Reproduction or Death. Your Call.

If a species of animals stops mating and reproducing, it becomes extinct. If everyone in your family line stops making babies, your family tree will not expand anymore.

This is a natural and inarguable fact of life. Non-reproduction ends in non-growth and ultimately death.

Now, let me shift to the gospel and the mission of God. We are asked to go and make disciples. We know that God wants his church to go everywhere! And he wants every single person and nation to meet him and love him.

THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN WITHOUT REPRODUCTION! Another word for reproduction is multiplication.

A leader is not a leader unless he is making other leaders.

A prophet is not a prophet unless he is making other prophets.

An apostle is not an apostle if he is not making other apostles.

A disciple is not a disciples if he is not making other disciples.

A church is not a church if it is not making other churches.

Success in the kingdom = Reproduction and Multiplication.

20,000 people in a church is not success. Replication of leaders and churches is. Who cares that you have 500 or 50,000 people in your church if it is not reproducing. Give me 10 people that treasure and live reproduction and they will leave that group of 50,000 in the dust.

I was in a meeting recently with David Watson and he said this: "I will not disciple anyone who is not discipling others.  Reproduction is a value and I will not violate it. If you are not reproducing, you do not get my time." //WOW!

Reproduction is one of the main reasons that my heart has become so attracted to simple church structures and relational disciple making.  IT IS REPRODUCIBLE!

This really has me thinking.  What do you think? How are you doing at multiplication in your church and life?

All Over The World

Today was amazing.  I spent 8 hours of this day with a group of Kenyan church leaders who are hungry and ready for a fresh move of God! It was one of those days that the Lord chose to speak loudly at me....to get my attention, open my eyes and show me some things. The more I travel around, the more countries I visit, the more people I meet, the more conversations I have, I am realizing a few things that are giving me tons and tons of hope and joy!  My Kenyan brothers and sisters filled me with hope today! May I share it with you?

• God is moving all over the world. 
• God is preparing people all over the world. He is getting soil ready for a harvest!
• There are people becoming sick and tired of ineffectiveness for the Lord all over the world.
• There is a growing "holy frustration" all over the world.
• People are hungry for a fresh move of God all over the world. 
• People are feeling the same things growing in their hearts all over the world.
• People all over the world are asking the same questions.
• People all over the world are weary of the same churchy games.
• People all around the world are hearing a new trumpet sound.
• People all over the world are changing the direction of their trot.
• All across the world, people are joining a structural revolution and reformation in the church.
• All over the earth, God is raising up people and communities committed to being faithful disciple makers.

And the end of the story is that the glory of God will fill the earth and every knee will bow to the Christ, the son of the Living God!

I am coming to believe that we are reaching the tipping point. The party is starting.  And I don't think there is any stopping us now.

How about joining in?  Come on.

"The gospel of the good news will be preached in all nations, and then the end will come." Matthew 24:14

East Africa Trip

Early tomorrow morning, me and two friends/fellow All Nations leaders (Archie Van Der Byl and Thomas Reber), head to East Africa for 17 days. We will be in the Nairobi, Kenya area for about 7 days.  We will do a JDx Training (Jesus Discipleship Experience) and explore future ministry options in Kenya.

Then, we will spend about 10 days in Addis Ababa and Awassa Ethiopia where we will lead another JDx and then attend the IMA Holy Spirit and Missions conference with leaders from around the world.

I hope to tweet and blog from the road when I can. We would value your prayers and prophetic words should the Lord give you something for us.

(This will be my last trip of the year before heading back to the US of A with the whole gang around November 15!)

Toxic Charity

I recently finished reading the book "Toxic Charity" by Bob Lupton. It was a hard-hitting, direct and honest look at our charitable justice work and how it hurts people and relationships.  I liked the book, but felt that the Author did a poor job of dealing with many of the scriptural aspects of care for the poor. I took detailed notes of the book.  If you want them, email me and I will gladly send them to you.

Backsliding on Starbucks

Confession time. I've hesitated to go public with this, but I must now. The time has come. I am Starbucks lover. Have been for a while.

