“We are called by God to bring His Kingdom, His reign to the slums of Mwanza, Tanzania, planting indigenous churches that are nationally lead and locally sustained by God, thus, initiating a movement sustained by His Spirit through equipped local leadership with a vision to reach every tribe, class, and ethnic group in Mwanza and beyond with the good news of Jesus Christ.”
(those bold are ones I’ve been told by Frank Kilawe, regional planning commission, have no churches at all)
· Kigoto
· Igogo (Assembly of God, AIC, and Catholic)
· Mabatini (has 7th Day Adventist and a Catholic)
· Shede
· Mkuyuni (Catholic, Pentecostal, but a very strong pagan presence)
· Bugando (Catholic only)
· Ibungilo
· Kitangili
· Mihama
· Isamilo
· Nyashana
· Ilemela
This mission will be founded, grounded, and bathed in prayer and the authority of the Word of God. We desire nothing more than to fulfill God’s will and His purpose for our lives and for the city of Mwanza, Tanzania. “Many are the plans of a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s Purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:21) For that reason, we can write out our strategy and have our ideas, but we are going to call on God daily to show us His strategy for reaching Mwanza and be submissive to what He calls us to do. After all, He does have the best plan and I’ve found in my life when I make plans, God always changes them! We want to join Him where He is already working in the hearts of the people!
(these goals have been approved by the elders and mission committee at Minter Lane and they are to be accomplished before first suggested furlough, December 2005, my passport and drivers license runs out in early 2006)
1. Become familiar with and settle in Mwanza, Tanzania
2. Gain fluency in the KiSwahili language
3. Develop meaningful relationships with the local people.
4. Study the nuances of the cultures in urban Mwanza.
5. Plant a minimum of 8 indigenous churches in the slums of Mwanza. A “church” is defined as 25-30 Christians (3-4 families) who worship in their own permanent structure (either rented or built with own local resources) that is indigenous in nature (meaning they will make all decisions) and has its own leadership.
6. Disciple and train local church leaders focusing on LTE (Leadership Training By Extension) model of leadership training learned at ACU. This is simply teaching leadership skills through discipleship and teaching on their own turf dealing with issues that are relevant to them.
7. Help nationals start a credit cooperative. Credit cooperative seeks to meet the felt needs of a community through the Local Christians. The local people know their needs, we don’t. Small loans will be given out through the church and possibly some training will be made available through local people and funds. There will also be “acts of mercy” done by the local Christians. For example, cleaning up trash is a huge problem, so by helping the slum become a better place, we attract people to the Gospel.
8. Gain a deeper love and greater intimacy with God through prayer, study, and meditation.
9. Develop strong relationships with team members providing support, unity, encouragement, and accountability to each other.
10. Develop a stronger and more intimate
relationship as husband and wife
What will be our role at each stage? In order for a work to become indigenous,
the missionary must learn to surrender to these roles. I will share what our
roles will be at each stage.
December, 2002 – June, 2003
OUR ROLE IN THIS STAGE: Learner, Building Friendships
1. Rent downtown apartment or house close to the city and set up living.
2. Get settled and continue becoming familiar with the slums of Mwanza
3. Research the slum culture using urban anthropological methods designed by Dr. Ed Mathews from Abilene Christian University.
4. Bi-Weekly team meetings with Groens and Guilds. Men’s/women’s fellowship/prayer time will be encouraged. We will attend the East African Missionary Men’s Retreat in Kenya in February and Women’s retreat in May.
5. Continue KiSwahili language learning through LAMP (which focuses on USING what you learn) and reviewing what was taught in Language School. Teresa will also begin learning KiSwahili. We each will seek to study 3 days a week, 5-6 hours a day.
6. Visit local churches each Sunday conducting interviews with local leaders.
7. Finish introducing ourselves to the city officials and resource agencies, stating our intentions and developing relationships with them.
8. Begin building relationships with people in slums, seeking to understand their culture, and to understand how they network as a people
9. Two hours DAILY minimum time to spend with God in prayer, study, and meditation. 1 hour each day will be spent in back exercise (Chris).
10. Take at least 1-2 days off a week. We are planning on seeking balance in our marriage and lifestyle as Christians in a foreign culture. This will be our first year of marriage as well and it is crucial that we continue to grow together. I do not want to sacrifice my family on the altar of ministry nor do I want to go through burnout like I did in April of 1997 when I worked as an evangelist with Mobile Inner City Ministry. Ministry is what we do, not what we are. We are children of the King and the Father always wants a relationship with us FIRST before He wants our service.
NEXT 6 – 12 MONTHS (FIRST YEAR)
June – December, 2003
OUR ROLE IN THIS STAGE: Learner, Building Friendships, Evangelist, Church Planter
1. Develop “preaching point” lessons that will lead people to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. These lessons will center around the Kingdom or Sovereignty of Yahweh focusing on allegiance only to Him. We will teach from a chronological perspective, starting from Genesis 1 to Jesus. In each lesson, I’m attempting to deal with their worldview and felt needs. Before I leave America, I will have the basic “skeletons” of what we’re going to share, but will obviously improve & alter them as I learn about culture, felt needs, and problems they face.
