DMM: Moving with the Movers, Loving the Lingerers

DMM: Moving with the Movers, Loving the Lingerers

 

“Where are you? You have left us abandoned. We need help to grow. Plus, we have started new Discovery groups and they are ready to believe…”

 

Two of our formerly engaged DMM local partners who were meandering through life in the past 2 years came to us with fresh vision and fresh commitment.

 

The reason?

 

They were rebuked by some of the former new disciples of Jesus (down to 3^rd generation DG and 2^nd generation house fellowships) which they had formerly been coaching (as we coached them for next steps). We had seen this couple become distracted while leaving these new followers to fend for themselves.  After realizing that we needed to attempt to get into that community to help those new house fellowships continue and to reproduce on-goingly, this newer disciple directly confronted our national partners. As we considered how best to re-train the remaining disciples…(this is area where our visits bring higher level of scrutiny from area Muslim leaders)…we were prepared to enter in there but knew this would bring un-needed attention by doing so…This is when, by the Holy Spirit leading, the new followers rebuked our zero generation.

 

Thankfully, our zero generation couple in those streams awakened to what they had abandoned and are on track to coach these newer DGs. One of these new Discovery Groups has believed and been dunked. Huge levels of intimidation have come to these newer followers to which they have stood against…Luke 12:11-12

 

Pray with us for these streams to flourish to multiple generations in that region.  Pray that our zero generation partners would never choose to forget to be diligent to not allow their hearts to be distracted from what the Father has entrusted.

 

 

Women Involved In Church Planting Movements (CPM)-Just Do It Scared!

Women Involved in Church Planting Movements (CPM) 

Contents: Each post features suggestions in points of engagement in CPM based upon:

Critical Elements in CPM

1. Vision-God’s Glory  
2. Extraordinary Prayer
3. Word of God Foundation. Holy Spirit dependence
4. Evangelism: Finding the POP and oikos 

5. Discipleship: DBS style, Oikos healthy House Fellowships
6. Baptism of followers as groups (oikos-households/affinity groups
7. Leadership: equip indigenous lay leaders
8. Rapid reproduction of House Fellowships
9. Persecution Preparation 
10. Ruthless Grace-filled Evaluation 

   

Just Do It vs. Do It Scared by RA

Just Do It as a motto perhaps would motivate many a heart to attempt the seeming impossible on a physical level. Yet, as a dear missionary colleague BB reflected recently, “I got to the point of my time on the mission field where I was becoming more fearful of being and doing what the Father was inviting. I thought of the Nike company phrase, Just Do It, and that seemed to not really connect with the honest process of the feelings part of our beings as we consider trusting God for the impossible. Instead, the Father gave me a phrase which helps me to be honest with the vulnerable areas of fear I face in attempting to facilitate CPMs among UUPGs and UPGs. He spoke to my heart, 'Dear child of mine, Do It Scared. Do all that I ask of your heart in surrenderedness and trust in the power of My Holy Spirit to enable you.”

Personal Reflection: What areas do you feel the Father is inviting you into deeper trust and obedience? How might trusting God in these areas release you to engage further in CPM efforts?

Extraordinary Prayer
Take a prayer walk around your neighborhood. Keep a diagram of the area; when you express Shema statements, personal story of God's story shared, other approaches to offer to find a Person of Peace. Make note also if you were able to offer the start of a DBS with their oikos. Bring someone you are coaching in CPM in the desire to model MAWL (Model, Assist, Watch, Love/Letter)

Ideas
Invite other Kingdom partners in your setting to join you in setting aside 2-3 days at agreed upon time monthly for prayer and fasting. Share insights in intercession the Lord gives to all involved. 

  

  

DMM: Extraordinary Prayer, the Cultivation of a Listening Heart

Listening Well Precedes Loving Obedience

So Paul warned them, 10 “Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous and bring great loss to ship and cargo, and to our own lives also.” 11 But the centurion, instead of listening to what Paul said, followed the advice of the pilot and of the owner of the ship.-Acts 27

It can be said that listening is more important than doing. The Apostle Paul was one who exemplified the practice of God’s presence as well as a desire to listen and obey His voice at all costs.

Intimacy with God is always Plan A to be cultivated and experienced by those who follow Christ. Extraordinary Prayer in the process of Church Planting Movements occurs not through anemic levels of intercession. Prayer is simply dialogue with the God who is, and was, and always will be. We talk to God, He talks to us. We cultivate intimacy or we remain largely disconnected to ABBA: those are the two choices for the believer. What one does for Christ is to be done out of the overflow of a daily growth in the practice of intimacy in Christ.

Recommended Study for the Cultivation of Extraordinary Prayer: 

• Read the book of Acts
• list out what the followers of Christ did and how/what they prayed. Be amazed at the anticipatory nature of their intercession, predicated upon the promises, purposes, sufficiency and nature of God. 

