Basic math is made up of four different processes involving numbers: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. In the sequence of positive numbers addition and multiplication gain in numerical sum, while subtraction and division reduce. When it comes to the Kingdom of God we want to increase, not decrease, so addition and multiplication are more preferable.

Multiplication is a popular topic in missions and church today. Unfortunately, when you look more closely, much of what people call multiplying is really just addition. When a church adds a small group, it is often called multiplying. When another worship service is added on Sunday morning, it is often called church multiplication, but it is merely addition. Adding a venue for worship in your church or a satellite campus is not multiplying a church, it is merely adding. I am not against addition, but let’s not call addition multiplication.

The thing about basic math is that it is a world of absolutes; there is one right answer and an infinite number of wrong answers to every equation. But if the processes are mixed up, the solutions are way off. In Christendom today we have poor math skills, and our bottom line is wrong in the end because of it.

Imagine what would happen in life if you got the two processes mixed up in other areas of life. What would happen if NASA engineers added when they should have multiplied? What if Wall Street mixed things up and multiplied when they should have only added? The results would be problematic at best, disastrous at worst. So why do we confuse the two when it comes to something as important as reaching the world for Christ?

Even if you add an additional church to your denomination, you are still not multiplying, at least not yet. 2+2=4 and 2x2=4 as well. In the early stage of multiplication, addition plays a part. The difference starts to happen with succeeding generations. If you merely add another 2 to 4, the sum is 6. But if you multiply by 2 you get to eight, then sixteen, and now you know you are multiplying.

The Momentum of Multiplication

Addition is good, but multiplication is better. Addition produces incremental growth, but multiplication produces exponential growth. Paul gets to the heart of multiplication in his second letter to Timothy when he says, “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” (2 Tim. 2:2) This is the key verse in the Bible about what it means to multiply disciples. There are four generations in the verse: Paul, Timothy, “faithful men” and “others also.” Of late, I have taken to commending people not to use the multiplication language before the fourth generation. Until we get to “others also” we have not succeeded in multiplication. It is possible for a strong leader to attract other leaders who, because they are leaders, will have followers. You can have three “generations” of influence without really multiplying. But in order to get to the fourth generation of disciples, leaders or churches, everyone must be giving everything away to the next generation. Then we are multiplying. This is truly the test of a movement in my own understanding.

Multiplication begins slower than addition. In fact, you cannot have a multiplication movement that is not rapid. That doesn’t mean it begins rapidly; in fact multiplication starts slowly. But it gains velocity at an exponential rate as it goes—that is, its velocity increases with each generation. Like a proverbial car starting to roll from the top of a steep hill, it builds in momentum as it goes. Each foot it passes in descent increases the speed and momentum, which becomes increasingly harder to slow or stop.

To illustrate this dynamic, Christian Schwarz and Christoph Schalk, in their Implementation Guide to Natural Church Development, give the following example: “Imagine a water lily growing on a pond with a surface of 14,000 square feet. The leaf of this species of water lily has a surface of 15.5 square inches. At the beginning of the year the water lily has exactly one leaf. After one week there are two leaves. A week later, four. After sixteen weeks half of the water surface is covered with leaves.” The authors then ask, “How long will it take until the second half of the pond will also be covered? Another sixteen weeks? No. It will take just a single week and the pond will be completely covered.”

The Seduction of Addition

Multiplication may be slower than addition in the initial stages, but in the long run, it is the only way to fulfill the Great Commission in our generation. The population of the world is rapidly multiplying. If all we do is add disciples and churches we will not even scratch the surface of what we have been commanded to do. Nor can we simply add multiplication to our current addition strategies, because each one has completely different requirements. We must stop adding if we want to start multiplying. Could it be that our commitment to strategies that cannot multiply is in fact what is keeping us from seeing a movement here in the West?

Because addition is faster in the beginning and multiplication takes time, often we are content with growth through addition. We are easily seduced by the more immediate success and instant gratification of addition instead of waiting for the momentum that can build with multiplying. As I said in my book, Search & Rescue, “Don’t be content with addition! Stop applauding the pathetic success we see in addition and start longing again for the incredible power of multiplication.”

In our current context, however, the success promised by addition is hard to turn down. It is so rare to have a church ministry grow at all that one that grows fast with addition is very desirable. The glamour of potentially being labeled “the fastest growing church” is hard to turn refuse. It is difficult for leaders to turn away from the crowds and invest in the few, but that is exactly what Jesus did Himself.

Jesus knew the power of multiplication, and He was willing to wait for it. He rejected the pressure of the crowds and chose instead to spend His life with the few that would multiply. We need leaders who are willing to do the same. 

• How do I enter an unreached region and connect with people?

• How do I share the gospel?

• How do I make disciples who disciple others?

• How do I form groups in the community that will reproduce?

• How do I develop and multiply local leaders?

Jeff sought out examples of the best practices from anywhere in the world where he could find a Church-Planting Movement. He then applied these lessons to his setting. He learned that a Church-Planting Movement is a work of God through his Spirit and his dynamic Word.

Jeff learned to teach new believers to obey Christ. He learned to identify leaders, not by their knowledge and gifts but by their obedience, because obedience is at the heart of any Church-Planting Movement. Local believers with little or no education faced persecution with courage and boldly declared the gospel. They learned to obey what they knew. Jeff discovered that a disciple who is obeying the little he knows is on the road to maturity.

Over the years Jeff and the leaders he trained equipped thousands of local believers to share the gospel and plant churches. Across the region tens of thousands of new disciples formed new simple churches—many of them in regions where there is official hostility toward Christianity.

In 2009 the Sundells moved back to the United States and began applying what they had learned to their new situation. They moved to an old mill town in North Carolina that had been in economic and social decline since the 1970s. Unemployment was high, and drug and alcohol abuse was a problem. With help from the police, Jeff identified the three toughest neighborhoods in their county—Henrietta, Alexander Mills and Spindale—and chose them as his mission field.

Jeff met with pastors in the wider area to cast vision and offer training to anyone who was interested. He gathered a small group of men and women on Monday mornings and began training them how to share their story and Jesus’ story. They then went out prayer-walking in one of the three neighborhoods, and they looked for opportunities to connect with people who were far from God.

These areas are known for their pit bull dogs and methamphetamine labs. As Jeff and his coworkers met people, they asked, “If God could do a miracle in your life today, what would it be?” Then they prayed for people on the spot. 

Jeff recruited his mom and dad, Norm and Paula, to the team, and they began walking and praying. On their first day, Jeff’s parents visited an African American neighborhood. The day didn’t begin well when Jeff’s “Yankee” father asked two middle-aged women, “How are you guys?” They thought he was addressing them as men and began cursing at him. (A real Southerner would have asked, “How are y’all?”)

Norm and Paula persisted in the conversation, however, and eventually one of the women, Ruth, asked them to pray for a severe pain in her chest. The other asked, “Just pray I’ll get through the day.” Jeff’s parents prayed for them and promised to visit again.

A week later Jeff’s parents returned and met a man named Randy sitting out on his front porch drinking even though it was only 10 a.m. Randy’s porch was the place to hang out if you wanted to party. He invited them to come back and share some stories about Jesus.

Norm and Paula moved on and visited Ruth to pray for her. Word spread that they had returned, and a woman called Annie came looking for them. She’d heard there were some folks praying for people and wanted them to pray that God would provide a stove for her and her family. They prayed for her—and for a new stove. A few days later a friend of the Sundells heard about the need and donated a stove.

The next week Jeff’s parents were at Annie’s house enjoying the cookies she had baked on her new stove when Ruth came banging on the door. She wanted prayer. The doctor had just told her that the pain in her chest was breast cancer. They prayed for her.

Norm and Paula began a simple discovery Bible study with Randy and his drinking buddies on Randy’s porch. They read stories about Jesus and asked, “What does this say about God? What does this say about people? Is there a command to obey or an example to follow?” Norm had them reading the story of the four friends who lowered the paralytic through the roof so that Jesus could heal him when Randy realized he needed to do something about Ruth’s condition. Since Ruth had been diagnosed with cancer, she had missed all her medical appointments out of a combination of fear and her drinking problem.

Randy and his buddies knew this, and when they read the story of the four men who brought their friend to Jesus, they knew what they had to do. Before Ruth’s next appointment, they stayed up all night to make sure she didn’t get drunk. The next morning she arrived at her appointment on time.

The Bible studies on the porch continued until one day Jeff’s dad got a call from Randy saying, “I believe! I believe!” Ruth also gave her life to Christ. Six weeks after his conversion, Randy told Norm, “You know I’m an alcoholic. Would you pray that I’d get healed?” Today Jeff’s mom and dad have a ministry on the porch praying for people; they ask “that alcohol would taste bad in their mouths.” They also pray for people to find work and God answers.

Randy, Ruth, and other new believers in the community consider that porch as their church. The porch used to be the place where parties happened. Now no one is allowed to drink on the porch. Instead those who are still drinking bring their bench as close to the porch as possible so they can listen in while the church meets around God’s Word. Over twenty people have been baptized, and disciples are meeting in three simple neighborhood churches. One of the groups meets in a hotel room.

Jeff and his coworkers continue to prayer-walk the community. They pray for the needs, share their stories, share the gospel and make disciples. Discipleship can be a challenge as new believers grapple with drug and alcohol addiction and fractured relationships. Some of them are still using drugs or living together. Jeff never compromises what the Scripture teaches; he knows that making disciples takes time.

Some time later Jeff met with Neil Perry, pastor of a growing church in nearby Forest City. After planting the church, Neil found himself preoccupied with counting “butts on the seats.” Over a three-hour cup of coffee, Jeff helped Neil discover how he could get back to making disciples. One of the new believers in Neil’s church was Chuck, a former crack cocaine dealer who had run a prostitution ring in his basement. With Jeff’s help, Neil taught Chuck to make disciples and plant churches. Now Chuck runs a simple church for his former friends and associates in the basement where he once sold cocaine and ran prostitutes. A pastor in Spindale, Andy Evans, has also connected with Jeff and is training anyone who wants to learn to make disciples. One of the new believers is a former cocaine addict who has formed a church in a trailer park with twenty baptized new believers.

It’s a long way from the Himalayas to North Carolina. Jeff has been able to adapt the principles he learned in Nepal to a very different context. He still asks himself the same five questions.

1. How do I enter an unreached region and connect with people? Jeff prayer-walks the community, looking for opportunities to connect and praying for needs. His purpose is to find households of peace that connect him and the gospel to relational networks.
2. How do I share the gospel? Jeff shares his story, and he shares Jesus’ story. He offers a series of simple discovery Bible studies called Seven Stories of Hope.¹
3. How do I make disciples who disciple others? Jeff and his coworkers do not do anything their disciples cannot copy. They teach new believers to share their story and to share Jesus’ story. They teach new disciples to ask, “If God can do a miracle in your life today, what would it be?” Then they ask, “Can I pray for you?” They train new disciples how to take a friend or family member through the Seven Stories of Hope. All they need are the stories and four simple questions: “What does this teach us about God? What does this teach us about humanity? Is there a command to obey? Is there an example to follow?” All the learning is obedience-oriented. At the end of every study, the leaders ask, “How can you obey what you have learned today?” At the beginning of every study is the question, “How did you obey what you learned last week?”
4. How do I form groups in the community that will reproduce? Jeff believes that churches come from disciple making, not the other way around. He teaches communities of new disciples the basics of life from the book of Acts—worship, ministry, fellowship, evangelism and missions, and discipleship.
5. How do I develop and multiply local leaders? Houses of peace become church communities. Multiple churches are formed simultaneously. Jeff trains existing believers and new believers to make disciples and form groups.

After two years, over 350 people are gathering in 73 groups. Over 250 people have been baptized. Jeff has identified 45 people in the network who are effective in connecting, sharing the gospel, and reproducing disciples and churches. Seventeen of them have equipped groups to reproduce between two and four generations of new groups.

Jeff’s example and training is inspiring a growing number of people to apply simple church planting methods across the United States and Australia. Those he has influenced are identifying houses of peace, baptizing new disciples, and forming new neighborhood churches in their communities. In doing so they are imitating Jeff, but Jeff himself is imitating Jesus, because Jesus is the Lord of a missionary movement that Jeff and his friends have joined.

What would an honest evaluation of our churches, mission teams, and church-planting projects show? Are we focusing on the kind of individual and corporate preparation necessary to see a growing discipleship movement? Are we using successful biblical models? Unfortunately, our typical method of discipleship tends to be primarily idea-based, and focused on passively listening to sermons, classroom instruction and reading, with very little practical hands-on instruction and life application in discipleship and church-planting. Mentoring for ministry seems almost non-existent in our churches. Further, have we exported our failed Western models where churches rarely reproduce themselves to our cross-cultural church plants? Perhaps we’ve done a little bit better overseas, thanks to the multiplication church-planting models to which we’ve been exposed,¹ but a healthy self-examination in our mission practices would be worthwhile, as well.

If we want to see disciples making disciples and rapidly multiplying churches both at home and abroad, we need to readjust our discipleship and ministry training paradigms accordingly. Hopefully by eliminating some common false concepts and myths about the equipping process and looking at some simple biblical models, we can more successfully produce obedient followers, raise up new leaders and missionaries, and experience greater multiplication of disciples and churches.

FOUR COMMON MYTHS ABOUT DISCIPLESHIP AND EQUIPPING:

Myth #1: The task of discipleship is only for leaders and other mature and qualified people.

Nothing could be further from the truth! The idea that only certain high-level individuals should be developing others is one of the most insidious ministry myths to creep into our churches and missions. We all need to be actively engaged in discipleship and there is no pre-qualification period. Some of Jesus’ most recent followers began to share what He had done and immediately engendered more followers (for example, the Gadarene demoniac, the Samaritan woman, and the man born blind). During His years of earthly ministry, Jesus maintained a primary focus on making disciples and teaching them to make disciples. (We’ll look more closely at how He did it in section 3.) 

Paul, too, entrusted the work of spreading the gospel to new believers. In many of the cities he visited, he left handfuls of converts and was confident that multiplying churches would be left behind. Like Jesus, he also utilized a layered discipleship process: “The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.” (2 Tim. 2:2) Each one that he trained was expected to train others, who would in turn be prepared to go out and teach. 

Simply put, discipleship and multiplication are primary tasks of the church and all of its members. Rapid and sustained equipping of others is all the more imperative in the frontier mission context where human resources (i.e., experienced leaders) are limited and the need for a rapid spread of the gospel is high. We must adopt an approach both at home and abroad that will produce disciples and cross-cultural missionaries with a multiplication mindset. Our traditional Western hierarchical teaching model is just not up to the task.

Putting it into practice: 

The t-shirt motto comes to mind: “Just do it!” Prayerfully look around you for those who would like to grow alongside you. Are you reaching out to unbelievers? Are you continually reaching a hand back to newer, younger believers, as well as a hand forward to more mature and experienced ministers? Are you motivating others to reproduce? If you are part of a church-planting or outreach team, take some time to examine your methods and model. Do they include a plan for multiplying leaders who will in turn be multipliers? Recent issues of Mission Frontiers have included a number of viable options such as the T4T Process and the Discovery Bible Study Method from which you can draw as you learn to make disciples and train others to make disciples as well. 

Myth #2: I need to have specialized training before I can begin the complex process of equipping others.

Books too numerous to count have been written on discipleship, mentoring, and leadership development. Many offer excellent models and practical pointers. However, the plethora of teachings often cause us average folks to think of equipping others as a complicated process to be handled by a cadre of educated specialists. Reading and studying can certainly be beneficial, but we can start right now by adopting Paul’s two-point model of discipleship: “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.”

Paul, arguably history’s greatest cross-cultural missionary and biblical teacher, focused on multiplication through modeling. He multiplied followers; he multiplied leaders (and taught them to multiply); and he multiplied churches. His model was a simple one. He urged his followers to follow his example and in turn be examples to others in their lifestyle, ministry, and teachings. 

• “Imitate me.” (1 Cor. 4:16) 

• “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” (1 Cor. 11:1)

• “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.” (1 Tim. 4:12) 

Granted, it’s a bit intimidating to compare ourselves to Paul. Nevertheless, just as we can look to Paul’s character, intimacy with God, passion, power, and influence as goals to strive toward, we, too, can impart to others what God has taught and imparted to us. “Freely you have received; freely give.” (Matt. 10:8)

Putting it into practice:

By all means, read some books on discipleship, mission strategies, and ministry development as mentioned above, but begin by immersing yourself in biblical models. Start by re-reading the life of Jesus, paying attention to how He interacted with His disciples. Move on to the travels and writings of Paul. All of us can strive to live examples of Christ-like lives and encourage others around us to do the same. Be transparent about your shortfalls and keep yourselves mutually accountable.

Myth #3: Christian growth occurs primarily through listening to good sermons and participating in Bible studies.

The primary teaching mode of most Western churches is through a knowledge-based didactic paradigm. Of course a solid foundation of biblical understanding is essential for both personal growth and outreach. I am extremely grateful for the excellent theological instruction I’ve received through my church, its biblical study program, as well as through formal mission training. However, passive learning from church pew and classroom Bible study alone will not prepare us to actively engage in fruitful ministry.

John Maxwell in Mentoring 101 ² reminds us that we remember only 10 percent of what we hear, but we’ll remember 90 percent of what we hear, see, say and do. (This statistic might be a little frightening to preachers and teachers!) As active disciplers, we need to ensure that what we teach results in understanding, recall at a better rate than 10%, and effective life application—that neither we nor those we train are just hearers of the Word, but “doers” (Jas. 1:22). 

What are ways that we can teach people to “do” ministry? A look at Jesus’ “School of Ministry” will give us insight into key elements for successful multiplication. When He chose His disciples, they were completely untrained and uneducated, but at the end of their time together they were a world-changing force that shook nations and kingdoms. What were specific ways that He prepared them for the tasks and challenges that would follow His death and resurrection?

a) Jesus spent considerable “face-to-face” time with His disciples. In fact, they were together almost 24/7 for three years. He modeled godly character in a wide array of circumstances, while at the same time giving them input (both encouragement and rebukes) as they reacted to the happenings of the day: hunger, exhaustion, excitement, griping, comparing, fear, doubt, and so on. 

b) The disciples had the benefit of hearing Jesus’ excellent instruction (the equivalent to today’s sermons and teachings) to the crowds, but He also spent time giving them private explanations of some of the more challenging teachings. This allowed for questions and discussions on a more intimate level, and specific emphases on what they needed to hear as individuals and as a group. 

c) Jesus modeled ministry to them: preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons, and performing miracles. Then, he gave them detailed instructions and sent them out to put it into practice. He did this first with His inner circle (Matt. 10), and then with the seventy (Luke 10). The passage in Luke also shows how He debriefed them on their return, with further instruction and correction.

d) Finally, Jesus commissioned them to start their own ministry (Matthew 28, Acts 1), but promised that He wouldn’t abandon them, but would still be available to help them.

Maxwell summarizes the method in a simple five-step process: modeling (the learner watches the teacher); mentoring (the teacher explains the task and the learner assists); monitoring (the learner performs the task, but the teacher assists and corrects); motivating (the learner performs on his own, with encouragement and help as needed); and multiplying (the learner now becomes a teacher, training others to complete the task). 

Putting it into practice: 

Think about the skills you’d like to replicate in others. What will help them to grow, reproduce, and become effective ministers of the gospel? Prayerfully consider who demonstrates a desire to grow and serve. Gather a few folks around you and then put into practice the “show and tell” model outlined above. Make sure that everything you do is imitable and place yourself in the background shadows just as quickly as possible. Monitor, encourage, and make sure they are soon training others. You should be equipping multiple successors for every aspect of what you do. 

Don’t forget that shared living is also key to helping others mature. Few of us will spend 24/7 with our disciples like Jesus did, but it is important that we spend significant time together in a variety of settings. Activities such as playing basketball, cooking, a family picnic, or travelling together for an event will open doors for deeper sharing and transparency. None of us will be able to model character perfectly, but our own struggles and flaws will open doors for discussion and prayer if we are willing to be open and mutually accountable.

Myth #4: If I have been faithful to make disciples, I’ve done my job.

The task of discipleship is never “finished.” We don’t retire or disengage from the commands and commission of Christ. We may experience an ebb and flow of who the Lord places in our lives for a season. Some we have invested in will move on and God will bring others into our path; and we are told to go out in the streets and “compel them to come in.” (Luke 14:23) It’s fascinating to study the ministry of Paul and the individuals that came alongside him in his travels to learn and serve. Some stayed behind to help build up the newer believers in the cities where they had travelled. Other workers joined the entourage or visited Paul in other places. Wherever he went, Paul focused on making disciples and forming leaders. 

We need to also remember that our discipleship is only successful to the degree that those we have trained are in turn multiplying and reproducing. Keep this end goal in plain sight from the beginning of any relationship.

Putting it into practice: 

In writing this article, I’ve realized that it’s time for me to once again expand my discipleship role. Many of the young ladies I’ve mentored have “graduated” into their own ministry roles; several are beautifully discipling and mentoring others; some have far surpassed me in their kingdom influence. (This is a good thing, by the way.) While we continue to interact in mutual accountability, I know it’s time for new discipleship relationships. What about you? Take a few moments and write down whom you are involved with at the moment. Are you engaged with any unbelievers? Is it time for expansion? Here are some practical steps we can take together:

• Make yourself available to the Lord, staying alert to His Spirit as He brings people across your path.

• Look around you and reach out to newer people in your church—offer friendship and hospitality as a
way of building relationship.

• Talk with the leadership in your church or mission; make them aware that you’d like to serve by discipling others, and get their input. (Be careful, though, if they are stuck in an old-school paradigm.)

• Find avenues of engagement in your wider community. Sometimes we are so involved with the church that we don’t even know any non-Christians. 

• May I specifically encourage you to look around for people that might be interested in a full-time mission career? The need is so great and the workers are few! If you have no idea how to start, my own book To Timbuktu and Beyond: A Guide to Getting Started in Missions will give you plenty of real-life tools.

Conclusion

The Bible gives a strong mandate for discipleship and multiplication, and richly provides us with examples and models for doing so effectively. Unfortunately, our entrenched Western paradigms have slowed us down with knowledge-based training and limited life application. If we are willing to step out in faith and obedience, utilizing biblical patterns for reproduction, we’ll experience the rich reward of being apart of others’ development, and a more rapid spread of the kingdom, while at the same time enjoying greater growth and maturity in our own lives. So let’s follow the Nike model and “Just do it!”

We will never be free of the problems that cultural Christianity breeds unless we deal with these problems at their root. If we are content to maintain and promote a mission strategy that accepts the status quo in North American Christian culture, we can assume the strong likelihood of either failure or recidivism in our training of missionaries. It is likely that North American Evangelicalism will need to reinvest or reinvent itself as a new people and a new culture for these problems to be completely eradicated.

When I wrote this I was hopeful that given time, the Evangelical church would make the necessary corrections in how it is the Church and how it does church. What I failed to take into consideration was how deeply ingrained the problematic values were to the culture of Evangelicalism. The culture of the American Church has developed over a considerable period of time. One of the battles that the Church has fought is to be in the world but not conformed to the world. Every human is in a constant process of being conformed to the world (and his culture) or being transformed and remade in the likeness of Christ (Romans 12). The most significant problems for the Church originate in our becoming lost in earthly cultures. The net effect is that we attribute our cultures’ values and beliefs to God and, in essence, reinvent God in our own image. This process has changed our reading of the Bible, our understanding of the gospel and our perception of our place in the world as the Church and our duties as the children of God. 

There are a number of biblical values that the western Church has contextualized to the point of syncretism. This syncretism has forced the Church further and further away from biblical patterns of behavior and has blinded us to how it has changed us as a people. In the process we have lost most of the belief-driven values that empower us to be a world changing force, a reflection of the eternal Word and a people that show the unmistakable presence of Jesus in our midst. We have sacrificed transformation for culturally-determined “sacred cow” practices.  

Sacred Cows that need to be turned into hamburger:

1. Worship services ad nauseum 

2. Preaching without teaching/training

3. Orthodoxy without orthopraxy

4. Proliferation of church property dedicated to no one but those already Christians

5. Education as sufficient preparation for ministry without character development and competence in disciple-making

6. Understanding the “gospel” as primarily an issue of salvation.

As we have worked with young men and women these deficiencies have become very notable and visible. American evangelicals do not understand “worship” as something we do to honor our relationship with God and that requires us to bring something to the presence of God as an act of worship. Quite often a worship service is an event that is viewed as either entertainment or an event from which we should get something. God is secondary if he is a factor at all. The idea that our lives should be seen as an act of worship is often something completely missed by the evangelical.

