Study the map. What do you see?

If you drew a map of your ministry, what would it look like?

In the latest Movements podcast Jeff Sundell reports in with updates from the field and insights on how to multiply workers who make disciples.

Subscribe to the podcast or download the mp3.

In the interview Jeff refers to the Discipleship Cycle resource.

Here’s an article from Jeff in Mission Frontiers.

“T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution” (Steve Smith with Ying Kai)

UPDATE: The mp3 download link should work now.

A few years ago I visited friends who had chosen to live and work in the slums of a major South American city. I was deeply impressed with their commitment to serve among the poor as a family, despite the high levels of crime and disease. They were a living witness to God’s presence in a dark place.

I asked my friend, how many people live in this slum? There were over 120,000. I wondered what it would take to reach the whole slum, not just one neighborhood.

I’ve visited Kabera a slum of over 1,000,000 people in Nairobi, Kenya. It was overwhelming. Our vision for the spread of the gospel has to extend beyond presence in one neighborhood, to every man, woman and child in such a place.

If instead of asking ourselves What would Jesus do? we asked, What did Jesus do? our ministries would look very different. Jesus would have had a plan to reach every neighborhood. Jesus would have been on the move connecting, looking for households of peace, training workers among the people themselves.

Jesus would not be satisfied until the mission moved beyond what he did, to a growing movement of ordinary people.

Floyd McClung shares one of his happiest moments so far in Africa. . .

Anyway, my D-Group on Wednesday evenings is with 4 Malawian men who are new believers and future church planters. They live in shacks, are dirt poor, but most important, they have a vibrant, growing love for Jesus and a willingness to sacrifice in extreme ways to make Jesus known. I am investing in future leaders of movements that will transform Africa!

What made the D-Group last Wednesday so powerful to me was the fact that I no longer lead it, the guys are growing in their faith, and, well it is hard to put in a few words, but they get it. They are preparing to go change their nation. They are allowing the Word of God to transform their lives. The main thrust of a D-Group is simple obedience… not more and more head knowledge, but listening to God through the Word, then obeying, then the next week, taking time to give feedback about their victory of failure in obeying that one thing God said.

A D-Group operates on the principle that the best teacher for non-Christians and new Christians alike is the Holy Spirit, and the best book for them to be taught from is the Word, and the best process is obedience oriented self-discovery

read on . . .

So far Germany’s brilliance in attack has derailed the World Cup campaigns of Australia (4-0), England (4-1) and Argentina (4-0).

Yet just six years ago the national team returned from 2004 European Championship in Portugal without winning a single game.

Jurgen Klinsmann tells the story of how German football was rebuilt from the ground up. Here’s an edited version.

I got the chance to decide on the direction we took when I agreed to take over as Germany coach that summer, with current manager Joachim Loew as my assistant.

‘Jogi’ and I began the whole regeneration process by trying to give our national team an identity.

We decided to go down an attack-minded route, passing the ball on the ground from the back to the front line as quickly as possible using dynamic football.

From that, we created a style of play that this Germany team in South Africa now really lives and breathes.

When Jogi and I took over the German side, we made our plans very public and made it clear that we were trying to rebuild from the bottom up.

The German Football Association (DFB) helped us by putting a lot of pressure on all the first and second division teams in the Bundesliga to build academy programmes and ensure talented young players were coming through.

We held workshops with German coaches and players, asking them to write down on flip charts three things: how they wanted to play, how they wanted to be seen to be playing by the rest of the world and how the German public wanted to see us playing.

We then announced that it was our intention to play a fast-paced game, an attacking game and a proactive game.

Once we had done all that, we created a curriculum for German football.

I brought in a former international team-mate of mine, Dieter Eilts, to run the under-21s and said they had to play the same way as the senior team because they would be a feeder for it.

I was always looking long-term but I knew our plans would be measured by our success at the 2006 World Cup.

I was basically doubted for the two years I was coach – and when we lost 4-1 to Italy in a friendly game three months before the 2006 World Cup, everybody wanted my blood!

We had another game three weeks later against the United States and we won that one 4-1.

That victory saved my job and kept me in charge for the World Cup because the DFB had been ready to make a change. They wanted the conservative approach again, not the revolution.

But I kept on being positive, explaining that this was how I wanted us to play. I did not know if we would master it in time for the 2006 World Cup but we would give it a shot.

We had the players for four solid weeks before the tournament began and were able to get our thoughts across. They agreed to train the way we wanted them to and do extra work. Soon they started to believe in the system.

