Mid-week Course Correction
Meetings as a table for 10 minutes to determine if there is anything we as a table want to see happen that is not on the schedule.
Questions:
I want to hear real-life testimonies about how this process we’re learning has been implemented. Stories of failure and success. Some of these concepts are abstract. I’d like to hear some of these stories.
Discovery process for the person of peace: Random occurrences like Lydia and Philippian jailer vs. strategic launching of mission to Cyprus in Acts 13. Time and energy concerning both strategic and the process.
We were wondering whether we have stories within our own back yard, but in more affluent communities.
We would like to see this process have impact on the youth.
More details on the process of when the discipleship group becomes more mature, when do they get baptized? More details of the process.
We would like to hear what is right in the church. How do we work within the church today. We should be the church’s allies. What unites us with the church?
We have two ends of the spectrum: programs and development – how does CPM work in relationship to development and with the programs to do church planting?
We would like to hear more about the process of discipling outside leaders.
We would like to know what is the process to recruit workers from the field.
If there are any pointers on finding person of peace and getting the ball rolling?
What is the content of the 15 sessions and how much flexibility, especially with illiterate or oral peoples?
How do you discover a culture before you enter it?
We would like more time for question and answers and more practical experience of practitioners, especially as it relates to here in America, and how to incorporate children into the process.
Application to CPM principles in North America; are there certain nuances? Bottom line is that the NA church is not obedient, does not want to be held accountable.
Considering that CPM does launch from a framework in a pre-Christian culture, how does CPM apply or change in a post-Christian culture when we’re dealing with people who are coming from a post-Judeo-Christian culture. We’re talking about people who already have a theological framework, how does CPM apply? What do the definitions of person of peace, etc., look like in that framework. They have an eclectic selection of opinions, but not necessarily a theology.
Our group was interested in seeing an example or a story of the key elements of CPM from beginning to end that something you can tell us showing when it’s appropriate to leave a group, for example.
I appreciate the modeling of the interactive process and asking questions. It would help me if you highlighted it and said, “I’m going to lecture for a while now.”
We felt that the afternoon questions were a little too specific; if you broadened them more it might have more benefit for our ministries.
If you leave here and do not implement what you’ve learned within 48 hours. The people who succeed with CPM process are the ones who go out and start doing it, even if they don’t understand it fully, because you can’t learn it sitting in here. You learn by doing it. If I had time, I’d love to have a personal relationship with each of you and walk you through it in a mentoring relationship. All of us touch a lot of lives. That’s why we’re the right people to do CPM. CPM fits into our life. It’s a lifestyle. Whether I’m sitting across from a potential donor or from a new recovery client, there’s a potential for church to be established in their community. Can we move the gospel into that next social silo, family unit, hotel, etc. We have to have that attitude with everyone we meet, not just some of them. Some of them we will identify spiritual people. This afternoon is about how we know the right person.
Your assignment this afternoon is to do a 3-column study on Luke chapter 10, verses 1-12. Once you do that, I want you to go to Luke chapter 9, verses 1-9, and read it looking for what is not in chapter 10. Continue 3-column study with the new verses. Then go to Matthew chapter 10 and read verses 5-16 and do the same thing. Look at what has not been said in Luke 9 and Luke 10 and continue the 3 column study. You will need to finish this by tomorrow morning.
I WILL:
I will work with others.
I will ask the Lord of the harvester to show me those who are harvestable; to have eyes to see those who are sent.
I will be sensitive to the culture differences.
I will trust God to supply the resources along the way. I will empower other people to do their own ministry. I will know when I am not welcome.
I will coordinate prayer groups and meetings for workers for the harvest. I will not allow access ministries to personally connecting with people and connecting with the man of peace. (The people on the road.)
I will identify distractions I have. I will stop them until I have a person of peace. I will prioritize everything and listen for God to show me that person of peace.
We will try to live simply so we can go when and wherever God sends us.
We will go two-by-two. From now on I will be more consistent in taking my wife or someone else with me when I go and look for the person of peace.
When we are training church planters, we will make sure we are training teams rather than individuals.
I will not go alone.
I will trust God to provide.
We will get together and pray and focus on the depth of changes we need to make in our department based on the principles in Luke 10. Our prayer time will be a dedicated prayer time to get the answer to this.
I will get a partner.
I will pray.
I will start, take that first step. Next Tuesday we will start a new group of outpatients in Portland. I will start a DBS with them.
I will do the DBS with the volunteers who come to do the Bags of Love.
I will be flexible by God’s grace and eat whatever is served. I will go when I am asked to go out looking for the person of peace.
I will pray for workers, for favor, for protection, for open doors, for miracles of healing of the sick, driving out of demons, and raising people from the dead (access ministry).
Dave Hunt: It is easy for us to institutionalize our access ministry. God may be calling you as an individual in a personal way to touch a community. When it talks about not taking anything with you, it talks about staying with them. It says I will set aside my power and become dependent upon the community I am going to. We so often come in power, with the education, etc. This passage says we are to go in a position of humility and servanthood, being willing to place myself under the people I am going to serve. I will not go searching for the person of peace from a position of power.
TRAINING
To offer the training, train the trainer, coach the facilitator who is coming up.
In training outside worker, we will share Luke 10, to expose them to who the person of peace is and also to the Discovery Bible Study process. When we are training people to come to us.
Keep it simple. Practical in the training. Don’t make it too long. As we’re training volunteers, clients, family and friends, it has to be stuff they are able to apply right away.
The better environment for training is on-the-job training, as you go along, walking side-by-side. You’re training, even training each other as you go through this process.
I will remember it is an ongoing training.
I want to set up with some other people in our house church to walk through this.
To allow people who are training time to assimilate what they are learning.
And allow them to make mistakes.
From Recovery standpoint, we’re training them from the moment they come in, all the way from discipleship to leadership in six months. By the time they get to their sixth to eighth month, they’re ready to into the field.
Jonathan: We send out our clients 2 by 2 to the detox once a week. We have outside meetings. For volunteers in a recovery center, we need to train them to be accountable, otherwise they can become enablers.
We used to graduate people from the CPM course. That was a mistake. Now you learn and you go out and do.
I’m hoping that we can count on Paul’s commitment that by the end of the week we’re going to have something in our hands so we can take home to do the further training.
If someone asked for the DVDs, I would say there is a condition – they need to commit to the DBS process, so this does not become an academic thing.
I am already doing mentoring and coaching in my country. In July I will move to a new area and have one of the guys come into my class and do the coaching. I will take some people into the field with me, have the first three meetings with them and then let them do it.
With Family & Youth Outreach, we had volunteers we could use to do tutoring, etc. Now we have these middle class volunteers who want to volunteer with CityTeam. The majority of our work is with Spanish-speaking families. So we have this challenge of training volunteers and potential donors with CPM and we are looking at not sending them to the low-income neighborhoods, but we will encourage them to go to their neighborhood, their friends who are lost, who are unreached people. If we send them to the people we’re working with, there’s a challenge with language barriers. We’re already trying to set up a meeting with three volunteers.
They may not be comfortable. Like sheep among the wolves.
For us in Recovery, it is important to train the trainers right away. It is very important to listen. A lot of times we do the same thing over and over. Our hearts may become calloused. One of the ways that we do that is that we do everything we ask our clients to do. On Wednesday, we have a meeting that is dedicated to prayer. When we do that, it keeps us in the right frame of mind.
