Destiny Kids International: Investing in the development of youth leadership!

Posted by Bill on April 12, 2013

Fredrick and the DKI Team prefer to be on the cutting edge in the development of their teen-leadership in Cairo. In partnership with CCI, DKI facilitated small groups development training for seven African youths. Fredrick kindly shares with us the following testimony …

“Greetings in Jesus Name. I would like to testify regarding to the Youth Cell Groups leadership training that took place on the 28th of March, 2013 which lasted for six weeks. We bless the Lord for how He moved during the training. It was a big blessing to the lives of the trainees; we were eight in number, including myself.

During training, the young leaders came to have a better understanding of the meaning of reaching out to the lost for Jesus. It was an eye opener to them and a refresher to me also. We all benefited in the training: we started very well and also with the help of your prayers and God the training ended very well. On the last day we had a little celebration where we provided them with refreshments. I prayed the Prayer of Empowerment over them (Ephesians 3), and we had a time for questions that related to the training experience.

Prayer Point

Next week (Thursday) we will be starting training for a second set of young people. Commencing on April 11, the training will continue for six weeks. I wish you could see the excitement in the eyes of the candidates for the next session. I am so ready to be used by the Lord. Please join us in prayer that the second training group will fire-up like the first group. Thanks to the CCI Team for their support through prayer and finances. May Almighty God bless you all, Amen.”

Small Groups back on the radar in Cyprus

Posted by Bill on March 27, 2013

Before the birth of CCI in 2008, the Lord opened a door to me while at Maadi Community Church in Cairo, to share our Small Groups Church Plan with Hercules Panayiotides, pastor of a Greek evangelical church at Nicosia, Cyprus. I travelled to Cyprus on two occasions to consult/train leaders of the church.

Hercules latched onto the small groups vision for his church with excitement and enthusiasm, and quickly translated the material into Greek to lead a number of his people into deeper waters of understanding through training – the excitement for small groups mushroomed at Nicosia!

Sadly, due to circumstances, Hercules resigned from his church. Years passed by without hearing from him … until several weeks ago. Hercules contacted me to say that he and his wife, Suzie, had relocated to a church at Larnaca AND small groups was back on the boil in Cyprus – praise the Lord! I have to tell you: Small groups + Hercules is a powerful combination.

Small groups development training is progressing well at Larnaca and Cyprus is back on the CCI radar.

We will keep you updated as news comes to hand

Evangelism Centres – news from Elijah in Lagos

Posted by Bill on December 12, 2012

The desire to see qualitative and quantitative growth in the church in Nigeria is becoming the passion of many church leaders. This is the case with The Ever Prevailing Word Church in Lagos. The lead Pastor, Emmanuel Agamah, has been trusting God for the right strategy to make his leaders and members become involved in the work of the Kingdom. And at last, the answer has come for him!

I was privileged to facilitate a four weeks small groups’ development training with a number of leaders and members of this church. With each week of training, all faces shone with rays of hope and excitement in anticipation of what the Lord would accomplish through the principles learnt. And by the end of the training, with the practical demonstration classes, all the leaders gained great confidence to get down to work. And immediately three small groups were launched right from the classes used for demonstration. “We can’t wait for a better time to launch out!” was their cry. The leaders expressed this without any prompting from the lead pastor.

Throughout the duration of training, I emphasized repeatedly the importance of the main components of small groups: Community, Evangelism, Discipline and Multiplication. And these four components combine to bring about great success in small groups. I pointed out that these components distinguish a cell group as being holistic in purpose, rather than just specialising in Bible study, and prayer groups.

To be sure the principles learnt were well understood by all, I invited the participant to freely ask questions and also share their thoughts, convictions, workability and possible challenges they might come across. It was amazing how convincing their expressions were. The lead pastor said:

Before now I have been asking God to show me what next to do – to make my leaders more involved in ministry beside just pulpit ministration in our Sunday services. “Pastor Sam, your coming these four weeks has been the answer to my prayers. We are going all out to practice these principles and we shall christen our cell groups, Evangelism Centers … where souls will be won and discipled for Christ. And we look forward to having you again in March, 2013, to come and see what the Lord has done, and to share in our joy” (Pastor Emmanuel Agamah).

I praise the Lord for the four weeks well-spent in practical teaching and demonstrations of how small groups ministry can help grow healthy churches that actively take part in the Great Commandment and Great Commission. Small groups are indispensable instruments employed by the Lord to win the world to Him (He spent three and half years with a small group of twelve in order to win the entire human race).

“And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen” Rev1:16 (KJV).

Pastor Elijah

Why do people bother with a Sunday focus?

Posted by Bill on

Ever since the birth of CCI I’ve longed to see each member on the CCI Team contribute regularly with short Christ-stories that can inspire us in our partnership effort – serving the Lord on a global scale, in equipping His people to expand His Kingdom without limit. Thank you, sincerely, to each person who has made such valuable contributions along the way.

At this time, it’s my pleasure to share with you the following Christ-story that has been offered by our brother, Dave Quak, Pastor of Living Temple Christian Church at the Gold Coast, in Queensland, Australia (www.livingtemple.com.au). Dave says …

Dear CCI family and friends,

Bill is like a dog with a bone! For those of you who know Bill, you will understand that I am not being offensive…. His bone is Life Groups! A dog with a bone can think of nothing but the bone… Bill is OCD for CCI…LOL.… I have it on good authority that he sleeps with a Joel Comiskey book under his pillow J. Here is my problem… Bill has persuaded me and Jess (my wife) to lead a small, life group based church. (Just for some context, we are almost 2 years old, 10 ish life groups, and Sunday congregation of about 40…)

Here is the thing. I am meeting more and more people who genuinely love Jesus, want to serve him for life, but really don’t enjoy Sunday church…. they love life group, love life, and enjoy living here on the coast, but don’t really feel like cooping-up in a dark room, listening to me dribble-on, on the only day they have off in a week. I know there are some people who love the Sunday celebration, love preaching and corporate worship, and love church… I get that… but what about our brothers and sister who don’t?

