Igniting Discipleship Multiplication

The Church continues to grow through Disciple Making Movements all over the world. The Church in India has been growing rapidly seeing thousands of churches planted and Central India Christian Mission is on the frontlines. Their Director of Leadership Training, Josh Howard, has been leading many of our bi-vocational and co-vocational church planters to develop simple reproducible discipleship strategies. Josh desires to raise up disciples who make disciples, leaders who create leaders, and churches that plant churches.

To learn more about Nexus and our training for church planters, check out our Church Planter Pathway.

Transcription

Andrew Estes 0:01
Well welcome everybody to our next Nexus webinar. I’m so honored and so excited to be able to have with us Josh Howard from central India Christian mission. he’s a he’s a great dude that’s been that I’ve been introduced to just last summer when Nexus started the bi-vocational co-vocational toolkit is just a little side training that we’ve been doing for some of our, our bi-vocational co-vocational guys. And he’s just been been introducing us, and training us to with some incredible disciple making movement tools that are, are really being used all over the world and just gaining ground for the kingdom, and just simple, reproducible tools that have been incredibly effective and helping people come to Christ and equipping them to lead others to come to Christ. So Josh, thank you so much for being on the call, man.

Josh Howard 0:53
Yeah, it’s awesome to be here, Andrew, thanks for having me. Love you guys at Nexus and so really, really excited to be on here with you.

Andrew Estes 1:01
Awesome, man. Well, I would like to just kind of maybe step back for a little bit, and maybe just get just a little bit of a backstory about a, but a dude that grows up in the Midwest and moves to India and marries an Indian gal. And guess how did you get involved with central India Christian mission? And just give us a brief overview of what what was that process? Like?

Josh Howard 1:22
Yeah, I mean, that’s a long story. I’ll try to keep it super short. But basically, man, so I grew up in church. I, I from a young age really felt cold in a ministry. But I always thought that was going to be like, get a church in America, be a pastor, be a preacher. You know, that’s, that was kind of the the, I don’t know, the pathway that I thought that I was going to be on. And then when I got to college, that’s really when God began to kind of lift my eyes off of America and onto the nations and really began to dream about what, you know, what God could use us for, if you know, we really wants to unreached areas and places that had a lot of lost and broken people, right. And so it was in college that I really began to pray and think about what this might look like to go overseas. I had no idea where that would be. I remember the the head of it all, was I was at icon the International Conference on missions in Indianapolis, Indiana. I was sitting in a session, don’t remember the preachers name. Don’t remember his sermon. Okay. I remember him quoting somebody else, and that how God works like you don’t like, it makes me feel real great as a preacher of what people are going to remember that I say, but anyway, and I never heard this quote before. Apparently, it was pretty famous quote, I just never heard it. And God, the guy said, if you had but one light to burn, would you rather burn it in a land filled with the darkness or one glowing with light? And that night, when they gave the invitation, man, I absolutely sprinted forward? I was just like, okay, God, I don’t care where I’m at what I’m called to do, I want to, I want to go to the darkest, most difficult places and take your take your name there, whatever that looks like, right? So in my hotel that night, I’m praying, I’m thinking, I’m asking God what he wants, right? And all I hear in my heart, Andrew, okay. You’re gonna like this. All right? All I hear in my heart after surrendering everything to Jesus was Josh. I don’t need you. I’m like, what, like, I just surrendered everything God like how many people you have doing this? Right? Like, like, I thought you said your workers are few man. Like, what do you mean, you don’t need me? Right? Um, but then after letting me sit in that for a moment, God followed that up with us. And he said, Josh, I don’t need you. But I need you to know that I want you. And there’s a difference. Yeah, there’s a difference between being needed and wanted by God. We aren’t needed but we’re wanted and that’s even better, man. It’s better to be wanted by the most I God and so in, I guess, in order to keep my pride and check that night, all right, God, let me know Listen, man, I could call 1000 other people better than you. All right, I don’t need you. It’s not like I’m like begging you to do something. Right? But But I want you and I want to use you. And so if you’re willing to humble yourself before me, Josh, like, you just need to know your wants and not needed, right. And so the next day, bro, literally 12 hours later, I meet the guy, a guy named Mike Shaggy, who’s now the director of good news productions. And he talked about this internship of going overseas to eight different countries. And so I applied, got the internship once again so that I wouldn’t get prideful. I found out I was the only guy who applied so Nope. No pride involved there either because it’s not like I beat out 100 other applicants. All right. So I was the only guy that applied another another god moment. There. And I went overseas for three months and traveled to eight countries and that whole trip, man, I was praying and asking God, God, where do you want me? Are any of these countries where you want me to be? And when I got to India, that’s really when I just felt a burden on my heart for that nation. It’s when I met the woman who’s now my wife. I didn’t know it at the time, obviously. But that’s when we met was on that first trip to India. And anyway, I’ve been there now. 13 years, man, that would be crazy. And that’s how I got connected with central India. Christian mission.

