| Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN: Layered Mentoring Model for Missions
Introduction So where is all this headed? At his point, we can only speculate which is what this closing chapter is! But as we have progressed down this path of reproducing teams and developing mentoring networks, we have ultimately come full circle to what we started with as an overall vision: The Great Commission Vision for the Church! (See Chapter 2 'Manual for House Church Planting in Networks' for this paper. The discerning reader will realize that the vision outlined there are fleshed out in this book would play havoc with the status quo in most mission organizations. This chapter will speculate on future direction based on our experience to the present. As the Lord has blessed our work, we have had more interaction with missions and mission organizations. Several things have impressed me that things need to change with the way we do missions. I note the two following: 1. Missions now are mostly done by mission organizations which have loose ties, if any, with churches. Churches, for the most part, are not recruiting and training people to fulfill the great commission. This job is largely taken over by mission agencies who recruit and seminaries and Bible colleges which do the training. Even when churches do the sending, the young man or woman who goes through such training (usually away from the eyes of the sending church) often goes out with very weak ties to the church. The result is that the church is largely omitted from the responsibility of fulfilling the great commission. I think this greatly contributes to the impotence of the local church which, instead of engaging in the mandate of the great commission, is content with serving as a maintenance station for the saints. 2. The western, bureaucratic model of setting up a centralized mission organization seems to me to be becoming outdated. Our world is changing quickly but our mission agencies are often slow and cumbersome in responses to such changes. They may have been well suited for the colonial era, but in a world that has become a global village quickly evolving, any bureaucracy responds too slow. Likewise, even a college type education to equip a missionary seems to be based on the premise that after three or four (or 7) years, you will be properly equipped to carry out the task for the duration of your life. But in such a quick moving world new technology as well as new information on anthropology, culture, language, etc. is constantly being updated with direct impact on effectiveness in the field. Business is realizing that a constantly changing market requires constant upgrading and ongoing training. This, I think, also needs to be taken into account when considering what a mission agency of the future might look like. I need to point out that I have never been particularly enamored with mission agencies because of #1 above. The Fellowship of Church Planting Teams has tried to do church planting over the last years in a way which avoids #1 above (not without a great deal of difficulty). I have only become aware of the second concern more recently. I do think that as we have consciously sought to enhance God's plan for his church by giving them more direct involvement in missions, we unconsciously have also been developing something (I hate to call it a mission agency) which takes steps to deal with the concerns in #2. Let me start by laying out some principles which have shaped the Fellowship of Church Planting Teams.
Apostolic Bands As I studied the scripture I was persuaded that apostolic bands were no accident but fundamentally a part of God's plan for kingdom expansion. A second principle was that plural leadership has substantial advantages over one man leadership and is the Biblical norm. An apostolic band serves as a far better model for planting plural leader churches than a one-man church planter. The student becomes like his teacher! It seemed to me these bands were sent out directly from local churches and operated under the direct authority and control of God. These teams were accountable to the other members of the team but no higher human authority (i.e. no mission organization). A normal argument is "what will prevent them from getting off the track and going into error?" I think the simple answer to that is "nothing". In fact there appear to be numbers of counterfeit apostolic bands which indeed caused a lot of trouble. On the other hand, the true ones did manage to fill the world with the Good News in a very short time. This illustrates what perhaps has been the central principle which has undergirded FCPT: Those to whom God has given the responsibility for a task should also have the authority to carry out the task. Those of us in the baptistic tradition, practice this in the autonomy of the local church. We believe that God has a plan for each church and that the church is responsible to seek out that plan and carry it out. The church does not look for bishops or denominational boards to dictate policy, nor do such structures stand in the way.
Networks of Churches and Teams Balancing this, though, the New Testament shows a great deal of cooperation and connectedness between churches. Resources of people and money were often shared between congregations. This did not infringe upon a churches autonomy since all such association was voluntary arising out of the understanding that whatever resources a congregation had was to be used for the greater good of the Kingdom. Thus Barnabus, Paul, Timothy, and others making up these early apostolic bands were not seen as possessions of a particular church but gifts to be shared for the greater good in expanding the Kingdom of God. The same could be said of financial resources. Thus the early church seemed to be highly networked while still retaining their autonomy. Hierarchical, centralized, episcopal structures were still quite a ways off. The early apostolic bands seemed to function similarly. Although we have less information on this, it seems that Paul's band was a training center from which other apostolic bands emerged in addition to doing the task of church planting itself. These bands seemed to have had contact periodically (eg. the letters of Titus and Timothy) and even swap personnel (eg. John Mark). Paul's band itself was not static, but dynamic often sending out individual church planters and teams for specific tasks. But the association, like those of the churches, seems quite relational and voluntary in nature as opposed to a centralized, such as is in the western mission model.
Benefits of The Model for Today's World I believe the New Testament model of churches recruiting, training and directly sending reproducing apostolic bands which may loosely affiliate with other bands is exceptionally well suited for our rapidly changing world. Decisions can be made in a timely way by those directly responsible for the church planting effort (i.e. by the band itself as opposed to a board). Ongoing training can be given as needed by those more experienced in the work on the field. New information can be exchanged among teams as one team may hit on a new method or approach which can be used by the other teams. Using an illustration from research science, each apostolic band can be seen as a research group which has a responsibility not only to their own work, but also to share what is being learned to other bands.
