Day 5, Church Planting Movement Training Transcripts (Unedited)

Learned this week by individuals

• You can launch facilitators quickly
• Big responsibility before God
• Learned to expect rejection and failure
• Giving up what I would love to do to do what God has commanded
• If we move into the edgy part of the community rather than to direct to our side of town
• Plant churches among the lost, not the saved
• Discipleship is a relationship to provide opportunity to observe consistency; that’s one of the places that has had a big hole. It is huge.
• Not to move around within the same community, but to stay with the initial person of peace.
• If you take any of the components out, it doesn’t self-replicate; it’s all or none
• I learned that a facilitator is not a teacher
• Principles of reproduction: 2 x 2, people you’re discipling, getting them to share even before they’re saved
• Matthew 28 process: Go, make disciples, make disciples, and teach to obey. As disciples have a chance to see you live your life; giving them an opportunity to fall in love with Jesus as they see him in Scripture before they give their life
• CPM is a lifestyle
• Step off the ledge, find the edge, and “Go!” – I’ve been so busy with CPM that I haven’t been reading emails or talking on the phone; two of my family members have passed away, my dad is having a major surgery. What I’ve learned is I will ask them what are you thankful for, what can I do to help, what is it you need, and what are you going to share this week?
• I learned as a city director that I cannot expect what I do not inspect; need to make sure we have proper DNA.
• Person of peace shows up through spiritual statements. The way you determine your person of peace is their response when you make spiritual statements to them; are they open or are they closed?
• Be conspicuously spiritual, not obnoxiously religious.
• I am going to change the way I’m presenting the Gospel. I can do better.
• I need to do more hanging out and develop relationships personally. Too soon old, little late smart.
• Measuring differently; measuring metrics instead of how many churches you start and Bible studies.
• Shoot the rabbit: stay focused so they can receive what I’m saying and God can do the work in them.
• Resources/ministry are key to access the community; just make sure it’s the right resource/ministry.
• Going. To take the step and do it. It’s all laid out in the Scripture.
• God is the Source of the power and who brings it all together.
• Five obstacles – especially #3, transitioning from individual to the family
• It’s okay to fail; it’s up to God. The things he wants me to try and do will be successful through me if He chooses them to be.
• Love and obedience = reproduction. Obey for the right motive, out of love, not because you don’t want people to see you doing the wrong thing.
• It is more important what I do than what I say.
• I have to culturalize, to be open as a leader. Outsider’s responsibility is to deculturalize the Gospel, the insider’s responsibility is to contextualize the Gospel.
• Not to change people, but the Word does, and the Holy Spirit. I have to detox myself from my religious culture, and not try to impose my culture on them. To respect the culture and blend in with the culture. By respecting the culture, I will be able to become like them. I will have to change.
• Ripping up my pedigrees. We need to go in barefoot. Valuable to go in in weakness. I need to learn how to put capability aside.
• Be more patient with the unbelievers. Initially DBS is a week-by-week thing. Modeling. Informal in the beginning. Then move to the household and pass it on.
• I learned not to expect the unbelievers to act like the Christian
• Remember that I am a coach and not spin so many plates myself; it’s His desire to bring people in.
• We have to stay in the coaching role and not bring in the teaching/preaching role
• I learned it was easy by watching the group demonstration
• Challenge to implement this in 48 hours
• Calling people “lost” and “saved” grated on me – it seemed like Christianese. This week I learned that was what Christ called them. Jesus told 3 major parables about lostness: The lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost son.
• Focus more on CPM and feel more passion for CPM
• It’s okay to learn new cultures and it’s okay to fail, but get it right at the end. It’s not okay to fail and quit.

Are you willing to share with us an encounter with God you had this week? Did God show up for you this week?

