Tag / team building

by johnkking

Q&A: How do you encourage Christians who are very happy to sit and receive teaching from the ‘qualified’ to engage with this discovery model? What has worked for you?

Working through strategic preaching/teaching plans which expose these people to Kingdom texts which produce a Kingdom expansion call motivates some. How will passive people be called to “get on the pitch” rather than being only consumers?

Do not focus too much attention on the resistant. Invest time, energy and passion into the willing. Build a team out of these. “Start small to end big; focus on the few to win the many.” are two related the counter-intuitive statements that were learned by on the ground teams in Africa. You will not succeed in getting large numbers of people to take up new approaches at the same time. Their rhythms keep them doing what they are doing. Who are the people who are willing to learn new rhythms?

Celebrate the stories of breakthrough which come from the efforts of your team. As success begins with your team, their stories have the potential to provide the “social proof” which is required by the 84% who are middle or laggard adopters. Focusing too much attention on the slower adopters increases their resistance, but often sidetracks you and your team. Read through Acts and pay special attention to how much attention Saul/Paul gives to the Jewish people in the synagogues who rejected his proclamation.

Focusing on the willing is not about giving up on the resistant, though. It is understanding that they need proof. Give it to them. Get to breakthrough and more will join you. Yes, I know you wish they would help you get to breakthrough, but do not allow that to distract you.

by johnkking

Reflecting on “A God-sized Vision”

From: “This is possible; I can see a path to accomplishing my vision.”
To: A God-sized vision, impossible apart from His intervention. Waiting on God for his guidance and power.

One of the main reasons so many CPMs seem to have started in modern times is that people accepted a God-sized vision of focusing on reaching entire people groups. When faced with the task of reaching an unreached group consisting of millions of people it becomes obvious that a worker cannot accomplish anything on their own. The truth that “apart from me you can do nothing” applies to all our endeavors. However, if we have a smaller goal it’s easier to work as if fruit depends on our efforts rather than on God’s intervention. (Copied from: https://2414now.net/2020/09/22/mindshifts-in-movements-part-1/)

A verse from Proverbs might come to mind as we reflect on this Mindshift: “When there is no clear prophetic vision, people quickly wander astray. But when you follow the revelation of the word, heaven’s bliss fills your soul.” (Proverbs 29:18, The Passion Translation). Note how the Message restates this proverbial saying: “If people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; But when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed.” (Proverbs 29:18, The Message).

When you reflect on your city, campus or beloved people group what do you think? Can you envision what a blessing they would become to other groups? Does your heart overflow with joy pondering how many people they will reach with the Gospel?

One of my friends who is a cross-cultural missionary in East Africa wrote the following in reflecting on this shift: “This one was a challenge for our team. I like the idea of having a God-sized vision, but when we tried to set massive goals we just felt like we were pulling numbers out of the air. I think this one deserves even more prayer and fasting until God really lays the vision on your heart.” Yes, the vision we seek to see become a reality must shape our goals, but I think he identifies why many of us are scared off by a God-sized vision. We set massively impossible goals for ourselves. How can 12 reach millions?

The answer is not to create smaller goals for ourselves, so much as it is to clearly acknowledge and communicate with God that we realize he must do the “heavy lifting.” A God-sized vision for your neighborhood will only become a reality when God’s resources are mobilized. But you are one of his resources. Will your heart learn to beat in rhythm with His heart? If so, then there will be realistic goals you can formulate for yourself which align with the vision he is giving you for them.

Consider a Campus ministry to a university with an enrollment of 11,638. When you check you discover that they have 3,600 beds in their on-campus housing. Either number will be too large for any team to reach, especially with the turnover expectations. But one DMM minded catalyst has prayed fervently and arrived at the idea of raising up 80 disciple makers. Why 80? There are forty floors in those campus dorms and he believes that Jesus’ strategy of sending workers out in pairs has incredible value.

His goal is still a steep hill to climb. It will stretch him and his team greatly. While 80 is more manageable than 3,600 or 11,638, it still is a stretch. But it also shapes the kind of training he is doing in his attempts to raise up 80 (by the way, he says they started with 3, then 5 and is up to 8, so there still is much to be done). The goal is to equip everyone trained to be able to start a Discovery Group in a way that other students not only come to faith, but they are simultaneously equipped to start new groups with other people. Generational multiplication is not fast on the front end. It actually can be rather slow, but it carries in its DNA the explicit goal of increasing the capacity to equip others to facilitate new groups in ways participants can be equipped to start new groups.

Global DMMers were pushed to develop simpler strategies because our desire was to raise up disciple makers more quickly than we had previously thought possible!