Page 105-106
In Session One with believers (whether they are new believers you won
or existing believers) help them work through the WHY-WHOM-HOW of becoming a
trainer. Remember, your goal is to build a multiplying generations of trainers.
- Why? Cast vision to
them.
- Whom? Make a Name List
of their oikos (household, circle of influence: family, friends, neighbors
& co-workers) and prayerfully prioritize it.
- How? Give them a gospel
bridge (eg testimony) and a gospel
presentation. Give them adequate time to practice it and then set goals
with prayer as they live out their assignment from God.
In Session Two, you begin setting a pattern for the weekly three-part
T4T meeting. These three parts (or three thirds) are integral to helping to
develop trainers, not just church members or witnesses:
First third:
- Pastoral Care
- Worship
- Loving Accountability
- Vision Casting
Second third:
- New Lesson
Final third:
- Practice the Lesson
- Set Goals and Pray for each other
Page 109-110
Attendees: some trainees did not witness and only attended the meetings
Witnesses: some trainees began to witness and led people to faith, but
never started new groups.
Starters: some trainees led people to faith and started new groups.
However, they didn’t train their new group members to reproduce the process.
Trainers: some trainees led others to faith, started groups AND trained
these new believers to witness and train others. They truly became trainers not
just trainees, but their numbers rarely exceeded 15-20%.
Page 126
First Third: Looking Back
- the goal of this time is to evaluate how the trainers did while
apart, celebrate together and encourage them that God can build a movement
through them.
Second Third: Looking Up
- the goal of this time is to look up to God for new direction by studying
a new lesson or Bible study.
Final Third: Looking Ahead
- the goal of this time is to prepare the trainers to implement the
things God has been teaching them – evangelism, discipleship, training others,
starting a group, etc.
Page 130
Although you will give your trainers a vision to train trainers from
the beginning, you have to ask questions that move them a step forward toward a
movement each time you are together.
Page 130-131
T4T accountability questions fall into two areas:
1) Following Jesus questions.
You don’t want to build a “movement” of trainers who slavishly盲目地share
the gospel. You want people who are growing in their love for Jesus and godly
character. Therefore, you can ask questions like this:
- How did you obey the lesson from last week?
- What is God doing in your life related to our Bible study on [prayer,
marriage, etc.]?
- Guys, how did you do loving your wife, since that was our lesson from
last week?
2) Fishing for men questions.
Since this is the hardest area for many people, it is usually helpful to ask
more questions in this area to enable the trainers to move step-by-step toward
training trainers. You ask questions from week to week that build upon the
progression from witness to starter to trainer.
- WITNESS: Who are you
witnessing to? Who has believed?
- STARTER: When are you training them in the same process?
- TRAINER: How are these new believers doing witnessing to and winning
others?
- TRAINER OF TRAINERS: When are they training their groups?
- TRAINER OF TRAINERS WHO TRAINS TRAINERS: How are the trainers, that
you are training, doing in training their new groups?
Page 131
If you want real obedience-based discipleship, avoid one of the chief
trap: Never give an assignment or goal
unless you plan to ask about it at the next meeting. Failing to ask about
it is the fastest way to kill obedience-based discipleship.
Page 132
The accountability time is not a judgmental time or harsh time. Rather
it is a loving, encouraging time. Essentially what you are saying is this:
Brothers and sisters, God wants us to love Him better and reach the
nations. How are we doing at loving Him better? How are we doing being people
through whom God would spark a movement?
What? We stumbled this week. That’s okay! God can still use us this week.
Let’s help each other. Let’s pray for each other. Let’s go together this week
to witness to our first people. God’s Spirit will help us!
We’re a band of brothers and sisters on this journey. We can walk this
road together.
Said in love, often with tears, sometimes with laughter and joy, the
accountability time becomes a source of encouragement rather than an occasion
of fear because it is built on mutual trust. It becomes a real troubleshooting
time to help the trainees become trainers.
Page 136
One of the biggest mistakes trainers make in this area is giving too
much content because we are often such content-driven people.
Page 137
Your goal in the last third, as the trainees look ahead, is to give
them confidence and competence to fulfill God’s plan.
Such confidence as this is
ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim
anything for ourselves, but our competence
comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant – not
of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives
life. (2 Cor 3:4-6)
Page 151
A rule of thumb is to cut down
the amount of content before cutting down anything else. You are just
trying to give them enough to obey and pass on.