• I had some serious questions about how this could really relate in urban context and it seemed to have such a foreign missionary context. I think there were subconscious hang-ups I had. I felt God caused me to really see the clear way it needs to happen. When we went through the study of Luke 10, Luke 9 and Matthew 10. And Matthew 28, how Jesus commanded us to baptize people into community; it was more than a symbolic thing. The community aspect seemed like God was giving me understanding of an application.
• I have conscious hang-ups. As part of the development team, I could believe for what God is doing in all of you, but not in my personal life. Last night I went home and talked to my husband about it. I didn’t even write down “I will” statements because I knew I wouldn’t do them. My husband and I got to the point where we realized this is a call on our lives. As soon as our obedience got locked into God’s will, my husband went outside and started talking to some neighbors who have been annoyances, always partying, drinking beer, smoking. Anyway, my husband went to them and started talking with them. The guy said, “I notice you have some sort of Bible study. Do you go to church? Don’t judge me because I’m interested in this God thing. He just lost his job. He’s been fighting with his girlfriend. He asked, “Can I hang out with you?” This is a person of peace! He was telling me how many people he knows in that apartment complex. We didn’t even start praying, but God led us to find a person of peace.
• God spoke to me at this conference when I had time to talk to some of my peers about how this fits into the realm of recovery. We are so concerned about the people God puts in our care, so we were trying to find some practical ways of putting the DNA in and send them out. Jonathan said he would intentionally send his residents home with instructions to tell somebody about that. God spoke to me and said this is a real way of implanting this DNA.
• One of the most powerful moments I had with the Lord is this Scripture: “If you forgive the sins of any, their sins will be forgiven, but if you retain the sins of any, they will be retained.” If we are unwilling to go to a silo, it is unforgiveness. It can also be not planning correctly to do everything we can. I want by God’s grace to do everything I can. Where are we not touching yet and how will we get there is a question we can ask every day. We can get so focused on what’s right in front of us that we forget what’s further and further out.
• This morning in terms of working with our men in recovery. The Lord showed me that every man who comes into our recovery program is a person of peace, as they come looking for spiritual answers. The demon-possessed guy – basically we all act like that when we come in. That’s what we do with our men – send them back to their city.

David Watson: When you look at the story of the Transfiguration, the 3 wanted to just build tabernacles and stay with Jesus. The demoniac of the Gerasenes wanted to stay with Jesus. It’s not a place to camp, but a launching place to move forward. Those are moments for launching, not for camping. When you recognize that God has given you a launch pad, not a campsite, your life changes.

• Wednesday night we went home to Fresno to share and two of my very close brothers were so negative in their response and I came back Thursday thinking maybe I was just spinning myself. I went off by myself in my discouragement and a beautiful lady came up to me from Fresno and told me she was very interested in my house church. God was saying, “Don’t get discouraged.” One negative thing should not affect you that bad.
• The outer gate and the inner doorpost and then Philippians 2 about attitude. I was talking to a staff member who is not a part of this conference. And their question was, “What’s different?” They sensed the different attitude of those who are attending.

Break

Matthew 13:44-45 Parable
This relates to who we are as church planters:
The Kingdom of Heaven is like treadsure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again and then in his joy he went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant of fine pearls. When he found

This relates to the two kinds of Persons of peace we find in the world. The first one is just going through life with no expectation of finding a treasure. And one day he is going down the road, happens to see the treasure in the field and buries it and goes and buys the field. This is Jewish law – when you buy a field, you get everything in it. Part of finding the person of peace is our behavior, ministering to people in the name of Christ, intentionally putting out treasures for people to find. When they discover it is a treasure, they sell out to get it. If you look in the book of Acts and seeing where God moves, there is always a person of peace at the initial part of that move, like the Philippian jailer. He wasn’t looking for God, but the treasure glinted and he sold everything.

The second guy has devoted his life to finding the perfect pearl. He is looking for it everywhere. One day he finds it and he sells everything he has in order to get it. This is Cornelius, a good man, a philanthropist. He helped people, tried to love the Lord and do the best he could, but when he found what Peter had to give to him, he sold everything to get that pearl.

These are the pictures that we have to see to have open eyes. We want to people “accidentally” find the Kingdom of Heaven, but we also want to respond to those who are seeking the Kingdom of Heaven. Both kinds of people are out there.

The seminar this week has been about first steps. We spent a week now on the first step. In the next few minutes I want to back the camera out and let you see a bigger picture of where it is going. The reason we don’t give you the big picture because many people think they know the incremental steps. Each step requires as much training as this step has required. The process is extremely intensive in doing and learning. If you skip steps, the process doesn’t work. It’s like a mechanical clock and remove one gear or remove the hand, it doesn’t work. CPM Process is like that. We think we can pick and choose, but we’ve discovered that if you do that you handicap the process and may kill it. The CPM process is a leadership development process. It is not an evangelism process. It is a disciple-making process that leads to leadership. We treat every single person as if they’re going to be the next leader. They decide where they stop. But we must have every step of the path mapped out to help them develop. I’m going to show you the pyramid. It’s a pyramid because each level has fewer people.

