mbjones

In our second week of CPx, we had a guest speaker come and spend several days laying out a method and structure for church planting simple churches in such a way to spawn movements. He started by digging into the “Great Commission”:

Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20

To do this we broke it up into specific commands contained within it and juxtaposing them with what the western church tends to do.

Go!

The first command we see in the great commission is to GO! It is a commissioning requiring movement and not one designed to feed into our tendencies toward complacency. More often than not, our tendency as a church (universal) is to stay. We’ve fine tuned the process, in fact, and church is little more than an event or club we head to one or two days a week. The greater body of believers has little to no sense of going in their lives. I read a stat some years ago that said that over 95% of Christians, after having been a Christian for 7ish years or more, knew zero non christians. That’s incredibly sad to think about — Jesus explicitly commands us all to go to them, yet we choose to stay while the world goes to hell around us.

We also tend to mix up the GO! command with a COME! command. We require attendance to do something as simple as sharing the Gospel. It wasn’t ever about attendance in Jesus and Paul’s time, as we see in the book of Acts. Paul and the disciples showed up in synagogues and other third spaces, going directly to the people rather than making the people come to them.

In traditional church settings we also have a tendency to send others rather than ourselves. We miss that the command to GO! is broad and extends to us all. And so, we get these people called missionaries and send them to the ends of the earth (which is awesome — don’t miss the point!). People everywhere need Jesus though, be it an office place — a health club — anywhere else you can think of. Moving far away isn’t an automatic. More often than not, we are called to GO! right where we are at. I had just as much a responsibility to share Jesus where I was before coming to Africa as I do now that I’m here.

Another tendency in some church settings is also isolation. We insulate ourselves with people that are just like us and stay in our own little shells, never coming out to GO! as Jesus commands.

Make Disciples!

The second command is another very important one — Jesus commissioned us all to go and make disciples of Jesus, teaching them what He has taught us. But does the western church do this? If we took a serious look at the church landscape, is disciples what we would find?

More often than not it isn’t, particularly in the American context. We make consumers much more often than disciples. Reducing the Gospel to a simplistic transaction has instilled it with the same value as that of buying expensive computers. We find something we like and tend to stay loyal to the brand but if something new or cheaper or in some way flashier comes along — it really isn’t anything to switch. Much about the seeker and attractional models tend to reinforce this. They are built around entertaining and capturing attentions and get flashier and crazier and more gimmicky with each passing year. Anything to get them in the pews, though, right?

And speaking of that, all to often discipleship gets lost in the quest for crowds and numbers. If we draw them in by the drove, week after week, that must be good right? Well, Barna research would tend to indicate otherwise:

• Fewer than half of all adults can name the four gospels.

• Many professing Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the disciples.

• 60 percent of Americans cannot name even five of the Ten Commandments.

• 82 percent of Americans believe “God helps those who help themselves” is a Bible verse.

• 12 percent of adults believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

• A survey of graduating high school seniors revealed that over 50 percent thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife.

• A considerable number of respondents to one poll indicated that Billy Graham preached the Sermon on the Mount.

• Six out of ten Americans reject the existence of Satan.

• Four out of ten Americans believe that when Jesus Christ was on earth He committed sins.

• Five out of ten believe that anyone who is generally good or does enough good things for others during their life will earn a place in Heaven.

• Four out of ten believe that the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths.

• Seven out of ten born again Christians said they do not believe in moral absolutes.

• Only one out of ten Christians base their moral decision-making on the principles taught in the Bible.

Those stats speak volumes to me about the nature of discipleship within the American church. We are great about making members though. And programs. And events.

Of All Nations!

The third command is really an extension of the last — and its the drive to go and disciple not just individuals but nations. All to often its about the individual and not the nations — the object we are going after is much grander than we might necessarily think.

When brainstorming the common approach to discipling nations, we discussed the tendency for discipleship to be homogenous (we go to the “same”) rather than being heterogeneous (intentionally going to the “other”). I think this begins to get at the heart of incarnational living — Jesus is for all tribes, tongues and people. It is our job to take Him to them, bleeding His life, death and resurrection into the cracks of their culture. In this way, entire cultures can enter into the kingdom of heaven.

This is one of those things that excites me quite a bit and really gets me going.

Baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit

Baptism is an important thing but it’s not THE thing. That’s Jesus. It’s not some magical or esoteric event either. Rather, it is a public declaration of who is lord of your life. It’s placing a stake in the grand that says, “my life now and forevermore belongs to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.” It’s also a symbolic act — an identification with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Just as He died, was buried and rose again to new life, so we die to our old lives, are buried beneath the water, and rise again to new life in Christ.

That it is a command of Jesus just solidifies its importance (if its prophetic stance of identification and allegiance hadn’t already gripped you). But do we do this (and do it well)? Do we baptize into the trinity? It’s easy to say yes! But we often baptize into religious affiliations, into denominations and into doctrinal statements. They take prime importance and are the grid through baptism is decided and administered. I remember a friend some time ago discussing baptism in a church they were attending and it was all dependent not in the trinity but the particular doctrinal stance of the associated denomination. All to often we get caught up in those details.

