My partner Colin Denlea and I recently spent a busy week in Nicaragua doing back to back Catalyst Communities in two different cities. Over the last 12 months Nicaragua has experienced challenging political and social unrest driven by reforms that dictator Daniel Ortega enacted which increased taxes while reducing social benefits. In spite of this, the church has pressed on, and the teams we work with there have started 6 new churches!
Angel’s Story: The Veil Removed!
One of the things that humbles and inspires me at the same time is being a part of the “Aha Moment” in someone’s life when they discover a new way to move forward in ministry. I met Pastor Angel (see picture above) in Masaya where I taught 6 sessions on developing missional culture in your church. At the end of our first day Angel came up to me, and with the help of our translator, Frank, passionately shared, “It’s like the veil has been removed from my eyes. We’ve been doing it all wrong!”
Angel has been faithfully obedient to all that the knew to do, but his path was set in motion by the traditions he had learned along the way. At our conference, Angel’s eyes were opened to a new way of doing things. I believe Angel will be leading a new season of increased missional activity among his people this next year, and that many will come to know Jesus as Savior and Lord because of this! Pray for Angel and his church.
Catalyst Community 2: Missional Culture in Masaya
We do three Catalyst Communities in a location over the course of two years. Over those two years we focus on the building blocks of a pretty simple formula for rapid growth in the church:
Most churches are “Come and see” churches. In other words, people who attend the church believe that they are fulfilling their call to make disciples by inviting people to attend their church. Once they get them there, the pastor will then do the job of evangelizing them. One problem with this model…it’s not what Jesus called us to. In Matthew 28 he told his followers, not just pastors, but all his disciples, to “Make Disciples”. How do we do this? As we are walking through the various contexts of our day, we build relationships with people, and through those relationships open doors to gospel focussed conversations. When our people get this, and they are intentional to put it into practice, our church exhibits a missional culture which leads to rapid growth. When you combine this with a culture that prioritizes reproducing leaders, you have the two primary ingredients to leading a missional movement! We teach a simple method for each of these.
Catalyst Community 3: Network Formation in Jinotega
Catalyst Community #3 focusses on three primary areas:
- The five characteristics of movements.
- The benefits of working together in networks.
- Overcoming the fears and challenges that stop us from planting new churches.
At the end of the last day we like to have a dialogue with the group on what their next steps are. In Jinotega, I began this conversation by asking the teams present about how they saw their path forward. This final conversation is their chance to own things as we move beyond Catalyst Communities into network gatherings. We can’t force them to work together. It’s not easy, but when they see the value that cooperating in a network brings, they want it, and they are willing to work for it!
One leader responded, looking around at the crowd, “Aren’t we kind of a network here already?” YES! They continued, “Can we start meeting together?”YES! “Can we get Frank to help provide leadership as we start the network up?” YES! And just like that, our network in Jinotega is up and running!
Funding the Gaps in 2019
We have had a busy start to 2019 and we have a lot planned for the remainder of the year, but we need your help! We also have some exciting new developments taking shape for 2020, including two opportunities for ministry in the Greater Middle East.
Please pray about how God might use YOU, alongside US, so that together WE can continue to catalyze movements of reproducing churches in hard to reach parts of the world!
