Last week I was listning to the Lifeschool Podcast hosted by Ceasar Kalinowski and Heath Hollensbe. For episode #178 they were talking with Rick Bartlett who gives leadership to Tabor College's Ministry Entrepreneurship and Innovation masters degree program. The topic was mentoring. Through the course of the conversation, I became inreasingly convinced that our decision create E2E as a multi-generational training event - not exclusivly a youth group event - was the right decision. As it is, we want youth groups to come to our E2E trainings but we ask that they come with adults from their church, ideally mentors who they know. We actually tell youth groups that they have to have at least one adult for every two youth that come. I think we can help teens engage with their faith by walking with them, by doing it with them, by coming alongside them. And then doing mission with them. And I think those kinds of things are what help students grow." Our thinking with that idea comes from our own experience. Too many youth in our churches think that the only adult they can relate to or learn from at their church, and perhaps, in their life, is their youth pastor.
Something special happens when a young adult sits down and digs into the word of God with adults from their church, when they watch adults wrestle with their faith and fight to overcome their fears. What our youth need more than anything are models of radical obedience and surrender to Jesus. Everywhere to Everywhere training events allow for that sort of modeling to happen on mission together. So if you are a youth pastor - YES! We want you to bring your youth group to the next E2E event but we want you to bring adults along with them; adults willing to be challenged and stretched and pushed out of their comfort zone in full viewing of these kids. Adults willing to take what they learn back to your church and lead these young people out into the harvest as they lead them into an abiding relationship with Jesus. Bring the kids . . . but bring Mr. Miyagi along with them. Click the program tab above to learn more about what is invovled in an E2E weekend.
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We are excited to announce that we will be hosting another Everywhere to Everywhere (E2E) training event in Sioux Falls, SD the weekend of October 12 -14.
If any of those statements sound like you, join us for this three day training event.
We want to invite you to tap a few shoulders in your church and help them come to E2E. Here is all the relevent information When Friday October 12 at 6:00 pm - Sunday October 14 at 8:00 pm Where Life Church 501 N Elmwood Ave - Sioux Falls, SD Cost $125
Last week we shared seven podcasts that we have found helpful to fuel the missions fire. Today we’d like to add to that list of resources and share with you seven video channels that will help you train unto the harvest and cast vision for the great commission. Some are focused purely on training and equipping the local church. Others are focused on helping the local church catch God’s vision for the nations. All have been inspiring and helpful and we hope they will do the same for you. Everywhere to Everywhere (E2E) works to multiply healthy disciples and raise up missional leaders. We are challenged to inspire believers to cultivate a heart for the least reached locally, nationally and globally and to provide tools that will help them make a difference. We hope that these seven video channels will support that effort. At the bottom of the post, we’ve shared one video from each of these sites to give you a bit of the flavor of their content and we hope you will explore more. [READ ALL OF THE 7 SERIES BLOG POSTS] MB Mission https://vimeo.com/mbmission MB Mission believes in the power of story. Their videos will take you into the heart of mission all across the world, telling the stories of God’s engagement with and through his people. Powerful testimonies will encourage and inspire you. Global Frontier Missions https://www.youtube.com/user/gfmvideos Their GFM 101 series of videos have been especially helpful for casting vision with local churches and individuals. These short videos do a great job of unpacking the great commission and some key concepts that missionaries are wrestling with today. Frontiers USA https://vimeo.com/frontiersusa Frontiers is one of the largest mission agencies focusing specifically on the Muslim world. These inspiring videos tell the story of God's working through his people across the Muslim world. No Place Left Training https://www.youtube.com/npltraining The No Place Left Network are a group of like minded individuals and churches who are working to see movements of disciples making disciples spread across the globe until there is no place left (Romans 15:23). In order to work toward that goal, they have been developing simple and accessible training tools. These they freely give to anyone