In the second game, when we beat Poland with a last-minute goal, the whole nation embraced us and said “yeah, that’s our team and that’s how we want them to play”. We lost in the semi-final against Italy but I was still very proud.

After that World Cup, I was burned out after two years of banging my head against a wall but I made it clear to the DFB that Jogi had to take over after me to continue the job we had started.

He has continued to develop that initial style of play and is enjoying success. It has taken Germany six years to learn to play it properly – and it has developed along the way – but the players are completely comfortable with it now.

Germany’s style of play might work for England because, in a way, Germany now play a lot like a typical Premier League team, with the emphasis on pacy attacks.

But whatever approach the England team decides on – whether it is attacking or defensive, patient or high tempo – everybody in the English game needs to sign up to it.

After all, it is the players, coaches and clubs who will help to make it work.

Now go back and list the lessons for renewing an organisation or movement and the lessons in growing leaders.

Hopefully Germany will beat Spain later this week and not spoil a good story!

HT: IngitionJournal

According to conventional wisdom, Paul spent three years in the solitude of Arabia between his conversion and visiting Jerusalem.

It’s assumed he spent the time in prayer and study preparing for his future ministry.

There’s no evidence Paul spent the three years in quiet contemplation. We just assume he did.

Here’s what we do know, according to Eckhard Schnabel and Martin Hengel and FF Bruce:

1. Paul’s missionary work began in Damascus immediately after his conversion (Acts 9:19-22).

He proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues as the Son of God and promised Messiah.

The opposition stirred up by Paul’s missionary work is an indication that his preaching was successful and resulted in a good number of Jewish believers in Jesus.

2. Paul went to Arabia to continue his missionary work in obedience to God’s call (Gal 1:15-17).

Arabia (in the region of modern Jordan) was not just desert, but also a flourishing civilization made up of cities, sea ports and cultivated land.

In the cities of Nabatean kingdom, south of Damascus, there were synagogues that Paul could have used as an entry point.

Paul’s conversion was also his calling to mission. He didn’t suddenly become a missionary years after his conversion. Paul met the risen Christ. He was commanded to preach the gospel and go to the Gentiles. Three years of solitude in the desert does not fit.

Luke never says Paul went “into the desert,” as John the Baptist and Jesus had done. Luke says he went “into Arabia” where there was both desert and civilization.

Paul relates his Arabian visit closely with his call to preach Christ among the Gentiles (Gal 1:15-17). The point he is making to the Galatians is that he began to discharge this call before he went up to Jerusalem to see the apostles. Therefore none could say it was they or any human authority who commissioned him as an apostle to the Gentiles.

When his mission was complete in Arabia Paul returned to Damascus where the representative of King Aretas of the Nabateans sought to have Paul arrested (2 Cor 11:32-33). Why would Nabateans take action against Paul if all he had been doing in Arabia was prayerful contemplation?

Paul’s mission in Arabia had stirred up trouble.

3. Therefore Paul’s missionary career began immediately he was converted.

By the time Paul and Barnabas set off on what we call their “first missionary journey” (Acts 13) they were already seasoned missionaries who had seen both Jews and Gentiles come to faith, and churches established.

Why is this important? Missionary movements mobilize new disciples, like Paul, immediately for evangelism and church planting. They are action oriented. Their leaders learn their theology on their feet.

Don’t pass the torch — start with it in their hands.
Floyd McClung

You’ve got to listen to Floyd on church planting movements to catch his heart for Africa and the world. Visit his blog to download the audio or video of his series on CPMs.

Recently I heard of a nation in Central Asia in which vast amounts of money are flowing in from the Middle East to spread Islam.

In one remote village a pastor returned home after completing his studies to threats of death and intimidation. He was warned off any intention of planting a church in the village.

So he left.

Persecution is unfortunately a common experience for believers in this part of the world.

But there is something else wrong here.

Where did we get the idea that the best way to train a church planter was to take them out of their situation and put them in a classroom for a few years? Meanwhile Islam spreads from village to village.

Eventually the church planter returns having lost touch with his people. His training in the city has lifted him out of his village educationally, culturally, and financially. He stands alone in the place he once called home. Who can blame him for leaving?

I don’t. I blame the people who advised him to leave in the first place. I blame the westerners who provide the funding to keep a system like this going.

I asked a missions leader, Why aren’t church planters trained in the villages alongside their people? He told me there were too many logistical problems. The villages were remote and they didn’t even have electricity. How could you train leaders in such an environment?

