mbjones

I arrived back to Cape Town a week ago after 3 weeks in East Africa. It's a joy to be back with my girls as I really miss them when I have to travel without them. I'm incredibly grateful to everyone that prayed & thought of all of us while I was on the road or in the air. This was a really significant trip, and I can't help but think that is in large part due to all of the prayer support covering it.

You might be wondering what actually happened; I'd love to share some of the details. Not all can be shared in this format (public blog) but I will get into the specifics of what I can share (for the rest, including the most exciting stories, please setup a time where we can connect in other ways).

Ethiopia

I traveled with one of my colleagues here in Cape Town (Noah) and we started in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We arrived late evening on a Thursday and promptly got up the next morning to lead a training from 8:30am to 6:30pm (with the same schedule repeated on Saturday). It's a catalytic training by nature, designed to draw local people into mission rather than have them rely on outside people (like Noah & I) to do everything. We don't do but rather train/disciple/empower others to. Think of a catalyst in a chemical reaction: you add it to aid the reaction and speed things up but the reaction itself shouldn't generally be dependent on said catalyst. We want to speed things up, help put the pieces together for people and see them released to be the kingdom of God where they are at.

Anyways. There were approximately 80 local church planters and 2 primary language groups in this Ethiopian training. They are targeting the unengaged areas of their nation (this means where no one else is targeting). We were able to (hopefully) instill essential disciple making DNA rather than what they've always known. We went to challenge the creation of static structures that create dependency and stifle movement and instead impart highly mobile, ultra reproducible mission that bleeds into and affects all of life. As we only had 2 days, our primary goal was to cast vision, giving some hooks for people to latch on to. Now we watch and followup with those who take the bait and start doing what we are doing. There were definitely people that "got it" that we are really excited about following up with (but that's another story for a different medium).

Sunday was another interesting day. We had already been told several weeks prior that we would be preaching in different churches. Noah was given a topic (Giving Your First Fruits or perhaps money cash now if you are unfamiliar with churchy language), but I was not. Thankfully. I got a huge laugh that Noah, an American, was asked to preach on tithing in an African church and was quite happy that I did not.

After prayer and thought, I felt like I was supposed to preach from Revelation 2 (the letter to the Ephesian church or don't get caught up in your own business and forget about Jesus for the uninitiated). I was expecting a small group of 20-40 at most in a largish shack as this is the normal setting I've preached in throughout Africa. Much to my surprise I instead arrived to find more than 600 people in a large building. Not only that, I arrived to discover that this Sunday's service was actually a wedding(!), something I definitely hadn't prepared for. But I preached the message God gave, and people seemed to be touched (and now there is a wedding video floating around Ethiopia somewhere of a random American guy giving a homily on not getting caught up in the stuff of church and life and therein losing your first love). Actually I was quite encouraged by comments after the service. One older man came up to me and went on and on about how needed that message was in this time for the broader movement this church is a part of; I later found out he was one of the original four founders of said movement of more than 500,000 people in Ethiopia. Had I known there was a wedding in advance, I would have likely preached a different message so it turned out well that I didn't know.

Tanzania

That Sunday evening we got back on a plane, flew to Dar Es Salam, waited in a ridiculous visa line (1 1/2 hrs at 2am), slept in a hotel for 4ish hours, then got back on a plane to fly to Mwanza where we hopped a bus and drove 4ish hours to Musoma, Tanzania. If you didn't catch all of that, just think, "really long day of travel". No one should have to wait for 1 1/2 hours at 2am for a visa. We were wiped out.

On Tuesday & Wednesday we got up and taught all day again, this time for about 40 Tanzanians & Kenyans. This was a much tougher group - by mid day Tuesday we weren't sure if we were getting anywhere with them. I was pretty confident we weren't when we found out that the participants hadn't chosen to be there but instead were asked by their churches to come. Thankfully though we were getting through to them and by the end of our time with the group some really significant mission focused decisions had been made by individuals at the training (including such things as intentional reconciliation between warring tribes; I can't stress how amazing this was to hear).

On Thursday we started another long travel day that included a hellish bus trip (4 hours, as dirty as you can possibly imagine, seats not fastened to the frame, over loaded with an additional 30-40 people standing in the aisle besides those filling every seat, and a lady standing in the aisle next to Noah throwing up in a plastic bag for most of the journey; thankfully, though, it wasn't playing soft-porn music videos on its screen as other buses do), a lunch meeting with a bishop in Mwanza and a dinner meeting with a pastor in Dar. This meeting in Dar was especially significant as we would later find out and might lead to some fantastic followup opportunities.

