Day 1 PM, Level One CPM Training Notes (Unedited)

David Watson:

Learning from God is an important process, we want them to learn from God, not us. You will add things and learn from one another, but the main thing is to learn from God. You need to make it clear at the outset. Do your talking and sharing AFTER the meeting and use the meeting time for listening to God. Part of managing the time is how you START the group. Set the ground rules with a new group. You wanted to learn about God from the Bible. We want to really stay focused. We’re not going to talk about religion, your bad experiences at church, or whatever, we want to talk about and listen to what God is saying to us. It’s not school, but you do want to say, “We are here to discover what God wants us to know about him.” In that process, we want to learn directly from God what He says about Himself. And, if this is from God, what is our response to that? Set the expectations at the beginning and as you go, clearly, in a way that is nice in the culture you’re working with, they’ll get it and will start moving in that direction. But remember not to expect lost people to act like saved people.

 

Take the next 45 minutes to do the 3-column discovery and discussion on Deuteronomy 6:1-9 – read those verses, but do 3-column study on verses 4-9. In 30 minutes, we’ll see where we are.

 

Break into table groups and do passage.

 

Now, write down on pad on your table what you learned from the passage.

 

Shared things we learned:

Verse 4

Listen up, pay attention. Hear and obey.

God wants our attention.

There’s only one God.

God is one, He’s unified, He’s complete. There’s no deviation in him.

God has authority to give us a command.

 

Verse 5

Love God with all your attitudes, motives and actions.

Love God with everything He gave you, with all your abilities.

Love God with all your strength and your soul and your heart, with obedience.

One’s love for God must surpass all things.

 

Verse 6

I will keep these things in my heart, my soul and my mind and live by them at all times.

Commandments are not suggestions, not just if you feel like it.

Keep and memorize Scripture in your heart for easy access.

That we are to choose to love God with all of our heart. It’s a commandment, but we have a choice.

To love God is to obey Him and to obey Him is to love Him.

 

Verse 7

I will share my love for God with the next generation.

Pass the Scripture to your children and keep them accountable at all times.

God went from individual to family and in doing that, he said not only to have it on your heart, but you have to live it out.

For parents, it’s the toughest times of the day to be consistent with your kids, in the morning when you’re trying to get them out the door, at night when you’re trying to keep them in bed, and in public.

It starts with my house.

God giving orders. He is an orderly God.

Passing on to the next generation – TEACH them to love God.

 

Verse 8

He is telling us how to obey, but the first thing He is telling us to do is to listen. He is telling us how to do it, but He wants us to listen.

Share God’s love with your community and with your family and meditate on His commands day and night.

Write them where people can see them.

Your home should reflect your love for God.

 

Verse 9

We are to demonstrate our love and obedience to God in our actions and thoughts in all our comings and goings.

We are to have no secret compartments in our lives.

 

David Watson:

Discovery versus teaching: Our world is sensitized to people pushing religion on to them. If we teach and push religion that is perceived as a negative thing. The active party in teaching is the teacher. The student is the active party in discovery. From the very beginning, you want to establish the DNA that Christians are active, not passive. What message is sent by the way we do church right now? You sit and you’re passive. We send that message when we’re teaching and preaching. There is a place for that and it’s with the saved, who want to have things pointed out. Now I’m going to do a little bit of teaching with you now, but don’t do this with your groups.

 

This passage is called the Sh’ma – it’s the Hebrew for “hear, obey, observe.” When God said, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” That is not what they’re to hear and obey, it’s WHY they need to obey. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. In the time of Moses, to love with your heart was about your emotions, about passion, it was about loving God passionately. You cannot have worship without passion. You cannot have people who will die for the Gospel without passion. You cannot have people who will walk into adversity and still share the Lord without this kind of passion. You don’t reserve any little part of it, your passion is wrapped up in it. All means ‘all’ and that’s all it means. If you’re reserving part of your heart, soul or strength for something else, you’re doing less than God is requiring of us. The soul is eternal. The soul is recognizable to God. Love God with all of you that is eternal and do it eternally. It takes an extraordinary passion to hold deep levels of passion for a long time. When the passion goes away, I want that part of you that is eternal to keep holding on eternally. I want you to love Me with all your passion, but also with all you are that is eternal and keep building on that love. Strength is action. Think about it. When you’re doing something you don’t like to do but you’re doing it, how are you supposed to do it? With all your heart. Who are you doing it for? God. It demonstrates your love for God. In all that you do, demonstrate your love for God. Even when we find ourselves in situations where we’re angry or frustrated, we can still demonstrate our love for God. These commandments I give you today are to be upon your hearts. At the time of Moses, they knew that if you took the heart out of an animal, it would die. They do not drink the blood of animals because the life is in the blood. I want these commandments to be on your heart. It’s the hardest working muscle in your body, 24/7. It never stops until you die. I want these commandments to be like the heart of your life with God, always there, always giving life to you. Do you have to think to make your heart beat faster? It just does it. You don’t have to think about it. I want the commands of God to be so much a part of your life you don’t have to think about them. Even when you’re laying down to rest they’re still there. This needs to be so much of a part of you that you don’t have to think about it. It’s doing right without having to think about it. It’s about obeying God without having to think. Automatic obedience that is like the automatic working of our heart. Here’s how you make that kind of obedience work. Impress these commands on your children. Same word that’s used as ‘to strike a coin.’ At a mint I learned that it took 50 lbs of pressure to mint a coin. Unless you melt the coin down, that impression will always be there. Talk about them (the commands) when you sit at home, when you walk, when you lie down, when you get up. This word is more than just talking, it’s modeling. I want you to talk about these commands when you sit at home and when you walk along the road. At home you’re with your family; on the road you can be with anybody. I want you to be the same at home as you are in public. No mixed messages. If you’re not consistent at public and at home, then your children will not be impressed with the commands of the Lord. The only way that you can impress them on your children is to be consistent, in public and in private. Even in the most intimate inner room of your house, there is to be obedience to the Word of God. It doesn’t change with the rest of the family, or the neighbors are there, or travelers. Nothing has changed. You’re still going to be obedient. This is how you impress the law of the Lord upon those around you; not just talking with your mouth, but by talking with your life.

