From the Founder of the Ecclesia Framework
We are excited to see our visits to our site have massively increased as people see how much transformation is needed in the body of christ ands it is everyones responsibility to understand what form of ecclesia is biblical. We are in a period of great transition but there are many new organic forms of the ecclesia rising up using resources from all parts of the body across the world ( not just restricting themselves to one source of input which can be spiritually limiting).
The writings of Jesus and the apostle Paul show us how important the model of discipling is to effective training and how real multiplication can only take place through one–on-one discipling. This is shown by Jesus spending a large proportion of his time with the 12 disciples and in particular the three.
Jesus knew he would not reach the world by preaching alone and that he needed to raise up good men who were equipped to train and teach others. (2 Tim 2:2). Although this seems to be a slower method on the surface, in the long run, through the process of multiplication it is much faster( see the stats below).
It is also one of the most effective method of encouraging people to stay with the body as people stay for relationship mainly . It also allows for people to be alerted if they are losing their faith. We may then have a method of dealing with the lost sheep.
This has been promoted and practiced by the Navigators for decades. See the difference between Spiritual Addition and Spiritual Multiplication.
Results of Spiritual Addition V Multiplication
| Spiritual AdditionReach 100 people for Christ each day | MultiplicationWin, Build & Send One Person Every 6m |
| 36,00072,000108,000
144,000 180,000 216,000 252,000 288,000 324,000 360,000 396,000 432,000 468,000 504,000 540,000 |
1664256
1,024 (thousand) 4,096 16,384 65,536 262,144 1,048,576 (million) 16,777,216 67,108,864 268,435,456 ( million) |
If we are just adding them to apostolic resource centres we may not see the numbers but what counts is the quality of the disciple following their highest calling and impacting the
kingdom.
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Man to Man
How to Do Individual Disciplemaking
Jack Griffin
The New Testament Model
Before we actually look at what man to man is, let me give you three verses to show that man to man is not just a Navigator method, but a New Testament method of training and teaching.
“For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel.” (I Corinthians 4:15)
“As you well know, we dealt with you one by one. as a father deals with his children, appealing to you by encouragements and solemn injunctions.” (I Thessalonians 2:11 NEB)
“Therefore be always alert and on your guard, being mindful that for three years I never stopped night or day seriously to admonish and advise and exhort you, one by one, with tears.” (Acts 20:31 Amplified)
The greatest need in Christendom today: more spiritual moms and dads.
What Is one anothering
It involves sharing your whole life and ministry with them so by the grace of God, they will progress from spiritual immaturity in Christ to spiritual maturity in Christ. “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us.” (I Thessalonians 2:8) “Till we all come into the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13)
The question is often asked, “What is the difference between follow-up and man to man?” It’s as if follow-up is a “shotgun” ministry, often by groups and extensive in its design. Man to man is the “rifle”, working one at a time and intensive in its aim.
Follow-up is a spiritual nursery involving groups and some individual attention, but man to man is personal – to faithful men. “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” (II Timothy 2:2)
A faithful man is one who is dependable, reliable, trustworthy. When you suggest he do something, he does it. The testimony of Joshua is that he was this kind of faithful man. “As the Lord commanded Moses, His servant, so did Moses command Joshua, and so did Joshua; he left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses.” (Joshua 11:15) To test his desire and faithfulness, give him some small thing to do – perhaps a simple assignment. Luke 16:10 says, “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much …”
A book that has been of great help is “Disciples Are Made – Not Born”, by Walt Henrichsen, who until 1978 was on the staff of The Navigators. Chapter I is entitled, “The type of man God uses” and in it he lists nine features in the life of a faithful man.
1. He has adopted as his objective in life the same objective God sets forth in the scriptures. (Matthew 6:33) – to see God’s kingdom and righteousness as the first priority.
