 Hey, good morning, everyone. Welcome to the session. Let's begin this time with a word of prayer. So if you would like to lead us in prayer, it's okay with you. Alright, anyone can lead me in prayer. It's silly. Thank you Father. Thank you for this time that you've given us. Thank you for your goodness, your monsees, your provision. Father, thank you for your faithfulness and our lives. We thank you for bringing us together once again for the session. We thank you Father for the truths that we are learning. We pray, Father, that you enable us, Father, to understand, to perceive, to be receptive, Father, to your word, to these concepts. Father, Lord, that we may be able to practice it, Father, that we may be able to act according to your will in these areas. Father, Lord, we thank you for this opportunity that you've given. Father, we pray for all. Father, we pray for your enablement, your strength, your grace. You are still upon him. Also, we pray, Father, for all the classmates, Father, Lord, we pray, Father, that you strengthen each one of us, Father, and help us, Father, with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. All these things we pray in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you, Divya. Alright, so last class we looked at the vision of a cell church. Then we looked at what a cell church is. We saw that it's a microcosm of the kingdom of God. It's a unit of the local church. And most importantly, we saw that it is a biblical pattern. So when we talk about a cell group, we see that the Lord Jesus ministered in small settings. In the early church, we looked at a lot of examples. And we looked at the verses as well, where churches and people met in smaller settings as well. Then we went into why are cell groups important. We looked at about three points. We looked at that it provides the most efficient means of pastoring and evangelism. It's a wonderful place to recapture families. And we did the number three, which was it's a way of increasing the church. Now, let's stay on this point, increasing the church, point number three. Now, when we talk about a cell group, we can, since evangelism is part of that cell group, it's a wonderful opportunity to bring people to Christ. And many times when people come into these cell groups, they are sailed and they are ministered to in the cell group. Eventually, they normally would prefer to get into a local church. The more effective a church is in meeting the needs of its members, the greater the positive impact on the church growth. So cell groups play a vital role, a very major role in terms of building spiritual building and nurturing of a church. Remember, we talked about this last week on Sunday, the pastor preaches, there's worship, the pastor preaches, everyone go back home. But the cell group is a place of building up, nurturing and mentoring. Let's go to the next point. It is a perfect place to make disciples. Discipleship of believers takes place effectively in small groups. Now, there are a lot of discipleship programs. There are discipleship, life coaching is something that we have at APC. We can attend two-day seminar, maybe five-month course or one-year course on discipleship. Now, what is important is that we must understand that making disciples is an ongoing process. It doesn't just happen overnight or it doesn't happen maybe in one year. As we know that discipleship is a process that goes on and on. Look at the example of Jesus. He chose 12 disciples and for three and a half years, he was ministering to them. Can we say that after three and a half years, they were all set to take up the battle of going out and reaching out and sharing the message of Jesus? I don't think so because a lot of them were towards the end of three and a half years. One of them disowned him and then the other 11 were fearful and weary. They had no idea what to do. So, when it comes to discipleship, it is life to life mentoring. You're speaking your life into the other person's life. It's life to life. It's not on paper. On paper, it's a different story. For example, we can study a lot of things in the Bible and I can teach it as we are doing right now. We are teaching, but mentoring is more than just teaching, more than just preaching. Mentoring is about life to life. The moment I'm as a mentor, I should be able to open my life, share about my failures, the things that have gone wrong and the things that worked out where I was successful and it's more about life and life. Next point, small groups is a wonderful place of having true fellowship and edification. We build meaningful relationships, especially in a church which is, I would say if the church comes up to more than 200 people, sometimes they can get lost. But now we have wonderful churches which have 400, 500,000 of people. That's wonderful because God said I will build my church. I will add people into the kingdom of God and we're not against churches growing in numbers. But when we look at growth, we must also see spiritual growth. Building meaningful relationships can be hard in larger gatherings. But in small groups, it is where you can have true fellowship. Relationships are better and each of them can spend time bonding of people happens. Edification happens. Remember the Apostle Paul said, edify each other through the word and through love. So we edify each other, build each other up. Send groups is a wonderful next point. Send groups is a wonderful place to exercise spiritual gifts. When we talk about small