Conversations as you Go Dave Lawton

So what do we actually do once we find a person of peace? In this, our last episode of David Watson’s training, we are walked through some of the coaching and mentoring questions we can use when starting a movement. David emphasises how important it is to focus in on coaching the right people who are starting to facilitate Discovery Bible Studies (DBS). 







David calls the facilitator of a group the first level of leadership in movement. He describes how all the steps of the DBS are vital to form healthy churches. It is the coaches job to develop the facilitator in the skills to form these groups through debriefing how the DBS went.







But debriefing is so much more than just coaching. Mentoring is also involved where character development takes place. David takes us through six key questions a mentor can ask. These are: 









What are you doing to improve your relationship with God? 







What are you doing to improve your relationship with your family? 







What are you doing to improve your relationships with your community including your church? 







What are you doing to understand and improve your reason that God put you here? 







What are you doing to be a better employee or team member? 







What are you doing to improve yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, intellectually? 







Also, any problem areas? 









Finally, David encourages us to give this a go. Coaching a person of peace to facilitate a DBS instead of leading a group ourselves is a big paradigm shift for many of us. We need to be willing to fail and learn from our mistakes when seeking to reach all sorts of lost people. But we need to take the first step and coach someone to start a DBS. 







Resources: 

David shares with us a number of counter intuitive or paradoxical statements his church planters have developed when it comes to seeing movement. These include: 









Go slow to go fast 







Focus on the few (or one) to win the many







Share only when and where people are ready to hear







A new / inexperienced insider is more effective than a highly trained, mature outsider







Start with creation not Christ







Its about discovery, not preaching or teaching







People learn best what they discover







Obedience is more important than knowledge







Let the lost facilitate the Discovery Bible Study







Disciple to conversion, not convert to make disciples







Prepare to spend a long time but anticipate miracle accelerations







Buildings kill church planting







Paid local leaders kill church planting







No personal evangelism so that the masses will hear







No mass evangelism so that the masses will hear







Expect the hardest places to yield the greatest results









David tells us the importance of moving on when people are not responding, remembering its not our job to convince people. He shares how Christ is the end, not the start story, highlighting how we don’t usually fall in love with a stranger. 







He describes how discovery is key since people can only own what they discover. David also speaks about how all four parts of the Great Commission are necessary for replication: 









Going







Making Disciples 







Baptising people in churches 







Teaching them to obey 









Finally, David finishes this episode by challenges us to stop sinning by missing the target. We need to be aiming for God to show up and show his glory even in the hardest of places. Its often here that we will yield the greatest results! 







Resource: 







Engage Africa - Paradigm Shifts

David shares with us about finding People of Peace (POP) after sharing the Engage Africa 'Person of Peace' video. He gives us some characteristics to keep in mind when identifying POP within communities. We also hear of a story of a Person of Peace before David explains the difference between group and personal or mass evangelism. 







Groups are vital when it comes to movement, however David tells us that we are likely to see 8-10 groups fail. Despite this, groups do work since they replicate more groups of disciples. 







Persons of Peace are the key to seeing group evangelism. David trains using a Person of Peace game, highlighting important learnings along the way. These include how finding a Person of Peace is our single, most important prayer need we have when starting movements since it is an act of God. He also mentions how we need to be conspicuously spiritual when identifying a POP whilst connecting with a community. 







Resource: 







Engage Africa - Person of Peace video

This episode, David talks about the core values behind the Discovery Group process. He makes special mention of how we need to be builders of communities in our modern urban contexts since there is often a lack of community. He also emphasises the need for participation and no experts in the group for movement to happen. 







Every culture, David says, has to develop its own response to love, care and worship in their own context. This allows church to form from the Discovery Group process. 







If you already know about the Discovery Group process, allow David’s insights into the DNA behind it perhaps refine how we are going about starting groups around us. Something he mentions might just help you get unstuck. 







Resources:







The Core Values of a Discovery Group















Engage Africa - Discovery Bible Study video

David Watson continues our summer series on starting a DMM. This episode, he starts by reflecting on the importance of prayer after showing us the ‘Prayer and Fasting’ clip from the Engage Africa video series (we recommend watching this before or after listening to this week’s episode). 







Listen to David walk through one strategy of setting up a prayer network that can model prayer to others. This involves making a list of 30 people and allocate each to a day in the month. Then each day each person is contacted and is offered prayer. This is repeated each month. After a period of time each person is encouraged to ring and pray for 30 people per month too. A prayer network is rapidly formed that can contain thousands of people. 







Establishing and maintaining prayer networks like this for each area that we are wanting to see movement in is our first job. However personally we also need to be praying, seeing it more and more as a lifestyle that we deeply value alongside scripture and disciple making. 







Resource: 







Engage Africa - Prayer and Fasting video

In this first of six episodes, we rewind the clock to April 2016 when we first had David Watson come visit Australia and train us in starting a Disciple Making Movement (DMM). 







In this episode, David introduces the importance of the role of a coach in DMM. He begins by sharing with us how we need to have our favourite Christian beliefs challenged to embrace movements since everyone who wants to be a Christian is already a Christian. Our job is not to make people like our Christianity, but to help them fall in love with Jesus. 







Reflecting on the average costs Western Christianity, David identifies how our role in DMM must shift so that we become coaches not players. We need to have a higher tolerance for error and releasing the need to control. People on the front edge of movements are different to those on the inside. DMM only happens if we stop trying to lead and instead begin coaching movement. 







Finally, David describes how every church is essential. He hows how we can start a second track within our established churches for people keen to practice DMM principles. Others from the original track might then be inspired to join in once there is fruit. 







David ends this episode by challenging us to think about what we will need to give up to see movement. 







Resource: 







‘Contagious Disciple Making’ - David and Paul Watson