One of the more disturbing offenses is the idea that what is experienced as “preaching” in a service is somehow teaching or equipping the congregation for future ministry. The idea of teaching denotes that learning is going on or that the desired outcome of teaching is learning, where revealed truth is applied to life in obedience. There are a number of incompatibilities with calling what we do in our services as “teaching.” First the setting is all wrong. Our Sunday experience is a one-way communication process where congregants are passive listeners. If we were concerned about teaching it would need to be two-way with active participation from both sides of the conversation. But it is also possible to utilize the service to communicate a message that we come back to later in the week in small groups or other venues where two-way communication is possible. This would enable something approaching learning to take place. Since many, if not most, churches never take the message preached beyond the time it consumes in the service, most missionary candidates do not understand the difference between teaching and entertainment—I mean preaching. The missionary candidate is seldom shown disciple making or church planting, nor is he trained or apprenticed in these roles as he seeks to become a competent disciple-maker himself. 

The issue of orthodoxy being a litmus test of a healthy church and healthy believers is one of the historic developments that has been forgotten by the Church. Right thinking (orthodoxy) is always paired with right living or right behavior (orthopraxy) in the Scriptures. The understanding is that a changed allegiance from living in spiritual darkness to following Jesus will also bring with it a changing lifestyle. Historic records prove this point. Fox’s Book of Martyrs is full of such evidence. But with dramatic and, most often, unfortunate culture changes that took place in the Church from the second century onward, orthopraxy became less and less a virtue and signing statements of faith or ascribing to doctrinal statements became the measure of success. When this is paired with a lack of understanding or interest in discipleship, we end up with missionary candidates who know what is doctrinally accurate, but who do not know how to apply these values to their total existence in their own culture, to say nothing of how this would be done in another culture.

The American evangelical preoccupation with church buildings and massive building projects is primarily a problem in its lack of focus on serving others and particularly the have-nots of the world. The whole discussion of whether property and buildings are a good investments for the kingdom would change dramatically if our buildings were done to meet the needs of the larger community, particularly those suffering or in need. The Christian habit is to build to meet Christian needs and this preoccupation is most often the single most significant evidence of an earthly culture at work conforming the Church to the world instead of to Jesus. 

A more realistic understanding of our “edifice problem” is that in much of the unreached world, church buildings will be neither possible nor affordable and so the missionaries and the believers will need to conceive of a church system that exists and thrives in the absence of buildings. For American evangelical missionaries, this will require learning unlike any they have had to do up to this point, and the ability to think outside their own cultural box. The patterns and practices that they have learned as spectators at countless church services will be counterproductive in preparing them for cross-cultural disciple-making.

For many Christians the word “training” connotes education. I would never want to have be operated on by a surgeon who had never been to medical school, but neither would I like to be the first person on which  that a surgeon, fresh out of medical school, operated. The medical profession is a good example from which to draw. A person desiring to be a surgeon needs to jump through a fair number of educational hoops in order complete his or her undergraduate degree. Then, the grueling first year of medical school happens where the intention seems to be to either torture the student into withdrawing or hardening the survivor to the reality of his or her  profession. After three years of medical school, the student must intern for a year during which he or she is discipled by a more experienced doctor. This is followed by three or more years serving as a resident. Medicine is one of the few professions where mentoring or discipleship is a common and indispensable practice. The pertinent question is why it is seen as normal and necessary to train and mentor doctors so meticulously and yet something as important and as complicated as communicating the gospel and living spiritual truth in a cross-cultural setting should be treated so cavalierly? 

Often the only requirement to serve as a missionary is to pass some psychological tests, be able to raise financial support and attend the mission agency’s one or two week indoctrination session. After these cursory preparations, the person can report and in many situations, if they are serving on a team, no one on the team has more experience in disciple-making than they do, including the team leader! One more facet of this problem is that many missionary candidates have significant and deep personal issues that need to be dealt with before entering the pressure cooker of foreign cross-cultural service. When they do not remediate these issues ahead of deployment, the pressures, spiritual warfare and interpersonal complexities of life often turn them into casualties and attrition statistics. In the current state of the Christian world it is incomprehensible why any mission agency would not prepare their candidates thoroughly. Should not missionary candidates have proven their ability to make disciples and plant churches before they are sent to do so cross-culturally?

Lastly, we come to the word “gospel”. What does this mean? For the American Evangelical Christian, it is most often associated with the idea of Jesus’ death and resurrection as an act of penal substitution for the sins of the world (or some subset of this depending on your theology). In a recent book, Scot McKnight describes the situation this way:

Most of evangelism today is obsessed with getting someone to make a decision; the apostles, however, were obsessed with making disciples. Those two words—decision and disciples—are behind this entire book. Evangelism that focuses on decisions short circuits and—yes, the word is appropriate—aborts the design of the gospel; while evangelism that aims at disciples slows down to offer the full gospel of Jesus and the apostles.¹

In the world of the Muslim sheikh, Buddhist priest or Hindu guru decisions are neither individual nor do they lead to visible transformation in society. The world outside the kingdom of God awaits the King and his kingdom that defeats sin, suffering and death once and for all. Most statistics related to conversion from these mission fields say that Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus become followers of Jesus because of the noticeably different and changed lives of the missionaries with whom they have relationships. In spiritual terms, they see Jesus and do what they have been meant to do before the foundation of time; they fall on their knees and confess, “My Lord and my God.” But what must happen next in their life is discipleship. No one can call himself a follower of Jesus who is not being changed into his likeness. This is true in Asia, Africa and the Middle-East and it is true in North America. 

The most significant issue that we face in preparing men and women for the mission field is that American Christians are not primarily representative of the biblical idea of being a follower of Jesus and they do not embrace enough of the beliefs and values associated with Jesus. What the American Christian missionary represents is a culturally conformed church that will unwittingly reproduce its own culture and communicate its values as the gospel and as central to being a follower of Jesus. Across the world this has led Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus to believe that being a follower of Jesus means becoming a western Christian, and most want no part of this. In the course of this author’s almost thirty years of working with missionary candidates I have found that the majority of those men and women required major reconstruction of their understanding of reality, and very frankly, our efforts were not always successful. Matthew 28 tells us to go and make disciples of all ethne. We need to thoroughly rethink our methods and practices of pre-field training of missionary candidates with a focus on effective disciple-making, because if we do not, if discipleship happens at all, it will be to make disciples of American evangelical culture and not of Jesus and the kingdom of God.

Ying was reluctant. He knew about the reputation of Nandong’s authoritarian government. So the businessman took Ying and Grace on a tour of the region. Later Ying recalled his reactions:

As we rode the train, we passed many factories. The man told us about every factory we passed. He would say, “This factory has 3,000 workers. I know the owner. He hopes that someone will come to share the gospel, but we cannot find anyone who will come.”

The biggest factory we passed has 70,000 people. When we saw all the lost people of these factories, God opened our eyes and our minds. I realized, “These people need the gospel.”¹

Ying was called by God to reach the twenty million people in this rapidly growing urban center where each day thousands of new migrant workers arrive looking for work and a better life.

Ying knew that he would have to do things differently to reach Nandong. He knew that merely adding disciples and churches would not be enough; he had to tap into the power of multiplication. As Ying prayed, God gave him three insights for those who are called to make disciples: 

• Go, not come. The Great Commission does not say we are to invite people to come to us. It says we are to go. We must go where the lost are and train new believers to go also to the lost—into factories, homes, shops, and neighborhoods.

• Everyone, not some. We must make disciples of all, not just a few. We typically choose whom we want to share the gospel with, trying to prejudge who might accept it. But God said to share with everyone. We cannot predict who will believe and whom God will use to birth a movement.

• Make disciples and trainers, not passive church members. Jesus wants true disciples who obey his commands—including the commands to witness to others and train new believers to do the same. Every disciple must be a trainer.

Ying the church planter and pastor became Ying the trainer and catalyst for Church-Planting Movements. He called his process of making disciples “Training for Trainers” (T4T). “Trainer” conveys the idea of someone who both grows in his loving obedience to Jesus and passes on what he learns to others through witness and training.

The T4T process trains believers to share the gospel and make disciples in a reproducible way. The discipleship training process includes new group and church formation along with leadership development.

Ying and Grace began by training one class of thirty believers. They taught the trainees that each of them had a unique story to tell of how they met Jesus. They trained them to tell their story and helped them to identify five people they would share with in the following week.

The next week seventeen of the thirty trainees reported sharing their story, and one farmer had shared with eleven people. The following week Ying raised the level of accountability and allowed only those who were sharing their story to continue with the training. Two months later, the trainees had started twenty small groups. After six months there were 327 small groups and 4,000 newly baptized believers scattered across seventeen towns. Within twelve months, there were 908 house churches with more than 12,000 new Christians.

One old farmer who had never before planted a church started twelve house churches in two months and 110 in the first year. He began every day reading his Bible from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. Then he worked in the fields until 5 p.m., at which point he went home for dinner and family time. At 7 p.m. he went back out again, and he worked in “God’s fields” until midnight.

In another town a 67-year-old woman became a Christian and in one year led more than sixty families to become believers.

In another example, Ying lost touch with a Christian factory worker he had trained. After six months, he learned that the worker had been transferred to another large factory with ten thousand workers. During those six months, the worker had started seventy small groups and seen ten generations of reproduction (churches planting churches).

By the year 2003, Ying and Grace were training 300 to 400 believers each month. As the Kais trained them to be trainers of trainers, they found that many would witness, some would start new groups, and a smaller number would go on to train their new group members to repeat the process. Hundreds and then thousands began to come to faith.

Immediately after coming to faith, new believers were equipped and held accountable to witness to relatives, neighbors and close friends. These new believers were taught to train and follow up with those they led to Christ. The trainers learned simple, reproducible Bible lessons and taught them to new believers who were encouraged to form into new churches.

Urban streams of new converts jumped from neighborhood to neighborhood and from factory to factory as believers changed jobs. The T4T training prepares new believers to be seeds so that when the church is scattered, whether by dangers or opportunities, new churches are planted.

In the most recent survey of the Kais’ ministry, more than 1.7 million people have come to faith and been baptized. Every month trained workers start two thousand house churches and small groups in villages, urban high-rise apartments and factories. Over 140,000 churches have been started in what is currently the world’s fastest growing church planting movement.

In other parts of the world, T4T has birthed new Church-Planting Movements within Hindu, Muslim and animist contexts among both literate and nonliterate peoples. T4T has also begun to bear fruit in the United States and Australia.

Ying Kai’s strategy has been to aggressively train every willing local Christian in how to be more obedient in their spiritual life, how to effectively share their faith person to person, how to immediately follow up with new believers, and how to initiate reproducing groups which often become churches. Training, encouraging, and holding existing and new Christians accountable to become trainers of trainers has characterized this Church-Planting Movement. Ying’s story demonstrates the power of multiplication at work

At the heart of this amazing movement is a simple process for training disciples.³ When trainees meet, their time is divided roughly into thirds. They spend time focusing on each of these three areas.

1. LOOK BACK

Pastoral care. Trainees ask each other, “How are you doing?” and take time to minister to one another’s needs in prayer, biblical counseling and encouragement.

Informal worship. Trainees praise God in a culturally appropriate and reproducible way. It could be prayer or singing, with or without an instrument or mp3 player. Some groups read the Psalms out loud.

Accountability. Trainees share in mutual loving accountability about how they have been following Jesus (obeying the previous meeting’s Bible lesson) and being fishers of men (witnessing to and training others) since the last meeting.

Vision casting. Trainees are reminded what God has designed them to become and what he plans to do through them.

2. LOOK UP

Trainees receive enough biblical content to obey and pass on to others. After a series of six basic discipleship lessons, participants learn how to do inductive Bible study by asking the following questions: What does it say? What can I obey? What will I share with others?

3. LOOK FORWARD

Practice. Trainees spend time practicing what they have learned, gaining confidence and competence to pass it on to others.

Goals and prayer. Trainees set goals for how to obey the lesson and to take the next steps in witnessing and training others; then they recommission each other through prayer.

My research among Roma communities in the Balkans over the last year highlights a consistent yet strange irony found in missional praxis—a truth that first struck me when I read The Brothers Karamazov years ago. “I MUST make one confession,” Ivan began. “I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbors...One can love one’s neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it’s almost impossible.”²

Why does our compassion so often scab over in response to those closest, and most unlike us, even as our hearts burn with passion for “those in need” who are far off? Perhaps Jesus told his parable of the Good Samaritan in order to elicit a visceral reaction regarding the true challenge of loving our neighbor—a reaction we can experience today if we take out the word Samaritan and insert a neighbor with whom we share close physical proximity but try to avoid. In fact, despite changing paradigms in 21st Century missiology, the word “mission” and “missionary” often still hold an implicit meaning of being “far off and distant.” 

The reasons for this are not merely peripheral—in fact, it is imperative that we understand the why behind this issue, perhaps unique in every context, so that we can effectively address the how in rethinking proximal mission in a given context. There is most likely a complex web of historical, cultural, personal, spiritual, and social factors at play that feed into disregard for the other at close proximity. 

I have tried to analyze this issue in my research among Roma communities in the Balkans—communities that have very little missional contact from the surrounding Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches. However, I proceed with caution in this venture of understanding the why in this context. It is always easier to identify another culture’s “Samaritans” and likewise pass judgment, even as we remain blind to our own. In this regard, I am mindful of Jesus’s admonition in Matthew 7:3-5 to “take first the log out of your own eye.” 

At 10-12 million, the Roma make up Europe’s largest minority and yet remain largely invisible.³ The poverty and educational levels are often far below the average in each respective European country, and their history showcases a theme of disregarded suffering. It cannot be said, however, that this marginalization is simply due to ongoing discrimination—they are not passive agents in their own history. Rather, there are elements within the Roma culture itself which contribute to the separation from the surrounding culture. Even after over 800 years of being in Europe, the Roma remain not only distinctly “cross-cultural,” but also profoundly unwelcome and unwanted. Although there are exceptions, Roma communities in the Balkans hardly register on the local church’s missional radar screen. “Nobody wants to accept the Roma,” one Roma pastor in Serbia declared to me. “Not the traditional [Serbian Orthodox] church, not the Protestant church...so now is the time we can make our own church for the Roma.”⁴

Confronting Historical Barriers

The Roma are not new neighbors in the Balkans—the first historical account documented their appearance in the late 1200’s.⁵ Therefore, history plays an important role in current perceptions of the Roma. Unfortunately, the church’s historic attitude towards the Roma has often been a double-edged sword—faulting them for being pagan while showing scant inclination to include them in the church. In fact, the church was complicit in forced conversion, limiting access to sacraments, taking children away from Roma families to raise in “non-Roma homes,” and forcing segregation from the church. 

Although there is no simple explanation for this reaction, their identity was often interwoven around religious folklore, fostered both by the church and the Romanies themselves. In the fifteenth century, some Roma groups secured “letters of protection” from nobility by claiming to be wandering in penance for abandoning Christianity and returning to paganism.⁶ Other folklore claimed that they had constructed the nails by which Christ was crucified and they refused sanctuary to baby Jesus and Mary when they fled to Europe. The suspicions surrounding Roma identity increased because of their skin color, serving to portray them as “non-white, heathen outsiders.⁷ Finally, their spirituality deepened the religious antagonism against them—their practice of magic, palmistry, and fortune telling. “It is certain that the Gypsies have at all times been godless, wicked people who are harried with complete justification,” declared the Universal Dictionary of all Sciences and Arts, published in 1749.⁸

In fact, often we construct our unwanted neighbors’ identity around some measure of “folklore” derived from negative incidents, history, the media, or first impressions. This forms our assumptions and colors our perceptions toward them. If we are not careful, this puts us in a posture of “bearing false witness” against our neighbor, as we sum up who they are with quick cliches or stereotypes that do not come from actual relationship. 

When Anita first visited a Roma home, she was wary, half-expecting that they would try to steal from her. But she was surprised at their openness and their welcome, and when trust began to form, she realized that they were treating her like one of them. Her expectation would not be unusual—most of the majority culture in the Balkans knows little about the actual culture of the Roma, and their perception is filtered through stereotypes that have been present for centuries. But even as the historical legacy promulgates deep feelings of suspicion toward the Roma, the ongoing cultural divide is at least partially maintained by disapproval of their lifestyle and fear of their potential economic demands.

Confronting Socio-Economic and Cultural Barriers

“But you’ve seen how they live,” one earnest student asked me in my missiology class. “It is easy to say that we need to love and reach out, but how do you suggest dealing with your neighbor when their front lawn is full of garbage?” I had posed a case study to my students from recent events that took place in a small Croatian village. After a Roma family moved into a village unfriendly to outsiders, they came under great pressure from the community to leave again. Finally, the community built a fence around the Roma home to “keep them in.” This action was roundly condemned by the Croatian president, but it displays a disturbingly graphic picture of what we may feel in our hearts toward our unwanted neighbors. 

Christine Pohl, in her book Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, discusses this inclination in humanity to turn away from the stranger, to view them as an enemy, the one not like us. “We seldom notice how substantially bounded our private worlds are—how few ‘unknown’ strangers we welcome, nor do we recognize how frequently the boundaries are socioeconomic.”⁹ She points to a number of factors contributing to this response: a steady diet of media images portraying gratuitous need in distant locations that paralyzes us from local involvement, a feeling of ill-will against neighbors who seem detached from social responsibilities, or people feeling inundated with “cultural difference or socio-economic need” of the other.¹⁰

 As the economic situation grows more challenging for everyone in the Balkans, perhaps there is a fear that one’s neighbor may demand too much—giving a little could open the floodgates of need, especially if we disapprove of how our neighbors live. Unpredictable outcomes can stymie relationship, particularly if there is a lot at stake. One Croatian pastor explained his hesitancy to include Roma in the church because of prior incidences of Roma attendance splitting a church. Another pastor admitted his relief that Roma stopped coming to his church so that Croatians would once more want to come. 

One cannot merely dismiss or minimize these concerns. It is difficult to live next to someone who has different priorities and different cultural norms. What is to be done if a pastor loses most of his congregation because of Roma involvement—a congregation that contributes to the offering which helps maintain the church programs and building? What does a church do if by reaching out to unwanted neighbors, it loses its own identity in the process? Even if God might be doing something new with a church’s identity, the prospect of losing what is comfortable and known is always difficult and painful. But perhaps some kind of death is always a prerequisite of new birth. 

Of course it is not possible to confront the socio-economic and cultural barriers without beginning a relationship—and being willing to accept both the risk and the joy that accompanies that beginning. “I found out that although of course there are some Roma who are messy like in any culture, “ Anita told me, “many Roma earn their livelihood by hunting for scrap metal in junkyards and trash. Much of this metal gets sorted and stripped in the front yard of a Roma home.” Relationship not only highlights truth behind the stereotypes and reasons for cultural behavior, but serves to illuminate our own self-erected barriers—our fears, our sin, our commitment to personal comfort and familiarity. 

Confronting Personal Prejudice and Fears

It can be painful to consider a missional approach to the communities we feel most reluctant about—it forces us to confront our own hearts and our lack of commitment to love. Why do I feel no qualm about stepping over a passed-out homeless man in Portland, Oregon, my hometown? Why does a Croatian church not care that a nearby Roma village is in such dire poverty that some houses do not have doors? Is it because I am tired and feeling overwhelmed by work and my previous commitments? Am I worried that too many people will ask me for money? Perhaps I will be confronted with hard questions? 

The narrative of Jesus’ life is bent around the central principle that to “save one’s life, one must first lose it.” Losing one’s life may look different in different contexts, but it demands that we submit to Jesus our own personal comfort, our ideas of mission, and how we think people should act and think. Such a surrender in the context of relationship with our neighbor can lead to a certain identification with them. When Anita proposed to her church that they put together shoeboxes for the children in a nearby Roma village for Christmas, the church stalled on its decision. Finally, Anita heard that it had been vetoed because people were afraid of exposing their own children to diseases by going into the Roma village. Anita found herself angry and offended—although the offense was not aimed at her, her identification with the people allowed a righteous anger at the misinformed prejudice and judgment.  

And yet, moving in relationship toward the other does not often end in a neatly tied up happy ending. At one point, Anita was ostracized from the Roma community by making an unintentional but serious cultural mistake—after a woman had lost a baby, Anita had gone outside to talk to her husband alone, a cultural taboo. Soon, rumors and gossip were flying around the community and Anita struggled with fear and worry about what this meant for her ministry. She felt rejected after she had poured herself into the community. 

“Still,” she said, “I had a big love for the people that this pain could not quench and I wanted to keep being involved. “ 

Confronting Our Limited Ideas of Mission

God continues to reveal himself in Roma communities through miracles, dreams and visions and the Roma expression of faith differs radically from the majority culture around it— therefore the few non-Roma that venture into the community find themselves blessed in unexpected ways. When the woman that Anita had offended finally asked for forgiveness for her behavior, Anita was astonished at her humility and open repentance—an expression of the gospel that she rarely saw in Croatian churches. 

Anita’s journey is a powerful image of mission as a multi-directional catalyst. As we participate in God’s mission, our own understanding of God deepens and our ability to love increases through the ones we are serving. If the kingdom of God begins as a mustard seed, we must step out of our groomed orchards and manicured lawns to poke around in unexpected and unlikely places—will we be able to recognize it when it is only a small seedling?

The Courage to Recognize the Mustard Seed

In 1950, a French Roma woman’s son was miraculously healed and consequently her family converted. However, evangelists refused to baptize them or allow them to take communion because they were not legally married according to French law. Disturbed by this, Pastor Clement Le Cossec arranged for both legal marriages and baptisms, and thus began his involvement in what became the rapidly growing Gypsy Evangelical Church. In 1958, the number of baptized had reached 3,000 and Le Cossec quit his involvement in the Assemblies of God Church to work exclusively within the independent Gypsy Evangelical Church. In its first three decades, the Gypsy Evangelical Church reportedly baptized around 70,000 members.¹¹

In the 1970’s, Pastor Mio Stankovic pastored a small church in Leskovac, Serbia. Although there were thousands of Roma living in and around Leskovac, he gave little thought to them. However, one day a Roma woman came to him and asked for prayer. After he prayed, she was healed. By the late 1980’s, Roma continued to come to the church as a result of the numerous healings and miracles taking place. By 2004, the church had grown from 30 people to 1,000 members.¹²

After a year and a half forming relationships with and discipling our Roma neighbors, Anita and I can see the small seedling pushing its head up from the soil. Our Roma partners in this endeavor decided that the time was ripe to begin a church. The first service, held in November 2012, was celebrated with two pigs and much festivity. In preparation, new Roma believers weed-whacked the property, chopped down unruly trees, replaced windows, and painted the old building. We watched with awe in our hearts and certain expectation of what God was doing. Although it is easier for us to love the idea of the other than the actual other, Jesus’ mandate requires us to move into this uncomfortable, unpredictable, and even sometimes dangerous territory. This is precisely why Jesus told such a disquieting story to the lawyer wishing to justify himself—loving our neighbor, wanted or unwanted, is at the center of mission. 

Some may be surprised that the largest of the unreached Southeast Asian clusters is the Thai.¹ Despite 185 years of Protestant missionary activity in Thailand, “only 0.3% of ethnic Thai, about 185,000 people, have become Protestants.” ² Thailand is made up not only of distinct “Thai” people groups, but also many different tribal groups, based mainly in the north of the country.

A recent research project reveals the composition of the church in Thailand: of the nearly 400,000 Protestant believers, 42% are from a tribal background rather than Thai.³ Furthermore, the majority of believers in Thailand are based in only three provinces out of 77.⁴ These provinces—Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and Mae Hong Son—contain some of the highest concentrations of tribal peoples and some of the highest concentrations of expatriate missionaries in Southeast Asia.

Yet now the church in Thailand has organized around a national plan called the “20/20 Vision,” with a preliminary objective (the “2015 Vision”) for 100,000 members of the national church to declare their intent to bring one million to Christ by 2015. The goal of the 20/20 Vision is to plant a church in every sub-district in Thailand that currently has none; the fulfillment of such a goal will make it much easier for Thai peoples to come to faith in Jesus. 

Researcher Marten Visser found that a Thai living in a village with a church was nearly 100% more likely to come to faith in Jesus Christ. He goes on to conclude, “The Thai have not declined to become Christians because of active resistance but because it has not been a live option in their own social network.”⁶ The question that begs to be asked: “What kind of churches should be planted among the Thai where there are currently none?” 

While Church-Planting Movements (CPM)—“simple churches”—are promoted in many other places as a viable way to engage and reach unreached peoples, this approach has only belatedly received study or adoption in Thailand. Some in Thailand have quickly dismissed CPM methodology because of its emphasis on church leaders who earn their living through bivocational or self-supporting projects rather than Sunday-morning offerings alone.