who is interested in being a disciple who makes disciples and we have incorporated these tools into our Everywhere to Everywhere training events. The 411 Training module is a key component of E2E. Curtis Sergeant Training for Multiplication https://www.youtube.com/curtissergeant Curtis is one of the foremost trainers in movement methodology and has been a catalytic part of movements across the globe. His 28 multiplication concepts videos are a great first step into thinking about multiplication. They are accessible and easily understandable and at less than 10 minutes, each can be watched over a lunch break or after work. Engage Africa https://www.youtube.com/engageafrica Engage Africa has put together a series of five videos unpacking their work to see multiplying movements happen across Africa. Hosted by African pastors and practitioners, these videos allow us to learn from local leaders on the ground in Africa. Filled with powerful teaching and amazing testimony, these videos are a great tool for learning about missions and movement. Pioneers USA https://vimeo.com/pioneersusa Pioneers is another large mission agency whose focus is on unreached people groups across the globe. Their videos do a good job of telling the story of what God is doing among the nations. They also have a series of videos to help train and equip sending churches - great for pastors and mission committees. If you know of other video channels like these, feel free to share them in the comments below. MB MISSION GLOBAL FRONTIER MISSIONS FRONTIERS USA NO PLACE LEFT TRAINING CURTIS SERGEANT TRAINING ENGAGE AFRICA PIONEERS USA
The path of the missional heart is often a difficult one. The distractions that life will throw at you are many and varied. The number of fellow sojourners with whom you'll be able to run daily are often few. There is little in the culture and sometimes even in the church that will encourage your heart for missions and the completion of the great commission. Because the challenge is real and because I need all the encouragement I can get to help me stay the course, I want to take the next few blog posts to share with you resources that will help to continuously fuel your missions fire. Today we will start with seven podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis to stay encouraged, to be inspired and to continue to learn. If you have a favorite missions podcast that helps you run the race well, please leave a comment and share it with the rest of us. With all of these podcasts, if you search in itunes or your favorite podcast service, you'll be able to find them. Global Missions Podcast http://globalmissionspodcast.com/ The Global Missions Podcast is hosted by Rob Magwood and in general, each episode is an interview with a missionary or missiologist or author about missions. The purpose of the Global Missions Podcast is to provide helpful resources and practical information to churches and individuals to help them effectively support and engage in global missions. My favorites: What's the role of the North American church in global missions?; Ministering to those from honor/shame cultures. Movements https://www.movements.net/ Author and mission leader Steve Addison hosts this great podcast which focuses on disciple making movements. Most episodes are interviews with movement leaders who are making disciples who make disciples. If you need help believeing that the harvest is plentiful, if you need encouragment to share your faith boldly, this podcast will inspire you. My favorites: Ron Surgeon Interview; God, give us Austin or we die!; Reaching the world in your backyard; NoPlaceLeft Manchester Engaging Missions https://engagingmissions.com/ Host Bryan Entzminger does a great job of interviewing a wide range of missional people. Some are experienced veterans and recognized experts while others are young missionary candidates just preparing to move into ministry for the first time. It creates a great resource for anyone interested in missions. My favorites: Brett Butler; Curtis Sergeant; C. Anderson Strike the Match http://www.jdpayne.org/tag/strike-the-match/ J.D. Payne is an author of over ten books on missions and his experience and insight make this podcast a great resource to continue learning. Many of his podcasts are just him sharing his insights and wisdom on missions but he also has great interviews with missiologist and missionaries. My favorites: Nathan Shenk on Church Multiplication and Health; John Klassen on Engaging with Muslims Storyline Podcast https://www.storylinemissions.org/storylinepodcast/ The Storyline Podcast is part of Storyline Missions, an effort to equip local churches with great commission vision. The foundation of this is the Storyline Workbook, an 8 lesson curriculum which is great for Sunday school classes and small groups. The first 8 episodes follow and supplement the lessons in the workbook. The rest are interviews