“What circle do you want to be in?”
Blank stare.
“…Is there anything keeping you from having a relationship with Jesus today?”
Puzzled facial response. Awkward silence.
I’m already sweating because we’re outdoors on a Thai university campus, but now the sweat has become a cold sweat because of how awkward this moment is.
My Thai Christian friend, Yai*, saves the day. He breaks the awkwardness by changing the topic and redirecting it elsewhere.
We’re in year 3 of being in Thailand. We’ve learned language, prayed, built relationships with local Thai churches, and a local church has even entrusted us with a group of college students to train in disciple-making. So we train on Sundays, and we go out on the campus 2-3 times a week to try sharing with other students.
Since we had been trained in the States in 3 Circles and used it a bunch, we decided to try 3 Circles as our gospel sharing tool. 3 times a week, with 15-20 students a time, over the course of the entire semester. We probably tried 3 Circles 500+ times over a few months.
Blank stares. Puzzled facial responses. Awkward silences.
After this latest encounter, I asked Yai: “3 Circles isn’t a very good tool for sharing with Thais, is it?”
I expected an indirect, polite answer, but Yai answered flatly, “No.”
Back to the drawing board.
One of the things that nobody really tells you before you launch overseas to try and catalyze movements is how much curriculum development there is! Out of our inexperience, we simply try what we’ve learned before or seen work elsewhere – which is a good place to start. But when something doesn’t work, we get frustrated or give up. It’s happened to us personally, to our teammates, and to countless other movement practitioners around the world.
We hear it all the time: “I’ve done everything they told me to do and nothing is working!”
The first response we should have when we’re hitting barriers to multiplication is to pray. Bring it to the Lord, and listen to what He has to say.
Beyond that, there are some best practices for how you can discern what tools and training to use or even create for your ministry context. In this post, we’ll address how you can choose the tools and training that have the best chance to bear fruit in your context, and how to develop new curriculum and tools for specific topics that your ministry encounters.
Be a Learner
In order to have wisdom for discerning the right tools, we need to be learners. This is a critical characteristic for movement practitioners – be constantly learning. Since the missions field is a pioneering environment, most times there will not be a clear instruction manual for how to multiply disciples and churches! Movement catalyzers need to be critical thinkers and innovators who fail forward through trial and error. But most importantly, they need to be able to learn from many different sources in search of approaches that have a chance to be effective, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Learn from Scripture. If we’re trying to catalyze among the unreached equipped primarily with movement training and tools, we’ll be ridiculously shorthanded. Ultimately, Scripture is our guide for life and ministry. We continue to be surprised how underprepared people are in regards to knowing the Word, as 2 Timothy 3 tells us that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” All of Scripture is useful to equip us for every good work!
Whether it’s Bible reading plans, deep verse-by-verse study, topical or word studies, Old or New Testament survey classes, and even systematic or biblical theology training – learn the Word! Learn the Bible in many different ways, from many different perspectives, and consider how it applies not only to your life but to your ministry context. The Holy Spirit will reveal things from Scripture that we’re missing that could help us more effectively make disciples!
Learn movement principles. Ultimately, movement principles are derived from, and consistent with Scripture. But they help highlight some things that are standard across movements. You can use Garrison’s 10 elements, 12 Principles in Disciple Making Movements, Four Fields Framework, etc.
If we only know the applications without the principles, we won’t understand the “why” behind what we’re doing, and therefore won’t be able to diagnose what is or isn’t working. One of the pitfalls we hear from movement practitioners just starting is: “this tool worked there so it will work here.” While it’s good to learn movement practices and tools from others who have seen success, we should have an approach of experimenting with those tools in our context, not just blindly assuming they’ll work. Having a foundation of Scripture and understanding movement principles will help practitioners discern the right tools and what they’re trying to accomplish.
For example, we tried 3 Circles on the Thai college campuses because that’s what we were trained in. But the underlying biblical/movement principle is that we need to sow broadly (2 Cor. 9:6, Matthew 13:3-8). Training disciples with a simple, reproducible tool will help them to sow broadly. But in our situation, 3 Circles is not the only tool that can help us with that.
Learn a variety of tools. I’m of the belief that stealing a tool is preferable to creating one. While I’m not coming in with the assumption that one specific tool must work in my context, I am going to learn all the different gospel tools available in movement training – 3 Circles, shema statements, prayer for needs, etc. – in order to have more options for what I can experiment with in my context.