In addition, most of the previous strategies for the Thai prefer an “extraction” approach that tends to cut off new believers from their families and social webs. The norm is extraction from any and all things that have even the scent of Buddhism; this includes praying with palms together in “wai,” saying Satoo (the Pali word for “so be it”) instead of Amen, and attending community functions at the temple or during Thai national holidays.

Extraction approaches minimize the power of Thai social identity and how social identity has been bound to Buddhist identity from the cradle to the grave. Yet the Thai are not strict, “religious” Buddhists. For most their faith is “high identity-low practice.” Most are not actively seeking nirvana or even seeking to keep the five basic moral precepts of the Buddha. 

By contrast, many in Thai society are lamenting the decline in moral values among both the general population and religious leaders. This decline is reflected in Thailand’s high ranking for adultery⁷, whiskey consumption⁸, methamphetamine abuse⁹, an infamous and thriving sex industry, human trafficking¹⁰ and many publicized religious scandals.¹¹

In addition, most Thai are deeply enmeshed in various forms of “popular” devotion that is tied to Thai Buddhism, such as astrology, spirit devotion, spirit houses, monk veneration, fortune-telling, amulets, power tattoos, and merit-making schemes such as the wildly popular Dhammakaya movement. All the while, Theravada Buddhism struggles to stay relevant to modern culture.¹²

Some Thai believers are opening up to the need to use other means to reach their people rather than replicating Western or Korean models. They are opening up to CPM or “organic” approaches to planting “Christ-centered communities” where there are currently none. They are seeking ways to be self-supporting so that they can focus on empowering every new believer to be a witness of Jesus both in word and power. They are bravely looking at what it could mean for new believers to remain as witnesses within their own socio-religious environments. They are willing to “leave the 1% for the sake of the 99%” who still have little or no access to the gospel.

I believe that we will see a massive movement of Thai come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior and live out dedicated and grace-filled obedience to Him within their own cultural context. Pray with me for the Thai to know and honor Jesus as their Liberator and King! 

To learn more, visit: 

http://www.hubthailand.com

http://www.spreadtheflame.com/category/thailand/

http://www.thaicrc.com

http://www.thaimissions.info

http://e-star.ws/

http://www.thaivision2020.com/

Confusion of massive proportions is taking place across the missionary enterprise. Great cultural change in the world has thwarted both young and old so that many are unable to engage successfully in cross-cultural church-planting. Political and religious opposition as well as emotional stress are partly responsible for this. But the greatest problem seems to be a lack of skill in cross-cultural church-planting. Some agencies report as high as 47% of their personnel leave the field in the first 5 years.¹ Others stay longer but do not really succeed in planting churches. This is a tragic waste of outstanding and committed people. We cannot expect them to do a job they have never been trained to do, and that is exactly the case which I want to address in this article. I want to suggest two things: 1) the type of training modern missionaries need in order to plant churches cross-culturally, and 2) the time and place where that training should initially take place.

Creating The Training Model

In 1999, a team created a cross-cultural church-planting model for Church of the Savior in Wayne, PA. Although the model was never implemented, it is useful as a template to discuss training issues. After surveying other programs in the U.S. we found that only one engaged in both cross-cultural adjustment and church-planting methods. Since then, additional programs have emerged in various parts of the country, but the need for cross-cultural church-planting training remains critical.

Proposal For A Cross-Cultural Church-Planting Training Model

This proposal was field-based, intending to put missionary candidates into cross-cultural situations in their home country as interns to live and work for at least a year. Generally speaking this required them to live in urban areas where there was a significant immigrant population that still spoke their native language. The interns would rent living quarters and secure jobs in the area where they would raise part of their living expenses. It would probably be necessary for their church or agency to add to their income. The challenge of finding and fulfilling a job in a cross-cultural neighborhood would give them valuable experience for future assignments. Family and singles housing would enhance immersion in the ethnic community. They would then partner with a local church to implement a church plant among their focus group. If the candidates had children, they would experience the challenges of raising their children in an ethnic neighborhood.

By doing this, the interns would achieve a two-fold objective: 

1. They would learn to relate to a new culture while being given tools to understand emotional, spiritual, and lifestyle challenges.

2. They would participate in the planting of a local congregation within a culturally different community while being coached in the observation and adaptation of biblical church-planting patterns in cross-cultural contexts.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites were established in order to assure that potential candidates were being trained for cross-cultural church-planting. 

1. Each intern was expected to demonstrate spiritual and emotional maturity, a distinct call to unreached peoples ministry, and no personal problems or hindrances that would embarrass them in ministry.

2. Each intern was expected to have finished his/her formal training, Bible and religious studies, and/or degree work.

3. Each intern was expected to have completed the spiritual formation program at his or her home church.

4. Each intern understood that this internship was arduous and had released him/herself from other work or encumbrances to give full time to this program.

Experienced-Based, Coach-Intensive

Since this was formulated to be an experienced-based, coach-intensive program, we envisioned it to have several stages. In Stage One, the intern would follow a lesson-based course lasting from 8-12 weeks. The intern and family should attend. The interns would be in the classroom about one day a week studying the theory and process of cross-cultural church-planting, linguistics, and psychological/emotional debriefing/evaluation procedures. Stage Two would overlap with Stage One, covering a year during which the intern would be assigned to work in a team model under the supervision of a church planter and a missionary coach. Here the tasks were envisioned to be both theoretical and applied in nature. Communication lines between the worker and the coach would be open at all times through e-mail or phone.

The intern would be assigned to cross-cultural church-planting preferably among an ethnic population that is the focus group of the candidate. All aspects of the intern’s fieldwork would be under the authority of the local area church that is his partner. A missionary coach would be assigned to the intern. This coach would be in regular contact with the intern and his partner church in order to give guidance on any area of cross-cultural or church-planting questions which arise.

The intern would also seek to develop a spiritual support group. This might be from the local area church, from his/her home church, or from a combination of churches. This support group would pray for and with the intern and family and would aid them in preparing spiritually and emotionally for departure to a foreign land. This group would pledge to pray for and maintain contact with the intern and family as co-workers in the harvest.

The Rationale for this Training Program

When workers have not had any experience in how a church is organized and operated, they cannot envision what they are trying to accomplish among the unreached people group. Churches have structure. This includes theology, worship, liturgy, organization, polity (government), and various infrastructure. When a worker helps create a church plant, it is necessary to have a concept in mind toward which to work. The goal is not to plant a clone church of another culture but rather birth an indigenous church. This would not be a fellowship where no one has responsibility to train evangelists, pastors, or lay leaders. A fellowship does not develop its own literature, music, or youth camps. The church-planting team must have an idea of the kind of congregation that will thrive in the UPG and have long-term success in all those aspects of ministry. This training program seeks those goals.

The major problem that most cross-cultural church planters face is a lack of church-planting experience. If one has not done church-planting in one’s home country, it will be difficult to do it in a foreign country. The reason is pretty simple and should be obvious. Pioneer church-planting involves a complex series of competencies that are only truly understood when one has had some previous involvement. A false perception that people will suddenly understand the complexities of disciple-making, church theology and organization when they go to another country often leads to immature outcomes. 

Benefits of Cross-Cultural Church-Planting Training

“Preparation is not something suddenly accomplished, but a process steadily maintained,” notes Oswald Chambers.² This program speaks to all the important weaknesses that lead to missionary attrition because it integrates the competencies needed to do cross-cultural church-planting. These include spiritual disciplines, family dynamics, team building, work experience, nurturing children, and learning to partner with national peers. In addition, this training program prepares a worker in language acquisition, cross-cultural communication and comparative religion. These are all competencies required for a successful cross-cultural church planter. Examples of the competencies can be found in the International Missionary Training Fellowship publication.³

A serious issue in today’s world is preparation for trauma. Every cross-cultural church-planting model should have the experience of trauma or hostage training. Dr. Steve Sweatman of Mission Training International has commented that “more and more of those we debrief have experienced some significant trauma related to bodily threat or damage. We have noticed that there are three distinct missionary eras:

The era when Western Expats and missionaries were considered TERRIFIC

The era when Western Expats and missionaries were TOLERATED

The era when Western Expats and missionaries are now TARGETED

For those we debrief, 50% are coming from countries in the TOLERATED era and the other half from countries where they are in the TARGETED era.”⁴

Train in the Homeland

Many of us have become convinced that training new workers in their homeland is the most effective way to alleviate these problems. However, this requires a significant shift in attitude by all parties. The candidates must be willing to add another year to their training while the churches must be willing to finance them during this time. It will cost far less in dollars because it will reduce the number of those who return without engaging their focus group. The financial loss by these resignations is much greater than a year’s training would cost. In “Understanding Missionary Support,” Daryl Anderson writes: “The average cost to support a missionary family from North America is $10,338 per month.⁵ A cross-cultural church-planting training program in the US would cost the church less than half that because the intern would also be making money at his/her secular job.

Obstacles of all kinds can be overcome with preparation for cross-cultural church-planting in a UPG. Such preparation takes time and cannot be accomplished simply by taking a few summer courses and short-term mission trips. Also, training at home is more efficient because it means that the worker is able to (1) integrate more quickly with his or her team on the field and be an effective member and (2) not be a physical and emotional drain on team members who must spend considerable effort training them. The team gains a prepared worker while not expending the skills of a seasoned veteran. 

Perhaps it is in this last reference that we as a North American church are challenged most. We are so accustomed to the power of education, resources and fortitude to change the world that we’ve become much too self-reliant and too little God-reliant. If we ask ourselves the question, “Am I doing anything right now that absolutely requires faith in the Spirit to sustain me as opposed to my own personal abilities?” we often find ourselves at a loss.

I recall a group of twelve East Asian believers I worked with in a Church-Planting Movement. Their people group, on many economic scales, was classified as the poorest group in the country. Many individuals had one, perhaps two sets of clothes. Most had little, if any, money. The average educational level ranged between third and sixth grade. Illiteracy was at 86%. Drunkenness was rampant. They brought nothing to the table in their effort to reach their people group with the gospel—no resources, no education, no connections. And this brought great despair in a society in which connections were everything.

When I first saw them, clothes ragged, hair disheveled, teeth missing, I almost lost hope that God could do much with them. But then God gave me these counterintuitive promises for these precious new believers:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

(1 Cor. 1:26-29 ESV)

I told them: “You’re the poorest tribe in this country!” Their shoulders slumped. “You’re the most despised in this country!” Their eyes looked down at their toes in realization.

Then I told them “So rejoice! That is why God is going to use you to win the world! You are in these verses. You are the weak, the poor, the despised to whom God will give grace. God gives grace to the humble and there is no group more humbled than you! Take up your calling.”

At that a deep, Spirit-prompted identity rose up in the hearts of this “insignificant” band as they laid hold of that promise. These were their verses. God had shown them their place in the cosmic plan for the redemption of this world. They took up this mantle and began to spread the kingdom of God from village to village and from valley to valley.

The counterintuitive nature of the kingdom joyfully catches us by surprise.

The Mustard Seed of Kingdom Growth

CPMs are kingdom movements that operate in the power of the Spirit on kingdom principles. Because we don’t naturally or intuitively understand kingdom ways, Jesus painted many word pictures of the kingdom in the form of parables, starting most of them with “the kingdom of God is like….” Each is a kernel of truth about the overall mystery of the King’s reign.

Jesus answered [His disciples], “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted…. But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.

(Matt. 13:11, 16, NASB, emphasis added)

Parables are a mystery to those outside, but to those who come like little children, God will disclose the mysterious nature of the kingdom. Surrender your pre-conceived ideas to Him and ask Him to speak afresh to you. We must be very purposeful if we would live King-centered rather than human-centered ways of ministry.

A foundational kingdom kernel is the mustard seed. 

He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

(Matt. 13:31-32 ESV)

What is more insignificant than a mustard seed? What was more insignificant than this little band of barely-literate ignored believers in East Asia who sought to change the world?

The parable teaches us that large movements start from small beginnings. In this manner God most fully receives the glory. Powerful transformation comes through those we would deem weak. It is not the resources, education and connections that enable us to succeed but rather the recognition of our spiritual bankruptcy and absolute need for Jesus every day.¹

What transformed that humble band of twelve into the early apostles was their recognition of their insignificance and their utter dependence on nothing but the Spirit of God. They had no other options. Like Peter, they could say “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee.”

The CPMs around the world have nothing to do with earthly socio-economic status and everything to do with spiritual socio-economic status.

This bursts a common myth about CPMs: that they only occur in poor societies. They more often occur in poor societies, perhaps because their physical poverty helps them recognize spiritual poverty. But CPMs are also taking place in educated communities and professional arenas. The key is not economic status but status of the heart.

The King’s ways are to take the spiritually bankrupt when they rely on Him and His Word in absolute dependence and use them to spread throughout the world as His change agents. In the West, we find it hard to imagine that a small group of poverty-stricken or poorly-educated believers and churches could grow like a mustard tree and become the largest tree in the garden. We find the speed of Church-planting Movements of the world unbelievable precisely because we forget how the kingdom operates. It does not depend on human resources or engineering.

And that’s what I love about CPMs: God taking bedraggled have-nots and shaming the haves. That’s our King! If we plant the right DNA of the kingdom in the right types of individuals, the growth of the kingdom is inevitable. It is critical that we get the beginnings right! We must start with the counterintuitive ways of the King.

What follows are two examples of how that is happening: the percentage growth of believers in societies and the transformation of cultures in which they live.

CPMs-—in which ordinary believers and churches are envisioned, equipped and empowered to complete the task of world evangelization—offer a fresh arena in which the percentages of disciples of Jesus in a lost society are significantly increasing.

Stan Parks, a CPM Trainer with Mission to Unreached Peoples, speaks about this below. He may be contacted at sbp@gcnow.org.

Changing the Percentages 

by Stan Parks

In the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus commands us as His disciples to make disciples of all ethne. The Great Commission was given to the entire Body of Christ; all of us have a part to play in reaching the world. So how are we doing? 

According to the Joshua Project, there are currently 16,598 ethne in the world and 7,165 are unreached constituting 41.5% of all people. In 1900 the world was 34.5% Christian and now we are 33% Christian. The global annual growth rate of Christianity is 1.2% and the global annual growth rate of Great Commission Christians is 1.2%. Ironically, these both match the world population annual growth rate of 1.2%. This implies that our Christian growth rates are merely biological and not spiritual. As a global Body of Christ, we are not doing a very good job of obeying the Great Commission.

We MUST change our Great Commission efforts if we are going to see the world reached! Missions as usual will continue to lose ground and leave millions and billions without even the first opportunity to hear the gospel. We must be willing to make radical changes and be open to new approaches. 

Church-Planting Movements (CPMs) are the main way we are seeing God change these heart-breaking percentages among the unreached. CPMs are rapidly² multiplying indigenous churches planting new churches within a population segment. This is happening because all new believers are being taught to obey Christ’s commands, and as a result they expect every believer and every church to take responsibility for reaching those next door and at the ends of the earth. CPMs are not a new fad, but rather a modern example of what God has always done in history: bringing individuals, families and groups into relationship with Him in a powerful way which makes these new communities of faith want to serve those around them and reach more people with the Good News. 

In recent years, God has delighted in starting CPMs in some of the most unreached areas of the world. In North India, sometimes called the “Graveyard of Modern Missions” because of 200 years of largely fruitless efforts, God has birthed a movement among the Bhojpuri of India that has grown to over 80,000 churches and four million baptized believers in 20 years. This movement has started CPMs in four nearby groups and has sent missionaries to South America and the South Pacific. Another CPM in China has seen over 150,000 churches established and two million people baptized in the last twelve years. Over 6,000 new churches have been planted among Muslims in eighteen different countries in Africa over the last seven years. Around the world, there are over 90 CPMs that are seeing consistent 4th generation or beyond reproduction of churches. And God is starting these movements in every region: Africa, Asia, South America, North America, Europe, the Middle East. 

What are we willing to do to support and catalyze these new movements? Are we willing to change anything and everything to better cooperate with God’s movements? May it be so!

Not only is the percentage of believers growing in these people groups and countries, but they are also actively transforming their communities. Here’s a testimony from Nathan Shank who works with several CPMs in South Asia. He may be contacted through http://www.movements.net.

A Breakthrough in Holistic Ministry 

by Nathan Shank 

I am proud to say, “Our ministry has started thousands of localized, strategic community transformation centers (or co-ops).” 

We have gone about a systematic campaign against alcoholism among men in hundreds of communities. This has happened through ongoing teaching related to being filled with the Spirit rather than the things of this world. As a result, hundreds of men have put down the bottle and stopped beating their wives. With the money no longer given to liquor stores, children are sent to school with books, materials and appropriate dress. Sobriety offers these families new hope through a model of fatherhood focused on the needs of the family rather than daily appetites.

We have fostered an unprecedented literacy campaign across hundreds of communities. We have discovered a breakthrough in the major barrier to education across the fields we target. Countless families have emerged from isolation into the light of education for their children offering a bright future of progress and economic development. The breakthrough was intrinsic motivation. By instilling the motive for literacy we have seen families emerge from the grinding legacy of the caste system and its oppressive outlook of fatalism.³

To varying degrees each of the co-ops participates in regular benevolence projects determined locally for the betterment of their community.⁴ Further, they provide ongoing support and subsidy generated from local sources for widows, orphans and the oppressed. Many expressions of care for the sick, dying and hospitalized have been received.

We have mobilized hundreds of indigenous volunteer workers to advocate, support and adopt the victims of sex trafficking, domestic violence and infant exposure. We have received dozens of reports of infant girls rescued from exposure, as well as orphans and abandoned children placed into protective custody led by Christian families. We have seen dozens of volunteer kingdom agents compelled by the teaching of the Word and the Spirit of God to engage the local sex industry in their cities with the light of the gospel.⁵

We have catalyzed citizenship across the nation through the same localized co-operatives by introducing biblical teaching on submission to authority, prayer for one’s masters and the value of quiet productive lives. We have heard numerous reports of lives and families reformed of law-breaking. We have heard the testimonies of reformed smugglers, prostitutes, murderers and child molesters. We believe teaching through these co-operatives was the central catalyst for these reforms. 

Finally, we have seen countless lives oppressed by sin released from a lifestyle of despair and transformed to productivity. It has been based on an outlook of hope in a just Judge capable of righting wrongs for eternity. 

For those interested in holistic ministry we offer you our best practice. All these things have been accomplished through the establishment of localized community-oriented transformation co-operatives. We believe the Holy Spirit inspired these co-operatives and laid out patterns in Scripture for our systematic pursuit of their establishment. 

For more information on joining the Spirit and the Kingdom in transformational, holistic ministry please begin your search here: 

Matthew 16:18—“… I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not stand against it.”

---------------------------

As you can see, local churches that are part of CPMs are demonstrating the ability to transform their communities as a result of life transformation and obedience to the admonitions of Scripture. Rather than transform society first then redeem individuals second, in CPMs it is normally reversed: redeem individuals first and then help these Spirit-led believers and churches transform their communities.

It’s counterintuitive, and that’s one thing that is so delightful about God—He’s the King and we are not. It’s about His ways, not our ways. Mustard seeds are being planted around the world, and the trees of the kingdom growing and spreading their branches are glorious!

How will you and your church apply this kernel of truth about the kingdom? Whom do you know that appears insignificant but is hungry for God and His Word?

Follow-up:

To send examples of what you are learning in CPMs to be featured in future issues, write us at KingdomKernels@onepost.net.

Kingdom Kernels is a regular column featuring lessons from Church-Planting Movements around the world.

So how are we doing in preparing believers to make disciples in every tribe and tongue? Are we using the very best training methods—so effective that others are seeking to copy them? Are we giving this critical task our very best efforts? 

Unfortunately, often the opposite is true. The church generally uses the least effective means available to make disciples and to train others to do so. And the sad fact is that in some cases we are actually doing less today than we were in previous generations. No other profession in the world uses the Church’s methods to prepare its people for various jobs because they know that these methods do not work. 

To train our people to make disciples we ask them to sit in a church and listen to lectures (sermons) week after week for years. Participation in Sunday school used to be expected for adults, but increasing numbers of churches have even done away with this modest avenue of training as well. Note taking is not required during these lectures; no tests are given; no outside reading or study is required; no opportunity for “student” discussion of the material presented in the lecture is provided. There is no one available to supervise or mentor the “student” toward mastery of the information and skills required to become an effective disciple-maker. 

In the realm of academia this process would be called auditing a course. In such cases no academic credit is given because everyone in academia knows how ineffective this process is in enabling a student to gain competency in a particular subject. They know that only about 10% of what is given by lecture alone is remembered. In effect the majority of believers in Jesus are “auditing” the Christian faith. They have become passive participants in the most critical mission in the history of the world and most pastors and church leaders are content with continuing this means of “training.” But it is not working to equip most believers for the essential work of making disciples who disciple others. 

So after undergoing hundreds, if not thousands, of lectures in church we send out these “trained” disciple-makers to peoples, tribes and tongues all over the world with the goal of making disciples and planting churches without ever having proved that they can do these tasks within their own culture. The job of doing so cross-culturally is many times more difficult. 

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that having worship services where the Word is preached is wrong or should be done away with. My life has been changed by some sermons. The problem arises when this is the primary means that is employed to equip all believers for the work of ministry. The worship service is not an effective means of training people in disciple making and should not be relied on as the primary means to accomplish this vital task. Many churches have small groups that could be effective venues for training in disciple making if they are focused on doing so. Real Life Ministries is one church that does this well. (See Jan-Feb 2011 MF)

Discipling someone must be a highly intentional, personal relationship between people where the disciple is trained in the process of making disciples by actually doing it, not just hearing about it in a sermon. It seems so basic but people learn by doing not by simply listening. I would never want to be operated on by a surgeon who simply listened to hundreds of lectures on how to do surgery. Neither should we send out disciple-makers with similar preparation. 

Some will say that we train many people in Bible schools and seminaries with high academic standards. This is true but these institutions usually teach people biblical information to be mastered, not skills in discipleship and church planting that can be reproduced in the lives of others. When was the last time you heard of a Bible school or seminary in the West requiring students to demonstrate a mastery of disciple-making or church planting as a prerequisite for graduation? Also relatively few believers are able to receive this type of training.Our goal must be that every willing believer is trained as a disciple-maker.  

Jesus Showed Us How

Jesus modeled for us the most effective methods for making disciples and the rest of the world has copied his methods while the Church has largely abandoned them. For three years Jesus spent most of his time mentoring or discipling 12 men, day in and day out. These disciples learned by watching and listening to the master and then going out on their own to practice what they had seen lived out before them. Then they came back for debriefing and correction. This was not just a sit and listen means of training. This was hands-on practice whereby skills and competency were mastered. 

Throughout the centuries the world has often adopted this means of training and applied it to many occupations. There has been a long history of apprenticeship in many professions where those who have learned various skills are able to pass them on to others. See the article, “The Guild,” starting on page 10 where the centuries-old model of apprenticeship is being applied to the training of today’s missionaries. 

We have a long way to go toward developing effective training for all believers to be disciple-makers but we must commit ourselves now to move in this direction. Approaches like the T4T Process (see page 18) and the Discovery Bible Study Method have been presented in recent issues of MF. They are an excellent place to start in developing the skills for the most important job in the world.

A Tribute to Dr. Richard Twiss, 1954-2013, Co-Founder & President of Wiconi, Intl. 

I want to take a moment to pay tribute to a friend and fallen warrior for Jesus. Richard Twiss died February 9, 2013, from a heart attack. Richard grew up as a member of the Sicangu Lakota Oyate people of the Rosebud Lakota Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. He met Jesus in 1974 and came to understand that as a Native American he did not have to completely reject his heritage and culture in order to follow Jesus. Since then he has led thousands of others both Native and non-Native alike to this same understanding. He said, “Why does the Native American have to exchange his sin-soaked culture for someone else’s sin-soaked culture?” 

No other ministry leader has had so significant an impact in pioneering new contextual approaches to reaching Native Americans as Richard Twiss. I have never known a more eloquent advocate for contextualizing the gospel for Native American peoples as well as for all the other unreached peoples around the world. 

Richard was a great friend of the US Center for World Mission and he was instrumental in helping to pull together two different issues of Mission Frontiers—one in Sept-Oct. 2000 and more recently in Sept-Oct 2010 titled, “Making Jesus Known.” Through his work with MF, I came to value him as a friend as well as a respected colleague working on behalf of the unreached. His voice will be missed, but what he has started will live on in the lives of the thousands he has inspired with his vision of contextual ministry among the Native peoples of America and beyond. Pray for God’s grace and power to be poured out upon Wiconi, Intl. as they move forward in their mission to reach Native peoples without their founder. Go to http://www.wiconi.org for more information on their ministry. 

