Mega to Mini-Church-Part 2 of 2 (Victor Choudhrie)

Continuing with Victor Choudhrie's, "Mega Church To Mini Church: 25 Steps to Transit from Being Barren to a Millionaire of Souls" are steps eleven to twenty-five.

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11.Drive the change- Start with your family. Your real marriage is to the Lord. The husband-wife-children relationship is just an earthly model to see how you make it work. If you can’t make it work, you may not be invited to the wedding banquet of the Lamb. Sons and daughters - honor your mother and father, if you want to live long. The Hebrew word kabad and the Greek word time’for ‘honor’ means ‘making rich’ or even ‘money paid’. Providing for your aging parents’ ranks higher than paying Korban to your church. Tithing is neither a part of the Ten Commandments, nor a requirement in the New Testament but taking care of parents is in both. Fathers – improve your relationship score with your children, lest the Lord smite the earth with a curse. He is now preparing a new generation of reformers with new values, concepts and vision to drive the change, to restore the Body which is grossly disfigured and marred by centuries of extra-biblical additions and accretions, into the original Bride without spots, wrinkles and blemishes.

12. Know your identity in Christ: You are an ambassador of Christ, the highest ranking representative of the government of God, wherever you are posted. You are a royal-priest­, made so by the blood of the Lamb. Dismantle the ‘Reverend’culture and breach the preacher-creature divide. Like Melchizedek, the royal-priest of Jerusalem (City of Peace), who served bread and wine, took a tithe and blessed Abraham, bring godly governance to your city. Catch the vision of cloning and saturating the city with royal-priests, and run with that vision. Remember every royal priest is authorized to offer the sanctified lost people as mincha (bloodless sacrifice), baptize and serve the Lord’s Supper. God is not looking for shepherds who just take care of his sheep but entrepreneurs who multiply his sheep.

13. Paul’s passion was to conduct a saturation blitz of the gospel, where Christ had not been named, not just with words but with mighty signs and deeds. What is your passion? Challenge purposeless churches to enunciate a clear vision and to lay out a road map to translate that vision into action plans and set goals to ‘do greater things than these’. For supernatural harvest, minimize motivational pep talks and maximize supernatural healing and deliverance...Armed with maps, stats and the Great Commission, go 2x2 treasure hunting, find “the person of peace”, heal the sick, cast out demons and then teach them the divine arithmetic of discipling just one soul every month, and very soon, you will have a thousand souls in your savings account.

14. Most church going Christians are deluded into thinking that they are believers. To be a believer you have to carry signs (evidence, proof) of a believer? – “And these signs shall follow a believer; he shall cast out demons…and pray for the sick and they will be healed.” But a believer will not make it to heaven, if he fails to disciple the delivered. Yeshua did not ask you to make believers, but to make disciples. Unglue from the pews all those lukewarm Churchians who sit, soak and stagnate, and send them to heal the sick, raise the dead, tread on snakes and scorpions (expel demons), bind the ‘strongman’, plunder his possessions, demolish the gates of Hell, and make disciples.

15. Resurrect from being a dead organization to a living organism. Missions is too important to be left to extra-biblical professionals with cosmetic titles like Director, Chairman and CEO etc. Replace “Reverend culture” with five-fold ministry-gifted Elders of either gender, like apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers. The primary function of the church is to equip the saints, stagnating on the pews, for the works of the ministry (offering mincha), resulting in growth and multiplication of the Body.

16. Stop despising the barefoot apostles: The religious mega-stars of yesteryears were focused on revival and churching the un-churched. In spite of mega claims, they made little dent in the global spiritual landscape. In the last couple of decades, the non-literate story tellers belonging to the oral tradition grassroots level workers, who were focused on “conversion movement” have emerged as global players in changing the religious canvass, especially the 10/40 Window countries. It is the shift from superstars to the common man/women, as the real drivers of the missions, that is changing the spiritual profile of the globe. To reach the ends of the earth, maximize every cell church, Sunday school, bible school, prayer cell, youth and women’s fellowships, cottage meeting and indeed every Christian household into full-fledged, authentic churches.

