GO AND PLANT

When we enter a new area, we often wonder, “Where do I start? I don’t know anyone here, and who am I to come into their world and start teaching them?”

Jesus prepared his disciples for this by giving them a strategy

When Jesus was sending out His 12 disciples on a missionary training trip in Matthew 10, and when He was sending out 72 of His followers on evangelism training in Luke 10, He gave them each a command that was to be part of their strategy for reaching those areas.  Jesus told them to find “Persons of Peace”  or “sons of peace” Luke 10:5,6. And in Matthew 10:11-14 Jesus calls them “Worthy” people. Jesus told them they were to look for these kinds of people who would help them reach the towns they were going to. They were outsiders, but these people would be insiders. In fact, He told them that if they didn’t find any such people, they ought to move on to another place. So,

What is a “Person of Peace?”

In Matthew 10:14 Jesus tells us that these Worthy people or Persons of Peace are people who 

1. “Receive” Jesus’ messengers and 

2. “Listen to their words.”

3. They were supportive of the messengers and their ministry, relationally and even financially.

4. Mathew refers to these people as “worthy.” That could indicate that they would be respected and connected in the community. Or “Worthy” could refer to their respectful welcome of Jesus’s messengers.

5. They accepted the disciples into their households (gk: Oikos)

“Oikos”  – the Greek word used here for house or household is “oikos,” usually referring to more than the building, and including the family network of all who live or work in that place.  It would infer that they introduce the messenger into the home and family where they were staying.  They welcome the message and the messenger and introduce them to their network whom they can more easily reach than we outsiders.

6. One of the key characteristics of a Person of peace is that they are from that area and are connected there. 

POP's: We used to refer to these kinds of people as POP’s: Persons of Peace, or Prepared, Open People. Jerry Trousdale in his book, Miraculous Movements says, “Persons of peace are God’s pre-positioned agents to bring the gospel to their family, their friends, or their workplace.” (p.90)

Some key words

Some key words  then for the kind of people we would be looking and praying for as we enter a new area would be: Prepared, Open People (POPs), connectors, networked in the area, locals, those who provide relational bridges to the community, respected, welcoming, receptive to the message and messenger, door-openers.

Some Examples in the NT are: 

Levi - Lk 5:27-29 to the tax-collectors and to his family

Cornelius - Acts 10 to his family and to the military

Lydia – Acts 16:14,15 to her family and business connections

The Philippian Jailer - Acts 16:27-34 to his whole household and the prison staff

The Woman at the Well - John 3 to her whole town

Paul would often go into new places and publicly share the gospel with a large number of people.  Before long he would take those who responded and then focus on teaching and training them and on reaching their oikos groups, their households or networks. These people would often become a base for reaching their whole communities.

Some Examples of POPs in our Ministry

(i) Tarlac City

When I arrived in Tarlac city as a new missionary, I didn’t know how to begin or how to connect with the people.  I was there with my Filipino co-worker and neither of us knew a single soul in the city and there were very few followers of Christ in that place.

So, I decided to take 2 approaches simultaneously

1. I would use the friendship approach to build relationships through common interests  and look for opportunities to speak of Christ, 

2. and we would share the gospel widely, going door to door, sharing the gospel in a certain part of town, looking for open people. 

Common Interests:  So, I joined a tennis club in my subdivision, but I was so bad no one wanted to play with me. Then I started biking and found a biking club I could join. Through those friendships and much time together in a common interest, I was able to befriend 2 of the influential people in the group, and that led to them suggesting to the whole group that we take a little time halfway through the ride to have Bible meditations together. By connecting with these respected members, the door opened to the whole group. One of the two influential leaders never came to Christ in my time there, but he was my person of peace that opened the door for the whole group to hear the gospel.

Share the Gospel Widely: At the same time, after 3 months of going door to door 5 days a week with no results, we came to a house where 2 young couples were visiting with each other.  When I shared the gospel with them, they all four immediately received Christ and were willing to start weekly Bible study together. When we started the Bible Study, they had invited other neighbors  together and from that we had our first baptism with 12 people, which became the beginning of the church in that city. 

When I found these 2 couples, my Persons of Peace, I stopped the door to door, and focused on discipling them and training them to share with others. When I went back after 20 years, they were still passing it on to others in the same way I had brought the gospel to them. Long after we had discipled them and trained them to pass it on and after we had moved on to other places, that 12 had grown to more than 600 believers, many of whom I have never met personally and never could have reached.

Both friendship and also broad spreading of the gospel had led me to find persons of peace.

