John Peterson - Knowledge Cafe

John Peterson (Regional Director in the MidSouth – NC,SC,TN,KY and a slice of WV) recently sent me some notes from a “Knowledge Café” their team hosted to discuss launching new spiritual movements in cultures other than the dominant culture. Here are some of the results (Italic text are notes made by John):

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I. Why is it easier to go to a foreign country to launch a movement than it is to launch multiple movements on our campuses?

A. Differing Expectations:

• Willing to try/ Freedom to fail/ Less pressure to succeed/ Higher expectations for success/we go to pioneer/ More just winning overseas/ Less infrastructure in the ministry – simpler
• Here we stay to settle/
• In U.S. we don’t see ethnic groups as readily as we see one ethnic individual.
• Here, we’re taught NOT to isolate or separate people of different races and color/ here we feel we need to ‘tiptoe’ around culture

B. Feeling Overwhelmed:

• Here, we don’t know where to start, Different cultures intimidate us in the states, Feels more like a group effort [how can we help our staff not feel isolated in attempts to launch new mvts?]
• Less spread out overseas (resources)/ more focused/ we have so many white Christians to deal with

C. Feeling Distracted in U.S.

• Support, lots of other important ministry things to do here
• New Movements interfere with currrent movement [More bricks w/ less straw. How can we simplify the ‘current’ job for our staff, and help them view this more as leveraging opportunities (low control)?]

D. Needing Training for new culture [we’re more intentional, and we expect to have to culturalize our ministry]
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II. What, (if anything,) would need to change in the way we think about ministry in order for multiple movements to become a reality?

A. God’s hand:“Multiple movements is a God-thing. Prayer, fasting and faith”

• Believe it can be done
• Surrender mentality

B. Take Risks:

• Don’t sweat messiness or failure, Risk losing control, Release staff, Give freedom to embrace MM vision
• More student leadership. Empower students more quickly. More empowering of leaders, Allow students to own the current movement

C. Vision: Lots of communication and vision about MM, Develop heart for MM, Greater vision casting

D. Learn: Catalytic mind set, Redefine success, Decoding exercises, Person of peace and missionary mindset, Willing to learn a new culture
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III. The 80/20 principle say that 20% of our effort gives us 80% of our results (and the last 80% of our effort gives us 20% of our results). Understanding that God alone changes lives and produces the fruit of our ministries, what is the 20 % of what you do that leads to 80% of the fruit you see?

A. Seeking God:

• Prayer and fasting
• God Moments

B. Taking risks:

• Stepping out of comfort zone
• Making Mistakes
• Empowering others to lead/ allowing opportunities for students to see God use them./ modeling ministry

C. Perseverance: Continually launching

D. Fundamentals in Ministry

• Face time with students
• Selecting wisely
• Sharing Christ- evangelism
• Sharing Spirit filled life

E. Networking: Build bridges with gate keepers

NOT: making posters, answering administrative e-mail, working with every student who is willing, …
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IV. How can regional and national leadership best serve/help you in launching multiple movements?

A. Training:

• every staff in Catalytic Lane at least two years [trying to say that staffed campus lane needs to apply catalytic principles – more hands off, more entrusted to students earlier,…]
• field training in MM
• Catalytic school for all staff/one day cross-cultural trng./decoding trng.”MM=catalytic in a way”

B. Resources:

• Recruit more staff (especially catalytic staff)
• money and scholarships [harder for minorities to raise support]

C. Remove Obstacles:

• understanding from r. and n. when stats go down, takes time to learn new cultures/measure risks and attempts [how can we change reporting to better value, encourage, reward activity that lends to launching and developing multiple movements?]
• relieve busy work/reduce work load [what do we ask of the local level that feels like ‘busy work’ to them? How can we ‘help’ more and ‘require’ less? –wkg group sited conferences and e-mails…. Also, the need to define the job for local leaders and staff. What is NOT included in their job descriptions?]

Lend a hand and help:

• visits[Perhaps this is about leadership coming and helping to locate person of peace and launch movement]
• regional launch day/reg. team visit campus to help launch mm-[teams go to a new campus]

D . Vision and Encouragement: stories of real movements videos and DVDs of places where it is working, video for students for vision [tool to help students catch the vision of this]

E. More Prayer