Another trap that’s easy to fall into is relegating baptism solely into the realm of choice: it’s a personal decision and we can decide whether or not we do it or not. It’s true that salvation itself isn’t dependent on baptism. But Jesus is quite clear that it’s something we are to do, and probably as we are able to. It feels like their is immediacy in the words of Jesus — that’s it’s important enough to Him to command it and not just suggest it.

Teaching Them to Obey

This is one category that can raise some tempers. The question begs a close examination of the nature of the sermon and what it gets across. Thinking high level — what exactly do we teach? Perhaps getting more specific, does the sermon if that is your primary mode of teaching fulfill the command of the great commission to teach disciples to obey everything that Jesus taught.

That is an interesting question. In sermons, preachers have the tendency to just talk at people rather than teach them. I’ve sat through many lessons where the pastor gets up and passionately spends time going through this 30 minute lecture and I come out and 3 hours later have no clear recollection of what went on. Is that teaching? If there is nothing to obey and especially nothing of Jesus to obey, is that really fulfilling the command of Jesus? And this happens often week after week.

I’ve preached in a traditional setting once and found it to be a fascinating experience. I honestly much better like “preaching” in house church settings where it seizes to be about me on the stage with a headset and instead becomes all of us circled around discussing the scripture and coming up with real and practical ways of applying the scripture together in everyday life.

And I haven’t gotten into the content of a lot of sermons. Are they scriptural? I’ve heard way too many that read like a self-help/motivational sermon and NOT Jesus’ Words to obey in everyday life. Cultural relevancy and self-esteem all too often trump the Bible and sometimes (probably more than we are willing to admit) church culture trumps it as well (I’m thinking of all you Baptist who can’t do anything fun, like dance). I’ve also heard many that read like magic formulas to get God to obey us: say this prayer and the genie will grant your wish — do this thing and the genie will do this — and so on. That’s not teaching to obey all that Jesus has taught us either.

And we’ve got to be careful of the flipside of the watered down/neutered Gospel: teaching to know and not to obey. Knowledge is a seductive drug. It’s easy to get caught up in the knowing and having your systematic theology ducks all in a row. But if all we do is know and not obey, then it is no better to us and we ignore the teaching of Jesus.

I Have Commanded

I think we kind of covered this above but we have to make sure that we are chasing after Jesus and His Word while not getting caught up in man made dogma and doctrine and everything that the church commands (that Jesus often might not).

In looking at these verses, there is one other thing I noticed that I find important: the commands of Jesus in these verses are bracketed by the presence of God. It is with the authority of heaven and earth that Jesus gives this commission. It’s in this authoritative presence of the Word of God that it’s given and, as the verses end, it’s in His presence with us til the end of the age that we walk in them and carry them out.

I find it exciting and challenging and incredibly rewarding to be invited to partner with Jesus in seeing every tribe, tongue and nation come to know Him, as well as challenged to truly walk in His commission and not the world’s, or the some church’s or some man’s. After working it out, here’s to living it out…

This week, instead of going into Masi on Sunday as we normally do, we went in on Saturday. There is a big bicycle race happening today — Sunday — (the Cape Argus race) and all of the roads in our vicinity are shut down because of it. So it mixed things up a little bit, but it was still an incredible day.

We had appointments scheduled for Sunday, but we were thankfully able to move most of them to Saturday, and we started the day by going to the first. It was with whom we think is the most peaceful and spiritually hungry man we’ve met (who happens to be from Zimbabwe — that’s a common thread for some reason). We’ve visited his house twice before specifically for Bible Studies, and each time its grown with different friends and family from the immediate area.

This particular day, we actually had two meetings planned with him. The first was a money management session and the second a Bible study. He and his wife and another friend came to each this day and it was an incredibly fruitful time.

The money management seminar was basically a time to go over the fundamentals of having a budget, saving for the future and being empowered throughout. I taught them a simplified version of the method my wife and I use — a modified envelope schema. We started by talking about recurring expenses — what we spend money on weekly and monthly — and having a category to classify every single expense we make. We discussed dividing his paycheck appropriately between the categories (making sure the “fixed” expenses like rent had enough and that more fluid categories like “food” had plenty as well). We taught them how to keep track of what to spend and the importance of making sure that everything — even little treats like ice cream — had a category from which they came. We also talked about the importance of saving a little, even if only R10 per paycheck, to prepare for the unforeseen expenses of the future, and that it was ok and good to make “special” categories so that they could get important items that might not fit elsewhere, like a new cooking set for the mama.

We take doing things like this for granted but it was totally mind blowing for this family. They had never even considered tracking what they spend. These concepts were all completely new. And that’s how it is it seems in most, if not all, of the townships. They grow up in families that have no inclinations towards managing their money. As soon as some comes in, its blown on a whim on whatever comes to mind. Basic stewardship just isn’t something passed from generation to generation.

It was exciting to me to see them get excited about budgeting and taking ownership in their own financial stewardship. It was encouraging to see them empowered to think past immediate desires and take serious stock at the actual needs in their lives.