Level 5 International Leaders
Level 4 Multi-Group Leader
Level 3 Small Group Leaders
Level 2 External Local Group Leaders
Level 1 Internal local group leaders
Level 0 there are no leaders: Every Believer Discipleship
Leadership is not a title or a role. It’s a function. I don’t have any positions to fill. I look at what’s there and I equip it because it’s there. You don’t get false leaders, people holding positions and keeping others from developing. We say we know that God provides leaders for His church, so let’s look at the people who are leading and help them lead. Internal leaders are going to be given the responsibility of doing the everyday discipleship. We talked about lost people facilitating the DBS. They’re an inside leader. They came out of level 0, they’ve been here 3-5 weeks. At some point you see people who start looking outside the group and showing concern. All of a sudden, even in the first few weeks of the group, you’ve got a person who is establishing leadership outside the group. It’s people who are starting work outside and you equip them to be better at it. They came out of level 1, they’ve been there. They are kept engaged in the church by helping level 1 leaders. Small group leaders have become believers. They understand group process. They become responsible for internal and external leaders. We might call these pastors in traditional church thinking. They have a pastoral role. The small group leaders take on that pastoral functioning. They are about the whole group, but they understand the need for the internal/external leadership role. They are the first management level. We may be a year or so into the process by the point this level emerges. The group may be 30-40 people by now. It’s continued to grow and develop. He’s recognized because he functioned as pastor. “You’re the one leading us.” Identifying people who are doing it and equipping them to do it better. That’s your modus operandi. We don’t have positions to fill, we look for people who are doing it, starting to do it, or showing a desire to do it, and we equip them to be better at it. Mentoring: Identifying capacity and equipping people to fulfill their capacity. That’s your role as an external leader. A mentor identifies capacity and helps them to fulfill it. You can’t do it for them. Level 4 leader is someone who has been leading a group and decides to go start a new group and passes the first group off to someone. Responsible for equipping level 3 leaders. You see this in megachurches. The pastor is equipping a few who work at different levels. We have people managing systems, working in the programs, etc. Multi-group type of leadership. Level 5 leader is a person who takes it to the nations. There are people whom God will equip and call out to do this. Out of level 4 leaders, you will most often find the level 5 leaders. Here is the biggest temptation: We’ve just started a new group and very quickly we see someone who will make a great level 4 or 5 leader, and we tell them not to do the first steps. We’ve just cut them off at the knees. You don’t learn leadership by head knowledge, but by doing it. You may accelerate the person, but don’t skip the steps. It’s not distinct steps. It’s a gradient. It’s much more complex. We want to understand it, so we talk about it in this way. Each one of these levels requires different kind of training.

Level 0 is the church itself, the church planting process and mentors doing the training
Level 1 is church, mentor and seminar trained
Level 2 saying what can we do to mentor to our community? Bring someone in who is an expert in that, have a seminar to give us a boost in an area where we don’t have confidence yet
Level 3 – requirements on pastoral leadership are immense, even in a small group; how do you deal with marriage difficulties, loss of a child, illness; unemployment. Get the leader into some sort of equipping or training program that systematically gives them opportunities to learn these things. You need to get the person trained so they know when to pass off to someone more trained in a specific area.
Level 4 – responsible for massive systems from city to city; might be good to go to seminary, but not pull them out of the system; learn while doing. Gain knowledge while doing so you can apply the knowledge. Many seminaries are beginning to have these kinds of programs – one week per quarter do a whole course, for example. There are processes beginning to develop. Many Bible schools are going online so you don’t have to quit what you’re doing in order to go to school what you’ve learned. I (David Watson) pastored all the way through seminary and I knew I was learning more than the ones who didn’t have churches. We didn’t make as good of grades as the other guys, but we applied it better. You have to deal with real life which might interfere with academic learning.
Level 5 – once you get to this level, it is helpful to have a solid seminary degree behind you and think in different ways and be equipped.

Questions:

Is it possible for the level 5 person to stay there always?

If you’re level 5, you have expertise in all the other levels. I am a level 5 leader, so I am always dealing with level 0 and level 1, but most of my time is focused on level 3 and 4 leaders, training and equipping them. Occasionally for level 2, but not very often.

We are talking about people coming up through our groups, right?

