I: Be Barnabas – Intro + Mint’s Story
II: Why Be Barnabas?
III: Who was Barnabas from the Bible?
IV: Be Barnabas – What is a NAV?

V: Be Barnabas – How to Find a NAV?

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In our previous post, we introduced how a goer might start the process of networking and finding potential NAVs to partner with. Many times, goers will have some initial connections but find themselves stuck with the question – “How do I know who I should spend time with?”

So much of it is listening to the Holy Spirit about who we should spend our time with, but in this post we’ll share a process that our team created to filter through contacts, develop relational trust, and eventually partner closely with multiple different NAVs in our country towards catalyzing movements.

NAV Partnership Process and Scoreboard

As our team started networking with different national leaders, as well as asking each one if they could recommend 5 others to meet with, our list of potential NAVs quickly ballooned to 20+ leaders. And we were asking the question above – who do we spend time with? Who are the people that God has prepared to multiply and that we should invest in? We needed some kind of way to evaluate our fit with each of these leaders, and a process to narrow down who we should eventually partner with.

The image above is of the NAV Partnership Process Scoreboard. You can download the entire template with this link and start filling it in with your contacts. This is a great process to go through together with your teammates as well to share with them which leads you all have. Some of the goal-setting language is from the 4 Disciplines of Execution, which basically helps you to focus in on a goal to have the highest impact, and set up some processes around it to help you be accountable to the goal you’ve set. If this kind of thing floats your boat, there’s a shorter book summary you can read here, or just buy the book, but it’s not necessary to understand the NAV Partnership Process.

The process follows three stages, from bottom to top.

Identify Stage

The Identify Stage is largely where you’ll network with leaders and have initial conversations asking questions like we mention in the “How to Find a NAV” post. The three steps include:

1. We know each other – whether from cold contact at a church or an introduction from a mutual connection, the local leader knows your name and you have each other’s phone numbers, hopefully with a time to meet together in the near future. There might be certain leaders who you know about but you’ve never met, but we’d have a hard time counting them among our potential NAVs list if we’ve never even met them and they don’t know who we are!
   
2. Two-way vision cast – You’ve asked the all-important question, “What is the vision God has given you?” and have heard them share. And you’ve also been able to share about who you are, why you’re there, and at least some about your heart for seeing multiplication happen.
   
3. Fulfills NAV qualifications – this may take several meetings to discover and is somewhat subjective to your personal evaluation of each of these qualities. We expanded on what most of these mean in the “What is a NAV” post, but ultimately, it will be up to your insight, discussing with teammates and coaches, and listening to the Holy Spirit to decide if these potential NAVs fulfill the qualifications. And we’ll often use a red-yellow-green framework in evaluating, meaning green is that they clearly fit that quality, yellow is “we don’t know yet”, and red is a clear barrier.

A couple of things to note about evaluating someone’s NAV qualifications: don’t be too narrow in your interpretation of these qualities and cross someone out too quickly. We’ve given some short example stories of how different goers have found their NAV partners, and hopefully you’ve gleaned that partnership with a NAV can happen in a lot of different and unexpected ways. For example, some goers we’ve coached have initially excluded certain leaders because it wasn’t immediately clear that they were excited about CPM methodology. However, those national leaders had a desire to make disciples and plant churches. Be patient! Giving that vision for multiplication may be exactly the thing that God has you there to help them with! CPM approaches could be a relatively new idea for some leaders. If they are a clear red and have barriers to partnership in a certain area, then mark them as such, but it can take time to get to know someone’s heart after that initial meeting, which is why we encourage you to take this as a process.

On that note, a newer leader could also emerge as a NAV as you spend time with them. Even if they don’t initially have a big vision but have some outward focus, they could have their vision and faith stretched as you spend time training them and showing them God’s heart from the Bible. Or, they might have some dormant apostolic giftings that aren’t apparent and will come out when given an opportunity to enter the harvest and pioneer some new works.

On the flip side, be discerning with leaders who seemingly say all the right things initially. More than a few times, we meet charismatic leaders that are excited about multiplication, that seem excited to partner with us, and want to introduce us to a lot of people. But as we invite them to be trained or to implement some movement tools, they end up not actually wanting to for whatever reason. Just like in the Bible, sometimes God brings an amazing leader out of nowhere, and those that look shiny and charismatic have different barriers that keep them from embracing multiplication. As you meet people, continue to listen to the Holy Spirit’s guidance!

Access vs. Implementation NAVs

In the Identify Stage is also where we’ll mention that we will distinguish between two different types of NAVs – access NAVs and implementation NAVs.

As our team was looking for national leaders that had these qualifications, we started running into two different types of leaders that both fulfilled the NAV qualities but looked very different and were able to help us in different ways.

An Access NAV is someone who fulfills the NAV qualifications and is excited about the vision of multiplication, but may be too busy with current leadership and ministry responsibilities to begin directly implementing CPM tools. However, they will have influence over a large network and give you access to be able to train those under them. They are the gatekeepers who open the door to networks of believers, where you can begin training and looking for the Implementation NAVs that will practically engage with catalyzing multiplication. Many times, these access NAVs will be high-level leaders and pastors over a large church or a large ministry, be great visionaries and recruiters, and can be more obviously charismatic and experienced leaders. These types of leaders are essential to build relational trust with, as open doors from them greatly increases the trust you have with those you’re training and even provides a layer of filtering / recruiting from their influence that you wouldn’t otherwise have.

An Implementation NAV is a NAV who is willing to start implementing CPM tools and training, both personally and with those that they lead. They will not only come to a training, but begin to enter the harvest, share the gospel, make disciples, and plant churches. Sometimes these are newer or under utilized leaders who have the vision and faith to multiply, but have not yet stepped into a position with significant influence or have not yet been equipped to make disciples and multiply. Ultimately, you’re looking to find these Implementation NAVs who will dive in and do the work of multiplying disciples and churches!

As an example, the church network that we partner with has both of these types of leaders in different roles. After spending the first few years doing some simple disciple-making trainings with college students and casting vision with leaders, we finally met the head of church planting over their network, Pastor W. Since we had spent the time and relational investment gaining trust with other leaders in the church, we established trust quickly with Pastor W.

Pastor W had been in church planting ministry for longer than we had been alive, and he famously would run his cars into the ground and have to switch cars once every two years because of how often he would drive around rural areas visiting different church planters and church plants. He told us, “I know how to plant churches, and I know how to disciple people and send them out. But I don’t know how to get them to disciple others! In 30 years of church planting, very few of my church plants have been able to plant another church.” He had the vision, the gifting, and the experience that far surpassed anything our team could ever hope to have, but our small role was to bring some simple, biblical tools and come alongside Pastor W and the faithful church planters in his network.

