World Evangelism News and Helps

The principles in the Deputation Manual were a major help to Teri and I as we raised support to go to the mission field.  We were able to raise our support in about 22 months with God’s help and by following the principles in the manual. Travis and Terri Snode in Ireland

My friend and mentor, Pastor Austin Gardner, has just finished a book about deputation as a help for missionaries. He has partnered in the writing of this book with Tony Howeth, the deputation director for MWBM. Inc. Though Bro. Gardner is a pastor of a church in Georgia, he is not ordinary. He was a missionary for twenty years that raised enough money to run a very large ministry in Arequipa, Peru including many churches, a Bible College of one hundred students, a TV station, and a radio station. He writes from experience of how it really is, not from theory of how he thinks it “should” be. This is a seriously practical and biblical book.I personally followed his fund raising training very closely and was on the field with good support in less than 20 months. Many other young men I know who have been called by God as missionaries have done the same. I think it’s a tradgedy when a young man responds to God’s call to missions and then wastes months and years on bad fund raising advise. Click here to check out the book. Missionary in Morocco 

I have been very pleasantly surprised at how well the Deputation Manual has done!  The honest truth is that our market is a niche market squared.  By that I mean if you take all the missionaries in the world the group that this book was written for might be considered a small number. Some missionaries are able to go out fully supported by their mission agency as they have raised the funds through the denomination and others raise their funds straight through friends and not from local churches.  But our guys and girls usually work through local independent baptistic congregations.   That is primarilyour way.God has allowed people to hear about the Deputation Manual from several different states and we have been selling slowly but surely several copies of the book.  Before its release we were able to sell about 50 copies.  Then since then each day we have seen a little bit of sales come through paypal. We only printed 500 copies and that seemed like a bunch to us.  It may take from now till the rapture to sell all that we have but we believe that it will definitely help our missionaries. Sad to say but it has been taking our independent Baptist missionaries an average of like 4 years to raise a minimal amount of support.  This book will help with that.  You can raise your support in 24 months or less of full time deputation.  You really need to start full time deputation right away.  There is no need to do part time deputation for 2 years and then finally go on full time for 2 more years.  The entire process should take you less than 24 months. Feel free to write if you have more questions.  

Bob Preston, a man in our church, sent me the following quotes 

• There are many of us that are willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do little things. Dwight L. Moody 
• God never made a promise that was too good to be true.Dwight L. Moody 
• I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met!Dwight L. Moody 
• I know the Bible is inspired because it inspires me. Dwight L. Moody 
• If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of me. Dwight L. Moody 
• It is a masterpiece of the devil to make us believe that children cannot understand religion. Would Christ have made a child the standard of faith if He had known that it was not capable of understanding His words? Dwight L. Moody
• Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength. Charles Spurgeon 
• Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us. Charles Spurgeon 
• Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven. Charles Spurgeon 
• The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation. Charles Spurgeon 
• The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction Charles Spurgeon 

Brother Tony and I have put a lot of work into a book for missionaries as has our whole team. Mark Coffey, Travis Snode, Morris Hunsucker, Kelli Canfield and I don’t know who else has worked so hard to get this book together.

We are really praying that God will use it to help missionaries raise their support. There is a lot that scares people about being a missionary but one of the scariest things of all is how they are going to raise their support. This book is going to help them in every area of their deputation.

For those from our church that may not understand the term–deputation is the process we use in our independent Baptist Churches and faith mission agencies. Our men and women make phone call after phone call and then visit churches. After a couple of years they should be able to raise all of their support.

This book and material has already been used by many people now for many years but we just haven’t had it in a published book. I am so proud of our team and I pray that God will greatly use the book to help get men and women to the mission field.

If you are interested in purchasing the book click here and you can buy it right now with your pay pal account or your credit card.

The book is not at its regular price of $16.95. Get it for a missionary you love!

Well not really but we did already get orders for about 30 books and they aren’t even here yet. If you want to order some you can go to the following link and order right now. The book should be to you within the next two weeks.

I know that several pastors and missionaries read this blog. So here is a special offer to all of you. The Deputation Manual is on its way from the printer. I want to give you a pre release offer. If you will order the book before it gets here you can have a copy for $10 plus postage. If you want to order 10 or more copies we will get them to you for $8.50 plus shipping. The book will be selling for $16.95 when it arrives. You have about one week from today to place your order. Just send us an email to gardner at bcwe.org or call the church at 770-456-5881 and we will let you know how to make your payment.

I believe the book will be a blessing to any missionary you have and is good information for you as a pastor to have also.

The Deputation Manual that Tony Howeth and I have written together is on its way from the printer.  If you would like to pre order a book please send me a note or make a comment here on the blog.  We are hoping to get the book out to as many people as possible. 

source 

Build the job into the budget ahead of time think 1 – 2 years out.