Andrew Estes 5:33
Yeah, yeah. Tell us a little bit about that. what’s what’s central India? What do they do? How long have they been around?

Unknown Speaker 5:40
Yeah. So my, my father in law, my wife’s dad. And and, and her mom started this ministry about 40 years ago. Now, doctors are jammed into wall. And it started out as a church planning ministry. I mean, that’s what they were focused on doing. And now 40 years later, man, I mean, there are, I don’t know, three or 4000 churches that are a part of the cicm network. On any given Sunday, there’s between 607 100,000 people that are, you know, meeting in cicm church, we also have like children’s ministries, and my wife leads a children’s home and orphanage with over 150 kids. I’m married way up, bro. Like, my wife’s like, you should honestly have her on here. Anyway, um, she’s a lot prettier than me too. So, um, but uh, so we have a children’s ministry. We have a church planting school that I’m helping lead. We’re we’re trying to raise up as many church planters as we can. And then we have a ministry called ignite that we started that’s really about movements. It’s about making disciples who make disciples who make disciples, and planting churches that plant churches that plant churches. And bro, listen, in 2020 man, we saw as an organization, the most fruit we’ve ever seen in the history of our organization, like I mean, in the midst of a pandemic. So cicm, salver, 50,000 baptisms last year, okay, in the midst of a pandemic crazy numbers, through ignite through our micro church, house church multiplication. We saw over 1300 churches started last year, just by multiplying disciples who are multiplying house churches, crazy, crazy stuff, man. And so God’s move in in remarkable ways in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of difficulty, just just really, really awesome. Really cool.

Unknown Speaker 7:40
Yeah, I know, you were, I think you were sharing some of those statistics, even just a month or so ago with some of our guys. And I was really kind of blown away. But my, I think my initial question, and even at that time was what what has kind of led to such a drastic increase in that because I think you showed either an infographic or something like that, or search some statistics of, you know, from, you know, back early 2000s, up until recently, there was like, 2000 churches planted or, I mean, you probably know, you know, the numbers better than I do. But um, and then just over the last, like, 234, or five years, or however long it was like, there’s just some been some dramatic increase in the multiplication of what’s going on. And I want you to just kind of give us a high level of what that has looked like numerically. But then also, what does it What does it take in to actually really ramp that up and get into that?