with global leaders about accelerating the emerging mission force in the world. My favorites: Living the Wartime Lifestyle; Mobilizing the Russian Church for Missions Crescent Project Radio https://www.crescentproject.org/podcast Crescent Project Radio is hosted by Matt Bonner and each episode is an interview with someone involved with ministry to Muslims or with former Muslims who have left Islam to follow Jesus. This is a great podcast to share with your friends who are struggling to understand how we as Christians are supposed to engage with the Muslim world. My favorites: Nasser's Story (part 2); Standing in the Fire with Tom Doyle -Part 1 ; Tom Doyle: Standing in the Fire (Part 2); Ajla's Journey to Faith The Sent Life http://sentlives.com/ The host of The Sent Life is J.R. Ammon and he has spent the last several years reaching Muslims in a North American city. He builds each podcast episode around three rounds through which he unpacks missional principles and ideas. My favorites: Status Seeking; Love for Timothys
In our last post, Introduction to Discovery Bible Study (DBS), we looked at DBS as a discipleship tool to help followers of Jesus enter into a deeper, fuller reading of God's word and move toward greater maturity using DBS. With this article, we'll look at how to use DBS with your friends who are not yet followers of Jesus. Jesus commanded his followers to make disciples of all nations. Making disciples begins by helping people who are far from God find their way into a relationship with him. They need to hear the good news of Jesus. They need to be evangelized. There are a lot of images that probably come to mind when you think about evangelizing but I wonder if sitting down and reading the Bible with your Muslim friend is one of them. Richard Kronk conducted research on the conversion to Christianity of Muslims immigrants in North America and found that 82% of former Muslims in the study had found or recieved a Bible and read it. The Bible's influence should not surprise us. Scripture is clear that the word of God is powerful. Isaiah reminds us that: As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (55:10-11) The writer of Hebrews tells us that "the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (4:12). And Paul in his letter to the Romans makes it abundantly clear that "faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ " (10:17). If we believe what the Bible says about the Bible, then we should do all we can to help our Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist friends find their way into the Bible, to read it for themselves and allow the word of God and the Holy Spirit to work in their hearts and minds. Discovery Bible Study is a simple tool that you can facilitate. It allows non-believeing friends to explore scripture in a non-threatening way and provides you a simple format to help them discover God in His word for themselves. It relies on the word of God and the Holy Spirit rather than on you. DBS is in one sense a slow form of evangelism. It is as well a powerful tool to begin to set the DNA of new believers and begin training them even before they commit to following Jesus. It is simple - we read a scripture together and together explore the scripture through a series of questions. Because of this simplicity anyone can facilitate a discovery Bible study; you, new believers, even those who have not yet believed. Gordon Baines in his article, DBS in a Nutshell, cites six key reasons why he thinks DBS is such a powerful tool:
Intervarsity, in an article about DBS, shares four important principles to consider. Discovery Bible Studies should focus on:
So How Does It Work? The first step is to simply ask your friend or a group of friends or a family if they would like to read the Bible with you. You can simply ask your friends this question: I'm looking for someone to read the Bible with me. Would you be interested? See if you can get together with them at their home and with their family. Gather around tea or coffee and follow the format below. Basic Format for a DBS Below is a basic format for DBS that we teach at our Everywhere to Everywhere events. It follows a three thirds process. The first third of meeting time is dedicated to pastoral care and taking care of one another as well as accountability. The second third is dedicated to the scriptures through the discovery method. The final third is focused on application, practice and commissioning. Allow equal time for each third - 20-30 minutes at least. Here is what your DBS time can look like: *Looking Back CARE What is one thing you are thankful for and one thing that is stressing you out? ACCOUNTABILITY How did you do this week with your personal application? Who did you share with? Did we meet any needs in our community? *Looking Up PASSAGE Read the scripture passage out loud 2-3 times. RETELL Retell the passage using your own words as if you were having a cup of coffee with a friend. (Not what you think it means but simply retell it.) DISCOVERY QUESTIONS
