My Friend Just Asked, ‘What About God?’ – Now What?
was on March 16 | 12:00 pm EST
Featuring David Watson, author of Contagious Disciple Making, and DMM trainer with CityTeam.
We discussed …
- A 24/7 prayer room
- Getting from “Hi” to DBS
- Getting from DBS do DMM
- Today’s Webinar
- What might 24/7 prayer (and a 24/7 prayer room) do for your outreach?
- How do we go from “Hi” to a Discovery Bible Study (DBS)?
- How might God use a DBS to lead your friend to Christ?
- David – 30 years, church plants in 168 countries
- Why is Disciple Making Movements (DMM’s) important to future and growth of the local church?
- Resistant communities were resistant to Christianity as religion but not towards the Gospel
- How do we present the Gospel without transmitting religious culture with it and have them take it into their culture?
- Experimented for awhile and the Discovery Bible study (DBS) came out of that process
- Listen to God without listening to me as a religious person
- What is a Discovery Bible Study (DBS) and what does a typical one look like?
- A DBS is used in a Discovery group
- DBS – Simple 3 column inductive Bible Study
- 3 parts
- Write down the scripture
- Engages different part of brain for learning
- Tell someone else about this scripture in their own words
- Demonstrates understanding and engages other part of brain
- If this is from God, what are you going to do about it? How will you obey?
- Gets people engaged in listening to God from his Word
- DBS Group – Uses this study as a platform to grow a group process that leads to church
- Group is responsible for establishing DNA of new church
- What are you thankful for?
- Leads to worship and prayer later as they become believers
- What challenges/struggles do you have in your life?
- Leads to intercession and ministry in community itself
- Are there other people in the community that are going through the same thing and how can we help them?
- Leads to prayer and ministry outside the body of Christ
- What does this teach us about God?
- What does this teach us about man?
- If this is from God, what are we as a group going to do about it?
- Who are you going to tell it to?
- Leads to evangelism in community
- Last week, how did it go with your sharing?
- Leads to accountability in the process.
- How long do they last?
- 45 mins but for every person you add, it adds time.
- 5 people – can be hour and half vs 20 several hours
- Keep group in 5-8 people until believers
- Then combine those that become believers into larger group meeting which later becomes a “church”
- Example
- First was worst as learning
- Step 1 Enter community to become acceptable outsider
- Access of some kind (i.e. business or ministry meeting needs/ disaster)
- Step 2 Find people God prepared to go to and hear the Gospel from a person of a different source
- Person of Peace
- To find them, I have to be a conspicuous spiritual person
- Person of prayer
- Cares
- Intimate with God
- Spiritual
- They must be looking for spiritual answers
- Hard to find them. You need to be a beacon of light and draw them to you by living and working in community very conspicuously spiritual
- Everywhere we have lived, our home as become known as a house of prayer or healing. People would show up and asking for prayer/healing.
- Step 3 Begin having spiritual conversations
- Mini DBS – Informal, raising spiritual questions, asking them to discuss with family/friends
- “I was reading this morning that God knows everything. What do you think about that?
- “Why don’t you go back to your community and see what they think about it.”
- Not a person of peace unless they can go back to community and able to discuss spiritual matters
- In fact, Satan may send them to distract you from finding the person of peace, if they are not willing to share
- You can still fellowship with them but don’t spiritually invest
- People that bring back questions and comments from family and friends and then help them understand and look for themselves and ask what they think.
- Learning takes place in dialogue not monologue
- Mini DBS – Informal, raising spiritual questions, asking them to discuss with family/friends
- Step 4 Move toward formalizing it by negotiating with them
- “We’ve been having a lot of spiritual conversations and coming from the Holy Book I read. Can we sit down and read together and walk through process together with family and friends? You can see it directly instead of my opinion.”
- This leads to DBS group
- Step 5 Immediately identify spiritual leader in group (this may or may not be the person of peace)
- Coach them to lead the group (not me)
- If I lead a group, Im the expert and nobody will talk or come up with ideas
- If I coach a person from their own group that’s “lost” to just ask the questions to the group, their discussion is much more animated.
