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YWAM is starting movements, Pt.3
Kevin Sutter, head of YWAM’s Church Planting Coaches talks about how YWAM is transforming nations through church planting movements. Reprinted from the February 2001 International YWAMer, published in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. Part 3 of 4.
IY: Isn’t it also that a group of believers is like a living organism that can grow on its own, rather than something that needs to be sustained constantly from the outside?
Kevin: Yes. They’ll be learning as they go, by stepping out in faith and seeing how God blesses them through their obedience. In Mongolia, after the YWAMers passed complete leadership of the whole movement on to the Mongolian leaders they discipled, the church began to grow in a new understanding of how to impact their communities, they began feeding programs for street children, a cell group among people that lived in a garbage dump, and they started visiting the prison. This was all their idea. It didn’t come from the foreigners at all. God will speak to them. The Holy Spirit is living within them, they have God’s Word, and they’ll learn with proper training and discipling just like we have learned that we must address the needs of the whole community.
IY: How can YWAM start more church planting movements?
Kevin: Church planting movements do not just happen. You have to be intentional about it. You can’t go into an unreached field and think it’s going to happen just because you’re there. You have to have a clear goal and be able to say something like: “Our goal is to start an indigenous church planting movement among this people group and here’s how we’re going to do it and we’ll evaluate our progress in light of these goals.” It’s really important to be intentional.
IY: The booklet* also talks about response filtering. It says that mass evangelism often goes hand in hand with church planting movements. If the church planter intentionally finds people who are responsive and collects them, this is a quicker way to get it going. Is that something that struck you?
Kevin: If you look at the stories in this booklet, the value of mass evangelism is pretty clear. I was recently talking to a YWAM team leader in a Muslim country. He said there have been evangelistic broadcasts into this country for several years on a particular radio station. A local believer got permission from the government to do a survey and find out what radio stations people listen. If they said they listen to this particular radio station that broadcasts the gospel in their own language, then he would ask if he could talk to the head of the household. Next, he’d ask, “Are you interested in talking to somebody further about Jesus?” This man went to I think it was 20,000 homes—who knows how long it took him to do it—and he compiled a list of heads of Muslim households who would like to talk to somebody more about who Jesus is. There were 6,000! And this in a country we would think of as being resistant to the gospel. Not only are they not resistant, they are open and they wanted somebody to come and talk to them. So now the YWAM team leader has been talking to the local believer who has done this work. The aim is to raise up a team of national believers, putting together maybe teams of two who will start to visit some of these homes and introduce themselves as familiar with this radio station. If they can start to find some of these men who really want to talk about Jesus, that would be the way to start new fellowships right in their homes.
*[Ed.note: The booklet Kevin refers to is “Church Planting Movements,” by David Garrison, published by the Southern Baptists’ International Mission Board. To get a free copy of this booklet, you can order one at: www.imb.org/cpm/default.htm]
(Come back tomorrow for the conclusion of this article about the growing church planing movements in YWAM)
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