It really is a privilege to work with so many people who are focused on starting new things!
My wife and I do a lot of ministering here in Idaho through the School Of Apostolic Pioneering. We bring together people who are looking to start a new works in the mission, bring together really cool people who have already pioneered new things to teach, and then pull it all together in a three-month school where everyone (students, staff, and speakers) can learn from each other.
Our next school will be this coming September, by the way.
Hopefully, by the end of three months, a team is ready to pioneer.
Though, that isn’t always the case.
The process that a person walks through in order to pioneer a new ministry is a long one. Most of it is wrapped up in preparing a person’s character. More time is spent on learning new skills that will be needed once the pioneering starts.
Once a person’s character and skills are in order you start to see healthy teams form around a vision of what God wants to do.
I am not sure how long that process is for most people, but I am certainly in the “character and skills” part of that process. It certainly isn’t a bad place to be, it is simply an honest one. This part of the process admits that I need more experience before I go further.
Gaining Experience
Once in a while gaining that experience is a lot of fun!
The other day was a good example of what I’m talking about.
It all started as I drove out early on October 31st, I was headed out to a spot in the mountains to sit down and wait for deer. It was the last day of deer hunting season and, since I was still going out, I still didn’t have a deer. It was dark and the sun hadn’t risen yet, though, as I looked out into the eastern sky I did see a very beautiful crescent moon. It was very bright and you could somehow see the rest of the moon too, though it was very faded.
For a moment time slowed and I could feel God’s stirring inside of me.
It is so difficult to describe God’s voice. Hundreds of emotions, thoughts, and memories were inside of me, though, God’s voice was much clearer than all of them, contrasting them all.
From childhood I was told October 31st was a bad day. It was Halloween, a devils holiday. It was a dark day. It was a day to have your own parties away from everything and everyone else.
That all said; I could feel that God wanted to do something on this day. It had plenty to do with prayer and it had to do with families.
More about what it would look like and the courage go through with it would only come later, but the seed had been planted. I could tell that there was something God wanted to do and He had already brought me into it. This isn’t to say that God forces people to do things, but rather that God knows where we are at, where He is taking us, and what we need to learn along the way.
God is very willing to bring us into the things that He knows we are ready for, though, the primary measure of that is our obedience. Will we do what He asks?
Today, that was a resounding (and sometimes wavering) yes.
As I drove back from a lot of thinking while I was in the mountains, without a deer, I might add, I heard a song on the radio that came at just the right time. “Fall, Goliath, Fall,” was the name of the song. If you enjoy the rock music that Christian bands sometimes make I recommend listening to it. If not, then just know that it spoke to my heart at the moment and I was encouraged.
Immediately after I got back into town I ran into another friend who was also out hunting that morning. He told me about a great spot he ran into for deer. I knew in my head that if I headed out to that same spot tonight I may get a chance to take a deer… and I knew in my heart that God had told me to do something very different with my evening.
No, I would not head out to hunt deer. I was going to be in town praying for families.
That is what obedience sounds like.
Rarely is obedience loud, showy, or troublesome, though, sometimes it may. Today it was a quiet resolution in my heart that there was something God had told me to do.
Previous Preparation
After that morning it was all a rush.
The morning’s vision had to be communicated, team members had to be given a purpose, emails sent, signs made, money spent, hot chocolate to be made and served, etc…
Step one was telling my wife about it; aside from sharing your plans, hopes, and dreams with your spouse (which is sort of in those vows and a foundation of marriage) it is very important to share your vision with others who can hold you accountable to it. I think that’s important with any idea, but even more so when you are dealing with something God gives you.
Give permission to others you trust to hold you accountable and move in the confidence that the vision is God’s and He will be faithful to see it through!
From that point on I noticed that a lot of what I was doing had been built up from previous tasks in the mission.
The basic goal was simple enough; pray for families at the parking lot of the local grocery store where everyone would be handing out candy for Halloween (which is called “trunk or treat” in Cascade). We could set up our own spot with hot chocolate and cookies, make a sign advertising free prayer, and after that see what would come of the evening.
In order for that to happen we had several things to get in order.
In, like, three hours.
The biggest need was people… given time was short I went for a walk and invited everyone I found. At the end of my walk there were two people who could help serve hot chocolate and pray. Not everyone I had expected to come was able to come. Yet, what was interesting was that, of the five people helping with the prayer stand I was the only American.
That was a benefit to us since it showed off our ministry’s diversity and made us a little more interesting.
The second biggest item on task was how to supply our stand with hot water.
Rather early on I scrapped the idea of serving fresh hot chocolate right out of our thermoses. We had enough space in those thermoses for a gallon of liquids. Serving straight hot chocolate would have been really cool, but way too time consuming. By only refilling hot water we were able to make each cup individually and only make the runs as long as it took to boil new water.
With two of us making chocolate it also gave us a happy medium of time in which we could build relationships and offer prayer.
The other bit of logistics was one of resources.
We checked our own finances to see if we could personally cover the costs of the prayer stand supplies and we could. We were also able to supply the table that we served everything on and our Jeep to get everything to the parking lot.
After all the work… ministry!
So right!
Believe it or not in the middle of a good heart to do ministry you will often get swamped by all of the extra stuff around it. The extra stuff isn’t bad, of course; it is simply there and needs to be addressed at the appropriate time and way.
Eventually all of us were over at the grocery store parking lot with all of the stuff we needed (with a couple extra runs for spoons and sign making materials). The first several kids showed up. They wanted something warm since they were waiting there before everyone got there. One of boys said that we could pray for his grades in school.
After that several other families came and took hot chocolate. Some of them said we could pray for them and others chose not to be prayed for. Most of the families wanted prayer for their families; sometimes through God’s protection or God’s provision.
One of the older men said that he would like prayer for his sanity, as he laughed. He said that he was taking care of his three grandsons on his own. We prayed for him right there while we gave them all hot chocolate and cookies. We thanked God for giving his grandsons someone to look up to and prayed that he would have both the sanity and strength to bring them up well.
It was a great night of ministry!
In Conclusion
In the SOAP these are some of the questions that we try to encourage when students are working through their pioneering projects.
-What is the vision that God has given you?
-How will you communicate the vision to other interested and available people?
-What needs to be done logistically for the vision to be accomplished?
-What will the results be when the ministry is finished?
At times we have people and teams who are very ready to start pioneering, sometimes we have people who have some ways to go before they get to start pioneering (like me). In any case we hope that we can bring our students closer to completing the goal that God has given them.
For the last several years I have been on the learning end of many experiences like these. As I’ve walked through them God has continually brought me closer to seeing the vision that He’s put on my heart become a reality.
Though, this is what it could look like in a day.
In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom
The Abiding Kingdom 