We see some movement practitioners who are overly committed to “their methodology,” be it 4 Fields, DMM, T4T, or something else. We’ve learned from all these different movement approaches and integrate tools from them all in our work in Thailand. I don’t care about whatever brand of movement working in Thailand, I care that disciples and churches are multiplied by the Spirit’s power. In all these approaches, we see that their principles are largely the same, but there are pros and cons to the tools for specific contexts. This requires discernment to know how to choose, but we’re limited if we aren’t willing to learn many different tools.
Learn language, culture, and worldview. As a goer, you’ll never be an insider in the culture. It’s a worthwhile endeavor to learn as much as you can about the language, culture, and worldview in order to best think critically about how to reach a certain people or place.
Many of you have learned about guilt-innocence, fear-power, and shame-innocence worldviews. The Bridge Illustration is an incredibly effective tool in guilt-innocence cultures, but largely ineffective for fear-power worldviews, like Thailand. So when our team was discerning what gospel tool to use, we quickly eliminated the Bridge for our context. Learning at least some basics about the local culture and worldview can at least inform your discernment process about tools.
After asking my friend Yai* about why the 3 Circles tool was ineffective, he had some very helpful insights. Some of the components of the 3 Circles tool are completely foreign to a Thai worldview like a monotheistic God that created the world or the concept of sin. If we hadn’t understood how to apply the biblical and movement principles to our specific context, with the help of a local partner, we would still be trying to shove a certain “circle” tool in the “square” context hole, to middling impact.
Obviously you want to learn as much as you can before you launch to the field, but it doesn’t stop there. As you’re on the field and trying to catalyze, continue to read books, attend trainings, talk to movement coaches, listen to podcasts, and even visit movements if it’s possible. You never know what the Spirit will reveal to you that leads to breakthrough!
Choosing Tools
So now that we’ve established that you’re a lifelong learner with a foundation of biblical understanding, movement principles, various tools, and some competency around your local culture and worldview, how do you choose an effective tool?
Having a ministry framework to guide your process is greatly beneficial for you as you consider tools, and it will help your local partners and their disciples as well. Many people use the 4 Fields framework, and in Thailand we use the Multiplication Cycle.
- Assemble your tools. As you’ve learned from different approaches, each method will have its own tools for the various stages of the multiplication process. For example, a key component in movements is abundant gospel sowing. So “steal” your tools from all the different approaches – the closer to your context the better. Gospel tools include 411, 3 Circles, Bridge, shema, testimony, creation to Christ, etc. This is your starting point.
- Eliminate based on what you know. As you’ve learned culture, worldview can be one consideration when picking tools. For a fear-power worldview, the Bridge doesn’t make much sense, so that one’s off the table. Another consideration is simplicity and reproducibility. For us, training a Thai believer to share a creation to Christ gospel tool to Buddhist background people did not seem simple. So that one was put to the side. Language and literacy is another factor to gauge; certain cultures will need gospel tools that are oral as opposed to reading-focused.
- Find a national or near-culture partner. We have an entire Be Barnabas series that explains how you can find a local partner. There’s many advantages to this, especially in discerning and creating tools, training, and curriculum. Your local partner will understand the culture and worldview much more than you will. You bring some of the outside perspective and training from movement principles, and they help make the final decision about applications.
- Train/Explain the tool and its pros and cons. One of the steps in the process of finding the right national partner is to train them in some movement principles and practices. Once they’ve had some introductory understanding of movement, you can get their help in choosing effective tools. If you’ve narrowed down your list of tools to the ones you think are most likely to work, you can train your local partner in them. Explain the pros and cons to the tools – some may be more simple or more complicated, some might fit the worldview better, some might be easier to train.
- Field test hundreds of times before formalizing. Once you’ve talked through the tool with a local partner, go out and try it! Train other believers in it, and regularly engage in the harvest. When you meet to report, debrief what went well and what didn’t work. Make adjustments as necessary. We wouldn’t assume that a tool works or doesn’t work until we’ve tried it at least 200 times. Even better, try the tool in different areas (rural vs. urban), with different socioeconomic groups, etc. The more information you can gather, the better you can make a decision. You could even A/B test one tool with a certain group you’ve trained, and a different tool with a second group.
- Continue in the process or go back to the drawing board. If the tool is bearing fruit, wonderful! After sharing the gospel you have new disciples, and you need to move forward in the process to figure out a discipleship process. Or, if a tool isn’t working well after a couple hundred tries, debrief with your national partner and field test a different tool.