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Birthing kingdom communities (fellowships oriented around allegiance to Jesus and life in his kingdom) is much more a craft than the pursuit of an academic subject. Therefore a more suitable model for training is needed beyond the typical Bible school or seminary structure.

For millennia, craftsmen have been trained through a master–apprenticeship model. A master in a trade or skill trains apprentices to the competency level he has attained. For the purposes of this article we will call them “trained practitioners.” They have gained the experience needed from a master trainer to be able to help other apprentices and eventually rise to the level of a master trainer themselves. 

This was the ancient pattern of training found in the New Testament. Jesus trained the twelve in this manner. Paul, a Pharisee, was trained in this manner under Gamaliel. Both Jesus and Paul trained their “craftsmen”: the Twelve and Timothy. It was an intentional training pattern for the first century apostles. Paul referred to himself as a “wise master builder,” using craftsmanship terminology.

This kind of training requires lifelong learning and upgrading in a rapidly changing world. Masters must continually keep up-to-date in their craft and skill or become irrelevant. Medical doctors have to constantly upgrade their knowledge and skills. Soldiers need training camps where they learn and practice using the latest equipment and warfare tactics. Airline pilots need enhanced manual flying skills and access to advanced simulators to learn the latest cockpit technology. The same should be true of apostolic practitioners and apprentices. The apostolic task is too complex to expect anything less.

The Problem

Many who sense God’s calling might rightly question their own abilities. They have not been tested or trained in the environments they will face. They’ve sat in classrooms and learned how to read books, write papers, compete with classmates to achieve higher grades and pass exams. Some have become very skilled in how they’ve been trained. But training has focused mainly on the mind in an artificial environment. The spiritual challenges, the issues of the heart, the relational, linguistic, and ministry skills needed have not been learned or experienced.

No medical doctor feels confident in the operating room having studied surgery in a classroom alone. No soldier feels confident in warfare having studied its history from a book. He needs to get out in the field and experience battle, sweat, dirt, fear, and the blast of a gun. He needs to learn the tactics and strategies of warfare in relationship with other comrades in the face of an enemy. While there are tremendous resources available for understanding (cognitively) the dynamics involved in cross-cultural apostolic ministry, few find the master trainer (field-experienced) workers or environments where they can learn what they need experientially. Because of this, many lack the capacity and sensitivity to face the challenges they will be confronted with long term on the field. It’s more than mobilizing warm bodies to leave home and go to the field!

Development of “The Guild”

For a number of months we’ve been developing a process within an environment where master-apprenticeship-type training can occur for the purpose of equipping apostolic workers. We’ve identified 18 areas of competency for equipping workers in birthing kingdom communities within the cultural traditions of the unreached peoples.

First–An Appropriate Learning Environment

In order to achieve these outcomes, which involve heart attitudes, character and skills as well as knowledge, specific conditions need to be met for developing an adequate learning environment, namely:

• A context where learning can be experienced

• An environment where the felt needs of an apprentice engaged in a task guide the selection of the information he is taught

• An environment or community that is initially safe for experimentation, failure, and practice

• An environment or community that is “unsettling” enough to test and try a person’s character and skill

• A transactional learning environment where peer to peer, master-apprentice type relationships can develop

• An environment where models of incarnational ministry can be experienced

Second–A phased Apprenticeship Approach

Apprenticeships will vary in length based on the complexity of the craft being learned. Shorter ones might last three years, longer ones five years. Stimulating the birth of kingdom communities cross-culturally is a complex task that could take years to sufficiently learn experientially. Even good field practitioners never finish learning and are always looking for ways to upgrade skills in more fruitful practices.

Apprenticeships for cross-cultural practitioners should involve experience in different locations and varying contexts over a period of time. The crafting of appropriate apprenticeships will vary depending on the trainee’s past experience, age, and target people or culture. A phased apprenticeship approach
will adapt to the needs of each apprentice.

This is similar to the apprenticeship model in the medical field. Following medical school, doctors usually move onto a three–year residency at a hospital where they gain experience under the watchful eye of trained doctors. Their final phase focuses on a specific field of specialization with a personal doctor overseeing their work.

We envision a similar phased apprenticeship approach for training field practitioners. Time frames are approximate. Few apprenticeships will include all the phases. This is a proposed framework for designing a program to fit an apprentice’s needs. 

A Phase 1 Apprenticeship:

Up to two years with an Apostolic Learning Community (ALC) in a culture near to the sending culture—probably located near an urban city with various unreached ethnic populations. The training teams will be led by experienced apostles who can train and evaluate apprentices in the following:

• apostolic calling (exploring and confirming)

• personal character (exploring and developing) 

• models of kingdom community (exploring)

• apostolic team (experiencing)

We envision at least four possible outcomes of a Phase 1 Apprenticeship:

1. The apprentice could be confirmed in his/her apostolic calling and move on to a field team or a Phase 2 apprenticeship. 

2. The apprentice could be encouraged to move to some other aspect of the apostolic community such as a sending structure, new role in the training network, etc.

3. The apprentice could be evaluated by the master trainers as one not apostolically gifted, nor ready for a role in support work with the apostolic network, but rather encouraged to seek a role in a local church.

4. The apprentice could be denied any further confirmation due to uncovered sin or character issues and referred back to the sending community.

A Phase 2 Apprenticeship:

A two to three year internship in a training network in a gateway city of a culture near to which the one the apprentice feels called. These training teams will be led by experienced cross–cultural workers who can evaluate and develop apprentices in:

• Language and cultural learning 

• Cross-cultural adaptation

• Team-ship in challenging pioneering contexts

• Character issues that emerge in difficult cross-cultural adaptation situations

• Developing teams for specific fields and unreached people groups.

We envision at least six possible outcomes of a Phase 2 Apprenticeship:

1. Complete Phase 2 apprenticeship and take up a lifetime of practitioner work on a specific field team.

2. Complete the apprenticeship and be evaluated as one not gifted as a cross–cultural apostle (like Paul); encourage them to return as a Petrine apostle (like Peter) to their own culture.

3. Have the calling confirmed as a potential team leader of a specific field team and move to a Phase 3 Apprenticeship.

4. Encouraged to move to some other aspect of the apostolic community, such as the sending structure, or a role on a training team. 

5. Confirmed that they are not an apostle, nor have a role in support work with the apostolic organisation, but encouraged to pursue a role in a local church or elsewhere.

6. Denied any further confirmation due to uncovered sin or character issues and referred back to the sending community.

Phase 3 Apprenticeships:

A one to two year internship on a field apostolic team in the target culture or a culture close to the target culture. Phase 3 apprenticeships are suitable for potential team leaders going to isolated, pioneering situations among unreached people groups and who need specific training for leading a team. The mentor would be an experienced team leader with a proven track record for reproducing team leaders and equipping them in: 

• The dynamics of a high performance team

• How to develop a high performance team 

• Character issues that emerge in the challenges of leadership 

• Recruiting a team and developing a plan to engage an unreached people group. Recruits might come from field training teams, sending agencies, or existing field teams. 

Third–The Need for Experienced Master Trainers

One of the most serious challenges we face in attempting to launch these types of apprenticeships will be finding appropriate leadership. Field-experienced workers who return home could be a huge untapped potential resource for this type of training. Bible schools, churches, and seminaries are often limited in their capacity to make use of these types of people. Many have more years of fruitful ministry and valuable experience to pass on to a younger generation. A Guild-type structure could harness their experience and provide ongoing fruitfulness for them. 

Jesus looked upon the crowds and expressed deep dismay that they were like “sheep without a shepherd.” How many in the coming generation, stimulated by faith to pursue cross-cultural work among the unreached, will be like “sheep without a shepherd?” Many will be mobilized to go to the field, only to learn years down the road what they wished they had learned before going. Master trainers need to be harnessed to shepherd a new generation of cross-cultural workers.

Sending agency personnel often lack the time, resources, or master trainers to provide this type of training for new candidates. The Guild as well as other groups can hopefully fill this gap. It is our prayer that the investment and time taken to provide a more adequate training process for potential apostolic workers will pay long-term dividends yielding sustained, life-long, apostolic practitioners.

A growing problem for the church to grapple with is that there are more and more people at church who have a deeper engagement with the world. One reason is the wealth of information available on the Internet—which can be alternatively helpful or false and overwhelming. Often it is very difficult to effectively interpret. Another reason for this growing interest is the increasing travel of many church members for their work—not to mention the huge numbers of people who go out for short terms. 

But often, those globally engaged brothers and sisters don’t have an effective way to talk and learn more about the burdens they see. They come to church or attend a Sunday school class, but fail to see a connection between the teaching and day-to-day life in the world.

While I was speaking at a church outside Houston, Texas a few weeks ago, I talked with a geologist from a large oil firm who was experiencing something different. Since he could work wherever he wanted, he had gained international experience by living in Nigeria for five years. Their kids had their worldview shaped by living in a very different culture. Their mom was able to reach out to all kinds of people—both from the country as well as global workers living there or passing through. And the company paid for it all! Now, as their kids go off to college, the parents are looking forward to where they might go next and the wife is as up for it as the husband!

As we talked, it was clear how much they enjoyed a particular class at their church that focused on global issues. It included not only Bible study but also concepts and books that allowed them to grapple more deeply with cultural understanding. They studied one that talked about shame and honor—subjects that the Bible has a LOT to say about, but we Westerners often miss.²

They studied another we have mentioned in this magazine: When Helping Hurts by Corbett and Fikkert. I suggested they consider, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes as a way of understanding the Gospels and statements of Jesus in a whole new light. Kenneth Bailey, the author of that book and a new one, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes, spent his career teaching NT in the Middle East.

But what was so encouraging to me was what I heard in this calm engineer’s voice. I heard a sense of engagement and excitement in church and its purpose. As we talked, he was able to discus a much broader range of subjects than is often the case. I sensed the church was tapping into his experiences and he was committed to the church and to helping them share their missions values. As I talked with others and heard other global workers share, I was very encouraged by the level of interest. 

I know there are others who were not really that interested—such is always the case. But I was greatly encouraged by the weekend to sense that the engagement would continue. There was not a sense of “well, missions week is over for another year.” It was more of a “how can we continue to grow and improve what we are doing?” 

How is it going in your church? Perhaps there is something you have tried out that worked well—or failed! Are you excited about what your church is doing? Or are you frustrated? How are you engaged? 

Why not grab one of those books I mentioned and discuss it with others? Then share what you learn by posting your thoughts about this article in the comments below and see what others are saying.

Spearheading evangelistic initiatives are local believers working alongside expatriate workers, spreading the vision of God’s mission to restore humanity to Himself. Three years ago believers were challenged to share more boldly and impart to others Christ’s command for obedience. At that time there was not a single reproducing church on Sumatra; this challenge to obedience has resulted in several reproducing churches. In 2012 church-planting increased sevenfold, and 105 baptized believers were added to congregations on the island.

A man named ^*Dian is like many other believers on Sumatra. Dian is an agricultural worker who tends farm plots throughout the week. When his family’s financial needs increased, he began to hunt wild boars in the outlying jungles. The boars devastate precious crops and attack villagers, yet they are difficult to capture, and many butchers will pay a high price for the meat. Often Dian has returned from a hunt with three or four butchers waiting to receive the day’s catch. 

After some time, three men from Dian’s community asked to join him in his hunts. Week by week the men hiked into the brush, set wire traps, trained hunting dogs and sharpened their spears. Dian had not told his companions of his faith in Christ until his house church challenged members to obey Christ’s command to be His witnesses among the nations. Slowly, during the long hours of each hunt, Dian began to share his faith, daring the other men to embrace Jesus with all their hearts, and today his obedience has drawn his companions closer to Christ.

Another believer, ^*Matius, recalls his own journey to obedience. Matius understood that his faith and obedience could lead to persecution, but he remained determined to convey Christ’s love through every smile, handshake and conversation. Eventually his boldness took him to an area of Sumatra that is home to several peoples not only unreached but also unengaged by any existing mission initiatives.

When he first moved to his new city, Matius began to search for a way to both develop relationships and remain in the community long-term. After meeting a man who made ice cream, Matius began selling this ice cream from the back of his motorbike as he traced the weaving roads leading to surrounding towns. 

Today Matius is greeted by smiles and warm receptions as he travels and chats with those who stop to buy his frozen treats. Conversations inevitably lead to the subject of faith in Christ, for Matius cannot help but share what Jesus has done for him. Small groups have begun to meet as house churches among this collection of neighboring villages. Matius guides his life in an intentional pattern of sowing and reaping, and today his work is beginning to touch one of the nine unreached, previously unengaged peoples on Sumatra. These nine peoples encompass a population of 875,000 and are located in some of the island’s most daunting and remote areas.

One local church on the coast of Sumatra has made a commitment to increase its efforts to take the Good News to their own ethnic group. Previously this body of believers was highly introspective, avoiding conflict in their community by keeping silent about the saving power of Christ. After they participated in several training conferences where they heard the challenge for all believers to live in obedience to Jesus’ commands, the church stepped up their Bible study programs and members began to listen more intently to God’s call. The Lord led several families to relocate to unreached areas. 

Funded by this local church, these families are now engaging the lost and praying for responses to the Good News. Many of their efforts have been met with receptivity, and the fruit can be seen in the formation of house churches across areas of Sumatra where three years ago believers would never have dreamed they could reach. 

Join in prayer for the new believers and churches throughout Sumatra. Much remains to be done! To learn more, see: 

www.researchseap.org/sumatra2.html 

^*Names have been changed.

Seeking CPMs for Every Cluster and Every People!

by Evelyn Adamson

With 50 million inhabitants and at least 49 unreached people groups, Sumatra has been called the most unreached island in the world. These millions have not heard the good news of Christ because of strong, local religious traditions as well as political, geographical and cultural barriers. Yet God is moving on Sumatra, and we are seeing increased responsiveness among these unreached peoples in the last three years.

These 49 unreached peoples can be grouped into ten clusters:

1. Aceh Cluster (Aceh, Aneuk Jame, Gayo, Simeulue)

2. Batak Cluster (Mandailing, Alas, Singkil, Kluet)

3. North Sumatra Malay Cluster (North Sumatra Malay, Tamiang)

4. Minangkabau Cluster (Minangkabau, Kerinci, Muko-Muko, Penghulu) 

5. Central Sumatra Malay Cluster (Jambi Malay, Riau Malay, Bangka Malay, Belitung Malay)

6. Bengkulu Cluster (Rejang, Bengkulu, Pekal)

7. Musi Cluster (Musi, Palembang, Rawas, Lembak)

8. Pasemah Cluster (Pasemah, Kaur, Kikim, Lintang, Semendo, Serawai)

9. Ogan Cluster (Ogan, Aji, Belide, Enim, Lematang, Pegagan, Penesak, Rambang)

10. Lampung Cluster (Lampung Pesisir, Lampung Abung, Lampung Pubian, Lampung Sungkai, Lampung Way Kanan, Ranau, Daya, Kayu Agung, Komering)

New efforts are underway to start Church-Planting Movements (CPMs) in each cluster and within each people. We start Church Planting Movements (CPMs) by…

• Asking God for His vision for these peoples;

• Carefully following the strategies modeled by Jesus, Paul and the New Testament Church for multiplying disciples exponentially;

• Discipling whole households to obey all that Jesus commanded;

• Teaching these groups to start other groups who start other groups;

• Equipping these groups to feed the poor, help the sick, share the gospel and change their societies from within;

• Collaborating globally to stimulate and resource more CPM teams.

To learn more about the Sumatra clusters, see Joshua Project.To learn how to become strategically engaged in Sumatra, write to sumatra@sr21.com.

First of all, the appeal stated that the girls currently need to find housing in nearby villages with relatives or others willing to take them in. Unfortunately, this has led to various forms of abuse, including sexual abuse, and being forced to work for the host family when the girls should be in class or studying. Teenage pregnancies are forcing some to leave school, perhaps never again to have the opportunity to finish their schooling. The appeal for funds said the dormitory was necessary so that the girls can be “safe” from the evil in the surrounding villages. 

As I read it, the appeal made me sad because I had some personal knowledge of that area of Africa. The gospel has been preached in that area for over 100 years. In the early days, mission stations were established as places where local people who wanted to follow Christ could find a safe haven, away from the “sinful atmosphere” of the surrounding villages. So, the idea that the school dormitory would be a safe haven is not new. Interestingly, one of the facts of life is that young girls, despite the “safety” of school dormitories, can still get pregnant out of wedlock. 

What grieved me most is the implication that after 100 years of preaching the gospel in that area, the villages are still not safe places for these girls to live! What does this say about the nature of the gospel that was preached—that local populations cannot be trusted not to prey on teenage girls? It is quite possible that the men violating these young girls attended mission-related primary
and secondary schools themselves. Why has the gospel not brought deep spiritual transformation? Should they not, after 100 years, display a level of morality that makes their villages safe places for young girls to live?

If there has not been an effective level of transformation in the hearts and minds of the villagers, will building a dormitory on the secondary school compound solve the problem in the long term? Or does this lack of spiritual transformation point to the inadequacy of Western-style education, which may leave the mind improved but the heart wanting? 

About 40 years ago some anthropological research was done in East Africa on the spirituality of those who attended four years of secondary school. It was discovered that those about to finish four years of secondary education were more likely to be committed to an animistic paradigm than when they entered the program four years earlier. The explanation was that the nearer the students got to graduation (anticipating the adult world), the more likely they were to take the non-Christian paradigm seriously, indicating that many of them lacked a deep personal relationship with the Lord. To them, Christianity did not seem to have the answers for “adult” questions, perhaps because for them it was formed, incubated and developed in a Western-style educational environment that often denied the realities of the “spirit” world.

In a situation such as this, where compassionate Christians want to provide shelter for young women, what could possibly be a workable alternative? The alternative is to present a gospel that does not extract people from the real life of traditional villages, but finds a way of dealing with the spiritual issues faced in the villages where the young women are seeking accommodation. This, of course, needs to be addressed in the long term. The need for the dormitory represents a more urgent and short-term solution.

How can sinful villages be transformed? Western-style education is definitely not adequate to deal with the realities of the spirit world in which most of these young people live their lives. The only viable solution is to present the gospel—within the villages themselves—in such a way that the kingdom of God and the power of His transforming grace can be extended over the villages, so they can become safe places for everyone to live. When that happens, the village no longer needs to be a place of evil but a place where God’s transforming grace is seen on a daily basis. Those same villages can become places where adult men and women will create a safe place for their children, youth, and all residents and visitors who are seeking shelter. 

 In short, the long-term hope for the Christian church in rural Africa or anywhere else is not extraction from but transformation of the village. A life-changing experience with the Holy Spirit, combined with biblical teaching and an emphasis on holy living, can turn sinful villages into places where spiritual men and women will care for and disciple their youth. 

And when it comes to mobilizing local resources, think of it this way: if villages are safe places for young women to live, foreign funding for dormitories will not be needed. In fact, if local people deem such dormitories to be necessary—and they take psychological ownership of the school—they may even make and burn the bricks to build the buildings! If that were to happen, the appeal letter can be sent to the local people capable of making and burning the bricks without appealing overseas for funding. People in Africa deserve the blessing of doing such things for themselves.

David remembers his first conference: “I remember that I was overwhelmingly impressed with two things: First, that every Christian who has received the gospel is responsible for giving it to those people who don’t have it. And second, that most of the people without the gospel were not in my country. People in North America had access to the gospel. But most who had not heard were located somewhere else. This raised the pressing question: What should I be doing about that reality?” 

“J. Christy Wilson, was the director of that first conference, became a noted missionary in Afghanistan, then missions professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. L. E. Maxwell, president of Prairie Bible Institute, was an impressive speaker, as was Bahkt Singh, a noted India evangelist and church leader. Dr. Robert McQuilkin, president of Columbia Bible College, gave the closing address. I remember being impressed with his passion for the church and for the world.

“Even though I don’t remember the details of when I signed the Decision Card, I took the signed card back to campus with me and tacked it above my desk back in my dorm room. I was willing to respond to whatever the Lord would reveal to me… 

“I prayed every day that I might be faithful to God in fulfilling the commitment I had made to him represented by that card….

David joined InterVarsity as a student worker part-time in 1951, and then went with Latin America Mission in 1953 to Costa Rica and Columbia, where he and Phyllis served for 15 years. In the 1960s he returned to the US and began speaking again at InterVarsity chapters across the country. He would often pull the card from his pocket to illustrate the importance of making a decision and prayerfully waiting on the Lord for specific guidance as to when and where.

David continued: “The card is now brown, but I remember I prayed about that daily for years. I found the card many years later, tucked away in some old files. I began to carry it with me when I spoke at the Perspectives course. When I taught the History lesson, I would share about how God has used young students in modern missions. I would pull my own Decision Card from my pocket and show it to the students as a tool the Lord used: ‘I made a commitment in 1946, and here is my commitment card….’ 

“I finally laminated it just this last year… to protect it…. 

“At this last Urbana’12 I was asked frequently to see the card…. In fact, Alec Hill, current president of IVCF, now has a copy framed outside his office in Madison, WI, as an illustration of how God uses our decisions to change our lives and use them for his glory…

“This is an illustration of a very minor thing—a card smaller than a postcard—that God can use as a reminder and benchmark to us along our journey into missions. The decision behind the card affected my whole life, which has been spent in missions. I attribute that to my own prayers that I might be obedient to him. The card meant nothing. It was the decision behind the card.” 

Steve: Where were you when you first heard about and attended
your first InterVarsity Student Missions Conference? 

David: I heard about the convention as a freshman in college. I attended the first-ever InterVarsity Student Missions Conference as a 20-year old sophomore at Wheaton College. I attended with Jim Elliot, my best friend. We had met as freshmen on the wrestling team, and became close friends, both being involved in student missions. I had no idea then of how our lives would intertwine. 

He was a very zealous missionary candidate, already committed to missions when he came to college. He was talking excitedly about missions and his desire to get to Ecuador as soon after graduation as he could get there. He was already focusing in
on Indian tribes—looking for the most difficult and dangerous place he could find. Once he discovered the Waodani (then called the “Aucas”—“The people”), the more he wanted to go into the Andean jungles to reach them. 

Jim married my sister Elisabeth in 1953. In his biography written by Betty, The Shadow of the Almighty, she documents his early interest in missions even before he entered college. 

At the first conference, I roomed with John Winston, an MK from Belgium. His experience as a missionary kid in Europe, and his experience in the Navy in WWII, made an impact on me. 

From Toronto to Urbana. IV moved the student missions conference to a more central location in 1948—the spacious University of Illinois campus in Champaign-Urbana, IL, and I attended as a senior in college. 

Steve: Recap your cross-cultural involvement between those conferences and re-emerging at Urbana ’67. 

David: When I finished college in 1949, I joined InterVarsity (IV), and traveled the 1950 school year as an appointed “missionary staff member,” challenging students to give their lives to missions. It was a significant experience for me in visiting over 120 schools in that year. 

 I married my college sweetheart, Phyllis Gibson, in 1950 and spent two years at the Wheaton Graduate School. I was also the assistant director of Urbana 1951. Little did I know how this triennial student convention would factor into my later life.

So as I completed my graduate work, and ministered with students on campus, Phyllis and I selected Latin American Mission (LAM) and moved to Costa Rica in 1953. At that time Colombia was a country closed to new missionaries. The country opened following a political revolution, and we entered in 1958. 

Steve: Share with us a few of the most memorable and shaping moments that the Urbana Student Missions Convention had on your life as a missions leader. 

David: Urbana ’70: I was the assistant director, after 15 years as a missionary in Colombia. Dr. John Alexander, president of IV, had invited me to assist Dr. Paul Little. Paul had joined IV as campus staff right out of college and had excelled in campus evangelism and training. He was named Director of Urbana ’70. He had quickly gained visibility from his best-selling book, How to Give Away Your Faith. 

The end of the 60s was a tense time for IV. Kent State had just taken place, and a group of student radicals had shown up, held daily demonstrations, and printed a daily news sheet attacking the conference and our mission purposes. They wanted to commandeer the conference to focus on ending the war in Viet Nam, poverty, and other political issues. 

Campus mood begins to shift. Only 8% of the 12,000 students signed the Decision Cards indicating any interest. By 1973, 28% of the students signed the cards. Missiologist Ralph D. Winter came to me after the conference, noting the change in attitude and interest. He was desperate to follow-up this fresh interest in world missions. By the summer of 1974 he had designed a two-week seminar for students, the Summer Institute of International Studies (SIIS), to explore the biblical basis, history, culture and strategy of missions. This was the precursor of the Perspectives course, which he produced and unveiled at Urbana 1979.

