III.
Preaching The Gospel to Groups and Individuals
Points of engagement for women in Church Planting Movements:
1. Prioritize deeper times of
worship, intercessory prayer, and building intimacy with the Lord. Bathe all in
prayer.
2. Ask the Lord to lead you to Women
of Peace in the target ethne. Time is too short and eternity is too
long to not believe God to be God. Believe God to develop in your heart a
passion to pursue women who are seeking after the knowledge of God and hunger
to know Him. Satan would love for us, as female practitioners, to get bogged
down with hearts in the target group that are not yet open. This does not mean
that you neglect to display His kindness and mercy to those who are not responsive
but it does mean you trust His ways implicitly and unwaveringly so. Enlist
prayer partners from your home culture for this specific request and track His
provision back with these prayer warriors. Trust the Lord daily to engage focus
women anywhere and anytime with seed sowing into their lives. By faith, expect
a harvest.
3. Ask the Lord to provide oikos (households) to begin Discovery
Bible Study (DBS) using Chronological Bible Storying streams.
4. Ask the Lord to give to you,
with the women within your sphere of daily life, His heart in dialoguing about His
Story.
Basic styles to evangelism
A. Relationship building as well as casual contact
encounters are both significant opportunities to declare God’s glory in the lives
of target women.
B. Strategic Hanging Out is just
one way of being deliberate with relationship building approaches. This term is
defined as the pursuit of non-believers with the intentionality which the
Savior modeled. Jesus hung out with others while definitively demonstrating eternal
perspective purposes. ( I Cor. 9:19-23,
2 Timothy 4:2)
| -In searching for Persons of Peace it is important to focus on the Spirit leading you to anyone, any where, any time. This is a lifestyle pursuit of the trusting the Holy Spirit in your different spheres of contact: relatives, friends, new contacts. |
C. Learn one method of sharing Christ
in the process of the language learning phase and use it. Over time develop a variety of
approaches. We call this a tool box
approach or
rather
a “bouquet of options” approach.
Depending on the situation you can reach into the tool box or bouquet
and use an evangelistic tool that fits the context. Some approaches include:
►Preparing
and translating your personal 3 to 5 minute story of God’s grand
drama of bringing you to Himself through Christ.[1]
Craft your story in contextual terms and then commit to share several times
until memorizing in the target language. Share openly and honestly what the
Father is teaching you and how He is working in your life. Refer to the Deuteronomy 6 passage on Shema living as a mobilizing template. Shema statements are brief statements of
the glory of God expressed in the context of life daily.
These
Shema
statements are then utilized to help discern whether the person is a Person
of Peace. After sharing these statements in dialoguing with the
potential POP, invite them to join you in studying through the
Chronological Bible Storying process of Discovery Bible Study (DBS) with you
and the oikos (their own household or their close friends) they can gather. It
is recommended for you to not attend the oikos but to train the POP in sharing
the stories with their oikos. At the most, if necessary, you facilitate just
three gatherings of their oikos. After selecting the natural leader (either the
POP or another who seems to be the natural leader) arrange to meet them
individually weekly in order to train them in the next stories that they then
share with the oikos.
►Preparing
a presentation of the gospel in your target language and memorize it.
Then, trust God to delight in proclaiming to others. Trust God for
opportunities to share Christ. This will plant seeds within your growing
relationship network as well as first time contacts, as the Spirit leads.
Always keep in mind that every evangelism approach is shared in order to
challenge the potential POP to gather their oikos so that
they can begin interacting with the transforming power of the Word of God while
being templated with the multiplying discipleship process of following Christ,
as the Spirit moves in their hearts.
►Brainstorming
with other women on your team as to transitional stories into the
Gospel message that could come from local “culture” (legends, myths, traditional
stories, dramas, current events, worldview, etc...).
►Learning the Camel Method[2], if you are serving in a Muslim upg
►Learning the Camel Method[2], if you are serving in a Muslim upg
It is important to note that whatever your approach, you want to invite the potential Person of Peace to study the stories of the Old Testament and New Testament in a Discovery Bible Study together. As you train them in the simple pattern of eight discovery questions then they are challenged to take this back to their family and do likewise, one study at a time. The questions can vary but the point being, make it simple and reproducible. The questions we utilize are as follows:
(1). What are you thankful for?