Page 155
T4T is fundamentally different. T4T is NOT grow, then multiply. The
design is not to bring new believers into existing groups. Instead, T4T is launch and repeat: as trainees lead
people to faith, empower them to launch new groups and then to repeat the
process with their new trainees. Multiply trainers. In T4T you don’t wait for a
group to grow before launching new groups out of it.
Page 158
You don’t hold the entire group back and start over on session one. If
you do, the group will never move forward. You keep the plan as is. But after
the three thirds are over (or during the final third), you pull Frank, Joe and
Harold aside. You say something like this: “Frank, you remember session one
that we did last week. Why don’t you walk Joe and Harold through it, while I
sit here and help out. Remember it answered three questions about why
Christians don’t witness: WHY-WHOM-HOW.”
By doing this, you are reinforcing that Frank is a trainer, not just a trainee.
You help him lead the new believers through the session. Before you all leave,
you pull Frank aside. “Frank, there’s no need for you to bring these two guys
to this meeting. We’re already pretty large, and are ahead of them in the
lessons. When would be good time that you could meet with them as a group of
three? Each week during our training time, I’ll coach you on what to do when
you train them.”
Page 159
Where no oxen are, the manger is clean. But much revenue comes by the
strength of the ox. (Prov. 14:4)
Solomon made it very clear. If you want a stable with no mess, don’t
get an ox in the first place. But if you want to plant and harvest, you need
several oxen and plan to clean up a lot.
I used to have this verse (Prov. 14:4) taped to the inside of my desk
in my office where only I could see it. When we worked with the Ina, team
members often came into the office to discuss strategy. Inevitably, we were
putting out fires and solving problems: persecution, leadership development,
dissension, false teaching, lack of access, etc. As each new problem would come
up, as difficult as it was, I would look down at the verse and smile inside. I
would say a prayer of thanks: “Thank you, Father. We would not be having this
problem if people weren’t coming to faith, being disciple and starting new
churches!”
Page 163
Perhaps the biggest concern about a CPM is that it feels our of
control. It IS our out of control, not
of your control. But instead, you have commended it to the King’s control.
Page 164
When Paul returned a year or so later, he found a movement continuing
to grow.
So the churches were being strengthened in the faith, and were
increasing in number daily (Acts 16:5)
He continued to coach them and guide them, but he didn’t babysit them.
He let the Spirit be their Teacher. It was worth the risk.
Giving up personal control and management of all the believers and
groups is an important step for any leader who longs to see a church-planting
movement develop. This is the only way to launch new generations of churches
rather than gradually grow and multiply groups in an orderly system.
Spirit-control is the discipleship revolution.
Page 165
In the growing messiness of the Ephesian work, Paul began to meet
resistance by the non-believing Jews. What often happened at this point in
previous journeys was something like this: “Then the Jews dragged him out of
the city, stoned him and left him for dead” (Acts 14: 19). Perhaps the most
significant words of this passage are “but…he
withdrew”. Paul perceptively realized that the growing opposition
threatened to derail his modus operandi. He moved from primarily “evangelism mode” to “training mode”. (Remember the
dichotomy: win the lost, train the saved)
Page 179
Churches multiplying
+
Leaders NOT multiplying
=
LEADERSHIP OVERLOAD (CPM slows or stops)
When T4T became more widely implemented, we inadvertently discovered
that the number of leaders was generally keeping pace with the number of new
churches. There were isolated instances of a super-spreader starting and
leading numerous groups (and possibly burning out). But by and large, the
number of leaders was growing because every believer was being trained as a
trainer.
Ying himself avoids ever using
the term “leader” because he believes it can easily lea to pride. Instead, he
just refers to every group leader as a “trainer”. Some of his trainers are
leading movements of thousands of churches, they they’re still just “trainers”.
He doesn’t like to give them titles for fear of pride. “Trainer” just carries
with it the basic idea of being a disciple who receives and passes on what he
learns.
Page 190
The number one trait of fruitful
CPM workers is their ability to cast
vision to local believers and get them onto a kingdom agenda toward CPM.
Page 192-194
Since casting vision to potential Christian partners is one of the
highest value activities in CPMs, here is a simple acronym to guide you in T4T
mobilization. The acronym is R.E.L.A.T.E.
R-relationship
All effective discipleship comes out of relationship. Your goal is to
walk in relationship together toward God’s purposes, not to use these believers
to fulfill your agenda. One is life-giving while the other is manipulative.