And this, as it is with all that we do, was a discipleship issue. We don’t live outside the grasp of our heavenly Father, nor should we budget and consider finances outside the realm of His touch. We were able to encourage them to look to God as their provider, that He cares for them even more than the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and that even if disaster might strike (as it has a knack for doing), we could still rest firmly in the comfort of His arms. It’s in the simple truths and the simple actions taken in response to them where we see transformation occur. And it’s exciting.

But our day didn’t end there, and that wasn’t even the most exciting part of our story with this family. After the money management seminar, we did a Bible Study. The past two Bible studies there, we’ve looked at intro passages to the Bible together; today we decided to start digging into God’s story of creation, rebellion, sacrifice, repentance and commission. Creation was our starting point (and all that we got to), specifically reading Genesis 1:24-28:

God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: cattle, creeping things, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” It was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the cattle according to their kinds, and all the creatures that creep along the ground according to their kinds. God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.” God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.”

It’s a pretty straightforward passage and lays out some keys of creation: God created us all, every animal and every person and saw that it was good, and that people are all created in His image. We thought this would be our primary topic of discussion but God had other plans. We went through the passage as we normally do (which I promise to write more about soon) but before we finished we had a couple of questions. First, our main man’s wife asked, “Male and Female were both made in His image — does that mean God is married and has a wife?” This led us to begin talking about the grand love story of Scripture — God’s quest for a wife, visualized as Israel, and Jesus’ eventual consummation of that in His people — the Church. We talked much more eloquently than that, and I believe were spirit led because of the next question, from the main man himself: “I want to be baptized — how do I make that happen?”

This question honestly took me by surprise — we were talking about creation and NOT Jesus and baptism. But the Spirit moves through His Word. We asked Him what led him to this decision and he said that from the passage he was just impacted by how powerful God is juxtaposed with how much He must love us. Finding this to be a good answer we steered the conversation towards Jesus specifically and then to baptism. I got to share my testimony intermixed with the Gospel and the what baptism meant — dieing to our old selves and being raised in the resurrection of Christ — and that there wasn’t any specific power in the act but that it was a public declaration, a stake in the ground, that your life now belonged to Jesus and not the world (it can be good, I think, in places with a high spiritual awareness to distinguish between an act like baptism and weird or powerful magical type things that witchdoctors do). Anyways — at every step of the conversation both he and his wife said, “Yes, this is what we believe and this is what we want!” I had the honor of leading them in a sinner’s prayer and when we finished, we all hugged and celebrated being a part of the same family. And — on April 4th (which is Resurrection Sunday) they will be baptized, if we can get them to Africa House! Regardless — the Kingdom of God is now one family bigger!

After leaving their place, our only other significant encounter for the day was an impromptu Bible study with these guys named Joseph, Courage and Blessing. I normally don’t name names but these names were too cool NOT to. They all seem hungry and are interested; but our schedules never mesh (we met them our first day in Masi as well). We studied the same passage of Genesis together, and it was good — I just don’t know if we’ll be able to followup. The upside of our encounters with them is that they know who Jesus is and go to a church that at some level respects the Bible (many of the churches here don’t). Our goal isn’t to draw people out of existing churches but to empower them to chase hard after Jesus, to love one another and reach out to their neighbors and our hope that we have been able to do that, with them, at some level.

Like I said before — it was a pretty incredible day. I expected my story to end here when I started writing last night. But it doesn’t. I never dream but I have twice in my life had dreams that I remember, to this day, that seem to be significant and from Jesus. Last night I had my third and it relates to the events of the day.

In my dream I met a lady from a township. It wasn’t someone I currently know and I don’t necessarily think that that’s important. What is is that we were able to encourage and empower her. She was struggling and had dreams but didn’t know how to pursue them. She really wanted to but didn’t believe that she could. Everyone was telling her that she was worthless and wouldn’t ever make anything of herself but we were able to speak the opposite into her life, beginning with the Gospel. As discipleship took its course, we were able to encourage her to step into those dreams of her heart and pursue them. This took the form of some sort of business she wanted to start and some sort of grant that was needed. We encouraged her to go to this place (it was ABSA, a local bank, in my dream) but this place never gave it to people like her (women from the township); it just wasn’t done, and from what people were told, would never be done. But she went confidently anyways and lo and behold, everything worked out perfectly and the business happened and her life was forever transformed in a big way. And that day we had a big party with her in Silver Palms (the place we are staying). It was a fun celebration but could have been better and Jesus was there and he walked over to a microwave and turned the power up as high as it could go, and then the party got really fun. And then I woke up.

And I remembered it (which never happens), felt like it was from the Lord (really, this is pretty much the case with any dream I remember vividly — the third time that I can recall) and felt like I know what it meant. First of all — discipleship is the beginning of relationship with people and it needs to be like that — firmly rooted in Jesus and the Gospel. He is the power of transformation in life and nothing less (hopefully we can all agree on this at the very least). Second of all — in our context and probably broadly when considering the world’s poor, there is a lot that has been spoken over people that they buy into that isn’t at all helpful — a lot of discouragement and a lot of things that keep them down. I was immediately reminded of our Zimbabwean friends and how budgeting was so foreign to them and so many people here because folks assume that they are always going to be bad with money and that they aren’t worth their time to even try and teach better life skills. Third of all — the ending. It’s important that we live out of a place of joy and praise and thanksgiving. We can’t forget that regardless of what it is, every good thing comes from the Lord, whatever it might be — food for our bellies, a sunset on the beach, a job or the blessing of a child. It all warrants our celebration and thanksgiving. To me, the ending is a reminder of that — that God is wanting to see us walk even more fully in a place of thanksgiving, not taking for granted any little thing that might come our way in life (something I’m keen on right now, living a life solely dependent on Him in a way that I never had before).