But....

I am ready to admit that there is something better here in South Africa. It's called Vida e Caffe. The coffee is right on!!! Fresh. And the perfect medium between strong and weak.

And guess what? It doesn't taste burnt!

So there. I said it. I like something better than Starbucks.

I'm a traitor.

Thank God for Beer

Like the title?  Here are some more that were in the running:

• I love Beer
• Beer opens doors
• Beer leads to God

So, they are all a tad controversial, huh? Well, they are also true. Maybe.

After working in Africa for 20 months, I have found that what is true in my homeland is even more true here.  There is a huge canyon between sacred and secular. People dichotomize life so drastically. Right, wrong. Black, white. Holy, unholy. Church, life. God, me. Sin, purity. God is at church on Sundays. My Monday through Friday has nothing to do with God. He only plays on Sundays. My life and sin are a separate departments than my spirit and faith.

So, what does this have to do with beer?

Well, there is loads of alcohol use an abuse in the community we serve in. But, almost every local African I meet thinks that beer separates man from God. God evidently hates beer. And drinking. So, we must hide it from him. And we can certainly not talk about God while drinking. We must first hide or dispose of the beer and then we can discuss God.  Or we can talk about God tomorrow with a coke. But, God and beer do not mix.

What is my point?

Here's the deal...this is legalism. And it is anti-gospel thinking. The very nature of Jesus is that he comes among us, loves us where we are, and invites him to join him as we are. Then, his spirit works in us for his good purposes.

I thank God for beer.  Beer is a topic I can bring up every time to start spiritual relationships by shattering religious spirits, crappy legalism and bad theology.  Stop hiding your beer. Bring your beer to church. Bring some to share for goodness sake.  And let's experience the radical nature of the lavish love of God....yes, even for sinners.  And then let's journey with Jesus from there.

Helping someone see that God loves them right now, with or without beer....with or without addiction....is the first step to teaching good theology to a future disciple.

Beer...a new evangelism tool. ;-)

Video :: Nothing is Original

This video is a must-watch. Please take the time to see it and think about how you perceive creativity.

Video :: Self-Discovery

JDx coming to Kenya and Ethiopia!

I am thrilled to announce that I will be heading back to East Africa again in just a few short weeks with two partners in crime here at All Nations. Thomas Reber (Switzerland) and Archie Van Der Byl (South Africa) and I will be in Kenya and Ethiopia leading Jesus Discipleship Experience (JDx) training programs for disciple making leaders. We are excited about what the Lord is preparing.

Are you passionate about faithful, Jesus-centered Disciple Making?  JDx unpacks seven counterintuitive values of disciple-making.

Do you or someone you know live near Nairobi or Addis Ababa?

Can you help us get the word out?

• Nairobi, Kenya: September 6-9
• Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: September 13-16

Want more information? Email me at noah dot ccf at gmail dot com.

Change the Question

Here's another post inspired by my day with David Watson last week... For far too long, far too many of us have exported our ways of doing church and acted like it works. It doesn't. My way of doing church only reaches the people in my church. We CANNOT and WILL NOT see movements to Jesus by just recreating and shipping out our brand of church. It hasn't happened and it's not going to happen. As long as you want to recreate your church instead of making disciples for Jesus, we will remain as effective as we have been. And denominational loyalty is one of the biggest barriers to this issue.

Watson said this "A true Apostle cannot have loyalty to a single church or denomination."  He went on to make a brilliant point. He said, We have to change the driving question we are asking. Instead of asking "What can we do to reach our city?", we must ask "What is it going to take to disciple this city? And will it take to disciple this nation? Every nation?"

When we ask these type of questions, we quickly realize that we simply come to the table with a part of the meal, not the whole thing. Then, we submit in humility and join in Kingdom collaboration to reach our city with the rest of the Body of Christ.

We will not disciple nations alone.

And we need to change the question.

