T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution 2/3

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)