As a pastor, I have a warped view of the cost of attending church. Technically speaking, Sunday is a work-day for me, so if I spend all day at church, it doesn’t bother me… but that is not true for most people. Most people sacrifice a good chunk of their best day to sit in church. The reality is that sometimes the sermon will be average, sometimes the worship won’t connect, and sometimes they will have to have obligatory conversations with people all afternoon, while they would much rather be at the beach with their family… What do we do? I love Christians who love the Sunday part of church, and I love Christians who are frustrated by Sunday church…. SOOO I am stuck at what to steer toward in the future…

My hunch is that Bill’s bone is the key. I need to set up networks of people who love Jesus, and express church through life groups…they need to be people who want to affiliate with Living Temple (our church), and people who do not. Somehow this needs to happen while, at the same time, providing great Sunday celebrations for those who prefer Sunday church. People can choose one way, or the other way, or both ways… but they need to know that Jesus is going to encounter them, regardless of our understanding of church structure.

Obviously there will be an overlap, but I think the big key to the whole deal is making sure people feel free to express church in the way that suits them. I realise we could all go through the Bible and find verses that teach life group church, big church, small church, no leadership church, heavily leadership church, charismatic, conservative etc etc etc… I am not saying this is the only way…. but here on the Gold Coast, where I live, I am not sure heavily Sunday service focussed churches are maximising on the natural demographics of our city.

I had 4 weeks holiday in October (praise Jesus), so my family went down the beach at 8am one Sunday morning. We could not find a park anywhere… the place was packed with families laughing and playing, young people surfing and getting fit, fat people doing exercise (grin), old people holding hands… it was really lovely… the truth is that I would have been bummed to have to leave that and go to church… I would have much rather had my life group come join me at the beach.

I have heard all the objections to this…”that’s because you don’t have enough commitment to God’s house” NOT TRUE… I have given my life and sacrificed much to see the kingdom grow….

“you worship leisure, not God”…. NOT TRUE!
“You have poor ecclesiology”… Maybe… but the Bible is pretty grey on this area…
“You are conforming to local culture instead of kingdom culture”… well, I actually have never seen a local culture conform to kingdom culture EVER… especially in Australia…

I realise this is not concise or clear… but I guess my question for the CCI community is “why do people bother with a Sunday focus?” It seems upside down… and actually like more work than it’s worth.

If I need preaching, I can download millions of sermons from thousands of great preachers
If I need to sing praises, I have 600 praise songs in my iPhone…
If I need community, I have heaps of friends
If I need to evangelise, all my neighbours are not with Jesus

mmmmmmm… I think that is it.

Anyway… Just thought I would vent for a while…

Love you guys

Dave

Kat’s Story: “My Life is changing”

Posted by Bill on December 4, 2012

I was brought up in a loving family who believed in God. From a young age my dad took me to church and Sunday school. When I began high school, an hour each Sunday seemed too difficult and I preferred to sleep-in. So I only really went to church on Christmas when I wasn’t too tired to wake up for midnight mass. I always believed in my mind that God and Jesus were real but I never truly understood it. I lived my life to please myself, doing things I knew were wrong and things I was blind to. I was afraid of what was going to happen to me when I died but I continued to live that way.

In December last year I met Ben, my boyfriend now of four months. Soon after I met him he told me about his Christian faith – he spoke about it so passionately. Since then we talk about it all the time. I asked him every question you could imagine and he answered them all. This got me thinking. I wanted to know more. I wanted to understand it. If I believed in God, and believed in the Bible, then why wasn’t I following it? Shouldn’t I want to be sure that I’m going to heaven?

In August this year, I asked Ben if I could come along to church with him. Pastor Ross preached in a way I could understand and relate to his message. I then started going to small groups on Friday nights where Bill teaches and helps us grow in our faith.

One Sunday after church Bill asked me how I was going with my faith, at which time I explained to him I hadn’t yet accepted Christ and that I thought I needed to know everything before calling myself a Christian. Bill explained that this wasn’t the case. He said, “Someone can spend a life-time learning about Christ but may never really get to know him.”

Since then all I wanted to do was learn more. I would browse the internet reading about the Christian faith. I also found out that one of the ladies I worked with was a Christian – she answered a lot of my questions. One day at technical college I struggled to focus so I picked up my Bible which Josh gave me from church. I started reading it – it described four steps to receiving Jesus, and they are:

Admit – Admit to the Lord you need Him, regardless of how good you think you have been. Admit to Him that you have sinned.
Believe – Believe that Jesus died for you and your sins. Ask Him for forgiveness.
Commit – Commit yourself to God. Let Him be the God of your life. Stop doing the things that displease Him and start doing the things He wants you to do.
Follow – Follow Jesus, His example and His teachings. Get to know Him as your Lord and friend. That was the day I asked Jesus into my life!

Thanks to the Lord, my life is changing. With His guidance I am transforming into the person He wants me to be. I now have inner peace. When things go wrong I know everything is going to be okay. I am so thankful for what the Lord has given to me. I have never been so happy and confident. I know God loves me, and I love Him. I have hope for this life and for the life to come.

Kathryn S.