After casting vision for CPM, Pastor W was excited and immediately gave our team access to two of his best church planters who he said we should start piloting with. One of those was Mint, who was a pretty new church planter but had started as the church secretary! We share more about Mint’s story in our first Be Barnabas post. Initially, it wasn’t clear that Mint was a NAV, but Pastor W was clearly an access NAV and we were excited to start piloting CPM implementation in rural areas. But as Mint’s fruitfulness went from one church of 15 people to 5 house churches of 80 people in 6 months, we started to realize that she was an implementation NAV! As we had the opportunity to empower her and cast vision, the latent apostolic giftings and big vision that the Lord had given her had an opportunity to come to the surface! Fast forward a few more years and she is currently the regional leader of church planting over the least reached region of Thailand, and has discipled and sent out church planting teams to 11 other provinces!

In short, both access NAVs and implementation NAVs are important. An access NAV gives you access to a group of believers to train, and an implementation NAV will begin practically using CPM tools to catalyze a movement.

Develop Stage

After the initial Identify Stage, you want to continue investing time and getting to know these potential NAVs in the Develop Stage, where you’re developing trust and relationship and trying to identify the best candidates to partner with. You may not know if a potential NAV fulfills the qualities you’re looking for until late into the Develop Stage.

4. Two-way ministry involvement – this simply means that they’ve come to a ministry thing that you’re doing, and you’ve gone to a ministry thing that they run. For you, it could be as simple as attending the church service or a small group at their church. For the potential NAVs, it would be something like coming to a training you’re running, or going out into the harvest together. This step is important because it helps you see if there’s actual commitment to multiplication in what they do in these ministry settings, as opposed to potentially saying the ‘right things’ in a coffee meeting but not being willing to implement.
   
5. Willing to pilot with us – If you’re 80%+ sure that they fulfill the NAV qualifications, you’ve prayed and listened to the Holy Spirit, and you’ve been in some ministry settings with them, then you can offer to run a pilot training with them and / or the people in their network. We highly recommend a pilot training or even a series of pilot trainings, because this is truly where you’ll be able to see if this NAV or their network is the right fit to partner with. If there’s significant buy-in, engagement in the harvest, and even initial multiplication fruit, you know it’s a good sign that they are the people you’re supposed to work with! If there are significant barriers, then at the end of the pilot, you can have an honest conversation with the leader about whether it’s right to continue on or not. In this step, you should offer a pilot training, explain to the leader what the training will look like, how long it will go and how often you will train, and what kind of expectations you’re expecting from the group that’s being trained (e.g. enter the harvest x amount of times, try to obey the goals that are set from the training, etc.). For our team, we offer a pilot of 4 trainings that happen once a month, that each last about 3-6 hours depending on the context:
   • Training 1 – God’s Heart for Multiplication (Matthew 28), Multiplication Cycle, Entry (Luke 10), Simple Sharing Tool (411)
   • Training 2 – Abide in Christ, How to lead someone to faith, Discovery Bible Group Tool
   • Training 3 – Review, New Believer Discipleship, Baptism Tool
   • Training 4 – Simple House Church Training, Team Meeting (3/3s), Vision for Multiplication

This training outline is where we’ve landed after probably hundreds of trainings over the last several years, and has gone through a lot of different innovations from the amount of time (over 10 or 12 weeks vs. once a month), trainings in an afternoon vs. a 3-day training camp that includes going out into the harvest, and many different topics! Figure out what works for you, but in general, it’s important to start with a vision for multiplication and tools for entering the harvest and sharing. From there, it depends on what the Lord decides to do with the group! If you’re interested in taking any of our training or tools to use in your context, please reach out and let us know at contact@missionsleaders.com! There’s also a ton of other CPM tools available, some of which you can see on our Resources page under CPM.

6. “Bought-in” and willing to partner – After the pilot trainings, it should be pretty clear whether this is a good group to partner with and continue training. Even if there isn’t a lot of fruit, you can usually tell if the group is excited to make disciples and obeying, or if there’s a lot of push-back and it may be time to move on for now. Part of it is just practical – if you’ve given them initial training and they haven’t done anything with it, it doesn’t make sense to train them with tools further in the process. If they’ve tried things and they’re not effective, then it’s a good idea for you to bring different tools and approaches to try to address these barriers.

Partnership Stage

Finally, after you’ve completed the pilot trainings and evaluated them with the leader, you can mutually decide to partner together towards catalyzing multiplication! The entire NAV Partnership Process will take more time in the initial stages of your ministry, especially as you’re continuing to improve in language and learn cultural cues. Again, the timing of things is dependent on the Holy Spirit – you could meet your key partner in one of your first meetings, or it may take several years of training and networking to meet the right partner. But hopefully, this process gives you and your team some clear focus and potential steps to find and filter for a partner.

As you find an initial NAV to partner with, hopefully as you invest time with them, your relationship and trust with them and your vision for multiplication will grow! Especially as they begin to see fruit, they will connect you with other leaders and networks and you’ll operate out of the trust they give to you through that connection. The process of subsequent trainings and partnerships will probably go faster.

To answer the question at the beginning – “how do I know who I should spend time with?” – we asked other experienced movement practitioners this same question almost every time we had an opportunity. This is an important question because as a movement practitioner your most limited resource is your time.

One experienced worker told us, at the beginning, as you network with a lot of people, be willing to spend at least some time with anyone who would obey something. Even if that was as simple as sharing a testimony, or obeying an “I Will” statement from reading the Bible, some sign of obedience meant that it was worth it to explore if they were the Faithful, Available, Teachable (FAT) type of person that he should invest in. In my opinion, a new believer that is FAT and obedient to the Word is honestly preferable to a charismatic leader that says all the right things but isn’t willing to do anything.

As people see more fruit and multiplication moves forward, you should focus your time on the most fruitful while being willing to help everyone else. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive, as many times leaders tend to want to help the lowest common denominator and don’t give the fruitful few the help that they need. Chapter 1 of the classic book, Master Plan of Evangelism elaborates on this, that Jesus selected from his followers the 12 Apostles (Mark 6:13-17), and even within them spent focused time on the three, Peter, James, and John. As Coleman points out, “Jesus devoted most of His remaining life on earth to these few disciples. He literally staked His whole ministry upon them.”

All it takes is finding one faithful National Apostolic Visionary leader that God has prepared in order to literally change the eternal trajectory of an unreached people or place. Are you willing to invest the time, effort, and servant-hearted posture to find these men and women that God has prepared? Even if it takes years of time, countless coffee meetings, and dozens or even hundreds of trainings and times modeling going out in the harvest to find this leader, will we stake our whole ministry on a single NAV that God wants to use to catalyze a movement?

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Now that we have learned some principles from Barnabas and know what we’re looking for in a National Apostolic Visionary (NAV), how do we find one? From here, we’ll start to get into the practical steps of what you might do to filter for and find a NAV to partner with in pursuing movements.

