As a family, we don’t always get to spend as much time together as we would like. With kid activities, work, and other things infringing, we frequently are on the run.
At the same time, when we do have some downtime and can be together, we are often pretty tired, so we default to the easiest thing to do. Often, that can be watching TV or doing whatever sort of needs to be done to get ready for tomorrow.
It became clear to me that there are several things that we were missing in how we were teaching our kids. Several things that I think are important that we never really spend any time talking about. They won’t get these lessons in school, at university, or anywhere else except for experience in life, so it is important to figure out how to set aside time to discuss them.
There isn’t necessarily a curriculum of things that I was wanting to go through, but there are certainly a set of topics to talk about. We’re only two topics in so far, but the kids seem to be engaged in what we’ve been discussing.
Below, I’ll list some of the topics that are yet to come, and continue to update it as we go forward, subsequently entering posts for the individual topics as we do them.
Today, as I mentioned in my previous post, I started reading through the Bible with my friend who has been a believer for only about 6 months. We’ve read the Bible a lot over the last several years, although most of what we have done previously has been reading through the Gospels as well as the new believer lessons that our team uses with people who have said that they want to believe and follow Jesus. I felt like it was important for him to understand the bigger picture, the larger story that God has been telling from the beginning so he could have a solid Biblical picture of what God has been doing, leading to Jesus, and ultimately now to us.
We read Genesis 1 today, talking about how God created the earth. Here were a few notable parts of the discussion:
God seemed to have systematically moved through the process of creation, developing each component of the creation of the earth and the heavens in a step-by-step way.
God created man and woman in his own image. We are loved by God and considered to have great importance to him as carriers of his image and his likeness.
We were given two commandments directly from the beginning: To be fruitful and multiply and to have dominion – oversight – over the birds, the animals, and the fish of the seas. We have been given a great responsibility for all of these.
As I noted in my last post, the intent is to continue to develop the list of these countries so that we can be praying through them, having some basic information to work from and a basis for which we can pray in addition to the people that we know and have met from these countries here where we are working. It is probably also important to understand that I am primarily including those countries whose people we meet here in Italy on a regular basis. I haven’t necessarily included all of the countries, for example, from East Africa, but if they are a regular part of the population that we connect with, I will include them in these lists.
I’ve been working on the Phase 2 Training course, specifically trying to think about how to introduce the complexity of all of the different nationalities, tribes, languages, and backgrounds that we work with here in Catania. My initial plan was to try to work through it by region – for example, West Africa, East Africa, North Africa, etc. The peoples in each of those areas are very different, and see themselves as different, despite living on the same continent.
I think I’ve arrived at the idea of introducing these different nations and people groups through our times of prayer. Our weekly prayer calendar already reflects prayer for specific nations and their top people groups by population, so as people come in to train and work with us, I think they can learn about these different nations and peoples in preparation for our times of prayer and then experientially as they meet them during the day.
I’ve created a template per country that uses various resources for Geography, Culture, and Spiritual background information, and just started to fill it in. It certainly doesn’t feel complete, but for the breadth of people that we are working with, the likelihood that we will ever learn any of these in-depth, especially when we are meeting them in a third culture in Italy, seems low to me. Here is what I created for West Africa to date with more to come in other regions of the world.
Prayer Walk
On Friday, we have been going for a prayer walk, praying specifically for Muslims in our area given that their Friday (Jumu’ah) is similar to our Sunday in that they go to the mosque for congregational prayers and a teaching by the imam.
We know the imams in each of the mosques and have enjoyed spending time with them and sharing with them. During this prayer walk, we met an assistant imam at one of the mosques. We had previously given him some food as part of Covid relief, so as we were outside of the mosque praying today, he saw us and called and greeted us. We spent a few minutes talking and he invited us to come visit the mosque next week, so we’re hoping to take some time together one afternoon next week to visit their prayer time and then sit and visit together, hopefully having an opportunity to share our hope in Christ with them as well.
Abiding in Christ
We have been working to disciple a man that was baptized in this last year. As part of our discussion in the afternoon, we read John 15:1-8 and talked about what it means to “remain” or “abide” in Christ, as some of the translations say. As part of that process of abiding, we discussed three ways that we believe that we can do that:
Reading the Word of God
Obeying what Jesus tells us to do
Praying and hearing from God
There are probably other ways as well, but these were the ones that we identified and discussed. The result of this conversation is that we’ve decided to start meeting for a short time each day, even online as needed, to read God’s Word and pray together. This particular man has no background with the Bible, so I’m looking forward to see him grow as he learns what the Bible says.
I’m generally pretty fascinated by advances in technology. I love seeing how sciences and technology advance to do things and create a world of new opportunities and help people and economies in new ways.