Unknown Speaker 8:35
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so yeah, if you look at basically from the, yeah, the early 2000s, there was about a total of about 1500 churches planted at that point around around that number. I’m, I’m kind of generalizing, I can’t an exact amount that was planted since 1980, something until early 2000s. So we’re talking 20 something years, right. And then in the last six years, we’ve seen over 5500 started just in the last six years. So God has just radically shifted stuff in some remarkable ways. And a lot of that, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff we attribute that to, but the majority of it are really a couple things. Okay. One is and we can go into some of these things, Andrew, like whatever you think would serve your people the best we can shout about. But one of the main things was, we really started massively traveling and training and equipping as many of our people as possible, ordinary people. I’m not talking about just our leaders, ordinary people in our churches, to actually be disciples who go make disciples. So how can they go? Basically what we’re trying to do is get all hands on deck. How can we get every single person to Take out the burden, and the responsibility of being witnesses for Jesus ambassadors for Christ. Because answer in the traditional world man in the traditional Christian world, it’s so easy for everyday Christians to outsource their identity to professional ministers. You Yeah. So what I mean by that is this, it biblically speaking, every Christian is an ambassador of Christ. That’s who we are. It’s our identity. And it’s very easy for us as everyday Christians to say, No, you’re that you’re going to be the ambassador for our church, as the pastor, or the Bible says that we are witnesses right? That we are witnesses of Jesus. No, you’ll be the witness, or First Corinthians says that we are ministers of reconciliation. That’s what we are reconciling God and man together again, that’s part of our ministry. And we say no, no, no, that’s the professional pastors job, the evangelists job, whatever, you’re the Minister of reconciliation, right. So it’s super easy for us as everyday Christians, to outsource our identity to professional ministers. And what we wanted to do is say, No, we’ve got to reclaim the identity of every believer that they are ambassadors, they are witnesses, they are ministers of reconciliation, they are disciples who are called by God to make disciples, right? They are spirit empowered believers man, that have the same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead inside of them, like every one of them, not just the leaders and pastors and church planners, every person in our church. And so about six or seven years ago, we started traveling with this radical 2000 year old idea, okay, that every single person needs to be involved in this in this in this movement. And so we tried to train as many ordinary people as possible to get out there, share their faith, make disciples and start churches and homes and, and coffee shops, and, you know, under mango trees, wherever they can meet. And we just saw God do incredible things. He loves to do extraordinary things through ordinary people. And that’s what we saw over and over again. So that’s one thing is that we tried to really, basically do the Ephesians four task Ephesians four says, it talks about the a past apostle, Prophet, evangelist, Shepherd teacher, all that we don’t need to get into that right now. But it says though, that our main job, no matter which one of those we are, is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. So professional minister, his main job is to equip the saints. That’s what we’re called to do. And so we say a lot in the movement world, the difference between ministry and movement is that ministry is a few people doing all the work. And movement is a lot of people doing a little bit of work all at the same time. Right. So if I’ve got one guy, that’s the evangelist of my church, and he’s on staff, and he’s reaching 100 people a week or whatever, whatever, it is not that many, probably like 20 a week or whatever. But then if we’ve got 200 people that are each reaching two people a week, That’s way better, you know what I mean? And so when we started training, equipping like that, man, we saw massive differences. And so it really came down to releasing the priesthood of all believers, and in releasing authority, and their commission and their identity back into the hands of everyday people. And that’s where so many massive changes took place.

Unknown Speaker 13:35
Yeah, absolutely. No, I think help for a second and let’s let’s just kind of talk about the the differences, not just culturally but just even ministerially from from what it looks like in for you guys in India, versus maybe what American church kind of looks like. So when you’re saying you’re planting these 1000s of churches just helped me with this real quick just give me a good definition of what you guys consider church like so when we when we talk about church planting especially in the US I mean, we’re we’re talking about filing a 501 c three with the IRS we have a board of directors we have all these different things in place all these what’s your

Unknown Speaker 14:11
what’s your all very biblical things. I’m just joking. I know they’re needed here. I’m joking guys. Write me nasty emails. I know. I know. All right.

Unknown Speaker 14:25
But we’re all these all these ideas of what we call church. So give me give me a definition real quick of what you guys call called church when you’re talking about multiplying these disciple makers and planting churches. What is what are you what are you how do you define that?