(ii) John 

In one city, my son and I were out in the street throwing a football in the subdivision.  A neighbor, a Chinese businessman, came out and started chatting. He asked me what I was doing in the city.  I told John, “I’m a Bible Teacher.” To my great surprise he replied, “Can you teach me the Bible?” It turned out that he had been asked to lead a Catholic small group of young business people but was struggling because he knew nothing of the Bible.  So, I started meeting with John, working through a passage of the gospel of John each week together and then helping him prepare to do the same with his small group. After several months, John came to receive Christ personally.  I met some of his groupmates and none of them knew I was meeting with John.  It came up in the conversation that “John has become a really good Bible teacher.”  Later John was asked to speak at one of their Catholic retreats to hundreds of young adults.  We worked on his talk together, bringing the gospel of grace clearly, and then John presented it to his group. They never knew I was involved.  They never would have invited me as an outsider to speak to their group. John was a person of peace. He was a POP, a Prepared Open Person. He had been prepared by God by giving him a task in his group that he was not able to fulfil. He had a felt need  to learn the Bible. He was an insider and he was connected, and he received me, the messenger, and the message. He was the bridge to his Oikos.

(iii) COMBAT

I rode a mountain bike as a way to connect with the many mountain bikers in the city.  I had started riding occasionally with a group named COMBAT. It turned out that Danny, one of the group members who had lived a wild life before, had recently come to Christ.  He had been trying to figure out how to share Christ with his very lost groupmates. When he found out why we were there, Danny came and asked if I would teach a Bible study to his group  (of about 12 young men).  He said he would invite them to his house for dinner each week and he would provide the food  and all I had to do was teach the Bible study.  Through that, several of the guys became followers of Christ and were baptized and discipled. Danny didn’t know how to teach them, but Danny received me into his Oikos and recommended me to His group, and prepared them to receive the message I brought.  Danny was a new Christian and he was a Person of Peace.

(iv) Roy

One of the guys in the COMBAT Bible study with Danny was Roy. Roy had lived a godless life.  I had ridden with Roy previously and there was no interest in God. But when his wife had a stroke, his self-sufficient life was shaken. Previously he had said he didn’t need God. God was for sinners and he was a good person. But now in his time of need, he heard the gospel from a friend, and started to come to the Bible study to learn more.  Roy’s life was completely changed by Christ, and he asked me if I could come to teach his family, which included his siblings, his Mom and her sisters and a number of cousins and other relatives.  Roy convinced them all to join the Bible study and all of them came to faith in Christ.  Along the way, Roy asked me to show him how to teach so he could keep teaching his family. Later Roy became one of the elders of our church.  Roy had become a person of peace.  He was prepared by God  through his wife’s stroke and a sense of need and brokenness. He brought me into his Oikos and, through him, the group accepted me and the message, and the whole family was changed. 

(v)  Consolacion

This town was our fastest church plant, and one of the primary factors was this principle of entering the town through persons of peace.  Together with a small group of missionaries, we had planted a church in nearby Mandaue City. We knew no one in Mandaue and it took us years to get a breakthrough. When the church was finally established, we felt led by God to start a new church in the next town up. However, at first we weren’t able to find other missionaries to go with us, and we didn’t want to start alone. As we prayed, about 10 of the members in our Mandaue church asked if they could go with us to start the Consolacion church plant because they were from up there  and had been praying for a church to come to their area.

I told them they could come with me if they would let me train them to help us reach the people there.  So, they came and we trained them to reach their already established networks of relatives, friends and neighbors. For almost a year we met with them, discipled them and trained them, and they were reaching out to their networks.  When we started that church officially after 1 year of planning, praying and training, we had more than 80 people start coming, all of whom had been reached through those who were hometown people. The original group of local believers were our Persons of Peace.  We never had to do cold-turkey evangelism in this church plant.  Our total focus was to equip local people to reach their already established networks.

What do we learn from this about Persons of Peace?

- They can be unbelievers, pre-believers, new believers or established believers

- They are local, networked people

- They are being prepared by God in very different ways

*Through sickness and a sense of need

*Through a sense of inadequacy

*Through their own lives being changed

- They reduce exponentially the amount of time it takes to penetrate a new area 

- They already know the people and the culture we are trying to reach

- The people we are targeting will listen to them, either because they are so changed, or because they are respected and “worthy” people

In our next Blog we will look at the question “How do we find Persons of Peace?” and we will look at Examples of unexpected Persons of Peace.  Take some time now to consider persons of peace who have opened doors in your ministry, and begin thinking and praying for ways to discover more such people.