I do also think that there is reason to be concerned. As you think about advances in robotics and Artificial Intelligence, it isn’t a long leap to begin to think about how the world of the movie Terminator could be too far away. Even Elon Musk has spoken strongly of these things in the past.
But sometimes it can just be a little fun as the robotics companies show off some of their most recent advances in their abilities of the robots. Boston Dynamics recently released a video of their robots dancing to the song Do You Love Me. Enjoy!
Last night around 8:30, we had an earthquake here in Sicily. It was down to the south of us near the coast by Ragusa, but some of our friends here in Catania felt the quake all of the way here in Catania. Some friends from our church sent this website to us from the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology so we can track the quakes if and when they happen: http://terremoti.ingv.it/
Even though it is frustrating, this was also a funny thing that happened as I have been developing the Come Follow Me sites. Yesterday, I developed an advertisement for Facebook based on Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 5:43-48 to love your enemies. Facebook rejected the ads on the grounds of their dating policy. HA!
When I saw the rejection initially, I laughed because I thought that it was just the algorithm messing up. But then I appealed the ruling, presumably to have a human look at the ad, and it was still rejected! Well, on to the next one, I guess…
Just for posterity, here are the videos and the landing page for those ads:
I appreciated the stories and background from these pastors talking about how their churches started down the path of working toward a NoPlaceLeft vision. Here is a quick Table of Contents for the video:
Sugar Creek Baptist Church, Don Waybright – 00:25
Ross Ramsey – 7:44
Brian King – 16:35
JT Timblin – 23:30
What’s a barrier you faced in implementing NoPlaceLeft disciple-making / church planting? – 31:15
What would you encourage someone to do who wants to implement what they have learned with regard to NPL or help their church catch the vision? 36:45
Can you share a story from the harvest, something you have seen God do? 39:45
If you had to do it again, what would you do differently? 45:20
As pastors in established churches, what encouragement or challenge would you give to someone else in your shoes? 48:45
Common objection: Can we trust individuals who you are releasing to not become heretical? 52:50
One of my fellow workers recently sent me this podcast. I encourage you to give it a listen, especially if your aim, like ours, is to catalyze discipleship and church planting movements. For reference, if you would like to follow the show, check it out here.
I wanted to work through what I heard as some of the most important elements of finding and working with these people who will start movements. Here are the things that I took away along with some thoughts that I will include:
There is very little written on how to recognize a movement leader and how to help train and sustain them over the longer-term.
In the beginning, Bruce asked himself if he should follow the advice that he was given and go find and hire the best church planters that he could. After thinking about this for some time, he decided that this was not the right way to go.
Instead, over time, God gave him 6 people to invest in deeply. He prayed that God would bring them to him, and God did exactly that.
What was the most important thing to recognize within these people?
The answer is Vision – Do they have a vision to grow their ministry? Or do they have a vision to reach the nations? It isn’t easy to find this person that has a vision for reaching the nations and not just growing their own work.
At the same time, we see humility in movement leaders. It isn’t about growing their work. It is about seeing the Kingdom grow.
Bruce’s advice, then, is to pray that God will bring these people to you.
Next, we should, of course, say that we believe the Word of God is inspired from a doctrinal perspective, but do we also believe that the methods and practices that we see in the scriptures are also inspired? Or do we need to turn to other books and studies to determine our methods? Some thoughts to help round out this point:
Jesus was a master disciple-maker. Disciple-makers should make disciples like Jesus did and in the way that Jesus taught.
Jesus cast out demons – we should cast out demons. Jesus found people of peace – we should find people of peace.
Jesus discipled the few and shunned the crowds – we frequently like the crowds and shun the few. We need to rethink this!
Jesus said Come and see, follow me, be with me, and then go. That should also be our model.
So, the question to ask is: What did Jesus do? Let’s do that!
Disciple-making movement leaders ask themselves about their hope for those that they are investing in. As movement leaders, the hope should be that there are more workers. We desire to see that their ministry will exceed mine. This is what Jesus did and the example that Jesus gave.
Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
John 14:12-14
So, we have to find the right people. Jesus was the master of finding the core disciples and pouring his life into them. He filtered through the crowds, calling out the disciples using parables and difficult teachings, but the right ones stay.
Jesus fed the crowds with the loaves of bread and fish, but then called people to eat his flesh and drink his blood. As the crowds left, rejecting his teaching, Jesus looked at the disciples and asked them if they were going to leave too.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
John 6:68-69
This is an important way to find someone who may become a leader of a movement because they are dedicated to the teachings of Jesus. He is the Holy One of God in whom we can put our faith.
