 Good morning. This is exciting for me to see so many people interested in this idea of church planting. And I recognize that it's just ahead of very important and a encouraging weekend of kingdom fellowship and that kind of thing. And I think it's an ideal way to try to plant that vision for church planting. I'd like to give you just a little bit of a background of our journey through life so that you know what has informed some of the things that I'm going to share here this morning. I was born and raised in a large Mennonite community in Montezuma, Georgia, and grew up there. And got married when I was 21. And even before I got married, I told Maya then to be wife that I feel that God will be at some point calling us into some kind of ministry, missionary work, or just something involving his kingdom. And so we got married. And then about a year and a half after we were married, we were asked by Amish Mennonite Aid to spend some time in Belize Central America. We were there for two years from 1987 to 1989. We were there at Hattieville, a church that had been established. It was largely made up of Belizean people. And we were there to sort of start winding that particular mission down as it relates to becoming completely indigenous. There were a number of pastors there already. From there, we came back, and then we're involved in a sort of a swarm model church planning endeavor over in Alabama in the Hartzell, Alabama area. We're there for 10 years, and then God called us to go to Liberia, Africa for four years. We were there in a church planning endeavor sort of under the umbrella of Christian aid ministries, but they had gotten with a local church from Texas to head up that church planning endeavor. And we were there for four years. And then back to Georgia again, and we're about a year and a half before we settled into Thomaston, Georgia, which is where we're at now. We moved there in 2010. And are attempting a church plant there. And so what I have to share this morning was shaped in large part by these experiences that we've been through in our lives. So the topic this morning is ingredients of an indigenous church. And just to explain what is meant by indigenous, looked up the dictionary definition. And this is what Merriam-Webster says, produced or growing or living or occurring naturally in a particular region or environment. And indigenous church planting then sort of assumes that if that is the goal to plant a church and have it become be an indigenous church, it sort of assumes that there will be outside influence to try to make that happen. And so it's like you're bringing the kingdom gospel to a native people or to whatever, if it's an ethnic group or wherever you're trying to plant a church, you are trying to bring it there for the purpose of them taking the work on. And as we talked about in some of the questions that were asked, that is something that we attempt to do in many of our overseas missions. But it's something that we don't attempt to do so much here in America. And one of the things that I've appreciated in the recent years, especially being involved with the church planters forum, is that there is more of a push towards reaching local people and having indigenous churches. And I appreciate that. So just a few points, some things that I think are important in thinking and in establishing or starting an indigenous church, with that being the goal, is to have a vision statement. When I say a vision statement, I'm not talking about one of these five-year plans, like Alan was talking about. But I'm talking about where you sit down and you put together something, whatever you are attempting to do, you put together something just stating that this is the vision that we have in mind in our church planning endeavor. And that vision statement can be two pages long. It can be a paragraph long. It doesn't matter. Just so you have something that everyone who is involved in it can come back to and say and remind ourselves that this is the reason that we are doing what we're doing here. In order to formulate a vision statement, there needs to be an understanding of the culture being targeted for church planting. I'm going to get into more of that cultural part of it here in just a little bit. If you are new to the culture, get input from those who know the culture so that a realistic vision statement can be put together. And I would recommend, if you can go online to thechurchplantersforum.org and access Jason Algar's topic that he had just a few months ago, he gives some great pointers as to how to go about finding out what the culture is like, what the people are like that you're trying to reach. So go on and listen to that. And I think that you will get some pointers on how to put together a vision statement. The vision statement should include whether the goal is to establish completely indigenous churches or a blended church of sorts. And so here in America, sometimes we like to have that blending of cultures, that blending of backgrounds, and that's good. But just so that you put together the statement, that reflects what you're after. Here's a very important point as you're putting together a vision statement. Make the goals attainable for both those involved in the church planting and the local converts you're trying to reach. Make it attainable. Don't have your vision statement be so high and lofty that it's going to be hard to reach that. Make it attainable. It's very interesting. A couple of years ago at the church planters forum, I think I remember Brother Allen talking about how that when they went to New York City, they went with this idea, we're going to reach New York City for Jesus. And he said once they got there, and he realized how large New York City was. And so he kind of narrowed it down just a little bit. Was it Brooklyn? Is that, yeah, or somewhere? Kind of narrowed it down. Okay, we're going to reach New York City for Brooklyn. And then he started realizing how large Brooklyn is. And so he kind of narrowed it down then to just a few square miles or a region or whatever. That they said we're going to focus on reaching these people. And so that's what I'm saying. Make your vision attainable. It's good to have these grand and lofty ideas, but sometimes they don't work out in real life. The vision statement is important as it relates to consistency in approach, regardless who is heading up the church planting endeavor. And what I mean by that, having been involved, not in the initial planting of the church in Liberia, I think I was the third pastor that was there, I learned something