2. He is willing to pay any price to have the will of God fulfilled in his life. (II Timothy 2:3-4)
3. He has a love for the Word of God. (Jeremiah 15:16)
4. He has a servant heart. (Matthew 20:26-28)
5. He puts no confidence in the flesh. (Romans 7:18)
6. He does not have an independent spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:5)
7. He has a love for people. (I John 4:11)
8. He does not allow himself to be trapped in bitterness. (Hebrews 12:15)
9. He has learned to discipline his life. (I Corinthians 9:24-27)
Is your man willing to measure up to these things – to be developing in them? If not, then you are investing your life into an unfaithful man and Proverbs 25:19 says, “Confidence in an unfaithful man in a time of trouble is like a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint.”
How To Start Meeting On A Man To Man Basis
1. Pray for a hungry, thirsty-hearted man to work with – just as Jesus Himself sought out the thirsty ones. “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink’.” (John 7:37)
2. Remember that it is God that gives us men. “I have manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gayest me out of the world; thine they were and thou gayest them to me – I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for them thou halt given me…” (John 17:6, 9) “Saul also went home to Gibeah; and there went with him a band of men, whose hearts God had touched.” (I Samuel 10:26) Also Numbers 27:15-20.
Regarding Moses and Joshua; for many years I believed Moses chose Joshua as his replacement. Not so. Joshua was chosen by God.
Begin praying, “Lord, You choose the one in whom I am to invest my life.”
3. Be alert to the ones growing faster than others in Bible study groups.
4. Go to them – one, or at most two. Ask if they would like to meet with you on a personal, man to man level, for special, intensive training.
5. Explain to them what the cost will be in time, priorities and discipline and ask them to pray about it. When I was setting up a training program for laymen in churches eight years ago, it was known that I was looking for some faithful men to be on the training program team. If anyone was interested, they were to see me within the next few weeks. I was simply praying, “Lord, give me a handful of men that are Your choice”. Five men came. I laid down the qualifications. A high standard was necessary. All five went home to pray and all five came back to take up the challenge of being team leaders on the Shamgar Training Program.
Play a man’s game, a man’s way and you’ll get men!
Play a boy’s game and you’ll get boys.
6. If they are still interested, explain the II Timothy 2:2 principle and the nine features of a faithful man. If he is willing to come to this standard and if he has a willing and teachable heart, I would suggest you start with him.
7. Set a day and time to start. Either once a week or fortnightly is best. In the Shamgar Program, the family commitments of the team leaders mean that fortnightly is better.
8. Have a trial of 2-3 months then both of you evaluate the worth of continuing, or making some changes. I took me a long time to find that faithful man I had been challenged to pray for; so be patient, but hit for that faithful one. Remember, he is more than a faithful man – he is a “faithful man who shall be able to teach others also.”
Don’t feel you are too young in the Lord – a pace-setter has only to be one step ahead.
What are you going to teach him?
All that your spiritual father has taught you.
Every Christian needs to ask himself two questions:
1. Who is my Paul? (i.e. who is helping me to be a fruitful disciplemaker?)
2. Who is my Timothy? (i.e. who am I helping to become a fruitful disciplemaker?)
Practical Hints In Man To Man
1. Make sure you are well prepared. Pray and organize before you spend time with a man. Remember you will reproduce after your own kind.If you are a fanatic on scripture memory – you’ll produce another fanatic! If scripture memory means nothing to you, it will mean nothing to him.
You will teach by your life. More is caught than is taught. The same goes for all the other basic disciplines of the Christian life.
2. Aim at winning his heart. Proverbs 27:19 says, “As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.” Pray before he comes, “Lord, give me Joe’s heart when he comes tonight.”
3. Remember that you can’t lead anyone further than you yourself have gone. You cannot lay solid foundations in other lives from what are only sketch outlines in your own.
4. You teach by the example of your own life. Paul said this very thing in Philippians 4:9, “Those things, which ye have both learned and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace will be with you.”
The person who is ministering man to man, must be what he is trying to teach. To repeat what I said earlier, the learner will sooner follow the example of his teacher than he will his word.
5. In man to man take nothing for granted. When you are beginning with a man and he tells you something, whatever it is check, check and double-check it! You’re not doubting his word, you are just taking nothing for granted.
6. Repeat all things. Both you to him and him to you. “He tells us everything over and over again, a line at a time and in such simple words” (Isaiah 28:10, Living).