Anyways — I woke up encouraged and spurred onward by that dream. I was encouraged that Jesus is pleased with what we are doing — all of it — and that His desire really is for life transformation here on earth as it is in heaven. And I was spurred onward to see both more of that in the lives we meet in the townships (and elsewhere and our own) and much more thanksgiving and praise in our every day walks with Jesus.

And that brings us to the end of this past week in Masi — I hoped you enjoyed it!

I had another pretty incredible week in Masi. It’s amazing to witness, and be a part of, the move of God in a place. It is happening here — there is no doubt about it. Here’s a sampling of the highs and lows of the last three days:

Thursday

Thursdays currently are probably our busiest day. We always seem to have at least 3 meetings to get to. This week was no different — we started out with four meetings on our todo list. But this Thursday ended up being somewhat different — it was actually the day of answered prayer. The first was with the Zimbabwean group that officially started last week. As we were walking to their place we actually met two of the women. They were super excited to see us and even more glad that we were coming but weren’t actually able to meet. Lines got crossed (as is oft an issue here) and our contact into the group was out of town. But this was a good thing as it was an answer to prayer (he needed to get back home to Zim to attend a funeral). That wasn’t the only answered prayer of the group though: one man that we had prayed to get a job actually got a job after we prayed (which is a really significant thing) and another woman whom we had prayed for to have a safe and easy birth had just that.

Since we didn’t need to have a full blown Bible study with them, we used our newfound time to visit the other existing Zimbabwean house church. We found out that one of their prayers had been answered to (the one for safe birth). After briefly sharing with them, we headed to the house with the white picket fence (from the treasure hunt story I told last week). The man we met was there, as where 4 friends that he invited. We all had Bible study and it was a significant time — one of the women was touched enough that she broke down and shared her heart with all of us and we had a chance to pray for her and her husband. It was certainly one of those “Holy Spirit” moments.

After this, we took some time, as a group, to specifically lift up Masi in prayer. This was also a significant time as God gave me a verse to specifically pray into and for Masi (and for those reading this note, you can pray this as well): Isaiah 45:8 which says, “O Sky! Rain down from above! Let the clouds send down showers of deliverance! Let the earth absorb so that salvation may grow and deliverance may sprout up along with it. I, the Lord, create it.”

Friday

It’d be easy to label Friday as a down day, but God was still on the move, and it was good because of that. Our first appointment was with someone spiritual intrigued but timid. They weren’t willing or interested in gathering friends and family and where a bit shy to talk. But, as we shared with him, he started to completely open up. The passage God put on my heart was exactly what he was needing to hear (the story of the persistent widow) and while he came to the Bible study with a heart hardened towards prayer, he left wanting to continue to press into God. This, at the very least was encouraging, and we are going to follow up with him but as of now it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to plant anything else with him.

We then wandered around and “hunted” on the streets. It went fairly but their wasn’t anything spectacular to write about. We did come awfully close to getting a contact high (one of the houses we were invited into reeked of mary jane) but thankfully didn’t stay long enough for this to be an issue. We also had a meeting with a woman that we keep crossing paths with but who appears to be a grade A distractor — she is wanting all the prayer she can get, but when it comes to Bible study and putting into practice the Word of God, she seems totally uninterested. It’s a shame, but we are going to try one more time with her (she was drunk on this day).

I’m actually going to write and tell the story of Saturday in a separate blog post because it is incredibly powerful and special. I’ll try and do this tomorrow after I sleep so get excited for it!

My life now depends on others in a way that it never has before. I live in a foreign country (South Africa), have a job I volunteer at (work visas aren’t a possibility) and spend half or more of my time in ministry (with a healthy dose of community development thrown in for good measure). We wouldn’t be here without the prayers and support of friends and family across the US, and it’s those prayers and support that sustain and allow us to continue doing what God has before us.

I wouldn’t trade it for the world — my wife and I were just talking this evening about how fulfilling life feels — finally we are tangibly walking out the dream God placed in our hearts many years ago. Anyways, all this introduction is important and leads me to what I want to discuss right now: the importance of contact. I’m finding a couple of things to be true as we start this journey of living as missionaries, reliant on the support of others: (a) contact is a necessity when living as any form of community and (b) as people build into my family through prayer, encouragement and/or finances, I want to be able to build into theirs as well.

Backing up, it may be useful to start with some meaningful definitions of that word, contact. Their are two that immediately jump to mind: to be in some sort of close relationship with, perhaps better visualized by touching analogies (ie, a spark flew when my hand contacted the door) and an entity that you communicate with, in some form or fashion (ie, my contact database has about 200 people and 5 organizations). The first definition necessitates some form of close relationship whilst the second demands almost no relationship, as in I could (and do) have contacts I’ve never actually met or know on any real level.