Listen to discern God’s ways

Several times weekly we search for Persons of Peace (POP) as delineated by Christ in Luke 10 and Matthew 10. As we walk through our respective days, we trust the Holy Spirit with anticipation to lead us to anyone, anywhere, and anytime. In most cases, we are intentionally with our national partners together in this pursuit.

On one particular day, my husband and I were enroute to an overlook located at the northwestern part of our island. Usually, we have found loads of Sumbi, Soli, and other Unreached People Groups as they take in the ocean side view. On the hour’s drive to this spot, we prayed for however the Father desired to lead. We listened. We prayed through the 10 essential elements to trust the Holy Spirit to launch a Church Planting Movement (CPM). 

On this day, no one we met was readied to start a Discovery Bible Study (DBS) with us but interestingly so, a group of female dentists from Mksr and Mmj areas of Eastern part of our country were there visiting.

After we established that we are followers of Isa Al Masih we talked with them about the reality that many Islamic peoples have not taken the opportunity to explore the stories from the prophets in the Bible, though the 4th letter of the Koran (4:136) admonishes Muslims to do so.

These women were scheduled to return to their area of this country the next day. We exchanged cell phone numbers and asked if we could contact them on our planned survey trip to their area and go through some of these stories upon meeting again.

Our vision and passion is to continue to train, coach, be practitioners of CPM among the Sumbi and Soli. In addition, for the past several years, we have been able to train more indigenous college students as professionals (doctors, teachers, fisheries specialists, and such) to prepare them to launch CPM teams among the Unengaged/Unreached People Groups (UUPGs/UPGs) of other parts East in this country.

The other Strategy Trainer team we are recruiting is for the area from where these gals above mentioned originate. In a couple of weeks we plan to meet with a potential couple whom God may lead to facilitate CPM among UUPGs/UPGs in the southern area of the Eastern region. (note: we have since taken that survey trip with the said couple. This couple is now settled on being led to this Cluster of UPGs and are raising support)

Prayer focus…

• Ask God to rip the heavens open and come down in provision for those from within this country to be equipped and sent, as well as strategically placed foreign catalysts of cpm. 

DMM: Vision Casting for UPGs

Worship/casting vision for Disciple-Making Movements among UPGs

Prayer module:

1.  Print out small 3x5 cards of various UPG profiles from Joshuaproject      https://joshuaproject.net/resources/prayer_cards

2.   Prep room in Prayer cover before worship time.

3.   Place cards, one by one on each seat.

4.   People will come in and take seats. Ask them to read over their cards and just have them in hand as we enter into worship.

5.   7-8 of seats will not have cards on them.

6.   These will be your ones representing those who are believers.  Those who live in regions of the world, people groups, who have access to the gospel.

7.   Instruct the others, when all have come together, that they will be representing being one of the UPG in the card which they hold. Define Unreached People Groups, if the group is not yet understanding.

8.   As such, explain that only those who have access to the gospel can access worship…so, everyone who is representing a believer may stay in their seat.

9.  The rest, with cards in hand, are to get up and go to the back of the room, with their backs to the front, as representing being outside the access to the gospel and cannot yet know true worship.

 Start worship songs, sung by just the few together:

• Revelation Song
• How Great is Our God

 10.   As facilitator, keep interjecting how wonderful it is to read the Bible, to worship Jesus together…Read Matthew 28:18-20 (go, make disciples of ALL ethne!)
Ask them how this will happen with current pattern of reaching individuals? What does it mean that ALL ethne are to be made disciples of? 
How does Jesus model reaching households? How does Book of Acts contain examples of reaching households?

11.   Read Rev. 5:9

12.  Now, go therefore and invite others to follow, not to come to church, but the church to go and make disciples of ALL Ethne, invite them to discover worship…take them by the hand...

13.   Debrief the group….

• For the ones who worship, representing those who have the gospel…
• How did you feel as you worshiped? 
• Describe what you felt like doing?
• What new thought did you have in this process?
• For the ones who represented the UPGs of the world…
• How did you feel as you were outside of worship?
• How did you feel about the ones represented on the cards representing UPGs?
• What new thought did you have in this process?

Worship all together as an act of declaring God's fulfilment for the knowledge of the glory of God to go out among all the ethne (peoples) of the earth…prayer response time…focus on asking God what needs to be done personally, in our families, in our fellowships, in order to obey these commands?

John Piper…”when it comes to Matthew 28:18-20, three responses for the believer: go, send, or disobey!”

Ask the Holy Spirit what He is impressing on your heart to obey?

Listen together to song (optional) song Yours, by Steven Curtis Chapman https://mp3jax.com/mp3/Steven-Curtis-Chapman-Yours

Much Fruit…received on May 2017

Hey beautiful friend,

Last week at ________ I had the opportunity to talk to a lady named Wendy. She and I are both and children's leadership but we have never had the chance to sit and talk.

We spoke a lot about her heart and her passion for missions and she shared with me her most recent trip to India and the darkness that is over there. I shared with her some of the experiences another friend of mine has written about recently from their time in India.