Kenya

On Friday we flew from Dar to Nairobi and I started a ten day stay in the city that I will soon call home. This was a really significant stay; I was able to meet with those that we are partnering with there and build foundations for the upcoming move. A lot of this stay would bore most people (meetings/meetings/meetings) but they are a necessary part of this moving process. And some of them were more exciting (but not really blog publishable exciting).

I did quite a bit of StrengthsFinder coaching here as well (I sat with 17 people, either one on one, in couples, or small groups). It was really encouraging to put into practice what I've been training on for the past few months. I got to do my first team "Top 5" coaching as well as my first executive "Full 34" coaching session which was great practice. It seemed really encouraging to those being coached as well.

I also had the opportunity to do some training amongst students doing a 3 month discipleship course based in Nairobi (I spent some time coaching them on their outreach, as well as three days training on various topics in their classroom).

Wrapping Things Up

As I said at the beginning: this isn't everything that happened. It touches the surfaces and hints at some of the more significant moments. If you have further interest, please don't hesitate to contact me and we'll setup a time to otherwise connect.

If you prayed while I was gone -- Thanks so much! There were sticky moments with travel woes and sickness but your prayers helped spur us into and through those various times.

• Who in the world thought it'd be a good idea to privatize prisons, and put quotas on how "full" they should remain? Essentially what you have happening: if crime lowers, tax payers must spend more as quotas aren't met so you incentivize the state to keep crime rates inflated and prisons full.
• Giving money to child beggars is one of the worst things you could do when traveling through impoverished nations. Did you know, for example, in Brazil child beggars trade powdered milk for coke (as in cocaine, not cola)? Or in India that organized crime runs rings of trafficked child beggars to exploit tourists?
• Thrice has always been a favorite band of mine. They are on a bit of a hiatus but their frontman just released a worship album and it is amazing. That review is from a non-christian magazine, and they gave it 3.5 stars out of 5, which kind of surprised me.
• Worth linking to again, as it came up this week: The Missionary Code and how churches play into it. Dynamics that are important to process through.
• Great questions for the Bible part of a DBS. They'll help any study get deep into the text.
• Interested in the Lavabit story? Here are the details of what all transpired.

Maybe it's education. Maybe you need a liberal arts college education to be properly shocked by the bible.

Maybe it's life experiences. On the margins life is more brutal and violent. There, in the midst of that social location, the bible doesn't sound strange at all. It seems to fit. And this seems to be the case worldwide. The bible speaks to the third world, it is alive and powerful. But in the educated and liberal Western world the bible is a shock and a scandal.

Or perhaps something else is going on. But if either of these two factors are in play then it seems that offense at the bible is associated with privilege. Whenever I've heard complaints about the bible being horrible I've generally been talking to a person of advantage and privilege. Generally White. Generally educated. Generally rich (by the world's standards).

And it's likely that my privilege is blinding me in certain ways in how I'm listening out of the margins. I may be really missing the boat on this. 

Regardless, does any of this mean that the privileged concerns about the bible should be dismissed? No, I don't think so. Being a privileged person myself I share these criticisms about the bible and wrestle with them. But given where I'm reading the bible I'm increasingly less obsessed with these sorts of questions, issues, and criticisms. Mainly just because these objections aren't coming up.

I'm not wholly dismissive of the complaints of the privileged regarding the bible, but I am, generally speaking, much less interested.

From Richard Beck's blog. Thought provoking, and something I've discovered to be pretty darn accurate. Incidentally, his blog is one worth bookmarking.

Attached you'll find our summer newsletter. You may have gotten it
via snail mail -- if not, here it is! Enjoy!

We always start Discovery Bible Studies with prayer time (or at least a time designated for prayer-like activities). For one thing, it helps focus peoples attentions around Jesus (if they are praying) and opens their hearts to the community (if they are just speaking thanksgivings and needs). Also, a big part of what a Discover Bible Study is designed to do is seamlessly transform from a simple study to a simple church as people find themselves following Jesus, and if you want the DNA of prayer built into the church community, it’s necessary to start with it from the very beginning (even if very little “prayer” is happening).

The obvious question is how do you build this DNA into the community from day 1, especially if you are dealing with a group of people that have no concept of Jesus and prayer and talking to God? Forcing prayer is one option. It’s an option I’ve tried in fact but it doesn’t really produce fruit that is lasting — people are shy and nervous and unsure about talking to someone or something that they don’t even know.