that because we didn't really have a vision statement, each pastor sort of had his ideas of ways to go about doing this. And the Liberians had gotten used to the pastor that was there first. And they said, you know, we really liked his approach in this. The next pastor that came, he did some things differently and it can get confusing. And so if you have this vision statement too, for everyone to work around, whoever is there, whoever, whether the initial church plant or the evangelist moves on, and then someone comes along to do as the Apostle Paul did, to ordain, to take on the work, there is this idea of what is being expected, what is going to be expected moving forward. The second point that I'd like to look at in relation to indigenous church planting is that cultural consideration is important in indigenous church planting. And I believe that we would all agree that culture plays a big part in who we are as individuals and as churches. We can't escape culture. We can't escape culture. We are part of a culture, whether it's part of the bigger surrounding culture or whether it's a subculture within that surrounding culture or a sub-subculture. We are all part of cultures. There's nothing wrong with that. That's what happens. But we do need to take into consideration the surrounding culture, the people that we're trying to reach. We need to take into consideration what we are coming up against, what we are going to experience when we get there. And that will make a difference, I think, in how we approach this. And I believe the Apostle Paul understood the importance of understanding cultures in order to effectively reach them. He says this in 1 Corinthians 9 verses 19 through 23, for though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all that I might win the more. And to the Jews, I became as a Jew that I might win Jews. To those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law. To those who are without law, as without law, then in parentheses, not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ, that I may win those who are without law. To the weak, I became as weak that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men that I might, by all means, save some. Now this I do for the gospel's sake that I may be partaker of it with you. I think there is a scriptural basis right there for focusing and understanding, focusing on and understanding the culture that we are trying to reach. We must do that, we must understand that in order to effectively take the gospel. And remember that not all cultures are alike. And so that's what Paul is saying here. He's saying that he had to become like the Gentiles in order to reach the Gentiles. I don't think he means that he just all of a sudden lost all of his Jewishness or all of that, but he had to take some time to understand who the Gentiles were and then formulate something to work to reach those. I also think it's important to think about and understand the culture of our upbringing and how it may affect our outreach to the cultures we are targeting. We need to understand our own culture. We need to understand our own upbringing and how that is going to interact with the cultures we are trying to reach, especially as we're thinking about indigenous church cultures or indigenous cultures. Thank you. And I think the apostle Paul recognized this about himself, which is why he chose to become all things to all people. He recognized that he growing up as a Pharisee, as he in one passage talks about all that he was. He was blameless as it relates to keeping the law. I think he recognized about himself some things that he was going to have to consider as he is dealing with the Gentiles, as he is dealing with those without law and things like that, that if he's not careful, his own cultural upbringing will come through and will dominate and that's why he's saying that he had to even let go of some of those. I think he talks about in Philippians in order to take the gospel out as God wanted it to. And I think another way that we can see this in the apostle Paul's life is he recognized, I think by the many times that he warned in his epistles against the Judaizers, what they were attempting to do. They were attempting to come in and make this a Jewish Christianity or to persuade those of the Gentile people. They recognized I think that the gospel had opened up for the Gentiles, but Paul also recognized that there was this push to infuse the culture of Jewishness onto the Gentiles and he says we need to recognize that about ourselves and take the appropriate steps to narrow it down to what Jesus is expecting his church to be. It may take a good bit of time to gain a solid understanding of a culture and not allowing enough time to understand a culture can bring frustrations with it. And when frustrations are involved, the goal of establishing an indigenous church is usually impeded when there are frustrations involved. I remember the first year, year and a half that we were in Liberia. We were working with a culture and we were working with a people that were one year removed from a 15 year civil war and there was a lot of devastation both culturally, infrastructurally and all of that. War is a horrible thing. War does terrible things and it had affected the Liberian people. And the first couple of years that I was there coming from a background that has never experienced war, that has never experienced the things that they have gone through, in my mind I became frustrated. I said, why can't these people learn? Why can't they see things like I see them? And it was just very, very frustrating that it didn't seem like we could reach them until I read this passage one day that I just read here and it clicked. I'm going to have to start thinking like the Liberians think before I'm going to be able to reach them. It didn't mean that I'm going to have to come up with, I mean to practice and do and be like the Liberians because there are some things that I just didn't want to, I didn't think we're scriptural first of all and it just wasn't practical even second of all to become like I like but I was going to have to learn how to think like at a Liberian. One of the greatest compliments I received a couple of years in and you may wonder why but one of the greatest compliments I received was when I heard one Liberian brother say to another Liberian brother you can't get anything past pastor. And he was talking about that I had gotten to the point where I understood how they think and I understood how they think was going to affect their next move and to be honest