Incorporation into Church

From interview with FF and WF about ways they incorporated people into the church:

 is first assignment was university student ministry.   As the pastor in the student center, his main focus was equipping these students for student (peer) ministry and evangelism.  The students were involved in a Friday night fellowship meeting held at the missionaries' home, and during this fellowship, hel focused on teaching the students to pray for one another. 

• He encouraged the students to be involved beyond this fellowship group at the church.  He encouraged them to worship there.
• Many Christian students invited their non-christian friends to the fellowship and as a result many became Christians.  When they did, hel connected them with the church and the church baptized them.  Hel taught the baptism class

From interview with MD and SD:
“Sharing in worship with the local Christians is high priority—whether you can understand or not, you worship with them sharing in that identity.”

It’s good as a missionary to be identified with a community program that meets needs of the people.  For example, when Maynard began he worked at what he called a “hole in the ground” with laymen—building toilets and sewage pipes to handle rain runoff.

From thje Book Missions by Gailyn Van Rheenen:
“Evangelistic methodologies should not scatter contacts who cannot be molded into bodies of believers; they must focus evangelism in one area for the purpose of creating a community of God.  Converts must not be treated merely as individuals but must be incorporated into the body of Christ” (148).

Effective church planting must focus on cultivating reproductive fellowships.  Often churches are planted without the expectation that new converts will teach others.  We must heed the verse in Hebrews 5:12 which states, “Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again.  You need milk, not solid food!”  By not equipping, delegating, and expecting converts to begin teaching and reaching out, you are hindering spiritual growth within the body of Christ (149). 

“A major problem of missions is not conversion of unbelievers to Christ but reversion from Christ” (153).

 Interview with JC and CC from Africa:
Sometimes they went into a village without a church and opened up a “preaching station.”  They would teach the Bible there and try to raise up a leader and a church would start that way. 

Interview with Dr. B:
He had a devotion every morning with his family including singing, prayers, and bible study.  If he was not with his family then he did this with whoever he was with.  The first seven families to become Christians in the tribe of people that he was ministering to became Christians through bible studies in his home and they followed his model of having devotions every morning with their own families.  These Christian families were able to tell others what had happened in their family and through this every Christian became a witness.  So, many years before there were “churches” as such, there were many family churches that became Christians through this system.

When Dr. B first arrived among the Yala people who had not been evangelized previously, he found a polygamous society.  He felt that until people had become Christians, it was unfair to force them into social patterns that weren’t a part of their society.  Now that they have become Christians, polygamy is not much practiced.

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