It’s also for all of us. We need to be thinking if we need to be moving and training. People self-select out of this process, by the way. People will come into your groups, love the Lord, and never become an internal leader. Other people will come into it and they’re just helping everybody. They are happy working with Christians and they stay level 1. Then there are people who say, “What about all those lost people out there?” they want to bridge the gap between Christians and lost. Then there are those who want to manage and grow the system and start making it work stronger. Their time and capacity is filled up and they may not go up to level 4. But there are those who say, “Wouldn’t it be great to have 10 groups like this?” and then they move up to level 4. They’re working with people raising them up. Then there is the person who goes up to level 5 who sees an area where there is a group who has nothing and so he goes to replicate the system in a new place and a new time. Many people build the system, enjoy the system. It takes a lot to walk away from a well-developed system and start all over again from scratch.

You can bring experts or professionals to give a workshop or seminar to some leaders. If there are addiction issues within the group for some guys there, you might refer them to professionals to help them deal with that. When we are doing the three columns, is that a tool that we can also use to help people with addictions, people who are having problems in marriage? Is that something where the leader decides to refer them to a professional or does he help them find Scriptures to help them deal?

It’s not a this or a that situation. I can point them to Scripture, but if it isn’t doing it, we keep doing DBS, but add additional things to it.

Would you start first by doing a DBS on that issue and then move to professional help?

Yes, but don’t wait too long. If you’re having a heart attack, you can’t do a Bible study about it, take them to the hospital.

Could you tell me real quickly; when you reach that top level and then go to another place, what level do you start at?

You may have to start all over again. I’ve started all over again several times.

Once you get to level 4 and you have the leaders, how do you keep it from becoming stagnant in that church? Do you go off and start other things or keep working with those people?

If they’re obedient, you don’t see the stagnation. Most of you think in terms of establishing this group, now we’re going to grab lost people and bring them into the group. That’s not how you grow the church. You take the gospel into a community silo, you plant the Gospel in it and let it redeem that culture. Three things can happen: 1) we like the believers that brought us this so we want to join them, they come in and the church grows in numbers, whether it’s a house church or a traditional fellowship – don’t do this when they’re lost people. 2) We like who you are, what you do, the way you lead. We want to be like you, but not a part of you. They establish their own church that grows and develops and there’s an affinity between the two. That’s denomination. The house church movement is a denomination. They function like a denomination. Even though there’s no authority, there’s influence; the highest level of leadership is leadership by influence. There are many house church movements, following different leaders. 3) Our culture is so different from yours, our style of leadership needs to be different, how we worship will be different. We love the same Lord, the same Spirit, the same baptism, but we have to put it in a different form. Because we’re so different in our form, we will go a different way to reach more people like us.

It doesn’t require uniformity, it requires one Spirit, one Christ, one Lord and Savior of all, one baptism, obedience to the Word. Keep this in mind when you think about systems. The Church is not ours. It belongs to Christ. He is a creator of infinite options. Whether you go all the way down to the microbiological cellular level or all the way out to astrophysics, the infinity is seen in both directions. For us to say, “This is The Way God does it.” Is a problem. There is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, but the form around those is infinite.

You’ve heard Critical Elements referred to. These are core values, but these are not prescriptive, they’re descriptive. You can’t go out and force these things to happen. Some of them you can, but what we’re doing is looking at CPM that are highly successful and said, “What is common between these?” which may give us some prescriptive elements, but we can’t, for example, prescribe persecution. When you’re obedient to the word these things start happening. Let’s look at the 21 elements. This is an overview. You are not going to see them all in a brand new DBS. As we go through these and you think they are part of a DBS, write them down. When it goes to church, there’s going to be some more. When it goes to replication of churches, there will be more.

To understand CPM principles as an integrated process
To understand what it takes to establish/cause reproducing groups
To summarize CPM