the Liberians and many other cultures like that are good at pulling the wool over your eyes and making so that you can't see what they're really after, what they're really wanting. You know sometimes it can, it's not always good what they want. A lot of times they want the monetary support and things like that that they're after. And so when I heard them say that you can't get anything past pastor anymore that's when I began to realize hey I think I'm finally thinking like the Liberians and I'm understanding where they're going, what they're after. And it gained I think a greater respect on my part for the Liberians but also on their part towards me. And so it took me understanding my own cultural upbringing and how that was affecting my outreach to the Liberians to, it took me understanding that to make a difference. I'd like to talk a little bit about some of the difference business between a predictable culture and some fragmented cultures both in Belizean and Liberian cultures somehow seemed a bit more predictable because once you've met, and I'm gonna use the Liberians here again, but once you've met a Liberian you pretty much met all Liberians. And so it was pretty predictable once I was able to understand their thinking, once I was able to understand some of the parables that they talk about and some of the things that they say, what they were really trying to bring. Once I was able to understand that I could pretty much understand Liberian culture. And the Belizean culture was very similar. When we look at America, I don't really know how to define American culture because it's so fragmented. It there's not really, really one overarching American culture. Because America is made up of so many different backgrounds. America is made up of so many ethnicities. And as Brother Allen said, usually birds of a feather flock together. And so you have within New York City, you have the Bangladeshi communities, you have the Muslim communities, you have different communities. And so in those particular communities it might be easy to understand if you've met one you've met all of them. But in the larger overarching framework of American culture that is more fragmented and it can be more difficult than to to know how to bring people together into a local church and make it work. And we found this to be true in our first few years in our church plant there in Thomaston, Georgia. So the first few years that we were there, our vision statement that we had put together was something to the effect that we want to, we want to be a church where seeking families, seeking individuals. And by this when I say seekers, I'm talking about people who had already come to know the Lord, but they were just looking for fellowship. Maybe a more kingdom approached way of life or a more biblical way of life. They were looking for that. So we, our vision statement said that we're going to open it up for these kinds of individuals to come in to our church and we would provide fellowship. And we were quite successful. They're the first couple of years in attracting some of those people. But we soon discovered that with each individual family, with each individual family, with each individual, if there was just one, they were bringing with them a culture of their own upbringing. And it became difficult. Some of them didn't want to hear of church membership. Some of them didn't want to hear of church accountability. I had one brother that told me that he doesn't find accountability in the New Testament. Well, you might not find the word accountability in the New Testament, but you find accountability to one another and looking out for the welfare of one another. You find that as a theme throughout the New Testament. And this same brother had the idea that we could, what he envisioned as a local church was each individual family having their own set of beliefs. And it could even conflict with another family's view, let's say, on non-resistance. And that what we're really looking for is just to be able to come together Sunday after Sunday and find fellowship with each other. We don't have to agree on doctrinal issues and things like that. And it became clear to us as a church and to this particular family after about three years that the difference in how we viewed church, which I believe, according to the New Testament, is accountability and membership and a focus on one another ring and things like that. How we viewed church and how they viewed church was not going to be a good fit. And looking back, what I wish, and here's where I'm going to share something that I wish that we would have done differently. I wish that we would have been a lot more open with these families and these individuals, a lot more upfront with them, explaining better what the overall vision for our church was, so that everyone would have a clear understanding of what it was going to require for their background to mesh with the vision. We were so happy to have families and individuals coming in that we sort of overlooked some very important things. And in looking back, I believe that if we would have been more upfront with them, we would have saved ourselves some frustrations. We would have saved ourselves this thing of them coming for a while and then leaving. And today, sadly, that particular families has some sad things going on in their family. It may be helpful in both types of church planting endeavors to identify and promote. And when I say both types of church planting endeavors, whether it's a swarm model or a more of a focus model or there's just one or two families going out more of the evangelization, I mean colonization by evangelization model, it may be helpful in both types of church planting endeavors to identify and promote what is common to all cultures whenever there is a genuine embracing of the gospel of the kingdom and then try to formulate what that will look like in the culture being targeted. In other words, how can we use the local cultural norms and figure out a way to present the gospel of the kingdom? And so that's what I think that we need to be looking for. So once we come to the understanding of how a culture thinks and the people that we're working with, how they think and how they function, then put together something using some of their, the librarians, they had all of these sayings that they would quote. And some of it just to someone like me who had just come there, it didn't make any sense, but they had a meaning in some of those quotes and some of the little parables that they talked about. But how can you use some of those parables? How