Unknown Speaker 14:36
Yeah, absolutely. So we try to keep things as as simple as absolutely possible, right. We want to keep things and that’s part of movement, man. It’s, it’s, they have to be simple. They have to be reproducible. They’ve got to be biblical. Those are kind of the three pillars of reproducibility I guess or movement is really simple, reproducible, biblical stuff. So when we talk about churches, we’re talking about a group of people that have Jesus at their center. Obviously, he’s King in the lord of their lives. So that’s one big difference. Let me stop here for a second. That’s one major difference between what we see in America and what we see in India. Is that Indians just do lordship a whole lot better than Americans do. Okay? Like, like if they hear for example, if they hear, hear, hold on, my daughter just walked in. Hey, baby, here, come on, you can come up here with me and we can train together. Okay. So anyway, if we if yes, Sunny, I’m here. We’re going through please. I’m sorry, guys. It’s real life. In real life, live Yeah, right. Real Life, real life dad stuff. Um, but she’s too adorable. I can’t really say no to her. So, um, so anyway, um, the whole idea of lordship is actually obeying Jesus with our lives, okay? Like he is king. And whatever he says, I’m going to do it as quickly as possible. We call it the Mary principle. Whenever if you guys remember the, the, the the first miracle at Cana, right? When Jesus turns water to wine, Mary brings the people to Jesus. Right? And, and what does she say to them? Whatever he says, do it, whatever she says, whatever he says, do it, right. And so the whole idea is that we’ve got to have that mindset of making sure that we are doing whatever Jesus says as quickly as absolutely possible. And as Americans, usually even me, when Jesus directs me to do something, or I read it, my immediate response is arguing it’s not obedience. Like I tried to come up with ways that I’m not going to do that and why it’s not important and why I shouldn’t do it that way, or whatever. The Indian believers, man, when Jesus says something, they’re ready to do it. They’re not arguing they’re not questioning there is doing what he says. And that has been a major, major difference. So for us, a church is a group of people that have said, Jesus is my king. He’s my Lord, not just my Savior. I’m not just going to take forgiveness and grace. I’m also going to take his lordship and kingship on my life. Okay. So it’s a group of people that Jesus at their center, who are focused on three main things, okay? They are focused on loving God, loving people and making disciples. Okay. And I know that sounds super simple, but that’s the whole Bible and three commands. Okay? Jesus said, the whole Old Testament is love God love people gay. And the whole New Testament pretty much can be summed up in go make disciples of all nations, that’s basically the book of Acts forward is their obedience to that command. Right? And so it’s love God, love people make disciples. And so a church is the group of people that have committed their lives to that. Now to add to that we also talked about, it’s a group of people that are also also functioning as a church. So we look at at chapter two, what are they doing, dedicating themselves to the apostles teaching, the breaking of bread, prayer, all those things. And so we want them to be no matter how big or small they are, we want them to be a group of people that are baptizing locally, they are meeting together, worshiping together breaking bread together, Lord’s Supper, they’re being generous with their time and their money. They have local leadership that’s helping guide and coach and mentor them and disciple them. That’s what church looks like. It just doesn’t need a building. It doesn’t need a budget, it doesn’t need all that stuff. And the cool thing about this is that the majority of these churches that were starting man are zero budget, it takes very little money to lead a church like that when you don’t need all this other stuff going on. Anyway, we could talk a lot about church, but that’s kind of

Unknown Speaker 18:50
Yeah, sir. I have a couple questions in the in the chat kind of about just some of that dichotomy of what what American churches like what Indian churches like question here is, what is your assessment of how the church is doing here in America? And just that idea of and I think you even mentioned this on a training call earlier. Either earlier this week, or last month that you were you were talking about how even a lot of the nations of the how we’ve talked about going to all the nations because America is so saturated with stuff like that, but now, there’s been a recent, maybe not even recent, but a something coming down the pipeline for a while where it’s just kind of flipped where we’ve had not only all the nations like right on our doorstep, but there’s just a lot of darkness that’s going to come back into that that idea of where America is like even going back to that quote, where, you know, being a light that shines only in a dark place like America is kind of becoming that again, so maybe just kind of speak into that what’s what’s kind of your assessment of the church, how that’s kind of going right here and, and I know that you’re you’re in Savannah right now, is that right? Yeah, I’m in Savannah, Georgia right now. We’ve been here. For two months, yeah, yeah, you do a lot of coaching a lot of work with churches locally. So just kind of give us that. What is your partnership there? And what is your kind of take on the local church and what we need to know as American pastors?

Unknown Speaker 20:12
Yeah, man. So it Yeah, I’m in Savannah, helping a church here. Basically think through this whole idea. How can we? How can we be focused on making disciples that multiply starting churches that multiply? What does that look like? And so we’ve been trying to lay a lot of foundational work here over the last couple months in in Georgia, we’re getting some great traction, man, God’s catch him, you know, God’s catch in the heart of a lot of people here, and they’re really moving forward. Well. So all across America, absolutely do There are obviously they’re broken and lost people everywhere, okay. And so the whole idea of that, quote, was not necessarily that we need to just leave America to the to the wolves. There, there are definitely places in America that desperately need the gospel. The problem, though, is, is that the majority of finances and people go to places in the world that there are already Christians. And my point, and my call that God put on my heart A long time ago, was to go to places that especially areas that did not have Christians or any light at all to shine, right? And so they’re the, the problem is this man, okay, the most recent studies show that 98% of Western Christians will die without ever sharing their faith with another human being. Okay, so there are people that have the lights, but they’re hiding it under a bowl, right? There are people that have the light in this nation, but they’re keeping it to themselves. And so because of that, absolutely, there are millions of dark places all across our country, they’re lost people everywhere, we desperately need this to happen. And I’ve seen post COVID man, such a greater hunger for disciple making movements, church planting movements, micro church, house church, that whole idea in order to spread and multiply disciples and churches, even in the United States. And I’ve got friends man that are seeing third and fourth generation churches started in America, they’re seeing churches started in homes and coffee shops, they’re seeing multiplication happen like that. I mean, it’s, it’s really incredible to see the hunger and the move of God in this nation right now. And so that’s, that’s beautiful. So there’s a beautiful piece of it. The negative piece of it, is that most of the time in the United States in the western worlds, we really have trouble with this whole idea of disciple making and multiplication. And most of the time, it’s for a couple of reasons.

