Fruitful methodologies
GLOBAL PARTNERS
by James G. Smith
In the Baptist Bible Fellowship International, we specialize in cross-cultural church planting. We start with evangelism, then on to discipleship, which takes us to leadership development, at which point the church planting actually takes place. When it starts to work, church reproduction becomes the new goal and we start over. To do all that in a foreign language and culture means that before anything happens there needs to be fundraising, language proficiency, and cultural adaptation!
We wanted to know how our global partners in all parts of the world evaluate their own methodologies. We have some interesting conversations on this issue that we hope will encourage you to pray more effectively.
We are not looking for a scoreboard, comparing numbers or results, but rather a discussion about methods. In the business world, they talk about “Best Practices.” In Missiology, it has been called “Fruitful Practices.”
Let us make clear that we are not looking for short cuts. The work of the ministry in all of its components is too important to skip any of the essential steps. We are very grateful to the missionaries who took the time and made the effort to answer our questions and help us with the information on the next few pages.
We begin by emphasizing that the basis of our cross-cultural church planting efforts is our dependence on the Holy Scriptures as the foundation of our belief system and our dependence on the Holy Spirit of God as our source of strength and divine guidance.
When we talk about fruit-bearing, we have entered into a very biblical theme. The individual Christian is instructed in scripture to bear fruit. I think we would all agree that fruit-bearing has two separate connotations in scripture. We exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. Fruits are results. The Christian, filled with the Spirit of God, will bear the fruit. That is, he will exhibit the results of the Holy Spirit in his life. Those results are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.
Paul told the Philippians, in the context of his discussion of missionary offerings, that he wasn’t looking for a gift. He was sure that their gifts were going to accrue eternal dividends and that the people who came to know the Lord as a result of his ministry were to be counted as fruit or profit to the account of those who gave and prayed. So that would be the fruit to which we refer in our discussion of abundant fruit-bearing.
After his initial meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar, Jesus admonished His followers to lift up their eyes to see the fields ready for harvest. Probably what they saw as they looked out across the agricultural fields, toward the city, was a large group of people who were coming to Jesus because of the witness of the “woman at the well.”
Jesus said in John 4:35-38:
“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.”
There is a harvest of fruit that must be gathered. There are many people on their way to faith in the Savior all across the world because of the witness of the missionaries of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International. Every day, somewhere out there in the harvest, people are trusting in Christ while others are following in obedience and discipleship, and some are being trained for ministry. Through it all churches are being established.
We have some very thoughtful and gracious missionaries among us. We are happy to share this issue with you.
To read the entire September 2014 Global Partners click here.