groups, the beautiful aspect of a small group is that you can be yourself. And many a times we come to church and sometimes we try to be somebody who we are not. But in a small group, we can just be who you are. All must come off. You can just be who you are. For example, I remember this long time back, this young boy, he didn't really believe in speaking in tongues. He was part of our church. He didn't believe in it. But he wasn't against it. He just didn't believe. He started going to a live group after he started attending a live group. There was not much of speaking in tongues. But some of our youth were doing it. They used to sing in tongues. Every now and then they would pray in tongues. And he would feel very uncomfortable. And then some of our youth began to speak to him after many months of explaining to him through the scriptures. This is what the Bible teaches us. This is what the gift of the Holy Spirit is that it's available. So over time he began to understand. And God in his grace filled him with the Holy Spirit and he began to also speak in tongues. But it took him about six months in a small group. But in that small group he was able to open up. He was able to be himself. He was sharing with me the other day. He was saying, all of them used to pray and speak in tongues. But I was the only person who was able to pray and sing in tongues. But I still felt like home in this small group. And that's how a Zen group must be. We don't judge each other. We don't look at each other and judge each other by their gifts and talents and all of it. But it's a place of just exercising, stepping out of your comfort. And there are many testimonies of people who didn't like to pray in public. Or they didn't know how to pray in public. Small groups enabled them to step out of their comfort zone. There were people who didn't like to sing or raise their hands in public. But through the small groups they were able to step out. And then next point, raising up leaders. Every cell member, especially in APC, what we want to see is every cell member becoming a cell leader. So right now we have about 40 life groups. Each life group has an average of about 8 to 10 people. And we intentionally kept it that way. The momentum life group becomes more than 12. We make sure that we divided it in two so that you have the life group leaders able to minister to each of them on a personal level. Now, why do we do that? Because it's not that we want life groups with 50, 60 people. That's not the point. The point is if I have to raise up a leader, I need to be able to take the responsibility of speaking into his life. I need to make the time. I need to share things in my life. I need to be able to speak into that person's life. Now remember, leaders, there are two kinds of leaders. One are born leaders. One are made leaders. It looks at some people and you know there's a spirit of leadership in them. When you look at some people, very shy, very quiet, you know, don't really talk much. Then they become great leaders. I would say one of the major responsibilities of a cell group is to raise up leaders. A cell leader must take the responsibility of raising a leader. So one of the things that I do for our life groups is if there are life groups which are more than probably two years, they function in for about two years. I speak to the life group leader and I say, hey, it's been two years that you've been ministering to these people. Who is going to be, you know, who is a potential leader? You have raised up. We can ask to start a new life group. And so we'd like to do that. And so even before life group starts, yesterday we just spoke to the person and we are starting a new life group. It's a family life group. And I told him, I said, brother, you're starting this Saturday. See, tomorrow is his first session. I said, the day you start, you must also think about who can be the next leader for this life. Or who can I raise as a leader that can start a life group and mentor another 10 or 12 people? Raising up leaders is very important and life groups, cell groups, is the perfect place to do that because we can speak into their lives. Number eight, accountability. Now, this word accountability somewhere, I would say, especially in church, when you talk about church globally, worldwide, the citywide church, worldwide church. Accountability is something that is slowly being taken out. Why? Because we have leaders who are pioneers. There's no accountability. They can say what they want to say, they can do what they want to do. And they don't have to report to anybody. But remember that accountability is whether you are a pioneer, whether you are working in the ministry, workplace accountability is important. Even on a personal level, picture this, you're at home, you have a family, you have children, you're really accountable to them. You've got to be able to, if you have a wife or you have a husband, you need to be accountable to them, to the children as well. So every member of the church has a certain accountability. Now, whether we fulfill that, that is secondary, but there is an accountability. What is it to evangelize, to grow spiritually and to fulfill is part of the vision to the fullness of his or her capacity. So this not only includes evangelism and church attendance, but it's also the ministries that he or she can be involved in. Now, as self-group leaders, we encourage them to be accountable. Now accountability can start small in small ways and also this, we've got