One Lesson Every Two Minutes
This just came in from a mentor we’ll call Yoda Bill.
Brother you hit a home run with your interview of Les.
I am encouraging trainers to cut this into short teaching segments.
Why not challenge your listeners to go over it and list the key lessons? There’s one every at least every two minutes.
Keep it up!
I thought Bill was exaggerating when he said, one key lesson every two minutes. I went over the first twelve minutes and found seven lessons.
1. God’s sovereign preparation
Les’s grandfather was a missionary in Tanzania, East Africa in the 1970-80s. He began with a handful of believers and ended with a movement of half a million people. As Les grew up he watched and learned from his example.
2. Desperation driven by a God-sized vision
The language group had 9 million people.
Les and his family arrived in 2006. They had planted a church in the US that had multiple small groups, but this experience was not adequate to meet the challenge of multiplying disciples and churches that could keep up with rapid population growth.
They could have planted a church, but only a movement could fulfil the vision.
Desperation caused Les and his wife to fall to our knees every day in prayer.
3. Best practice training plus faith
After 18 months of language and culture acquisition, they attended some best practice training in church planting movements.
During that event Les and his wife were reading Luke 10 and praying for workers for the harvest. They read John 4 where it says, You say four more months before harvest, but I say the harvest is ready now.
That passage came alive, and they knew the Holy Spirit was saying we were headed into a harvest time. As a result the training was a feast, they had faith for what God was about to do.
They came up with plans they could implement immediately.
4. Immediate implementation
For the last 18 months they had been taking a group of 5-8 people from Creation to Christ, none had turned and believed. They decided to immediately share the gospel with them.
They called the group together and gave them an overview of Creation to Christ in about ten minutes.
Everyone wanted to follow Jesus. Les told them they need to pray a prayer of commitment. They replied, “Oh this is a covenant prayer. We all need to stand and lay our hands open so we can make a proper covenant with Christ and Christ alone.” Which is what they did.
5. Trust the Holy Spirit in the people of God
These new believers were teaching Les how to express the gospel in their culture. God made it clear that he wanted Les to trust these nationals right from the start on how to follow Christ in their culture.
He challenged the group to think of one person they could tell about Jesus. The least educated woman in the room said, “I can think of 5-10 people, is that ok?”
The Holy Spirit rebuked Les for underestimating God’s power in his people.
This woman began sharing with everyone. She rode the bus and taxi routes just to meet new people to share with.
6. Make disciples, not just converts
The woman who has constantly sharing was not good at making disciples. So Les paired her with another believer who wasn’t good at evangelism but he was great at teaching new disciples.
Les and his wife watched him, took notes and changed how we taught new disciples. They trained other disciples using his methods.
He taught in a way that was “sticky” in the culture, so the teaching would pass along generations of new disciples. He would pair a song with each lesson and then the songs would be incorporated into their worship.
7. Expect trouble
After six months Les and his family were outside of the country for medical treatment when severe persecution hit the new disciples. [More on this in the next post.]
Meanwhile, how many lessons can you and your team find in this case study?