I’ll readily admit that I have many folks in our contact database that fit this second definition to a T. There are names that I don’t recognize and people I haven’t met. As I sat pondering this some time back I decided that this needed to change. It’s been something growing within me — a recognition that a community based on anonymity and a lack of real contact (definition one again!) isn’t really community at all. And a community is what my wife and I want surrounding us. We don’t believe this thing called life was meant to be walked out alone. We want to be able to build into others as they build into us. It likely won’t take the same form — we are certainly limited in the ways we can financially give, for example — but we can still pray and encourage and visit and live transparent lives that hopefully sharpen as we ourselves are being sharpened.

To that end be mindful that if you receive our monthly email updates, give financially, pray for us or feel a part of the community surrounding my family in any other way then we want to know you. If you have prayer requests, we want to be praying for them. If you need to be encouraged, we hope we can fill that role in some way. If you just need a friend, well, we gladly offer our friendship. It may not always look normal because we live so far away, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good or needed (on both party’s parts!).

We are currently going through our contact database and beginning to email people to hopefully begin breaking barriers and truly learning about one another. And I’m excited about the friendships that are already there and those that very well could be soon.

ps. If you want in on our community email me at mbjones AT gmail DOT com or comment on this post.

We spent several hours in Masi again on Sunday. I normally might wait a few days before sharing about it, and lump a week together, but our time was just so encouraging I feel like it needs to be shared in its own posting.

We started off by going to the Zimbabwean Bible study that started last Sunday. At the end of our first Bible study, we asked the man that gathered the group if he would be willing to lead this week and he was (which is a great sign for longevity!). We got there yesterday and he’d gathered people again (and this time some additional people: also a good sign). He then got us started through praying together. He’d also already picked out a passage of scripture to look at and led us in that study, remembering almost all of the steps perfectly. It was just a really encouraging time. All three of us “missionaries” that were there agreed that there is great potential in this group and particularly their leader. Here are a just few reasons we are thinking this:

• Their leader gets it. He’s new to Jesus and the Bible and praying and such but he is picking it up fast. And not only that he is hungry for it, wanting to gobble up as much as possible.

• Mission is on their mind. Their leader said, in his concluding thoughts (something we all go around and do), that it wasn’t enough to just learn these things about God but that we are to share them with others. That really made me smile and we got to encourage him in this: “Yes! That is something we are to do with anyone and everyone we meet! Don’t hesitate to take what God is teaching you today and share it with any that you meet!”

• God is answering prayer in their midst. This has taken two forms so far: (a) last week we prayed for a baby that was their, probably less than 6 months old, who was covered from head to toe and an extremely bad rash. His skin literally looked scaly. But as soon as we got to the Bible study this past Sunday, the first thing they did was show us the baby who was completely healed and tell us how thankful they were to Jesus because as soon as we all got done praying for him the rash started disappearing. (b) Their leader mentioned as his greatest need knowledge in how to manage money because it seemed as soon as it came in it disappeared on things. After talking it over with my coach, we volunteered to teach him and any of his friends next week some simple budgeting techniques that could hopefully over time begin to improve his family’s quality of life.

• God is springing up within them a desire for His word and presence. They really want it, and as much of it as they can get.

Anyways — that Bible study, “pre-house church”, was super encouraging and well on its way to becoming a house church and a bright shining light on a hilltop for the rest of Masi to see.

Our next appointment didn’t show, which was disappointing but happens often enough. We did get to pray for a woman struggling with alcohol and tobacco addictions. We spent quite some time praying for release from those bonds in her life. She cried and felt like God touched her life in that time and we are hoping that it is so. She’s one that we’ll try to follow up with at some point in time, if we get a chance.

Our next appointment was our last for the day. It was with another Zimbabwean who left one previously established house church to start another (this is the kind of growth exciting to see). It was small this Sunday but good. There was also two common threads that tied this one to the first one of the day. (a) It’s leader also said that his greatest need was for understanding in managing his money (we invited him to the little class) and (b) a healing was confirmed. You might remember that on our first day in Masi we prayed for a man who had a neck injury and hadn’t been able to move his neck since November and hadn’t slept well because of it. He was at this Bible study and said that ever since we prayed he could move his neck again freely, without pain, and that that night was the first time he’d slept well in about 3 months (and he’d slept well ever since). He spent a good chunk of his talking time in the Bible study praising Jesus (which is encouraging to hear). We have hopes for this group, just as with the first, and our praying that it grows and will be nurtured by Jesus and His Word and Spirit.

So — that was my Sunday in Masi. Encouraging and exciting. The Lord is moving and I am so blessed to be a part of it. For all those praying and supporting, I hope you are blessed by these stories as well. And for everybody reading, I hope you are encouraged by the incredible God we serve.

I’ve got more stories to tell about outreach — they never seem to stop! We’ve had three days of it since my last note, last Sunday and Thursday and Friday.