17. Filter out non-performing goats that come only for hatching (baby baptisms), matching (weddings) and dispatching (funerals). Replace them with sheep that take care of the hungry, thirsty, naked, strangers, sick and prisoners. Culling i.e. getting rid of the non-productive sheep and donating them as free gift to the nearest Pentecostal church, will greatly improve your standing in the local Pastor’s Fellowship. Culling is an integral dynamics of the ‘best practices’ of sheep rearing, so that the shepherd can focus and invest on the most productive sheep...As the dominance and the power of the clergy diminishes and the effectiveness of the empowered believers increases, the kingdom goes ballistic.

18. Simplify disciple making. Invite a couple of truth-seekers for a meal where the main dish is- The Lamb. Redefine authentic church as “the household of God” with a mission; wherever two or three, eat, meet, gossip the gospel, and multiply. Like Paul try reasoning first, if that does not work, then try persuading and if that fails, try disputing and when push comes to shove, perform a notable miracle that they cannot deny...Mini-church is the most cost effective strategy for reaching the ends of the earth by saving one household at a time. The architecture of an organic “household of God” is radically different from an organized church. It not only looks different but also her functional dynamics are entirely different.

19. Re-baptize seminaries, which are the Trees of the knowledge of good and evil and sanctify them as The Great Commission training centers. Be the Tree of life, wherever you are planted, and bring forth abundant new fruit, even your leaves should be for the healing of the nations. Share the whole wisdom of God from house to house, and set up an unstoppable momentum of multi-generational discipleship chain. Be they delinquent Christians or defiant devotees of other faiths, sound doctrine is not scholarly sermons from the pulpit, but the ability to convince, convict, convert and bring the recalcitrant to repentance.

20. God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to work and to guard it. Significantly the Hebrew word Avodah for work can also be translated worship. Adam was to worship God through his work in the garden while guarding it from demonic attack. God took an accountability walk every evening to see how Adam was doing...Paul, Aquila and Pricilla, Cornelius, the Jailor, Lydia, Phoebe and many others continued to work in their professions and also transformed their workplaces. The same infallible and Holy God, in His wisdom has placed you, a fallible sinner, among other sinners, to worship Him through your redemptive work.

21. Remove the chapel, the chaplain, the pulpit, the collection box and the Sunday service and the church will still be there because you are the walking and talking mobile temple of the living God. Reorient your personal paradigm. Recognize ‘Hi, Hello,’ happy clappy Sunday Service as your ‘secondary, optional church’, a fig leaf skirt that is only a temporary solution. Your business, workplace or home, wherever you spend most of your time, is your ‘Primary nuclear church’. It matters little whether you are the CEO, or the janitor or the kitchen queen; you are a full-time work-place minister and accountable. Salvation is free but discipleship is costly. Salvation restores your relationship with the Father but discipleship restores you in the image of God by becoming a blessing to others. Salvation is not enough, for you are saved to save others.

22. Offer Mincha and then Pray. God said, my house shall be a house of sacrifice and I will meet with you and speak with you at the altar where continuous sacrifice is made...Yeshua said, “My house is a house of prayer for all nations” which means all nations will come there to be prayed for healing and deliverance and then discipled all the way into the Kingdom...A church that does not send you out to ‘raise your holy hands to pray everywhere’and optimize you to walk tall and make Christ ‘high and lifted up’ in your city, is not worth going to for you are not just a lay member of a fragmented denomination but a value added discipler of nations.

23. Most good missionaries practice bad missiology because they come from highly literate societies heavily preloaded with their church culture and traditions which they try to impose on others who find them offensive. They must change hearts and delete all that is demonic but should do no violence to their food habits, dress code and culture, including their worship style, just because they are different. Do not hurriedly church a new believer into an institutional church, where he will be lectured to but not discipled. Yeshua did not call us to be church-goers but cross-bearers and disciple-makers. Sadly 99.9 percent Christians do not have a clue, on how to share their faith even with their best friends, forget about leading someone of other faith to Christ and by some fluke if that happens, then they do not know how to make him a disciple, simply because they themselves have never been discipled. Find a coach who is loaded with lasting fruit, to take you out for practice sessions in the harvest field.

24. Are you Rapture ready? Do not wait ‘till death do us part’, rather do whatever it takes to precipitate Rapture by bringing Christ back on earth in your own generation. Re-set your priorities to preach Christ where He has not been named. Any place where Christ is not high and lifted up, including your workplace, home or neighborhood is dragon land. You are a candle with the potential to kindle thousands of candles and obliterate darkness from those who sit in darkness and in the shadows death. For this you do not have to go to church from Sunday to Sunday nor work from paycheck to paycheck. You are chosen and “ordained” to bring lasting fruit.