Wendy asked me by any chance was I talking about R!?!?

Wendy heard you speak about six or seven years ago at a ______ retreat. She said you had cards up on a table and asked for people to take one. Below is a picture of the card she continues to carry around in her wallet, along with names of people she has met on her trips.  I just love this!! Wendy has been on many mission trips since then.

I thought that this would warm your heart.

Love you dearly,

Neyle

DMM/CPM: Casting Vision, Scattering Pearls

Casting Vision, Scattering Pearls

Recently, my husband and I were asked to facilitate a CPM Exposure, with DMM emphasis, to another missions organization**** **** International Leadership.

The risk of facilitating a CPM Exposure, as they requested, could be compared to obtaining enough controlled exposure to a disease which makes one immune to its affect.

In some sense, we felt akin to the Rodney Dangerfields of the CPM world, or perhaps better put…we saw ourselves as the “expendable crewmen” as in a Star Trek episode. (You know, the ones who were beamed down to the unknown alien territory but were not going to make it out alive!)

And yes, this particular missions agency international leaders were on the whole,  antagonistic. Their comments were rude at times, as they communicated a level of stubbornness as they clung to their “16 years to plant the average non-reproducing traditional church” traditional approach. Thankfully, their International Director was leading the way in trying to move the org to the biblical paradigm of CPM.

We had been prompted by him on a lengthy Skype call prior to our coming to meet with their 80 or so field/regional leaders, mostly over the age of 55 years with an average of 30 years field experience each. Most were male, excepting about 20 or so women. (Most women present were in the capacity of wives, some engaged, some not so much). I met two Team Leaders who were women over women. We were given 80 minute sessions, first in the morning, over a 4 day time frame, to present CPM exposure. We had them do some of the key DBS lessons. We also addressed their objections they carried: Is CPM heretical? What about women in leadership? How can the lost lead? The CPM numbers are exaggerated? We don’t like CPM people we have met? How could this be a healthy church? What about teaching gifting? How could un-qualified (non-theologically trained) people lead these movements?  Doesn’t it take four years+ to train a national to become worthy? Surely this is a fad?

I also met with their key international women's ministry director.(At least they had this in place and that could be good). I spent time just to listen to her passion and vision. She asked how she could lead the women under her in order to become more effective. I walked her through a coaching pattern of discovery style of where she sees the End Vision of what a women on the field in their org will ideally be engaged in as a servant. I asked her about the dreamed of 4th generation indigenous women/households in these UPG areas and what they would look like as followers of Jesus? I then asked her plan of how she would coach them to be that? In their present approach? I then shared with her the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 leadership training of CPM for everyone, from expat to the field indigenous women, to the potential multiplying women. I asked her what approach she presently engaged in order to reproduce field women who are all-in, all engaged, incorporating their various phases of life but intentional in basic 101 of reproducing disciple-making ways that could help with the launch of a CPM. She was riveted upon her present approach of member caring the women, first at a regional level women, then, hoping that would trickle down. However, when I asked her to consider equipping women in her org in the competence (MEWL-MAWL) piece of what Jesus modeled, she was messed with. Hopefully, in good ways. 

Interesting side note, after we had facilitated the DBS First Steps Lesson on What is Church?, the U.S. Director of their org gave an update as a wrap up to the week. In his statements, he recounted that he and the Board of Directors had spent the last year’s time studying the topic What is the Church? He posted on the power point the essential biblical elements their leadership board had found in their year’s worth process of parsing Greek words. The same exact list, which we had just “discovered” from the DBS on What is Church, is what he posted up front. That required a high level of humility for him to basically say, “Here, because of our present paradigm of how we approach what we do, we took a year to hash this around, when, just now in a 1 hour DBS “discovery” of truths in Scripture, we all came up with the same list, together.”

At the end of the week, after my husband and I tag teamed facilitating the times together, we each gave a concluding challenge. Spencer gave the challenge for all in the org and I gave the challenge for the org to make sure that the “boat load” of funding from the “CPM/DMM” minded foundation, which is funding them to set up 5 Regional DMM Trainings in the next year, also prioritizes “vetted child care” so that women get firsthand equipping at these trainings. We also challenged them to ALL come to the DMM trainings and wrestle with Scripture firsthand rather than being an untrained naysayer. (Though we communicated this aspect in softer words) 

They gave us feedback recently and it will be part of their trainings to set up child care, so as to make the norm for women to get the training firsthand.

So, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!”, comes to mind here. It is really that simple, at times, to shift paradigms with some initial practical norms which have yet to be challenged largely in the global missions community. “Times, they are a-changing!”. And still, the ethne Persons of Peace and their households are waiting to be found!

May the Lord increase the fold of laborers who choose the hard places. And may the Holy Spirit increase those who are willing to be willing to choose to die to old patterns of doing what we want to do rather than what needs to be done, as well as those who choose to trust the HS to reproduce the simple patterns of Jesus.