(2). What are some challenges in your life presently?
(3). Review the story from previous week together. Share personal obedience, personal applications taken resultantly.
(4). Read the text of the next Bible story out loud 2x together
(5). Rephrase the context of story in own words, based upon text alone. 2x
(6). What does this story tell us about God's character?
(7). What personal application (personal obedience) will you make as a result of this truth? When?
(8). Who can you share this story with? When?
5. Prayer Walking[6].
Ask the Lord to give you deliberateness in prayer walking in your immediate
neighborhood as well as regular times of intercession within the target
area. This can be incorporated with
childrearing needs. In each of our neighborhoods, I used to take the kids with
me for a prayer walk and conversation times with our various neighbors. On each
outing, we would ask the Lord for specific opportunities to learn more about
our context and to learn how to express care for the people. I systematically
brought that information about people’s ethnic groups, their family members’
names, and recent
felt needs they faced home to be brought before the Lord. I drew a chart of our
neighborhood and slowly filled it in with detailed information in order to more
effectively pray for these people as well as know what areas to ask them about
in the next conversation.
Our family enjoyed many times of praying for our neighbors in these specific
ways.
For
you to pray together as a family, to see Him open up ways to re-present Him to
your target culture neighbors, is to gain a greater glimpse of how the Lord
meant for our lives to be connected to our context and beyond. These
opportunities can be enjoyed no matter what season of life you are in.
6.
There are several potential obstacles to women becoming effective CPM practitioners (delighters
and declarers of His glory on the mission field) which can be summarized in
three vital areas:
► A Lack of Boldness
often ensnares female missionaries. Fear is often the entry port through which
Satan gains a foothold which could immobilize you.
►A
Lack of Deliberateness in declaring His ways in relationships with
target group women. Many people do not consider being strategic in pursuing
others.
►A
Lack of Equipping in basics of ministry.
A
fellow colleague, RH[7],
reflects upon possible solutions to these common obstacles,
writing,
|
“Knowing
a common obstacle is a first very helpful step, but what can one do about them?
Here are some ideas:
Overcoming a Lack of Boldness. Do a bible
study on boldness and timidity. Find a character that you can relate to. Pray
and ask the Lord to change your heart.
Analyze your fears. Talk about
them with an older experienced missionary or your spouse and pray through
it.
Overcoming a Lack of
Deliberateness. Make a list of the women in your life today. Ask the Lord for wisdom to know His plan for
them. What is your part in that
plan. Make small goals and keep a record
of how things are progressing with individuals.
Try to find an accountability partner who will brainstorm with you and
also ask you how things are going.
Overcoming a lack of Equipping. There are
many resources for emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and even social needs of
missionaries. Ask your team leader or
other missionaries in your area or your home church for help with specific
areas that you think you need growth in.
There is no lack of resources today, but rather a lack of awareness
about the resource and a limited amount of time to learn everything."
|
At
the conclusion of this paper I have listed some of the key books that are
related to the topics addressed in this paper.
7. Ask
the Holy Spirit for boldness to establish that you have a vital relationship
with Jesus from the first
meeting with the desired target culture woman or group of women. Many
missionary women want their lives to be witnesses before declaring that they
love Jesus. Then, after the relationship has been established, they find it
difficult to make the transition to talking about Jesus. Establish your love
for worshipping God in the first conversation. Ask the Holy Spirit for the
boldness and deliberateness within those first conversations to establish His
ways as being pre-eminent in the very fabric of who you are. This is done by
gentleness and with a spirit of humility through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Most
female missionaries have a rough time transitioning from comfortable
relationships with unreached people group women (in which most women excel in
the relationship
building category) into vital communication regarding the Eternal One. Deliberate seed sowing is indeed multifaceted. Trusting God to bear witness to His greatness by the power of the Holy Spirit, while leaving the results to God is our mandate.
building category) into vital communication regarding the Eternal One. Deliberate seed sowing is indeed multifaceted. Trusting God to bear witness to His greatness by the power of the Holy Spirit, while leaving the results to God is our mandate.
