Long Term Missions

What Kind of Dirt Are You?

Oct 5, 2022 | Stories

Matt lives and works as a movement catalyst in a remote region. He wanted some of his local Christian friends from traditional churches to think about discipleship as Jesus does. So he asked if they wanted to look over the parable of the sower with him.

After reading through the passage together, Matt asked which kind of soil their respective churches represented. They both felt their church was the third kind of soil – where thorns choke out any fruitfulness or maturity.

They read Jesus’ last command to his followers: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” They agreed that if Christians are in the third kind of soil, they are likely not keeping Jesus’ final command, and probably also not keeping many others.

Finally, Matt asked, “In which of the four soils does Jesus want his word to be planted?”

“All of them!” they replied. But they added that Jesus wants his followers to grow and reproduce like seeds in the fourth soil, producing crops of one hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.

Matt’s friends decided to invite others to join them in studying some Bible stories about Jesus. Please pray that they persevere in their seed sowing, and pray for a 100-fold harvest.

Obedience to God’s Word Overcomes Systemic Prejudice

Oct 5, 2022 | Longer Reads

by the Walker Family
The movement with which we are connected is bringing transformation—not just to the lives of families and individuals, but also to deeply rooted social problems including systemic prejudice.

The early church celebrated the Lord’s Supper: “They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity” (Acts 2:46 NLT). A few years ago, we learned of some churches in the Listening Movement that were not taking the Lord’s Supper. India’s systemic sin of casteism was the root of the problem. Casteism dictates that eating with a low-caste person makes a high-caste person spiritually unclean. “We cannot take the Lord’s Supper across caste lines,” they explained.

Sanjay,* the main leader in the area, didn’t know how to tackle this issue. We were out of the country at the time, so he wrote to us for advice: “What should we do?”

Teaching obedience is very different from simply teaching about Jesus or about the Bible. Jesus’ final command to His disciples was to make more disciples, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). At its core, casteism is racism. Prejudice in any form is unacceptable to God. It runs contrary to the truth that all of us are made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26-27). Within His Church, racism violates the Lord’s commands to both “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34), and “in humility value others above yourselves” (Phil. 2:3b). Casteism, meanwhile, teaches that from birth, some people are better and more valuable than others.

In the Indian context, caste is a huge issue. The churches needed heart changes about this systemic Indian problem. Mere verbal assents to a teaching we might give weren’t going to suffice. We needed God to touch their hearts. To get there, the churches needed to learn from the Bible, not from us. We gave Sanjay a list of verses addressing the equality of all people in God’s kingdom, and how in Jesus, all barriers – including gender – are dissolved. We also prayed like crazy.

Sanjay took these Scriptures to the leaders of the movement. They studied God’s Word together. They discussed what God was saying regarding casteism and the Lord’s Supper. Sanjay did not preach or teach. He gave them the Scriptures. He prayed. He asked questions. They all looked at Scripture together. Finally, the leaders (not Sanjay) came to the conclusion that, “If I am in Jesus, I am no longer Brahmin (or whatever caste I was born into). I can either be a Brahmin, or in Jesus, but I cannot be both. If that’s the option, then I want to be in Jesus!”

It is important to note that we are not turning the above personal application statements into doctrinal statements for all the churches. These particular churches wrestled with the Scripture, then applied it to their personal lives in this context of casteism. This is what it means to teach others to obey Jesus. From the very beginning, even before these Brahmin families called themselves followers of Jesus, they had been taught to not just listen to Bible stories, but to apply them. Thus, when this issue arose, the DNA of “obey the Word” was already established. They had no idea that casteism was anathema to Jesus’ kingdom. So we gave them the Word, they wrestled with it and then applied it to their personal lives. They chose unity over disunity, to count all things as loss compared to knowing Jesus. And since they are committed to teaching their disciples to also obey Jesus, we know they will share the Bible verses with others.