Sunday

Sunday started with a trip to Darlington’s house. We were kind of surprised (but shouldn’t have been!) to find him waiting for us. When we got to his place, he immediately gathered his friends and family that lived around the immediate vicinity and brought them to us. In all — there were about 8 of us (which is an excellent starting point). We went through the process for having a simple Bible study, starting with prayer and then reading the text and it was quite a blessed time. When we finished a couple of really neat things happened that we should be praying about:

1. One of the guys there said that he had never considered reading the Bible before but now he was going to immediately track one down and get it and start to read (we plan on helping with this if he needs it). He definitely had a hunger for the Word of God that you really are encouraged to see.

2. One of the ladies told us that she had never prayed — had never wanted to — before we came and now she wanted to start praying to God every day. That’s quite the change and will hopefully radically change her life and she learns and discovers more about who God is.

If I didn’t say this already, I meant to: we were really encouraged by our time. Darlington even agreed to lead this coming week instead of me (breaking dependency on foreigners is a key to continued existence).

The rest of the day was spent hunting for other people. We were able to pray and talk with quite a few but that really was our power encounter for the day.

Thursday

Thursday was different for a couple of different reasons.

1. Munya, Lucas and I went into Masi an hour early and

2. I drove into Masi for the first time by myself. And I should mention that this was my first time driving anywhere in Africa further than several hundred yards. And my first time driving a stick further than several hundred yards. And that driving in Masi is insane (due to the flood of people and vehicles in the road).

Anyways, we went into Masi early to do a Bible Study early enough in the day that the women in attendance would have plenty of time to make dinner for their husbands. It was with a group of Zimbabweans and their were quite a few there (that all lived in the same complex, I think). We got their and discovered that it’d been a pretty rough week for our connector (his mom had just passed away) and so we led it using Psalm 62. It wasn’t a normal passage we use but it was what God laid on my heart and according to Munya (who is a “Zim” as he calls himself) was quite meaningful to the group. They all stayed engaged throughout and were incredibly interested in knowing God better. One lady in particular (our contact’s wife actually) even said that she was for the first time feeling compelled to seek God. That’s again, something incredibly encouraging to hear. We are likely going to try and get into Masi early on most Thursday to meet with this group.

After this, we went to another Bible Study we had scheduled. But the person of peace wasn’t home. We at first were discouraged but then we found out why she was gone: she had gotten a job! This was a total answer to prayer — she’d been without work for quite some time and asked us to pray about this the week before when we had first met her. God does work in mysterious ways beyond us. Our prayer now is that she recognizes the Lord’s provision and is even more open to His movement in her life, and that she’ll desire to be discipled and make disciples. We plan on following up again as soon as we get the chance.

Our last Bible study of the day didn’t pan out. We waited about a half hour and the guys never showed up. It’s discouraging, in one sense, when this happens but it kind of clues you in real fast on who is actually hungry and not hungry.

Friday

Friday was another crazy day. We started with taking Juli and Whitney to meet a group of teenage girls that my group had met the previous day. They seemed incredibly peaceful but we were all guys and thought it best that the girls pursue them. It was definitely a good thing. And so after dropping them off, Munya, Lucas and I went to the library in Masi to spend some time praying. We didn’t have any appointments for the day and wanted to spend it “hunting” for people. While praying for clues, Munya once again found his walking by and jumped up and started talking to him. It’s a guy that’s really interested in both having a Bible study with us and bringing his friends to it. Hopefully this will happen on Sunday. We went from there to another Zimbabwean house church (that has been around for some time) to encourage them (we felt kind of like Paul in this). They led and we joined and shared our hearts with them and it was an all around great time. It’s encouraging to see these things going on their own without the need for outsiders like ourselves.

We went from here to a meeting we had scheduled with a guy named Doctor. He wasn’t around but we found a group of three guys that wanted to know what we were doing, and upon telling them, asked us to do an impromptu study with them. We obliged (of course!) and as we were finishing the prayer time Doctor showed up and joined in too. It was a good test case Bible study — it contained people really hungry to know about God (2 of them), a gatekeeper that granted us access to the group (an older brother who isn’t all that interested) and Doctor who we really aren’t sure about. We are definitely coming back to meet the 2, and Doctor but we’ll just have to see what happens. The prayer is that reactions won’t be dependent on the action of the older brother as he’s already granted us access into their lives.

After this, it was time to call it a day…but the story doesn’t end! As we where praying early for clues, God gave me one — A white picket fence. As we walked back to meet the van taking us home, we passed a house with the white picket fence and a guy sitting outside. Being bold we stopped and told him what we were doing, that Jesus gave me a vision of his fence and that Jesus wanted him to know that He loved him and was singling him out today. He had no clue how to respond to this and kept saying, “I’m shocked! I’m amazed! I don’t know what to say.” We asked him if he knew who Jesus was and he replied that he had only heard people pray to Jesus but didn’t know anything other than that. He agreed to let me share though and share I did. When I got done he said, “I know that what you say is truth, and truth to be believed.” He said he wanted to know more and he is gathering (hopefully!) his friends and family to hear on Thursday. We got a chance to pray for him for healing (he’s been sick since November) so continue lifting him up as you read this, for the healing and that Jesus would use him to bring Kingdom change to the area he lives in.