So what’s a good way to do this? Just as in studying the Bible it’s best to have simple steps so that it is easily reproduced. There are three that we do to create an atmosphere of prayer within the DBS.

1. Share what you are thankful for. We start by getting everyone into an attitude of thanksgiving. Even if life is as hard as it could possibly be, everyone generally has something that they can give thanks for — be it friends and family, the beautiful, life or some unexpected blessing. By sharing these we actively engage in putting our hearts in a mode of giving thanks and, when the group is praying, we have a pool of items to praise God for.

2. Share what your greatest need is. Whereas thanksgiving is probably the best place to start, intercession is also a needed component of prayer. Building in a reliance on God and recognition that He is the source of all that we are early on sets a very good precedent. It also gives God an opportunity to radically show up and show Himself as real (in line with 1 Corinthians 2:4) through answered prayer. For example, I had the honor of baptizing a husband and wife on Easter that we have been doing a DBS with for about 2 months. On our first meeting, the wife had us pray during this time for her baby who was covered some scaly skin disease that did not look pleasant at all; God showed up and instantly started healing the child (by the next day the scaly skin was normal again). And that opened them up to a more in depth conversation about Jesus that led to them making the decisions that they have made.

3. Ask if anyone present can meet any of the needs expressed. God often moves miraculously; often too He uses us to be the answer to other peoples prayers. And if community is a value, we should be actively seeking to meet those needs expressed. As an example, someone we met in a DBS expressed the need of not knowing how to manage money. Because of that, we volunteered to spend some extended time with him sharing tip and tricks to manage your money (basically a modified envelope method) which he found really empowering and helpful.

Even if everyone isn’t praying on the first DBS, you as participant or facilitator can. If no one can meet the needs expressed, you can offer to lift those people up. After the fact you can meet with people to pray for them. As people grow closer to God and want to pray you are there to teach them and help see them grow in this (as well as Bible study).

Hopefully this gives a quick rundown on prayer and how it is incorporated into DBSs.

In my last Discovery Bible Study (DBS) post I talked about the role of the facilitating and how they lead not in the traditional sense but in inspiring and encouraging everyone to participate. In this post I want to begin to get into the meat of the DBS program.

We’ll do this by looking at the steps for Bible study first. There are other elements to the meeting besides just Bible study but this is what I’m going to focus on this post. The DBS is designed to be a very simple (and therefore reproducible) method that anyone can follow regardless of schooling and background. It’s designed in such a way that you don’t actually need a physical Bible. It would work just as well with an audio copy. It’s also not dependent on a trained scholar of some type. A group could be made up wholly of pre-Christians and still get very deep into the WORD of God. And this is what I personally like so much about it — it takes people quite deep into the Bible. A superficial overview this most certainly isn’t. Substance isn’t at any level sacrificed for simplicity (and I think the substance in these studies is often much more challenging than the substance I’ve experienced in churches in the states). There are 5 simple steps that we follow when we do this with people in the townships:

1. Reading the WORD.

The very first thing we do is read the Bible out loud. Often we read it more than once so that it everyone clearly hears. Sometimes we have everyone read it out loud. Reading out loud helps the words to sink into the reader and repetition makes it easier to remember for the hearers as well. And, when you take the other 4 steps into account, people often have read or heard the passage out loud 6 or 7 times. This makes it much more likely to produce lasting memory.

2. Everyone retells the passage in their own words.

The first step gets people to digest the WORD of God and this step insures comprehension. If someone can retell the passage clearly in their own words, you can bet they have at least a basic understanding of it. This is something to have everyone in the group do — it’s another opportunity to rehear the word and meaning is fleshed out as everyone verbalizes it in their own words (although a retelling and not a meaning is what we are go for here — meaning will be discussed as a group in a later step). If you are able to put it into your own words you are also more likely to remember it and, for accountability purposes when you ask people to tell someone about the passage, they can do it anywhere they are at regardless of if they have a Bible on hand. In “closed” situations where Bibles are scarce this is also very important for people as it helps equip them to be able to recreate the Bible on their own.

3. As the passage is being retold, asks the group if people are missing anything.

This step is done hand in hand with #2 as people retell. Putting the retellings to the test of the group insures accuracy and that people are drawing a right understanding. It also gives another opportunity for the WORD to be heard as people go back to the text to explain what others might be missing.

