The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
2 Timothy 2:2
Let me introduce you to Rolly
Rolly is one of our key partners and leaders from the Philippines. Rolly and I have become pretty close over the past year. We met in February, when my partner Joe brought a few of our leaders from the Philippines to the US for the Exponential church planting conference. Since then we’ve worked together in Thailand and again in the Philippines. My goal has been to reproduce myself in Rolly. He’s my apprentice. In Thailand he primarily watched me, but in the Philippines I had him do most of the work. Rolly has asked me to be his mentor, and we will be connecting regularly for video calls. He’s a passionate leader with so much to offer and I can’t wait to see how God uses him in 2019!
Apprenticing our Philippine Team
Everything we do is about multiplication. Remember, we come alongside locals wherever we go, and we help them to lead movements of reproducing churches in their own nations. Our goal is to work ourselves out of a job in each country as we raise up a team of indigenous leaders who can take over what we have begun. This was our second round of Catalyst Communities in the Philippines. The team we are apprenticing there attended the first series of Catalyst Communities, came with us to Thailand twice to observe and assist there (left picture below), and as we moved into Bacolod, we had them help lead.
Their 2019 goal is to reproduce Catalyst Community #1 in 3-4 new locations throughout the Philippines on their own. We will return in December of 2019 to train them to lead Catalyst Community #2. This is part of our broader strategy of developing centers of regional strength to multiply our work around the world! It’s already working in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa, where the local teams we have trained are already reproducing Catalyst Communities without us!
Our goal has always been to develop local teams and elevate local leaders. It was great to see this working in Bacolod as key local leaders there were looking to our Phlippino team from San Pablo for leadership (right picture above). Some are already referring to our local team as their mentors!
Bacolod: The City of Smiles
Catalyst Community #1 was a great success in Bacolod. I’ve primarily shared about the team we are raising up to reproduce us, but we also worked with with many great leaders from the city, and they are excited about taking what they learned and putting it into practice with the goal of planting new churches!
In Case You Missed It
Links to some of our recent updates:
- The Persecuted Church
- A Siberian Story: Mongolians, Mafia, & Russians in an Ice Forest
- Macedonian Reaction to Catalyst Community
- 26 New African Churches!
- Exciting News From South Asia!
- …and more at TakingNewGround.org/blog
We Need Your Help
Our mission is to take new ground for the kingdom of God by catalyzing movements of reproducing churches in hard to reach parts of the world, and we’re doing it…but we need your help to continue!