Living My Values

The Lord has been imparting strong revelation into my life over the last month about the importance of living into my values. Here is a little bit about what I'm hearing from the Lord:

• I will either live out my values, or I will live out everyone else's.
• I can live on with purpose with purpose or I can live haphazardly without purpose. 
• When I am not living true to my values, I will live in a constant state of guilt thinking about what I really should be doing.
• I get one chance on this earth to make my life count, and for all intents and purposes, it's half over!  I cannot and I will not waste my life.  I want to live it in fullest obedience to Jesus.

And here is what I have done about it:

• I started going to bed every night by 10pm so I can get up every morning at 5:30am and spend time with Jesus.  I want some serious intimacy with Him! And it will take time and energy for us to bond and keep bonding. He is everything to me.  Everything in my life has to fit in around Him!
• Then, I took prayerful time to start developing and listing out my personal values. Values (to me) are the things absolutely most important to me...the top priorities of my life....the things that Jesus is asking ME to do and be and commit to.  Those are my values. I now know my top 10 and am ready to give an account of what they are and how I am living them.
• Then, I lead my wife in the same process. We both are doing this together.
• Now, we have taken our list of values...the things we are most called to live into...and we have laid them next to our calendar and ensured that every value has proper place in our weekly schedule. We have translated our core callings into time and events in our week. This is the only way to LIVE intentionally with purpose. Now, we can see it laid out in front of us.
• Now, we just get to it, continually cross checking the calendar with the values.
• I have been working at this with significant intentionality for 2-3 weeks now and I want to assure you that this is NOT easy, but it is VERY fulfilling and rewarding. For the first time in a long time, I feel I am living in full obedience to Jesus in regards to how I spend my time.

What about you?

Do you even know your values?

Are you living them?

Are you sure?

Join me.

Wealth in Poverty

There is wealth in poverty!

What is your dream? What is your vision? Mine is to see Disciple Making Movements cover the earth until the whole world loves and worships the Creator God.  Big dream, I know.

But, regardless of the size of your dream, the very most important resource that will help you in accomplishing it is people. People are 90% of what is needed to change a population or see a vision become a reality.

And now think in terms of successful organizations...personnel is also usually 90% of the cost! Only about 10% is other materials.

We work in a very poor community in Africa. And guess what? Even the poorest community in the world has the most precious tool within it. It has people.  It has the most expensive part of the budget already in place.  It has people.

So, no matter the dream you have or the community you look at, have the eyes to see that it has what it needs to be transformed.

Are we really going to fret about the 10% we may not have for bells and whistles we may not need, while we overlook that 90% that we do?

Yes, there is wealth in poverty!

(Inspired by my time today with David Watson. He used the phrase today and I built on it.)

Watch Me

Three times in the last month, I have heard people share about how they have modeled their quiet time with the Lord to people they are discipling.  At first I thought it as weird...like it draws attention to ourselves and our piety. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought: "Man, I wish someone would have shown me how to spend time with Jesus on a regular basis." Today, one of the guys that I disciple spent the day with our family and I asked him if he would like to watch me spend my daily time with the Lord.  He was keen to do so. So, we went into a room where there would be no distractions.  I told him that he was welcome to just watch and listen, but that he was also welcome to contribute and share as well if he wanted to. So, I proceeded to do my normal thing:

• Worship.  Expressing to God how deeply I love him.
• Needs. Praying into things that the are in my heart or that the Holy Spirit reminds me of.
• Journal what I am sensing and hearing from Jesus during prayer.
• Scripture. We read 3 chapters in Genesis and 1 chapter in Matthew.
• Journal again what I heard from Jesus in the Bible passages I read.
• Obedience: Is there anything specific that Jesus is asking me to do today? Write it.

This is how I do it.  It is how I spend my time with Jesus. Everyone is different.

But, today, my friend watched me. He had never seen this before.

Yes, I modeled devotions to someone staring at me.

Was it awkward? Sure. A little.

Was it worth it? Yes! You better believe it.

"I can do this" he said, as we concluded our time.

Have you ever noticed how sometimes we neglect teaching the most important things?

