Blessings!

David Watson

Blessings!

David Watson
Irving, Texas

Interesting discussions and I pray that God will bless your work in SA. The core values are so important in my opinion and God has really emphasized with me in 09 that we the couch or planter need to know your role, do it well and consistently. We need to do the basics well and trust in God for the rest. We are seeing some beginnings of exponecial growth here in San Jose, CA after 3 lean years and a lot has to do with doing the essencials well. Keep us in your prayers and to my SA brothers, "hou aan en julle sal verbaas wees wat Heilige Gees vermeerdering kan bring in jul bediening".
Blessings,
Hermie Smit

Blessings!

David Watson

Blessings!

David

New Reproductive Church DNA Essentials (as I am understanding them)

–Groups are begun with non-Christians who are the natural affinity/family group of a person of peace.

–Groups that have begun a guided discovery bible study are not to add new attendees, but rather encourage its members to begin other newer groups from the beginning, while continuing in their own group.

–Discipling and conversion which results from it is borne out of and happens in relationships. Relationships are key.

–Groups that do a guided bible discovery are to lead themselves by relying on the Bible (and each individual contextual portion) as sufficient, rather than on an outside, professional or specially trained teacher.

–Groups establish a dynamic or DNA that is pretty fixed by 3 meetings, so DNA has to be present and correct from the start.

–Church planters should never become an authority (directly or indirectly) of a GBD group. A facilitator should only ask questions and point back to the text. He should not teach, solve problems, give his opinion, fill in dead air by talking, explain or correct theology, baptize, nor should he lead or host the meeting himself.

–Group meetings should have a structure that includes these essential elements:
Thanksgiving,
Telling of needs,
Sharing (of obedience to or personal discovery from the previous passage)
Learning of scripture to the point of internalizing,
Processing the scripture by responding to key questions,
Discovering truths about God and/or how to obey the scripture
Planning together

Well that’s about where I am at. Looking forward to your next post, and thinking through where I will begin. (I’ve begun dozens of groups, but have established wrong DNA in all of them so far, so this is essential for me to get right)

How Scripture enters the group depends on the local situation. In some situations, only oral Scripture or Chronological Bible Story Telling will work. In other situations it must be oral contextual Scripture. Regardless of how we start, as the group matures we change to written word or recorded written word. Whether Scripture is sold or given away depends, again, on the situation.

In our context church planters are always working in pairs – one experienced and the other learning. Their job is to coach the local leader to start his/her own church. Our church planters never start churches in order to pastor those churches.

Frequency varies, but is usually not less than once in two weeks. We have many groups that meet twice per week.

Success among social classes is a hard one to answer. Our work is mostly in the 10-40 Window, so most are very poor. That being said, we have heads of state and cabinet level Believers involved in the process. Whether is works or not is more about the message-bearer than the audience.

Blessings!

David Watson
from Johannesburg, South Africa

“Don’t build new groups by winning individuals to Christ and congregating them…establish the new church around a minimum social unit or existing group.”
–This is counter-intuitive but makes all the sense in the world. All of the evangelism training I ever got in my church or at seminary was personal evangelism or church event evangelism (VBS, Revival, Door-to-door). I would say that 99% of American Christians don’t even know what this looks like.

Questions: (Core Values Related)

How are church planters generally providing God’s Scripture to the lost social groups so that they can begin these Bible discoveries? Giving Bibles? (full or partial?), providing audio recordings? Selling these items? Loaning them?

Are church planters generally working in pairs when when introducing affinity groups to inductive Bible discovery? After teaching the process and passing that on to a non-Christian natural group leader, how long to they continue participating?

Frequency of meeting seems like and initial DNA kind of thing, as well. Is there a frequency that is more common or successful than others (daily, weekly, 2 times a week, etc)

Are you seeing significant differences church planting success in social classes (wealthy, workers, impoverished)? How about literacy levels? ( I imagine that affinity groups can sometimes cross these economic barriers e.g. a store/factory owner and his family and their employees, a land owner and his farm hands)

Just thinking out loud.