From time to time it is necessary to evaluate how your mentoring process is going along. Do your leaders train other leaders? Do your leaders grow and bring forth fruit? Do you learn from them? The questions in this post will help you to evaluate your process of mentoring and training leaders.
John White from Lk10.com shares their journey in experimenting with starting new simple churches in the harvest. They use Missional Resource Teams (MRT’s), which are small, regional apostolic teams who are committed to see a vibrant family of Jesus followers planted in their environment.
Jesus said at the end of His life that a follower of Jesus is someone who obeys the commands of Him (Matt 28:18-20). During His life on earth, Jesus gave 50 specific commands to His followers. Several simple church networks are learning together to obey these commands. These networks enjoy the blessings God is giving them in this learning process.
In the New Testament most of the people became followers of Jesus together with their whole household (Greek oikos). Cornelius, for example, was not the only one who became of follower of Jesus. He received Christ together with his whole family. Simple churches in Europe are using the same approach as Paul and Peter. They try to identify where oiki are and how they look like in a Western context. They plant churches among these oiki. This document gives an overview of the oikos words in the Bible.
Jesus and the apostles urged us to love one another, forgive one another, pray for one another and many more. These “one another” commands are of vital importance in starting and developing simple churches. This handout describes these one-another verses in the bible. You can use this tool to evaluate where you and your church are. Read it for yourself or with your simple church. Pray over it that God will help you to obey these commands.
A LTG is a powerful, simple, reproducible tool to make disciples of Jesus in the harvest. The idea is that every week three men or women come together to ask each other accountability questions. Besides this they talk about what God has showed them out of the bible chapters they have been reading through the week. The third element of a LTG is to pray for non-believers that they know of and feel led to pray for. Look here to learn more about LTG’s. Click here to hear Neil Cole explain it.
In this article George Patterson and Galen Currah describe the alternatives of a monologue. When gathering new believers in groups it is essential to NOT use monologue as the main source for making disciples. A few weaknesses of a monologue are: people become only hearers and not doers, many who preach get full of pride, it is proven to be a weak form of communication, it usually bores the hearers and it is hard for new believers to do well on a monologue. There are alternatives: dialogue, gifts of the Spirit, demonstration of power, drama’s and role plays and questions and answers. Learn how to gather new disciples in groups that are interactive!
David L. Watson describes in this article the hard lessons he learned in mentoring lots of church planters. It is important to choose your mentorees carefully and to get to know them well. From there is it important to let mentorees make mistakes and release them quickly. Mentors are people who sacrifice for their mentorees and serve them. They are happy with the success of mentorees, keep communication open and take initiative in the relationship. Learn from the mistake of David and become a better mentor for leaders.
In planting new simple churches it is important to follow Jesus strategy of looking for a “child of peace” or a “house of peace”. When found one, you can start a new simple church among their web of relationships. This article will give you biblical examples of people of peace and how to recognize them.
God is working in the entire world to advance His Kingdom through sign and wonders. This article describes how to integrate healing with evangelism and church planting. To heal people it is important to practice the commands of Jesus in going out to the unbelievers, take up His authority and command the sicknesses to be healed. When you pray it is important to work together in a team and persevere. Sometimes there is no healing. You need to live with that. Another important aspect is to look at the whole person, not only to the physical side of healing. Is there a unforgiveness or does the person need to repent? The ultimate goal of incorporating healing in evangelism is lovingly obedient disciples of Jesus, so that He will receive the glory.