Frontiers' Model Frontiers is the first agency (and only one that I know of) to take serious steps toward decentralizing authority and decision making to apostolic bands. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude as their structure enabled us to get a running start. Each band has a team leader who is connected with the other teams through the field director. Each team is autonomous. The team leaders meet yearly to make policy decisions affecting the whole mission. Thus it is a decentralized, field led mission. But to insure accountability a Field director was the hub to whom all the TL's report. While effective when Frontiers was made up of a small number of teams, this centralization limited the team leaders ability to network effectively as the organization grew. The FD also became more distant and less able to effectively oversee and facilitate the TL's.
Diagram The results were a decentralized model which was hobbled by the inability of the teams to network more closely since such networks must go through the Field director.
Layered Mentoring Model Borrowing heavily from the Frontiers model coupled with our experience of reproducing teams in New England, we began a further evolution of the model. We could call this a layered networking model. This layered networking model presumes that teams exist not only to plant churches but also to train and spawn new teams. The team leader has responsibility not only to train team members, but also to be on the lookout for potential men who can lead other teams. As these TL's spawn other new teams the new TL's would retain a relationship with the older team leader with whom they have served. As these newer teams mature, they too would spawn other teams. The senior team leader could thus be influencing a number of teams arising out of his own. Layers would emerge based on ability, opportunity, and relationship. We did not force such layers, they emerged naturally. The diagram at the end of this section will show the layers. A mentor serves as the hub of a network of teams. Since these teams will, in turn, be spawning new teams, several layers can develop in a network. The mentor serves as a resource to the team leaders in his network. His mentoring network could expand by other team leaders he has not spawned who request mentoring help. Our experience is that a mentor can work effectively with about five TL's facilitating them in church planting efforts. Teams would network, exchanging information, personnel, etc. through the mentor. Below is a layered mentoring network in New England. Each TL writes a covenant outlining his relationship with the mentor. The place of other parties (such as sending churches or mission agency) can be included in such an agreement. The TL is responsible for including them in such a way which respects the relationships and lines of authority which are incumbent upon him. The covenant is agreed to by both the TL and the mentor and can be reevaluated according to changing needs. Either party can cancel the covenant. As seen below, layered mentoring networks can facilitate a surprisingly large number of teams. Keep in mind, the mentor serves as a trainer/facilitator not a controller of the teams. Each team retains its autonomy--its particular way of functioning as well as taking responsibility to discern the Lords will and carry it out. Likewise, as new teams are spawned forming other layers, new mentors will emerge.
Development within the Fellowship of Church Planting Teams The following outlines how we have developed layered mentoring networks within the Fellowship of Church Planting Teams. Jim Frost and I founded FCP. I trained Jim as we planted our first church. Mike Buffi joined us two years later commissioned by Jim's sending church. Mike and I went off to start another church while Jim continued a new effort in a home church setting. Later Doug Tengdin (commissioned from my sending church) joined the team and helped Jim as well as was trained by him. Doug later moved to North Africa to help out the team there, the TL with whom I had an ongoing relationship having trained him before he went out with Frontiers. As new members were added to the team and new churches planted, Mike Buffi, Jim and myself all served as a single team training these younger guys. As the team became larger, we could no longer meet together for prayer and decision making. We decided to divide up into two teams with me being a mentor to both Jim and Mike who would each be team leaders. As new teams were added in New England, Jim began to serve as a mentor to the New England Network. The diagram below shows the present mentoring network in New England.
New England Mentoring Network of FCPT Meanwhile I moved on to developing mentoring networks in other parts of the country and the world. These are seen in the diagram below which shows the three mature (more than one layer showing reproduction of teams) mentoring networks which emerged in FCPT by 1995. Each arrow represents a covenant relationship. New networks are already in the works. Arrows between Mentors are double headed showing the collegial relationship, even though at times the flow may be more one way that the other. A careful look at the diagram will show no centralized person or position through whom all the teams must network. Thus no centralized mission organization. Any team leader can enter into relationship with another team leader. Any mentor can initiate relations with any new team leader he deems the Lord desiring him to work with.
Advantages of the Model The relationships cross over mission lines and denominational lines. FCPT has relationships with members from: Pentecostal churches, non-pentecostal churches, Southern Baptists, Independent Baptist, non denominational churches, Presbyterian church (USA and PCA), Frontiers, Church Planting International, TEAM, Intervarsity, to mention a number. This is not a problem since the relationship are facilitating by nature not controlling. Therefore they do not usually cause authority problems. The TL's and mentors include such parameters in the covenants which govern their relationships. This gives us tremendous flexibility especially in the area of including churches more directly in the missionary task. For instance a church could send out an entire team and desire to be involved in an ongoing way in the life of the team. We have several examples in which we have a mentoring relationship. The Team Leader and the sending churches talked to the one who would do the mentoring. After several meetings, letters, etc. agreements were reached whereby the TL, the church, and the mentor agreed to an arrangement in which the mentor would give on field training to the TL as needed. Many churches want such a relationship with their teams and we encourage it. But some churches are too small to have a single team but want to send out individuals which will serve with a team. Since each team is autonomous, the team leader can work with the church to come up with an agreement including such aspects as visits, reporting, etc. which will include the church to the degree it desires. Some churches are content with sending a church planter out and entrusting him to an agency. We can accommodate such desires as well and assure them that ongoing mentoring will be available as needed. The teams making up FCPT are not under the same incorporation umbrella either. FCP is incorporated in RI, but one of its members derives his support from SBC and another from Frontiers (interning with the team for a year). The Austin team is separately incorporated. The middle east team and North Africa team function as a part of Frontiers although these teams also have members serving with them from a variety of agencies which Frontiers has joint agreements. Back |