to be accountable in bigger things as well. So for example, Saturday is life group. So a basic aspect, a basic thing that a leader should do is inform the members, okay, they have life group. This is the time, this is the place, this is what they're going to discuss. This is the agenda for the life group. It's being accountable. Initially, what we used to do is we used to have life group leaders at the ports. So I used to request the life group leaders to email in your reports. So it would be basically a monthly report. So the month, if you've met every week, what was it? How was the discussions? Were there any questions? So they send a whole report. If you meet once in two weeks, a monthly report is set. And it's good to be accountable. So right now what we do is we meet with our life group leaders at least once a quarter. We meet in person, even though here in Bangalore, we have different locations, everyone all across the city. It's hard to get everyone at times, but we try to meet on a call or we meet personally. Why? Because the same sense of accountability. They are accountable. We are also accountable. And so that when we are accountable, there is productivity is easily measured. It's OK. This cell group is doing well. This cell group needs some help so we can help them out. Number nine, avoid continuation of debt programs. Right now, the health of a cell group is very important. If you have a cell group and we're just meeting, but nothing is, there's no outcome. So for example, there's a cell group that is happening and it's been two years. And in two years. Right. We don't see any spiritual group. Right now, I'm just giving this example. So example, a person comes to this life group and he says, hey, I'm not comfortable praying in public because these are the things I. But after two years, if he still feels that I'm not comfortable praying in public, he or she. We need to ask ourselves what's, you know, because we need to see change. We need to see spiritual growth in people's lives. So it's very important to avoid dead programs. Right. Programs that can, you know, take up time yet they may look good on the outside. Out of no use. Now I'm not saying don't have programs. We encourage our life group leader to say, hey, you know, go out, reach out evangelize. We also help them during Christmas time if they want to go out to children's homes often it is do all of that. But the moment you feel that if your cell group is not growing the spiritual level. Number one, first reach out to your pastor. Reach out to your leaders. Right. Or within the center group itself. Talk to each other. You know, what are we not doing right? Is it some, is there something that's missing? Are we not open to the leading of the whole dispute? What are we doing? So we can, you know, just work together. But if you feel that there is something that is dead and it's not bearing any fruit. You know, try to avoid that. And then make sure that the shelf of the life group is strong. So there should be people should be ministered. Number one, it's about people. People should be ministered. After, you know, a couple of months, they must feel that hey, I don't want to miss life group. I need to go because I can hear the world. I can discuss the world. We open. They must feel that if they're not feeling that we need to, you know, discuss and see how to get people interested to be part of cell group. Right. So what does a cell church look like? So number one, we saw what is a cell group. We saw what is a cell churches cell groups is a ministry of a church. A cell church focuses only on small groups. So they don't, they don't always, they don't want to do events and programs. Try to, they don't focus on that. So this is the difference. So we saw what is why, why cell groups are important. Now we're going to look at what a cell church looks like. In Bangalore, in cities, in the city that we stay in, I've not really seen a cell church. But in, in states up North India, there are plenty of that. Plenty, plenty of, and they could be in, even in cities. But in, in the north of India, there are plenty of churches, which are basically cell churches. So what does a cell church look like? Right. Let's look at those few points on your notes. Would you like me to present the notes? Would that be easier for you? Or if you have your notes open, then you can just look at it. Let me know if you want me to present the notes. Is that fine? Okay. You just put, you just put a message in. If you'd like, if you want me to present the notes, okay. Oops. Sorry. Okay. Everyone can see this? Oh, sorry. I just need to, so, okay. So what does a cell church look like? Okay. So when you talk about a cell church, what does it look like? Does it look like a regular church service that we have every Sunday? Does it look like, you know, just a few people gathering in a small setting and they just sing a few songs, pray and go home. What does it look like? Let's look at a few points here. A cell church has Sunday celebration services like any other church. They come together for worship, for preaching of the word and they, and to keep in sync with the overall direction of the local church. Right. So, so basically when you look at a cell church, it looks like a regular church that nothing changes. Only thing you may not have, you know, big LED screen and all of that, but it looks like a regular church. Right. They meet during the week, but here's the difference now. They can either meet once a week, they can meet