How do we know they really meant what they said? Through their actions. After declaring they wanted to be “in Jesus,” the leaders did something seldom seen in their context. They apologized. In front of each other, without attempting to save face or defend themselves, they admitted: “We are sorry; we were wrong” both to Sanjay and to their disciples. Apologizing in public is a big deal anywhere, but it’s huge in Asia. Usually, apologies here are passive at best. For someone here to take ownership of a wrong they have done and apologize, not just to someone they consider “above” themselves (Sanjay), but also to people who look up to them (their disciples), is stunning. We were speechless!

That’s not all. After apologizing, the leaders intentionally gathered multiple churches with mixed caste-background people, and they all took communion together! This may sound like a small thing to outsiders, but this is a huge thing for India. Casteism is the filter through which the vast majority of Indians think about relationships and community. God broke into their hearts and minds through His Word alone. Hebrews 12:4 says, “For the Word of God is living and active and full of power [making it operative, energizing, and effective]. It is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating as far as the division of the soul and spirit [the completeness of a person], and of both joints and marrow [the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and judging the very thoughts and intentions of the heart” (AMP). We have always believed this to be true. Now we have seen it in action, bringing transformation to individuals and to whole churches. What a joy!

“Teach them to obey all that I’ve commanded you.” Sadly, we Christians tend to believe that lectures, sermons and codified theological doctrines will accomplish this task. But we need to ask ourselves: is all the sharing of information resulting in obedient disciples of Jesus, even when His commands run directly counter to their deeply ingrained cultural patterns and habits? When the Holy Spirit speaks through the Bible, people recognize that they are accountable to Jesus for their obedience (or disobedience). Praise God that discovering His will through group study of His Word helps people learn to obey Jesus for themselves. It is a priceless, humble privilege to watch God tear down destructive attitudes and practices, and build up an out-of-this-world fellowship among people from all kinds of diverse backgrounds. Hallelujah!

This article was used with permission and was first published in Mission Frontiers

How Good It Is When the Church Obeys!

Sep 21, 2022 | Stories

One team of disciple-makers in Indonesia had been praying and pondering how they could send out more national workers to unreached areas. They already had ten couples who were eager and ready to go. Those couples even had work platforms once they arrived among the unreached people groups they wanted to focus on. The question was: “How do we pay for their move and get them set up in a new place?”

Help came in the form of a timely training on generosity, passed on to them by their mentors. They, in turn, shared it with the house churches under their care. Those disciples prayed, then responded in obedience. They began to give generously.

Together they raised two-thirds of the needed expenses. Then, when the original trainer heard about their faithful giving, he agreed to fund the remaining amount. All ten of the couples were soon among their unreached people groups.

After one year, the team leaders evaluated how things were going. They are happy to report that over 80 groups of believers — over 750 people — are meeting together to study God’s word. A few of those ten couples, along with their local teammates, have seen fruit to the fifth generation and beyond! That means new movements have been birthed among previously unreached areas!

How good it is when the church obeys 2 Timothy 2:2 by passing on godly training and the Good News of Jesus! “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrusted to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”

OBEDIENCE EVEN WHEN IT’S DARK
One night at a prayer event on campus, she heard about the C people. She heard God speak to her very clearly, “This is the group to whom I am calling you. read more …

OBEDIENCE SO GRANDMOTHER CAN HEAR
As *YouLin and *Amy greeted one another and sat down, YouLin said excitedly, “Thank God I’ve had the opportunity to spend more time with read more …

Would You Walk 13 Hours for Training?

Aug 24, 2022 | Africa, Stories

Justin Long, Beyond’s Director of Research, recently returned from a trip to a Disciple-Making Movement conference in Africa. The first four days were a “Catalyst Camp” for DMM practitioners. The last two days were a 24:14 African leaders’ meeting for strategy and planning.

“It was an amazing time of worship, stories, and training,” Justin reports. “On the first night, I shared the dashboard* of what God is doing through movements worldwide. Surprised at the scope of the work, one man said, ‘I thought this [DMM stuff] was just something I did in my backyard. I didn’t know it had spread so far!’