25. Adopt a ‘completion mindset’. Evaluate your ministry by the Great Commission as its mandate, with the numbers of disciples made, baptized, equipped and sent out as the benchmark. Like our Lord, focus on a few to reach many. Aim to become a millionaire of souls. And why not? After all, you believe in a great and awesome God for whom nothing is impossible. At the very least, like Peter, shoot for 3000 baptisms every Pentecost. Or like Paul, plant a multiplying micro-church every day, till you can claim, “There are no more places left here for me to fully preach the gospel.’ The minimum standard to qualify as a follower of Yeshua is, that like your Master, equip twelve disciples who have the confidence and the competence to turn their world upside, wherever they are placed. If you are not connected with your world, then you are disconnected with your God for He has placed you there to write Acts 29.

 

l-my wife Linda, c-Bindu Choudhrie, r-me (Guy)

at the Antioch Gathering in October 2009

 

Ecuador missionaries commissioned to the USA

I never thought I would live to see the day when we would actually commission missionaries from Ecuador to go to the USA. Yet this is exactly what took place yesterday, Monday, as Roberto and Nancy left Ecuador for the United States of America.

Roberto and Nancy Aveiga have been with us for several years. His own testimony relates that he was a discouraged pastor of a tiny church, not having a clue what to do, or how to do ministry. He came to one of our church planting seminars three years ago and has been with us ever since. Roberto and Nancy have pastored churches, planted new works, participated in our TE programs, discipled and baptized new believers, trained pastors of their denomination with materials they have learned from us, and now sensing God's call as missionaries to a distant, foreign land--the USA!

After praying, conversing and counseling with Roberto and Nancy, we feel it is no coincidence that on their FIRST ATTEMPT to obtain the coveted residential/work visas to the USA that millions around the world are desperately trying to obtain, they were not only accepted, but their ENTIRE FAMILY was approved! God doesn't do things haphazardly. There is no such thing as chance when it comes to Kingdom business. We feel this is a "God thing" that He is clearly leading them to go, make disciples, baptize, and teach as "our" missionaries to the USA (Connecticut.)

This past Wednesday at their commissioning service, we heard their testimonies about how God has been preparing them for years. And how crucial their time with the house churches has been. Now they feel the Lord leading them into the next chapter of their walk with Him. God is leading them to leave their country, go to what is the third largest nation on the planet--the USA--and be His witnesses to the masses of lost people coming in the northeastern states.

Roberto and Nancy know it will be a tough road. They aren't expecting things to be easy. They have to first learn the English language. They will have to adapt to the strange foreign foods and cultural ways of the "gringos". Since the house churches here can't afford to support someone living in the USA, they will have to find jobs and work as bi-vocational missionaries. They will lose their network of close family, friends, and brothers and sisters in Christ. They will no longer be able to pick up the phone and call us with their questions, needs and concerns. In short, it will be difficult.

Will you pray for Roberto and Nancy? They aren't going for a "better life" or to live the "American dream". They are going to make disciples, baptize, teach, and gather new believers into NT churches. Just what they have been doing for the past three years locally. As I shared in their commissioning service this past Wednesday night, in the OT, only the best was offered to the the Lord in sacrifice at the tabernacle/temple altars. The same holds true today. Our Lord calls out the best amongst us to serve him. We are sorry to lose some of our choicest workers, but are filled with joy that we can share our best with the lost and needy of Connecticut.

May God bless these Ecuadorian missionaries sent out by the Guayaquil house churches for the Glory of God.

The Ten Commandments of Jesus Christ

Everyone knows, or at least has heard about the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament. But how many Christians know and can quote the Ten Commandments of Christ?

As part of the Great Commission Jesus clearly instructs "teaching them to observe ALL that I commanded you..." What exactly did Christ command? What are His commandments?

If we are Christians, we ought to be clear on not only teaching, but OBEYING these commandments. They are what Christ himself thought most important.

In our own discipling of new believers we teach early on the "Ten Commandments of Jesus". It is first taught as a single lesson, and then a deductive Bible study is done on each individual commandment.

How many of Christ's commandments can you name? Even though there are more than ten commandments of Christ to his followers, we feel all of them are covered in the following ten...

1) LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH...YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF. The Great Commandment: Matthew 22:37-40, Mark 12:28-31.

2) Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. The Great Commission: Matthew 28:19-20.

3) ...love one another. The New Commandment: John 13:34-35, 15:12.

4) ...seek first His kingdom and His righteousness... The Priority commandment for every believer: Matthew 6:33.

5) ...do this in remembrance of Me... The Lord's Supper: Luke 20:14-20, 1 Corinthians 12:23-26.

6) ...wash one another's feet...you also should do as I did to you... The Great Example Commandment: John 13:14-15.

7) Abide in Me... The Commandment that is the secret to a fruitful life: John 15:4-8.

8) ...beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest... The only specific request Christ commanded his disciples to pray besides the Lord's Prayer: Luke 10:2, Matthew 9:38.

9) ...do not pass judgment...do not condemn...pardon...give... General Commandments of Jesus for victorious living: Luke 6:37-38.

10) ...love your enemies...do good to those who hate you...bless those who curse you...pray for those who mistreat you... Commandments for loving our enemies: Luke 6:27-36, Matthew 5:43-48.

Christians should not measure their spiritual maturity based upon their knowledge of the Gospel, but upon their obedience of what they know of the Gospel. We should never confuse our knowing the commands of Christ with obeying them in our personal lives. The Christian walk is not about what we know, but about how much we OBEY what it is we know.

The rest of the story -- some of our "unsung heroes"

I'd like to pick up on something I wrote in my previous post below about our very first group that we trained in church planting in response to the ten2b virus. Towards the end of the article I state...

To make a long story short, within eight weeks that unpromising group of believers had begun SIX NEW WORKS!!! Today seven years later, four of those still are active NT churches!

I thought it might be interesting to share a bit about the "rest of the story" of these four unknown heroes of the faith who are out there making an impact on the lostness of their communities.

MANUELA. Is an older single mother who has a great pastoral heart. She never quite grasped the house church methods we taught, but did understand the part about evangelizing the lost around her community. Almost from the beginning she set out winning her lost neighbors to Christ. Everyday after work she hurries home, cooks supper for her kids and then rushes across the street to where the church she planted seven years ago continues to meet. The church meets 7 days/week and she never misses. Over the years Manuela carefully saved every extra dime she could and slowly began to remodel and expand the tiny building where they were meeting to be able to accomodate more people. With her own hands she has personally laid a cement foundation and built the walls and roof to, what is today, a modest temple for the growing group of believers she helps to shepherd.

CARLOS AND MARIA. Carlos was the man who showed up for the training in the previous post whose home burned to the ground leaving him, Maria and their children with nothing more than the clothes on their back. He slowly began going around the neighborhood collecting a board here and there, borrowing a sack of cement, receiving donations from neighbors, and with the help of the Lord rebuilt a semblance of a house for his family. From the very beginning both Carlos and Maria decided that they would use the ground floor for the church to gather. They themselves occupy the floor above the church for their personal use. Over the years this church meeting in their home has baptized dozens of people. They too meet seven days a week and are big on prayer, rising every morning around 4am to pray to the Lord. Recently they noticed a starving young boy wandering around their neighborhood. Carlos and Maria have never been able to find the child's parents (who apparently abandoned him to the streets) and have since taken him in as their own child. Yet another mouth to feed, and yet as they say, "The Lord always provides..."

MARIANA. Mariana is another single mother advanced in years whose husband left her many years ago when he gave her the ultimatum of choosing between himself or the God she served. Mariana chose the Lord and her husband left never to come back. Every weekend Mariana travels out on a bus to Kilometer 16 outside of the city where she shepherds a small group of baptized believers won to the Lord through her witness. She has been faithfully going now every weekend for nearly seven years and considers it her calling. Mariana does not have a very high education but has managed to work her way through to the second level of the Theological Education by Extension (TEE) program we offer our servant leaders.