Computerized matching: Phill Butler came to us with a way for all participants to indicate their interests and passions and receive a computerized print-out of 5-10 agencies that had ministry openings in the area of their interests. This was the integration of the emerging information technology and mission mobilization. 

Open up the schedule: Educator and consultant Dr. Ted Ward from Michigan State University suggested we replace afternoon plenary sessions with seminar-workshops and free time to browse in the Armory and visit the mission exhibitors and the IVPress bookstore. Eliminating the afternoon plenary session may have disappointed some at first, but greatly increased the interactivity between students and missionaries, seminar presenters, agency personnel and speakers. It was a schedule change that has lasted to this convention! 

Urbana ’73: Two innovations stand out in my mind—even to this day. My former co-worker in Colombia, 

• Gregorio Landero gave a full address through an interpreter. The students loved him, and showed us that the Spirit was speaking even through the interruptions of an interpreter. 
• A woman gave a full plenary address—Elisabeth Elliot. I had resisted inviting my sister for years—for obvious reasons, but others over-ruled. She spoke powerfully from her own woundedness about the place of women in missions, and provided a three-dimensional model of what gifted and capable women could do in this generation in missions. 

Urbana ’76 was a wonderful conference. There was a huge change in attitude of students, from the skepticism of the 60s, to the positive, even enthusiastic openness of the 70s students. They were much more excited and almost gung-ho about missions. We filled the university to capacity with 18,000 participants. Most significantly, there was a continued increase in the percentage of students indicating a willingness to consider missions as indicated on their Decision Cards. From only an 8% response in 1970, to 28% in 1973, student receptivity continued to grow!

• We once again invited Dr. Billy Graham to return and speak to the students. He turned me down
  flat at first, and was quite adamant about not speaking to students, thinking that the latest batch of students was not his prime audience. I persistently encouraged him to reconsider. When he walked on the platform the first time, the entire student audience of over 18,000 rose simultaneously to their feet, and giving him a thunderous and prolonged ovation for several minutes. That act convinced him he did have a message to this student generation. 
• Dr. Helen Roseveare was a powerful plenary speaker, who shared transparently about her missionary experience of capture, rape in Congo in the 60s. Her public vulnerability was probably a first for a student audience in the 70s, and paved the wave for subsequent messages by Becky Atallah from Cairo and another speaker from Afghanistan. 

Urbana moves from Southern Illinois to St. Louis: Prior to Urbana 2006 IV made the decision to move from the U of IL campus in Champaign-Urbana, IL for several crucial reasons. Campus facilities were full to the max—dorms, cafeterias, and meeting rooms, etc. The spread of the university campus demanded a tremendous logistical effort to transport students to meals, to the Assembly Hall, the exhibitor space, as well as afternoon workshops. Each move consumed considerable time out of the conference schedule. The St. Louis Convention Center is a spacious hall for plenary sessions, and the adjacent hotels are much closer to the meeting venues than were the Urbana dorms, and the public transportation system is efficient in moving people around.  

Steve: What are some biblical essentials at age 85 you have a concern for Urbana to sustain?

David: Missions is not just to another part of the world, but also to cross-cultural opportunities and needs
which are local. It must always be a both-and balance; never either-or. It must be Local and Global, or
Glocal missions. 

There are some sectors of the world, like the South Sea Islands or Oceania, who have been contacted, and realize their responsibility to respond “From the Uttermost” to those areas that remain unreached. That highlights the vital importance of maintaining a laser focus on the remaining unreached peoples—those people groups that remain beyond the reach of God’s tender mercies. Since Ralph Winter’s catalytic address at Lausanne 1974, highlighting the necessity of recognizing the “task remaining” of making disciples among every unreached people of our world, we have seen the move from mere geography (nations), to a focus on unreached people groups. As we have learned from the worldwide Lausanne movement, it is the critical responsibility of church
and mission leaders to keep missions focused on the “main thing.” 

There is a great danger in an overemphasis on such immediate needs as global poverty, human capture and rape or earthquake relief in Haiti, that we lose a big picture focus on the task remaining. Pressure groups
have arisen over the years that advocate for emphasis on their particular focus (e.g. French-speaking Canadians, Asian-Americans, left-handed artists in Paris, etc). But there remains a task to be completed—and that is to make disciples in every nation, people and language group. While particular pockets of need and specific audiences are critical to identify, we cannot lose our simultaneous focus on the larger biblical mandate to make disciples everywhere. 

Urbana has struggled to resist the temptation to succumb to the myriad pressure groups that want that kind of public exposure. We cannot give up what Urbana has been for since 1946. 

Steve: Looking back, what would you estimate to be the kingdom impact of the Urbana Student Missions Convention over the last 66 years? 

David: The first impact I have seen is the countless individuals I have met—around the world—sometimes missionaries, sometimes nationals, who testify: “I want to tell you that it was at Urbana that God spoke to me, or called me, or turned my life around and I was given a vision for the world church and that is what I am doing.” That has been by far the most gratifying thing. I heard it again this week—how many people came up to me specifically to thank me for my role and to comment on the impact of a particular conference. 

Second, though Urbana does not immediately deliver thousands of fresh candidates to mission agencies as we all might wish, the conference has had a significant ongoing impact on kingdom mobilization by doing what it does best—it provides an immensely popular, contemporary, and excellent venue for students and young people to hear from God in the context of a changing world. Urbana does not in one week “make” students into missionaries. But it has provided a “top of the funnel” experience for tens of thousands of students since 1946. For many it was their first-time exposure to what God was doing in the world. For others it provided Spirit-revealed inspiration to consider missions. For countless thousands over the years it provided a space in which students could meet, up-close-and-personal, veteran missionaries with up-to-the-minute accounts of specific locales in the world, where they could get their questions answered by world-class missions experts and specialists. For providing this venue, churches and mission agencies are incredibly grateful. 

Third, the shift to a broader biblical emphasis on holistic mission—ministry in Word, Deed and Power—has provided a scriptural framework in which this generation can operate. A Word-only approach might have turned off each successive generation decades ago. In a vital way, Urbana has kept in step with what the Spirit has been saying to and doing in the global Lausanne Movement, as well as in the World Evangelical Alliance and the Majority World Mission Movement. IV has fought to maintain a biblical “balance” between either extreme—an emphasis on Word evangelism on one hand or on social engagement on the other. Instead, they have sought to keep the message biblically balanced and holistic—without losing a razor-sharp edge on reaching the unreached. 

Fourth, it has brought biblical world missions into the mainstream. It has masterfully platformed biblical missions as a current, contemporary and continuing concern of the world church. Urbana has kept biblical missions as a constant for every generation over the last 66 years. That is an invaluable gift to the church and missions. 

Urbana is a not a “training time” as many might want it to be, but it is an effective way to expose students to what God says in his Word about getting the gospel to the whole world, and exposure to what God is doing in the world today. I think the conference has faithfully kept that twin emphasis before each student generation. 

Steve: What is the debt the North American missions movement owes to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for sponsoring this convention every three years for the last 66 years?

David: For almost 66 years Urbana has been the premier student missions conference in the world. IV has done more to expose the North American student generation to missions than any other single effort or event over these eight decades. It has facilitated more kingdom mobilization—with no strings attached—than any other effort by any other mission organization. 

In addition, the Urbana convention has often pointed to critical changes in our world and needed innovations in global missions, including multi-ethnic inclusion, using the computer for candidate matching, mission and the arts, worship and missions, and women in missions, to name just a few. 

The last 300 years of church history reveals that whenever there has been a forward movement in world missions, the Spirit has initiated it through students! What IV has done at Urbana with students is to awaken the entire North American church to its missions responsibility. 

And for that huge effort we owe them a great debt of gratitude for what God wants to do in his church, through students. Just as the Spirit used the Haystack Prayer Meeting with a handful of students in 1806 to catalyze formation of a plethora of new mission societies throughout the Northeast, which sent out their first missionaries by 1812, may there be a fresh wind of Spirit-energized mission outreach from our country to the remaining unreached peoples of our globe. 

My prayer is that God’s Spirit might once again work through Urbana’12 to awaken the church to its worldwide responsibility in world evangelization. 

It’s not that it took me attending 14 Urbana conventions to get the point, or to be obedient to the Spirit’s call on my life. Rather, over these 46 years I have served in a series of missions-related roles as student, pastor, professor of missions, mission mobilizer, missions executive, and most recently as a missionary trainer and coach that has permitted me to be an active participant in so many memorable events. It has been a profound privilege. Let me sort my favorite impressions from my mental scrapbook into four major categories: biblical insights, people, shifts, and memories. 

Biblical insights: 

For 42 years I have treasured the sight and sound of Dr. John R. W. Stott calling out, arms widespread, in his distinctive British accent that so many of us remember, to recognize the dual demands of “The Promise and the Blessing” of Genesis 12:1-3. I first “caught” the truth of the Abrahamic Covenant, the heart of Lesson 1 in the Perspectives course, “live” at Urbana ’70. It was a life-changing paradigm shift for me, from a limited Great Commission understanding of mission to a fledgling but whole-Bible theological foundation. 

At Urbana 1973, while furtively sneaking along the aisles of the U of IL Assembly Hall taking photos of the participants and proceedings as unobtrusively as I could, I was halted in my tracks when Dr. Edmund Clowney, speaking on “Our International Anthem” from Psalm 96, concluded his prophetic call to doxological mission with these words: “When we worship God as we ought, that’s when the nations will listen!” I was dumbstruck. For the first time, someone connected the dots for me between worship and mission. He was the first who ever showed me that worship and missions were inextricably linked. 

At Urbana 1987 Ajith Fernando, director of Youth for Christ Sri Lanka, held the audience spellbound for four memorable Bible expositions on “Jonah the reluctant short-termer.” For over 46 years Urbana speakers have been my favorite Bible expositors, calling the North American church and successive student generations
to discover that “Our God is a missionary God, and the Bible is a missionary book.”
I heard it first at Urbana! 

People: 

I have heard, seen, met and interacted with some of the most noted and gifted “world Christians” at the many Urbana conventions I have attended. That opportunity was available to every student who attended! It was like walking through God’s Missions Hall of Fame. Let me cite the range of those the Spirit has used as mentors and tutors in my own missions walk—George Verwer, John R. W. Stott, John Alexander, David Howard, Gregorio Landero, Billy Graham, Paul Little, Tom Skinner, Elisabeth Elliot, Jim MacLeish, Helen Roseveare, Jeannette Yap, Becky Pippert, Ken Fong, Miriam Adeney, Ajith Fernando, Paul Borthwick, Sondra Van Opstal, John Piper, Ramez and Becky Atallah, and David Platt, to name but a few. In addition to them, I came face-to-face with literally thousands of missionaries and mission reps who have brought the world to my Urbana doorstep. Their lives and stories of God’s unfailing love and faithfulness have been life-shaping for me. 

Urbana for me was never about meeting famous people, but hearing from God’s gifted messengers. Urbana provided an incredibly rich smorgasbord over 46 years of the best and latest biblical inspiration, instruction and worship. The assembly and exhibition halls became vision-stretching venues for global networking and meeting contemporary missionary heroes. Every question I would take to a conference was answered in interaction with the missionaries God brought to speak to me. 

Secondarily, those people brought a rich diet of cutting-edge messages and seminars across the range of contemporary missions practice, from “Affirming the Will of God,” “Out of the Salt-Shaker” personal evangelism, women in missions, worship and missions, Church-Planting Movements, to the task remaining. Some of the most significant lessons and insights I have learned from God in mission I learned at Urbana conferences. From small group Bible studies to plenary sessions with over 20,000, Urbana has provided space for the Spirit to show up and be my teacher. 

I gleaned one of my most profound insights at a 1973 seminar with Elisabeth Elliot. Over 500 students were jammed into a classroom to hear Elisabeth speak. In response to a student’s question about the value of a college education or a particular major, Elisabeth simply said: “Never let your education stand in the way of the will of God.” I have used that gem of wisdom dozens of times since then in my own advising of missionary candidates. 

Shifts in Missions: 

Urbana programs have reflected many of the major shifts in missions practice over the years. In 1967 Billy Graham represented crusade evangelism, and an Evangelism-
In-Depth workshop spotlighted a rapidly spreading mission innovation emerging in Latin America. The Urbana audience was probably 90% Caucasian at that conference, yet in December 2012 it was over 43% multi-ethic, reflecting the huge increase in the number of Asian-Americans who have flocked to the convention since 2000. This multi-ethnic diversity has been a hard-sought goal of InterVarsity, and reflects the changing face of global missions over the last 30 years—the emergence of the Majority World church and missions movement. During my years of attendance we have witnessed the sea-change of missionary sending shifting from the North and West to the Majority World of the South and East. 

Another highly visible trend has been the continuing shift in worship from the song-leader-led hymn singing of the 60s, to the introduction of multi-ethnic worship bands starting in the 70s. The changing band composition has framed the continuing changing genre of worship music from hymns to contemporary worship songs. In the last two conventions, the multi-ethnic, multi-media plenary sessions have been orchestrated by the gifted worship director, IV staffer Sondra Van Opstal, who has creatively blended sound and light, drama, interpretive and tap dance, media vignettes and humor, staff testimonies of campus evangelism as well as summer short-term teams.

In every decade there has been fresh impact in the familiar areas of worship, instruction and inspiration on a massive scale, produced creatively and with excellence for a very critical student audience. While mission agency participants have not always adapted easily to changes in media or music style, all have been appreciative of InterVarsity’s commitment to present the biblical call to cross-cultural mission in a culturally appropriate and creative manner. 

Not to mention the incredible and constantly expanding contribution of the authors and resources of IVPress would be a huge oversight. IVPress has continued to publish the very best of thoughtful, biblical and mission-oriented Christian books and curriculum. That is another immense contribution to the global missions movement. 

Most Significant Memories: 

Being front-row at 14 masterfully orchestrated missions pep rallies of “apostolic proportion,” and having been privy to that many scenes of private and corporate surrender and commitment has kept my heart soft and shaped my perspective on God’s foreign policy. As a freshman I remember how my spine tingled when I saw hundreds of students stand around me in commitment to Christ. As a grad student I remember the awe of the crowd when they responded to the call given by Dr. Billy Graham. I have sat among hundreds of students as they prayed, wept and responded to hearing God’s voice to them in seminar and plenary sessions. I have been swept up in the wonder of multi-cultural, multi-media worship that resounded with the music of heaven. I have prayed in the New Year at 13 midnight Communion services, and been moved to tears while singing “We Rest On Thee” or the IV hymn classic, “I Cannot Tell.” Singing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” with 15,000 was my first foretaste of heavenly worship. I have been both challenged and encouraged by four generations of students, missionaries and speakers whom the Spirit has used to keep my life laser-focused on Christ and His kingdom. 

Since my birthday is on December 31st, I have spent 13 birthdays at Urbana. My wife has asked me for 40 years just why I want to leave home and family celebration the day after Christmas, travel to the frigid heartland of America, to walk concrete halls along with thousands of students I don’t know, to sit in hard plastic seats in a drafty assembly hall, and eat fast-food meals for four days rather than sitting at home enjoying my birthday with family and friends. 

On Sunday afternoon, December 30, 2012, while facilitating two seminars and answering questions for an hour with sincerely seeking students, I realized my answer. I love Urbana because, for me and tens of thousands, it has become a “thin place”—a place where the Spirit of God shows up and manifests his presence in silence, in solitude, in worship, in seminars, in Bible Study groups and in interpersonal relationships. Hearts are softened. Minds are enlightened. Lives are enlivened to God’s call to missions. It is one of the most significant “spaces for God” the Spirit has used in my life to hear his voice and to respond in “a long obedience in the same direction.” 

I guess I keep returning because I want to be a part of Urbana being that for the next student generation. I may have once thought that Urbana was about me and what I brought to the conference—my workshop, my book, my wisdom. It’s taken a few years to realize that Urbana is actually all about how the Holy Spirit shows up in the lives of the students. It’s one of the great places in my lifetime where the Lord of the Harvest consistently shows up to raise up laborers for the harvest. It is an awesome scene.  

These and other surprises await in Greg Parsons’ new book Ralph D. Winter: Early Life and Core Missiology (WCIU Press, 2012)¹. The book is Parsons’ doctoral dissertation recently approved by the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. It is the result of many years of association (Greg has been on staff at the USCWM since 1982), research in Winter’s personal records and archives, as well as many interviews with Winter and his colleagues.

The book reads amazingly well for a doctoral dissertation. Though extensively footnoted (some of the best stuff is there) and boasting a 74-page section of appendices, it is nonetheless easily accessible for readers of all kinds. Roughly half of the book is biographical, dealing with Winter’s upbringing, education and marriage, his years as a field missionary in Guatemala and his tenure at Fuller Theological Seminary as a professor. These pages help show the forces that shaped Winter’s thinking and life direction and are crucial to understanding the person behind the persona. 

The other half of the book focuses on three basic aspects of Winter’s legacy: Theological Education by Extension, Sodalities and Modalities, and his 1974 presentation on cross-cultural evangelism at the Lausanne Congress. While many readers familiar with Winter’s life will already know about these topics, what is most helpful in Parsons’ treatment is to see the progression of thought over the course of years that eventually led to the ideas themselves. All ideas spring from a context, and the specific context for these ideas in Winter’s life are instructive and enlightening.

While the book does not focus on any of Winter’s more recent thinking, the reader will be surprised by how current many of these “old” ideas remain. For example, in the 1970s Winter would often deplore the fact that while mission agencies were good at planting churches in foreign fields, they seemed blind to the need to plant mission structures in those same fields. Even today, with the needed and encouraging focus on Church-Planting Movements, there remains a need to consider mission-planting movements as well. If it is true that Winter was ahead of his time, then it should not surprise us that many of his old ideas still speak today. 

Anyone who met or read Ralph Winter, and in turn grew fond of the man, will love this book.
It will fill in gaps, bring a smile to the lips and revive old memories. For those who never knew him, it will bring to life a truly unique individual who gave his all for God’s glory.  

I’ve been to a number of mission conferences. Some have been huge, and some have been very small. Some have been intensely scripted—so much so that if you just walked through the script it was like being on a mini-vacation in a nice hotel. Some have been very loose, so that you could hardly recognize the outcome. Many were very academic—papers presented, discussions held over lunch, maybe some fireworks if some controversial position was taken, but mostly very thoughtful and theoretical.

Ethne’s not like that at all. One of the attendees perhaps described it best when he said Ethne is like a family meeting where news of what’s happening is shared over a meal.

Briefly, Ethne is a network for people passionate about reaching unreached peoples. It grew out of the meetings held after the end of the AD 2000 & Beyond Movement, when such people found there was still a need for a global network focused on unreached peoples. (At one of the Lausanne meetings, for example, those interested in unreached peoples and those interested in ministry among the handicapped and disabled were all folded into one track called “hidden and forgotten people.” We amicably but quickly split into tracks 12A and 12B.)

As Ethne formed and grew, it intentionally kept its form as a decentralized and relationally-based “swarmish” network. There is no central Ethne headquarters, no incorporated body, not even a bank account (which makes registration for conferences interesting). It is a true “network of networks,” representing the sum of all the regional unreached networks (such as COMIBAM, MANI, IMA, the Korean World Mission Association/KWMA, SEALINK, PMA and many others). Every three years Ethne holds a conference in some region of the world. The exact place rotates: the first was Bali 2006 hosted by SEALINK, the second Bogota 2009 hosted by COMIBAM and the third and most recent was Seoul 2012 hosted by KWMA. These conferences typically bring together about 400 field leaders and practitioners.

The conference is “by invitation only,” but if you are working among unreached peoples and connected to someone else, it is really not hard to get invitations (issued relationally through the networks). The big constraining factor is typically the size of the venue and the quota: one of Ethne’s values is that it proportionally represents the various regions. Western faces are very much a minority—in the conference as a whole, and certainly on the stage. Even the name Ethne was chosen because it’s Greek, not English, and needs less translation.

An Ethne conference focuses on 1) celebrating Great Commission progress among unreached peoples; 2) assessing current opportunities and resources; and 3) accelerating movements to Christ among all peoples. These events always have their interesting moments. As with any family, you will encounter a cousin or two who can spin a great story—and then, on follow-up, you find the story has been, shall we say, filled with a bit of hot air. But elder brothers and sisters keep us on track and focused. There are those who come unsure about the whole idea of unreached peoples. Some arrive energetic and excited, others disillusioned and weary from the continual strife of their labors.

I always have two pictures in my head when I think of Ethne conferences. The first is worship: led by a multinational team, we sing songs in a variety of languages, with moments of humor and moments of pure joy. At Ethne 2012 I was very moved by the incredible Russian, Filipino, Thai and Korean worship. The second picture is the dining hall: it is a heart-warming thing to walk in a little late and see some 400 people eating and talking animatedly together.

While it is perhaps true that these triennial events are the most visible part of Ethne, the real purpose of the movement is to stimulate initiatives and projects that result in workers moving into unreached peoples and stimulating Church-Planting Movements (CPMs)—also called Disciple Making Movements (DMM)—among related people groups. The most recent project is the Ephesus Initiative.

Ephesus: The Simmering Conversation

As with all such initiatives, Ephesus has been bubbling in the background for a long time, working its way through the relationships and thinking processes of many participants. It started with a simple question: how do we accelerate the process of reaching all peoples and whole regions?

Leaders in the Ethne movement are passionate about unreached peoples, but also ruthless evaluators of their own work. The statistics are stark: although the percentage of the world with no access to the gospel fell from 75% in 1800 to 54% in 1900, and further to 29% today, in “real numbers” the actual population of people who have never heard of Jesus grew from 674 million in 1800 to 880 million in 1900, and then doubled twice to two billion today. The number is continuing to grow, at an average rate of 57,000 new people per day, largely due to population growth. Researchers estimate that by 2025 the number of people who will have no contact with Christianity will reach 2.2 billion.

Obviously, the vast missions movement is doing much good. The growth of the church is fastest in Africa and Asia, and many remarkable stories of church-planting have been heard at each of the Ethne conferences. (Some of them are in very sensitive places, which cannot be easily put in print, but Mission Frontiers has carried some of these stories in past issues.) Yet the statistics tell us that the good being done is not good enough. Population growth alone is outstripping our efforts.

This lack of overall progress led to some re-thinking. Instead of engaging single people groups, is it possible to engage whole clusters—to catalyze Church-Planting Movements that “cascade” throughout clusters of families of related people groups—faster than population growth? Many teams have sought to start Church-Planting Movements among single people groups (again, documented in past issues of Mission Frontiers and other 

Acts 19:9-10 tells how Paul and his co-laborers worked in Ephesus for two years, and “all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.” If it could happen then, why not today? This question was first asked and considered at a 2008 Ethne Steering Committee meeting. At the time the question was posed as, “How can the various strategic initiatives of Ethne work better together?” (which had always been Ethne’s intent but had yet to be achieved). Out of this discussion came the idea of focusing on two or three specific clusters and developing a coordinated effort in each.

At Ethne 2009 the various strategic tracks (Prayer, Information, Mobilization, Crisis Response, Member Care, CPM, etc.) took the discussion up more broadly. They asked, how can pray-ers, community developers, crisis responders, mobilizers, tentmakers, researchers, trainers and so on work together to see CPMs among families of unreached peoples? The participants developed the idea of “collaborative CPM initiatives,” along with a very rough initial priority list with such clusters as Sumatra, the Fulani, the Kurds and Bedouins.

In 2010 a follow-up meeting was pulled together when a number of CPM practitioners and Ethne members gathered in the United States. Participants were asked, “What would it look like to really do this?”

Based on these initial “brainstorming” ideas, yet another meeting was held during the 2010 Cape Town Congress of Lausanne, in which more CPM practitioners also took up the question, and after tweaking the concept they, too, agreed to be involved.

In late 2010 a list began to emerge. An Ephesus working group started with the notes and interest that had already accumulated, and framed this within the Joshua Project’s global research on unreached peoples and clusters. A “beta” version of a priority list of clusters was drafted and circulated among many Ethne members and global researchers. This draft was further refined in early 2011.

Right before the “Closing the Gap” meeting in the United States in 2011 the Ethne Steering Committee met and took up the discussion of how to make Ethne even more action-oriented. The idea of the Ephesus Initiative—now in a much stronger and more developed form—was proposed. After discussing it, the Ethne Steering Committee formally agreed to adopt the Ephesus Initiative as a strategic focus.