The process will generally follow this order, but different things can happen simultaneously or there might be some back and forth. CPM methods are often presented as a step-by-step manual for the sake of clarity and confidence, which is important, but the reality is that any kind of ministry – especially CPM – is messy, random, and frequently not what you expect or plan!

So you’re bought in to pursuing CPMs among the unreached, you have an understanding of CPM methodology and have received some training, and you’re on board with a ‘Be Barnabas’ approach of finding a NAV to partner with in catalyzing movements. Now what do you do?

Learn language and culture

To us, this is still an essential component for goers that want to live and serve among the unreached! In a few places in the 10/40 window, English may be commonly used, or perhaps working through translators is a standard method of ministry. For most goers, this won’t even be an option and learning language will be a necessity. Although there are benefits to the translator approach (e.g. don’t have to spend time learning language before entering into ministry, automatically have an insider to help train and hopefully develop as a leader), there are also shortcomings and limits (e.g. immediately brings a paternalistic relationship / power dynamic as you are the one paying the translator, limits your understanding of what’s happening in the other language and even in cultural interactions). 

Even if working through a translator might be a faster way to get started in ministry, our personal experience is that it can really help in a partnering relationship to speak the heart language of your partner. Conversely, not speaking the heart language can potentially become a limiter over time. It’s a way we can serve our local friends by not making them speak our heart language at the cost of their discomfort, as we are there in a Barnabas role to support and encourage them. Additionally, language learning leads to cultural learning, as deeper concepts relating to life, spirituality, family, and ministry will not directly translate to English and a Western worldview. 

We’ve heard from more than a few goers about the confusion that can happen in working through translators. CPM practitioners will often hear reports through translation that don’t line up with what is being reported in the local language. Sometimes it’s an unintentional translation mistake, but other times a paternalistic situation or cultural components might cause a local partner to over or under report or otherwise miscommunicate for the sake of saving face with the outsider who is paying them.

There’s an abundance of other reasons to learn the local language, including your own thriving in the culture, the ability to deepen in relationship and fellowship with local believers including your partners, and at least some ability to help national partners contextualize tools and lessons used in ministry.

This does not mean that you cannot engage in the process of connecting with potential NAVs until you’ve mastered language! For local leaders that do speak English or that you can fumble through conversations with basic language, you can still spend time connecting and networking. Meeting leaders is also a great way to stretch your language learning and motivate yourself to improve by preparing for those types of meetings in a different language.

Network With Leaders

Whether you’re starting to learn language and need to have initial conversations in English, or you’re advanced in language and able to communicate fluently, the next step is to network with many national or near culture leaders. These can be local pastors, ministry leaders, or lay leaders, but the emphasis is on connecting with leader-types, as we are looking for NAVs! These leaders might be potential NAVs themselves, or might connect you to other leaders who are NAVs.

How do you meet these local leaders? This can range from cold-contact showing up at a church (if possible) to having other expat missionaries connect you with local believers. Conferences and trainings can be places to meet many leaders in one place. One CPM practitioner we know moved to a new area and decided to contact nearly 200 churches on facebook in his region with a simple message about desiring to learn from their church about what they do in disciple making. In Thailand, we had a long-time missionary connect us with two main churches when we asked, “Who has a vision for disciple-making and church planting? Could we learn from them?” These are still our team’s main two partners after 9 years!

Obviously, if you’re in a creative-access country, you’ll need to be much more discerning in how you meet these local leaders, for the sake of their safety. Additionally, there will be areas in the 10/40 window that have a very low number of local believers, but very few countries that will have none at all. You could potentially find near culture believers from a nearby country in the region that has a larger number of believers and more available access to them. As the world is increasingly globalized and peoples move from place to place, mobilizing near culture believers to some of the least reached places could be an extremely effective approach, or at least likely to be more effective than Westerners entering these closed countries. Whatever your situation, think creatively about how to connect with national or near-culture leaders. Of course more connections is a bigger pool of leaders to filter, but remember – you only need to find 1 NAV, one ‘Paul’ in order to start a movement! Even finding one or two local believers to partner together with in the work can greatly increase your effectiveness.

When you get connected with these leaders, have a posture like Barnabas! Humble, others-focused, serving. If you’re younger or newer to a country, you can lead with, “I’ve heard amazing things about your church or ministry – I would love to buy you a coffee and hear your story and learn from you!”

Once you’ve secured a meeting with them, here are some things you can do during that meeting. This is just an outline, so follow the Holy Spirit’s guiding! You’re looking to see if that leader has the characteristics of a potential NAV, but in particular you’re looking for a vision to make disciples or plant churches. Even if the other characteristics are not apparent or possibly have yet to emerge, it’s likely that a leader with outward vision can connect you to other outward-focused leaders that they know.

Ask Questions to Learn About Them and Their Vision

After short personal questions and introductions, we almost always lead with the question, “What is the vision that God has given you?” One pastor that we asked this question to in southern Thailand said, “I’ve met many missionaries, and you are the first to ask me what vision God has given me. They normally want me to join them in their vision!” It may come out of a personal excitement or vision for CPM that God has given them, but many earnest missionaries may lead with sharing their own vision instead of coming in with an empowering approach. This can result in national leaders not wanting to work with us! 

We’re looking for outward focused ministry visions, not just a desire to add to their own church or ministry. For this particular pastor, he said, “I want to see a church planted in every province in southern Thailand – I believe God has given me the responsibility to see the gospel go to all these places!” Good start! Another Muslim-background believer (MBB) NAV that we partner with said, “I want to see 1 million Muslims come to faith in my lifetime!”

When we asked this question to the head church planting pastor of the network we partner with, he literally pulled out a multiplication table from his pocket. The Lord had given him a vision for multiplication to see 33,000 churches planted throughout Thailand. For context, there’s only about 5000 churches currently in the country. All of these are great examples of potential NAVs with big vision! Some of these leaders with great vision ended up being ready to receive training and help towards catalyzing CPM, and others decided to pursue different paths. That’s fine and not every leader with a big vision will end up being someone you partner with. But having externally focused vision for God’s glory – in evangelism, making disciples, multiplying churches, or reaching peoples and places – is a necessary component that we’re looking for during this investigation process.

Other questions you can ask include how they came to faith, about their current church or ministry’s history or current goals, asking about their family or hometown, or about a mutual connection that you have. In general you’re trying to learn how God is moving in their lives, get to know them in general, and build rapport and relational trust along with discerning if they have an externally focused vision.

