I.
Forming, Preparing, and Launching the Team
Points of engagement for women in Church Planting Movements:
1. Strengthen your inner life. Cultivate
deeper times of worship and intercessory prayer. Prioritize your daily times
with the Lord. Learn to sharpen your Bible study skills. Learn to journal in
some form or fashion in order to remind your heart to choose to never forget to
remember God’s faithfulness. Bathe all in prayer. Develop an ever increasing
embrace and practice of the Spiritual Disciplines. For further reading on
Spiritual Disciplines, see Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline.[1]
Ask God to give you, as a woman, a
heart that more closely mirrors His for the target group women.
2. Identify and clarify your
individual calling to the people group. If married, it is crucial for you and
your husband to express a firm individual calling to the field and to remember
often the Lord’s leading during this process.
3. Clarify expectations of contributions
you might desire to serve in while on the mission field. Discuss these desires
with your husband. Whether single or married, take time to discuss these
desires with teammates before leaving for the field of service.
For married women; Discuss a
desired approach with loads of flexibility built into the areas of child care
needs, home needs, schooling needs, e.g. How do you as a woman see the concept
of partnering with your husband in the area of calling? Discern, discuss, and
delight in a clearer sense of what your contributions may look like on the
field together as a married couple. Flexibility and grace are key here. Also,
for mothers of small as well as school-aged children, take care in discerning
how you and your husband will prioritize your individual times with the Lord.
Discuss expectations of how you and your husband would like to divide the child
rearing privileges and responsibilities as well as schooling needs where
applicable. Plan out family times and prioritize deliberate rest days weekly.
Consider how often you might desire to entertain in the home while on the field.
Getting expectations out in the open will help avoid many future problems.
What will be your plan to develop emotionally,
socially, physically, spiritually, and mentally while on the field?[2]
Apart from discussing your personal needs with your husband, take special care
to speak and learn what communicates grace to the other women on your team.
There are some women who want to be
involved in ministry in greater measure but don’t know how to do so. The
assumption of these suggestions is that God has called both the husband and
wife as well as their kids into the mix of His great purposes.
For single women; As a single
woman, what specific needs or personal contributions do you desire to talk
through with your leaders? Discuss the Lord’s process of calling you to the
field with the other women on your team as well as with those in leadership.
Discuss expectations of time with families on the team. Pray through how the
Lord might desire to use you to bless the children on the team as their aunt.
This is a highly influential contribution if one feels called to be involved
intentionally this way. Consider what type of vacations and rest times you
might need or desire. Ask the Lord to provide others to enjoy these vacations
together with if enjoying company is most restful and encouraging for you
personally. Plan to pace yourself with a balanced effort in personal
development. Consider the four areas of emotional, social, physical, spiritual,
and mental growth.[3]
The desire here is to encourage you to consider ways to come to a place of
healthy flourishing in the land of your calling.
4. Discuss and clarify team roles
of each member. There are what I call in roles for team life. In roles are acts of service one does to
help contribute to making the
Missionary team effective. There
are several in roles to consider
together
►Assessing team needs. What are the needs of the team?
►Orienting new team members. What would be your role, if
any, in the basic set up of a new team member?
►Providing hospitality. Who will host new team mates while
they are getting situated?
►Searching and reconnaissance roles for basic necessities in
target area.
►Discovering practical life issues in the target culture
such as housing, schooling, and banking.
►Planning team worship gatherings. Consider ways to serve
one another in caring for the missionary kids on the team so that the mothers
can also participate.
►Planning for member care issues.
►Interceding for one another is vital. Think through both a
personal and corporate intercession commitment to the team.
5. Take a basic first aid or wilderness
survival course. The typical Red Cross course assumes that an emergency services
contact is available. Develop a contingency plan related to medical evacuations
in your target area.
6. Recruit skilled and seasoned
intercessors as an inner circle from your home countries and beyond. Keep them
updated with honest reflections on your processes and prayer needs. If Satan
cannot take out the parents of a missionary family, he will go after the kids.
Remember to stand firm in your position in Christ, take care to not cultivate
fear but to be on the offensive to recruit specific intercessors for your
children.