twice a week. Right. Now, for example, life groups and, and, and back low, we have some that meet every week, some that meet once in two weeks. But when you look at a cell church, they meet every week for sure, or they meet twice a week. Right. And, you know, different churches or different ministries will have different structures. Let me give you this example. You can have a church with cell church, which has worship for 30 minutes, get into the Lord's table and through few announcements of what's going to happen. Then some churches can have testimony time. Right. So you have testimony and then you get into God's work. Right. And then you have probably 15, 20 minutes of prayer and close. So the agenda can vary from cell groups to cell groups. Now, you may have another church, a cell church, which can start with half an hour of prayer, get into worship, get into the announcements, get into the word and then end with the Lord's table. So the structure, the agenda may be different, but they have the Sunday service. Right. And again, it's a place to build strong relationships. Everyone feels loved and cared. People in need are ministered to right away. Okay. So for example, in a church, you want to meet with the pastor. The pastor has been preaching and you have about 500 people in the church by signing a line to meet with the pastor. Now, the pastor may not have time to look. The line may be so long that you'll feel, oh man, let me go home. Or we may feel the pastor may not have time to sit and talk. But here in a cell group, people are ministered to right away. Right. For example, the pastor can be traveling on ministry. He can be on a break. He can be on a holiday. But he got, when the cell group pastors are there, they're available to minister one-on-one right away. Ministry is done through cell groups. They do not have to wait for the church to start the ministry or a program. Cell leader takes the opportunity and works together to get the work, the ministry work started and keep growing continuously. Souls are continuously being added to the kingdom. The church and its ministries are focused on building leaders and providing training. Now, remember, a local church and a cell church, they both can have overlapping, you know, the ideas, the strategies can overlap. Right. A local church also wants to build leaders. It's not like it's only the cell group leaders or cell church wants to, you know, they want to raise up in the local church. So they could then, it's always an overlap. Right. You know, a cell, a regular church will want to train people and build people up in the world. So also, you know, cell church. So we see that overlap is there. But even with that overlap, it's just that the cell group, you can go into detail. Right. So the vision of the church permeates the entire church structure. Every individual is possessed by the vision of the church. Every individual will wants to, you know, they lift the vision of the church. Now, again, it's not that in a cell church, there's no vision. Right. It's there. Right. Now, let's look at the next one. There are occasional events, special meetings, crusades and seminars that cells are involved in. And they get everyone in the cell group to participate. So when you look at the local church and a cell church, there is an overlap, but there is, there are differences. Right. When you're part of a local church and when you're part of a cell group, you will see, you can see that you can see the difference. Right. Now, look at these examples of cell churches. I'm sure all of us pay. I've heard of David Paul Yonky Chow. Right. A powerful, powerful minister of God. God just touched his life as a young boy, probably at the age of 18, 19, young boy. He had some illness, very soft-spoken young boy. God touched his life and, you know, he started this church in Seoul, Korea. Look at this. Look at just a few aspects of what happened in his church. The church began in 1958. Here are the three keys in the church. Number one was prayer, cell groups, let my people grow and go. Now, here's the thing I want to listen to. Look at these three points. Prayer, cell groups, let my people grow and grow. So, when David Yonky Chow, he started, he had these three aspects and he writes a lot about it in his book. Forget the name. I think it's the five dimensions of the church, but you can go online and check. He writes a detailed description of how God just gave him these ideas and strategies and, you know, he was able to build the largest church in the entire world. Prayer, cell groups. And the purpose of the cell group was for people to grow and to go. So, for David Paul Yonky Chow, his strategy was not, okay, I need thousands of people or lakhs of people coming and sitting for the Sunday service. That was not his intention at all. His intention was, I need to reach out to people and when I reach out to these people, these people must grow, become leaders and they should go out and do something for God. So, you see the mindset there. It was not like, okay, they should grow and they should serve. No, he wanted, his vision was to expand, to raise up leaders and these leaders will go out and raise up another 10 or 100 leaders and those 100 will go out and raise up another 100 leaders. So, you know, just a ripple effect. But look at what happened in the first six years. Without the system of cell groups, right? So imagine this, the church for the first six years had no cell groups. And later on after that he initiated the