4. Break the passage into chunks and look at the specific meaning.

This is the step that dives us into the meaning. The facilitator breaks whatever passage is read into small chunks and the group discusses the meaning of each. The chunk could be a verse, a phrase, a sentence or a paragraph — essentially anything that’s smaller than the passage itself and gives you ample room to talk about all the different meanings within the text. Generally a phrase or a sentence works best but you might have to do more than that depending on time. For a group getting started, they might not know where to begin with discussing meaning so a few questions that I have found helpful are:

• What does this phrase tell us about God?
• What does this phrase tell us about man?
• What is God asking us to do or obey in this phrase?

There could be many other leading questions as well that gets the group to dive in and discuss.

Here it is very important for the facilitator to keep people on task. It is in this step of the process that you want to make sure that not one person is dominating the discussion or completely checking out of it. Also it is very, very important to keep people in the passage at hand, allowing no outside wandering. For non-Christians cross referencing and other such things aren’t something they know about so this generally isn’t an issue but when you deal with people that have some exposure to Christian culture they might try to wander all over the place introducing all sorts of confusion. It’s important to let the text at hand speak for itself. If anyone at anytime tries to say something thats not in the passage read, ask them where in the passage it is and if they can’t show you remind everyone that the focus is just the passage read. As Bible studies become churches, they can begin to compare and do broader comparative studies as they become equipped to deal with such things.

5. The obedience step.

Step 5 is really important. It’s in this step that we let the WORD of God sink from our heads into our hearts. When we don’t just hear it but actively choose to obey it — that’s when it changes us. And so, we ask everyone to be silent and think of all that we talked about throughout the DBS. We ask them to think specifically about one thing that God is highlighting to them that they can be faithful in obeying. We generally give them a minute or two to think about this and then everyone shares that one thing with everyone else. If everyone shares, there is accountability — they can check up on you throughout the next week or at the next meeting. Responses can be varied and that’s ok. What is important is that people are hearing from God through the Word and putting it into practice in their lives. One of our teachers told us of a Bible study he was in where the passage was Genesis 1. One guy mentioned how convicted he was that his horses where God creation and that he was exercising poor stewardship by beating them while other people could mention completely different things.

Choosing Passages

It may not be apparent from these steps but this is a long process. A selection of 10 verses could easily take you an hour or more to get through. As such, it’s generally best to select passages that are 10 verses or less. They should contextually go together (ie, you shouldn’t rip verses out of their context). If you need to go through a longer passage, it can span a week or more and that’s ok.

For groups of non-Christians (or people whose spiritual state we are unsure of) we tend to sequentially go through what we like to call God’s story: Creation, Rebellion, Sacrifice, Return, Commission. We also have a longer list of passages that takes them through the Old and New Testament that culminates in presenting a decision to chase after Jesus (it takes 20ish weeks to get through though — something that’s beyond our scope currently). As groups are baptized and become churches there can be a little more freedom in choosing passages and letting them discover church life and the Christian life as the dive in but we have lists that will take them through this as well.

One of the nice things about this process is that people can do it on their own. It’s actually a quite challenging Bible study tool and one that’d I recommend everyone give a try sometime. Obviously there will be differences if you are doing it by yourself (writing a retelling instead of verbalizing it for example) but its worth it.

I’ll have more on DBS’s soon.

I’ve written at quite some lengths about the small Bible studies we are starting and encouraging in our outreach time but have yet to spend much time actually describing what that looks like. I keep promising it and so this will be the first (of likely many) post to tackle that subject.

I’ll preference this by saying this method is called “Discovery Bible Study” for a reason: it’s designed to be simple enough for anyone to lead and deep enough that it draws non-believers into obedience to God. It’s actually simple enough that even a nonbeliever can lead it (and in CPM situations this is more often than not the case).

And it’s the role of the leader that I think deserves first mention.

The Facilitator

In truth — facilitator is a much better term then leader. They aren’t leading in any traditional sense; rather their role begins and ends with providing direction in keeping the conversation going. There are three things in particular that are worth mentioning.

1. The facilitator is not there to preach or teach in any way, shape or form. They just facilitate conversation. Pushing their opinion to the exclusion of other opinions or dominating the discussion is definitely out of the question. Participation is definitely acceptable (and encouraged!) but their voice counts the same as all the others.