And that brings me to the end of our last few days in Masi. Hopefully you can be encouraged by these stories. I know I am.

My last CPx post dealt with what we as missionaries to Africa are hoping to see — vast movements of people coming to Christ. I wrote quite a lot about the broad notion of “church” driving these movements but didn’t deal much with our place in regards to them. It’s an important topic though and one that needs discussing. What we as outsiders do can seriously hinder or empower the people directly touched by the movements.

In more traditional models of mission, the work done typically revolves around the missionary. They are there running the schools, staffing the hospitals, pastoring the churches, or powering other access ministries legitimizing entry into a place. And this isn’t necessarily bad — sometimes this very well may be what needs to happen. It’s not the case though for the movements to Jesus we are hoping to see. They are a completely different animal, and as I started saying, are hindered if the missionary (by nature an outsider to the context of the movement) becomes a focal point.

Instead, our role as church planter becomes that of a catalyst. We most often think of catalysts in terms of chemical reactions. Catalysts are enzymes or similar compounds that are not actually a physical part of the chemical reaction — they are not used up or changed in the reaction; instead, they initiate reactions and help to speed them up. At some point in the reaction, they often become unnecessary and when all is said and done — they finish in the same state they began.

This describes what we are to do as a church planter exactly. We are there to initiate and help speed up the reaction. We do this by finding people of peace that open their networks — friends and family and any other social groups they might be involved with — to the Gospel. The people of peace, not the the church planter, then gathers. They become the facilitators, not us. At no point in the process does anything ever revolve around us; the idea is that if we were for what ever reason unable to go into the area again, the groups would continue because all along in the process, they were empowered to lead themselves and not rely on us.

This isn’t to say we have no place in leadership or discipleship in these movements. Rather we carry an important role: it is we who disciple those initial people of peace. Everything we’ve been trained in — glorifying God, loving one another, and seeking those that are lost — we pass on to those initial people of peace (as well as the basics in simple church facilitation). And we continue to meet with them and stay in relationship with them, often for years, until there truly is no further need of an outsider. But they should quickly carry the mantel of discipling others who disciple others who disciple others. And here is were our job for many becomes difficult: it necessitates a background role. As it works, we should only be “known” by that first generation. As successive generations are produced, our place in the picture fades (and quite rapidly sometimes).

Anyways, this is an important addendum to what I wrote in the last post. It’s important that we see our place clearly and know that, as an outsider, we can never be leaders in these movements to Christ. Instead we raise up leaders on the inside. We do have important roles but being the man on top isn’t one of them (and won’t ever be).

If you keep up with modern missiology (the study of missions) and what various organizations and people are doing and strategizing around, you might have heard the term “Church Planting Movements” thrown around. There is a book all about it, in fact, put out by the IMB (the missions board of the Southern Baptist Church). For the unawares, CPMs are modern movements of extremely large completely unreached and unchurched peoples coming to Christ rapidly. And by many and rapidly we are talking about a scale of tens of thousands of people (or more) coming to Christ in a years time or hundreds or more churches being planted in the same timeframe. So very rapid and very large growth.

It’s something we often don’t hear much about in the west. We’ve probably all heard about one popular example though — the underground church in a certain large Asian country that is slowly opening up. As I said, these tend to be the focus more than anything else of mission organizations across the board as God is moving in mind blowing ways. They tend to all have several characteristics, which I’ll dig more into in the coming weeks as we study here at CPx; we’ve only begun to scratch the surface, and it is a quite deep topic.

It’s an important topic to us as a part of All Nations as they have missionaries across the globe focusing on seeing this very thing. In the face of an increasingly flattening world, and the threat of an ever encroaching secularism of the west, these CPMs (or Movements to Jesus as we are more apt to call them) are changing this planet for the better. It’s because of them that the two thirds world is rising up to take the spiritual mantel from the west.

In our first week, we began to talk about these movements, and it started with a frank discussions about the nature of church and how we view it. We started by discussing our views of church, particularly our terminology in describing it. We have many words and phrases used and it’s interesting to compare those within the Bible to those external to it. Some of the external (read: nonbiblical) words we came up with were, “Building”, “Place”, “Parachurch”, “Organization” and other such words. These words tend to focus on church as meeting — as something external to a people — to more of a gathering or venue or more simply put, a non living and active thing. Words that describe church that we pulled directly from the Bible were things like “Body”, “Bride”, “People”, “Ecclesia”, “Brethren”, “Saints”, “House”, “household”, “Living Temple”, “Royal Priesthood”. The focus in this terminology set is not on the place or building or any non-living thing, but rather on the community itself. Church is a community of people — of followers of Jesus — and its this collective that makes Church what it is.

All Nations (the organization we are training with and joining) sees themselves (rightly) as this. Better put — they are a community of small simple churches. Simple church is the focus as they are (a) easily reproducible (b) put church in the hands of people and not in a the hands of a few leaders and (c) frankly, the form in which the vast majority of movements to Jesus are taking across the globe.