- Questions may come back to me through person I’m coaching
- Realizes doesn’t take an expert, it just takes them, Word of God and studying to come to a place of giving their life to Christ
- Give them written/printed verses and questions each week (or oral recording)
- House of Prayer – How does your house begin to look like that among a people group?
- Prayer Walking – Walk around own community and pray. People will engage you and ask questions.
- “I’m a person of prayer and I would love to pray for you and any problems you may have and giving thanks to God for things that are happening in your life.”
- Never had the lost turn down prayer. Pastors and Christians have…but not the lost.
- Even in hindu, muslim, Buddhist, animist – they want someone spiritual to be talking about
- Most common request is health and second is financial (poverty/provision for food/school)
- Engage them in prayer in community
- Keep prayers conversational
- “Who are you talking to?”
- “I’m talking to God. He calls me His friend so I talk to Him like a friend.”
- Word gets out that you’re a person of prayer and people come to your house
- Prayer alter in foyer. First thing people see.
- Globe, Bible, 3 element light (trinity), Cross and prayer list (book we open that people can sign into it)
- God begins to answer prayers in peoples lives. When there’s something done outside of what I could do, they start to pay attention and want to know more about this God because we haven’t been seeing this from our god.
- People start talking about prayer and a community around those spiritual issues begins to form and they want to know more.
- 24/7 Prayer Room – Paul Rogers, Elder from Church in Indiana. Prayer team has created 24/7 prayer room. Watch this video: https://vimeo.com/159434859
- Prayer Walking – Walk around own community and pray. People will engage you and ask questions.
- Going from “Hi” or prayer to a DBS
- Movement starter – My role isn’t to win a soul to Christ or to start a church. I start a movement, which is churches starting churches
- Think about the multiplication from the beginning.
- Don’t see an individual in need of God. See a doorway to a community that is in need of God.
- It’s a group process…not typically done as an individual.
- I coach the leader and avoid stepping into the group. If I do, it usually will not replicate.
- Relationship – still engage and fellowship in community with them but not in group
- Those groups begin to multiply and can even start more groups before they are believers. Very common
- Alot of cultures you work with have a teacher/guru mentality, one central spiritual authority that tells you what to think, believe and do.
- Move to John 6:43-45 Jesus says the Father is going to be your teacher. Everyone who listens and learns from God will come to Christ.
- How can I get people to listen to God and not from me or my church? We will see at some point, these groups will multiply.
- Only about 20% of groups you start will continue. That means you aren’t wasting your time.
- Those that do go through completion of receiving Christ, living as a Christian, character issues, learning how to be a church, learning how to be leaders and equipping them through the same DBS process. Everything points back to His Word.
- Question: Process sounds fuzzy. Groups grow 5-8. What does it look like when it splits?
- Never hiving or splitting. That will destroy them.
- Start new groups with new people. Everyone in group has relationships. Instead of bringing them in and catching them up, let’s start another group with them. They start the same process from beginning. Now coaching 2 facilitators, etc.
- Focus on groups that continue, not ones that quit.
- This can take up to a half year where they love or hate God but still believe in Jesus. But 25-30 come to Christ. Establish relationship with God not me.
- Believers start having group meetings which develop into churches.
- Describe how DBS started in an example
- Largest is still going. Started in 1994 and it’s up to over 200,000 churches with avg church size of 60. No limitations because in country densely populated.
- Over 36,000 churches in last 10 years in Muslim environment in Africa.
- Jeff Sandall in North Carolina is over 1,000 groups in US
- Some start in US and jump to other countries and grow more quickly
- Potential is always astounding. Not unusual at year 3 to see 500-600 new churches (not groups) (especially in Africa)
- Size varies on community.
- Muslim cap around 30
- Nonmuslim caps around 65
- Leadership issues – Take a lot of training for larger size
- Government Restrictions on meeting size
- China – only allows families or groups of 8 to meet
- Insider can take a spiritual conversation much deeper than an outsider
- Ideas move or fail very quickly so you aren’t wasting time
- Lots of time meeting, praying, coaching, mentoring church leaders.
- Starts slowly. Stay with it 3-4 years.