Unknown Speaker 22:46
One is we have no system in place for this. We don’t really know how to make disciples most of the time. I mean, we have churches, large churches that come out with studies that say, Hey, we thought we were making disciples, and we didn’t, we have none, right. And so we don’t know what to do, we don’t know how to fix it. And then we have other churches that think they’re doing it, but they’re really not getting any disciples out of it, right. And so we think we know what we’re doing. And then all of a sudden, we don’t get anything on the other end. And a lot of times, what happens is the form that we currently have as a church, like the the models we use, and our services and our systems, and all of that tend to at times, take the front seats, rather than the function or the purpose for which we were created. And so what we try to talk about a lot in the movement world is allow the function and the purpose to take the front seat in the form, or the models we use should follow that function or that purpose. And so when we look at if God’s call to our hearts, and to the nations is to go make disciples who multiply, if that’s our call, then if that’s the purpose, and that’s the destination that God has, then our models and our forms, and all the stuff that we do our systems or programs, and all of that should be to serve and push forward that vision that God has for the worlds. But so often we get it backwards, we’re our model comes first, our form comes first, the systems and programs come first. And then we hope and pray we make some disciples out of it. But what ends up happening is most of the disciples we get are in spite of what we do, instead of because of what we do, right? Yeah. So I use the illustration a lot, Andrew, like if I had a I’ll just make this up. Like, if I had a cell phone factory, right. And one out of every 1000 cell phones that came across my production line actually worked. I’ve got a business bro, like I won’t have a cell phone factory very long. Okay. The problem is, is that the church looks a lot more like that than a good production factory, meaning we may get one or two great disciples out of 1000 or whatever, but it’s not because of what we’re doing. It’s in spite of what we’re doing something is broken and what would it look like if we were actual disciple making factories? What would it look like if the majority of people that came through our systems and programs actually came out on the other end disciples of Jesus that were living and loving and serving like him and making more disciples? That’d be a beautiful thing, man. Right? And so the whole thing we’ve tried to do in India, and when we’re working with churches in America is take a look and say, all right, how do we get the purpose? First? How do we get the function and the calling of the church first of making disciples, and then create forms and models that will actually serve that purpose. And maybe every now and then we’ll get a few that come out on the other side that isn’t very good. Like any cell phone factory may have a few duds at the end that aren’t working or whatever, that’s normal, and okay, but it shouldn’t be the majority. And most of the time in our churches, it’s sad to say, but it’s true. And this is globally, not just in the West. But most of the people that come on the other side of our programs and systems aren’t really disciples of Jesus, right? So the system’s broken somewhere, and we need to take a look at are we putting form before function? Are we putting the models and the methods before the purpose and calling for which the church is called? Right? We need to think through that.

Unknown Speaker 26:15
Yeah, absolutely. No, that’s so good. I mean, I’ve just reevaluating what your what your outcomes are based on what you’re everything that you put into it. I mean, we just put time and energy and resources and Dollar After Dollar After chasing certain things. And yeah, like you’re saying, like, just the studies that come out and just say that, like, whoops, we didn’t do it. Like, I read