cell group model. Now, let's read, look at this Exodus 1821. Moreover, you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of 50s and rulers of 10s. This is when Moses' father-in-law comes and gives them instructions as, hey, Moses, you're a leader. What are you doing looking after these small aspects? You are up there. You need to look after the spiritual aspect of the people of Israel. You are looking at, you know, why are these two people fighting? Why are they upset with each other? No. So his father-in-law says, this is what you do. Get people and put them over as rulers over thousands, over hundreds, over 50s and 10s. With this in mind, David Yongi Cho started the cells among women. What started with one or two went on to become 65,000 cell groups. That number is, you know, when you think about it now, it looks unrealistic, but it's not unrealistic. That's what really happened. 65,000 cell groups. And the church membership went up to 750,000 members. How? Through cell groups. Because what he did was he pointed cell leaders. He said, you go out, bring people, minister to people. And what happened was when they were able to do that, the cell groups just began to multiply and multiply and multiply. And towards the end, 750 members within the church. So we see that the cell group model is a successful model that, you know, later on we'll talk about it, whether cell groups are relevant for the generation that we are living in. Some of you may ask, hey, but this is 1950s, late 1950s, early 1960s, people didn't have much to do. But now they're all busy. We don't have time. It's all true, but it doesn't mean that the cell church model is not effective. It is yet, even now, very, very effective. Let's look at the second example, the International Charismatic Mission in Pagoda, Colombia. Now, if you look at the 1980s, Colombia was a place infested with drugs. It is known for its drugs. It's known for its gangsters. And it was known as, even though being a third world country during that time, resources were less, only cocaine and all these drugs were the source of income for the people of Colombia. And, you know, there was no proper management system. The government was failing. But in 1983 God used this wonderful ministry called the International Charismatic Mission in Pagoda, Colombia. Now Pagoda is, it's not just, it was not a city, but it's a town in Colombia, a growing town. So look at what happened. It began in 1983, groups of 12 cell groups and evangelism. For the first seven years, worked with David Yongecho's system and the church grew to 3,000 members. So he did something very, very smart. What he did was, he took his, he probably read about David Yongecho. He used his ideas and for the first seven years, through cell groups, 3,000 members were added into the church. And he started to focus on planting new cells instead of multiplying existing groups. Right, so 2,400 cell groups, 350,000 members. Now remember, this is the 1980s, there are, crime was at its peak, but God used it. God used the cell groups to touch and minister to people. And I'm sure there would have been hundreds and thousands of testimonies during this time. 350,000 members added into the church. Let's look at some more, just a few more here. Churches that have implemented the G12 model. And we'll talk about model in G12 in the next class. And what we have also done is we've done the APC-12 model. That's how we've taken it from here and we're applying it here at APC. What is the G12 model? G12 model is these are the churches that have applied it, right? Harvest Assembly in the US, Christian Center in Kudor, Kensington Temple in England, Bethany World Press Center in Louisiana, the USA. So what are these churches, you know, what is it about the G12 principles, right? Those churches following the G12 principles as opposed to the entire model are too numerous to name. So let me just briefly explain what this G12 model is. The G12 model was basically a cell leader was appointed and under that cell leader, they would have 12 people that this one leader will minister to. The moment the group becomes 13, the moment the group becomes more than 13, a new leader is appointed to look after, you know, the other group. So let me just paint this picture for you. So you've got one leader, he's got seven people in the cell group. Six months down the line, it becomes 12. Now, one person wants to join that group. So when it becomes 13, this cell group leader must have already raised up another leader, and this other leader is appointed as a cell group leader, and he starts with that one person. Then that cell group continues to grow and becomes 12. And then when it becomes 13, it again, a new group is started. Now, why 12? There's no reason why 12. It is a one person, one cell group leader. 