Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

Category: Church Planting

The Resume is Staring You in the Face

This entry is part 4 of 7 in the series Success for missionaries

Part 4 of a series on defining success for a missionary.  Part 1 demonstrated that we, like Paul, can be confident in our ministry, despite all our detractors and critics. In Part 2, we saw in 2 Corinthians that Paul repeats the phrase “commend ourselves,” to identify key criteria that he uses to demonstrate that his ministry is credible and successful.  In Part 3, we explored Paul’s first criterion of successful ministry, that of clearly proclaiming the Gospel.

The Church’s Existence is a Proof that I am Successful

Besides reminding the Corinthians that he clearly and even simply proclaimed the Gospel, Paul argues that the very presence of a Corinthian church was ample evidence that he was, in fact, a successful apostle and missionary.

The Importance of Coaching Church Planters

In SEND U, we have been promoting coaching as a means of personal development, and as a help for those in mission leadership.    But coaching is also used extensively in supporting church planters, and this was the context that first sparked my interest in coaching back in 2007.

The following article comes from the December 2011 edition of Dr. Bob Vajko’s Help in Planting and Multiplying Churches newsletter.   Dr. Vajko is a church planting consultant with TEAM International, and he and his wife Noreen served as church planters in France for 29 years and then 7 years in Australia.

Training for Cross-Cultural Church Planters

In SEND U, we are very open to partnering with other organizations in providing training for our missionaries.   As the saying goes, “Why re-invent the wheel?”  One of the more profitable partnerships for SEND has been with ReachGlobal, the international mission arm of the Evangelical Free Church of America.   Through ReachGlobal’s training arm, EQUIP, SEND U has developed and facilitated an online training module for SEND team leaders.   A second edition of this training module is scheduled to begin on February 14, 2011.   Although the primary target of this training is for SEND team leaders, I am willing to enroll a few team leaders from other mission organizations. More information about this training module is available on the SEND U wiki. Contact me if you are interested in enrolling.

Another opportunity for partnership in training comes in the area of training church planters.  Our SEND Directors’ Council recently asked SEND U to develop a plan for church planter training – both basic training for appointees and continuing education for mission members. Fortunately, our Leadership Team had already been thinking along those lines and was ready with part of the solution to the DC request. We are recommending the ReachGlobal/ EQUIP church planting school for all SEND missionaries who have completed their language study and are headed into a church planting ministry.   Two members of our Leadership Team attended the training last summer, and based on their very positive evaluation, we are making this recommendation.

Church Planter Training

A few weeks ago, Dick Walton and I joined the SEND North Central Europe church planters and their Polish co-workers for a SEND-sponsored church planting workshop in Karlowice, Poland. Dick was a church planter and my former Area Director in the Philippines, and since then he has also served as area director and church planting trainer in Bulgaria. He was planting churches in the Philippines since soon after I was born! My experience in church planting is much more limited, and I was somewhat surprised that I was asked to be one of the facilitators. I was also very impressed with the quality of the instruction by Adam Małkiewicz, a Polish church planter from the Bible League as he talked about how to incorporate new people into church plants.

The workshop itself was short (only one evening and the next day until supper), but packed with great ideas and opportunities to make connections with other church planters. After the workshop, Ted Szymczak (our North Central Europe Training Coordinator) and Dick Walton spent several days, visiting each Baptist church plant in that region of Poland to give counsel and answer questions for each church planting team. These on-site visits probably were even more helpful than the actual training done during the workshop.

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