Many fellow disciple-makers shared stories: people who walked 13 hours one way to be trained in disciple-making, of COVID and unrest bringing previously unreached people groups within reach of the gospel, of churches started in ghettos and among witchcraft practitioners, of widespread openness to the gospel amongst Muslims, of many previous “mission graveyards” becoming fruitful vineyards, of tens of thousands of new believers, of “Sauls” (persecutors) becoming “Pauls” (evangelists), of people bearing scars and disabilities because they refused to renounce their faith, of whole families and villages turning to Jesus as a result of the love and obedience of Christ-followers.

Please pray for these many African movement leaders who wholeheartedly work among nearly 1,000 people groups and strive toward gospel-movement engagement for the whole continent.

WATCH JUSTIN’S PRESENTATION

Who is Defining the Priorities of Our Church’s Mission Efforts?

Aug 22, 2022 | Longer Reads

by Stan Parks

If we seek to reach the world according to our own priorities then we are doomed to frustration and failure. The Lord desires obedience not sacrifice, so as disciples of Christ we must consider God’s priorities and shape our efforts to be in sync with His will. Based upon the Gospel message and the Commission of Jesus, I believe there are three priorities we should consider:

Missions was birthed in His heart because He is a missionary God reaching out to a lost humanity. The end of missions is the worship of God as is well shown in Revelation 7:9-10 “After this I looked, and there was an enormous crowd—no one could count all the people! They were from every race, tribe, nation, and language, and they stood in front of the throne and of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They called out in a loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who sits on the throne, and from the Lamb!” (GNB) In our efforts to obey God’s Commission to us, it is crucial that we prioritize God’s glory. We need to avoid pursuing human-sized goals with human-strength plans but earnestly and continually pray that the Holy Spirit will empower us to be vessels for God’s glory.

The goal of missions is to see the Body of Christ birthed and expanded within a people, tribe, nation, language and/or place. Ministry that does not see local churches birthed is often valuable, but until these church “communities of faith” are established and extended, the goal of missions has not been reached. However, this goal is not an end in itself, or the church becomes guilty of breaking the first commandment. The newly established church must be encouraged and taught that it is their mandate to reach out within their own group and beyond to the entire world. However, when we speak of growing the Body of Christ, we do not just mean numbers of converts and churches started.

We must ask God to grow the church not just in quantity but also in quality. It is not enough to start churches if those churches are selfish and powerless. The goal is Acts 2 churches being continually transformed by God and in turn serving God in devoting themselves to the Word and prayer and fellowship while sharing the good news, living sacrificially and transforming their own communities and nations.

Is it right that some hear the gospel twice when others have never heard it once? Or some hear it 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times, even 10,000 times when some have never heard it one single time? Evangelism is sharing the good news, while missions is sharing the good news where it is news. There can be no question that while we are called to many good efforts, our priority in world missions today must be those living beyond the gospel. God does not wish that “anyone should perish but that everybody would come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Approximately 30% of the world’s population has no access to the gospel and just as tragically 42.6% of the world’s population are members of “unreached” ethne – those without a culture-impacting indigenous church that is strong enough to reach its own people. 2 If reaching the world is the charge Jesus gave us as His disciples, then we cannot defend the vast sums of money and time spent on ourselves while we pray and go and spend so little to reach those most in need of the gospel. This is not to say that we should only focus on the unreached, because no church can be truly concerned about the unreached without being concerned about the lost around them. But as a worldwide church we find it much easier to prioritize ourselves and those around us at the expense of those with the greatest need for the gospel.

So if your church is seeking to obey Jesus’ mission commission by worshipping and glorifying Him in your words and deeds, a key priority should be helping reach out and start churches among unreached cities, nations, peoples and groups. That will in turn bring glory to God by their transformed lives and transforming service to their communities and their resulting efforts to bring the good news to other cities, nations, peoples and groups.

About the Author: Stan is a Church Planting Movements trainer and a coach for leaders of Church Planting Movements around the world. He has been serving Unreached People Groups since 1994 while based in Indonesia, Singapore and Dubai. He is Co-Facilitator of the 24:14 Coalition which is focused on Kingdom Movement engagements in every Unreached People and place by 2025.

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