Lessons from the Field

Jason Birkin and his wife Shirley spent many years church planting in the Philippines, today they continue to work alongside the local church there. We asked him the question – What was the most difficult thing you faced during your time as a church planter overseas? Simon:              Well hello everybody and welcome back to the Lessons from the Field podcast. Podcast where we ask cross cultural church planters the hard questions about ministry and life overseas amongst unreached people groups. I’m here with Brad as usual. Brad:                Hi Simon. Simon:              Hey Brad, thanks so much for joining us again, thank you to everyone who’s here listening along. It’s great to have you. Brad:                [inaudible 00:00:34] getting questions coming in? Simon:              Yeah, that’s right. Lessonsfromthefield.org is our website. There’s a contact form there. You can ask questions and we will- Brad:                Keep them coming. Simon:              We will put them to the best person that we can think of to answer that question. Brad:                So that’s good, isn’t it? We want it to be interactive, right? So people are bringing in questions, send them into the website and we’ll get them out to people on the field. Simon:              Yeah, we’ve got a good network of people that we can contact their Bible translators, church planters, et cetera. So yeah, let us know. This episode as always is brought to you by AccessTruth. You can visit AccessTruth at accesstruth.com. There’s plenty of resources there which are really helpful in learning more and being equipped to take the good news to the ends of the earth. Today we want to talk to you about an event that cross view is putting on, is that right, Brad? Brad:                Yeah, we can do that. Simon:              Sort of an event. Brad:                Yeah. So May next year we’re putting on an exposure trip called Explore. So Explore, Simon is a 12 day exposure trip journeying through Thailand, Indonesia, Java, and Bali. We’ll let The Book of X guide us as we consider what it takes for the gospel to spread. So we’re going to be looking at four different worldviews, three major religions. Over two nations. So there’ll be one team, one epic journey as we- Simon:              One team, one epic journey. Brad:                [inaudible 00:02:09] but it’s an opportunity for people to engage with a great commission. To be able to see I guess firstly how that applies practically to their life and also it helps them ask the question what’s it going to take to cross borders and barriers to effectively communicate God’s love to people in another culture and language group? Simon:              Okay, so you do, I believe it’s structured in a way that you go out, you do stuff in the commun

In episode 7 of Lessons from the Field we talk with Bill Housley. Bill and Kelley Housley are missionaries in Papua New Guinea. They have been working in church planting and translating the New Testament into a minority language. We asked the question: How would you describe the relationship between teaching God’s Word and discipleship in a pioneering church planting context?  Simon:              Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Lessons from the Field podcast. Lessons from the Field is a podcast produced by Access Truth, and Access Truth actually has a brand new resource that we want to tell you about. It’s called Equip Engine. And I’ve got Brad here as you know. Brad:                Hey Simon. Simon:              Hey Brad. And now tell us a little bit about what Equip Engine is. Brad:                Well, it’s brand new. Access Truth have developed this over a lengthy period of time. Simon:              A couple of years, right? Brad:                And rolled it out recently. Yep. And at Cross View, the way that we train is through a program called the Connect Program ministry training discipleship, cross-cultural ministry discipleship program, and people are spread out all over the country, and the way that they’ll learn will be through this online portal, Equip Engine. Simon:              Yeah. Brad:                And we’ve loaded up all their courses under that and the students and participants in the Connect Program can begin mentored through their learning using Equip Engine. So yeah, suits their needs perfectly. Simon:              Yeah. A Quip Engine is a learning management system designed for churches, Bible schools, mission agencies, small groups, et cetera. Brad:                Churches, yeah. Simon:              Small groups, big groups. It’s pretty flexible and basically you can create your own courses with tutorials, videos, audio files, PDFs, quizzes, interaction between the teachers or mentors and the students and also facilitates group discussions so people can respond to each tutorial or lesson privately. But then there’s also a public forum available there as well. So it’s really flexible. Brad:                Yeah. Simon:              And yeah, it’s aimed at Christian groups of any description. So if you’re interested in that, you can go to equipengine.com. Brad:                You can get some different packages, Simon. So depending on how many users you want. Simon:              That’s right. Brad:                How many courses you want to load up on there. So there’s different packages available to suit your ne

In episode 6 of Lessons from the Field we talk with Todd Gerst, a church planter and Bible translator who worked in Papua New Guinea (See the video His Gift to Gie). He and his wife Karen spent 15 years working in PNG and seeing several churches established, elders appointed, and the fruit of new birth apparent in countless lives. Todd is now Lead Pastor at Warsaw Community Church in Indiana, USA. We asked the question: If you were 25 years old again would you still choose the same path for your life? Speaker 1:        This is an Access Truth Resource. For more information, visit accesstruth.com. Simon:              Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Lessons From The Field Podcast. I’ve got Brad with me, as always. Brad:                Simon, how are you, mate? Simon:              Good thanks, Brad. And, it’s a beautiful day here in Western Sydney, 33 degrees Centigrade, Celsius, Kelvin, whatever you want to use. Whatever it is, it’s not Fahrenheit, because I’m pretty sure… What’s 33 in Fahrenheit, Brad? Brad:                Move on. Simon:              Okay. You’re the one who lived in Colorado three years or whatever it was. Brad:                I can’t do that. I can’t do that. Simon:              Okay. Brad:                There is a formula, I forget it. Simon:              Yeah, yeah. Okay. Brad:                Let me go just grab a phone. Simon:              Yeah. All right. Today we’re here talking with Todd Gerst again. You might remember him from the last two episodes. Today we’ve got a bit of an interesting question. It’s one that comes up a lot, I think, Brad. It’s the sort of thing that we talk about just in our culture in general, in Western culture, we often talk about this, don’t we? We talk about reliving our lives from a certain point. People say, if only I was 21 again. Brad:                Right, go back and do it again. Simon:              Yeah. And in a mission context, a church planting context, especially because it’s such a learning process, isn’t it? There’s so many things you learn along the way. God sanctifies us, he teaches us things, and we look back and we go man, if only I’d listened to God earlier, if I’d done that sooner. There’s a lot of if onlys. Brad:                Yeah, yeah, either way. So even when you do something that you think is wholeheartedly the right thing to do, you can still doubt itself, right? Simon:              Yeah, yeah. Brad:                You can still look at other options you could have taken and still maybe even have r

In episode 5 of Lessons from the Field we talk with Todd Gerst, a church planter and Bible translator who worked among the Maleu people in Papua New Guinea (See the video His Gift to Gie). He and his wife Karen spent 15 years working with the Maleu people seeing several churches established, elders appointed, and the fruit of new birth apparent in countless lives. Todd is now Lead Pastor at Warsaw Community Church in Indiana, USA. We asked the question: What are some of your observations of the approach to missions that is current in the U.S. church?

In episode 4 of Lessons from the Field we talk with Todd Gerst, a church planter and Bible translator who worked among the Maleu people in Papua New Guinea (See the video His Gift to Gie). He and his wife Karen spent 15 years working with the Maleu people seeing several churches established, elders appointed, and the fruit of new birth apparent in countless lives. Todd is now Lead Pastor at Warsaw Community Church in Indiana, USA. We asked the question: What would you say is the single biggest factor in effective church planting in a least-reached people group?