Ephesus was also discussed at the “Closing the Gap” meeting itself, and became a major part of the agenda. As a result of the post-Cape Town meeting and the “Closing the Gap” meeting, about a half-dozen clusters were adopted for CPM focus, and strong teams began to emerge.

The Next Step: Ethne 2012 and Beyond

Ephesus was introduced broadly at Seoul 2012. Over 100 Church-Planting Movements (or disciple-multiplying movements) are known to be growing right now among specific people groups. Ethne leaders wanted to see many more CPM teams launched—but even more, to see some existing CPM teams take on whole clusters. The goal of each Ephesus Initiative team is to (1) prioritize specific, most-neglected “clusters” or “families” of people groups (mostly based on the Joshua Project list); (2) “in this generation” catalyze collaborative, reproducible Church-Planting Movements that can cascade throughout multiple people groups in a cluster; and (3) find ways to stimulate global collaboration to inaugurate movements together as a Body.

At Seoul 2012 we heard reports each day, but on the second day the participants divided into a number of working groups around people group clusters, with the intent of exploring the formation of an Ephesus team. Early meetings focused on sharing information about the cluster, and then transitioned into action steps. As with any decentralized network, some of the working groups made more progress than others.

Now comes the hard question: what next? The biggest problem with a decentralized network is not poor-quality action, but no action at all. Apathy is the killer. In the wake of Ethne 2012, to keep momentum going, a Global Ephesus Support team has been formed, including eight “fairly public” individuals (myself among them), as well as six “less public” people whose ministries might be harmed by publicity. This support team exists to help make connections and provide resources to CPM teams that want to engage whole clusters. In addition, there are presently 28 Ephesus team facilitators in eight Ephesus teams, and a fairly large training network is available.

The eight current Ephesus teams include:

• The Cushitic Family (Afar, Beja, Oromo, Somali)–44 unreached peoples–57 million people
• The Fulani/Hausa/Kanuri Family–98 unreached peoples–78 million
• Southeast Asia–653 unreached peoples (311 unengaged)–303 million
• Sumatra–49 unreached peoples–26 million
• East Indonesia–104 unreached people–25.5 million
• Bengali–407 unreached peoples–330 million
• The family of 400+ unreached peoples in the Kush mountain ranges
• An unengaged urban area in South Asia, and other similar areas

In addition, some progress has been made in the Persian, Turkic and Middle East clusters, but no specific Ephesus teams have yet formed.

Between Ethne 2012 and Ethne 2015 we will continue to recruit people who will serve on the various Ephesus teams, start an ongoing collaborative training process for the various Ephesus teams to learn from each other, and seek to resource the teams. If you would like to connect with these groups, please send an email to ephesus@ethne.net. 

A Conversation with the editors of the new book from William Carey Library, Worship and Mission for the Global Church, by Robin Harris, James Krabill and Brian Schrag (see page 41). They are all part of ICE, International Council of Ethnodoxologists. For more information, go to www.worldofworship.org

MF: What is ethnodoxology, and what kind of response have you seen here at Urbana?

Robin: We study how people around the world worship God. We would like to see that worship grow and see more people worshiping God in their own heart-music and heart-styles. This generation especially wants to engage with the arts in ministry. This is a huge wave. At this Urbana we’ve seen the most response ever. This is the first time that ICE (International Council of Ethnodoxology) has been here as a presence. When we interact with students they tell us, “God has gifted me as an artist and I want to be involved. Can we do this in missions?” This is the first time Urbana has offered a whole bevy of seminars on this. They brought on five speakers from ICE. The sessions are well attended and we’re really excited that Urbana has this vision of exposing people to ethnodoxology.

MF: How does someone get involved?

Robin: There are a number of different approaches. The first is taking what you know, your arts, your music, and you bring them overseas, and you just do them. The second model is a bridges model, where you go and you learn about that culture’s music, and you use this as a bridge into the culture and as friendship evangelism. The third approach is where you go and learn how to encourage local people to use their own local artistic and musical resources to spread the kingdom of God and encouraging their expressions of worship to the Lord. 

Brian: A great way to get involved is to connect with ICE. You can join as an associate or an organization, and that opens a door to the 300 people and organizations that are members. 

Robin: ICE is not a mission agency but a large network. We just network people together and provide resources. The big deal this year is the book and handbook we are publishing with William Carey Library. The title is Worship and Mission for the Global Church, edited by Robin Harris, James Krabill and Brian Schrag. 

MF: Tell us a little about this amazing book you guys have put together.

James: Our ICE team was being asked to conduct intensive courses in a variety of contexts on this subject. We kept compiling collections of articles and eventually became aware that we needed to do something more substantial. The book has three main sections. The first section is foundations, which includes biblical and theological reflections on why supporting culturally appropriate worship is the goal of the church. The second section, another 200 pages, is stories from around the world of all the things people are doing in this field. And the third section is a tools section, which shows you how to do all kinds of practical things—how to design a multi-cultural worship service, how to conduct an arts-worship seminar, how to mentor artists, etc. The book includes 100 authors from over 20 countries. It really was an attempt to be as international as possible. The book includes a fabulous DVD in the back as well.

MF: Western music, and especially Christian worship music from the West, is becoming increasingly dominant around the world. How much of a concern is this, and what can be done about it?

James: That’s really central to part of the issue. There’s probably a tendency in this group to be a little unrealistic about the huge wave of impact that Western music will continue to play. We obviously want to encourage something that we would call culturally appropriate, but realistically the church is going to be a hybrid. At the very least what we want to do is legitimize and encourage people to take another look at their own cultural gifts. I just talked to someone from Central Java who said that the worship leader in their church just got permission to translate all the Hillsongs into Central Java. I thought, “Central Java? I think there are a few arts there!” So I just began to encourage him about appropriating what God has given Central Java and trying to find a way to integrate this into the worship life. But realistically it’s going to be a hybrid. To be most cynical, the people with the money who can produce the CDs, the videos and the television programs will continue to have huge impact. It’s the new form of empire and cultural hegemony, and that’s what you’re up against.

Robin: God has given us a burden to encourage those who are being marginalized by this huge wave of stuff coming out of the West. And we can be the voice for those who have immensely expressive means of communication but are being pushed off to the side. We believe this is a gift to the church that should not be lost. 

Brian: When I was in Congo, the church had been there for 50 years, and the first evangelist there had told all the people to burn their instruments because they were associated with their old life. Inside the church no one knew how to play the traditional instruments. So when they decided to integrate the local instruments in the church, specifically the kundi, we had to go outside the church to find someone who knew how to build it, tune it, and play it. The first time I played the kundi, there was complete silence. Normally there’s a lot of noise going on, and I thought we had done something wrong. So after the service, I asked a church member why everyone was so quiet. He replied, “What could we do? It cut our hearts.” Even though they had lively music, and translations of the hymns, the community arts penetrate into the hearts in ways that other things can’t do.

MF: What is the significance of ethnodoxology for reaching unreached people groups?

Robin: Working with local music and art forms is the ideal way to show love to people. When they see you asking about their music and arts they feel so loved and validated. That cuts through the barriers. The result is then a church that is not foreign but is deeply rooted and has much more potential with connecting with other people. It is generative and reproducible.

MF: Tell us about the history of how you got started as a network.

Robin: One of the exciting things about the history of this movement is how connected it is to Mission Frontiers magazine. The 1996 July/August edition had a whole spread on worship—on having the focus of mission being worship. Many of us in this movement read that issue. Those articles were so influential and really launched us. I read it when I was in Siberia at that time, very isolated, not really understanding how God could use a musician in ministry. It really came alive for me when I read those articles. I went on to do some masters studies and then a PhD in this field. We are extremely grateful to the USCWM and to WCL for working with us on these volumes. We sense a great sense of partnership. You guys get what we do.

Where Do We Fit?

A conversation with Paul Borthwick, author of Western Christians in Global Mission: What’s the Role of the North American church?, which was selected as one of the “Book of the Day” offerings at Urbana 2012.

MF: You have written a very timely book, and one that is highly overdue. What led you to write about the role of the Western church in global mission today?

Paul: I speak at about 12 or 14 mission conferences a year, and I‘ve discovered two opposite extremes. On the one side are churches that still have a mindset of “the West to the rest”—we have to reach the whole world on our own. The other extreme is saying, “There are so many people rising up from Nigeria, India, Brazil or South Korea—our work is done, we’re off the hook.“ So I start by giving the reader a global overview of trends and a sense of what is happening in the world today. I give the pros and cons of how I see the North American church and the pros and cons of how I see the non-Western church. One of the flaws that many of us get into is thinking the non-Western church is perfect and all we need to do is get out of the way for them. Let’s not over-romanticize the church around the world; let’s be realistic about it. I fundamentally disagree with the idea that the baton has been passed, because in the analogy, the person who releases it is out of the race. I don’t think there is ever a time when the Western church is released from our obedience to the Great Commission.

MF: You talk about how Western missions has been conducted from a position of power, and that we need to come now as servants. How do we begin doing that?

Paul: Coming as servants is tough because of our academic and financial power. It’s easy for us to want to dictate the agenda. I believe it takes some major effort to convince our non-Western brothers that we are there to serve and not dictate our agenda. But, of course, power is a two-way street. It’s not always that we assume the power, but in the majority world they often give us the power. Pastor Oscar Muriu, of Nairobi Chapel, said at Urbana 2009, “When I go into a meeting with a white missionary, I say please just listen, because when the white man speaks the conversation is basically over.” There’s politeness, they defer and, at times, there’s the residual effects of colonialism. 

MF: What would you say to a local church that says, “We have $100,000 in our missions budget, and we could use this to send out two American missionaries, or 100 national missionaries.” How do we decide what is most strategic in this equation?

Paul: It’s a very good question, but unfortunately it is reflective of our materialism. Our pre-occupation with money drives the agenda with the question “What is most cost-effective?” Sure it might be true you could send more national missionaries. But in India, for example, sending missionaries from lower castes to higher castes might be cheaper but less effective than sending Westerners or people from other countries.
So it’s a very over-simplified view of missions. If I were talking to a church, I would say find out if there are people in your church that you believe are prepared for and called to strategic ministry. The reality is that as soon as the only thing the church gives to missions is our money, our vision diminishes. When your own flesh and blood is out there, the church prays more, they are more concerned about it.

MF: It’s been said that Westerners suffer from a guilt-complex about how rich we are in an age of great poverty and suffering. How might you advise a short-term mission group who will be exposed to some of this firsthand and may want to make a difference?

Paul: The best advice I can give to short-term missions—and I’m a lifelong fan of short-term missions even though I’m aware of all the potential damage they can do­—is make sure you’re connected to some long-term ministry locally. Otherwise you’re just going on a poor tour, and maybe you’ll feel like you’ve put a band-aid on something. But if it’s going to be sustainable there needs to be some group on the ground that’s there long-term, and you go in to serve their purposes. Poverty-alleviation is not going to happen by doing a one-week training on micro-finance; it’s not as easy as a ten-day project. Ultimately, short-term missions shouldn’t be just about having a great experience for your group, but actually doing something that’s going to have a long-term, kingdom-building effect in the location you are serving, long after you are gone.

MF: What do non-Western leaders want to say to us in the West?

Paul: One of the things I try to do in the book is give voice to the non-Western church. Overwhelming, the number one thing they want us to hear is to prioritize pioneer church-planting. They tell us the greatest gift of the North American church is the optimistic belief that change can happen. We look more in the future than the past, and pioneer work really requires this.

MF: You’ve been to many Urbanas. How would you evaluate Urbana 2012?

Paul: Urbana leadership has listened to some of the critique. As one person put it about Urbana 2000—it was more of a worship conference with missions thrown in, than a missions conference with worship. In 2012 David Platt pulled out all the stops. Tom Lin called students to ask God, “Where is my Mongolia?” I think Urbana 12 was an excellent call to global and local mission. And over 4000 students committed themselves to two years or more of cross-cultural service!  

MF: Many publishers will not even consider publishing a “missions book” because they think missions books don’t sell. Then along comes Radical… what do you think is going on?

I remember sending out manuscripts of this book to different publishers, and not many people were interested in it. But what was really helpful even in the process of writing this book was somebody saying to me “Ok, David, not many people walk into a bookstore and ask how my life can impact the nations for the glory of Christ.” So the way we tried to reformat this book when I was writing it was to say, “When we really focus on Jesus and take our eyes off the American dream (and I don’t want to be negative about everything in the American dream, but so many things in our culture are antithetical to the gospel), then missions is the natural overflow.” I try to make it kind of a “back door” into missions, not like a “hook and bait”, but to say “When we get serious about following Jesus, the natural result is going to be making disciples of all nations, and being serious about his mission.”

MF: The sequel to Radical was Radical Together, which was written from a pastor’s perspective. Can you tell us a little of what it has been like to take your church through this process?

This whole journey was just a personal conviction in my whole life and my family, and then walking through that with the church. The Word does the work. As we really looked at texts about Jesus in the Gospels, calling people to a radical death and life in him, and as we got serious about those, it was so wonderful to see different people in the church begin to respond in different ways to that. There’s no question, there’s been some people who have left the church in the process, and I regret anything that I have done pastorally that was not most helpful or sensitive in that process. My responsibility before the Lord as a shepherd is to lead and guide people in a process like that. I have a tendency to push with urgency, and I need to be really careful not to be impatient in that process. So I’m learning a lot as a pastor. 

MF: If you could sit down with a pastor and give some personal advice on how to begin this journey with a congregation, what would you say?

I would say number one, let the Word do the work. Make sure the Word’s the foundation. My favorite quote to hear from church members is, “Pastor, we think you’re crazy for saying this, but Jesus said it, so we’re going to do it.” I’m pointing to a greater authority. If someone’s turning their life around because of something I’ve said, they’ve missed the point. When they turn their life around because of something Jesus has said, now that’s the point. I love seeing the Word take root in different people’s hearts and begin to grow in different ways. We’ve seen people sell everything they have and move overseas. We’ve seen people sell everything they have in the suburbs and move into an inner-city environment, where they’re living out the gospel in a much more dangerous context. And we’ve seen people keep their homes right there in that suburban environment and live with a totally different perspective and focus and mission. So I’d say to a pastor, let the Word do the work; make sure to focus on His authority, not your own. And be intentional. I think about it as in an air-war and a ground-war. So, air-war—preaching every Sunday. I want to trumpet God’s passion for his glory among all nations, on a continual basis, showing this in the Word, showing what it means to follow Christ. At the same time, on the ground, I want to be living this out in my own life, in my own family. I want to be living a life where there’s imitation in these kinds of things. I want to be leading other people on a one-on-one, small group basis—to be doing this in an intentional, disciple-making way, showing people how to follow Christ. So I would encourage any pastor to make sure not to do one without the other.

MF: What do you think Jesus would say to
us if he showed up in one of our churches on Sunday? How might he speak into our
American Christianity?

The things we most need to hear, first and foremost, is his love for us and his desire and ability to satisfy us more than money, and bigger, better possessions, and so many pursuits that we’re running after. Jesus is saying to us, “I’m better than all of these things put together, so don’t spend your life running after all these things.” When Jesus is more satisfying, even the call to sacrifice is really not a call to sacrifice in the end. It’s a call to be smart when you have treasure in Christ that is more valuable than everything else in the world put together. You go out and leave behind the things of this life to grab on to Christ. I think that’s the picture. That’s where I want to focus in my preaching and writing; I want to show Christ as supremely satisfying, and supremely joy- and life-giving. And in that, see people let go of the pleasures and pursuits and possessions of this world, and abandon themselves to him, and to realize that giving your life to him, even losing your life in this mission, is far better than wasting our lives on the stuff of this world.

MF: You describe Matthew 24:14 as being the “memory verse of hell.” Tell us a little about what
this verse means to you.

I think this is an incredible promise that Jesus has given us: This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a testimony to every nation and then the end will come. Now there’s a lot of debate about what exactly that verse means in the context of Matthew 24 and 25. But I think the promise is clear when you put it together with the Great Commission, and the end of the story in Revelation 5:9 and 7:9. The reality is that one day every nation, tribe, people and language will be represented around the throne. There is a divine sovereign plan to make known this gospel among the nations, and Jesus is coming back one day to receive the full reward of his sufferings. So I want to give my life and shepherd the church God has entrusted me to lead, to give ourselves to seeing every single nation reached with the gospel, knowing that there is a day when Jesus is coming back to receive the reward that he is due. There is going to be a day when the Great Commission will be completed, and I’d love to be a part of that generation, or to die trying to be a part of that generation.

MF: One of the emphases here at Urbana 2012 has been to show an integrated gospel. What are some of your thoughts on how to keep proclamation and demonstration in balance with each other?

I love the way John Piper put it, “We care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering.” I think that’s a good picture. Yes, all suffering. There are so many suffering brothers and sisters around the world. There are so many people suffering who don’t know Christ, who are on the road that leads to hell, and who don’t have food and water. There are massive physical needs, and eternal suffering is waiting when it comes to massive spiritual needs—people who don’t have the gospel, who haven’t heard the gospel, or seen the power of the gospel in front of them. And so I hope that in the church that I pastor, there is a primacy on proclaiming the gospel, on addressing eternal suffering around the world. 

We want to be a part of reaching unreached peoples, we want to go, we want to adopt unreached peoples, we want to send people to them. We want to be praying and giving toward that end, and not just unreached peoples, but peoples around the world who don’t know the gospel. But then also, along the way, if we’re going to be intentional about making disciples of all nations, we’re going to come into contact with a lot of people who are starving, who don’t have clean water, and who are in desperate poverty. It makes no sense to come with this good news and not care about the fact that they may not live through the next month. So it just is a natural overflow of proclaiming this good news and making disciples. And particularly, as disciples are made, this is what the church does. The church cares for one another, and loves one another. This is the whole picture in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9—the offering that is taken up among churches for the church in Jerusalem. This is where we, particularly in the Western context, where we have been given so much—have a responsibility to help care for our brothers and sisters around the world who are suffering physically. It certainly is not an either-or, it’s a both-and. Yes, proclamation of the gospel is central and primary, because this is what matters for eternity. And yes, that is accompanied by love in Jesus’ name that platforms the gospel and is the natural overflow of Christians who believe this gospel.

MF: What do you think is the role of the North American church today in mission?

By God’s grace, it’s a good thing that churches are arising around the world and becoming sending bases for missions. We are not necessarily leading the way in all the ways that we have in the past. I do think there is still a place for North American missions. We’ve learned a lot about things to do and things not to do in our experience in North American missions. We have a lot with which to serve our brothers and sisters from around the world, as we go together, particularly converging on unreached peoples together, alongside other brothers and sisters from other countries. At the same time we’ve got a lot to learn from our brothers and sisters around the world. I think, unfortunately, in many ways theologically and doctrinally we’re losing grasp of the gospel. Thankfully, we have brothers and sisters around the world that are holding tightly to that gospel. We need to make sure to keep hold of the gospel and let our brothers and sisters encourage us in that. I think the picture of a global community of Koreans, North Americans and Africans, converging on unreached peoples—6,000+ unreached people groups that are needing the gospel—and serving together, praying together, working together—I think the potential for global cooperation in gospel advancement is just glorious in our day. So how do we take advantage of that, and how do we work alongside brothers and sisters, coming alongside indigenous peoples, leading them to Christ, equipping them, empowering them? This can be a glorious day for North American missions, in a whole new way, and I pray that by God’s grace and God’s wisdom we take advantage of it. 

With such compelling words, David Platt, author of the best-selling book Radical, challenged Urbana’s 16,000 college students to a life of sacrifice, commitment and obedience towards fulfilling the Great Commission. His words were echoed in the testimony of a young Brazilian missionary who declared to the convention: “The forces of darkness tremble, for there’s a new generation of missionaries rising….” Her words were prophetic. Over 4,200 attendees signed up for a long-term missions commitment by the end of the five-day convention in St. Louis.

Urbana 2012 was unique in many ways, and from an historical perspective quite significant. Meeting as a separate track, some 30 international student-mission leaders gathered to plan their own Urbana-like conventions in their countries. It is very likely that the sum-total of attendance in these non-American “Urbanas” will far exceed their North American counterpart. Thus, Urbana is more than just the world’s largest mission conference. It is the epicenter of a global movement to mobilize and equip college students for carrying out the Great Commission in their nations and beyond.

For this reason, among others, what happened at Urbana 2012 will have significant influence for many years to come, first, because Urbana is helping to shape the next generation of missionaries, as well as future church and mission leaders, and second, because Urbana is in a unique position to influence the missions movement in the non-Western world, which is undeniably the emerging powerhouse in global mission today.

The Call to Sacrifice

Paul Borthwick, author of Western Christians in Global Mission, and a speaker at numerous Urbanas, observed that “Urbana 2012 was the most consistent call to sacrificial life and cross-cultural service that I’ve seen in the last five Urbanas…. It used to be said that Urbana was InterVarsity’s gift to the mission community… Urbana 2012 has resumed that theme.” Numerous agencies which partner with Urbana commented on the remarkable level of commitment of students at Urbana 2012. This has led some to wonder whether we are on the verge of a new mission awakening in the United States. Clearly, the Spirit of God is stirring, and not only in this present student generation, but across the entire church. When was the last time that a “missions book” like Radical became a New York Times bestseller with more than one million copies sold?

Even so, the response at Urbana seemed to take everyone by surprise, including the organizers. The atmosphere following David Platt’s plenary address was electric. Within 24 hours, every one of the 4,000 copies of his book Radical was sold out. So many students flocked to hear his seminar the next day, another unscheduled seminar had to be set up to accommodate the demand. What was so compelling about David’s message? It was simply the message of Jesus: Come, take up your cross, and follow me into the hardest and darkest places in the world. 

This radical call was heard for five consecutive days. The exclamation point came on the last night when the speaker told her story of serving in Afghanistan, where her husband and nine others lost their lives at the hands of Taliban militants in 2010. There was hardly a dry eye in the convention hall. She and her husband’s journey began at Urbana in the 1960s. Following her testimony came the time for students to make their own commitment. They knew exactly what they were signing up for, and where this journey might take them. Even so, over half those present made a commitment to missionary service, including mid-to-long-term commitments. 

Where is Your Mongolia?

Urbana’s current director is Tom Lin, a Chinese-American who was used by God to start a student movement in Mongolia. His journey in mission began in 1993 when he attended Urbana as a Harvard student. This one event completely changed his life. Since that time, in addition to his service in Mongolia with his wife Nancy, he has been instrumental in seeing 16 new student fellowships established on campuses throughout the United States. Speaking with conviction from a life that has been fully spent for Christ, at the end of the convention he challenged the students:

 “I invite you to make a decision tonight, and not excuses. Where is your Mongolia? Where is the area where Jesus is inviting you? Is yours Afghanistan? ... Despite the risk and obstacles, I invite you to say, ‘Yes, Lord, here I am.’”

Thousands responded that night, making solemn commitments which Tom called “covenants between you and God.” In addition to committing to long-term missions, over 6,000 also committed to leading an evangelistic Bible study on their campus in the next year. Seminars were specifically designed to train students in how to reach people from non-Christian backgrounds on their campuses. With some of the brightest and best from every country on earth coming to study at American universities, the potential for Urbana’s students to impact the world begins on day one when they return home.

Urbana’s students also raised $800,000 over five days. The funds will be used to help Sat7 broadcast the gospel in the Arab world, and assist in the development of new student mission conferences in non-Western countries. Delegates also made history by funding and assembling World Vision’s largest-ever care-giver kit assembly operation. In one night, students assembled 32,000 medical-supply kits, which will be used to treat as many as 800,000 people in some of the neediest places in Africa.

The Justice Generation

One of the fascinating features of Urbana 2012 was the juxtaposition of evangelism and compassion ministries. The conference organizers made an intentional effort to show an “integrated gospel” which must be both proclaimed and demonstrated. It has been observed that today’s evangelical college students resonate closely with the justice issues of our time. Alongside seminars on reaching the world’s unengaged peoples were seminars related to sex-trafficking, ministering to drug-addicts, environmental care, and partnering with Roman Catholics in mission.

Observers are calling this generation “the justice generation.” Unencumbered by the debates within evangelicalism in past decades, this generation is determined to both share their faith evangelistically and live out their faith compassionately. The message they are sending is clear: we don’t have to choose between proclamation and demonstration. We are called to share and live, to be the voice as well as the hands and feet of Christ in our generation. The justice generation wants to change the world—and in a way no other generation has succeeded in doing. One cause promoted at Urbana, Live 58, calls for the eradication of extreme poverty by the year 2035.