12 people is a good number that he can look after, right? Like really speak into their life, spend time with them. Imagine you have a cell group and you have some 20 people in that cell group. It's just going to be a prayer group. It's just going to be another meeting. Because you're not able to spend time or minister to them on a one-on-one basis. So the G-12 model and the G-12 principle really took off in the early 80s, 1980s, 1990s. Many, many, many churches began to use this model. And they also saw the fruit of this model. It worked. People's lives were touched. People were getting ministered. Leaders were being raised. Discipleship was happening. And so many churches began to apply this model even as they continued to build the ministry. So here's the question that we want to ask. Will the cell church concept work in the city? Will it work in the city? Now, the answer is a resounding yes. Yet there are challenges that we will see. There are challenges. But let's look at why the cell church concept works even in a city. Regardless of region, regardless of culture, regardless of status, it can be rich or poor. We can be from a certain culture. We can be from a certain region. It doesn't matter why people are created to have relationships. So when you and I, for example, we start a cell church, we invite people. Sometimes they may say, no, I don't want to come. But remember that people are created to have relationships. Jesus being the son of God, he could have done everything on his own. But he didn't do it. He used people, ordinary people. He built relationships with them and we use them. And I always use this example. In 2020, we saw COVID and the lockdown. We were all locked up in our rooms, in our homes. How many of us felt, oh, man, I need to speak to somebody face to face? Because why is that feeling coming? Because we are built, we are created to have relationships. We cannot be, no matter how much we do things online, recently I was speaking to a young man in his early 30s and he was saying, he works from home. So the entire, there's no office in India. So there's no going out at all. All he has to do is work from home. So there are no people to speak with in terms of his colleagues. Everything is done through either through the instant chat. There's no office itself in India. So he was telling me, I don't have friends. I don't have people who I can talk to. The church is only on Sundays and he is also part of a cell group. And he says, only on Sunday and cell group, I get to talk to people. Otherwise, no. Because Monday to Friday I work from home. He's saying I feel lonely at times. I feel lonely. I don't know what to do. Sometimes I don't know what to talk. I've lost the interest of, you know, sometimes I can't frame a sentence properly because I've just been working from home. So remember that people are created to have relationships. So definitely you start a cell group, people will come. They may have work. They may not have work. They may be busy. They may not be busy. But there are times people can put aside 10 other things and come to your life group. Because there's life there. Two, in general, people are hospitable and like to visit their homes. The moment you tell somebody, hey, why don't you come to church? They may take a step back. But home is a different setting. Normally 8 out of 9, 10 times when you invite a person home, come visit. They will come. So it gives us an opportunity. Three, cells allow the unsaved to explore without being very public about their interests. I'll just share a few things here and bring this session to a close. There are many testimonies that happen even in our church where we have people coming from different parts of the states of India and they come into Bangalore and people from other faiths as well. So we had a couple of youth. And this is over time for the youth that who were invited by friends, they came into church. They were unbelievers but the Lord touched their heart. And they became believers. But initially they were very weary. How can I go to church? Am I doing something wrong? What if my parents get them home? What if God is upset? They had a lot of questions. So what we did was we connected them to cell groups, to life groups. I said, okay, this is not a church service but it's a place where you have questions you can go now. So there were a couple of girls and two or three boys that we know of. So the girls we sent them to some of the girls' life groups, the boys we sent them to the boys' life groups. And there they began to ask a lot of questions. Why do you do this? Why do you have this, you know, Lord's table? Why do you sing songs? Why do you pray so? They have simple questions. But they began to explore. It was a safe environment for them. And for about one and a half to two years they were only attending life groups. And they came to a certain level of maturity. They were growing in the Lord and they said, no, I need to go to church. They understood. So they themselves decided, no, I'll come to church. So they began to come to church and they began to serve and they finished their studies. Some of them have gone back to their hometown. Some of them are still here. But you see that it gave the life group was the place where they began to learn and grow. They never attended church, not up to about one and a half to two years. So it's a wonderful place for the unsaved especially to, you know, a comfortable safe environment to ask questions and to learn and grow. What are some of the challenges we see? And what are some of the solutions? Challenges. People have long working hours or timings. Right. Solution is we can have workplace cell groups, cell groups at home, at homes close by or even in coffee centers or anything that can make them be available for this meeting together. Right. So actually we'll stop here. So we lost time so we can start next week. We'll just look at a few of the possible challenges and share a few examples as well and how we were able to work through those challenges, bring up solutions. And then we can continue from there. Right. All right. Thank you so much everyone. See you next week. Have a great week ahead. But bless you all. Bye now.