can you use some of how they think to put together a presentation of the gospel of the kingdom to make so that it would be effective? It's what I call a kingdom Christianity culture. And you can usually find common things that are common throughout all cultures, throughout the world, when kingdom Christianity makes inroads and when it starts changing people's lives, there are some commonalities that you can find that I think we do well to focus on those commonalities. It changes people's lives for one thing. That's what kingdom Christianity does. It changes their lives to where it promotes peace. It promotes love for your enemies. It promotes a lot of things that the Bible talks about. And so when we focus on that, I think that we can find a message that will resonate. So there were three points addressed if you saw the outline there of this topic. And I'd like to address those three points here fairly briefly. The first one is how can we make indigenous churches self-governing? The first point that I'd like to make here is keep the number of church planters low so that a sense of responsibility and accountability is developed by those becoming a part of the church. So if the goal is a self-governing church or with local leadership from the target group that you are targeting, if that is the goal, then keep the number of missionaries, keep the number of church planters small so that they will need to own what is happening and so that they get a sense that this is for us, what the missionaries are trying to do, what the church planters are trying to do is work themselves out of a job so that we as the local people, the local culture can continue on with the work. And I personally believe that this should be the case both in our foreign and North American church planting endeavors if indigenous church planting is the goal. We need to be actively working to have them become self-governing. So how do you do that? Well, if you've got people in your church from the local culture, and there is someone that you have identified that has leadership qualities, ordained them, mentor them first, ordained them, and let them take on the work, ordained as soon as possible in order to keep a leadership dependency from developing. And that is something that we saw in Belize especially is that the missionaries, there was a turnover of missionaries, just missionary after missionary after missionary for 20 and 30 years. And it seemed like the local people just came to depend that their leadership is going to come from new missionaries coming. And I think that it would have been much better to ordain, to take some of the risks of ordaining people that in our North American cultures we would sometimes say, you know, you might be taking a risk by ordaining such a person, but I think it would have been better to take more of that risk to do that in order to keep a leadership dependency from happening. Our way of ordaining in North American conservative Mennonite, conservative and abaptist settings may not work well in other parts of the globe. If you don't already have men within your church who have leadership qualities, have the giftings of leadership or whatever, consider picking out some men from the area who may have an interest in someday being a pastor, someday being involved in some kind of church planting endeavor, missionary work or whatever. Consider finding such people and mentoring them with the goal of ordaining them to carry on the work. Now, as I stated in the question and answer session, we, if you want, if you consider numbers and if you consider actual members that have joined our church in Thomaston, Georgia from the local culture there, we've been a failure. If that's how you want to look at that. The first couple of years, as I said, our stated mission endeavor or mission statement was a place for seeking families, seeking individuals to come. About four years ago, we decided to change from a focus on that to a change or to a focus on reaching the unsaved, reaching the unchurched. And so we are now in a, in what is considered one of the generational poverty areas of our little town of about 10,000 people, we are now focused on one particular community. Reaching the unchurch, reaching the unsaved. And so one of the next steps that we have been talking about is to try to identify some young men from the community who have a desire for being involved in the Lord's work and seeing if they would be willing to come under the umbrella of our church and let us mentor, let us train, let us even support them as they do this with the intended goal of having local leadership there. So that's one of the next things that we want to try. I'm hoping that that will, if we could just only have one or two people from the community there, that would have a passion for what we have, have a passion for the vision that we have, I'm thinking that they could probably be a bit more effective in reaching that set of people than even we ourselves are. And so that's the goal is to have a self-governing church there to where perhaps in five or 10 years we are ready to move on then to a new area and start doing the same thing. That's what some of the goals are. In Liberia, we ordained two pastors in the time that we were there, Pastor Kali and Pastor Nelson. And one of the things that I found was important and it was a good thing to do is that once we had ordained them, I tried as much as possible to fade to the background and to spend my time in teaching and mentoring and training them and sending them out to do the pastoral work. And I found that effective in a number of ways because they know their people, they understand their people and they were able to connect even better than I was even though I had learned to know them a little bit better, I was still an American. I was still someone who was going to be there for a while with the hopes of working myself out of a job. And so every Monday, every Monday morning after we had Sunday church services and things like that, every Monday morning then we pastors would get together and we would just spend about three or four hours together talking about the church services, talking about needs within the church and that kind of thing. And I would also use then that as a time of mentoring and training. And one of the things, one of the things that I remember promoting very much was this and the Liberians, when they get into a position of leadership, when they have some kind of authority they tend to really push that. They tend to want their people to look up to them because they're in this position of