Obviously the muslims can do it. I’m assuming Jesus was able to train leaders without electricity.

If we have to build colleges to train the pastors we pay to plant churches, we’ll never see a multiplication movement that reaches the 80 million people of Central Asia.

Something needs to be different. Something is different wherever we see church planting movements.

Jay: Let’s go on to your fourth characteristic — rapid mobilization.

Steve: This is a simple concept — everybody has a job to do. Movements don’t abolish the clergy, they abolish the laity. They ordain everyone for ministry.

You see it in Jesus’ ministry. Even before the woman at the well has come to a full understanding of who he is, she’s off telling her town and village about this man who has told her all about her life and bringing them to see Jesus. Right from the first steps of Christian discipleship people are mobilized for ministry and there are no artificial or non-Biblical barriers to entry.

The US frontier was won by the Baptists and the Methodists because they mobilized young men on horseback (this was especially the Methodists) as circuit riders; as preachers. Francis Asbury in the US, and before him John Wesley in the Britain were criticized for releasing ordinary people to spread the gospel and to lead groups of believers. Wesley would not apologize for it. He felt that these common ordinary people were ministers of the gospel.

So movements just don’t create those artificial barriers that keep people out of ministry; that professionalizes ministry. The problem isn’t the clergy, the problem is clericalism; which is the concept that somehow there’s a class of people who do ministry and everybody else is on the sidelines. It’s all hands on deck if you’re in a movement.

Jay: What’s the balance between rapid mobilization and empowering young believers and the whole process of discipleship and leadership development? How rapid should mobilization be?

Steve: The reason for the rapid mobilization is that movements create learning opportunities in what we call leadership farms.

An example I could think of this is how young players are developed in Australian Rules Football. From a young age they are learning pieces of the game and putting those pieces together and step-by-step they’re growing in how to play football.

It’s the same for movements, they put everybody to work, but then the best movements, and Wesley was great at doing this, create supportive environments where as people are doing, they are learning. And so Wesley’s circuit riders, may have started out uneducated but they didn’t stay that way. They were continually reading, they were educating others, they were even selling educational literature to the common people and raising the level of everybody’s education and learning.

The key balance is, you throw people in the deep end and then you build supportive environments and relationships around them so they continue to learn as they go.

Roland Allen wrote about rapid mobilization almost a century ago. George Patterson was a great practitioner of this in Honduras. It is essential that people learn by doing and have mentors, that their learning is field and life driven. Its not just the fact I have to pass an assignment, that I need to study this book of scripture, its because I need to teach it next week to a new band of disciples and so help me understand this piece of scripture so I can go and teach it and then let’s debrief how it went. So that’s the model, it’s not an either/or it’s a both/and.

Hi Steve,

I’m reading your book at the moment and I get the impression that you are against theological education. What do you think?

I will say that when I studied Church History at Bible College I found it boring. Thanks for making Church History interesting.

Liz

Here’s my response.

Hi Liz

Thanks. I’ve always believed that Church History is not just the history of theology but the story of the people who made history.

I’ve spent 17yrs in higher education (part time). Economics/Politics, Theology, Doctor of Min. I LOVE study. I enjoyed Greek!

I just don’t think we should exclude 99% of the world’s population from leadership in the church because they will never complete formal theological education.

What they need is life-long, on-the-job training, which engages head, heart and hands—knowledge, character and skills.

I also think theological education is a socialization process that creates a professional clergy and undermines the rapid expansion of the church. Movements “democratize” the faith.

With few exceptions theological education is a secularizing force, even for the biblically orthodox.

I like what Roland Allan said, “Most heresies result from the speculations of learned men.”

Having said that, we must have teachers in the body of Christ and in every missionary movement that are theologically trained. We need Pauls and Lukes who were both active in evangelism and church planting and at the same time sharp theologically. But most churches in the NT were not planted by our equivalent of “ordained” clergy.

I think it’s reasonable to assume that after Peter left Cornelius (Acts 10), that it was the new believer, Cornelius, who became the “pastor” of the new church that met in his home. At that stage Peter didn’t even have a copy of the New Testament to leave behind.

I’m trying to have it both ways. But in the West, the pendulum needs to swing away from formal theological training as THE road to leadership. The mandate is clear: we are to make disciples of Jesus and teach them to obey what he commanded. Movements take both knowledge and obedience seriously.

Thanks for the question. I might turn it into a blog post. . .

Steve