One more note about the Barnabas approach is that our personal conviction is to honor the local church and generally try to preserve unity with other Christian leaders, even if we don’t end up partnering with them. Other leaders have legitimate and wonderful ministry visions from God that might be to rescue women in sex trafficking, start schools for marginalized children, develop online ministries, raise up more worship leaders, or any variety of visions, and these are all great! We don’t chastise or shame them for goals that God has given them. But we are looking for these apostolic type leaders that want to explicitly pursue the Great Commission, who have a Romans 15 vision to bring the gospel where it is not known. Again, for earnest and apostolic missionaries who are excited about CPM, we can sometimes shoot ourselves in the foot by perhaps unintentionally shaming other leaders that don’t have a similar vision to us. But as 1 Corinthians 12 tells us, no part of the body can say we have no need for other parts. And that the local church is the bride of Christ who is to be cherished (Eph. 5:29-30). We see in Scripture and we find in our experience that honoring all the parts of the body, including the traditional or ‘legacy’ local church results in a good reputation with leaders that leads to opportunities to partner with others. In short, don’t burn bridges! We’ll have a future post about how to “speak church” and communicate in an honoring way with leaders in the local church about CPM.

Share About Yourself and Vision Cast for Movements

While every conversation will be different, we’d encourage you to mostly ask questions, listen, and learn from potential leaders, at least for the first couple of meetings. However, you should share at least some about who you are, what God has called you to, and your vision for movements! In vision casting, we recommend that you listen well in order to shape your vision cast to the things you hear that they are passionate about. If they’re passionate about sharing the gospel, vision cast about how CPM helps believers sow broadly. If they’re passionate about raising up leaders, share about CPM is focused on empowering and developing lay leaders. After hearing their vision, we will ask a follow up question – what’s your approach or plan to get to that vision? How is it going? From their answers, we are looking for a felt need that we can meet with CPM training.

As we mentioned in the ‘Why Be Barnabas’ post, many times as believers from the West we have a low credibility in evangelism, but a high credibility to other believers as a trainer or leader. Our experience among Thai believers is that they are drawn towards our story of how God called us to be a part of the Great Commission – leaving our families, jobs, homes to obey God and see the gospel go to every people. Share your story!

Also share briefly about movements and gauge their response. As you hear about what their felt needs are in pursuing the vision God has given them, you can share about what you’ve learned in Scripture about multiplication and about what God is doing around the world in movements. 

As a reminder, when we meet with these potential NAVs, we are looking to see if they fulfill all or at least some of the NAV Definition: a National Apostolic Visionary who is willing to be flexible in their methodology and is surrendered to God. If we meet a leader with big vision who is a die-hard Alpha Course or G12 advocate, they might not be a great fit yet to partner with. If we meet a leader who has external vision and is open in methodology but he and the people in his church are too consumed with executing the Sunday worship service to have time for evangelism and disciple-making, we’ll keep the relationship with them but we might spend more time with other leaders who are more open.

As an example, here are some points that we’ll share in the vision casting component:

• Share briefly about how God called us to go overseas.
• Emphasize that we believe that Thai believers are the ones that will be best in reaching their own people, and that we believe our role is to support and come behind them.
• Introduce movements: “Before we moved to Thailand, we learned about an amazing thing that is happening all around the world through multiplication called Church Planting Movements. It follows the principles from Jesus’ ministry and the book of Acts, and it’s bearing much fruit in many different places around the world.” Here we’ll share a brief story of some movements that we know and the impact that it’s having in multiplying disciples and churches.
• Explain that we have some simple and Bible-focused training to help believers make disciples and plant churches in a simple, reproducible way.
• “Would this be something you’re interested in?” And gauge their response!
• If they want to learn more, we might draw a framework of the process and explain it in more detail – we use a framework called the Multiplication Cycle, and others might use Four Fields.

Connect with Other Leaders in Their Network

After hearing from them and vision casting, we’ll ask – “Who are 5 other leaders that you know who have a vision to multiply and might be interested in this? We would love to connect with them and learn from them as well.” After a few meetings, hopefully you will have a potential NAVs list of one or two dozen people to meet!

Build Relational Trust

A key learning we’ve discovered in trying to find and develop relationships with NAVs is that Trust = Relationship + Credibility. When we find a potential NAV who we think is someone that we could partner with, we want to build enough trust with them (in both directions – us trusting them and them trusting us) to engage in a new type of ministry and be given the opportunity to train them and their people. If you have high credibility, whether from previous movement experience, seminary degrees, or even just being older and experienced, you don’t need to build as much relationship. If you have low credibility, you’ll need to spend more time and effort to build relationship with these leaders to gain their trust. For many new goers to the field, you’ll likely have low credibility, so be willing to build relationship through spending time with these leaders and their people or church, through humility in your approach, and through serving like Barnabas! 

In the early days of trying to build trust with our current partners, we were 25 year olds who didn’t have seminary degrees and hadn’t seen much movement fruit, so we spent significant time as learners and in relationship building. This was primarily during our language learning season and according to people’s bandwidth, but we attended small groups, helped serve in various ministries in the church, and had a lot of meetings (and hundreds of texts!) with leaders to learn and vision cast. Over time, as our partners have seen fruit, we are increasingly invited and requested to meet with other local leaders who are hearing about what God is doing through our partners. Thai leaders will now quickly invite us to train them and we have to be discerning about how we spend our time, which is a good problem to have! As our credibility has gone up, mainly through our partners, other leaders are quick to trust us.

As an example of building relationship to gain trust, we heard a story of one CPM practitioner who knew of a national ministry leader that oversaw 400 church planters in India. Over a span of 10 years, whenever he was in this national leader’s city, he would ask for a meeting and ask how he could help. He would assist with various needs like providing educational materials, medical supplies, or Bibles, but whenever they met, this goer would have a posture of humility and heart to serve, knowing that this church planting ministry leader was clearly a NAV. After nearly 10 years, the national leader asked, “I know you want to be involved in church planting but you have never planted a church. How do you think you could help me?” The goer replied, “We have some simple methods for church planting we’d like to try – give us your newest, most immature, most troublesome church planter and let us try partnering with him for 18 months.” Through that ‘immature’ church planter, they were able to catalyze a movement – and he ended up inheriting the leadership role of the national leader and overseeing the entire ministry.

Especially if you are starting out in trying to find new partners, be willing to serve and do anything to gain trust if you meet a key leader who you think is a NAV. Pray and discern from the Holy Spirit who you should spend your time with! The above story is not to say that it will take 10 years to build enough relational trust to partner with someone, but that it’s all dependent on God’s timing! You can’t control if it’s in year 1 or year 10 that God connects you with the NAV that He desires to use to multiply. But you can control your approach and your posture of humility and serving. One of our CPM coaches told a story of how they invited their main partner to an early CPM training. Our friend literally ran into this national leader on the street and said, “Hey! We are doing a training about church planting this weekend, would you like to come?” Later on, the national partner shared with this practitioner: “Honestly, when you invited me, I thought – what do you have to teach me about church planting? I have planted several churches and you haven’t planted any. But because you were kind to me, I came to your training. And God revealed a way to multiply churches through this training!” They are now seeing exponential growth and multiplication all throughout their country.

