Week #6 @ MDP

The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. II Timothy 2:2

This week at MDP we got down to some “nitty and gritty” things with the church. There is almost too much information to put into a blog, so we will give some basics. We spent the first three days talking about the indigenous church. Indigenous is being defined as “having originated in and being produced, growing, living, or occurring naturally in a particular region or environment”. Those are the type of churches that the world needs, equipped with indigenous leaders. If you are a person that goes to church, more than likely, your church is formed on indigenous principals. In which we spent much time in detail talking about. We talked also of other things such as contextualization meaning “the capacity to respond meaningfully to the gospel within the framework of one’s own situation”. This is so very important. All people need to be able to hear the gospel in a way that is relevant to their culture. I’d like to share a quote form a man named Dwight Smith, he says this about the church:

The church exists to glorify God by equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, with the result that every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to hear and understand the gospel and accept or reject Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and that every member becomes actively involved in the completion of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) in foreign lands.

The last two days of the week we spent learning about practical evangelism & discipleship in a native culture. We talked about the II Timothy 2:2 (the verse at the top of this article) principal, and how important that is in the discipleship process. Then we talked about some basic principals for Biblical Church Development as taken from the book of Acts.

It was all wonderful information that we will have to continue to process in the days & months ahead. Especially as we work as a team within the culture we are heading into.

Thanks so much for your prayers, notes of encouragement during this time in our lives. We are so blessed to be here and are thankful for the leadership of MDP, for the quality program that this is.