power or whatever. And one of the things that I nearly every Monday morning before we parted ways, I made a statement. I would say, remember that truth is powerful. So yes, people are called to respect you as pastor. People are called to respect your authority. The Bible tells us to do that. Truth is powerful, but it is most powerful when it is accompanied by humility. And so that was an attempt to get them when they are dealing with their people, when they are dealing with their fellow countrymen that they would do it in humility because that's the way that God intended for it and that's what the New Testament teaches. Practice makes perfect. Let them do the pastoral work while you mentor and train. It was such a blessing. A few months before we left in 2008, it was such a blessing for me to observe about I think 10 people being baptized one Sunday morning and there was not one American involved in that baptismal service. I said, praise the Lord, things are moving towards an indigenous church. And today there are two indigenous Anabaptist churches there in Liberia. The next point in the outline was self-supporting. And so if you're going to start a church here in America, whether it's overseas, if you're going to start a church and you want it to eventually be self-supporting, start out small. The first church house that was built in Liberia, which was before we got there, was a pretty massive structure. It fit the area that we were in. We were in one of the nicer parts of Monrovia, the capital, and it fit in that area. We wouldn't have wanted just to have a little straw or it didn't seem like they wanted to have just a little straw mat structure or whatever. But so they built a building that fit the area. But there was something about that. And number one, what it did is people who became members of that church sort of had a status symbol. They viewed themselves as being part of the, maybe the upper class of Liberians by being a part of that church with this nice, big church structure or whatever. But with time, we began to see that this was a problem and we began to work on that. We began to see that there were many people that were coming there for that purpose and also for the purpose then of hopefully that would get them a direct line to Christian aid ministries and to some of the support and programs and things like that that were available because we were sort of under the umbrella of Christian aid ministries, although it's sort of a separate organization under that. And so when the second church started there in Liberia and this was after we were home, I think the lesson had been learned. Start out small, have the goal to be something that is sustainable for them. And so it was told the Liberians that moved to the new church setting there. It was told that they are going to be responsible for putting up their own structure for their church buildings. They were going to be responsible for maintaining it. They were going to be responsible for finding the funds to be able to build it. And so they started out with just a couple of bamboo poles planted in the ground with some palm leaf mat type of a roof. And that's what they met in for a number of years until they could afford and build up the funds to build a better structure. And today it's still nothing like the first one, but I see good things happening in that church that I think that if that would have been adopted in the first church, we would have probably had some less of the problems that we did have. Another way of promoting this self-supporting, this in other words, that they carry on the work themselves is get them to see that humanitarian work. And all of us, we're called to do that. We're called to reach out to the poor. We're called to be hospitable to strangers. If you want to figure out what we're called to, look at Matthew chapter 25 and see what the difference was in the two camps. Those were, they were saying, when did we see you oppressed and in prison and things like that? And we didn't go visit you. And just look at that account. Look at what is being promoted there. Look at what is being said there. Humanitarian work is a good work. Push the idea that the local church should be involved in humanitarian work. I'm going to say something that I think we as conservative Anabaptists have gotten too accustomed to looking to para-church organizations to do the humanitarian work. And we've missed out on one of the greatest blessings because depending what kind of people, whether it's a generational poverty type of people or whether it's an overseas type of poor people or whatever, you will discover that one of the ways to reach them with the gospel of the kingdom is to show them that you care about their condition. To show them that you understand the hard times that they are facing and to show them Christ's love. And when you do that, it may open up the door for them to become a part of your church and to become an active part of your church. And then it's up to those people and all of us then to be involved in humanitarian type work. It's not saying that para-church organizations don't have their place. I think they do. And in a bigger scale sometimes, but we don't let humanitarian work be only the responsibility of para-church organizations. Don't start something the local church can't continue. It's very, very important. Don't start something the local church can't continue if it's going to be indigenous. And the third point, self-propagating. I believe based on my limited understanding of church history that the most effective way to self-propagate is by developing a culture that closely resembles the culture that emerged from the early church and then make sure that that culture remains intact. When it's that simple, pure gospel of the kingdom that changes people's lives and you see that at work in a church, it is attractive to those who are looking for something with meaning. And so keep it that pure and simple kingdom Christianity culture. And I think that you will see it become a self-propagating church, one that continues to reach out, one where new churches are birthed out of it. And if this is what is being advocated both in reality and by perception, most likely there will be continual growth. And so the purpose for this topic this morning is to focus in on this part of being involved in indigenous church planting. That's not the only model that works, but it is an important model. And I think we do well to take that into consideration as we think about church planting. May God bless you, may God bless our efforts at church planting.