• What roles need to be filled and when
• How much do you need to budget

Staff is the key to growth

PT is extremely advantageous in the short term (in particular at the level we are at)

• You can try them out with less risk
• You get them w/o benefits
• You get more people passionate about more areas
• You develop your leadership gifts with less risk to the church

Hire from within first

• There is already vision alignment
• They aren’t likely looking to change you as a leader
• Give titles with positional authority to part-timers

Winters said:

• Bad churches lose staff
• Good churches lose staff
• Stagnant churches keep staff

Keep the right staff – lose the wrong ones.

If I find an exceptional staff, I hire them. We can build roles around awesome staff. Don’t worry as much about finding a role and then a staff as you grow…find great people and build a job for them.

Keep congregations out of the hiring role…they can’t be informed enough to make good decision. Let’s stop pretending they can. It has never worked, it won’t work and it isn’t biblical.

Boards are better than Congregations but most large churches at some point will give that role over to the Sr. Leader(s).

• One of the fastest growing arenas of church lawsuits has to do with publicly firing staff (required by many older constitutions).

More staff isn’t better than good staff

Unity and vision alignment are incredible important within a staff. It falls apart fast…all it takes is neglect from the Sr. Leader. To keep these two critical core traits of healthy staff a leader must be intentional.

Hiring Generalists, Specialists and L2s

• From 700 to 1000 hire generalists (i.e. he can preach but also does windows)
• From 1000 to 3000 hire specialists (i.e. he can preach but little else)
• From 3000+ primarily hire Leaders of Leaders

No matter how careful and strategic you are you will make hiring mistakes.

The staff you hire now that “personally” do good ministry may never learn to hand off the ministry. If they can’t you will likely need to let them go as you grow. You need people who can give away ministry.

OVER NIGHT OUT OF TOWN SHARED EXPERENCES (wow did the coaches hammer the importance of this. All of them do this and are adamant that we do it).

J.J.’s How to have hard conversations with Staff:

S – Situations (Identify Situations)

B – Behavior (Focus on Behaviors)

I – Impact (How did the Behavior in the midst of the Situation effect things)

Classic Winters

1^st Our job is to create discontent within the staff…pointing out the problems early.Let the people ach for “it”. Ex. “I don’t think we are reaching lost people like God wants us to. I don’t even think we have been as effective as we were last year.”

Don’t try to solve it just create pain around it by focusing some “truth light” onto it.

I was amazed to read the blog from our friend in China.  God has placed eternity in their hearts.  Well this story makes that really clear. The following story comes from a dear friend of ours.  Click here to go to his blog.  Twenty-four hours later, I’ve still got a headache from the noise of the fireworks. At midnight, the whole city pretty much erupted. People were setting them off on the street outside our house, and thanks to our fourth floor location, a good percentage of them just exploded right in front of our window. 

Since today is actually the first day of the year, I might as well write out the story of the traditional beginning of this holiday. It’s a pretty amazing story, mostly because of its strange familiarity to Bible-believers. This is a story that apparently everyone knows and remembers around this time of year. The tradition says that thousands of years ago, there was a monster called “nian” which used to come once a year in the middle of the night and kill the citizens of this town. So naturally, this night every year was a time of terror for the people.  

Then one day, some old guy (I think there’s some different variations on the story - I’m not one hundred percent) comes into town and tells them that if they want to get rid of this monster, they should put strips of red paper on the sides of and over the tops of their doors (they’re lucky God doesn’t get them on a copyright violation). And that night the monster didn’t kill anyone.  

So Chun Jie, the Spring Festival, is when the Chinese people celebrate this story and their New Year. The strips of red paper on the top and sides of the door is still a common decoration (we’ve got it on our door). And the monster “nian”? This story is such a strong part of their tradition that the word “nian” today is the word for “year.”  The common greeting on New Year is “guo nian hao,” which is kinda “happy new year.” But some think it may have come from this story - that people would say this to each other after they lived through the night - “congratulations, you survived the nian.” The whole thing tends to remind you of this one time when a spirit passed through a place and killed someone in every house that didn’t have blood on the sides and top of their door and this event marks a nation’s New Year. 

Since the story is so reminiscent of Passover, that’s what I preached on Sunday. I have no idea what the similarity is all about between the two stories, but it makes a great connection to the Word of God. Which is about all we can ask from culture when it comes to teaching the Bible. I think it’d probably sound pretty dumb to proclaim with certainty that this was God preparing the way in the culture thousands of years ago for people to recognize Jesus, but maybe it’s what Paul would do. I don’t know that the “unknown god” was much better of an illustration, but he sure ran with it.