22 October 2011

Churches That Change Cities

In many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, it's easy enough to get people to agree to follow Jesus and to plant churches. Shoot, several years ago, during a brief few weeks, US volunteers reported 80,000 professions of faith along the coast of Kenya, from Mombasa to Malindi — that's an area where Islam is prevalent. The difficulty is planting churches that make a difference.



Steve Sjogren, who blogs at ChurchPlanting.com, put up a post yesterday with some suggestions on how to plant churches that make a real difference in an urban area: How to Plant Churches That Change Cities. It's an interesting article. Here are his four main points:

  • Layer your city with acts of love
  • Preach the gospel with great love once they arrive
  • Take a vow of stability
  • Spin off daughter churches
He's writing from the perspective of a church planter in the U.S. and the methodology to which he alludes seems to be traditional church planting rather that one that is based around gathering small groups and using oral-preference methods like S-T4T. Still, the principles are valid.

  • How would you implement these principles in an African context?
  • Have you used any or all of these principles in your own church planting? What were the results?
For the Kingdom,
Bob A

09 June 2011

Silver Bullets


I appreciated the way that Discipleship Journal Online News advertised a new series of discipleship materials: "A proven way to establish, equip, and train disciples" (2:7 Series). Too often, a publisher or church leader or missionary will say something like "the proven way to establish..." as if it is the only way to do something. But DJ, in the wording of their ad, "a proven way...", has recognized a truth — there are few silver bullets in life, there are only a very few times when it is appropriate to say, "This is **the** way, there is no other effective way to....", or even to say, "This is **the** best way...."

Outside of Jesus as "the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me", I'm not sure what else I would nail down and say, "This is the only way to do something".

In our organization, storying (i.e., oral) T4T (training for trainers), or S-T4T, is the latest, greatest method for evangelism, discipleship, and leadership development. (Another resource for S-T4T is this site.) Fortunately, no one is saying that S-T4T is the **only** way to do this. I recently had a conversation with a missionary who has been in his place of service for less than 3 years. He was lamenting the deemphasis on literacy and the current focus on orality. I reminded him that the vast majority of Africans (as well as many, many Americans, especially the younger generations) are oral-preference learners — it has nothing to do with whether or not they can read, it's a question of how do they learn. However, I also reminded him that the key is to know the people with whom one works and to select methods that are most appropriate for that people group. And, the reality is that one really needs to select the method that is most appropriate for a given individual.

  • Are there methods or programs that you have seen or heard touted as "the only/best way" to do something?

For the Kingdom,
Bob A

30 May 2011

International English Christian Literature

Just a quick post on a resource, Gospel Publishing Mission. This is what they say about themselves:


Gospel Publishing Mission is Hope International Missions' world-wide publishing ministry. Our mission is to bring the Gospel, world-wide to those who speak English as a second language.
We publish Gospel books in a very understandable way using Special English. This is a 1,500 word vocabulary of very simple basic English words. (It's based on the Voice of America's basic English.)

Besides the limited vocabulary; Special English is written in • plain simple style,
• 
one thought per sentence,
• 
and idioms are avoided.

We have books in more than 50 countries, distributed through churches,
mission organizations, and book shops.



We publish books on evangelism, prayer, Christian living & devotion, English learning through the Gospel story, biographies, Christian novel, and children’s books. Some of our books are published in bi-lingual format with one of several languages side-by-side with International English.


If you need printed material in English to support your ministry, this might be the resource you've been looking for.


For the Kingdom,
Bob A

21 April 2011

A Key to Success

Perhaps you've heard the saying, Pray like everything depends on God; work like everything depends on you. It's probably an American saying — sounds like an American worldview. My purpose is not to debate that statement, but I was reminded of it by a blog post that I read today. It was on a running blog — well, to be more accurate, it was on Nissan's Facebook page where they feature, among others, Ryan Hall. The content of the post applies to many facets of life, not just running.

Let me begin by stating what should be obvious. In mission work, as in any other endeavor in which a follower of Jesus pours his life, the foundation, the prime cause, the source of all success is the Holy Spirit. Without the presence and empowering of God's Spirit, all of our effort will be for naught. We will not effect real change by effort, perseverance, intelligence, scheming, or fraud. Real, lasting change only comes as a result of God's Spirit working in a life or a situation.

That being said, we are never given the freedom to simply be lazy — we have responsibilities. The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-19) tells us that we are to do something — we are to make disciples of all nations, we are to baptize them, and we are to teach those disciples to obey all that Jesus commanded. So, we have work to do and we should do it heartily. That's the context within which I want to share this post.