12 Principles of Discovery Discipleship

Floyd McClung, Founder and Director of All Nations, lifelong Jesus-loving missional leader, who also happens to be our leader and our friend here in Cape Town posted this on his blog the other day.  I think it's brilliant and I wanted to share it with you. ________________

DISCOVERY DISCIPLESHIP seeks to empower emerging leaders to bring about sustainable transformation in society and to ignite self-sustaining, reproducing movements of Jesus’ disciples making more disciples, and through that, to build healthy reconciled communities and nations. Discovery discipleship is based on Biblical principles of personal and community obedience to Jesus Christ.

The principles of discovery discipleship are as follows:

1. Obedience to a few simple truths that a person discovers from the teachings of Jesus is a more powerful form of transformation than seeking ever increasing knowledge about the Bible or Christianity as a “religion”.

2. Investing in a few obedient followers of Jesus is a more powerful form of transformation than seeking to influence multitudes of non-obedient Christian spectators.

3. “Insiders” make the best leaders: “outsiders” are to invest in insiders, those inside the culture or business a network of relationships that God wants to use to bring about transformation.

4. Self-discovery of the life-transforming truths Jesus taught is more powerful than being told what to believe.

5. The Holy Spirit is the best teacher; the role of mentors is to facilitate opportunity for new followers of Jesus to hear the Holy Spirit speak directly to them from the Bible, without being told what to believe.

6. The teachings of Jesus in the Bible are the greatest source of wisdom for transforming a nation.

7. Every person has the resources within them through faith in Christ to be a leader in their community; the greatest obstacle to being a transformational leader is not poverty of circumstances, but poverty of mind and spirit.

8 God has prepared persons of peace inside every culture, business, government, neighborhood and sphere of society who are the key persons to bring about transformation. Such persons are not just “networkers”, or “gatekeepers”, but persons ready to obey Jesus, to change their mind and behavior about sinful, selfish choices that are destructive to themselves and their community.

9. Discipleship is intentional relationship. Transformational discipleship is intentionally investing in someone so they might have the opportunity to experience the life-transforming power of knowing and obeying Jesus Christ and as a result, bringing transformation to their community.

10. Jesus invited people who did not yet know him to be his disciples; he discipled people to convert them, he did not convert them to disciple them.

11. Belonging leads to believing, not just believing to belonging. In other words, Jesus modeled inviting people to be part of his spiritual family as a way of bringing them to obedient faith – he did not wait for them to believe in order to invite them to belong. If they did not grow to obedient faith, he did not kick them out, but at the same time, he gave attention to those most serious about obeying him.

12. Discovery discipleship happens best in small discovery Bible studies that provide opportunity for accountability and practice of the above mentioned principles. These discovery groups are capable of growing into simple churches that can multiply and bring transformation every sphere of society.

I left my relationship with Jesus at church

I try to spend a few days a week walking, connecting and sowing into Masiphumelele, the poor community near our home. There is really no way to begin to transfer to you the many things we experience that touch our hearts, tug our hearts and grieve our hearts. But, I would like to share a quick story... Last Friday, while walking in the community, a lady stopped me and asked me to pray for her. I asked her what made her think that I was a spiritual person or even believed in prayer. She said: "because you look like a Bishop"! (I was wearing a sweat suit--go figure.) Well, I told her it was her lucky day, that I not only believed in prayer, but that I would be happy to pray for her and believe in faith that God will grant what we ask. So, we did. Then, after I finished praying, I asked her this: "Do you have a personal friendship with Jesus?" To which she replied: "Yes, it's at St. John's Apostolic Church down that road there."

My heart sank. She understood my question, trust me. I get this all the time. Many "Christians" have no facility for a friendship or personal relationship with Jesus. They leave it at church every Sunday.

God, help us. Help us to know you, to love you and to stir the precious friendship you want with us.

Video: Church. 3 Loves.

Mind Follows Mouth & Pen

Recently, I was listening to a friend of mine named Ken Primrose teach on intimacy with Jesus.  He was talking about the importance of fascination with Jesus and spending time with him alone. He then spoke a bit about how we can get easily distracted in our personal times with the Lord. He then made this statement:

Our mind follows our mouth. If you find yourself getting distracted or your mind wandering off during prayer or Bible reading, begin to pray of read out loud and your mind will follow your mouth.

