Church Planting Tips

Tim Williams, a Cape Town local, who has taken over a church in the heart of France, gave these helpful practical tips and thoughts for all those who have even the inkling of a desire to church-plant, support a church-plant or to just go to the nations for the Gospel. Hope you find them as useful food for thought as I did.

1. The King and his Kingdom must be the treasure of your heart
2. Get a biblical understanding of God's plan for the nations
3. Seek God's face for a region or a nation
4. Start learning the language
5. But don't use language as an excuse not to go
6. Communicate your heart to the elders of your local church
7. Put your feet on foreign soil
8. Start saving your money for a trip
9. Consider a short term trip
10. Consider going with a team
11. Go to serve rather than be served
12. consider going for a season
13. Go to be a blessing not a burden
14. Your homegroup can adopt a nation/ church-plant to pray for, bless with finance, letters etc
15. Develop a heart for the lost now (don't live in the "when I get there" future)
16. Support those who are going to the nations
17. If you go, be ready to count the cost
18. ...but it's not about the cost! (he is faithful and our very great reward!)
19. Consider all these things when you choose a spouse
20. Be faithful to what God has called you to now

Romans.10:9-15

In just one moment

Sometimes we need to do something completely radical in order to get our flesh to bow it's knee to the Spirit. Tonight was such a night...
"Draw near to me...and I will draw near to you"

*A Call to Intimacy
-Am I pursuing and preaching 'the call' or am I practicing 'the intimacy'?
-Do I love 'The Call' or 'The Caller'?
-Have I allowed the call to become an idol?

*A Call to Nations
-Have I become domesticated, safe, predictable, cautious, "balanced"?
-Have I allowed the everyday things to cloud the bigness of the vision?
-Have I resigned myself to 'the process'?

Oh how long will we sleep for? How long will we strive and wrestle with the flesh when we have been called to wrestle with things so much greater?

It pays to know who you are!

The picture on the coffee canister caught him cold. The man blinked, rubbed his eyes, and peered over his grocery cart at the image on the Taster's Choice coffee canister sitting on the store shelf. The face peering back at him was unmistakable. The sideburns were darker, and the lines around the eyes weren't there yet, but it was clearly him- Russell Christoff- an unassuming fifty-eight year old kindergarten teacher from Northern California. Christoff picked up the coffee can and showed it to a clerk. "Yep, that's you all right, " she said. "Wow, you're famous."

Christoff bought the can, and then headed to a lawyer's office. A legal dispute began with the coffee company. It seems sixteen years earlier, Christoff had been working as a part-time model and had posed for the picture along with several other models who tried out for the role. Company representatives told Christoff that if his picture was ever used, they'd call him back and finalize the contract. No call came, years went by, and all was forgotten. Then one day an employee pulled the photo to use in an advertisement, evidently believing that consent had been given. The picture was printed. And printed, and printed, and printed. For six years it showed up on coffee canisters sold all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, japan, South Korea, Israel and Kuwait

When the dust settled, a jury concluded that Christoff's picture had indeed helped the company sell coffee. Lots of coffee. And it had all been done without Christoff's permission. The court awarded Christoff a payment that included more than 5 percent of the profits from Taster's Choice sales for the years the photo circulated.

His award: 15.3 million dollars!

What's the moral of the story?

It pays to know who you are!