Conclusion

Hopefully these are some helpful steps and examples to help you begin to connect with potential NAVs and build relational trust with them. In our next post, we’ll share a general process and scoreboard that will help you filter down to the best NAV candidates to begin partnering with.

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In the last couple of posts, we’ve heard from some guest contributors about who Barnabas was from the Bible and what he did to find and partner with Paul to catalyze multiplication in the 1^st Century. This gives us some foundational principles about who we should try to embody as we approach Being Barnabas in pursuing movements.

From here, we’ll start to walk through the different stages of finding and partnering with a National Apostolic Visionary (NAV). But before we start with what to do, we need to focus on who we’re looking for. We’ll start with breaking down the term, and then look at some characteristics of a NAV.

“National” (or “Near Culture”)

Firstly, the movement leader needs to be a near-culture or cultural insider. So we can use the word ‘national,’ but ‘near-culture’ also works – the NAV may come from another country that is in the same region and has a similar cultural background. We’ve touched on the importance of why the key leader should be a cultural insider in previous posts, but it boils down to the reality that the vast majority of movements are started and led by national or near culture leaders with the support and coaching of outsiders.

However, if we think about ‘why’ this might be the case, there are a few different reasons. Among the unreached, outsider workers, especially from the West, have very little credibility as messengers of the gospel. Language and culture are also significant barriers in our ability to communicate the gospel in a contextually appropriate way.

However, as the church has grown in the global South and globalization allows for increased international travel, Christian workers from the West can have an inherent credibility in training and providing resources to churches in the global South. Where we lack credibility in sharing the gospel in an unreached context, we are generally welcomed by the growing church to help train and influence – provided we can gain trust.

To me, this is highly encouraging! It means that God has selected believers from their own people groups to lead the advancement of the Kingdom, and it means that we as outsiders can have a role in partnering with, training, coaching, and empowering those national leaders.

“Apostolic”

The term ‘apostolic’ can bring about a lot of different opinions and even different emotions, depending on where you land theologically. However, movement practitioners largely agree that it is national leaders with the apostolic gifting that are most commonly the ones that catalyze movements. At the very least, you’re probably looking to partner with someone that has a strong ‘APE’ gifting (Apostolic / Prophetic / Evangelistic) in order to get a new disciple-making and church planting multiplication ministry started.

We plan to do a longer post in the future about the word ‘apostolic,’ but for the purposes of understanding what to look for in a NAV, we’ll point to 4 aspects of the apostolic gifting that we’re looking for in a NAV. These are compiled from a few different resources about the apostolic gifting, as well as trying to investigate from the Word. We’ll list a few of those resources at the bottom of the post.

Vision – firstly, they have received big vision from God. At the very least, it is vision that goes beyond growing their own church. When we met Mint and asked her what her vision is, she felt called to bring the gospel to Laos and wanted to see multiplication happen throughout northeast Thailand and Laos. Another NAV that we work with in southern Thailand said, “I want to see 1 million Muslims follow Jesus in my lifetime.” That seems to fit the bill!

Faith – They have the faith to believe that God will complete this vision and use them towards that big vision. This might feel redundant, but we’ve seen plenty of people be drawn to big vision or even create big ideas, but lack the faith to believe God wants to use them in this and therefore do not pursue the vision wholeheartedly. Those with the apostolic gift will have both the vision and the faith to pursue it.

Systems and Structures – Clinton describes the function of the apostolic as “a special leadership capacity to move with authority from God to create new ministry structures and to develop and appoint leadership in these structures.” In particular, we think that those with the apostolic gifting pioneer new ministries, specifically in the context of unreached church planting and disciple making. There may be pioneers who set up new structures within the local church or in an orphanage ministry, which is great, but we believe the apostolic gift is one that is primarily used among the unreached. It reflects Paul’s apostolic passion in Romans 15:20, to go where there is no foundation. In setting up new systems and structures, the apostolic leader may for a time act as a ‘jack of all trades,’ leading out in evangelism and teaching and shepherding – whatever is needed to establish this new pioneering ministry. As the ministry moves towards maturity, it’s better and healthier for the apostolic to then release the ongoing growth of the ministry to the other leadership giftings, especially the shepherds/teachers.

Leaders – Lastly, the apostolically gifted leader is able to recruit, develop, and release leaders. They understand that leaders are critical in starting and multiplying a new ministry, and will constantly have a lens of raising up new leaders to take over responsibilities that the NAV has started or to pioneer new areas under the NAV’s leadership. Young leaders will be attracted to the NAV’s life, ministry, vision, and character, and want to follow them.

These 4 aspects are what seem to come up consistently in various writings about the apostolic gift as well as our own personal experience. But a few others things might be indicators of an apostolic leader:

• Apostolic leaders most likely won’t keep to the status quo. The vision that God has given them will result in some discontentment if the group they’re with or the current role they have isn’t pursuing that vision wholeheartedly. As a result, these apostolic leaders could stick out as a little weird or be known as a ‘black sheep’ of sorts.
• Apostolic leaders are not afraid to fail forward and start new things. One CPM practitioner told us to look for ‘failed business entrepreneurs,’ as that could be an indicator of their willingness to fail forward and pioneer that needs to be directed towards a God-given vision and ministry.
• God has clearly been moving in their lives. Whether in the story of how they came to faith, or in the ways that the Lord has been refining them to step into ministry, there is a clear pattern of the Lord’s hand on their lives that can be an indicator of Him preparing them for a significant work ahead.

“Visionary”

Lastly, at the risk of being redundant, a NAV is a visionary leader. They have the big vision and the faith to pursue it like we mentioned in the apostolic section. They’re also surrendered to God and willing to do anything – to sacrifice, to fail, to pioneer – in order to pursue that vision. As with the ‘leaders’ section of the apostolic gifting, the visionary leader is able to influence others – sometimes large numbers of people – towards a vision of multiplication.

Now that we have more clarity on the different aspects of the term National Apostolic Visionary, we’ll look at some additional characteristics of a NAV that we’re looking to partner with in pursuing movements.

Flexible Methodology

A NAV that we want to partner with will have openness to try different methodologies of church planting and disciple-making. I don’t think that CPM practitioners can have a monopoly on the apostolic gifting (although we may prefer to!); there may be apostolic leaders that you meet that God has called to pursue a different type of ministry than CPM. And that’s OK! But it may not be the right timing for you to partner with them until they’re open to try a movement methodology. If they’re locked in and committed to a different type of ministry methodology, we will continue to keep the relationship open and even vision cast towards trying something new in hopes that they might be open at a later time, but we won’t partner with them until we know they’re willing to pursue a movement approach.

