Month: July 2009

I’ve been thinking and writing a lot lately about how God uses community to shape followers of Jesus. That’s the theme of my book The Relational Disciple, which is set to see daylight in October 2009.

In Relational Disciple, I contrast the way we do discipleship in the west (individualistic approach) with the way Jesus discipled people (though accountability relationships).

While growing as a believer I attended a large, well-known church in the southern California area. One of the attractive features of this church was anonymity. The church’s philosophy was to make it easy for people to come, leave, give, or not to give. People flocked to the church for the pastoral teaching, but everything depended on whether the individual attendee was able to personally apply the teaching. Thankfully, God gave me the grace to apply the teaching and follow Jesus. Many weren’t so fortunate and fell away. Today, many churches use the same philosophy of anonymity to grow their churches.

Jesus discipled people differently. Take the first twelve disciples of Christ. They lived, walked, and ate with Jesus for three full years. Jesus taught them through parables and real-life object lessons–not primarily in the large group setting. The early church followed the same example. They applied the apostles teaching from house to house. And when they could no longer hear the apostle’s teaching openly, they only met from house to house.

The private, individualized form of discipleship practiced in the west is now having disastrous consequences (North America, Europe, Australia). All three continents are leading the world in negative church growth.

Christ’s plan was discipleship through accountability at a smaller group level. Look at the one-another’s of Scripture, the example of the Trinity, and the witness of church history–starting with Jesus and the twelve. In my upcoming book I will talk about how discipleship must start at the nuclear family level (if relational discipleship doesn’t happen there, everything else will implode). And of course I highlight the cell, the local church, and the church scattered in mission.

I believe Christ is calling His church back to relational discipleship.

Comments?

Joel Comiskey

by Mario Vega

One of the greatest gaps in our model for several years was that we did not have an appropriate training course for leaders. Our model took care of the people for four weeks after their conversion, but then they were left on their own for several months, waiting for them to have the sufficient maturity to be trained as leaders.

Obviously, those months of waiting were fatal, representing the loss of rich human potential. For several years I was aware of it and started reading the various training materials that existed. At the end, I concluded that we had to make our own.

I developed our training and started to implement it a year ago. It is a training course that lasts six months. It takes every person from conversion to leadership. After the first year of implementing it, we have had very satisfactory results. We have managed to train over 400 new leaders.

However, because of the year’s desertions, the positive growth has been 256 new leaders. We hadn’t had such good growth for several years. The attendance increase has been around 5,000 new attendees in cells during this same period.

Now, I have no doubt that although the training course requires time and dedication, it is very worthwhile. I’ve discovered a direct correlation between the focus on training and the development of leaders, groups, and attendance.

Comments?

Mario

Translation in Spanish:

El entrenamiento de lderes.

Uno de los grandes vacos de nuestro modelo por varios años fue que no tenamos un curso de capacitación para lderes apropiado. Nuestro modelo cuidaba de las personas durante cuatro semanas después de su conversión pero luego se les dejaba durante varios meses esperando a que tuviesen la madurez suficiente para capacitarse como lderes.

Obviamente, esos meses de espera eran fatales y representaba la pérdida de un rico potencial humano. Por varios años estuve consciente de ello y comencé a leer los diversos materiales de capacitación que existen. Al final, llegué a la conclusión que debamos elaborar uno propio.

Lo hice y lo implementamos hace un año. Es un curso de entrenamiento que dura seis meses. Toma todo nuevo cristiano desde su conversión hasta llevarle al liderazgo. Después de este primer año hemos tenido resultados muy satisfactorios. Logramos capacitar a más de 400 nuevos lderes. Sin embargo, por las deserciones del año el crecimiento positivo ha sido de 256 nuevos lderes. Tal ritmo de crecimiento no lo habamos tenido en varios años. El incremento en asistencia ha sido alrededor de 5,000 nuevos asistentes a células en el año.

Ahora, no tengo ninguna duda que aunque el curso de entrenamiento demanda tiempo y dedicación vale la pena. Mientras más se invierte esfuerzo en la formación de lderes mayores serán los resultados.

by Jeff Tunnell

Joel asked us to share our highlights on the Cell Symposium so I’ll follow up here.  My time there was ENORMOUS and powerful.  Seeing the “heads of state” for the cell movement in one place at one time was awe inspiring.  Hearing from them each-in-turn was a privilege not to be squandered.  Holy Spirit presence was granted in the gathering and I believe the Father was pleased to overseee everything said and done.  Hats off to the servants at Antioch Community Church and Pastor Jimmy Siebert for their exceptional hosting of this historic event.

 A personal sensitivity in my life presently is toward prayer.  At the symposium I heard distinctly that the major weakness in the Western churh (as observed by our friends outside the USA) is that “it does not pray”.  We teach about it, write books about it, preach on the subject , lead Bible studies and tell others to pray, but bottom line, we do not pray much.  Little prayer, little power; much prayer, much power. That saying was coined by our far east brothers as I recall.  Our dependency on self has left us with just that for our assistance.  We are not able to accomplish much when we are depending on ourselves.

Dion Robert’s portrayal of a 15 year old cell leader, along with his cell group, raising someone from the dead was a poignant example of the Kingdom of God coming and the will of God being done, on earth as it is in heaven!  This apostolic man pastors 194,000 people through his cell ministry in Ivory Coast,West Africa.  His practical approach to God and His word led me to note “God-led and Bible-based, that’s all we need!”  As a General in God’s army, Dion called us to die to self and come alive in Christ for the advance of His kingdom.  He said the Lord needs more “dead men” to get the battles won!  Whew!

Bill Beckham’s presentation still loops in my mind and heart.  He compared the various “dimensions” of the church: Discipleship, Community, Task, Public, Network and Universal.  With these components in hand he moved on to demonstrate the part of the church that accomplishes each: Simple church, House church, Para church, Traditional church, Historical denomination, Catholic church (respectively).  I do hope this will be posted to the Symposium website  for review as it was very full and complete, concluding with a comment that cell church embraces and accomplishes all dimensions when Jesus is at the center! (go to the FAQ tab for downloadable materials)

Another clear-cut message from our international friends is this; if the American church fails in this hour of testing, the  world-wide Christian community will be severly weakened.  They still look to us for leadership on the global scene, but fear that we will wash out in this hour.  May God strengthen our spiritual spinal cord in this nation to rise to the challenge of repentance and sincere pursuit of God’s face instead of our preoccupation with His hand. (Him vs. His blessing)

The streams flowed together, may a mighty river be the result!