Facebook doesn't give permanent links to articles or notes, but you can find the original post somewhere on this Facebook page: Master the Shift. Here's the article — I won't restate or apply, but just let you do that. Josh Cox is an American ultramarathoner and holds the American record for a 50K race:


What it Takes to Succeed: Random Ramblings

By Josh Cox
While pacing a rain-soaked LA Marathon, I was asked what the keys were to having a long professional running career. I’ve learned a few things since the summer of 2000 when running shifted from avocation to vocation. In some ways it seems like yesterday when I was the youngest guy at the Olympic Trials eleven years ago, yet in other ways, it seems like a different life. There’s a myriad of ways to answer the question; here are some thoughts…
Whatever the profession, those with long-term success are the passionate few who would be doing what they’re doing whether they were paid for it or not. Dr. Howard Thurman said it this way:
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive and go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
It’s the passion principle. Passion takes you the extra mile, passion gets you through the tough times, passion keeps your hand on the plow.
Dream big and work your tail off. There’s no magic bullet, there’s no quick fix, there’s no substitute for blood, sweat, and tears. Embrace the grind; if it were easy everyone would be doing it. If you’re dreaming big and working hard, you have to learn toignore the critic. For every dreamer there are 100 cynics. Those who have abandoned their own dreams will try to convince you to abandon yours. Don’t listen. Believe in your dream. They’re on the sideline, you’re in the game.
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great.” -Mark Twain
Follow the golden ruleDo unto others as you’d have them do unto you. When you treat people right, folks want to work with you; when you act entitled, you end up alone.
Assemble a good team; no one can do it alone. Be proactive, don’t wait for good things to happen. My buddy, Josh Shipp, said it this way:
“Stop waiting for your ship to come in, swim out to it or build your own.”
Find influencers and ask for help. Find products you believe in and write those companies a letter. Knock on enough doors and eventually someone will let you in.
In short: Pursue your passions, dream big, work hard, be nice, and surround yourself with others who do the same. Be positive, ignore the critic, follow your heart, invest in your passions, believe in your dreams, & get busy making them reality. Don’t talk about it; be about it.
Success isn’t found on the couch, it’s usually under a rock… on top of a mountain.

For the Kingdom,

Bob A

21 February 2011

Sharing Christ While Experiencing "Crowded Solitude"

Bill Westfall wrote a post, Crowded Solitude in Pittsburgh, for his blog, Earth's Edge Perspective, that got me thinking today — especially the first 4 paragraphs. It got me thinking first how easy it is for me to withdraw into solitude in a crowd or even when there's not much of a crowd but when I'm around people I don't know. Last night, for instance, I was at the airport waiting for my parents to arrive from the US for a visit. There was a crowd there but I poked my nose in my (digital) book and withdrew into solitude.

Then I got to thinking how necessary it is to be intentional in engaging people when we're around them. Many of us (OK, maybe this is a case of projection, pointing and realizing that while I'm pointing at someone else, 3 fingers are pointing back at me) are more comfortable with choosing the time and place in which to engage people. We fail to take advantage of natural opportunities to talk with people, just be friendly, find out where they hurt or what their needs are, and then present Christ to them. And, I'm not talking just about "sharing a Gospel witness." I think we want and must get to that point but we may begin presenting Christ to people by simply loving them enough to care about them as individuals.

The key is that we have to be intentional...
  • ... intentional in engaging people
  • ... intentional in loving people
  • ... intentional in caring about people
  • ... intentional in talking about the deep issues of life with people
  • ... intentional in sharing the truth of the Gospel with people
According to Paul, the truth of the Gospel is ... Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.... (Colossians 1:21-22 NIV but see the whole passage, Colossians 1:12-23). We have to be intentional in sharing that.
  • So, what do you think — can we share Christ while experiencing crowded solitude?
For the Kingdom,
Bob A

11 February 2011

Do You Plant Churches in Your Head or Among a People?

Ed Stetzer is the Vice President for Research at LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, Tenn (USA). Recently, he wrote a blog post for Pastor.com entitled, "Don't Plant or Pastor a Church in Your Head." Here are a few excerpts from the post:

When we formulate our mission and ministry strategies, it's important we do so for our own community, not someone else's. It's so easy to hear an incredible speaker at a conference and say, "I'm going to be just like that pastor!" But that is not what God is calling you to be. Too often, we get so excited by someone else's church that we get a vision for their church before we get a vision for our people.
My challenge is don't plant or pastor a church in your head. Plant or pastor a church in your community. That's where the Gospel transforms real people who are living real lives. Know and live in your culture, not someone else's. Don't just bring a model, bring the Gospel. Lead a church; don't lead a plan.
There are marks of a biblical church that should and must be present in every culture, but biblically faithful church looks different from culture-to-culture. A biblically faithful church in Singapore, Senegal, and Seattle share the same gospel, worship the same God, and teach the same scriptures, but they should (even must) look different. 