Unknown Speaker 26:36
one the other day, bro, that a lot of churches, if you talk about their seating, just the seating attendance in the church, it’s like $10,000 a seat. Like, that’s how much we’re paying. Okay, in a church is $10,000 per attendee. And it’s like, holy cow, man, like, something’s broken here. Right? Like, something’s messed up. We got to like, if I had $10,000 per person in India, bro, like, come on, send it over to me, bro. Like, I’ll be I’ll be glad to take it. But, um, but the point is, like, they’re just some some things that we need to rethink if we’re really going to be about the things that Jesus called us to be about. Right. And we need to realign ourselves to be focused on those things. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 27:19
no, that’s good. I’d like to hear in a minute. I’d love you to share just a couple Like what? So what is the process? What are the tools? Like? What are some of those simple things that you guys, we do this, this and this, and this was really just paved the way for multiplications are really take place or movements really take place? where we are. So I’d love for you to do that in a second. But have a question here. And I’d like to maybe even lead you with the first part of your answer. But the question is, you know, what, if people in your church don’t want to be part of a movement, and they just come to be fed, how do you say no to that? Or how do you how do you deal with that? And I think I’d like to, for you to answer maybe just tell one of the stories that you told in our trainings about how you, you gave this great sermon at a at a church for this desire for multiplication of 100 sell that story? Maybe even 1000s once you share that story with us real quick and then right, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 28:15
So when I first started dreaming about movement, right, and we started studying and getting as much stuff as I could, we were ready to launch like we were ready to get going on movement multiplication, making disciples, and I was ready bro. Like I I had all this stuff in my pockets, you know, all these all these weapons. And every I was ready to go, man. So I’m preaching at our church on Sunday in India, it’s a large church, there’s a about usually between 1015 100 people that attend it was planted over 100 years ago by missionaries and, and so on preaching, and Dude, I’m ready. Like, I know, this is gonna be the best sermon I’ve ever given my life. Like, I just know it right. It’s one of those one of those moments. And so I’m expecting Pentecost Sunday, bro. Like, like, I’m ready for 1000 people to come forward, right? As a matter of fact, I was ready for 3000 like, I thought people on the streets, were going to hear it and be like, dude, I’m in like, sign me up, right? And so I preached my heart out man casting vision for movement and multiplication and disciplemaking. And what we could do if we all join hands and did it together, let’s awaken the sleeping body of the church man like I was, I was preaching it, bro. Like, I felt the Holy Spirit of the whole time. You know, it’s like an out of body experience. So after the service, right? I gave a call, hey, come up after the service if you want to be a part of this. And dude, I’ve got sheets of paper, like sheets after sheets, after sheets of paper ready for people to sign up for this thing? Right? And 12 people came forward out of like 1500 people, or 1000 people. How many were there? 12 people, bro. Well, I got mad I was like, are you people, not Christians. Like do you not want to do it? Jesus, you know, like, I was so frustrated. And I had a buddy sitting next to me that was like, hey, Josh. I know another guy that started with 12 people. And he did. All right, right. And so it gave me some perspective. So we start trading these 12 only, right? So we left the other 99 to go after the one, right? And so we’re, we’re trading these 1211 of them did nothing. Okay, nothing. So I had the opposite effect of what Jesus had, like, he had one guy that went away and was Judas, I had 11 of those guys. Okay, so I guess that’s, that’s about right, you know, for me not being Jesus and everything. But I had one guy, bro, that was an uneducated village guy couldn’t even hardly read or write. And after training him man in two weeks, started eight house churches and surrounding villages, eight churches, man, like he was the super spreader the gospel, bro. And let me tell you something, man, I would have never picked him on my team ever. Like, if I was selecting people in 1000 that day, he would not I promise, like, he would have been in my bottom like five, you know what I mean? Like, I wouldn’t have picked him. He wouldn’t been on my team. And God calls him out man raises them up and uses them. He’s like the, you know, the Gadarene demoniac, or the Samaritan woman like this person that nobody probably would have picked that just went out there and spread the gospel like crazy. And it was that guy. That was the proof of concept for me that ordinary people can do crazy stuff for the kingdom. And it was because of him that we started training as many people as we could, right? And so to answer that question through the story, what do you do when people don’t want to be a part of it? For me, man, I just, I let them keep doing what they’re doing. Like there’s no need. We can keep challenging, we can keep preaching, we can keep talking like that. But there’s no need to, you know, cast judgment, there’s no need to be mean, there’s no need to talk bad about them or anything like that. Really, some people like that, when they start seeing people actually start live this out, living this out, and they start seeing fruits, and they start seeing God move some of those same people to say, I don’t want to be a part of that, when they start seeing what God is doing. All of a sudden, it’s gonna be like, man, okay, what do I need to do to be a part of something like that, right? Like, I have guys on my team right now, Andrew, no joke, I’ve got one guy that is now in my main ignite team, he is in my 10 best guys on my team. He’s seen a movement and entrepreneurs right now that is shaking the city, okay. And he was a guy at the very beginning, that wasn’t for this whole movement thing. But when he started seeing what God did, man, he jumped in and got involved. And so I would say just focus your time and energy on those that are ready to jump in, focus your time and energy on the few movement principles are one of the movement principles is you got to go slow to go fast. And the point is, at the beginning, it is going to be slow going, there are going to be people who aren’t ready to jump in. And you’ve just got to make sure that you’re focusing on those that are being faithful and fruitful with what you’re giving them. They’re ready to jump out there and give this a try. And you want to focus on coaching and mentoring those people as best as possible.