But its important to note that the focus shouldn’t be on the wineskin, so to speak. We had a frank discussion about Luke 5 and wine and wineskins. When I say wineskin in this context, I’m simply referring to some sort of structure. Simple Church then is a wineskin and it isn’t the focus. Yes — it is what is working best in our context and in our particular mission but that isn’t to say we chase after to the exclusion of all other models. We have to be attune to the Holy Spirit and the wine (getting back to the aforementioned parable of Jesus) that’s being poured. It could very well be that a different structure (perhaps a more traditional model?) is what is appropriate for other contexts.

I’ll admit to be slightly biased here — it’s hard to think of a context where simple church wouldn’t work fantastically well. It empowers people rather than leaders. It involves the church as a whole, inviting everyone to truly bring something to the table. It’s bent around fellowship and more often than not involves people walking in mission together. I’ve seen it work in American contexts (NormCom for example) as well as African, Asian and Latin American. But you never know — as surely as I write this I could easily one day find myself back in something more traditional.

Anyways, as I wrote it’s the structure that is much less important than what goes into it. Really this God’s concern (even though its so often not ours). As a church, All Nations sees three key ingredients to church: Worship, Mission, and Community. These three things are necessary, in fact for the health of the church. When you boil the Bible down, we see the purpose of the church wrapped up in these areas: to glorify God above any other, to love one another as He loved us and to go forth and disciple nations. And these three things are what we are seeing across the globe as necessary pieces in the movements to Jesus. It’s where we start and where we start them.

Look for more on this and other aspects of Movements To Jesus coming soon!

Yesterday (Friday) was our first outreach day. I’ll back up a minute — during CPx, every week we have two day of lectures and 3 of outreach where we go into the communities and practice what we have learned. Masiphumelele (Masi for short) is the community that Juli and I will be working in. We are definitely excited about working here for several reasons — for one, it is where we have worked in the past so there is some sense of it that kind of feels like home and for two, it is the type of community we envision ourselves working in long term. This isn’t to say that Masi is the community we will forever work in (for various reasons, we aren’t expecting this) but it is the atmosphere and type of community that tugs at our hearts.

Anyways, yesterday was our first day of getting into the community for outreach and the our first opportunity to practice all that we had learned. We’ve been broken up into d-groups of 6 or 7 for these outreaches, and further divided into 2s and 3s and 4s for the purpose of ministering (a group of 7 is rather intimidating to people — we aren’t wanting to gang up on them!). For this and future trips, we are really focused on planting simple churches and so we were looking for peaceful people — people that would open a community or network of people to the Gospel as well as finding people that would intentionally gather their friends and families for little “Bible Studies.”

This last part is key (and in many ways paradigm shifting). When we’ve been here in the past, we’ve focused pretty heavily on finding as many people as possible and grouping them together. Often the people aren’t in any way relationally connected which makes the groups dependent on the outsider for gathering and providing the special sauce that makes the people stick together. This time though we are intentionally not doing that but rather getting locals to gather their people. For more about this, keep following my blog.

Back to the story of outreach numero uno. I went with two other guys — our coach Munya (who is from Zimbabwe) and Lucas (who is actually from Masi). We went out and pretty immediately found 3 different guys who told us that they (a) were interested in studying the Bible and (b) were interested in gathering their friends and families. And they were interested enough to give us their phone numbers so that we could SMS them to remind them. The last man in particular (Richard) we felt particularly good about. He not only seemed interested but also excited.

As we were leaving Richard’s place, we passed a house where a woman called out to us. She had heard about us (or people like us) and had some questions about faith and wanted prayer. We shared with her about Jesus and answered her questions and told her testimonies of His love in Masi. We then prayed for her and it seemed incredibly impactful — she was in tears when we got done and immediately asked us to come back to study the Bible with her (and that she wanted to do the same as the guys: gather friends and family). So we were quite encouraged by this point. I wasn’t expecting quite this response. I knew Masi as a spiritually hungry place, but expected a bit more resistance to the gathering concept. And we may run into it — we’ll find out next week if anyone is “gathered” but I have a lot of hope.

I know I would have probably been thrilled if this was the end of the story for the day but it wasn’t. Our next encounter was with a man named Eddy. He was also from Zimbabwe and was just passing through Masi. We still got an opportunity to share with and pray for him though. And he was another person left changed by the love and presence of God. He’d been struggling with pretty serious neck pain for several months. When we first met him he actually couldn’t move it at all. But we prayed! And Jesus healed! And the pain went away and he could move it again!

And this isn’t even the end of the story — we had two more significant encounters with people! They both revolve around a Zimbabwean house church that meets in another part of Masi. Susan, a woman in it (but who lives elsewhere in Masi) took us to her home and had us pray for her pregnancy. I felt like the Lord was asking me to pray Isaiah 40:31 for her (which I did) and she was really touched. She is even wanting to try and gather her neighbors to start a Bible study (which we were all surprised and excited about since she is already a part of the other). After this, we got to teach the Zimbabwean house church how to facilitate meetings and pray times without us which is significant — prior to this they had been reliant on us outsiders for meeting times and facilitation.

Anyways all that said and done — we were really excited about our first trip into Masi and can’t wait to see what else God does with our time there.