I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:6 As disciples, disciple-makers, goers, and team leaders, abiding is central to who we are and what we do. Often as team leaders […]
Category: Team Leader Toolbox
Principles, best practices, and tools for missions team leaders.
Almost nothing has a higher impact on team culture, health, and effectiveness as much as who you recruit to the team. A good team member will be a joy to the team and the leader, and be a strong contributor to the ministry. An unhealthy, underprepared, or poorly fit team member can cause conflict, distraction, […]
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How to Host a Vision Trip
“I don’t want to go to the unreached. But I also can’t ignore this conviction.” In 2012, I (Jenn) had journaled this sentiment over and over again. As we kept pursuing steps to move overseas, fears of permanent commitments and of wasting my life persisted. In the summer of 2012, we took a vision trip […]
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How to Cast Vision
Write the vision, make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. Habakkuk 2:2 I was 20 years old at Urbana 2009. A vision cast from a person I didn’t know, have never talked to, and have never met again, changed the course of my life. I had just gone to Thailand […]
Clarity is kindness when leading a missions team. There are so many transitions, unknowns, and moving parts when new teams launch to the field. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is a document that most missions teams have to provide clarity in the midst of those unknowns. We would define an MOU as a non-binding agreement […]
We’re excited to share that Jenn has taken on a new role as a co-host on the Dare to Multiply Podcast, where we interview movement practitioners and scholars on all topics relating to the multiplication of disciples. On top of our regular blog posts, we will post each episode that Jenn hosts when they are […]
Our first year on the field we established a rhythm of monthly team fellowships. At these fellowship times that Steven and I led, we ate together, worshipped together, and did a quick Bible study. Usually people stuck around afterwards to play board games. Seems simple enough, right? Except that everybody had a problem with team […]
In our previous post, we covered a simple definition of spiritual gifts and some key points about gifts. In this post, we’ll explore why using spiritual gifts is critical on the missions field. As we’ve mentioned in our spiritual warfare posts, our encounters with spiritual warfare during our first short-term trip to Thailand opened our […]
You cannot do a supernatural work without supernatural power. This is one of the lessons that God has impressed on our hearts over the last decade of ministry on the field. Scripture tells us that apart from abiding in Christ we can do nothing, but our pride, our selves still default to being self-dependent in […]
In the last post, I broke down some of the most common ways I have noticed women leaders in ministry tend to self-sabotage. In this post, I will continue with two more examples of internal barriers. If you are a female leader reading, ask the Holy Spirit to help identify areas that he would have […]