 

I want you to write them on your forearm and write them on your head. Who sees your forehead? Others. Who sees your forearm? You do. I want your obedience to speak so loudly that even perfect strangers will know there is something different about you. Have you ever met someone who instantly disliked you. Understand what that is: that’s a person with a demon who sees a person filled with Christ and they’re attacking immediately. Your life is to be so full of obedience to Christ Jesus, that when a demon comes into the room, they have to choose to run or fight. How you respond to that person tells the demon how strong you are. If you respond with anger and frustration, that sends one message; responding with love and compassion sends another message. We live in a busy age and we need reminders. It’s easy for Bible study or the time with the Lord to get squeezed out of our lives. What do you do to remind yourself to be in the Word of God and to act upon it?

 

I want you to write it on your door and on your gate. I want you to write it on your gate and on your doorframe. Many people took the writing on the arm and forehead literally. A tattoo or a phylactery is literal, but living it out is also literal. The stranger who sees you having written it on your gate knows who you claim to be. If you walk through the gate and get into the courtyard, you need to be able to find out that the reputation is true; the same thing that was on the gate is true in the house. This is the kind of person we must be if we’re going to see churches planted in North America because what America has seen is Christians who don’t know anything about God, who are no different than everybody else. If we’re going to make a difference, we’ve got to make a change; it starts with obedience to the Word of God.

 

ASSIGNMENT: Read John 14 and 15 and note all the ‘love’ and ‘obedience’ words in those two chapters.

 

Q&A:

Lots of things like this are bouncing around in my head and if I want them to catch the deeper things, am I supposed to just zip my lip?

 

Zip your lip. They’re not ready for the deeper things yet. Let them hear the things they’re ready to hear.

 

Break

 

Tables shuffled – seat yourself according to chart that is projected on wall

 

Denise Hadley:

Every morning you will sit at the same group you sat in this morning. The afternoon groups, 3:30 to 6:00 will be by affinity groups. Development Department is meeting in a different room.

 

Today we will start our hour with prayer. If we’re not modeling what we want to have happen, then it just won’t work. From now until 4:30, we are going to be praying.

 

Every day you will be with the same group of people in the afternoons. The table lists will be on the wall every day. We won’t have a structured prayer time like this the rest of the week. The rest of the week, from 3:30 to 6:00 will be our break-out group. Tuesday through Thursday, the last hour of the day we will come back and feed back. Dave Hunt will facilitate that portion. He is our new Vice President of North American Church Planting.

 

 

 

Feedback session:

The Scripture is a good one for men in Rescue Mission

 

Family Outreach: How do we identify people without using CityTeam resources? It’s personal what Paul has been through and who he is now. “I was this and now I am someone new.” Without using CityTeam resources, it becomes personal. It’s about what we’ve experienced and what we know. It is more about who we are and what we can give them.

 

Family & Youth Outreach: Paul was one of the persons to do this. Anyone can do this. He can use a drug addict, a person who used to break into houses, to do this. We look for all the opportunities we have, outside of CityTeam and inside of CityTeam, i.e., volunteers, donors.

 

How will I implement what I learned today in my contacts, community and family? We can live a Christian lifestyle and people will be drawn to us. It’s only by grace we are saved. We will have more grace for other people. Be mindful, patient, tolerant of other religions, personalities. If we’re Christ-like, we can really show love.

 

Wade: How do I own the vision for CPM in my area and how do I train clients, volunteers and donors to implement CPM? Because he considered being faithful, there was something God saw in this person. Maybe some time we wait too long. We wait for them to show signs of someone getting down the road, but by the time we start planting the seeds, they may already be waiting to transition out (clients). If you start with people earlier, they may look messier, but you have the opportunity to disciple instead of making a convert to just an idea. You can walk them through it instead of just shoving an idea on them.

 

How will I implement what I’ve learned today in my contacts, community, family, etc.? Just be thankful that Christ gives us the ability and he chooses us to be in the ministry. Be thankful for where He has placed us as He has found us to be faithful. Also, be merciful to those who are ignorant and in unbelief. To follow Christ’s pattern of longsuffering to those who are going to believe.

 

Kathy W.: How do we own the vision for CPM and how do I train clients, volunteers and donors to implement CPM? We may be getting Bible studies started, but it’s just Bible studies. There are some little shifts we need to make in order to take the stops out and see it just go. Once it’s turned on, it will go by itself. To tie it to the Timothy passage, how the people – we are extreme examples also, and as such, in that none of us deserved to be here. As an extreme example, we can model and we need to. We need to be taking it to our staff and helping them to implement a lifestyle.

 

Charles K.: How do I train our clients to seek out prospects, addicts still in their disease, to share everything? Paul put himself out there as just like everybody else. What we came up with was to model the unselfishness and to find a felt need and to try to help with that need. Don’t preach, but practice principles.