as much the result of your personal magnetism as they will be the result of divinely orchestrated circumstances.

Myth #5: Oikos is all about growing a church.

That is false.  Actually, oikos won’t grow a church nearly as fast as flashy programs will.  But programs tend to impress people who go to church more than people who don’t.  That’s why there is an alarming number of Christians in our culture who simply move across town to the church that has better programs, better bands, better preachers.  The math doesn’t lie- if one church grows at the same time another church shrinks, then there is no net benefit to the Kingdom.

We are not about simply adding bodies to our services.  If you’re visiting with us today, please don’t think that we consider you another notch on our gun belts.  You’ve been invited here today because Jesus really loves you.  Someone in your oikos is a Jesus-follower, so he or she really loves you too.  But the real reason any of us are here is because we have always been on Jesus’ radar screen.

We’re not after you.  Jesus is after all of us.  We were all at the heart of Christ’s mission to the world.  He came to accomplish a very specific job- to seek and to save people like us, those who were lost.  Jesus didn’t come to feed people or heal people.  He did both because He cared about them, but when He took off (and I mean literally) there were a lot of hungry and sick people still here.  Jesus came with a specific focus and He accomplished a specific purpose.  He left the Father, was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin, rose from the grave to conquer death and then ascended back to the Father.  He finished the job He came to accomplish and then He left.  That’s why we call Easter Weekend the Passion of Christ!  That was His passion.  That was His focus.  That was in His five percent!  That was something that He and He alone could accomplish.  Nobody could save the human race but Jesus.  If He hadn’t bothered to passionately engage His unique mission, then something really really important would have never been accomplished and we would all be left to wallow in our sin.

Jesus was all about focus.  So it should not surprise us to discover that focus is the primary building block of His church’s mission, the strategy that Jesus brought to the formation of the church.  God calls us all to be involved in very specific tasks (we call them spiritual gifts), to get together with other like-minded believers at a very specific place (we call it a local church), to prepare to do life with a very specific group of people (we call them our oikos).  That’s our 5%; that’s our world; that’s the world God wants to change through us.  So, together, let’s get focused.

What exactly is the mission of this church?  To help you become great in the Kingdom by focusing on the most important arena of your life.  When people decide to do that amazing things happen.  You’re not going to want to miss what’s next.  This weekend 46 people are being be baptized on our two campuses at HDC.  Please do not leave until I come back in a few minutes and close the service.

–Baptisms—

That can happen to you and for the people God has brought around you.  Your world can be transformed.  If you believe that, then I want to pray for you.  Some of you have already made that commitment- to bring that kind of focus to your lives, to ask God to generate that level of passion in your heart- so that you’re not just watching this kind of transformation in other people’s lives and relationships month after month, but you’re experiencing it in yours.  If you’d like to ask God to use you to change the world, then I want you to stand up today.  By doing so, you’re making a commitment to say no to those things in your life that distract you from the main thing.  You’re saying that you will make that list, if you haven’t already, and will pray every day that God would change you and use you to somehow reach them.  Your five hours start right now.

Dr. Helen Roseveare and the Hot Water Bottle

TimothyUncategorized

Helen Roseveare is a physician from Northern Ireland who has served as a medical missionary in Zaire, Africa, and the surrounding region for some time. Here, in her own words, is an eyewitness account about a hot water bottle.

One night, in Central Africa, I had worked hard to help a mother in the labor ward; but in spite of all that we could do, she died leaving us with a tiny, premature baby and a crying, two-year-old daughter.

We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive. We had no incubator. We had no electricity to run an incubator, and no special feeding facilities. Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts.

A student-midwife went for the box we had for such babies and for the cotton wool that the baby would be wrapped in. Another went to stoke up the fire and fill a hot water bottle. She came back shortly, in distress, to tell me that in filling the bottle, it had burst. Rubber perishes easily in tropical climates. “… and it is our last hot water bottle!” she exclaimed. As in the West, it is no good crying over spilled milk; so, in Central Africa it might be considered no good crying over a burst water bottle. They do not grow on trees, and there are no drugstores down forest pathways. “All right,” I said, “Put the baby as near the fire as you safely can; sleep between the baby and the door to keep it free from drafts. Your job is to keep the baby warm.”

The following noon, as I did most days, I went to have prayers with many of the orphanage children who chose to gather with me. I gave the youngsters various suggestions of things to pray about and told them about the tiny baby. I explained our problem about keeping the baby warm enough, mentioning the hot water bottle. The baby could so easily die if it got chilled. I also told them about the two-year-old sister, crying because her mother had died. During the prayer time, one ten-year-old girl, Ruth, prayed with the usual blunt consciousness of our African children. “Please, God,” she prayed, “send us a water bottle. It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, the baby’ll be dead; so, please send it this afternoon.” While I gasped inwardly at the audacity of the prayer, she added by way of corollary, “and while You are about it, would You please send a dolly for the little girl so she’ll know You really love her?”

As often with children’s prayers, I was put on the spot. Could I honestly say, “Amen”? I just did not believe that God could do this. Oh, yes, I know that He can do everything: The Bible says so, but there are limits, aren’t there? The only way God could answer this particular prayer would be by sending a parcel from the homeland. I had been in Africa for almost four years at that time, and I had never, ever received a parcel from home. Anyway, if anyone did send a parcel, who would put in a hot water bottle? I lived on the equator!

Halfway through the afternoon, while I was teaching in the nurses training school, a message was sent that there was a car at my front door. By the time that I reached home, the car had gone, but there, on the veranda, was a large twenty-two pound parcel! I felt tears pricking my eyes. I could not open the parcel alone; so, I sent for the orphanage children. Together we pulled off the string, carefully undoing each knot. We folded the paper, taking care not to tear it unduly. Excitement was mounting. Some thirty or forty pairs of eyes were focused on the large cardboard box. From the top, I lifted out brightly colored, knitted jerseys. Eyes sparkled as I gave them out. Then, there were the knitted bandages for the leprosy patients, and the children began to look a little bored. Next came a box of mixed raisins and sultanas — that would make a nice batch of buns for the weekend. As I put my hand in again, I felt the … could it really be? I grasped it, and pulled it out. Yes, “A brand-new rubber, hot water bottle!” I cried. I had not asked God to send it; I had not truly believed that He could.

Ruth was in the front row of the children. She rushed forward, crying out, “If God has sent the bottle, He must have sent the dolly, too!” Rummaging down to the bottom of the box, she pulled out the small, beautifully dressed dolly. Her eyes shone: She had never doubted! Looking up at me, she asked, “Can I go over with you, Mummy, and give this dolly to that little girl, so she’ll know that Jesus really loves her?”

That parcel had been on the way for five whole months, packed up by my former Sunday School class, whose leader had heard and obeyed God’s prompting to send a hot water bottle, even to the equator. One of the girls had put in a dolly for an African child — five months earlier in answer to the believing prayer of a ten-year-old to bring it “That afternoon!” “And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” Isaiah 65:24