First Tool:
Oikos Map & My Story/His Story
Adapted with permission from JUIO.net/#!oikos-mapping/ce45
When Jesus found people open to his message he often stayed and shared with others in their relational network (family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances). Sometimes “households” (Greek oikos) or even whole villages received the good news in this way.
When Matthew and Zaccheus (tax collectors) followed or received Jesus, he went to meet their household. The woman at the well, and the demoniac both went back to their villages where they told people about Jesus and his message even before the people in their villages had met him. This is how the gospel spreads virally.
OIkos Map
Learning this principle from Jesus, we practice and immediately teach each new follower of Jesus to draw out an “Oikos Map” with names of people we know who are “far from God.” We include both those we know personally (with whom we will go and share our story and God’s story) and those we have incidental contact with (those “far from God” that we will teach our family and friends to share with as our family and friends follow Jesus).
We begin by drawing a bubble in the middle of a sheet of paper and putting our name in it. Then we draw connected bubbles around our bubble with the names of “far from God” people we know directly. We try to map as many people as we can.
Then we draw lines from these people to bubbles where we write down those they know. Finally we draw an empty bubble at the end of every stream of relationships to encourage continued prayer and sharing through the “generations.”
We then set ourselves and those we are discipling a goal to share with five people every seven days, updating our map each week and choosing five more people to share with.
My Story / His Story
Jesus told the restored demonaic to let others know what God had done for him. So practice describing in one sentence each:
- our life before Jesus
- a clear gospel such as transformed us
- how our life has changed as a result
- an invitation to join us in following Jesus.
This presents our experience as supporting testimony for the gospel in a way that invites a positive response. If God leads them to follow Jesus, or even if they are just open to further discussion, we invite them to gather a few family or friends to discuss the Bible in a context that will be most com
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