- Spend 2-4 years with leadership and church but during that time they may start 20-25 more churches. I focus on growing leaders and they take over evangelism side.
- Encourage them and challenging them to expand.
- If church doesn’t reproduce by 2 years, they wont. Don’t give them my time.
- Focus on leaders that are doing something, facing extreme problems but still moving.
- Harder cross cultural issue isn’t race but religion
- Questions
- What difference does the context make when you see these work? For example, working on approach like this in the West versus doing in place never heard the Gospel? Not used to prayer answered in miraculous way.
- Easiest place to do this is no contact or adversity against Christianity at all. No preconceived ideas. Don’t even use “Christian” or “church”.
- Muslims taught that we are corrupt. Start with moral sections. “Does this sound corrupt to you?” Then broaden reading so they realize it is historical dialogue.
- Hardest is Western and highly Christianized area like South Korea.
- Expectations of what a church is becomes a filter for everything they hear. When you help them deconstruct this, they will start to listen to the Word again.
- Maybe left church in anger
- Did business with a Christian and cheated me. Christians sleep around.
- I want to learn to be a friend of God. (John 15 No longer slave but friend)
- Most cultures friend means something
- Ask “What do you think it means to be a friend of God?”
- Worst thing you can do is mix people that don’t know God with people that think they know God as Christians. Those groups rarely succeed.
- How do you adapt the group to the US context if you have to when in Western society? What questions are helpful? Does it look exactly the same?
- We don’t change anything. Same everywhere we go.
- As the groups begin to start 2nd & 3rd generation groups, do you find people are members of more than one group? How does that work?
- Don’t encourage them to be member of two groups. Be member of primary group and then coaching the facilitator in other group. (1 hr/wk)
- If a person is a FT missionary, they have plenty of time. If person has FT job. What’s typical number of hours per week? What can a wife/mother can do?
- Any gender can engage in this with their circle of influence
- Spent most of my life as FT worker and missionary
- 8-10 hours/week to ministry, you can start groups that replicate. Maybe a little slower because coaching time. This alone can be 25-30 hrs/week.
- What scriptures can a person can/should include? After you get through discovering God set, and discovering obedience set, what’s next? Where do you start?
- moredisciples.com – Scripture sets will be posted
- Primary beginning is understanding His 8 primary characteristics and we choose verses that teach that
- Righteous, all powerful, everywhere, knows everything, source of grace, hates sin, keeps promises, provides for our salvation
- Then present God incarnate.
- Many quickly become believers if they make it to this point.
- Then once they believe, they go back go back to first set as believers.
- One Another passages – 77
- What are the functions of the church? Do through primary leader of group to coach their church
- Discovery leadership
- Discovery church planting to places you don’t know anyone
- What do you call them? DBS groups?
- I don’t call them anything in the group. Not a group or church but the people will call it a Bible Reading Group. I avoid naming things because that is cultural.
- Name may be negative to their culture or portray something not true
- If it gets named, it gets named by the local people
- In US, people often changing jobs and moving to new community. If someone moves, do you coach them to start new group.
- Always coach anyone that moves if we can maintain the relationship and get them to start one where they live.
- Resources – Need more information
- moredisciples.com Blog
- “Contagious Disciple Making” by David Watson
- What will you do to obey?
- Not just knowing but obeying
- Relationship of obedience
- We start all workers in great commandments and great commission
- Love God
- Love people
- Going
- Making disciples
- Establish Churches
- Teaching them to obey everything God has commanded
- If you don’t Go, nothing happens.
- If you go but don’t make disciples, nothing happens
- If you go and make disciples but don’t establish churches, lasts less than a gen
- If you go and make disciples, baptize but don’t teach obedience, then it’s a cultural church that doesn’t reach out to community in loving God and people
- All 4 are reproducing model as one depends on the others.
- What difference does the context make when you see these work? For example, working on approach like this in the West versus doing in place never heard the Gospel? Not used to prayer answered in miraculous way.
- Coach them to lead the group (not me)
- What are you thankful for?
- Group is responsible for establishing DNA of new church
- Write down the scripture
- 3 parts
- Resistant communities were resistant to Christianity as religion but not towards the Gospel
