Lessons from Jeff Sundell

Over the last decade I've been regularly learning about discipleship and particularly, the principles of discipleship that lead to multiplication and the rapid expansion of the kingdom of God.  One of the sources of that continued learning which has perhaps had more influence than any other is the Movements Podcast by Steve Addison.  

Steve regularly interviews practitioners from across the world who are applying these principles and seeing movements emerge.  I'd encoueage you to skip over to Steve's website right now and find out how you can subscribe to the podcast.

Visit  Movements.net  Now

One of those practitioners who has been frequent guest and who is one of the leaders of the No Place Left movement across the world is Jeff Sundell.  It is not without reason that Jeff,  who hales from Bugger Hollow North Carolina and who spent much of his life making disciples in Asia, has been perhaps the most frequent guest on the Movements Podcast.

And so when the most recent episode of the podcast featured a report from Jeff and his wife Angie's summer in Athens, I queued it up on my phone to listen to right away.  I was not disappointed and there were so many nuggets of insight in their reporting that I went back and listened again, taking notes of the things that seemed extra important.

And so with this post I'd like to share those insights and encourage you to find some time in the next week to listen to the interview for yourself (or you can watch now below).
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Listen to Jeff and Angie's Interview

Here are a five of the nuggets that I gleaned from their conversation.  If there are any "nuggets" that you hear that I didn't mention, feel free to share them in the comments below.
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1.  The Gospel is worth it.

Angie started the inteview talking about the many times they heard heartbreaking stories from refugees who had lost everything.  People whose homes were destroyed, who had lost jobs, who had lost everything and over and over again they would say, "It was worth it!  It was worth it because when I came here I got to hear about Jesus."  The Gospel is worth it!

2.  Train everyone to be a disciple maker.

One of the adjustments that the disciple makers had to make as they worked with refugee populations had to do with the transient nature of the people.   A new believer from a Muslim background might be in Athens for a year or they might just be there for a month or even days.  The workers on the ground began to cast vision early and often for the great commission and to train everyone to identify lostness, to share their faith and to make disciples.  Everyone they worked with was seen as a potential missionary carrying the gospel to the next location whether that was further into Europe or back to their own country.  Train everyone!

3. Little happens if disciples of Jesus are not broken for lostness.

Again and again, they saw that the hearts of those who had found faith in Christ and who were sharing that faith boldly, were broken for the lost.  Their families didn't know Jesus. Their people didn't know Jesus.  That was a heavy burden on their hearts which compelled them to go and to pray and to share.  All the methods and tools in the world will do little good if the people of God are not broken by the lostness around them.

4. Focus on the grandchildren.

This was one of the most interesting and powerful lessons from the interview.  As the summer progressed, one of the changes they made in coaching and relating to the leaders in Athens, was to stop asking about how they were doing at sharing the gospel, discipling new believers and leading new churches and to begin talking with them only about how their grandchildren were doing at those things.  In other words, they began consistently asking about their disciples' disciples.  This shift lead to more concientious focus on training disciples to train disciples and resulted in better discipleship.

5.  A Hub stategy allows for local, national and global mission to exist.

I had first heard the idea of a hub strategy from Steve Smith in a 2016 article in Mission Frontiers Magazine.  That article caught my attention and over the last few years I have continued to think about what home hubs would actually look like.  It was Troy Cooper's Great Commission Pipeline video about a hub strategy which was published in April of 2018 that really fleshed out the idea for me though.  Jeff and Angie got to see the fruit of that kind of strategy in Athens and it is exciting to see it develop and grow.

​Those are five things that I gleaned from the interview.

What about you?  
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Watch the interview below!