Surrendered to God

Lastly, we’re looking for a NAV that we partner with to be surrendered to God. Even if a national leader has what looks like apostolic gifts and a big vision, if they have major areas of their lives that are not submitted to God or still need to grow, then they may not be ready for us to jump in fully and partner with them in catalyzing movements. This can look like major distractions with their time, like other ministries, family issues, debt, or character issues. Ultimately, if these things are not addressed in submission to God, they will end up being barriers to the national leader moving forward in the work. Or possibly even worse, some of the work will get started under their leadership and then be wiped out when these issues come back to bite them. Even Paul, after his conversion on the road to Damascus, had a significant amount of time where his convictions, character, and skills needed to be honed before he and Barnabas are ultimately set aside by the Holy Spirit to begin the first journey.

Does Paul Fit the NAV Definition?

Speaking of Paul, the whole point of the Be Barnabas approach is to find a national “Paul,” an insider who God has chosen to catalyze and lead movements where the gospel has not yet gone. So does Paul fit the NAV definition we’ve listed above?

National – The intent of the term ‘national’ has to do with the NAV being a cultural insider, able to contextualize the gospel and whatever the movement needs with fewer limits than a cultural outsider. In this sense, and in a literal sense as Paul was a Roman citizen (Acts 16:37), Paul was uniquely situated to contextualize the gospel to Jews, Greeks, and to Romans. As Paul famously notes in 1 Corinthians 9:

To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

1 Corinthians 9:20-23

Paul is clear about his legitimacy as a Jew (Phil. 3:5-6), who was from Tarsus which was well-known as a center of Greek learning and who writes his epistles in Greek, and he also leverages his Roman citizenship to appeal to authorities on his journeys in Acts 22:26-28. We see Paul contextualize his gospel message depending on the audience, reasoning with the Jews in the synagogue in Thessalonica from the Scriptures (Acts 17:1-4), or conversing with the philosophers in Athens and in the Areopagus (Acts 17:16-34) out of his cultural understanding of these varied contexts.

Apostolic – This is very obviously a yes. More than having the apostolic gifting, Scripture makes it clear that Paul is THE Apostle to the Gentiles, as Paul calls himself that in Romans 11:13. We see in Acts and in the epistles that Paul also more than fits the other criteria.

We’ll address vision and faith under the ‘Visionary’ section below. As for systems and structures, along with leaders, we can see in Acts and the epistles the gifting Paul has to set up the early church to thrive and multiply. He raises up local leaders as well as an apostolic band of leaders, sending letters and leaders to and from different key cities to address various issues in the churches, bring encouragement and vision to the believers, and manage the first Century movement in 6 distinct cities and regions through word of mouth and written letters!

Visionary – Paul’s vision and faith to be used to reach the Gentiles and those who have never heard is the clear example of the apostolic leader that we are looking for!

For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ; and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation.

Romans 15:18-20

Flexible Methodology – As we can see in the different strategies that Paul uses in Acts, Paul uses a variety of methodologies to reach different peoples in a pioneering context. Whether he went first to the synagogue to win near-culture Jews and God-fearing Jews to follow Christ, cast out demons and healed people through signs and wonders, or reasoned with philosophers, Paul was clearly not tied to a single method, but willing to do whatever it took to win some.

Surrendered to God – Lastly, we could pick a dozen verses to illustrate Paul’s surrender to God. But perhaps none exemplify it more than his words in Philippians 3. 

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:8–11

As DL Moody said, “The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to him.” I might propose that we have seen the result in the Apostle Paul. May we find and advocate for many more National Apostolic Visionary leaders like him!

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We realize that other CPM practitioners may or may not agree with these characteristics, or have ones that they’d like to add, and that’s great! Identifying and partnering with NAVs is definitely not an exact science, but these are the aspects that have consistently come to the top for us in reading the Word, learning from CPM literature, talking to CPM practitioners, and in our own personal experience. The term NAV, the related characteristics, and the following posts about how to filter for NAVs are simply meant to be a helpful tool for goers to begin looking for catalytic leaders that will multiply among the unreached.

In the next few posts, we’ll walk through the various stages of how a goer can begin to filter and find a NAV to partner with. We’ll introduce the NAV Scoreboard, which will help you evaluate these different aspects of a NAV in the process of filtering.

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Resources on the Apostolic Gifting:

Leadership Commentaries by Robert Clinton (has a variety of articles on the apostolic gift, process, ministry)
Loving the Church, Blessing the Nations by George Miley (Chapters 9-12)
A Vision of the Possible by Daniel Sinclair
The Permanent Revolution: Apostolic Imagination and Practice for the 21st Century by Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim

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Guest Contributor: Jorge Gonzalez

In our last post, we learned from John C. about what Barnabas did in order to help us understand why it’s strategic and critically important to play a Barnabas role in the Great Commission today.

For this post, we have another guest writer! Jorge is a mobilization leader based in Spain, whose passion is to see the Spanish-speaking church engaged in multiplying disciples among the unreached. Jorge will bring us through who Barnabas was in Scripture, mainly looking at his character as an example to imitate as we seek to be encouragers to the National Apostolic Visionary Pauls that will start movements.

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Hello, my name is Jorge Gonzalez, I’m honored to help us learn about who Barnabas was from Scripture!

When I was a kid, I remember me and my friend trying to jump over a wall. The only way to do it was for one of us to put our hands together and boost the other over the wall. One person got to go up high over the wall while the other was the support who would get stepped on trying to help his friend! In soccer, everybody knows who scores the goal, but the goal scorer needs someone to pass the ball to them in order to score.

Usually, those that give the pass or boost others over the wall are forgotten or unmentioned, but they are so needed! That’s why we are going to be looking at Barnabas. As the writer of Hebrews encourages us:

^“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.”

Hebrews 13:7

We want to consider the outcome of Barnabas’ way of life and imitate his faith. What was his outcome? God used Barnabas to initiate and advocate for two key leaders in the New Testament – Paul and John Mark. As far as we know, Barnabas wrote none of the New Testament. But the men he developed wrote half of it: Paul wrote 13 of the epistles of the New Testament and Mark wrote one of our four gospels. And much of the first century church was established through Paul. We want to examine who Barnabas was because we want to imitate him as he imitated Christ, and because we want to develop and encourage great leaders like Paul and useful laborers like Mark. So together, we’ll look at different aspects of Barnabas’ character that we see from Scripture.

Encourager

The first time we see Barnabas mentioned is in Acts 4:

“Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.”

Acts 4:36-37

His name was actually Joseph but the apostles saw a gift so strong in him that they gave him a new name. Barnabas was so full of the Spirit of God they called him Son of Encouragement. He boosted others over the wall, he advocated, he comforted others. Usually they give you nicknames for something bad, or something funny, like sons of thunder, but imagine being so filled with God and so gifted at encouraging that the apostles named you the encourager!