So, I tried it. It worked!! I literally could not think of anything else other than what I was praying or reading aloud.

Then I told another friend about this discovery and he made this statement:

Your mind also follows your pen. If you find yourself distracted, you can also try writing your thoughts and prayers and you will stay focussed.

I tried it. It worked too!!

So, in my own times with Jesus for the last few weeks I have been going after the Lord with my mouth and my pen every day....and my mind is following!  And it feels like a major victory, because oftentimes in the past, my mind has messed a lot of Jesus times up!

Perhaps this can help you too?

My First African Wedding

I am really excited about tomorrow when I will lead my first African Wedding-- tomorrow morning I am honored to officiate the wedding of Nomzamo and Darlington. Zamo is a Xhosa from the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Darlington is Zimbabwean. This couple has climbed deep into our hearts. Zamo served on our outreach team with us last year during CPx. I have been discipling Darlington for the last year and he just graduated from CPx last month.

Would you be willing to pray for this couple, for their day tomorrow and for their future together? They are a dynamite couple with major Kingdom call on their lives.  They are both disciple makers with a calling to plant churches and bring the Kingdom in Africa. Pray for them and listen to the Lord. If you have a word for them or want to invest in them in any way, don't hesitate to act. They have many needs as they start a life together of service and mission.

What Jesus Could Not Do

For many years, I have failed at having daily time with Jesus. Personal quiet time has been the single hardest part of my faith journey. I have treated it like a diet. I go at it hard for a week or two and then fall off the wagon. I have heard the invitation to spend more time with God as far as 15 years back and STILL am not satisfied with how I have obeyed. That said, the need for me to have time drinking from the living water is more significant and crucial for me now than it has ever been.  I hear the Lord calling and I have promised him I am coming. I won't share here and now how that is looking....but I may someday.

But there is something that I do want to share...

I have many times told myself some of the following true lies:

1. I walk with Jesus all day, so it is ok if I don't spend specific time with him. He wants my whole day, not just 3o minutes.

2. Jesus is more interested in our devotion than our devotions.

3. I obey Jesus and live for him and do really important ministry, so he understands that I do not have lots of time for him.

While these things may have some truth, they are excuses that have been a part of the enemy's calculated prevention plan against me for over 10 years.

Here is the lesson I want you to share:

JESUS COULD NOT DO THAT! JESUS HAD TO HAVE TIME ALONE WITH THE FATHER! (Luke 5:16, John 17, Mark 1;35, and more)

THAT should settle it. Period.

If you or I think we are holy enough to pull off something that Jesus could not, then we are deceived.

Our Bipolar Marriage

Tricia and I celebrated 10 years of marriage last week.  And I am madly in love with this woman who keeps growing and becoming more stunning on the inside and the outside with each passing month. But here is something I want to share out of our journey. We have learned a lot about marriage and love in our years together. But, here is a lesson we have learned that you do not hear very often that we are ready to go public with:

Our marriage is bipolar.

Huh? What do you mean?

Well, bipolar means "having or relating to two poles or extremities" or "to be characterized by opposite extremes". Yeah, I know there is also a psychological disorder that goes by the same name.

But here is my point:

Sometime marriage is awesome! Life is good, you are in love, feelings are bubbly, sex is magical, and no one is in the doghouse.

Then, there are times (sometime a week after the last state) when you cannot seem to get one thing across without misunderstanding, feelings are less than "lovely", hearts are cold and sex...what sex?

Ok, so maybe it's not that bad, but the truth is, your marriage can feel bipolar at time.  We think it is normal. We feel healthy. Maybe you have felt this way before too and wondered what was wrong with you. I don't think anything is wrong with you. Keep working at it. Keep loving. Keep faithful. And every year it gets better and better if you are committed to it for life.

And this concludes my (perhaps bad) marriage advice for the day...