7. As a team, go through a Church Planting Movements training.
Seek out a CPM coach for your team. These
trainings help you to consider and marvel at what God is doing in the over seventy
five plus documented reproducing movements among unreached people groups. Some
more recent trainings are called by the name Strategy Teams Training, T4T
(Training 4 Trainers), and Strategy Coordinators. Both together as a team and
individually, develop an end vision statement of what your
team believes the Father is doing or will do in and through you among your unreached
people group. David Garrison describes the end-vision writing, “An end-vision
can be defined as the ultimate and overarching aim of a strategy or plan of
action. In the implementation of a CPM-oriented strategy, it is the end-vision
that informs and measures the relative value of every objective, goal and
action step.[1]
8. Ask the Lord to provide a more
experienced female missionary in your unreached people group area who is personally engaged
in the process of implementing Church Planting Movements and learn
from her heart. Ask her to disciple you as well as speak boldly into your life
in a coaching role for further fashioning into Christlikeness.[2]
Ask God to give you, as a woman, the heart of a life-long learner. Teachability
is essential but needs to be forged indelibly and continuously in our hearts.
Initially, areas of balancing cultural adjustment, language learning, family
needs, and time management issues can be addressed.
Also, it is helpful to evaluate
needed on-going growth in ministry skills areas. Consider your basic ministry skills of
evangelism and discipleship in your home culture. Before coming to the field, determine
to be trained in multiplying discipleship by women engaged in this privilege in
your home culture. Multiplying discipleship refers to the pattern which the
Apostle Paul lays out in 2 Timothy 2:2 writing, “And the things you have heard
me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also
be qualified to teach others.” Multiplying discipleship is the
process of reproducing the Christ-life into others in such a way that they are
patterned and obedient to do the same likewise and so forth. Carol Shadrach, with
her husband Steve, has had years of experience both on and off the mission
field. And in her most recent position of assisting heading up the U.S. Center
for World Missions Perspectives and Mobilization efforts, Shadrach has observed
the following in regards to the necessary component of women being called to
the mission field as she comments,
First of all I firmly believe most
women either leave the field or are not effective because they are not involved
in ministry before they leave the
country (home country) – i.e, evangelism, discipling, leading small groups,
practicing hospitality – having internationals over, etc…. if they are not
sharing their faith and sharing their testimony BEFORE they leave, just going
to another country will not change anything.
I think of a college girl I know who wants to be a missionary , has even
been on numerous short term trips – however she has never led anyone to Christ,
is not actively sharing her faith, and not trying to influence others for
Christ. – so how will moving to another country make her a missionary? It won’t.
So you can learn all the methods you want, but what good is it if you
don’t practice them?” [3]
One
of the greatest hindrances we have observed in Church Planting Movements
over our time on the field is not that missionaries
are unwilling but rather that they cannot train others in that which they have
not had modeled in their own lives. It
has been my observation that the missionaries who have a strong background of
evangelism and multiplying discipleship have tended to thrive. It is so
important that you model obedience based on the love, grace, and mercy of
Christ-based discipleship and evangelism. And where this is the case in a
missionary’s life, there are seeds of multiplying house fellowships occurring
in these target groups.
9. Pre-field training is
essential. In addition to completing your organization’s Bible training
requirements, it is important to specifically read books on Islamic women[4]
(if heading to Muslim unreached people groups) as well as researching target
area women. Read also the books on Church Planting Movements your team
has decided upon.
10. Read and be trained by godly men
and women who understand a Biblical approach to Spiritual Warfare[5].
Through the years my husband and I have observed that if the new missionary
isn’t prepared in the area of spiritual warfare, he/she will tend to be
immobilized.
