I know of a training route from convert to cell leader which may be interesting to you. Neil Cole is a church planter and an advocate of church planting movements from Los Angeles. You can find links to his material at www.greenhouseSTL.org.

He wrote of his equipping track to rapidly equip new converts to become pastors of small churches in the resource entitled “Raising Leaders for the Harvest” written with Bob Logan (www.CMAresources.org). While they use Cole’s equipping track, most of their examples are from third world church multiplication movements and one of them might be useful to you. These networks of small churches are not cells, but the support of the mother cell church should make these methods more effective rather than less effective. We can think of them as “cell planting” as well as “church planting.”

This different perspective may inspire new ideas for you. There is a great freedom in Cole’s methods that would allow you to “make them Salvadoran.”
(My adaptation of them for churches in my denomination is available at www.disciplewalk.com.)

Here’s an example of their different ways of thinking about this: One of their principles is that lost people are already networked into small groups or an “oikos” (a greek word from the Bible). They use the example of a man drowning … when you grasp his hand to pull him from the water, whatever part of the body you grasp is connected to a whole body. What they mean is that each new convert is already linked to an oikos which is like a ready made cell of lost people waiting to be converted. And within that body of Christ, God has provided the cell leader who will rapidly mature … they are just not yet converted. Finding that person, converting and equipping them - rather than convincing an existing cell to to multiply - rapidly leads to the conversion of the whole oikos. So whenever one individual is converted, they care for that person in a cell but immediately look beyond that individual to the people he or she is connected to, knowing that God has placed the next cell leader within that personal oikos network.

I hope this is interesting and useful to you. Thank you for the blessing you are to all of us.

David Kueker

Hello Pastor Mario, Joel , Rob and Steve,

I see how God is bringing some things together in my mind. As I have mentioned to Joel recently God is bringing some real insights into my life about the changing face of Missions. I believe that it goes right alongside with your thoughts today, Pastor Mario.

We leave in a few hours for Sri Lanka to hold three seminars and a workshop for a church model on Bible Orality. I believe this is a key to the multiplication of Cell Leaders! Linda and I just had a total revolution in our lives when we attended a Conference on Bible Orality. God is putting some ideas into our minds about sharing this in Cell group ministry. We are excited to see what God has in mind for us.

We will look forward to sharing with you all what God has laid on our hearts, when we come back from Sri Lanka.

Blessings on you all. We love you and the great work you are all doing!

Ted and Linda Senapatiratne

I’m just beginning training and was looking at a 6mo period. I would like to get info on your training modules for the 3 month period just to review. Is that possible?

Blessings,

MIke