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Letter from the Field It is helpful to understand the difference between leadership roles in a church in the mature end of the church planting cycle and leadership roles on a Church Planting Team. (See Phase I and II on World Team's Church Planting Continuum--the Pioneer Phase). The role of a member of Church Planting Teams in the early stages of the cycle is similar to the role of an entrepreneur in a start up enterprise as opposed to the role of a department manager in a large firm (leader in a mature church). The role of a department manager can fit into a box, the role of an entrepreneur is "whatever needs to be done, known and unknown." Furthermore, in all humility, in the initial phase of this work we would not want to limit our planning to what we are doing at this moment as there has not been overwhelming success in any program. Most of the success has been the result of a few gifted workers. Therefore, it is important for us as planners and leaders to continue to put the best people we can into these pioneer situations based not just on skills, but more so based on character traits and Christian maturity. The person's character and mettle are more important than their job description, they need to be spiritual opportunists. Situations change drastically. Operations are conducted with uncertain outcomes and failure is common. Oppression from Satan drains one's strength. During all of this one must fight the urge to start a program instead of maintaining personal ministry. With programs we can have control, we can see outcomes, we can make plans and clearly define what we are doing. But usually these programs are not geared to bring people to the Lord because that outcome cannot be planned. The exception would be what we are trying to do now, training workers and facilitating them to start their own ministry, focused on evangelism. We can train in many areas, but the fruit that comes is still, as you know, the result of the blessing of God. Evangelism and soul saving, unlike training, is frustratingly contingent on the hearer's heart and free will. It is much easier to give out rice, start a clinic or do other social programming in lieu of trying to reach out to people who are seemingly not interested. It is easier to teach the Bible to Christians than to continually try to talk to people about Jesus who are opposed to Christianity. People are coming to the Lord. Where there are gifted workers maintaining high contact with the target population, the gospel gets a hearing and some believe. This is not that reproduceable, but we can generally find a few gifted workers per year that we can work with. Our prayer time is to see a time when the converts start outnumbering the Christian background believers, we move on to the next phase of the Church Planting Cycle, and all of our jobs descriptions evolve. This is the most exciting and challenging work that one could hope for, challenging us forward into unchartered areas, forcing us to do things that are "beyond us." We work at what we think is God's will and we find that the fruit comes but often from an area outside our work. As if we are being rewarded for effort or faithfulness and not for our cleverness. To focus only on a plan or a program would be imbalanced. Our job as trainers is to find the gifted, the called and the willing and help them grow as workers.
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