Creating Tools
As I said above, I’d rather steal than create a tool – someone has tried it before and it’s worth experimenting with it in my context as long as I’ve thought critically about its pros and cons in our culture.
But sometimes, using tools from other trainings or contexts won’t work, and you’ll have to create one!
First, in field testing different tools, make sure you’re crystallizing and writing down what you’re learning about what’s working or not working with those tools. Try adjusting certain aspects, possibly with simpler language, or tweaks to areas that aren’t being received well. If that doesn’t work, it might be time to create a tool.
Another situation where you might be creating curriculum is when you run into certain issues in your ministry where you’re not aware of any tools from other trainings that address that topic. For example, in Thailand, one specific discipleship issue for new believers is what to do with idols and spirit houses in their home. We asked mentors and friends from various movement approaches if they had any Bible study sets around this, and couldn’t find anything. So we had to create one.
- Use Discovery Bible Study as a starting point. Most of our tools begin as simple Discovery Bible Studies. It’s the engine for our discipleship process that leads smoothly into becoming a house church. For example, our new believer discipleship lesson set is largely done in a discovery approach, so further trainings or lesson sets are received naturally in a similar format.
- Find relevant bible passages. We’ll start by finding several bible passages that address the topic. Biblegateway.com, Bible concordances, or simply just googling can help you find these passages. But it’s difficult to be able to discern if the passage is appropriate for the topic you’re trying to address without knowing and studying the Word!
- Form simple questions that draw out simple answers. After you assemble the bible passages, form simple questions that can draw out simple answers from Scripture. Keep in mind that the training needs to be simple enough for a new believer to understand, obey, and reproduce. We’d recommend passages where the answer is explicitly stated in a verse, not something that requires outside understanding or multiple steps to draw a conclusion.
For example, 1 Corinthians 10:19-20 says in very clear terms that sacrificing to idols is an “offer to demons not to God.” It’s not an abstract answer but a clear and concrete one.
So our question to draw out that answer might simply be – “What does this passage teach us about idols?” Of course, the simplest questions would just be the standard Discovery Bible Study questions like “what does this teach us about God? What does this teach us about man?” Many times, these questions still work effectively. But if you are trying to develop a focused curriculum around a certain topic, asking the question, “What does this teach us about [topic]?” is effective and simple!
- Provide a “suggested” obedience step as an example. Lastly, in paralleling Discovery Bible studies, the final question is – “how do we obey or change our lives according to what we’ve learned?” We like to start with an open-ended question to allow the Spirit to work in the heart of the new disciple and help them own their obedience step. But in certain situations, we’ll add a “suggested” obedience step if they can’t generate one on their own that provides a concrete example to consider.
Using this simple process, we’ve developed several tools and lesson sets on numerous topics, including marriage/family, spiritual warfare, idols, prayer and intercession, shepherding, ministry coaching, and many others. And we run our tools through the same process as above – filtering it through culture, collaborating with our national partners, and field testing the tool before finalizing.
Our main warning in curriculum development is this: KEEP. IT. SIMPLE.
As a cross-cultural worker, you’ve likely absorbed an abundance of Christian and ministry content over your lifetime, and so we naturally can make things overcomplicated in pursuit of creating a “powerful” tool. But the number one mistake we can make in developing curriculum is overcomplicating it. When we finish creating lessons, it should feel almost painfully simple. This allows new believers, regardless of education level or Christian resource exposure, to receive from the Word with the help of the Holy Spirit. And perhaps even more importantly, it allows them to reproduce it to their disciples. KEEP IT SIMPLE.
Disciples Not Converts
We see two pitfalls in regards to cross-cultural workers and curriculum development. APE-type giftings (apostolic, prophet, evangelists) want to “do the work” and might find curriculum development as boring or unnecessary. To these we say – writing things down helps multiplication. There’s a reason why Paul spent so much time writing!
To the ST-type giftings (shepherd/teacher) who enjoy teaching from the Word, we’ll caution that creating curriculum for the sake of it without practical engagement and elevating simplicity will not lead to multiplication. Be on the ground with local partners and in the harvest to see what is actually needed and learn how curriculum can be most effective!
Catalyzing movements is not simply about seeing many people hear the gospel and come to faith in Jesus, though it absolutely starts with that. The Great Commission calls us to make disciples, not converts! As outsiders playing a Barnabas role, one of the great contributions we can have is to provide helpful tools and lesson sets that develop disciples to obey the Word and multiply.