To be sure, some have been alarmed by this kind of radical optimism, seeing in it shadows of the social-gospel, liberalism, and the kind of shifting priorities that led to the decline of the Student Volunteer Movement following World War I. Indeed, Urbana’s director from the 1970s, and former head of the World Evangelical Alliance, David Howard, observed at Urbana’s press conference that over the last few decades InterVarsity has faced pressure to compromise on the central focus of fulfilling the Great Commission. He warned from his own study of history and from his interaction with students in the 1970s that there is always the threat of sidelining the eternal priorities of the gospel mandate:

In 1920 the Student Volunteer Movement made a knowing and deliberate turn from the founders’ intent. They said we want to talk about war, economic poverty and racism, and we’re going to rid the world of those things.... They did not rid the world of those things. I believe God brought those things to our mind so that InterVarsity was able to keep our focus on Jesus’ command to get the gospel to the whole world. I’ve prayed every day for months now for this convention that God would help them to keep the focus of what the whole purpose of the thing really is…. We’ve gone through cycles on this, and I hope that this will be a cycle where it continues on with the main focus.

While others may be dismissive of David’s perspective, it is hard to deny the facts of what became of the Student Volunteer Movement almost a century ago. Will history repeat itself, or will a new generation demonstrate a model of integral mission that not only transforms the church, but the nations as well? In this regard David Platt also seems to be leading the way. He told the convention about a time when his church had $500,000 sitting in the bank, saved up, he said, for a rainy day. He challenged his board to give it all to help Compassion International save kids’ lives in India—because for them, their rainy day was now.

Not Radical Enough?

Did the two billion who have yet to hear of Christ among the world’s 8,000 remaining unreached peoples get the attention they deserved at Urbana? It’s hard to say. One of the risks to the cause-driven orientation of the “justice generation” is the tendency to “silo” within causes. Thus while seminars on unengaged peoples may have been well attended, this priority issue was just one cause among many. To be sure, this is reflective of the church at large. Tragically, after 40 years of the frontier mission movement, ninety percent of missionaries continue to go to places where the church has already been established. As a result, almost 2,000 years since Jesus gave his church the Great Commission, close to 3,000 people groups have yet to receive their first missionary. Surely there can be no greater injustice than to live and die having never heard the gospel. For the estimated 50,000 people who perish each day among unreached peoples, that is their reality. Shouldn’t this message be heard loud and clear in every pulpit on every Sunday until it is no longer true that a single soul exists on this planet without access to the good news of Jesus Christ? Shouldn’t the same be true of every plenary and seminar at Urbana—no matter what the subject? But perhaps that’s too radical.

Even so, the great legacy of Urbana has been organizers’ willingness to listen to feedback and engage mission agencies in an effort to serve them better. Urbana 2012 was unquestionably a boost to the global cause of Christ and will accelerate the fulfillment of the Great Commission. The greatest need now is an effective mechanism for follow-up. Urbana depends upon its mission partners for this, but the reality is that few agencies are equipped to walk students through the journey from commitment to long-term service. What is needed is a program and vision for Great Commission discipleship which committed students can get plugged into right away. 

Over thirty years ago, the need for better follow-up at Urbana gave birth to the Perspectives movement, when David Howard and Ralph Winter teamed up after Urbana 1973. David provided the names and addresses of every Urbana student and Ralph created a course that has truly impacted an entire generation. Indeed, in the interval between Urbanas, Perspectives will impact as many or more over fifteen weeks than those who attend the five-day Urbana event. Thus, as one of the fruits of Urbana, Perspectives has effectively doubled the impact.

While this is tremendous, the reality is that even Perspectives is missing a next step. That next step probably looks something like an online social network that connects Great Commission Christians, enabling team work, mentoring and ongoing learning. What if by the next Urbana in 2015 such a tool and program could be made available? Very likely it wouldn’t be confined to students for very long!

Urbana 2012 will no doubt be remembered for many things—from the multi-cultural worship in the plenaries, to the social-entrepreneurial “launch lab”, to the unprecedented commitment of the justice-generation. But with absolute certainty its most lasting legacy will be those who find eternal life in Christ among the hardest and darkest places. Indeed, the current president of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Daniel Bourdanne from Chad, is a believer today because decades ago a college student came to Urbana, heard the call of Christ, and gave up everything to come live among his tribe. May his same story be told 8,000 more times in this generation!  

And yet these dear brothers and sisters continued to struggle with how this might happen, until one fateful afternoon.

One of the Ina leaders approached me jumping up and down with excitement.

Brother Steve, you’ll never believe what we discovered! [Continued jumping.] As you know, we represent 80 new Ina churches. [Jumping.] We can easily go back and train each of our 80 churches to start a new church in six months or less. In six months, before the harvest season, we’ll have 160 churches! [Him jumping. Me feigning ignorance.]

That’s not all! We can train all 80 new churches to start a new church in six months or less. And before the planting season six months later, we’ll have 320 churches! [Jumping higher; me feigning shock—though real shock is beginning to set in.]

That’s not all, every six months we can help the new churches to repeat the pattern so that every six months we double in number from 320 to 640 [pointing to the numbers] to 1,280 to 2,560 and finally to 5,120!

Brother Steve, we are going to be finished in 3 ½ years!

All the Ina in the room were jumping up and down, smiles on their faces. It was beginning to occur to me that the Spirit had finally opened their minds to understand Church-Planting Movements and their part in them. Hope welled up in my heart that the Ina could indeed be reached in my lifetime. They really were grasping the idea that every new believer could be trained and expected to live out a lifestyle of witnessing to and training other new believers.

The movement came to life. A couple of years later, my supervisor responded to my monthly report: “Steve, this sounds like the book of Acts!”¹

I just love Church-Planting Movements (CPMs)! The operative word here is movements. Jesus made it clear that He would be the force behind the church growing: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt. 16:18 ESV). CPMs are God-engineered movements in one of their purest forms, harking back to the kingdom movements of Acts. They can’t be explained from a human-engineered standpoint. I love CPMs because I love seeing Jesus at work! Interactions with faith-filled believers in CPMs have radically altered my life to one of increased devotion, faith and effectiveness.

What is a CPM?

In their essence, CPMs are Spirit-engineered movements in which disciples and churches multiply generation by generation. Disciples display a value to love Jesus by immediately obeying all that they learn in Scripture and taking responsibility to win and disciple others in a like manner. CPMs emerge when there are consistent fourth-plus generation churches in multiple areas. “Fourth-generation” is defined by believers from a first-generation church (started by an outsider or pre-existing Christian) starting a second-generation church, which starts a third-generation church which then starts a fourth-generation church. If fourth-generation occurs consistently,
then it’s usually a God-movement.

In CPMs models of discipleship and church are extremely reproducible and life-changing in order to enable each new generation of believers to start new generations as a part of their normal lifestyle. How rapidly are the new generations emerging? CPMs typically double in size at least every 18 months, though new generations can start every few weeks or months.

Word, Works, Wineskins and Worries

Most of us have never lived in such a kingdom movement. When we live in the world of non-movement, we find it hard to believe there is a reality different from our own experience. The goal of this regular column is to draw lessons from this alternate world of kingdom movements so that we can implement their biblical principles in our own lives. 

If I can get someone to walk in the midst of a CPM, then that person will much more likely know how to cooperate with the Spirit in CPM processes. The ethos of CPMs is more easily caught than taught. The faith of CPM believers is contagious.

But since most of us cannot physically walk among these movements, we will learn from CPMs and their practitioners in four areas:

Word—biblical principles for CPMs that were foundational for the explosion of the church in the first century A.D. and are foundational for modern CPMs. 

Works—case studies of modern CPMs. Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them. (Ps. 111:2) We will study what CPM practitioners are doing on virtually every continent.

Wineskins—methods and structures that effectively cooperate with the Spirit in reproducing generation by generation: finding God-prepared people, evangelism, short- and long-term discipleship, church planting/life and leadership development.
We will share practical methods that can help you in pursuing a God-movement.

Worries—concerns and questions that are common when CPMs emerge, and biblical answers for those.

What’s Ahead in This Column, or Why I’m Tickled to Death About It

Mission Frontiers will serve as a worldwide forum for lessons from CPMs. Men and women in the midst of CPMs will share their insights with you. Here are some of the top highlights in the issues ahead, or why I’m tickled to death to learn what they are learning.

Changing the Percentages

Stan Parks, who works with Mission to Unreached Peoples, says that in CPMs we see real changes in percentages. CPMs are genuinely helping us win people faster than the birth rate so that cities and people groups are actually becoming Christian. 

Keeping up with population growth is a challenge any church faces. For example, the average annual birth rate in the U.S. is about 6.3%² and does not include the growth in population of immigration to the U.S. For churches to actually make gains on the demographics of society, they would probably need to at least beat the birth rate. So a church of 100 people needs to evangelize and baptize at least 6-7 lost people each year just to maintain current Christian demographics and more than that to make net gains. Otherwise, we are losing ground in the kingdom. Is your church beating the birth rate?

In CPMs the percentages are changing drastically. In CPMs a group of 100 believers evangelizes and baptizes a typical range of 30 to 100 persons per year. In other words, many CPMs are doubling the number of believers every 12 to 24 months. In one recently-emerged CPM in an unreached people group in South East Asia, every village now has a church. 

In the months to come we will discover ways to change the percentages in your community. Let’s beat the birthrate and reverse the decline of evangelism!

Diversity of Examples—A Model for Any Context

Fifteen years ago, CPMs were few and mainly occurred in certain regions and demographics. This led to the assumption that CPMs can only occur in limited-access nations among rural populations. Today, however, we are tracking dozens of CPMs­—on every continent in virtually every worldview. Places we thought could never experience CPMs are now blossoming. What this means is that there are probably examples that are very similar to the ones you face. Rural and urban. Literate and non-literate. Churched, post-churched and pre-churched. Western and non-Western. Muslim-background, Hindu-background, tribal-background, atheist-background, etc.

We can no longer say: “It can’t happen here!”

Within the diversity of contexts are diverse models or adaptations of models which all share similar principles. In the months to come, we will explore models that will fit your context.

Mission or Ministry? True Community Transformation

Transformation and justice issues have rightly captured the attention of the church today. Frequently missionaries host short-term teams who say: “We want to come do hands-on ministry—help the poor, right injustice, set free the captives—not evangelism (or not just evangelism).” This is an understandable reaction to evangelism and discipleship that does not result in transformation. The result, however, has been an unfortunate pendulum swing in which churches and organizations attempt to transform communities without first transforming hearts.

An exciting phenomenon is emerging in CPMs: as churches multiply through a people group and take seriously the transformational commands of Scripture, societies are being transformed. Research still needs to be gathered in this area. But what are emerging are frequent testimonies of transformation. Women are being freed from prostitution. Crime is waning. Education and literacy are rising. Unemployment and poverty are decreasing. Acts of mercy abound. We are finding that the most effective transformational model is the biblical model of making disciples who have the power by the Spirit and admonitions of the Word to love others as they love themselves. Rather than transform first, we disciple first, then watch transformation emerge as a fruit of discipleship and church life.

In the months to come we will learn how to follow a similar path of community transformation.

Immediacy­—A Return to Life-Changing Discipleship and Community

The ethos within these kingdom movements is to love God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength and to love one’s neighbor as oneself—and to do this in life-changing community with others. Many churches around the world display a similar ethos. CPMs don’t have the edge on this. But it’s really impossible to see a God-movement like a CPM without this ethos. In others words, when you find a true CPM you also find life-changing discipleship and community. The emphasis in CPMs is that by God’s grace we obey everything we’ve learned in Scripture. What emerges is an authentic Christianity that feels very New Testament-like.

While CPMs multiply rapidly, they are not primarily concerned with rapidity. Instead they are concerned with immediacy.³ Believers hold a value of immediately obeying what they learn.

The Gospel of Mark uses the word ευθυς —“immediately”—over 30 times.

And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. (Mark 1:17-18 ESV, emphasis added). 

Mark emphasizes that disciples, like their Lord, obey immediately out of their love for God.

Because disciples in CPMs frequently obey the Word without delay or reservations, it results in rapid life transformation and rapid multiplication of believers and churches. But in reality, this is rapid only by Western standards, not by biblical standards. In CPMs such Christianity is the norm; to not live this way is viewed as an aberration.

In the months to come we will learn how to cultivate such discipleship.

The Journey Ahead

CPMs are not a cure-all. They come with their own set of problems. Any model of discipleship and church does. But they are the most concrete expression of God’s kingdom coming on earth as in heaven that I know of. They beautifully display the growth of the kingdom that Jesus described as the new norm:

The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches (Matt. 13:31-32 ESV).

Not only do CPMs expand like this, but the number of CPMs is expanding like this, and our understanding is also expanding like this. At a recent CPM conference we hosted in the U.S. a participant remarked that it was somehow appropriate that America was now learning from Asia, where many of the modern CPMs were originally birthed. In the coming months may we develop a global conversation where the whole Body of Christ is learning from mustard-seed movements on each continent! 

Follow-up:

To send examples of what you are learning in CPMs to be featured in future issues, write us at KingdomKernels@onepost.net.

Kingdom Kernels is a regular column featuring lessons from Church-Planting Movements around the world.

Eurasian Peoples

With Emphasis on the Peoples of the North Caucasus

By Helen Bruce

“Russia is for Russians.” In 2013 Moscow this prolific and profane graffiti hearkens back 100 years to the failed policies of tsars and leaders of Russian Orthodoxy, who advocated for one religion, one administration, one national consciousness. Yet the North Caucasus’ 45 distinct Sunni Muslim ethno-linguistic groups are reminders that not all souls in Russia are Russian! After hundreds of years of battles for Soul and Soil, the Caucasus nations today remain in a “graceless chasm.” Hence the Caucasus proverb: “When will the blood cease to flow in the Caucasus Mountains? When the sugar canes grow in the snow.”

During the 1890s-1920s, with a newly completed vernacular Russian Bible, the evangelical church flourished “next door” to Caucasus nations, but the “all nations” mandate of Scripture lost out to nationalistic theologies. Today the blossoming church of the former Soviet Union is overcoming the “-isms” of the past, awakening to God’s heart to send messengers of God’s grace who can communicate a Caucasus Jesus to Caucasus Souls on Caucasus Soil. 

Today praying groups have Taken-Into-Their-Hearts (persistently and long-term) 31 of the 34 unreached peoples of Dagestan and the 11 unreached peoples between Chechnya and Adygheya. Thirteen of 45 language groups are legitimately engaged with various phases of intentional, cross-cultural efforts toward disciple-making movements. Fruit comes from “work produced by faith, labor prompted by love, and endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1Thess. 1:3). Still, 32 unreached peoples in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia remain painfully isolated from God’s blessings of Messengers, the Message and Communities. But we know that God responds to persistent, praying people!

Take-Into-Your-Heart Prayer prays with heart commitment like Paul in Philippians 1:7, that is, 1) praying for presence—the right people, in the right places, at the right times; and 2) praying for completed Scriptures and effective Scripture use. In 2012 the Chechen Bible became the first Caucasus-language Bible completed and published (a 40-year project)! Despite war, active Islamic insurgencies and visa challenges, an increasing number of people are finding jobs or starting micro-businesses with kingdom purposes in view. The North Caucasus Regional Partnership sponsors in-country gatherings for workers to mentor one another, receive training, pray for one another and deal with disciple-making questions. A new generation of workers have developed relational priorities to help each other along—they are brothers and sisters dwelling in unity and love for one another (not without challenges). Some groups are diligently working on Chronological Storytelling for the Caucasus context—a much-needed process for communicating with oral learners that allows for small-group discovery learning. 

When we pray for “the right people in the right places at the right times”, we hope for people like Shaadia Firoz (a pen name). Her story, Love that Triumphs, comes into English in 2013.

I was born in the North Caucasus, in a Muslim family, influenced by Communism’s residue and strong Muslim traditions. As a young girl, I sincerely believed Islam was indeed the religion of peace and goodness; with all my heart I searched for a close relationship with the God of Islam—like millions of honorable people in Muslim cultures around the world today. But my story is of a lack of peace in my heart.... From age 18 until 25 I ended up in Moscow pursuing my childhood dream of love, recognition and security through fame and success through singing. Singing was like breathing to me, but I struggled through life, naïve, gullible and vulnerable. My culture placed high demands on females for modesty and restraint, while the males were given permission for practically anything and everything. I was haunted by my father’s drunken curses, “I’ll bury you alive!” or “I’ll cut you up in pieces, like cattle!” In my Moscow years I felt that I was fully under all these curses and that my life was totally shameful and ruined.

Shaadia returned home and made a successful singing career, yet one without any solution to her longing for purity and holiness. Finding no meaning through psychology or Islamic rituals,

One night, having fallen asleep with my regular prayer to “know the truth,” I dreamed a vivid dream. I saw far off a vision of a very close friend who died several years before. She was shaking her head from side to side and repeating, “No, Shaadia, no, it’s not correct.’” The dream had an intense impact, moving me to seek trust in God, not in rituals. Very shortly after this dream, by a strange set of events, I ended up in a House of Prayer in my city, thinking that it was some kind of psychological treatment center….

In time, in the loving Jesus community, Shaadia hungrily searched the Scriptures.

In all my years of effort in Islam, Mohammed had never changed my life. So what about this great Isa (Jesus), who so amazingly changes the lives of people, and how does He do this?

At a home meeting of believers, she finally understood that she had found what she sought her whole life: Isa. Over the next eight years, accused of betraying Islam, she twice suffered family death threats against her. Her pastor was murdered in 2010. In 2011, she read Scripture portions in her own language for the first time.

This had a huge spiritual, emotional impact inside me that overwhelmed me. I understood spiritual truths at a much deeper level. As a test, I began translating the book of Jonah into my language—and I came alive doing it! It brought a level of understanding to my own life that I had never had before.

Jesus made it clear that she was to devote the next 10 years to translate the last 37 books of the Bible in her people’s language (one of 32 languages in Dagestan). Please pray for this Bible to be completed! 

To learn more, contact MFCaucasusResponse@gmail.com and read Overlooked No More.

Spotlight for April 2013

East Asian Peoples

With emphasis on the Japanese worldwide

By Gary Fujino

It may surprise some that the Japanese of Japan are the world’s second largest unreached people group.¹ However, with less than one-half of one percent of its 127 million people defined as “evangelical”, and barely 2% in Japan even professing “Christian” faith (which encompasses Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses, in addition to mainline Protestant denominations), this ranking reflects a grim spiritual reality. Over one million Japanese nationals live and work abroad annually. Add to this a dispersion totaling three million Japanese descendants in more than 50 host nations, and the need to reach this huge cluster of unreached peoples remains imperative.

A major missiological challenge has been the fact that the Japanese have long thrived at taking influences from outside the archipelago and turning them into something “Japanese”, without a sense of compromise to their national identity. This attitude influences evangelism and church-planting as much as does culture, since they are inextricably linked. Thus, in Japan, being Japanese often precedes being a Christian, so heartfelt witnessing and discipleship are struggles for even sincere believers.² It is not unusual for an adherent to Christianity to worship at a local congregation but also offer food at Shinto god shelves or prayers before Buddhist altars at home, without a sense of contradiction.

Over the centuries, this island nation has skillfully and successfully adapted technology, arts, culture, language, even religion from China, Europe and North America. A key element of this borrowing has been the concept of wakon yosai (“Japanese spirit, Western learning”), where the outward appearance is retained while keeping its “spirit” eminently contextual. Ironically, in lands touched by 100 years of Japanese immigration, when this same wakon yosai ideal is reversed it creates Buddhist “churches” in North America³, where the proper location name is “temple” in Japan. Or, in the same way, with the largest Nikkei (“Japanese descendant”) population outside of Japan⁴, Japanese in Brazil have fused Catholic celebrations for Dia de Finados (the Day of the Dead) in early November with Obon (a Buddhist festival for dead spirits), a national holiday week normally observed in Japan in the middle of August. For the Japanese psyche, being “spiritual” is much preferred over the idea of being “religious.” And those who walk with Christ in this manner are making inroads.

Since entering the new millennium there have been a number of hopeful signs for mission (both inside and outside Japan) which bear notice:

1. In an unprecedented combined venture, mainline, evangelical and charismatic churches jointly celebrated the 150^th anniversary of Protestant mission in Japan. Factionalism has always been a bane in Japanese politics, as well as in the church, where these three groups never got along. So this show of comity in 2009 for the unity and witness of the Body, after more than five years of planning, was a major achievement for the established church in Japan.
2. The 2011 triple disaster of a 9.0 earthquake, flattening tsunami waves and a nuclear meltdown galvanized the church in Japan. Many local observers said that they had never experienced the church working together like this in their lifetime. Not only did it wake up the church internally, it also brought an international prayer focus for the country that had not been seen since the end of World War II.
3. Traditional models and methodologies do not work in the sparsely populated disaster zone so Christian groups are cooperating with local authorities and are trying new ways to reach a beleaguered citizenry using a more holistic approach. 
4. There are smatterings of “newness” in the way that Christians “do church” and also in the way that a biblical witness is propagated in Japan. Many innovative angles are being attempted to reach the Japanese in a more contextual manner. Urban church plants are being started in downtown Tokyo and other large and mid-sized cities; organic church and lay-led Japanese house and cell church-planting are becoming increasingly common; prayer, evangelism and discipleship groups via Skype have been used creatively when distance or expense prevents frequent contact; and various church and mission groups are cooperating together to foster multiplication and lay-led movements that will start not one but many church plants in a given local area, even throughout the country. 
5. Immigrant missions (lay Christian migrant workers from Latin America, Africa and Asia) are slowly affecting the Japanese church. A few of these churches are opening their doors to non-Japanese congregations worshipping within the confines of their own buildings and campuses.
6. There is also a growing awareness of the need to reach the Japanese and Nikkei diaspora outside Japan. On the one hand, a number of groups in Japan are committed to reaching the Japanese diaspora throughout the globe. On the other hand, Japanese nationals saved overseas as well as many Nikkei Christians born overseas have taken up the torch to reach the Japanese in Japan. Brazil, Peru, Canada and the United States lead the way in sending Nikkei with Japanese ancestry to reach the Japanese in Japan, even as Japanese from Japan go out to reach non-Japanese with the gospel.
7. One of the most fascinating missiological realities is that Japan itself seems to be the “Mecca” (or “Jerusalem”, if you will) to which all Japanese seem to re-converge.  Unlike many other diaspora populations around the world, the return rate of Japanese nationals living overseas is very high—over 90%—and the length of stay outside of the country is normally no longer than five years.⁵ Often, Japanese saved overseas have to relearn their faith in order to live as Christians within the Japanese context after they return. And many Nikkei Christians living within the four most concentrated populations abroad⁶ have never been to Japan but say they want to go there, both for work opportunities and to share their faith. 

Three times in Japanese history, Christian faith and its accoutrements have exploded across this nation through economic, political and nation-building venues. In each era, despite their foibles, these movements produced new disciples, new churches and a deeper penetration of the gospel into society as a whole. The fourth wave may be approaching. 

ACTION POINTS:

NETWORK: Use the links in the Resource List to join an existing network, or start your own.

SEND/GO: to Japan and to its diaspora. New workers are needed (Matt. 9:38) in-country for relief work and to help Japanese to initiate indigenous multiplication movements.

There is also a growing need for workers to serve in diaspora lands among the Japanese there, especially Brazil and Spanish-speaking Latin America.

GIVE: To in-country churches and organizations that support the evangelization of the nation, and to missions and individual missionary/candidate families committed to serving there. 

Resource List:

Homepage of the Japan Evangelical Association

Homepage of the largest coalition of evangelical mission agencies in Japan

Japanese diaspora-related links:

www.discovernikkei.org/en/

www.jclglobal.org

www.rjcnetwork.org

On the occasion of the latest Urbana convention, Urbana 2012, held December 27-31 with over 16,000 people in attendance, we wanted to explore the history and impact of these conventions on the course of world evangelization. At Urbana 2012 alone, 4,224 people made decisions to serve at least two years in missions. This is an increase from 2,676 in 2009. Our own Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course, which is also one of the most powerful tools for mission mobilization, was birthed out of Ralph Winter’s reaction to an increase in the number of people signing the decision cards at Urbana 73. As David Howard says, “Missiologist Ralph D. Winter came to me after the conference, and had noted the change in attitude and interest. He was desperate to follow-up this fresh interest in world missions. By the summer of 1974 he had designed a two-week seminar for students, the Summer Institute of International Studies (SIIS) to explore the biblical basis, history, culture and strategy of missions. This was the precursor of the Perspectives course, which he produced and unveiled at Urbana 1979.” (pages 10 and 16 this issue.) The Perspectives course now impacts over 7,000 students every year. Go to http://www.perspectives.org to learn more.

