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Archives For January 2012

Thailand Congress 7.5

How To Reach Thailand With The Gospel

January 26, 2012 — 1 Comment

The National Christian leadership of Thailand has promoted a slogan that represents their vision for 2015.  

It is known all over Thailand in every local church.  It says,

“I’m going to be one out of one hundred thousand that will reach one million for Jesus Christ by 2015.

(This means they want the total number of Christians to be 1 million by 2015.)

So this begs the question for both Thai Pastors and the missionaries sent to help them,

“How will this practically happen”?

I could spend all of my time trying to do it as one single missionary.  A Thai pastor could do the same.  This would be impossible for a whole huge denominational team, much less for one person.

Or we could choose to find ways to empower the every day local people and influence the direction of training and practical strategy.

We could teach them to be disciples who disciple others who disciple others…

This is where I have chosen to spend the majority of time and energy. Continue Reading…

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Thai Christian

Thai Conversion and Church Growth

January 26, 2012 — 2 Comments

There was a very important recent study done here in Thailand on factors related to conversion and church growth among the Thai people.

A high level study of this type had not been done since 1982 which was the first time it had ever been done.

Some interesting findings came out of the study that have impacted our focus in ministry and how we prioritize what we do.

A friend recently mentioned to me that she believed missionaries were sent to places to “win people for Jesus.”  This is true in one sense, but is also a common misconception that misses the fact that the job of winning people to Jesus doesn’t depend on an elite highly trained few, but on every single believer in Jesus, whether local or foreign.

This is especially true in an area where less than 1% of the population even claiming to believe, trust in, and follow Jesus as Savior and Lord.

As a missionary called in one of the five giftings mentioned in Ephesians Chapter 4:11, my primary role is to “equip the saints” (the whole body of believers in a given area) for the “work of the ministry.”

I am not the only one, or even one of a elite group, who is expected to do the normal work required of every believer.

No, I am expected to find my place in equipping the believers and coming along side existing groups and empowering them through the gifts and teaching abilities that God has given to me. Continue Reading…

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Mistakes in sending missionaries

5 Mistakes In Sending Missionaries

January 25, 2012 — 3 Comments

Guest Post from Seth Barnes. (Great hard earned insights from a modern missions pioneer)

For 24 years I’ve been sending people on short-term missions (STMs) that challenge them to live the kind of life God dreams for them. STMs are great discipleship tools.

This year at Adventures, we’ll send out our 100,000th person on an STM. Our goal is for our STMs to activate participants to one day go and bring the hope they have to those that have none in some dark place in the world.

But moving from a short-term to a long-term focus requires a different set of tools. While Jesus sent all his disciples out on STMs (Luke 10), only a few were called to cross-cultural missions (in Acts). This may be one reason why he asked his disciples to go only to their own countrymen.

In my eagerness, I’ve made mistakes in sending people out for the long-term. Here are five:

1. Not enough screening. To be an effective long-term missionary, you’ve got to go as a learner. You learn the culture, the language and you learn people’s stories. To do this, you need a mindset and you need skills.

Sometimes in my enthusiasm to help, I’ve not spent enough time asking if candidates to go long-term had the mindset and skills they needed. Continue Reading…

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T4T A Discipleship ReRevolution

T4T Training For Trainers: 13-16

January 24, 2012 — Leave a comment

T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution: An Overview by John Lambert

Chapter Thirteen:Your T4T Package: Gospel Presentation

A “bridge” can move a person’ heart to listen, but only the Gospel can save them.  Acts 2:21; 4:12; Romans 10-13-17

What is the Gospel?

The good news that Jesus Christ provided redemption for us and that we can be saved by faith in Him.

Found simply in: Luke 25:45-48, I Cor 15:1-6.

Any presentation of the Gospel must include these core truths and a call for people to respond the the message.

How is it good news to the people you are sent to?

  • Animists: Jesus’ power over the spirits.
  • Buddhists and Hindus: Jesus’ power to break the cycle of rebirth and bring them to heaven.
  • Muslims and Jews: Jesus’ has the ability to break the futile attempt to gain salvation through good works.
  • Post-Moderns: Jesus offers true eternal relevance.  He changes lives.