2. Plant 2 indigenous churches following kinship lines. These churches will be made up of families. Cell or Home Groups will begin about 6-12 months after the church is planted. Home groups will be the FOCUS of all of the churches in Mwanza. In the rural, you’d go out to the next village and do a co-plant with the leaders from this new church, but in the slums, it’s much more difficult because of over crowdedness. We believe Cell groups will be the best form of evangelism for building up the church.
3. Plan discipling effort and begin maturation of new Christians with the focus being on sharing what you know. Discipleship will be “hands on.” Obviously, selection of leaders, worship, prayer, and Lord’s Supper will be taught first off as the church is begun.
4. We will encourage the Christians to make all their own decisions about things and our role will change to that of an advisor right after baptism. For example, we will not run the Sunday morning service, but will be guests. If they want me to teach, I will, but they will make the decisions. We will encourage the Christians to make decisions as Tanzanians do: as a group. Also, we will encourage them to wait for a season before selecting elders.
5. Weekly Maturation Lessons that follow will include (some ideas, don’t have a particular order, but will be prompted by their felt needs and struggles at the time):
a. Assurance of salvation
b. Prayer, prayer, prayer!
c. Grace
d. Discipleship (allegiance to Christ alone!)
e. Identity in Christ
f. Temptation and how to deal with sin
g. Who is God? Short narrative stories about people in the OT discovering an attribute of God. If a worldview is to be changed, it must center around who God is.
h. How to deal with Future Crisis: persecution, sickness, bad things happening, evil spirits, problem marriages. I’d like to develop a “Topical Prayer Book” that deals with their particular struggles. Example: fear of ancestors. Develop prayers centered around Scripture that they can learn to recite when they are afraid.
6. Continue studying the culture by building relationships.
7. Continue working on KiSwahili vocab, spending 2 hours DAILY with God, 1 hour daily in back exercises, and bi-weekly team meetings.
8. Begin Leadership by Extension Training, gathering one day a week with leaders. Emphasis with be on servanthood, humility, learning to plant another church, and meeting the felt needs of the community. Much of my time will be spent discipling these leaders as a group (not so much individually) and helping them mature in Christ. A focus will be on the STRONG leaders, rather than trying to “prop” up the WEAK.
OUR ROLES IN THIS STAGE: Learner, Evangelist, Church Planter, Equipper, Advisor
1. Co-plant 2 indigenous church along with local leaders.
2. Take first 2 churches planted in 2003 and begin Cell/Home Groups. Weekly training meetings dealing with problems and leadership training with the goal of developing a self-governing program that the Tanzanians can run on their own. We will provide curriculum. Evangelism will be the focus with the goal of each group being to form a new cell. Right now, we are anticipating waiting for 6 months after a church is planted to begin the cell groups. This is subject to change as we learn what is most effective for the people.
3. Continue leadership training each week with leaders.
4. Continue learning KiSwahili and studying the culture
5. Begin looking at ways the Christians can serve their own communities and an attempt will be made to begin a credit cooperative or something that will generate the community finding solutions to their poverty.
6. Begin hosting interns for the summer
January– December, 2005
OUR ROLE IN THIS STAGE: Learner, Evangelist, Church Planter, Equipper, Advisor
1. Co-plant 3 indigenous churches plus encourage 1 National plant they do on their own.
2. Take 2 churches planted in 2004 and begin Cell/Home Groups.
3. Continue leadership training each week with leaders.
4. Continue learning KiSwahili and studying the culture
5. Spending 2 hours DAILY with God & 1 hour in back exercises.
6. Evaluate with leaders the credit cooperative program and make necessary adjustments.
7. Connect these urban Christians to the rural Sukuma churches (if we have Sukuma urban churches) by establishing networks.
8. Encourage once a month gatherings of all churches to create unity.
9. Prepare churches for
furlough.
Some goals and ideas for next furlough time period (Mar 2006-Sept 2009)
1. We are here as long as God needs us here, but we are anticipating to be done by the end of 2009. We don’t want to stay too long or be in the way of what God wants to do through the local Christians. As time moves on and as they mature, we will spend less and less time with the churches, learning to work in our role as guests.
2. We’d like to see in the future, the Christians in Mwanza have a vision for churches not only in Sengerema, but Dar es Salaam, Geita, Shinyanga, Kahama, and their own rural villages! Even beyond Tanzania! Africans Claiming Africa!
3. We are anticipating as God makes the work grow, the Christians will desire to pull together possibly in one urban church. Due to limited space in the slums, our prayer is that they will see a vision to be more downtown and more accessible to the people of Mwanza.
4. At the beginning of God’s Work in Mwanza and by 2006, phase-out already needs to be decided: what will the churches look like when we are done in Mwanza? While this is a difficult question, conditioned upon circumstances yet unseen, we’d like to suggest the following about what we hope the churches will look like when it is time to phase-out:
5. The churches are generally self-supporting, self-reliant, and self-governing. There is a definite spirit of unity among the churches with a desire of reaching Mwanza as a group rather than as one church.
6. Cell Groups are growing and there is a definite “people movement”
7. The worldview of the Christians is continuing to change, but there is a definite allegiance change to Yahweh.
8. Local leadership within each church is mature, relying on God, discipling new Christians themselves, making all decisions, and seeking to meet their own felt needs.
9. Structures for future learning are in place. Most likely it will be LTE (Leadership Training By Extension) format. Leaders will be trained to take the churches into further maturity and growth.