VICENTE. Vicente's wife left him several years ago as an unstable drug addict. Vicente has done everything in his power to win his wife back, but to no avail. He continues to try to work full time, raise his children, and function as a missionary out in the neighboring provinces round Guayaquil. When Vicente came to us as a 2-month old believer he lied about the amount of time he had known the Lord, thinking we would not allow him in the training if we knew how young he was in the Lord! As he received the training, Vicente went out and promptly started meeting on the street with a group of prostitutes. He would bring them food and then sit out on the sidewalk with them and share with these ladies and their families how much God loved them. In another group he worked with, out in a dangerous part of the city, they would meet openly out on the street. One time one of my fellow IMB missionaries went to visit one of their "street services. " Suddenly a man began shooting a pistol at another person right near where they were meeting. Vicente calmly got up, went over to the guy shooting, and invited him to the sidewalk Bible study. My missionary colleague was quite upset and afraid to say the least, but not Vicente! Over the years Vicente has been used by the Lord to open many new works. For a two-year period he left all behind and felt called of God to go into the countryside to plant churches amongst the rural provincial people. There he started several works and with the help of his brother Felipe, still continue to this day to stay in contact with the believers there. Vicente feels a strong call to serve as a missionary. Right now he is a tent-making missionary supporting himself and his children while continuing to try and open works out in the provinces.

Would you pause right now and pray for Manuela, Carlos and Maria, Mariana, and Vicente? All these live very difficult lives and yet are joyfully serving the Lord where He has planted them. Who knows, maybe God is calling YOU to plant a church in your community as well. If they can do it, why can't you?

Grass-roots theological training on the mission field

When New Directions came on the Baptist missions scene nearly ten years ago, many people felt the IMB abandoned overseas theological education. TE continues to be a "hot issue" in missions and has recently come to the front again. Much of the Summer 2006 print issue of IMB missions magazine, The Commission, seeks to clarify the IMB's position on overseas theological education. IMB reporter, Kristen Hiller, writes about one of three major methods that TE is carried out in the Baptist overseas context. Our TE training in Guayaquil was chosen as an example for the "grass-roots" method of TE. Below is her article that appears on page 22 of the magazine...


Grass-roots: Feeling God’s Presence
--by Kristen Hiller
Sunlight pours through the glass ceiling of the Fundacion Clemencia, flooding the great room where a small cluster of elderly residents clap their hands and sing: “Santo, santo, santo!” or “Holy, holy, holy!”

Had Jose and Adriana Salazar not taken in these abandoned elderly in Ecuador, they probably would not have gotten food, shelter, and a chance to hear the Gospel.

The Salazars have spent the past five years establishing the Fundacion Clemencia, where they minister to the neglected elderly of Guayaquil, while also balancing their own theological studies.

Since 2003, a partnership between International Mission Board missionaries, workers with Serving In Mission, and national church planters has produced the Theological Education by Extension program allowing people like the Salazars to study theology while leading house churches.

"TEE is really filling a need that’s not being filled by the traditional seminary approach,” says Guy Muse, IMB strategy coordinator for this part of Ecuador. “Our goal, of course, is that we would like to see everybody, every single believer, trained theologically.”

As opposed to the traditional seminary approach, TEE allows students to stay in their local churches, study at their own pace, and meet each week for discussion and lecture, Muse explains.

“We don’t train and then send out,” Muse says. “We send out and then train church leaders as they actually do the work.”

The TEE curriculum is comprised of four levels of study, each taking about two years to complete. TEE enrollment averages between 70 and 100 students, who meet at various times and places throughout the week.

Those who have completed earlier levels of the program now teach others who are new to theological study.

Although Muse and other missionaries initially served as instructors in the program, TEE in Guayaquil is now led almost entirely by Ecuadorian church planters.

“As national believers completed levels, missionaries just stepped out of doing all the teaching,” he explains. For the program to continue long-term, Muse says it must be led by national teachers.

After studying in both a traditional seminary as well as the TEE program, house church leader Carlos Perez Flores says the TEE curriculum is a better match for the social and economic reality of the Ecuadorian people.

Xavier Alvarado, president of the Ecuadorian Baptist Convention, says only 20 percent of pastors in the convention have received any kind of theological training. By using the TEE program, Muse says 90 percent of those leading house churches have been trained.

Flores says that since national believers must work at secular jobs in addition to their ministry roles, TEE allows them to further their theological training while providing for their families in a secular workplace.

“If we want to reach the multitudes we need people who are able to transfer practical concepts to people’s lives,” Flores says. “We must be able to train others who also have families and work, and who also want to serve the Lord themselves.”

Muse estimates only one in 10,000 of those living in Guayaquil have the financial and social means needed to attend a traditional, live-in seminary.

“That’s not the world these people are living in,” Muse says. “We need to take theological education to them. No one’s neglecting theological education--it’s just a different way of doing it.”