2. The facilitator is there to insure that participants stick to the passage at hand. The idea with Discovery Bible Study is that participants are generally nonbelievers and have little to know exposure to Jesus so this is generally not an issue. It starts them out recognize the authority of scripture and it’s importance. Where it becomes problematic is when you get Christians in that group (or people with nominal knowledge of the Bible). They “hyperlink” and bring in verse and such outside of the scope of the passage at hand. Sometimes they might relate but it often only succeeds in confusing someone who is just beginning to discover Jesus. Another goal with sticking to the passage at hand is that you teach good Bible study habits. From the beginning they learn the importance of studying complete passages and not (as all too often happens) ripping verses out of their context to (often) say something that the Bible actually doesn’t. And if this is done right, from the very first study you build into the group the DNA of obedience to God and His Word.

3. A good facilitator also keeps his eye out for over-talkers and under-talkers. Just as you don’t want any one person dominating the discussion, you also don’t want any voice being left out (or drowned out). The facilitator, when he sees this happening, can politely (yet abruptly) silence the conversation (*”That’s really a great thought. Juli what do you think.”) In the same way he can gently nudge those that aren’t talking to speak up and share their heart. A good bit of the meat of Bible study comes in the group interaction; if you don’t have this, it’s less likely that people will be impacted as they should be.

Church Planter As Facilitator?

Ideally, the church planter (US!) should not be the facilitator. The process (described in coming notes) is designed in such a way that the facilitator can learn along side everyone else. Being a nonbeliever (or not) doesn’t disqualify from this role as the group is not yet a church. Not only that, you want people from within the context you are ministering to feel empowered to do this themselves. Ultimately, they are the ones that will reach their culture better than we ever could. It’s good to get them started in such a way that they are empowered to do that from the get go.

In some circumstances, it might be for the church planter to facilitate. When that happens our role isn’t any different than above. Not only that, we have to pay special attention to the mandate NOT to preach or teach. As I said, it’s called discovery because people are discovering Jesus. It’s not about us preaching or teaching our opinions at them. This is particularly hard to do and is a reason for the church planter not to facilitate. Instead, though, we can ask lots of questions and get them thinking about scripture critically.

If we facilitate, we also have to deal with the hand off. We can’t lead forever; at some point local leadership must take over if the group is to survive. If this is done from the start, it never actually becomes a big issue.

Honestly though this is something we are still trying to work out. The rhythm I am finding myself in is facilitating the first meeting and then getting our key man (or woman) — whoever introduced us to the group — to facilitate from then on; my role then is to simply show up, help when necessary and encourage and mentor burgeoning leadership.

Look for part two soon, hopefully as early as tomorrow. It’ll go into further detail of the structure.

I posted earlier today a mind-map of a few verses from Deuteronomy but before that my last CPx specific post was on the great commission, as seen in Matthew’s Gospel.

From it, we learned that our mandate is to go forth, making disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the trinity and teaching them to obey all of God’s commandments. This brings up an important topic of conversation: that of transformation.

Social justice is a hot topic right now. There are folks in the states disparaging the idea at every opportunity that they can. Their are others that make Jesus and the Bible solely about it (a social gospel that removes the sting of evil and the need of a savior). Both are quite wrong — Justice (I’m stepping back now because I think the “social” piece is an unnecessary adjective) is quite important to the heart of God — we see that in God’s design of His society, in the words He speaks through the prophets, and in the action and ministry of Jesus but it’s not the main thing. If we take Jesus’ Words seriously we see that discipling nations is the main thing.

And it’s quite profound to look at discipleship and it’s possible results. At its initiation, repentance is sought out. This is an active re-orienting of one’s life around the ethic of the Kingdom of God by renouncing and walking away from work sown in the kingdom of the world. This, specifically through the conviction and work of the Holy Spirit now present in their life, leads to a regeneration of the inner man (which should produce change in the outer man) and a character that looks much more like Jesus and less like the world. This reformation leads to the renewal of hearts and minds — they are shaped specifically by God — and the end result is a transformation that has changed everything.

This is the idea at least. Through all of this, though, we must act justly, as Jesus did — we heal the sick, we comfort the broken hearted, we clothe the naked, we proclaim and seek release for the captive, we announce jubilee, and teach those around us to do the same — and ultimately place our hope in the transformative power of the Gospel to completely change communities. We see it happen throughout Acts (The end of Acts 2 speaks powerfully to me regarding this) and we see glimpses of it happening in the communities we work in. We should never underestimate the power of the Gospel to radically transform communities united for it. And perhaps its a bonus but as Micah says, hearts radically transformed by God will be oriented around justice and mercy.