Generous

Barnabas sold a field and brought money and laid it at the apostles’ feet. Many were giving gifts because they loved each other and wanted to help the needs of the community, but Luke particularly uses the example of Barnabas as an example of a generous man. Barnabas was free from the love of money because his trust was not in the money for his security but in God, and he was free to give whatever was necessary.

Took Risks

“And when he [Saul] had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.”

Acts 9:26-28

Saul was a persecutor – imagine a well-known ISIS leader killing Christians, and now he says he is a Christian. Many would normally think this guy could be working as a spy to continue persecuting Christians. Luke said all were afraid of him. But Barnabas saw his potential, saw God’s transformation in him, and he stood up for this Saul. He took him and brought him to the apostles and gave his testimony. We rarely want to risk our reputation for others, but Barnabas reflects Jesus and the Holy Spirit in how they advocate for us with the Father. Barnabas, full of the Spirit of Christ, advocates for a brother in Saul that others would not. He had the courage to stick out his neck and take risks for potential leaders that God wanted to use!

Loved the Church – Rejoiced and Exhorted

“The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.”

Acts 11:22-26

After persecution caused Christians to scatter all over, normal believers went to Antioch and preached the gospel and one of the first Gentile churches was formed. So the church in Jerusalem wants to send someone trustworthy to see what God was doing and they send Barnabas. He loved the church – was obedient to be sent by the church in Jerusalem, see what God was doing in the church in Antioch, and stayed to rejoice and exhort the believers in Antioch towards faithfulness and purpose. From Barnabas’ actions, “a great many people were added to the Lord!” And Barnabas intentionally invites Saul into what God is doing in Antioch, modeling and partnering with Saul in fruitful disciple-making.

A Good Man – Full of the Holy Spirit and Faith

Luke makes it clear that all of this was because he was full of the Spirit and faith. He was a man that abided in Christ, delighted in Him. He put his faith in God, meditated on his Word, and was obedient to the Spirit.

Humble Advocate – Put Others Above Himself

We already saw that Barnabas took a personal risk in advocating for Saul. And Barnabas also had the Philippians 2 humility of Christ. He saw that Saul was the more gifted speaker and more dynamic leader than him, and wanted to empower Saul to be used by God. Normally, we think of leaders as getting others to follow and help them, but are we willing like Barnabas was to be the one boosting people over the wall? Even if they might surpass us and take our “position,” will we be willing to serve others as if they were better than ourselves?

In Acts 13, Luke has referred to Barnabas and Saul together six times, with Barnabas as the first name listed and given priority. But in Acts 13:13, everything changes!

“Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem.”

Here, Barnabas is not even mentioned, but Luke now calls them “Paul and his companions” and the narrative shifts to Paul as the primary character. Barnabas took a risk to humbly advocate for Paul and see his gifts as even higher than his own. It makes me want to imitate Barnabas because he imitated the humility of Christ like in Philippians 2! 

Faithfully and Boldly Proclaimed the Gospel, Made Disciples, Planted Churches, and Developed Leaders

“And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, “‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’” And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region.”

Acts 13:46-49

“When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.”

Acts 14:23-23

Many times, when we talk about Being Barnabas in starting church planting movements, people think that means we won’t be a part of sharing the gospel or making disciples. But if we are really imitating Barnabas, we see that with Paul, Barnabas boldly proclaimed the gospel, made disciples, planted churches, and raised up leaders. And like we would expect, “he strengthened the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith.” Barnabas was an advocate and supporter of Paul, but he was also an apostle that made disciples!

Joyfully Endured Persecution

“But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district. But they shook off the dust from their feet against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.”

Acts 13:50-52

We see more of Barnabas’ character in that he was persevering in the face of persecution, with the Holy Spirit filling Paul and Barnabas with joy and his own presence.

Gives Second Chances – Sees the Potential in Leaders

“And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.” Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.”

Acts 15:36-40

Just as he did with Saul, Barnabas repeats the process of advocating for John Mark. Barnabas was such an encourager and advocate that he risked his own reputation and even his relationship with Paul for John Mark. In this occasion, we see Barnabas as someone who gives second chances. Even though Mark had previously abandoned Paul and Barnabas, Barnabas gave Mark another chance to go on mission and to develop him in the process. We see the result several years later when Paul writes to Timothy, “ Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.”

Barnabas was patient, saw the potential even in those that had previously failed, and gave a second chance to John Mark and encouraged him in his leadership. And God uses Mark not only to be a fruitful laborer in Paul’s ministry, but also in having a huge impact by writing the gospel of Mark.

Barnabas Was Not Perfect

Even though we see so many great and godly characteristics in Barnabas, we want to be objective and realize that he wasn’t perfect. In Galatians 2, Paul talks about the separation between Gentiles and Jews and that Barnabas also fell into sin. 

“For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.”

Galatians 2:12-13

Barnabas also fell into the sin of wanting to please people more than God. He was not perfect, and even though there are many things to learn from Barnabas’ example, we don’t want to fall into the temptation of idolizing a biblical character. 

Barnabas had flaws like any of us – but it encourages me that even with these flaws, what made Barnabas have a powerful impact on the Kingdom was that the Spirit of God was in him. Barnabas was not perfect – but still God used him. 

We want to imitate Barnabas in being full of the Spirit, full of faith, a humble advocate, and an empowering encourager. Let us be like Barnabas in reflecting Christ – becoming less so others can become more. And let us be Barnabas to find, advocate, take risks, and launch many more Pauls that will fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of Christ through multiplying church planting movements.

Up to this point, this blog has largely covered some tools and paradigms around team leadership on the field. Our next series of posts will switch gears a bit to focus more on a strategic component of pursuing movements that we think is critically important.

We’re excited to start the ‘Be Barnabas’ series. Along with union with Christ, it’s one of the key ‘pillars’ that has shaped our ministry and leadership philosophy, and one of the reasons we started this blog.

‘Be Barnabas’ is what we call the role of the outsider in finding, equipping, and empowering a national apostolic visionary who is a cultural insider to catalyze movements. It’s a pattern modeled after Barnabas, who found, vouched for, teamed with, empowered, and encouraged Paul – the apostle who catalyzed much of the movement of the early church in Acts.

Why is Be Barnabas important? There’s a lot that can be said around missiology and missions history for the changing role of the outsider or Westerner in pursuing the Great Commission among the unreached. But for us, there’s two main reasons:

1. The vast majority of movements around the world are not started by a cultural outsider directly multiplying among the unreached, but through helping a national apostolic visionary (NAV) leader to catalyze a movement.
2. The biggest untapped potential missions force in the world is the church in the Global South, where two-thirds of the world’s Christians now reside. Those that are cultural insiders or proximate to the unreached will have much fewer barriers to multiplying churches than cultural outsiders will have.