*Looking Forward PERSONAL APPLICATION How will you practically apply what you learned in the passage to your life this week? What is one thing you will do or change because of this story? Who can you tell about what your learned this week? When? BLESSING THE COMMUNITY Is there anyone we know who has a need and can we as a group do something about it? Who can we bless? What Passages Should I Start With? The passages that you chose to read during your discovery time will depend on the context. Around the Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist world, many are starting with a set of stories called Creation to Christ studies. These start with Genesis 1 - God's creation of the world, and then works forward to Christ. Starting with creation and our creator God allows you to begin with a story that is similar to what Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists believe. You can find a creation to Christ study at the link below. [Creation to Christ DBS Study] Other story sets start with Jesus. These can be good for someone who wants to learn about Jesus or for your friend who is disillusioned with church and religion. Below are a few more story sets and ideas. [Stories of Hope DBS Study] -- [Signs of John DBS Study] As you connect and grow to understand your friend or group, you’ll find that you will begin to put your own story sets together in response to the questions and needs of the group. For example, if your group has particular anxiety over the power of jinn (evil spirits in Islam) in the world, you might put together four or five stories of power encounters with evil spirits from the Bible. In the Intervarsity article cited above, the author includes story sets for topics like graduation, Easter and leadership. [Intervarsity Story Sets] Do you have any story sets that you use for a particular topic or issue? Share them in the comments below. Discovery Bible Study is a tested method of reading the Bible with your not yet believing friends. It is simple. It gets them into the living and active word of God and it allows them to discover for themselves the living God of the Bible. I would encourage you to start by doing a DBS with some believing friends or with your family. Commit to doing all of the Stories of Hope study or Signs of John study above. It will take some time to get used to DBS so stick with it. Once you familiarize yourself with the process – this should only take a time or two – begin praying for an opportunity to invite your non-believing friend to read a story of God’s book with you. And be sure and check out the video and resources below. Learn it - Apply it - Share it - Today. Helpful Resources
Books: - Miraculous Movments, - What Jesus Started, - Contagous Discilple Making, - The Father Glorified Articles: How to Reach the World with a New Style of Bible Study Discovery Bible Study Various DBS Topical Story Sets Teaching Videos: City Team Videos - No Place Left Videos - Interviews: Gary Stump - James Nyman - David Watson *books are affiliate links The writer of the book of Hebrews hands out a gentle rebuke to the readers of the letter in chapter 5 verses 12 – 13: "In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." Something has gone wrong! The readers of this letter have somehow stagnated in their faith, remaining inmature and ungrowing. Some in fact, are in danger of falling away, of leaving the faith and returning to the idols of their previous lives. I think the message to the Hebrews could probably be given to many in our Western churches today. Though we have a long Christian heritage, our faith often sits in our lives like an ornament of something that has become just another decoration representing a sort of shallow civic religion rather than a transformative and transforming faith. The question then is how do help disciples of Jesus – everyone who calls themselves a Christian – train themselves to distinguish good from evil and become mature. One tool that I encourage groups of believers to use is Discovery Bible Study (DBS). DBS is a way to enter into a transformative reading of the scriptures in a church or group setting. It requires everyone to dig into the word, to wrestle with it and to apply it to their lives. It works toward obedience rather than just knowledge. Forms of discovery Bible study are at the core of most of the disciple making movements around the world today. Here is how it works. First, read the passage of scripture that your group has decided to study out loud to the group. Then have someone else read the passage out loud again. If it seems helpful, you could even read it a third time, out loud. This third time of reading the passage may be helpful because the next step is to have someone volunteer to retell the story or passage in their own words. The goal is to get a good enough grasp on the story so that you could retell it to a friend over coffee the next day if you needed to. Collective memory is better than individual memory so the group can feel free to jump in and help with the retelling. Next the facilitator (facilitator, not teacher) will lead the group into a series of questions that will help everyone enter into a deeper reading and understanding of the story. One of the more common set of questions is called the Sword Method which I’ll share here, but the focus is on asking questions that get the group engaging with the text. Here are the common sword questions:
I use a little different set of questions but the principle is the same. These discovery questions allow the Holy Spirit and God’s word to be the main driver of our learning. To keep the focus on obedience and not just learning knowledge, these discovery questions are followed by a time of application. The group works together to identify how the Lord would have them apply what they have learned from the passage into their lives that very week. Many discovery groups work together to come up with “I will” statements. “This week I will . . . “ These are written down with the expectation that the group will start the next week’s meeting time with accountability – How did you do with your “I will” statement? If it is important to obey Jesus, then it is important that we expect that as followers of Jesus, we will obey Jesus. This is one of the key differences between discovery Bible study and what we usually do at church on a Sunday morning. It’s where the rubber meets the road! DBS is an exercise in depending on God, not man and will drive those who practice it deeper into a mature, growing, active faith. This is not to say that preaching as we know it in the churches we grew up in is bad or wrong or not important. It is to say though that if a 30 minute sermon on a Sunday morning where an expert tells the church what the Bible says and how we should apply it to our lives is the only way we engage with the word of God as congregations, then we are probably not growing the way we should. We're still stuck with milk, not solid food! House churches all across the world are using discovery Bible study. In almost every context where the church is growing exponentially, some form of DBS is present. It pushes its practitioners to maturity as they learn to dig in for themselves, as they learn to self feed on the world of God and as they learn to apply the truths of scripture to their lives. There were two men in the story that Jesus tells about where you’ll build your house. They both “heard” the word of the Lord. They both knew what God had said. The key difference was that one chose to apply it, the man who built his house on a rock. The other was content just to know and his end was destruction. Discovery Bible Study is a great tool for the discipleship of believers young and old. It will teach new believers to self feed on the word of God and provide a simple tool for all believers to use to disciple others. DBS is also a fantastic tool to use to read the Bible with non-believers; with Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. We'll explore that idea in a future article. Learn it. Apply it. Share it. Today! Learn from others about Discovery Bible Study
DBS in a Nutshell Cru DBS Guide Intervarsity DBS Training Video DBS Distilled in Mission Frontiers Mission Network Three Column Discovery Bible Study It was a story that gripped the world for nearly two weeks. A Thai soccer team and their coach, trapped in a cave by rising waters were rescued in a daring and dangerous mission by Navy SEALS. It was with hope that the world watched the courage and tenacity of the rescue team and the resilliance of the boys. Last week I recieved an update from a friend who had been in Thailand for a conference with OMF. He relayed the obeservations that one of his collegues made from the rescue mission in relation to reaching the unreached in our world. I recieved permission to share those observations here. No doubt you’ve heard reports about the Thai soccer team rescued from a cave. Our friend, Larry Dinkins has shared some insightful observations to consider. Thank you for praying that God will thrust out scores of more missionaries to share Christ’s love with unreached people groups across East Asia. Larry shares these comments: The rescue and the picture above I think gives us a graphic image of what it is going to take to reach the unreached: teamwork, dedication, perserverance, focus and hard work. Are we up to the task? Let us meditate on Paul's words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:3-7: Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer. Similarly, anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this. Jesus is worth all of our efforts; all of our sacrifice; all of our lives. Learn more about the unreached at Joshua Project.
