Defining and Strategizing Outreach to UPGs in NYC - Part 4: Strategy
So, what do we do? Our Strategy can be summarized in six basic steps. Each step is actually a phase of a person’s walk with Christ. We map these six steps on a scale commonly known as the Engel’s Scale (see linked page):
As we bring our UPG friend into a relationship with Christ we are constantly conscious of where they are in the Engel’s Scale. Then we pray, intercede and do spiritual warfare over them. We specifically ask God to move them forward along the scale.
Step 1: Share Christ immediately – Most UPGs are between a -8 to a -6 on the Engels scale when we first meet them.
When we first get to know somebody, we always encourage our missionaries to share Christ with their friends right away. Some methods of evangelism encourage people to befriend their unsaved contact and then wait for God to open doors to share the Gospel. The problem with that is that often people never share the Gospel and many times never let the person know they are practicing Christians. This is disingenuous at best. We never encourage our missionaries to have hidden agendas. It is very important that your friend know who you really are right from the start and that you are praying for them to know Jesus.
The method we usually use to share the Gospel is called Any 3.[18]
This is a method for sharing Christ with Muslims but can be adapted to almost any religious background and it works very well with UPGs. It was written by Mike Shipman who used it in planting house churches when he was a missionary in Asia.
It’s important to understand that we use this method as a guide, but we don’t force people to use it exclusively since we believe that sensitivity to the Holy Spirit is more important than a method. Nevertheless, we insist on people sharing Christ with their unbelieving friend from the outset of the relationship at least once.
Step 2: Befriend – Once they have shared the Gospel and clearly communicated with their contact, we encourage them to continue working on the friendship. The objective here is to move our friend up the Engle’s Scale till they are ready to accept Christ. As you can imagine this can take several months or years since most UPGs are not able to move from a -8 to a -1 in one step! It takes time.
This may or may not involve discussions about Jesus or Islam. Some people have had the opportunity to start the discipleship process at this point, even before they come to Christ. I have one Muslim friend that was curious about the Bible and has been reading through John, Acts, Matthew, and is now working through the Torah. We finished reading the book of Leviticus out of sheer interest on his part. He is not ready to believe in Jesus yet, but the discipleship process has already started.
For others like Parveen, in the example given previously, there was very little religiously oriented Biblical discussion during our 5-year friendship with her. But when things became difficult, we were there to help her turn her problems over to Jesus.
Step 3: Lead to Christ and Baptism– We are always watching for a time that we can lead our friend to Christ. Again, this is not a hidden agenda. Our friends should know how serious we are about our relationship to Jesus from the start of the friendship. In this way, once they are going through problems, we will always turn them to Jesus.
Once they have accepted Jesus as their personal Savior, we ask them to be baptized. Some don’t mind getting baptized in front of other believers while others may find that difficult. We have a portable baptistry that we take to people’s houses to baptize new believers privately if necessary. WE have also baptized quite a few in bathtubs at home. The important thing is not how it is done, but rather that they understand what their commitment to Christ is and what baptism means biblically for the new believer.
Step 4: Obedience based Discipleship in a very small group setting – As we stated before, the lines between Evangelism and Discipleship can get blurred. Discipleship does not always start right after the person accepts Christ. It often starts way before while they are still investigating. Curiosity will almost always lead them to start reading the Bible.
It’s important to understand that many of our friends have been told many negative things about the Bible so they may be defensive at the beginning, especially if the discipleship process starts before they come to Christ. What I often challenge my friends to do is to start out by comparing the Bible with one of their religious texts, such as the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita or maybe the Guru Granth Sahib. I will often challenge my newfound friend to read the Gospel while I read their Holy book. We can then compare the two. I almost always find that when we start such a journey, we always end up looking at the Gospel and the life of Jesus without much reference to the other texts.
The size of the groups is very important. For the most part I never use a discipleship group that is larger than four or five people. We need to understand that many of these new believers are studying in secret and cannot risk being caught by other friends and family members in the social groups. We do encourage them to come out and become transparent but the pace at which that happens must be set by the Holy Spirit.
One of the big parts of discipleship among the Unreached is to teach them obey the teachings of Jesus. Once the person has come to Christ, we place a lot of emphasis on obedience and prayer. It’s not enough simply to read about the teachings Jesus gave. The new believer needs some kind of accountability in regard to how they are putting Christ’s teachings into practice. We encourage new believers to share examples of this on a regular basis as we walk through the Gospels.
Another big emphasis is on prayer. From the very first day we teach new believers how to pray, intercede and practice spiritual warfare on behalf of other friends and family members. With Muslims believers we teach them how to break the Pact of Omar over their lives and ministry. The Pact of Omar is a pact that the church made with the spirit of Islam when Jerusalem was first conquered. There is a big teaching that goes along with this but suffice it to say that we have noticed significant strides being accomplished much faster in the lives of MBBs (Muslim Background Believers) when this pact is broken. And just generally speaking, we have seen that the amount of prayer and seriousness a new believer express toward developing a prayer life and personal relationship with Jesus greatly affects the growth rate of that believer. Parveen has had great success in coming out and being open about her faith and has brought over 70 people from UPG backgrounds to the Lord. This is largely because of the fact that she spends over an hour every day in prayer and the Word.
Step 5: Introduce to the larger body of Christ – Once they have grown to the point that they are willing to be open with their unsaved family members about their relationship with Christ we usually find that these new believers want to either join a church or become part of a larger House Church. We are happy to accommodate them in this when the time is right. At this point they are usually at a +3 on the Engel’s Scale.
Step 6: Send – This is +5 and +6 on the Engel’s Scale. Once the believer is ready to be transparent with others about their relationship with Jesus, we immediately start training them to witness to other friends and family members and multiply the Evangelism – Discipleship process with them. We hope to see every believer who reaches this stage start discipling at least 3 others at one time. People who are working as missionaries should have a minimum of 8-10 contacts/disciples (at whatever point they may be on the Engel’s Scale, as the Lord provides).
Can a Small Group become a House Church?
One question I am often asked is at what point does a small group that meets on a weekly basis become a house church. Much has been written about this and I would direct you some interesting resources including the Discovery Bible Study method or the books T4T: A Discipleship Re-revolution by Steve Smith and Ying Kai and Stubborn Perseverance: How to launch cascading movements to Christ among Muslims and others. David Garrison also has
some interesting comments about the topic of house Churches versus small groups in his book A Wind in the House of Islam: How God is drawing Muslims around the world to Jesus Christ.
In a training session I recently took with David Garrison he said that a small group should be considered a House church once the group becomes Self-Governing, Self-Supporting, Self-Propagating, Self-Correcting and Self-Feeding. We could get into the definitions of what each of these mean but what needs to be understood on the surface is that once these five criteria have been met there really is no reason to avoid calling the small group a House Church.
Conclusion
At Center to the unreached we believe that one of the big reasons God has brought us into existence is so that we can came along side of other ministries and help them become effective in reaching UPGs. If you feel that we could help your church or ministry in any way, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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[18] Shipman, Mike. Any-3: Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime -- Win Muslims to Christ Now! WIGTake Resources. Kindle Edition.