The Gospel is always the same, never changing.  But the way you share it varies from place to place.   Continue Reading…

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Thai schools

2,000 Thai Schools Don’t Have Electricity

January 23, 2012 — Leave a comment

Over two thousand schools in Thailand that don’t have electricity and the students who attend these schools will not be eligible to receive the new PC tablets that the government will be handing out to all Grade One students by the end of May 2012.  Even more will be excluded that do not have “adequate facilities.”  Read  the full story here.

While Thailand is trying to catch up with the world in regards to technology, it runs the risk of creating an even greater divide between the the “haves” and the “have nots” through its government sponsored PC tablet program.

One of the campaign promises of the current administration was that it would supply a PC tablet to every child.  Now they are working to make good on that promise by providing a basic PC tablet with educational games for various subjects including English.

I guess that if they have the money to do this then it could be considered a bold move to push Thailand forward in regards to using computers in the classroom.  Or it could be a colossal waste of resources, especially considering the immediate needs being faced after the flooding.

Thailand is place where most of the PC hard drives are manufactured in the world.  They are over 13 million Facebook users in Thailand and that number is steadily climbing.  Thailand is working hard to catch up although a majority of its citizens live in rural areas with weak or little Wifi access or availability. Continue Reading…

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Thai police officers carried boxes of fertilizer and ammonium nitrate confiscated from a warehouse near Bangkok.

Thailand Recognizes Palestinian State

January 22, 2012 — 4 Comments

Following the recent issue of a terror warning lead by the US to all of its citizens in Thailand and followed by a dozen or so other nations, the government of Thailand issues a statement recognizing the Palestinian State.  But why?

First we have to look at the story that came out just a couple of days before this story.  Both the US and Israel issued a terror alert for all of its citizens living in Thailand because of intelligence of a very real and credible threat.  Other key nations began to follow suit.

But what was the story before even this one?  Thailand has just recovered from one of the worst periods of flooding in over fifty years. Almost a thousand souls perished and the Thai economy took a beating, especially in the area of tourism.  This tough period in 2011 followed a very volatile election period and civil unrest in 2010.

Tourism in Thailand is one of its largest national money makers accounting for 7% of its GDP.  Thailand is desperate to recover its foreign tourist revenue.  The nation is struggling to get back on its feet after fighting the devastating effects of the flooding for many months.

When the US and Israel issued the warning, they essentially scared off many would-be travelers.  This infuriated the Thai government who worked hard to down play the threat even though they made an arrest of a Lebanese man with connections to Hezbollah and found bomb large stashes of bomb making materials just outside of Bangkok in Samut Sakorn. Continue Reading…

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T4T A Discipleship ReRevolution

T4T Training For Trainers: 9-12

January 16, 2012 — Leave a comment

T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution: An Overview by John Lambert

Chapter 9:  ”Starting New Generations, Not Just Multiplying Groups”

T4T is different than traditional small group multiplication.  Instead of grow THEN multiply, it is launch and repeat.  You don’t wait for a new group to grow before launching new groups out of it.

These new groups become their own house churches or sometimes new small groups under the Lordship of Christ in a larger existing church.

Every new believer is potentially a new group.

The trainee may lead his family and friends to faith and incorporate them into his group.  At the same time, he is training them to be a witness to their circle of influence and launch new groups with them.

People you are training should not bring new believers to the original group but rather start a new group with them.  If they do, you must take steps to get them pointed back in the right direction.  If a new believer comes into the group, you should stay with the original lesson, but also be willing to stay after with the new believer and go through lesson one.

Generations of Groups

The author points out that the goal is get consistent 4th generation groups and for a CPM to emerge.  (How often do we lose sight of this or do not ever have it as something we are aiming for?  I would say more often than not.  This maybe why we don’t yet see CPM emerging in our own contexts though we have trained on it.) Continue Reading…

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T4T A Discipleship ReRevolution

T4T Training For Trainers: 5-8

January 6, 2012 — Leave a comment

T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution: An Overview by John Lambert

Chapter 5: “How To Begin”

T4T is a process, not a set of lessons (The author drives this home!)

