Through my internship with Steve Elliott at Church Assistance Ministry (CAM) and teachings from classes here at Fresno Pacific University, I am learning the value of knowing the “context” when studying the Bible.
Steve first introduced this to me when he taught me to study the Bible. Then when we took the Biblical Perspectives 436 class, we were taught even more about the “Historical World” which we need to know and understand before we begin to study the Bible.
The importance of historical and literary context became very apparent when I led a Bible study in Steve’s absence last week. As we started to dig into the book of Galatians to learn about how we should serve one another in love, I did my best to set up the historical context of the church setting, the city of Galatia, and the issues that Paul is addressing in his letter. Then we began to study Galatians 5:13 and how it was important to us as Christians to serve one another in love. As we started our discussion, it became very clear to me that I had not done an adequate job of setting up this context for my participants when one of them tried to apply the verse to salvation.
This caused me to have to apologize, take a step back to re-introduce the verse with the emphasis of the passage on “service” not “salvation.” Once I had the group correctly oriented to looking at the verse as a service verse, not a verse about salvation, they were able to understand what Paul was communicating.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
We All Are Creative, We Just Need to Find It
Beginning my internship with Church Assistance Ministry (CAM) has reminded me of my entrepreneurial spirit as I have seen ways I might assist their work. When I look at CAM, I don’t see “things to do,” but I can see “things to create.” I’m naturally a pretty creative, relational, right brain dominant person. I can come up with lots of ideas, even though many of them might not be very good.
While interning with CAM, I’ve had lots of new ideas about things we can create to help further CAM’s mission to serve and equip leaders around the world. I’ve had the idea to create a blog to share updates on CAM’s work. I’ve thought about possible case studies I might be able to write to enhance Steve’s teachings about coaching and core values. I’ve thought about how a book featuring CAM’s content would develop an even greater platform for CAM to reach more leaders. These are some of the many ideas that have quickly developed after starting to intern with CAM.
Getting back in touch with my creative, entrepreneurial spirit has reminded me of the feelings I had when leading a nonprofit program called A Day of Hope that fed families in need for Thanksgiving. While leading A Day of Hope, I was always coming up with new ideas to fundraise, recruit volunteers, and feed more families.
Being open to a new ministry where I have some freedom to serve and support in my gifted areas has been very encouraging and exciting. And I find myself passionate and energized by the new ideas that are flowing through my entrepreneurial spirit.
Question: In what areas are you creative? How does that affect your life?
While interning with CAM, I’ve had lots of new ideas about things we can create to help further CAM’s mission to serve and equip leaders around the world. I’ve had the idea to create a blog to share updates on CAM’s work. I’ve thought about possible case studies I might be able to write to enhance Steve’s teachings about coaching and core values. I’ve thought about how a book featuring CAM’s content would develop an even greater platform for CAM to reach more leaders. These are some of the many ideas that have quickly developed after starting to intern with CAM.
Getting back in touch with my creative, entrepreneurial spirit has reminded me of the feelings I had when leading a nonprofit program called A Day of Hope that fed families in need for Thanksgiving. While leading A Day of Hope, I was always coming up with new ideas to fundraise, recruit volunteers, and feed more families.
Being open to a new ministry where I have some freedom to serve and support in my gifted areas has been very encouraging and exciting. And I find myself passionate and energized by the new ideas that are flowing through my entrepreneurial spirit.
Question: In what areas are you creative? How does that affect your life?
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
A Church Planting Story
Evangelical Free Church Pastor Celestino“Jun” Sabate came to California in 1998 and began his career as a church planter among the Filipinos of Central California. Within twelve years of his arrival and the planting of his first church in Tracy, California, that one small church has become five churches with three others in development in California and Arizona. In addition, several churches have been planted in the Philippines and Japan with the active help, financial support training and coaching by Pastor Jun and others who make up the leadership of the World Harvest Fellowship family of churches in California.
How did this happen? How can a church that has never reached an attendance of 100 people (WHF Tracy) multiply itself so that there are now more than a dozen newly planted churches in its planting network with a growing constituency of hundreds of people in this relatively short period of time?
When Pastor Sabate came to join our effort in the EFCA West district in 1998 he came with a passion to serve Christ, but he had almost no financial support other than the district’s modest church planting subsidy and a small amount of missionary support to sustain him, his wife and three sons. Together, these resources helped pay his meager salary and a few early ministry expenses.
Jun attended EFCA’s intensive church planting training seminars designed for modern linear-thinking Americans. Although he is a seminary graduate with degrees in pastoral ministry and counseling and had served as a pastor and district superintendent in the Philippines, he found the training to be cross-cultural. He repeated the complex training event three times in order to translate the presentation into a form that suited an Asian who thinks cyclically. And he learned the church planting process well.
Jun learned quickly that effective church planting required developing a church “system” that contained multiplication at every level of the ministry. That multiplication thinking included multiplying churches after the pattern of the New Testament (for example, Acts 1:8, Acts 19:10-12, Acts 13, I Thessalonians 1). (Jun and I agree that multiplication should occur in all parts of the church’s ministry. For example, there should be multiplication of believers through congregational involvement in evangelism, multiplication of disciples through relationship-centered growth experiences, multiplication of leaders by discerning potential leaders through relationships and training them, multiplication of ministries as the growing number of leaders are deployed and empowered, and multiplication of churches which comes about as a normal result of becoming effective at all the other levels of multiplication!)
He allowed me to be his coach and mentor during those early years, and that helped him. But what carried him through the challenges and the tough times was his faith in the God of the Bible and his determination to follow God’s Word which he believed taught the true nature of the church and described a magnificent church planting movement—a movement lead by the Apostle Paul, his traveling team of church planters, people Paul trained along the way, and the other Apostles.
Jun trained his people, starting with his elders. He taught them to lead in a way that reflected Jesus’ leadership (Mark 10:45), and to teach, and to preach. He is thrilled to boast in his disciples’ successes, believing that his elders now preach as effectively as he does. When he travels around the USA and in other countries, he is thankful that he leaves his congregation in very capable hands and does not have to bring in outside preachers to take his place.Jun says the delegation of pastoral leadership responsibility is a counter-cultural experience for Filipinos. It is common for them to view the pastor’s role as similar to that of a Roman Catholic priest, who would not give “ecclesiastical responsibilities” to the “laity”.
So, one church has now become twelve or more relatively new churches. (Actually, there are more churches than that involved in the network, because Pastor Jun and I have helped train churches and denominational leaders in the Philippines and Japan to take a very significant role in multiplying church planting networks in their countries. Some of these churches are now part of the WHF network.) Now the vision of the WHF family of churches is to plant at least twenty more over the next decade in the USA, Asia, and potentially other parts of the world.
Can a small church plant churches? My answer to that question is a resounding “Yes!”
______________________
Steve Elliott, with experience as a church planter and as a regional church planting leader for the EFCA, serves as President of Church Assistance Ministry (CAM), a mission agency that specializes in training, coaching and leadership development for church plants, churches, denominations and mission organizations in various parts of the world, including the US.
In addition to his pastoral leadership, Pastor Jun Sabate serves the CAM ministry as International Director.
© Stephen D. Elliott, 2011
How did this happen? How can a church that has never reached an attendance of 100 people (WHF Tracy) multiply itself so that there are now more than a dozen newly planted churches in its planting network with a growing constituency of hundreds of people in this relatively short period of time?
When Pastor Sabate came to join our effort in the EFCA West district in 1998 he came with a passion to serve Christ, but he had almost no financial support other than the district’s modest church planting subsidy and a small amount of missionary support to sustain him, his wife and three sons. Together, these resources helped pay his meager salary and a few early ministry expenses.
Jun attended EFCA’s intensive church planting training seminars designed for modern linear-thinking Americans. Although he is a seminary graduate with degrees in pastoral ministry and counseling and had served as a pastor and district superintendent in the Philippines, he found the training to be cross-cultural. He repeated the complex training event three times in order to translate the presentation into a form that suited an Asian who thinks cyclically. And he learned the church planting process well.
Jun learned quickly that effective church planting required developing a church “system” that contained multiplication at every level of the ministry. That multiplication thinking included multiplying churches after the pattern of the New Testament (for example, Acts 1:8, Acts 19:10-12, Acts 13, I Thessalonians 1). (Jun and I agree that multiplication should occur in all parts of the church’s ministry. For example, there should be multiplication of believers through congregational involvement in evangelism, multiplication of disciples through relationship-centered growth experiences, multiplication of leaders by discerning potential leaders through relationships and training them, multiplication of ministries as the growing number of leaders are deployed and empowered, and multiplication of churches which comes about as a normal result of becoming effective at all the other levels of multiplication!)
He allowed me to be his coach and mentor during those early years, and that helped him. But what carried him through the challenges and the tough times was his faith in the God of the Bible and his determination to follow God’s Word which he believed taught the true nature of the church and described a magnificent church planting movement—a movement lead by the Apostle Paul, his traveling team of church planters, people Paul trained along the way, and the other Apostles.
Jun trained his people, starting with his elders. He taught them to lead in a way that reflected Jesus’ leadership (Mark 10:45), and to teach, and to preach. He is thrilled to boast in his disciples’ successes, believing that his elders now preach as effectively as he does. When he travels around the USA and in other countries, he is thankful that he leaves his congregation in very capable hands and does not have to bring in outside preachers to take his place.Jun says the delegation of pastoral leadership responsibility is a counter-cultural experience for Filipinos. It is common for them to view the pastor’s role as similar to that of a Roman Catholic priest, who would not give “ecclesiastical responsibilities” to the “laity”.
So, one church has now become twelve or more relatively new churches. (Actually, there are more churches than that involved in the network, because Pastor Jun and I have helped train churches and denominational leaders in the Philippines and Japan to take a very significant role in multiplying church planting networks in their countries. Some of these churches are now part of the WHF network.) Now the vision of the WHF family of churches is to plant at least twenty more over the next decade in the USA, Asia, and potentially other parts of the world.
Can a small church plant churches? My answer to that question is a resounding “Yes!”
______________________
Steve Elliott, with experience as a church planter and as a regional church planting leader for the EFCA, serves as President of Church Assistance Ministry (CAM), a mission agency that specializes in training, coaching and leadership development for church plants, churches, denominations and mission organizations in various parts of the world, including the US.
In addition to his pastoral leadership, Pastor Jun Sabate serves the CAM ministry as International Director.
© Stephen D. Elliott, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
The Goal of a Leader is to Find His/Her Replacement
The first week of my internship with Church Assistance Ministries (CAM) was been great. My supervisor, Steve Elliott has mentored and coached me for three years. I’m grateful to now be under his supervision as we embark on working together to advance CAM’s work to equip church leaders and church planters across the United States and around the world.
When meeting with Steve this past week, he revealed:
My main responsibly as CAM’s CEO is to find my replacement.
This is a great thought for anyone in a significant leadership position to focus on. I might be able to serve CAM by helping Steve find his replacement. As a new person working with CAM, I offer a fresh perspective. I will be able to see the strengths of the organization and compliment those strengths. And I will conversely see the weaknesses of the organization and where a potential leader might be able to fill those roles. Then you need to make sure a CEO is groomed to keep those strengths strong and also pray and hope that CEO will improve the weaknesses. I’m sure finding a new leader for a church ministry is not easy to do. You have to look at lots of candidates and evaluate their skill set, their character, and their overall ability to keep the good work of CAM going for years to come.
With that said, going forward with my own ministry in life, I need to always realize that one of my main responsibilities as a leader is to find my replacement. Maybe I will start by looking for creative ways to find my replacement as an intern after my service for CAM is over.
Question: What do you believe is the mail goal of a leader?
When meeting with Steve this past week, he revealed:
My main responsibly as CAM’s CEO is to find my replacement.
This is a great thought for anyone in a significant leadership position to focus on. I might be able to serve CAM by helping Steve find his replacement. As a new person working with CAM, I offer a fresh perspective. I will be able to see the strengths of the organization and compliment those strengths. And I will conversely see the weaknesses of the organization and where a potential leader might be able to fill those roles. Then you need to make sure a CEO is groomed to keep those strengths strong and also pray and hope that CEO will improve the weaknesses. I’m sure finding a new leader for a church ministry is not easy to do. You have to look at lots of candidates and evaluate their skill set, their character, and their overall ability to keep the good work of CAM going for years to come.
With that said, going forward with my own ministry in life, I need to always realize that one of my main responsibilities as a leader is to find my replacement. Maybe I will start by looking for creative ways to find my replacement as an intern after my service for CAM is over.
Question: What do you believe is the mail goal of a leader?
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