My husband and I now suggest several
books related specifically to the topic of spiritual warfare for new
missionaries to read. Because many people come from dysfunctional families and
will be serving in spiritually dark people groups, new missionaries need to be
keenly equipped for spiritual warfare. The
Bondage Breaker by Neil Anderson[6]
is one of these type books. Because fear is a real issue in places where you
will serve (e.g. fear of illnesses, death threats, physical risks/death, riots,
terrorism), another foundational book is Running
Scared by Ed Welch[7]. 11. Study and decide upon a personal growth
plan for working through conflict with others. Recognize and acknowledge your
personal tendencies in how you have formerly approached reconciliation in
conflict situations. Discuss this area as a team and then decide upon mutual
commitments related to resolving conflicts. Read and discuss as a team the
excellent book Peace Maker by Ken
Sande.[8] This book gives a framework for resolving
interpersonal issues. See Additional Resources Appendix for other resources.
12. Write out a personal theology
of suffering based on Biblical study. Among other things, your theology should
answer certain questions: one may ask, “Why
does God allow suffering? How might God use suffering for my good and to
advance His kingdom?”
Recognizing and surrendering types
of perceived personal rights is prime real estate for ongoing prayer before the
Father. The book entitled Have We No
Right by Mabel Williamson[9]
is excellent in addressing personal rights as are select sections of John Piper’s
book Don’t Waste Your Life[10].
See also the excellent treatment by Nancy Leigh DeMoss on surrendering over personal
rights in her book entitled Brokenness:
The Heart God Revives[11].
For an in depth life experience story of growing into a theology of suffering
refer to the book Evidence Not Seen
by Darlene Rose.[12]
13. Explore and pray through your
personal known fears of going to the mission field with other godly women. One
of the keys in spiritual battle is to begin to understand where your heart is
most vulnerable to Satan’s attacks. Learn how to press into understanding your
position in Christ and authority as a believer. The following is a suggested
simple process of learning to walk in more overcoming ways:
→Recognize the areas of personal previous woundings and
vulnerable areas of doubting God’s goodness
→Repent
of any responses to those areas which
are not honoring to God. Be honest and know that this is a process. The more
you express your feelings and thoughts honestly, the more opportunity for healing
to begin. Acknowledge any on-going doubting of God’s goodness
→Renounce
any of the ground having been given
over in previously doubting God’s goodness
→Reclaim
God’s truth to replant and be re-sown
into those places in order to increase in trusting God’s goodness
14. Research the implementation of CPM
activities already taking place among your target people group. Learn from
those who have preceded your team. Be committed to a partnering mindset. Be
comforted that the Holy Spirit has long preceded your arrival among the unreached
people group He has placed on your heart.
15. Recruit ten to fifty daily
intercessors to cover you, your family, and your team with vital intercession.
On reflecting upon the need for taking intercession seriously, one CPM
practitioner comments, “I would rather have ten committed daily intercessors to
cover these efforts rather than 100 non-committed intercessors.”[13]
16. Discuss with your children the
changes they will experience as your family moves to the mission field. It is
vital that you include your children into God’s processes no matter how young.
The Father has a tender spot in His heart for the children of His servants.
Believe Him to be that sweet spot to the hearts of your children.
[1]
Garrison, David. Church Planting
Movements. Pg. 59. WIGTAKE, Midlothian, VA, www.churchplantingmovements.com
[2] Webb, Keith. “Church
Resource Ministries on Coaching Missionaries”. Resources found www.CreativeResultsManagement.com
[3]
Shadrach, Carol. Email conversations. November 2009.
[4] Refer to Additional
Resources Appendix section at the end of this article for related books.
[5] Refer to Additional Resources
Appendix section at the end of this article for related books.
[7] Welch, Ed T. Running
Scared. Greensboro, NC.: Published by New Growth Press 2007.
[8] Sande,
Ken. Peacemakers. Grand Rapids, MI.:
Baker Books, 2006.
[11] Demoss, Nancy Leigh.
Brokenness: The Heart God Revives. Chicago, IL.: Moody Publishers, 2002,
2005.
[12] Rose,
Darlene. Evidence Not Seen. A Woman’s Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of
World War II. New York, NY.: Published by Harper & Row, 1990.
[13] African brother
commenting on urgency of vital intercession in engaging in the CPM
process; 8/09
[1] Foster,
Richard. Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. San
Francisco, CA.: Harper & Row Publishers, 1978.
[2] Personal goal setting
based upon Luke 2:52
[3] Personal goal setting
based upon Luke 2:52
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