Unknown Speaker 33:17
Yeah, that’s great, man. As we kind of transition, I’d love I’d love for you to introduce just a couple of really practical, what if we’re, if somebody’s sitting here today, how do we get started in this? Like, what are what are one of those tools? What are two of those tools that we could just really easily be able to just gather some people together and start doing things because that’s one of the and also maybe even a warning to somebody who wants to maybe stand up on stage and cast a vision for literally everybody and just, you know, maybe not going that route of just, like you said, starting slow starting with a few. I think one of the phrases we use is going with the goers of like figuring out who who’s willing to look foolish and go try stuff. And and just really kind of go in and into what that looks like. But um, if you would just kind of walk us through and maybe whether it’s either the discovery Bible study the three thirds groups, the four fields, like, what are what’s one or two tools that you would say like, hey, if you want to starting just to just to get the ball rolling, what do you do?

Unknown Speaker 34:21
Yeah, absolutely. Um, no, that’s great. I mean, I would I would highly recommend at the beginning, okay, before I get into any tools or whatever, I’d highly recommend to get a coach, somebody that’s seeing this stuff happen, whoever it is, in a context like yours who can walk you through this. I’ve got a bunch of friends if you’re in the United States right now or in Europe or wherever. I have a lot of friends that are doing stuff like this in your contacts, who would be glad to walk with you and coach you through this process. And so my first recommendation would be if you really want to jump in and get some stuff, do go and grab a coach that knows what they’re doing that can help you They can walk with you walk, you know, take your hand and walk with you through this process. But as for tools, man, yeah, there are. So we talk about three main things when we’re talking about movement all the time. And it’s what we train almost everybody in, okay? We talk about a big vision, a clear path, and simple tools. Okay, big vision, clear path, simple tools. The Big Vision idea that we talk about all the time, is basically laying down your vision and picking up God’s vision for your city, for your nation for your state, whatever it is, rather than building our little kingdoms, what would it look like to build God’s kingdom? And instead of asking, What do I want to do, ask what is it going to take to fulfill that vision? Not what do I want to do in ministry? What is my dream? Let’s go to ask him that question and start asking him, what’s it going to take to fulfill God’s mission for this city? To fulfill God’s heart for this nation? What’s it gonna take to see that type of stuff happen? Right? And that’s a whole different question. So we talk a ton about big vision. And so I would encourage you guys at the very beginning, man, fast, pray, get into God’s heart, and really start dreaming about what God desires to do not what you want to do, not what your church wants to do, not what your leaders want to do, what does God want to do in your city and in your nation, and see what that will look like when you join him in that work. It’s a it’s a, it’s a whole different paradigm shift. So I would say start there, man, begin to pray and fast about what God desires and see how your life can fit into that. Secondly, clear path. If God has a vision, then we need a clear path to get to that destination. Because usually, what got us here is not going to get us there. That’s what we saw in India six, seven years ago, we knew that whatever goddess the point we were, which was amazing, like we were getting, we were getting amazing fruit and seeing a ton of churches started. And a lot of people come to Christ. But when we started to look at what God’s vision was for India, of every tribe, tongue and nation, every village every place, we knew that what goddess there was not going to get us to that destination. Do you get what I’m saying? Yeah. And so you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got a clear pathway to get there. For us. That’s the four fields, okay. The four fields is a, it was created in India by some friends of ours. All it is, is an illustration showing the way the disciples and Jesus went about making disciples you multiply and starting churches. Okay. And so that’s, that’s really all it is. So we talk, are you sharing it right now? Yeah, here we go. So this is the this is the four fields, okay? entry right up here in the corner, is all about entering into new a new fields that is empty, or this could be new relationships, a new subdivision, a new city, a new village, whatever, it might be a new click of people, a new sphere of influence, whatever it is, okay? And that could be literally a new town or new place, or a new subdivision or new apartment building. Or it could be like, your bowling league on Thursday nights or, or like the, the the parents of the kids on your baseball team, like that’s another group of people, you get what I’m saying? Like injury is just learning how to intentionally form relationships with people. So we talked about there’s two types of loss people, ones, you