Learn how you can be trained to do be a part of reaching the unreached locally and globally at our next E2E training event. LEARN MORE I first met Any McCullough at an international church in Central Asia. He was on an short trip preparing to move to our city and we had the privilege of taking them out to eat that day. As a language coach and a friend, I got to have a bit of a front row seat to the settling of his family and team into the cross cultural context of ministry. What I observed impressed me in so many ways and so when I saw he had written a book on how we should enter into new cultures, I was excited. Global Humility: Attitudes for Mission is powerful, insightful and a must read for anyone interested in cross-cultural ministry. Broken into six different sections, Andy explores all facets of cross cultural work through the lens of what he believes is the most important aspect of this work: humility. Filled with first hand experience, personal stories, Biblical insight and sharp observation, Global Humility is a must read for anyone interested in learning from the global church and in moving cross-culturally as an ambassador of Christ. We will certainly be incorporating some of the lessons into the Becoming a Cross Cultural Ambassodor session of E2E. In Andy’s own words, he hopes that this book will stimulate, provoke and challenge you and cause you to pray more, cause you to think about the world in a humbler way with a broader perspective. Global Humility does just that. Andy writes in an easy to read way that is engaging and insightful. There are so many nuggets of wisdom in this book and so here are some those nuggets that I found as I read: one from each chapter. I hope this will give you a taste of what the book is all about and motivate you to order your own today. Click Here to Get Global Humility* Section 1 - Moral Humility: Thinking About Sin Chapter 1 - Tamar: Voice from the Margins One of the great sins of those who cross cultures, particularly those who travel from the powerful to the powerless, is the sin of judging. The centre judges the margins. The strong judge the weak. The missionary judges the heathen. The Christian judges the non-Christian. Chapter 2 - The Sins of Jonah Humility is reading scripture and identifying with its weak characters. If Jonah had such gaping flaws, the chances are we do too. Jonah does not have much to teach us about strategy, but a whole load to teach us about our hearts. Chapter 3 - The Men from James The word of the gospel is able to keep and build the believers. All of the tree is in the seed. Everything is an enormous mature tree was originally in the seed; all the DNA necessary. A seed needs planting and watering and needs space clearing out for it to grow (James 1:21), but does not need adding to. So with the gospel of the grace of God in Christ! Chapter 4 - Softening Your Certainty Our greatest theologians have only read the first line of the first page of an infinite library which is the knowledge of God. May our speech, our self-perception and our approach to God and others be softer! Chapter 5 - Humanity as Victim We must not forget that Sin as Tyrant is as big a theme in the biblical witness as Sin as Choice. The latter is still true, and the Christian formulation of sin includes both, but one of the things that makes Christianity unique as a world religion is the picture of sin as a power oppressing humankind and hence, necessitating a Savior. Islam, for instance, would teach Sin as Choice but not Sin as Tyrant. We, however, have a Savior who came not to judge but to save the world! If we can see people in this way, then instead of blaming we will serve and instead of judging we will empathise. Section 2 - Public Humility: Thinking About the World Chapter 6 - Whose Story? The geographical heartlands of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam are still where they have always been, and the faithful go their on pilgrimage. Not so with Christianity. Chapter 7 - On Memory When introducing yourself to someone from a high-context culture, they don’t just want to know who you are as an individual, but who your father and grandfather were, where your people come from originally, where your village is. Third generation urban migrants still talk about their village, even if they have never been there. One of the major differences between identity in the East and the West is the role of memory. Section 3 - Semantic Humility: Thinking About Language Chapter 8 - Nimrod Versus Abram That is why Christian mission must be dominated by an Abrahamic ‘go’ rather than a Nimrodian ‘come’. In multicultural cities and towns of Europe the same dynamic is true. There are many in your town who can never come to your church, the geographic, linguistic, cultural barriers are too many. You may think your church is accessible because it has a good website and a wheelchair ramp, but what about emotional and cultural accessibility? Instead, you must go to them! Chapter 9 - Heart Language In any cross-cultural relationship, language is an invisible power differential. If our whole desire is to see local responsibility, local leadership, local ownership in the Church, one of the most decisive ways to achieve this is local language. Chapter 10 - Translatability One of the most important things about Christianity is its translatability. I can talk to God in my own heart language. God can speak to me (through the scriptures) in