John Ridgeway and some other young men at the University of NSW, in the early days of the Australian Navigator work, remember well this principle. I would have man to man with John and Graham French and afterwards they would ask one another, “What did he give you today”? The answer – “He gave me the same thing he’s been giving me for the past couple of months!” Recently, before 1,100 people, John said how glad he was that I went over them again and again and again. “Because”, he said, “they became a part of my life.”
Make no apologies for repeating things.
Get him to write down what you have said and after he has written it, get him to read it back to you. Often you will detect at this point that there has not been 100% comprehension of what you have said.
7. Give him attainable assignments. Proverbs 13:19, “The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul …” If you happen to be shoveling all you have into this man – please; burn your shovel! Get out the eye-dropper or the thimble. You will find you will get more mileage out of “Line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little …” (Isaiah 28:10).
8. Take him with you as much as possible. Take him witnessing with you, take him if you have a church assignment whenever you can, take him with you. This is what Jesus did with His disciples – as He taught them, He took them with Him. “And He ordained twelve that they might be with Him and that He might send them forth to preach” (Mark 3:14).
9. Inspect him as well as expect of him. If you give him something to do, expect him to do it, but when he comes to see you next time, inspect him to make sure he has done it. He in turn will realize your interest in him and in future will strive to do well.
10. Use as many pass-on-able illustrations as possible. Make sure he gets it through the eye gate as well as the ear gate. Use such illustrations as The Bridge, Beginning With Christ, The Wheel, The Word Hand, The Prayer Hand, God’s Will Hand; there are many others. The Chinese proverb is right, “one picture is worth a thousand words.” I don’t know about you, but what I see sinks in faster than what I hear.
The Bridge to Life
A Classic Navigator Illustration of the Gospel
B-Rations: Beginning with Christ
Five Assurances for Every Believer
The Word Hand
A Balanced Intake of God’s Word
11. Share your whole life with him. Share your weaknesses as well as your strengths. Allow yourself to be transparent .
12. Share with him as a friend – not in a teacher/pupil attitude.
13. In everything, show him how. We are long in telling people what to do, but we are short in showing them how.
14. Tailor your program to meet the need of the individual. Why? Because each one is different. Don’t try to pour them all into the one mould.
16. Five things to remember:
• Tell him why – it is important.
• Show him how – the way to do it.
• Get him started – with specific suggestions.
• Keep him going – by visits or phone calls.
• Get him to reproduce all this in another life. (II Timothy 2:2).
17. Help him to establish his goals in life. e.g. To know Christ and to make Him known (Philippians 3:10 and Colossians 1:27-29 Phillips). To know Christ is the vertical spokes on the wheel – to make him known represents the horizontal spokes.
18. Remember Psalm 127:1 “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” (I Corinthians 3:6-7), “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.” (Philippians 2:13), “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure”.
Let’s never forget, it is God who is the Master Trainer – He builds the man.
A Suggested Man To Man Session
This is simply a skeleton outline; you will have to take this and adapt it to suit your particular situation. You can add or subtract from it.
1. Always pray before he comes for your meeting together. Perhaps you could pray Exodus 4:12, “Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.”
2. Have him visit you if possible. You may be very busy in ministry and therefore you will not have the time to travel from place to place. It will challenge him to pursue help. It is granted that this is not always possible.
3. team, we meet with fellows once a fortnight, for from 1-1/2 hours. You may prefer once a week – find out what suits you and the man you’re meeting.
7. First, have a friendly chat. If you visit him, greet his family. Let him tell you about his studies or work, etc. and be a good listener. “Set a watch, 0 Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.” (Psalm 141:3). For at least a little while let him do some talking. Another verse that is helpful to me is James 1:19, “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” God has given us two ears and one mouth, let’s be twice as long on hearing as we are on speaking.
8. You always open in prayer. If he is a new man, a young fellow in the Lord, just a short sentence prayer will do.
9. If meeting for the first time check him on his assurance of salvation. Make sure he has a Bible-based assurance. If he has no assurance, let me give you three verses God has used in my own life and ministry: I John 5:11-12 – this tells you what you receive when you invite Christ to come into your life – eternal life; John 1:12 – this tells you what you become when you invite Christ to come into your life – a child of God; Revelation 3:20 – the promise of the risen Christ is that if you invite Him to come into your life, He will – not maybe, HE WILL.