  • Do you plant replications of churches in your home culture (whether that's an African culture or a non-African culture)?
  • Or, do you consider the people among whom you hope to plant that church?
For the Kingdom,
Bob A

02 February 2011

Another Resource: "Best Practices Institute Manual"

In a post a few days ago, I gave a list of mission resources. One of those was the web site, Church Planting Movements. This morning, I found a helpful resource on that site. It's available to the public without actually joining the site:

It's a 1.8MB downloadable PDF file. The BPI manual is a detailed outline of an 8-day Strategy Coordinator training institute that has been used in South Asia for training national strategy coordinators. It would require some revision before being used in an African context, primarily to change S Asian references and examples to African ones.

I think this would be an interesting training to do with a mixed group of national and ex-pat workers.
  • How are you training others to plant churches?
For the Kingdom,
Bob A

30 January 2011

Are Your Theology and Work Biased by Your Culture?

Kevin Howard has written an interesting post on his blog, Need Not Fret, about theology, the gospel, cultural filters, and how one might think about all of those. It's an interesting read; it should cause you to think; it's a topic to which anyone doing missions and ministry in Africa should give some serious thought. I've listed some interesting (to me) quotes from the article just to whet your appetite. Read the whole article and see what you think: Allen Yeh, ETS, and Cultural Theology
  • Apparently a man in the ETS forum on world Christianity asked "Why do we need to look at the New Testament from an African perspective?" [Allen] Yeh felt frustration at the presumption behind the question, and I suppose some frustration is justified. At the same time if there is not some truth in the man's question then there is no core truth in Scripture or in the gospel itself to pass from one culture to another. Perhaps the man could have posed a better question along the same lines, like, "Can a particular culture focus too much on their ethnic identity when doing their theology such that it becomes ethnocentric to a fault?"
  • "Western theology also has some serious flaws in it," Yeh says. Who can disagree?  It does and this is an important observation. But sometimes it is too easy to make western theology the world-wide whipping boy and leave other cultural theologies unscathed.
  • "Platonic dualism...evangelism is seen as more important than social justice; non-Westerners would never make such a prioritization!"
  • To see a difference [between evangelism and social justice] and prioritize does not equal apathy or doing nothing for social justice.
  • That most any African believes in a supreme God helps to start spiritual conversations, but that many also believe in a group of intermediate divinities (more personal spirits to interact with humans) hinders true faith in Christ.
  • Scripture turns out to be more reliable ... than does culture even though none can read a passage without cultural influences.
  • Because we are all depraved then culture will show many traits of man's fallenness.  Some of God's image will shine through but so will grave sinfulness.
  • How does your own culture impact your interpretation of the gospel?
  • How does your culture impact what you do and how you do it in your work in Africa?
For the Kingdom,
Bob A

29 January 2011

Map: Muslim Population — World, Region, Country

Just a quick post this morning. Someone pointed me to an interesting map that I wanted to pass on. It's from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, a project of the Pew Research Center. The map is titled World Muslim Population Report. You can select a map of the whole world or of individual regions to see the total Muslim population of a region or an individual country, the percentage of the population of that geographic entity that is Muslim, and the percentage of the world Muslim population represented by that entity's Muslims.

Sub-Saharan Africa is 29.6% Muslim with 242,544,000 Muslims, representing 15% of the world's Muslims. Tanzania is about average in Sub-Saharan Africa with Muslims making up 29.9% of its population.

Perhaps it's quite obvious why this is important for this blog, but I hate to assume. That's 242,544,000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa who are trying to please Allah with their works but who are missing the mark — who are falling short of the glory of God — because they have rejected Jesus as God's promised Saviour.
  • Will any of those 242,544,000 Muslims hear about Jesus from me or you or see Him in my life or yours today?
For the Kingdom,
Bob A

27 January 2011

Are Elephants Muddying Your Water? (edited)

I'm currently re-reading Generation iY: Our Last Chance to Save Their Future by Tim Elmore. Great book for us "old folks" who have the privilege of working with or teaching or parenting those born from 1984 forward. Elmore says he is focusing on those born starting in 1989, but what he says applies to the broader Y Generation. Highly, highly recommended for anyone who works with or leads people in this age group.