know, and ones you don’t know. Okay? That’s really all right. And so we try to teach people make a list of the last people that you know, who don’t know, Jesus, and start praying for him every day and asking God for opportunities, super simple. And for people you don’t know, start praying that God would lead you to people that are open to the gospel every day of your life, people you don’t know. It’s called a people of peace, or a person of peace search or a person of peace prayer. It comes from Luke 10, and Matthew 10. And it’s just saying, hey, God, lead me to the people that are open to the gospel. That’s an entry strategy, okay to get into new people, new places, new areas, or people you know, that will lead to Gospel. The Gospel field is just where you begin to share about Jesus with people. And what what this is all we teach here is how to share your testimony and how to share a simple gospel presentation. That’s it. You could there are 50,000 gospel presentations in the world. Pick one that’s good that works and use it. The best tools are the ones you use. Yeah. Okay. The best tools are the ones you use, I could give you 1000 tools. And if you don’t use any of them, they all suck. All right, you need to use pick one that you’re going to use and use it all right, whatever it is, because doing something is better than doing nothing. All right, even if it’s a bad tool, I’d rather use a bad tool and do something than a good tool and not do anything with it. And so you want to make sure that you’re getting the gospel and making sure that you’re opening your mouth We say this all the time, your harvest is in direct relation to the amount of seeds that you sow. Your harvest is in direct relation to the amount of seeds that you sow. Andrew, I’ve got pastors all the time, man, they’re like, Josh, why isn’t my church growing? Man, you guys are seeing so much fruit in India? Like, why? Why is my church not growing? I’m like, how many seeds? Are you selling? Bro? You know? And most of the time in the West, the truth is, we just don’t sell that many seeds. You know, we’re not sharing our faith very much. Like somebody asked me once. What do you think is the big difference between American Christians and Indian Christians? And why are you seeing so much more fruit? Like the Indians just share the gospel way more? Yeah, they’re just, there’s open their mouths more. And so when you throw more seed, you get more fruit? Like, that’s what happens. It’s a natural, natural thing. Yeah. And so often, right, we have entire parachurch ministries, bro that are focused on like, only one of these fields, like entry strategy, we’re going to feed the homeless, or we’re going to have a, like, a, like a what is like a canned food drive or something right and feed families like that. But it never gets the gospel. And what do they do they skip these other two fields and try to get people straight to church. So they skip, they skip the gospel, skip discipleship, and try to get them to church, or we’ve got parachurch ministries that are just about gospel. And what do they do they invite people to church, like, let’s get people in the church, and they’re not discipling any of them. And then that’s why this third field is down here is that it’s about discipleship. And so it’s about getting people into groups, where they are learning how to be obedient followers of Christ, that are learning how to do what God’s called them to do and become who’s God’s called, who God’s called them to become. And so we have a lot of tools there, man, one of them is the one that you mentioned, called the three thirds. All the three thirds is is a group format. It’s a way to have a meeting. That’s all it is. But the difference that the three thirds is, is that it naturally leads to people being wise builders rather than foolish builders. Okay. It naturally leads to people listening to the word and doing what it says. I use this example a lot, man. Like, we talk a lot about the why Yeah, here’s the three thirds here. Thanks for jumping in there, bro. You’re doing awesome. I got Um, I don’t have time to go through the whole thing here. We can send this out to you. But basically, it’s look back, look up. Look ahead. And you can see over on the right side of look forward, we’re actually setting goals every single week. How am I going to obey? Who am I going to train? And who am I going to share the gospel with? It’s obedience being a disciple first training, making disciples and sharing telling people about Jesus, we set goals on those three every single time. And at the beginning during the bat portion. We’re checking up with each other to see did we actually do this or not? Okay. Yeah. Now when we talk about the wise and foolish builders, Andrew, what I say a lot, you know, I’ve heard 100 sermons about the wise and foolish builders. Almost all of them go something like this. The wise man, his son who builds his house on the rock, build your life on Jesus, he’s the rock. If you build your life on anything else, sex, money, power, fame, whatever it is, it’s gonna come crashing down. Build your life on Jesus, not on anything else. That’s the sermon. And Dude, that’s a beautiful sermon. It’s just not what Jesus was saying.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai