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Call it a Mission Committee, Global Task Force or Global Outreach Team
... every church needs at least a few trained men and women to propagate mission vision, education and involvement among their members. To simplify things, this tutorial will use the name, “GO Team”.
Below are suggested steps and links to training resources for establishing a GO Team in your church.
Already established teams that are struggling for direction may also find these suggestions helpful.
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STEP 1: PRAYER
FAITH-FILLED, COMPREHENSIVE AND PERSISTENT PRAYER ARE ESSENTIAL IN FOSTERING EVERY-MEMBER MISSION INVOLVEMENT IN YOUR CHURCH OR FELLOWSHIP. ASK GOD FOR:
- Guidance in approaching the leaders of the church – that the Lord’s favor would be on you and your presentation.
- Open hearts among the elders to understand and embrace your vision of a mission-active church.
- Additional team members to be raised up, given a vision for a mission-active church and given a heart for sustained involvement.
- Open hearts among your congregation ... that they would understand and receive Christ’s mandate to go and disciple all nations.
- Discernment of and deliverance from the enemy’s devices and plans to hinder, or even stop the work. (Never underestimate how determined he is to do this.)
- Prayer to become an ongoing priority among your mobilization efforts - till the Lord comes.
STEP 2: STUDY & PREPARATION
STUDY AND PREPARE TO SHOW YOURSELF APPROVED IN THE AREA OF MISSION AND MISSION MOBILIZATION.
KEY TOOL: General Mission Education - if at all possible take a locally coordinated or online version of the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course. Additional and less intensive Introduction-to-Mission courses can be found by clicking here, but we most highly recommend GO Teams to use:
KEY TOOL: ACMC training resources are essential for equipping your team. Highly recommended are:
KEY TOOL: DAVIDMAYS.ORG is a great source of helpful local church mission mobilization insight and resources for your church. Two of David's best are:
KEY TOOL: DUALREACH provides excellent “how-to” documents. Especially helpful are:
KEY TOOL: CATALYST SERVICES'S Interchange Posting for Churches provides equally excellent insights into how to do mission in today's world. Peruse all the documents, but jost recommended at this stage of preparation are:
For churches of charismatic or renewal orientation, Accelerating International Mission Strategies (AIMS) is a very helpful ministry with an excellent set of resources, consultants and seminars.
Be sure to contact your denomination’s mission program. They will offer you resources that will connect you with specific projects, media resources, missionaries and mission work that they are involved in. If you are a part of a large denomination, or one that is strongly mission oriented, they will likely have other helpful mobilization tools and literature.
To find regional and local missions assistance and training opportunities, see Go Connect’s Citywide Mission Networking web pages. jost of these pages are not yet locally “owned” or managed, and though the major mission mobilization ministries are listed, various local mission agency reps and campus mobilizers aren’t posted yet.
Finally, if you are going to see world mission integrated into the mainstream of your church you will need to study the dynamics of how people and organizations change. Learning these dynamics could preserve you from becoming either a casualty (quitting out of frustration) or a liability (damaging the image of missions by impatience and misguided zeal). For a selection of articles and books related to change dynamics, click here.
STEP 3: PRESENT YOUR VISION
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF HELPING YOUR PASTOR AND CHURCH ELDERS TO RECOGNIZE THE PREPARATION, PRAYER AND HEART THAT HAS GONE INTO YOUR PREPARATIONS.
Request a meeting with your pastor and the elders of the church, letting them know beforehand why you are coming.
Make an outline for your presentation and be well versed in what you are going to say. Prepare enough copies for all to use.
Present the training resources you have been studying. Explain how these tools will assist you in training and equipping a GO Team. Ask for a possible initial budget that would allow you the freedom to purchase a set of these same resources for each GO Team member.
Solicit their support and involvement in organizing a GO Team. Seek the possible involvement of one of the elders to serve as liaison between the GO Team and the board of elders.
Set up an accountability structure where you can report on progress and needs once a month and always be prompt and ready to give a quality presentation.
STEP 4: GATHER THE TEAM
REQUEST THE INVOLVEMENT OF ANY PEOPLE VOLUNTEERED OR SUGGESTED BY THE PASTOR.
Suggest that the pastor present your vision to the church and solicit the involvement of potential team members, or, he may give you a platform to solicit involvement yourself. Set up a date and location to meet with those expressing interest.
Set forth the agenda of what you are looking for in a GO Team and garner their commitments.
STEP 5: TRAIN THE TEAM
YOUR FIRST HALF-YEAR SHOULD BE SPENT PRIMARILY IN PRAYER, EDUCATION AND TRAINING.
Moving forward too quickly without adequate preparation of the team could very easily set activity and strategies in motion that will eventally need to be revamped or abandoned.
Create a budget for purchasing the earlier mentioned training materials. Begin to study these together on a regular basis – perhaps a chapter a week (or every two weeks), based on how often you meet together.
Schedule for your Go Team to attend a regional ACMC Conference for foundational Go Team training and workshops on specialized topics and mission strategies.
Bring a mission team training seminar to your church, such as:
Schedule a long-term strategic planning session based on your church’s unique make-up or “DNA” by holding either a Design Your Impact seminar (by DualReach) or by utilizing David Mays’ Developing a Missions Strategy CD.
If your city has a Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course in the spring or fall, do everything you can to get as many of your team to attend as possible. Though Perspectives is ideal, you may also utilize a number of other shorter courses that Go Connect has listed and evaluated for their various strengths and weaknesses.
(Optional) Study the book Serving as Senders (which includes a study guide). This study will later be strongly recommended as a key training tool for helping your church members and small groups to catch a vision for sending. For an online version click here .
Study ACMC’S, Church Mission Policy Handbook together and then begin the process of preparing a policy for your church. (To prevent much revision, policy decisions should be made after the team has taken the mission studies mentioned earlier.)
Provide some form of cross-cultural outreach for the team, such as a Saturday outreach to an ethnic neighborhood nearby. For assistance see: Blessing the Nations Among Us.
Set apart quality time to pray together for your missionary partners, the GO team, your preparatory studies, the pastor, the congregation, the peoples God has brought to your city and the nations.
STEP 6: MOBILIZE THE CHURCH
This section will emerge as a separate tutorial and is not ready for publishing. Suffice it to say, if you've done the preparation steps outlined above, you will be well equipped for mobilizing the members of your church and seeing God's hand at work in answer to your prayers.
| NOTE: This article is the lead article on Go Connect's larger body of helps and resources under the category, "Global Outreach Team" ... which is also under a larger subject grouping called "Mission Mobilization" |
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