E-evaluate the status
Ask these potential partners how they are doing on the path toward
fulfilling the vision. Though they may be seeing people come to faith each
year, is the current momentum enough to fulfill the vision of reaching their
neighborhood, city or state or region in the next few years? Most people find
that it isn’t.
This is a great time to ask this question: “If we could find a
biblical, long-lasting way to get there faster, would you be interested?” Very
few people want to say “no” to his.
L-lay out God’s vision
Once they see the implications of the path they are on, most people are
ready to hear a vision of how it can be different. All of us need to see a
vision greater than a human vision. It needs to be faith-filled, yet realistic.
You are trying to build faith, but not false hope. You are trying to give them
a heavenly vision – God’s heart.
An effective way to start with is with a three-minute vision casting.
Since time is often limited, or you find yourself suddenly thrust into
opportunities with local believers, you should be able to cast a vision to
believers in three minutes in the target language at any time!
Application:
Stop and think
about what’s on your own heart. What moved your heart to reach out to your
people or community? What’s on your heart as you read this book? Write that
down. This is the seed of your three-minute vision casting. Practice it.
Memorize it. Get feedback from other believers to see if it moves their hearts.
A-ask them to commit to the next
step
In vision casting to believers, the only way you know if they are
serious is by asking them to commit to doing something. What you ask them to
commit must be appropriate to your relationship and what you have discussed.
Remember: conviction does not equal obedience! You don’t know who is
obedient until you give them something to commit to. This is the parable of the
two sons – one who said “yes” and one who said “no” (Matt 21: 28-32) – all over
again. As Jesus cast vision, He repeated asked people to respond in what they
had heard. So should you.
T-trial group (Daniel Project) –
for the reluctant ones
Sometimes, after all of this, the believers you try to mobilize will
still say “no.” You could walk away with nothing, but you still have one more
option. Suggest a trial group, or what I call a “Daniel Project” based on
Daniel 1. In that chapter, Daniel and the Hebrew youths are taken to Babylon in
captivity and enrolled in the king’s leadership development programme. It
sounded okay except for one problem: eating non-kosher food from the king’s
table.
Though they were resolved not to eat these foods, the verdict was
against them. However, they didn’t give up. Instead they appealed to their
leaders to let them try things differently with a trial group: a small number
of people, for a certain period of time, with a different method and an
evaluation at the end. When their overseer saw the results, he then expanded
the program.
After reading this book, reading the Scriptures, looking at case
studies and talking to colleagues, you may be resolved in your mind not to go
back to the way you sued to do ministry. You want to live out the
counter-intuitive ways of the kingdom. Yet the local believers you meet differ
with you on this subject. What do you do? Do what Daniel did. Ask for a trial
group – a Daniel Project.
Much church leaders will be willing to let a “test group” of their
members try the T4T process. Instead of asking them to let you train the whole
group, you can do something like this:
- Give me 10-20 church members,
NOT leaders or even those who are responsible for ministries.
- I can train them myself, but I
would love for you to train them with me. You’ll be there the whole time.
- Let us try a different method
– a CPM method – called T4T.
- We will try it for six months.
- At the end of that time, you
evaluate. If you like what you see – i.e. we are getting better results in
evangelism and in spiritual maturity – then let us keep going. You can expand
it if you like. If you don’t like what you see, you can call it off or give us
more time.
E-every training includes more
vision casting
As I mentioned in the chapter on the three-thirds process, vision
casting should be a part of every meeting. When training local partners on a
continual basis, cast vision EVERY TIME you get together. Don’t assume that one
or two vision castings are enough. A short vision-casting element is needed in
training session.
A vision-casting vignette is a short, moving, easy-to-remember image, story or
lesson that can be passed on generation by generation. It casts vision for what
God can do IN and THROUGH believers, especially in regard to CPM.
Page 198
An important principle in T4T is that the most fruitful trainers tend
to be ordinary, usually more recent, believers, not current ministry leaders.
There are a number of reasons for this:
- Current leaders tend to be
overly committed already. Many people and ministries are already depending on
the way they currently spend their time, so it is difficult to change their
ministry patters.
- Current leaders may be less
open to new ideas because they’ve had so much training already – and much of it
very different from CPM thinking.
- Current leaders have more to
lose since they are vested in the existing system.
- Current leaders don’t know
many lost people, or have much time to get to know them. Their main ministry is
to the saved.
- The longer a person has been a
believer, the fewer contacts he has with non-believers.
Source: T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution - Steve Smith (Author) & Ying Kai (Contributor) (2011)