In this series, we plan to tell some stories of what Be Barnabas looks like, give some of the Scriptural and movement principles behind Being Barnabas, and lay out a clear pathway for what it looks like to find, equip, and empower a NAV once you’ve reached the field.

For this post, we wanted to introduce Mint’s story. Mint is our first national partner that we’ve been walking with now for 5 years. The following story is what I wrote for our church’s missions newsletter about 2 years back in 2021. We hope this story is encouraging and gets you excited to learn more about Being Barnabas!

“What is your vision, Mint?”

She whispered back to us, almost embarrassed at the audacity of such a goal: “I think God is saying that we need to pursue planting 100 multiplying churches.”

“I never thought that God could use me for something like this—I used to be the church secretary! I am just a little seed in God’s plans.”

My wife and I have been goers in Southeast Asia for the past seven years; Mint is one of our main national partners that we coach, serve, and encourage in the work of church planting multiplication. Through serving and empowering our national brothers and sisters in Great Commission work, we have had the privilege of seeing God moving in mighty ways among some of the spiritually darkest contexts in the world.

Before we launched, we had the traditional missions mindset: move overseas, learn the language, share the gospel, gather some believers, plant a church, and hand it off to the local believers. But on our vision trip to this country, we heard a shocking statistic: it takes two full-time goers evangelizing for one year to lead one person to Christ in our country, because of the language, cultural, and identity barriers of foreign messengers bringing a foreign message.

Of the 70 million people in our country, only 0.7% are Christian. If we wanted to see this country “filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14), the traditional missions approach would be like trying to transform the Sahara desert into a body of water, one drop at a time. Meanwhile,1,500 people a day are dying in our country and entering into an eternity separated from Christ without even a chance to hear of the hope of the gospel.

These realities drove our team to two questions:

1. How many people would have a chance to hear the gospel?
2. What is our role in seeing as many people hear the gospel as possible?

In our prayer and seeking, we learned about Church Planting Movements. These movements of God were happening throughout the unreached world, where simple churches and obedient disciples were multiplying exponentially. We learned that of the hundreds of movements started around the world, less than 1% of them were started directly through foreigners that shared the gospel and led someone to faith that multiplied. The vast majority of the movements happened through those foreigners finding, training, and coaching a national believer from that context towards multiplication. We call this role of the outsider, ‘Being Barnabas’ to a national ‘Paul’-type leader.

So when we arrived in Thailand seven years ago, our team pursued partnerships with local churches. We were looking for national leaders to come behind, like Barnabas was looking for Paul to encourage and empower towards multiplication. That’s how we met Mint.

Mint is a church planter in a rural area of our country. She is strong-willed, sassy, and she never gives up. She used to be the church secretary before she received a calling from God to plant churches. With almost no church-planting training and very little support, Mint was sent to a new province to plant a church. In her first year, Mint didn’t have a car, so she biked 20 kilometers a day trying to sell second hand clothes so that she would have enough food to eat. She said she cried almost every day at the beginning because of the many personal, financial, and ministry-related difficulties. But after 2 years of faithfully persevering and sharing the gospel hundreds of times, she finally planted her first church of about 15 people.

When we first met Mint, we asked her, “What do you hope to see happen in your ministry?” She said, “I want to see my church multiply, so that people throughout my country and the surrounding areas could hear the gospel. But I can’t get my people to obey God, much less make more disciples!” She was exhausted all the time from trying to lead the ministry by herself, and her phone was constantly ringing, with her members bringing their problems to her.

So after getting to know her and casting vision for multiplication from the Bible, we, together with Mint, started to train a small group from her church in simple tools for how to share their faith and how to disciple new believers.

In the first month, Mint and her team led seven people to faith. The next month, another eight. After three months, there were 20 new believers. They saw miracles every week—people healed through prayer, evil spirits cast out, families restored, and so many answered prayers. Keep in mind, it took Mint two years of sharing to reach 15 people. In those early months, Mint was more surprised than anyone at all that God was doing. 

Fast forward several months later, and 20 new believers multiplied into 80 new believers, and Mint planted five more house churches. At one house church training, a new believer gave us his lunch of sticky rice and ginger juice to use as the communion elements!

Soon after this, the church planting pastor from Mint’s network said, “Mint and her team have had more fruit in the last several months than all the other church planters combined. We want to train all of them in the things you’re doing with Mint!” Our team started training about 15 church planting teams in early 2019; in just one year they had led over 200 people to faith and started over 30 house churches. It would have taken my wife and me 200 years of sharing to get to the number of new believers that our national partners saw in just one year.

For us, serving and empowering Mint isn’t just about training or methodology. That’s honestly just a small part of our interaction. It’s being part of her life, being a listening ear, caring about her thriving. It is hours and hours in the car together on our way to visit new believers and train others, discussing and ranting about every possible topic together. Our favorite food to eat together on the road is KFC—which is way better in our country than in the US! When we go to visit Mint, her mom always cooks for us and calls us her own children. Mint has a deep abiding relationship with God, and she is an easy crier when she shares what she’s learning from Him.

Being Barnabas to Mint is getting to celebrate with her when there is success and fruitfulness, but also sharing in her burdens and sufferings. We walked together with Mint and mourned with her when she told us her dad decided to leave her and her mom to go live with another woman. We wept with her when she told us that two new believers decided to leave the church because of a conflict. They just left their Bibles on her doorstep and disappeared without a word. She said the hardest part was not that they rejected her, but that they were rejecting Jesus.

We can’t do what Mint does. But we can serve her, we can encourage her, and we can equip her with tools for how to multiply. We cannot directly start a movement in our country. But we can help her to do it. We were at a prayer retreat with Mint when she received this vision from God to plant 100 churches. We continue to believe that 100 churches is just the first step for what God has in store for her. Mint is currently overseeing seven church planting teams as a regional leader, and her teams are planting multiplying churches throughout the country, on their way to 100.

I have never baptized a single person in Mint’s province. Mint and her team have seen over 120 people come to faith and baptized them in the river. I have never planted a church among the people in our country, but Mint has at least 10 healthy churches who each have a goal to pioneer in new areas. When I originally thought about missions, I always imagined that I would be the one leading people to faith. But there is something so much richer and better in seeing Mint succeed—because she is a national leader, called by God, and multiplying among her own people.

In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul writes to one of his churches, and his words perfectly reflect what we feel towards Mint. Paul tells them, “What is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before the Lord Jesus at the time of his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and our joy.” We love Mint so much, as a friend, a co-laborer, and a sister in Christ. Knowing and helping her is our joy and if no one ever knows our names, it doesn’t matter, because God is using Mint to multiply the gospel in our country.