B-Rations: Beginning with Christ
Five Assurances for Every Believer
Assurance of Salvation – I John 5:11-12
Assurance of Answered Prayer – John 16:24
Assurance of Victory – I Corinthians 10:13
Assurance of Forgiveness – I John 1:9
Assurance of Guidance – Proverbs 3:5-6
10. Exchange blessings since you last met. Some evidences of God’s hand, His guidance, or blessings from your time alone with the Lord.
11. Proceed to check him on his daily disciplines and priorities. Check his assignments for the previous one or two weeks. “How have you been going in your quiet times in the past two weeks, Joe?” “Have you made it seven out of seven, before breakfast, Joe?”
Remind him if he fails that the victory at 6.00 a.m. is won at 10.00 p.m. the night before. It may cost you – you may miss the England/Scotland replay or the Wimbledon final, but a disciple of Jesus Christ is a revolutionary. On the Shamgar team we encourage men to make a covenant with the Lord, “For me Lord, from now on – no Bible, no breakfast!” Job 23:12 says, “… I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.” Jesus set the example of rising early to meet the Father, “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.” (Mark 1:35).
Some of the disciplines and priorities that the Shamgar team checks:
• Daily quiet time.
• Daily Bible reading calendar – a short, written application from the reading is recorded on one or two lines of a 5” x 3” card.
• Scripture Memory – Check their last few weeks of review, current verses, and if they have finished the TMS (Topical Memory System) we go through the outline.
• Bible study – check particularly the application questions.
• Witnessing opportunities – are they praying daily for the chance to speak to someone today about Jesus Christ? Does he carry a couple of tracts? Is his testimony sharp?
12. Keep sharing with him the vision of disciplemaking. (From Matthew 28:19-20 RSV) Be a disciple – make disciples – develop disciplemakers. Don’t forget, you must be one before you can make one.
13. Always keep the Wheel illustration in focus. Major on Christ the Center. I Corinthians 3:11 says that Christ is the only foundation on which to build. “For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
The key to living a victorious, Spirit-filled Christian life is Jesus Christ as the Center and Lord of all we do. With Christ in control, life is balanced and effective. The Wheel illustrates this Christ-centered life.
Just as the driving force in a wheel comes from the hub, so the power to live the Christian life comes from Jesus Christ the Center. He lives in us in the Person of the Holy Spirit, whose expressed purpose is to glorify Christ. (II Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:20)
The rim represents the Christian responding to Christ’s Lordship through wholehearted, day-by-day Obedience to Him. (Romans 12:1; John 14:21)
The spokes show the means by which Christ’s power becomes operative in our lives. We maintain personal contact with God through the vertical spokes – The Word and Prayer. The Word is our spiritual food as well as our sword for spiritual battle. It is the foundational spoke for effective Christian living. (II Timothy 3:16; Joshua 1:8)
Opposite this is the spoke representing Prayer. Through Prayer we have direct communication with our heavenly Father and receive provision for our needs. As we pray we show our dependence upon and trust in Him. (John 15:7; Philippians 4:6-7)
The horizontal spokes concern our relationship to people – believers, through Christian fellowship; and unbelievers, through witnessing. Fellowship centered around the Lord Jesus Christ provides the mutual encouragement, admonition and stimulation we all need. (Matthew 18:20; Hebrews 10:24-25)
The first three spokes prepare us for passing on to others all that we have received from the Lord. This is accomplished through Witnessing, sharing our own experience of Christ and declaring and explaining the Gospel, God’s power to save. (Matthew 4:19; Romans 1:16)
14. Keep II Timothy 2:2 before him. “Joe, how is your Timothy going?” “Joe, have you thought about praying for a faithful man – a Timothy to invest in?” (see diagram) Concentrate on faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. (Paul also spent time with other faithful men – Titus, Silas, etc.) Jesus spent most of His time with 12 men during a continuous period of three years and devoted particular attention to three of these men (Peter, James, John). These men were later to become the pillars of the church. (Galatians 2:9)