Photo by Amo Meintjes, Kruger National Park, South Africa
One of the things Elmore talks about really struck home with me this morning and has a much wider application than dealing with the iY or Y Generation. While not directly related to church planting in Africa, part of our responsibility for discipleship is to teach those who become followers of Jesus to obey what Jesus taught.

In Generation iY, Elmore gives an illustration of a study done a group of adolescent elephants who had been separated from the herd and left on their own in the wild. It seems that, after a lengthy period of separation, these elephants were disturbed by seeing their image reflected in a pool of water. So, they would stir the water to "erase" their image -- they muddied the water. (I haven't, yet, found another reference to this study. If anyone knows who did it, please let me know.)

How often do we muddy the water when it comes to letting others — or even ourselves — see us as we really are? How often do we muddy the water when we talk about reality, whether that's talking with our children, with those we lead, or with co-workers? How often do we try to muddy the water when talking to God?

Elmore lists these reasons we lie — oh, I'm sorry, why we muddy the water:
  • Because we're insecure.
  • Because speaking the truth takes time and work.
  • Because the truth can be painful.
  • Because facing the truth makes us responsible.
  • Because we've lost sight of the truth ourselves.
  • Because we genuinely want [these young] people to be happy.
[Tim Elmore, Generation iY: Our Last Chance to Save Their Future (Atlanta: Poet Gardener Publishers, 2010), 110-111.]

I also just finished reading a novel, The Justice Game by Randy Stinger (Tyndale House Pub, Carol Stream, IL, 2009). Interesting reading along with this section of "Generation iY" because the 2 main characters had to deal with exactly this issue — how much could they muddy the water before it became wrong? For the record, this was a good fiction book, if you like lawyer fiction. (I just found that the Kindle edition of The Justice Game is still no longer free at Amazon — click the book title to go to the page. Check carefully, though, before "purchasing" — Amazon sometimes gives Kindle books away for a limited time and I cannot be held responsible if you click "Buy" and have to pay. Yes, there's a testimony there and no, I don't get anything if you download the book, not even if you accidentally pay for it.)
  • How much are you willing to muddy the water? (Note: I am not suggesting that you muddy the water at all.)
(See: Colossians 3:9, 1 John 2:21, Revelation 14:5)

For the Kingdom,
Bob A

26 January 2011

More Church Planting Resources

Recently a friend wrote asking if I could give him a list of resources of best practices related to missions. This is how I responded:


(Background to this paragraph: My missionary sending agency is in the throes of a major reorganization — I hope we get out of throes soon.) One of the problems of the current reorganization and, to a slightly lesser extent (maybe), the last reorganization (1997) is the loss of natural avenues of reporting and learning. The burden falls to a given individual to take the initiative to share (and ask for) information.

Frankly, the blogs of individuals may be the single best source for best practice kinds of information. The problem is that you have to find those blogs and then read them (RSS feeds really help one to keep up with all that).

Here are some sources -- many of these are stories and prayer request type resources. Most of them I periodically review to see what's going on around the world:
I hope this is a little bit helpful.

  • What resources have you found helpful?
For the Kingdom,
Bob A

** The term "#missions" on Twitter has no usage restrictions. Therefore, there are some who use that tag for things other than Christian missions. In other words, caveat emptor — there are inappropriate comments included in this Twitter feed. It's possible that the IMB filters out the objectionable content before allowing it to show in this particular feed. However, if you do your own filter for "#missions" on Twitter, the less than appropriate material will show up.

14 January 2011

Africa: A New Gold Rush

It's no secret that I like information. In my Strengths profile, Learner is very high (Learner: People strong in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.). Because of that, I quickly look at any new source of statistics. A couple of days ago, the Wall Street Journal posted an interactive map of Africa showing a variety of statistics. They termed it: Africa Map: A New Gold Rush.

Granted, I'm not quite sure at this point how these might be useful to mission work in Africa. At the very least, they help give a clearer general picture of what's going on in a given country.

One thing that stood out to me is the very low direct foreign investment in Kenya, the country where we have served for almost a quarter of a century. It's lower than any country in Sub-Saharan Africa. On the whole continent, only Ethiopia and Eritrea are lower. There's no explanation but, based on experience and current topics of high interest in Kenya, I would guess it's the natural result of corruption — nobody wants to deal with that.

  • What do you see in regards to your country that stands out?
For the Kingdom,
Bob A

PS

I haven't posted in quite a while. Partly, that's been because of the apparent lack of interest. That's quite all right. If this doesn't meet a need, then that's fine. But, the other reason has been my own schedule and the holiday season. We were in West Africa for a month helping with orientation for new personnel. Then, our adult children and daughter-in-law were here over the Christmas holidays. We had a great time but non-essential tasks were shelved.