my own mother tongue. I don’t have to learn a sacred language - the gospel invades my language and renders it sacred! Section 4 - Intercultural Humility: Thinking About Differences Chapter 11 - Whose Reason? Have you ever noticed that in the Old Testament there are very few ‘photographic’ descriptions of appearance, whether of people or of buildings? But there is an obsession with the process of building. This because in the East, verbs are more important than nouns. For the biblical writers, describing what the temple looked like was not as important as describing how it was made. Chapter 12 - I Am Because We Are We have learned that when Westerners talk about church as ‘family’ they mean something very different to what Easterners expect. If you are going to use that word, are you prepared to live up to the implications? Family pool financial resources to send a nephew to university, or to buy a married couple a house. Family find jobs for each other. Family is invasive, comments on everything, admits no no-go areas. Chapter 13 - Honour Motivation There is a Turkish proverb, ‘A stone is weighty in its place.’ Where you are from, where you are known, you have weight. Chapter 14 - Multisense … if we discount all form and ritual, then we are making informality a gospel essential, when it is only a cultural preference. We must learn to contextualize to high-context cultures! Section 5 - Incarnational Humility: Thinking About Leadership Chapter 15 - Contextualize Yourself! Although it is rare for cross-cultural workers to genuinely ‘become’ local, the effort that you make to expose yourself to the same lifestyle as those you are seeking to reach - your schooling options, accomodation, work hours, food - will go a long way to communicating the compassion of Christ who lived among Jewish men as a Jewish man. Chapter 16 - Sent Like Jesus We are servants of the Sent One! Jesus’ incarnation is the model for our incarnation. His vulnerability is the template for our vulnerability. His humility, the prototype for our humility. His pain, the pattern for our pain. Chapter 17 - Scaffolding Reaching the unreached requires collaboration between different apostolic spheres, open-handedness and a non-possessive approach. Chapter 18 - Leadership is Not Like Riding a Bicycle The science of leadership is one of the most prevalent forms of neo-colonialism around in the Church today. Section 6 - Theological Humility: Thinking About Thinking Chapter 19 - Narrative The goal of missions is indigenous expression of ancient truth. The danger for missionaries is bringing the gospel plus something additional. Chapter 20 - Parable Jesus was unafraid to say ‘the kingdom of heaven is like . . .’ In fact, he knew that the only way our tiny human brains could conceive of the divine was through the medium of comparison to the material, everyday world. Chapter 21 - Theology as a Verb Theology should be taught as a verb and not as a noun. To theolog-ise. Especially cross-culturally. We must teach people how to think, not what to think. Chapter 22 - De-Westernising Your Eschatology Eurocentrism is rarely more evident in Bible interpretation than in the history of the interpretation of Revelation. Chapter 23 - Apostolic Plurality If an Indian reads a verse one way, and an Inuit reads it another way, because of cultural lenses affecting their reading, who is right? Who is wrong? And how can these be reconciled? How different should a Middle Eastern theology be from a North American theology? I know this is a mind boggling question, but we have to have the courage to ask it. Click Here to Get Global Humility* Take a moment to watch Andy talk about his book below. * The links to this book are affiliate links.
Are you using "Shema" statements to start spiritual conversations? One of the tools that I was trained to use to help start spiritual conversations with non-believers was the "Shema Statement". The Shema is the passage of scripture found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.” If we follow the example of scripture and believe that God is drawing people to himself (John 6:44), then the more shema statements we make with strangers, the more likely we are to discover the people that God has been preparing to hear the truth.
The basic idea of the Shema Statement is to make statements in our conversations with the people we meet each day that naturally lead to spiritual conversations. The idea is not to share the full gospel but rather to say things that lead to conversations that lead to sharing the gospel. It is through making shema statements that we can find the people who are seeking the truth. Here are some examples of Shema Statements:
Again, these statements are not said to share the full gospel. We say them prayerfully and then listen prayerfully for the response of the person we say them to. Some will not respond at all. Some might respond negatively. But others - those God has been preparing - will respond in ways that lead to further conversation and opportunities to share about Jesus and what He has done in our lives. Application
Learn it. - Apply it. Share it. Today. Read More: http://globalfrontiermissions.org/shema-statement/ Shema Statements are one of the tools we train everyone at Everywhere to Everywhere events to use and then we go out and practice using them. Come to our next E2E event or bring it to your city. [learn more] |
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