8.
Demonstrate through acts of service the love of the Father
for the target women. In
my experience, in relationships with women in
our unreached people group, every 3 to 6 months there is a crisis they
experience of one of the following kind;
►Emotional
Crisis-Speak of God’s healing hand, demonstrate His loving touch.
The concept of Isaiah 58 in being Wounded Healers to hearts of other women is
powerfully used in the hands of the Father.
►Relational
Crisis-Show forth His merciful, unfailing, and redemptive love.
The power of forgiveness in Christ alone is truly amazing.
►Physical
Crisis-Pray for the person/persons’ healing in the matchless name
of Jesus. Express to them that you are not a doctor, nor are you a witchdoctor.
Then, explain the authority and power of Jesus to heal is found in His name
alone. Explain that though Jesus cares for our physical needs and desires, He
is about the ultimate healing in our lives of bringing us into right
relationship with a Holy God Almighty. Many missionaries have found that
praying for inner healing is an effective evangelistic tool. For further
training in the area of inner healing and ways the Lord uses this excellent
expression of His splendor, see the book From
Seed to Fruit edited by Dr. Dudley Woodbury.
► Financial
Crisis-Demonstrate God’s care for the
person/person’s financial needs as you feel led.
► Fear
issues Crisis-Freedom from appeasing whomever and whatever powers related
to their network of darkness is formidable but not impenetrable through the
power of Christ.
►Spiritual
Crisis-Be expectant of God moving to stoke the
fires of desire in this most crucial need which affects the totality of the
person.
9. Communicate
and demonstrate that you care about the whole of their person and their lives
(their families, health, future, etc). Engage
in intercessory prayer for them and with them. Remember, you are deliberately
asking the Father to reveal the Person of Peace to you as you pursue
others.
10. Learn
to ask caring questions and how to cultivate deeper listening skills. To ask caring questions is a process of
gaining a level of trust to ask what lies beneath, to see with eyes believing,
and to facilitate the person reflecting. Related to the area of sharpening
skills in pursuing others with caring questions, Larry Crabb comments writing,
“We must learn to tell the story of our soul, and we must listen as others tell
theirs.” [8]
11. Trust
God for those women within your sphere of influence and beyond. Missionary women
with children can sometimes feel isolated and easily can overlook the blessing
of having their house helper as one whom they pursue in relationship with
eternal perspective intentionality.
12. Trust God for Rock Removal type ministry. Rock
Removal is the process of simply trusting the Spirit of God to identify
what deceptions and misconceptions the target women have in regards to Jesus.
Some call this pre-evangelism. To identify deceptions, to then replace the
deceptions with His truth into that hardened ground is the process of Rock
Removal in order for the Rock (the Lord Jesus Christ) to be declared
amongst their hearts.
13. In
the area of evangelism and in other aspects of ministry, many of us women can
tend to compare ourselves with others.
This leads either to self-condemnation or pride. It is far better to
understand your season in life and your personality and to discern what God
wants you to be in Christ first and foremost. Be faithful, then, to do what He
bids. Cheer others on in intercession but guard your heart from comparison.
14.
Ask the Lord to provide near culture believers in whom the Lord has placed this
same vision to reach the target unreached people group in partnership.
[2]
Greeson, Kevin. 2007. The
Camel: How Muslims are coming to Faith in Christ. Arkadelphia, Ark.:
WIGTake, 2007.www.camelmethod.com
[3]Chronological Bible
Storying-a method of evangelizing a people by relating to them, in a culturally
suitable manner, the great stories of the Bible from creation to redemption to
the return of Christ. Garrison, David.. Pg.59. Church Planting Movements. Richmond, VA.
[5]
Anderson, Neil T. Steps to Freedom in Christ. www.gospellight.com : Published by Gospel
Light,1990, 2001, 2004.
[7] Personal
email conversations with colleague RH, Used by permission.
[8] Crabb,
Larry. SoulTalk. Brentwood, TN.:
Integrity Publishers, 2003.
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