8 of these are Kingdom of God elements

PRAYER is the starting point for all ministry. Know the mind of God and join Him in His work. God is not manipulable. Animism is about saying an incantation to get what you want from God. Prayer is not this. Most prayers I hear are animistic prayer. They are trying to manipulate God instead of lining themselves up with the will of God. Sometimes He shows up and that’s a miracle. The rest of the time he answers through his people.
SCRIPTURE: Foundational and the source of all teaching and preaching. Scripture – > Principle -> Practice. It’s about being obedient. If you’re not doing it, you’re wasting everything. Begin in small steps. I’ve learned something from God today, what am I going to do about it. If you teach young Christians to line their lives up with the Word of God. If you do that at the beginning, they’re walking straight. A mature Christian doesn’t fall off the wagon or lose his/her temper all the time.
DISCIPLES: Make Disciples, not converts. Converts focus on religion; disciples focus on Jesus and obedience to His teachings. Doctrine of a church or a denomination is usually a subset of the Bible and a superset. Denominations all take away from the Bible and they add to the Bible. Do we want to predispose people to ignore parts of the Bible? No. Our goal is to make obedient disciples of Jesus Christ. We are going to focus on making disciples.
OBEDIENCE: Teach obedience to the Word, not doctrine. Sometimes our doctrines are outside the scope. If I plant a church and teach them something that is not in the Bible so the DNA is not contaminated. We avoid teaching for this reason. What does Scripture tell us to do?
COMMUNITIES OF BELIEVERS (CHURCH): Form new believers into minimum Biblical practice groups that will become Communities of Believers (churches) who transform families and communities. If people, families and community are not changing, yellow flag. How do I get it to be obedient?
AUTHORITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT: Authority of Scripture and the Holy Spirit are all that is needed to start. You need 1) people, 2) Word, 3) Holy Spirit. Do you really need anything else? This is the minimum starting point for church. We start with the minimum. If we add structure and form (i.e., a building, staff, etc.) we have made it difficult/impossible to replicate. Church planting is an act of God through His Spirit and His people who are obedient to the Word and the Spirit. We don’t plant churches, we put the pieces in place for God to plant churches.
PERSECUTION: Persecution is part of being a Christian. When you obey Christ there is going to be some level of persecution – annoyance to death. In pioneer work we always expect it, but in traditional western work we tend to forget it. It may be mild or may be severe.
SPIRITUAL WARFARE: In areas where the Gospel has never been preached, or in areas where traditional religions have reigned for a significant amount of spiritual warfare.

9 TACTICAL CRITICAL ELEMENTS
GROUPS: Communities learn more quickly, remember more things nad better, replicate more quickly, and often when correctly led, protect against heresy, and protect against bad leadership.
PLAN/BE INTENTIONAL: Plan your work and work your plan, be intentional in access ministry, prayer, etc.
ACCESS MINISTRIES: Access ministries open the door for church planting and lead to community transformation. If you are not ministering to the people around you and the community, you are not a church.
MAN OF PEACE
EVANGELIZE HOUSEHOLDS/FAMILIES: Focus on households/families, not individuals.
APPROPRIATE EVANGELISM: Intentional calling to a family to study the Word of God in order to move from not knowing God to falling in love with Him through Jesus.
REPRODUCING: Reproducing disciples, leaders, groups and churches becomes a part of the group DNA.
REACHING OUT (MISSIONS); Reaching out to all segments of society. Where are we not? Go there.
REDEEM THE LOCAL CULTURE (embrace the local culture): Do not import external culture. Allow the Gospel to redeem the local culture by embracing all you can Biblically.

4 LEADERSHIP CRITICAL ELEMENTS

INSIDE LEADERS: Keep all things reproducible by inside leaders and directed/led by inside
OUTSIDE LEADERS: Model, equip, watch and leave; leaving is usually earlier than people want. Jesus didn’t leave when his disciples wanted him to leave, but at the right time. Leaders do not develop in the presence of other leaders. True leadership develops in a leadership vacuum. So we have to intentionally form leadership vacuum. We can mentor a person up to a point, but if we stay too long, we stifle them or they become rebellious. Neither is a good thing. Servants do this regularly, controlling “power” people don’t do this.
SELF-SUPPORTING: Self-supporting local leaders start and sustain all work – including groups, fellowship, and churches. The ministries I have worked with – 100,000+ churches, average size 53 people. If I had to pay them $100 a month each I would need $10 million a month! If you get into paying into these systems, then the system grows to your ability to pay. If you keep your leadership in that system, no internal leadership happens. You have to find the places to leave.
EDUCATION/TEAHING – Training/Coaching – Equipping/Mentoring: Discipleship and leadership education and training are “on the job” and are continuous and primarily through mentoring. Education increases knowledge through teaching; training increases skill sets through coaching; equipping increases capacity through mentoring relationships.

Prayer, Scripture, authority of the Holy Spirit, Spiritual Conflict; Plan/Be Intentional; Redeem Local Culture; Outside leaders are there from the beginning. Outside leaders are the only element that ends.