I am also one of the fruits of Urbana. I was one of the 17,000 students who attended Urbana 1979. I had only been a believer for two years, and I had no clue what missions or the Great Commission was about, but I was part of an InterVarsity chapter on my college campus when they handed me an Urbana brochure. The decision to go was made much easier when my home church, which has faithfully supported my work with the U.S. Center for 23 years now, stepped forward to cover the cost of my attendance. How many more students like me could be mobilized into strategic mission involvement if more churches had the visionary foresight to sponsor their young people to go to Urbana? 

At Urbana 79 speakers such as Elisabeth Elliot, John Stott, Luis Palau and Billy Graham opened up my understanding of God’s purposes in the world. I realized that the Great Commission applied to all who claimed the name of Jesus as their Savior. All of us have a role in proclaiming the kingdom of God to the ends of the earth. We just have to find out from God what role that is. David Howard had a similar revelation at his first Urbana in 1946. He says on page 14, “I remember that I was overwhelmingly impressed… that every Christian who has received the gospel is responsible for giving it to those people who don’t have it.” The major question is why do students like David Howard and myself have to go to an Urbana-like meeting in order to learn of God’s call to all believers to make disciples of all peoples? 

Urbana 2012 Gets It Right and Gets Radical

Each time that one of the Urbana conventions comes along, people on the outside of InterVarsity, like myself, are tempted to wonder whether they will “get it right,” meaning, “Will Urbana have the right biblical focus on reaching the unreached? In the past we have been critical for a lack of focus on the remaining task and an apparent over-emphasis on social gospel outreach at some Urbanas. But this year it appears that they did a great job of striking the proper balance between proclaiming and demonstrating the gospel. 

We were also thrilled to learn that David Platt had been invited to speak, and from all reports his message of making Jesus supreme in our lives and taking the gospel to the ends of the earth was well received. After David Platt spoke, the convention delegates rushed the bookstore and bought up all 4,000 copies of David’s book Radical. See our interview with David starting on page 11. David’s message to Urbana this year is the right message for all believers everywhere, not just the younger generation. He said, “We do not have time to waste our lives coasting out casual, comfortable Christianity. We have a master who demands radical sacrifice and we have a mission that warrants radical urgency…. Every passion, every gift, every skill He has given you, every bit of study you are getting is all for one purpose—to proclaim the kingdom of God to the ends of the earth.”¹ He went on to say that the purpose of our education and careers is “not to make it big and enjoy the stuff of this world.” No, it is “for one purpose, the proclamation of the kingdom of God, the declaration of the glory of God to the ends of the earth.”² You can view David’s entire message to Urbana 2012 online. Scroll down to “Day 2 Evening” for David’s message. 

An Answered Prayer with Global Impact

In a letter written immediately following the first 1946 “Urbana” meeting in Toronto, conference director and InterVarsity General Secretary Stacey Woods wrote: “We are praying that this convention might be just the beginning of a mighty missionary movement on the part of thousands of Christian students throughout North America.”³ It is clear that God has answered Stacey Woods’ prayer in ways far greater than what he or anyone else could have imagined. But Urbana’s future impact could be far greater than its historic accomplishments if it maintains the kind of focus we saw at Urbana ’12. 

A New Regular Column

It is my pleasure to introduce a new regular column by Steve Smith called “Kingdom Kernels.” You can read his first entry starting on page 33. As the author of T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution, Steve brings to MF a wealth of experience and a depth of insight to the topic of Church-Planting Movements. With Steve’s help, in each issue of MF we will continue to explore what God is doing through these church-planting and discipleship movements and how we can help foster more of them. 

The InterVarsity representative at Princeton was J. Christy Wilson. He and Ralph helped recruit other students to go to what was the first of InterVarsity’s weeklong student conventions in Toronto, Canada. Later that year, Ralph also helped organize a student mission conference at Princeton, which brought together speakers Eugene Nida and Bruce Metzger. (He wanted to be sure they knew each other and could compare their respective areas of scholarship.)

Every three years or so, Ralph attended what became known as “Urbana” until he was in his 70s. He continued to take any opportunity to influence young people with a broader view of the world and how God might want them to be involved in it.

Today, it seems easier and more tempting for older believers to “give up” on the younger generation. Any reason they are different from us seems reason enough to focus on some other area in our churches or in mission agencies. 

It is no radical insight, but that is just shortsighted! As anyone who works with youth will tell you, they are the future of the church. They are the future missionaries, pastors, elders, business people… so what should we do?

Spiritually minded young people are looking for mentors. They may not fully understand you, just like you struggle to understand them, but they know you have lived your life and made it through rough times—keeping strong in the faith. We all have failures and shortcomings, but if you have learned from them, you have something to share. God is in the business of using people in spite of themselves.

So check with those who work with the young people (high school and college) in your church. Ask them how you can serve. You don’t have to dive in fulltime—just making yourself available will mean a lot and potentially make a great impact for the kingdom.

If you live near a college campus, contact the student groups on campus and see how you might connect with them. 

If you are a young person, seek out those older than you who could be spiritual—and practical—mentors to you. You will have to work through how it will play out for you and you will learn helpful lessons in the process.

I’ve shared this before, but my brother and sister-in-law live right across from a large campus in the South. When their kids were in high school, they added on to their home and have had college students—often foreign students—living with them ever since. Now, they know former students all over the world who are business people, moms and dads, some in ministry, some believers, some not. Many of these students came to Christ, and most consider them to be as close (or closer) than their parents.

Naturally, they had to set up boundaries for those who live in their home. And not all of us could handle that kind of “live in” ministry. But there are many ways we open ourselves to opportunities God might use to work through us. 

Pray that He shows you how to do that.  

Our global network, which is made up of 135+ organizations from 25 sending nations, has a vision to see effective church planting among all Muslim people groups, and we have set engagement of MUUPGs to be a top priority. 

In April 2012 a survey was conducted of the network which asked the
single question:

“From your personal or ministry perspective, what do you believe are the three greatest roadblocks or challenges that stand in the way of the global church engaging every one of these Muslim people groups in the next five years?”

The survey found the following five roadblocks, in order of frequency, to be most commonly identified by the respondents:

#1 Lack of Laborers

“Lack of workers—which I have observed is due to general lack of understanding God’s passion for lost people—lack of discipleship.”²

This quote by one respondent adequately expresses the recurring theme of the number one roadblock and sums up what has been published by researchers Barrett and Johnson. Regarding the lack of workers among the world’s 4,400 least-evangelized peoples, the research states that 25% of the world’s population receives only 7.5% of the world’s foreign and national missionaries.³ Leaders have rightly identified that we need to continue “beseech[ing] the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest”
(Luke 10:2) as we improve efforts at discipling the Church in understanding God’s heart for all peoples. 

#2 Lack of Effective Strategy

“Slowness on the part of agencies toward embracing new paradigms for missionary response….”

Among these mission leaders there was a general sense of the need for new and effective strategies to realize effective engagements. This might be indicative of the challenge facing some of the established organizations to transition into today’s realities regarding mobilization, effective training, funding, and working in the hostile environments where many of these people groups are found. Respondents found that their organizations were “unfamiliar with the breakthroughs that God is currently using...” and that they had an “unclear path from intent to action, concept to practice—how specifically to engage?” 

#3 Lack of unity within the global Church

“Lack of coordination is huge: getting the various international and national partners working together as much as possible.”

In an age of globalization it should grieve us that we still run “into” rather than “alongside” one another in our mission efforts. The message was loud and clear: we are still struggling with the grace, humility and sacrifice that collaboration and partnership require. “Lack of unity,” “mistrust,” and “fragmentation,” were some of the reoccurring words that expressed this roadblock. One Indian leader said, “Seems [like] Western missionaries and churches want to accomplish the task on their own, [there is a] huge imbalance in sharing the resources.”

# 4 Prejudice

“The global Church is biased against Muslims. It is hard to support workers serving people you do not like or for whom you have no affinity.”

The harsh reality is that the Church is reflecting the world in popular opinion of Muslims by non-Muslims. According to global missiologist Patrick Johnstone, the 21st Century will revert to patterns of earlier centuries where religion will be a dominant feature of future conflict.⁴ Organizational leaders are feeling this roadblock of prejudice from their supporting constituencies because of “the spirit of discrimination [fear] towards the people group [they] are trying to reach….” This roadblock is especially real among the leaders from the church in Muslim lands where there is a “lack of desire from the national church because they feel besieged…” 

What is the Church’s role in mission in a world of increasing ideological conflict, fear and repression of citizens? There is a need for mission organizations to promote and undergird Jesus’ teaching on loving our neighbors by putting a Muslim face to “neighbor.” 

#5 The Church is Unaware

“Unengaged are unengaged for many reasons—but the greatest reason by far is that these UUPGs are not individually (by name) on anyone’s ‘radar’.” 

When it comes down to it, the church is largely unaware of the least reached and the resources needed to engage them. A survey conducted by Global Mapping International found that only 48% of missionaries and 35% of mission-minded lay people are even aware of the term UUPG.⁵ Several leaders felt that the blame is partly theirs because “we tend to hold them [UUPGs] captive on database files in list form and do not invite churches to begin to embark on a journey with one UUPG.” There was also a sense that too many other things take priority. “Agencies and churches have many different and immediate concerns that demand immediate attention—out of sight, out of mind.”

Surmounting the Roadblocks

For several years, personnel recruiters and other mobilizers from the North American region of the network have been meeting annually to pray, talk, and strategize about this challenge. In late 2011 there was a collective sense that to see real movement a whole new approach was needed. In June 2012, 105 leaders met in Kansas City and in September 2012, 60 other leaders met in Amsterdam. Each group gathered for two days of hard discussion, prayer, and planning. Among the groups, there were 27 CEOs along with other senior mission leaders from 80 organizations. At these meetings, working sessions addressed three very simple but very tough questions:
1) What are the roadblocks preventing the Church from engaging MUUPGs, 2) What are a few of the absolutely highest solutions that could address these roadblocks, and 3) What specific action steps (people, objectives, timetables, etc.) will be required to realize those solutions?⁶

Post-meeting evaluations by participants at the working meetings in Kansas City and Amsterdam suggested they were highly productive. Now, collaboratively turning ideas into real, sustainable action will require the following key elements:

• Visionary, committed leadership of eachworking group 
• An awareness of and commitment to the fact that this collaborative effort is as important as their “day job” and, in the end, could potentially have as significantif not possibly greater kingdom outcomes.
• Relentless commitment to specific objectives and agreed timetables.
• Regular communication that keeps everyone up to date—both within the working group and across the wider network. An honest look at progress or problems can bring course correction and, often, celebration when progress has been made even though not all objectives have been met.

Stay tuned as further reports come in on this strategic action plan. And please pray! 

A lot had happened since the Glen Eyrie Consultation in 1978 which produced The Gospel and Islam (ed. McCurry, 1978). With the absence of significant numbers of converts from Islam in 1978, the writers of the conference papers were primarily scholars who drew insights from church growth and anthropological studies among non-Muslim people groups coupled with Scripture to suggest practices that gave promise to be fruitful among Muslims. These insights were developed further by the Muslim Track of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in consultations in Pattaya in Thailand,¹ Zeist in Holland,² and Manila. Meanwhile Muslims began to follow Jesus in increasing numbers; so there were many practitioners with first-hand experience of planting churches among Muslims who could see what God was blessing.

The young leaders who had covenanted to work together towards the planting of fellowships of Christ’s disciples among every Muslim people group then took concrete steps. One initially was for 13 mission agencies comprised of 5,800 workers to pool their research. This involved updating existing information on the Muslim Unreached People Groups³ by on-site surveys over a three to four year period. And it meant sharing and comparing a list of practices of the 13 agencies to seek to discern “fruitful practices” that God had blessed in planting churches, that reproduce. This was done with appreciation for the mystery of the blending of the divine and human in Paul’s words: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth” (I Cor. 3:6, NRSV).

A multinational consultation was scheduled in Thailand for March of 2007 for nearly 500 participants, with two tracks. A Fruitful Practices track led by Steve Holloway was for field practitioners so that practices could be developed from experience not theory. The other was a Global Trends track to ascertain the task ahead and present it to invited mission executives who could cooperate in assigning personnel and resources toward accomplishing it. The practitioners who attended were from 56 organizations and had participated in the planting of 738 churches or fellowships of Jesus-followers among Muslims. They met every day in small groups and evaluated 94 practices that had been highlighted by the original 13 agencies. The practitioners each indicated if they considered a practice important and whether they used it and gave case studies.

Some interesting things came out. Forty percent of the church plants were in contexts that had experienced social upheavals or natural disasters—an observation in line with previous church growth studies. A majority of the plants that gave signs of developing into movements were contextualized to the culture and were planted in preexisting social networks where trust already existed. In these networks discipling began even before people came fully to faith because enquirers felt they belonged even before they fully believed. Far more church plants resulted when planters used the heart language rather than the trade language. Against conventional wisdom, in one area the best context to share faith with women seemed not to be in secret but at parties where women fed on each other’s questions. The moral character of the witnesses was always most important.

The Global Trends Track, led by Jim Haney and others, discussed the state of the gospel witness in every part of the Muslim world in order to help mission executives develop their plans. Patrick Johnstone introduced the designation Affinity Block to refer to the largest clusters of people groups where the gospel can spread without encountering major barriers of understanding and acceptance (e.g., Arab peoples, Malay peoples). These he sub-divided into People Clusters (e.g., Kurds, Berbers). Such designations were designed to facilitate cooperation between mission agencies. The designation “unengaged” people was introduced more broadly rather than the commonly-used “unreached” people descriptor which has at times been hard to define. A Muslim people are considered effectively engaged when there is:

1. A pioneering church planting effort in residence.
2. A commitment to work in the local language
3. and culture.
4. A commitment to long-term ministry.
5. Sowing in a manner consistent with the goal of seeing a Church-Planting Movement.

At the time of the Consultation there were 247 Muslim Unengaged People Groups of over 100,000 members, and the attending network of agencies committed themselves to strive with God’s help to see that all of these were engaged by the end of 2012 and all the remaining Muslim Unengaged People Groups engaged by 2025.

A book was published in 2008 that included the proceedings and results of the consultation, From Seed to Fruit: Global Trends, Fruitful Practices, and Emerging Issues, ed. J. Dudley Woodberry,⁴ including a CD with updated demographic statistics and other resources. It was expanded in a second edition with additional analysis and an updated CD in 2011, and the demographic material is currently updated bimonthly. The emerging issues with respect to fruitful practices deal with topics such as factors that influence the identity that Jesus-followers choose, factors that facilitate fellowships becoming movements, the oral use of Scripture (since 75% of the practitioners worked with peoples preferring oral learning), and empowering indigenous leaders.

The vision that brought the young leaders together a decade ago still motivates us all—to partner with God so that some day we might join with those from the Muslim community who have decided to follow the Lamb and sing with them “with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9, NIV). 

A hundred years later (711 CE), the followers of Muhammad, in a feat of unparalleled military success, sent armies simultaneously east to the Indus River of modern-day Pakistan, and to the west to the Andalusian Coast of southern Spain.

The Christian churches of the time found themselves living under Islamic regimes which, on the one hand purported to be a continuation of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but on the other, taught doctrines that refuted the heart of the Gospel message: God is not triune Father, Son and Spirit; Jesus is not the Son of God; no one can atone for another’s sin; and Jesus did not die on the cross, but was supposedly rescued by God and taken alive to heaven.

When opportunity allowed, Christians would openly defend their faith. Outstanding examples of this were John of Damascus (c. 676-749) and Ibn Ishaq Al-Kindi (c.801-873). Al-Kindi’s “Apology” is a record of his presentation before the Caliph Al-Mamun, and was translated from Arabic into English in 1881 by John Muir.

It was not until 1143 that Robert Kentenensis translated the Quran from Arabic into Latin under the direction of Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of Cluny.

Francis of Assissi (1181-1226) was granted an audience with the Sultan of Egypt during the Fifth Crusade. They became friends. 

Ramon Lull (1235-1315), a Majorcan Franciscan who visited Tunis three times, advocated setting up schools of Arabic so that Christians could discuss their faith with the Muslims in their own language.

Slowly Europe awoke to this challenge and began to translate the Quran into its own languages. Martin Luther wrote the preface to the German translation published in Basel in 1543. Luther also wrote a work on the manners and customs of the Saracens and coached Christians on how to behave if they were taken as slaves by Muslims.

The first English translation of the Quran from Arabic was done by George Sale in 1734. In his preface to the translation, Sale’s description of Islam was polemic.

In due course, European scholars, both Christian and secular, began to study Islam. Their perception of Islam was that it was a religion that grew out of the teachings of one man, Muhammad, over a period of 23 years (610-632) and accordingly called it “Muhammadanism.” In retrospect, the scholars that analyzed Islam during this period from Sale to Muir and beyond were called “Orientalists.”

The approach of the Christian Orientalists up to this time was polemical.

While all of the above was developing in the religious sphere, Western powers were expanding and asserting their rule over other nations, including about ninety percent of the Muslim World. As they did so, there were both secular scholars and missionaries who became fascinated with the comparative study of cultures and languages. These studies gave birth to the academic disciplines of ethnology, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics. 

With the birth of the modern missionary movement in the West in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the question began to stir in the minds of those involved as to how do you look at nations. Are they monolithic entities, or are they conglomerates of several cultures? 

By the time of the first Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Switzerland in 1974, groups like Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Mission Advanced Research Center of World Vision had compiled impressive lists of ethno-linguistic groups of peoples. This new way of looking at the world, as separate ethnic groups was highly popularized by Ralph Winter’s presentation at the Lausanne Congress.

A short time later, in 1976, a group of mission-oriented scholars gathered at Willowbank, Bermuda, to hammer out a report that called for great sensitivity and respect for the culture and languages of the unevangelized throughout the world.

By this time, the stage was set for new thinking in missions. A shift had occurred from the older discipline of apologetics to indigenization and contextualization.

Also in 1976, at Fuller Seminary, a proposal for a new consultation was drafted by me and Bob Douglas which I presented to the North American Lausanne Committee meeting in Chicago. This was accepted and World Vision was committed to funding it. Out of this proposal a mini-consultation was held in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1977, led by Ed Dayton of MARC, World Vision, on whether or not to go ahead with a larger consultation. The decision was made to go ahead with a larger consultation.

The North American Lausanne Consultation was held in late October, 1978, at the Glen Eyrie conference center in Colorado Springs. One hundred and 50 people from 26 nations participated. The delegates were chosen on the basis of their specialties: anthropologists, Islamic scholars, mission executives, missionaries and communication experts. Careful inclusion was made of overseas nationals and women, all invited with the proviso that they had responded to several concept papers sent out during the six months leading up to
the conference.

There were two significant products of this consultation. The first was the publishing of all of the 40 papers that led up to the consultation in The Gospel and Islam: A Compendium, edited by myself, and published by MARC of World Vision, 1979. The second product was the formation of the Zwemer Institute of Muslim Studies, based in Pasadena, California, February 1, 1979.

In the Glen Eyrie Consultation, seeds of new ideas and new approaches were sown. Field workers implemented these new concepts in developing innovative approaches targeting the unreached Muslim people groups of the world. Later these practices were blended with church planting and church multiplication strategies that have led to the astonishing harvest going on in the Muslim world today. 

This past July, Sawi churches commemorated the event with a three-day gathering of more than 3,000 exuberant men, women, and children. Some of them traveled for days to be there. A newly released mini-movie, Never the Same, documents the emotional reunion that my father, brothers and I experienced as we participated in this remarkable event.

Following my college years, my wife and I embarked on yet another adventure. We spent ten years on a church-planting team in one of the world’s largest Muslim unreached people groups. Again, our relationships went deep. God gave us a love and passion for the Muslim world. 

In the 1980s the Muslim world received negligible attention from churches in North America. This began to change in the 1990s through the efforts of Greg Livingstone and others. Awareness of the spiritual needs of Muslims accelerated even more rapidly following 9/11. Today, more than 60% of the teams in the organization I serve, for example, focus their efforts on Muslim peoples.

The needs of the Muslim world remain vast, and the workers few, yet we would do well in our mission strategies to keep the larger picture in view. The Psalmist wrote, “Let the peoples praise you, O God; Let ALL the peoples praise you!” (Psalm 67:3, ESV, emphasis mine) God is the God of all the nations. While the civilizational clash between the West and the Muslim world dominates our discourse, there remain great challenges and opportunities in the Hindu, Buddhist and Tribal worlds.

In a Google and Facebook era, it is hard for many people to imagine that there are still places with no incarnational access to the gospel. Yet, the reality is stark: hundreds of tribal groups remain completely unengaged. Among Buddhists, 45 people groups are completely unengaged. There are 139 Hindu people groups that are completely unengaged. These are groups that are not only “lost” and “unreached,” but there is no incarnational gospel witness of any sort among them, as far as we know.

One of our leaders working among Hindus recently showed me a map of one state in India. It was covered in blue dots. Each dot represented an unengaged people group. The 139 completely unengaged people groups in India and the Hindu world represent millions of people. They are separated from one another and from the gospel not only by their languages but also by myriad expressions of Hinduism and social castes. While we praise God for reports of large numbers of Hindus coming to Christ, an estimated 70% or more of these conversions are from low castes and tribal groups. It is easy to underestimate the complexity of the challenge and the remaining need. This is no time for churches in the West to abdicate their vital role in helping, often through partnership, to reach these groups.

Despite generations of seed sowing, the Buddhist world remains a remarkably difficult challenge in the global mission picture. Physical access by missionaries is not the greatest challenge in many cases. Rather, it is the suffocating spiritual darkness and the power of a radically different worldview that makes conversion and church planting difficult.

Our stereotypes of saffron-robed priests meditating in complete peace are far from the reality. Many Buddhists in unreached and unengaged groups have no knowledge of the “Noble Eightfold Path.” For most, there is a simple two-fold path: Appease the spirits and protect your karma. Spirits dominate every aspect of life. House spirits demand daily offerings, neighborhood spirits require weekly attention, village spirits need appeasement from travelers, and regional “guardian spirits” expect annual offerings.

In northern Thailand, for example, there is great spiritual darkness, even according to Thai Buddhists. For the younger generation, Buddhist rituals are more like ATM transactions, completed to earn merit or luck, as it is needed. The sense that one has thousands of potential lifetimes ahead can deeply affect one’s worldview.

Spiritual opposition toward the gospel and its messengers can be profound. Our own workers in these areas have been ravaged with illness, marriage difficulties, and team conflict. It is a tremendous spiritual battle. Yet we are endeavoring to send more teams to various Tibetan groups and to the unengaged in Laos, Bhutan and Cambodia. The need is for workers and senders who are faithful in prayer, patient in enduring hardship, and strong in their proclamation of the goodness and glory of a Savior who is greater than the spirits that hold these precious people in bondage. 

In remote corners of the world (and some not-so-remote), there remain hundreds of tribal groups that are still cut off from the hope of the gospel. In the jungles of the Amazon alone there are an estimated 40-50 unengaged tribes. These groups are typically smaller in number, with 200 to 1,000 members in a tribe. Yet, each has a unique culture and capacity for expressing and displaying God’s glory. Many of them live nomadically, traveling large swaths of the jungle and only staying in one location for no longer than two weeks at a time. Simply finding these groups can be a challenge.

Tribal work has become politically sensitive in many countries. Many of the tribal lands have been designated as national refuges in an effort to preserve the “pristine” pre-modern cultures. The reality may be quite different as most animistic people live in constant fear of spirits, on whom they call to heal or to curse. Exploitation by the encroaching commercial world threatens the extinction of many of these groups. 

Who will learn their complex and difficult languages? Who will labor in difficult, often primitive conditions, partnering with nearby groups to reach these unengaged before it is too late? Who is willing to spend years helping to reach remote ravines in Southwestern China, nomadic peoples of the Sahara or desert tribes of Chad, or swampy areas of Papua New Guinea? I have seen firsthand the challenges and rewards of such a life. It’s an extraordinary privilege. I can imagine no greater joy than to see people brought out of darkness, conflict and fear into the peace and joy found in Christ and his cross.

I am encouraged by a new generation of God’s workers who are rising to the challenge of this final, great chapter of redemptive history. This year alone over 200 people have come through our organization’s orientations, desiring to serve in the “hard places.” We need people who are willing to do the “hard work,” as Jesus put it to his disciples (John 4), and to lay a foundation on which others can subsequently build.

My own experience among the Sawi and among various Muslim groups has given me a growing appreciation for the scale and grandeur of God’s great campaign of blessings through Christ, originally foreshadowed in God’s promise to Abraham, “All peoples will be blessed through you.” My daily prayer is that the blessing that came to “my own tribe,” the Sawi, will come soon to every people group in the world.