He says it is often misunderstood as a set of lessons or an outreach, but he says it is meant to cascade as a church planting movement, generation by generation.  Each challenge faced at each new stage in the process is still part of the T4T process.

Many learned that Ying Kai:

  • Had 6 initial lessons
  • Encouraged new believers to witness 5x per week
  • Had frequent training retreats for leaders
  • Used inductive Bible studies after the first initial lessons

But those same folks didn’t understand that T4T is an “all-in-one-process” that God uses to take a person from lostness to maturing disciples who can start new groups and train others to reproduce the process.  They just copied parts and were not successful.

What has T4T done?   Basically it has tied all of the basic parts of a CPM plan together well and enabled believers to naturally progress from one stage to another as they are trained: evangelism, discipleship, church planting, leadership development-repeating the process generation by generation.

Measuring Rod For CPM:  When groups consistently reach 4th generation with new churches formed in several places over a short period of time, then a sustained CPM has emerged. (One trainer, David Watson, says 200 churches in less than two years with at least 4 generations) Continue Reading…

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T4T A Discipleship ReRevolution

T4T Training For Trainers: 1-4

January 4, 2012 — 1 Comment

T4T A Discipleship ReRevolution  An Overview by John Lambert

Chapter 1: “Kingdom Come!”

This chapter starts with some impressive stats.  Since its inception in 2001, the CPM initiated by Ying Kai has yielded a conservative number of:

  • 1.7 million baptisms
  • 150,000 new church starts
  • 2,000 new churches started each month in places from high rises to factories

T4T is said to be influencing missions efforts throughout the world.

Steve Smith is introduced as a CPM Trainer and Ying Kai is introduced as the father of T4T.

It is said of T4T that it is about:

  • Cooperating with God to see CPMs
  • The Development of a CPM plan
  • God’s vision for a MOVEMENT
  • Majoring on practical ministry

The question that arises in Chapter One is, “What are Churches”?  Steve says in a footnote,

I will define this more later, but these are Acts 2 type churches that display the basic covenant and characteristics of that Acts 2 community whether they meet in homes or in dedicated buildings. Usually I am implying house churches or church-like small groups of a larger worshiping community.

Ying Kai had an end vision of 200 churches in his CPM plan.  He reached that in three months!  These groups were meeting in homes, parks, and factories.

Based on conservative reporting, researchers found 18 generations in this movement in only 4-5 years. Continue Reading…

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T4T A Discipleship ReRevolution

T4T Training For Trainers: Background

January 4, 2012 — Leave a comment

T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution:  An Overview by John Lambert

Background

In the world of missions, a new wave of the Spirit of God is moving across nations and people planting churches where there were little to none before.  This phenomenon has been called “Church Planting Movements” or “Church Multiplication Movements.”

In the book T4T: A Discipleship ReRevolution, missionary practitioners Ying Kai and Steve Smith seek to lay out the principles and background involved in one of the most explosive examples of “CPM” in modern history.

This book was born out of a growing hunger for missionary practitioners to understand the movement and how they can prepare themselves in their own contexts for a new move of God’s Spirit by implementing the key principles laid out in the book.

Asian Born

It carefully documents the work of an Asian couple (the Kais) working in an Asian context.  Contrary to some thought, it is not another Western import or new method.

After reading this book, I can confidently say that for the serious missionary practitioner this may be “the most important book you’ve not yet heard of.”

Among the global missionary community and those who have heard the term “CPM” there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding as to what the term really means.  A “CPM” is not a method or a strategy, but simply an observation of the phenomena of rapidly multiplying churches among a people group.   Continue Reading…

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john_doerr

Entrepreneurs As Missionaries

January 3, 2012 — Leave a comment

In this video I picked up from the site Missionary Confidential, John Doerr speaks students at Stanford University about how entrepreneurs are like missionaries.

He speaks of entrepreneurs being risk takers who are focused on getting rapid scalable change.

By definition he says that they do “more than anyone thinks possible, with less than anyone thinks possible.”  

He contrasts what entrepreneurs (and missionaries) could be like; mercenaries.

In this video he shows a comparison list that basically says that missionaries are known for

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