The Seabourns

Keith Seabourn

Thinking about 2019

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Aurea with 2nd generation church planters
Aurea with 2nd generation church planters she is training

Aurea, a 47-year-old woman and mother of 5, learned to plant a church. Kay and I taught Aurea and others in September 2018 in Bata, Equatorial Guinea. Aurea says,

“The training has given me power to start church planting. I started with three persons in my house, but it has rapidly grown to 25 members. There have been difficulties and challenges but God has raised three leaders who will soon start second generation churches. My vision is to see churches planted everywhere in my area.”

Anita, a mother of eight, travelled 80 miles to attend the training. She returned to her home in Cogo and planted a growing church in this former center of the slave trade. Cogo is at the confluence of 3 major rivers that ships could easily reach from the Atlantic ocean.

After returning home, Anita began to share her faith using the Four Spiritual Laws and organized a showing of the Jesus Film with 45 watching and 13 making decisions to follow Christ.

Church building in Cogo, Equatorial Guinea
Church building in Cogo, Equatorial Guinea on land donated by a new, 75-year old believer

Anita says,

“Cogo is a difficult area. Many people feel civilized because of the colonial influence, but their lives are empty. The people are into drunkenness and loose living. I came back from the training a changed person and was excited about teaching the word of God. One man who received Christ was 75 years old and controlled by smoking and drinking alcohol. He is growing in his faith and has stopped smoking and drinking. This transformed man gave us the land where we have started constructing a church structure.”

Map of Cogo, Equatorial Guinea
Map of Equatorial Guinea showing Cogo town.

Anita continues,

“Cogo is surrounded by rivers. A woman of 65 years received Christ with me but doesn’t live in Cogo. This woman paddles her canoe 10 miles to come to Cogo for fellowship with believers. She stays three days for church service and discipling then returns to her area to minister.”

This is why Kay and I train church planters to connect with the lost and to plant churches that multiply. This is why we develop training curriculum. This is why we develop digital technology tools to expand the scope and engage more people in the Great Commission.

Thank you for our partnership reaching an increasingly desperate world like the people of Equatorial Guinea with the life-saving message of Jesus.

Kay and I look forward to 2020. We will be training and coaching. We will be following Jesus into new adventures. We praise God for the privilege we had in 2019 to minister in 12 countries flying about 195,000 miles and sleeping in 29 different beds. The adventure continues…

A predictable process on an unpredictable pathway

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I teach evangelism, discipleship and spiritual formation, and how to help new believers form local churches that multiply. Occasionally, friends and colleagues from my own mission organization will challenge this work saying that following Jesus is a non-linear process and what I teach reduces following Jesus to a simple, linear, step-by-step process.

Most of this well-intentional criticism is primarily from those in post-Christian cultures. I appreciate their engagement and do not fear this pushback because I know that, while life is not linear, that education and training and transferable discipleship requires approaching it as if it is linear.

I’m reading Steve Smith’s Spirit Walk book and found this excellent understanding of this complexity:

The Spirit Walk is unpredictable. But the process of learning the steps of walking in the Spirit of God is predictable. The Bible and its application throughout history point to common patterns that we must follow. They are the spiritual disciplines of learning to let the Spirit guide us every day. [Spirit Walk, Steve Smith, page 40.]

The word “process” is defined as “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.” Steve is saying that, while truly walking in the Spirit day by day is an unpredictable experience because of who the Spirit is, we can LEARN to be obedient through a series of actions or steps taken in order. Ministry to others, whether evangelistic or spiritual formation, is rarely a linear, predictable process, but we can teach others to be effective by teaching the steps in a process of engaging others.

I appreciate Steve Smith’s 3 Ps of movement-building: a common pathway for discipleship, a common process that is teachable, repeatable and transferable and a common power available to all that comes through walking with the Spirit of God.

This fits well with my engineering education. Most of the physical laws in our universe are complex and not linear. But in order to train engineers, we make some assumptions that simplify the basic physical laws of the universe. My first courses were spent solving engineering problems in this simple, linear space. Then we admit later on that it is more complex and instead of linear equations that predict behavior, we actually have to learn what is called partial differential equations. These are equations that are too complex to actually solve except by making assumptions which simplify them and give acceptable accuracy (99.9%). Maybe they train engineers differently in this era of very powerful computers than can model and offer solutions very quickly. But the guys who put a man on the moon with less computing power than my cellphone did it by solving very complex problems by simplifying them into a step-by-step process.

We do the same with teaching a process of evangelism, spiritual formation and discipleship, and local church formation with a DNA of multiplication.

Measuring Multiplication – A Webinar

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Collecting and understanding data from the field allows us to see God at work and helps identify next steps. Such information is vital to our goals of one healthy, multiplying expression of the Church for every 1000 people.
On June 26, 2018, I and colleague Mike Waid met with leaders from over 25 other organizations to discuss measuring our mission. We discussed the iShare platform, a tool we developed along with an outside engineering firm.

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Bold Responses

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As I review my notes on the Bold Moves Summit, things have become clearer to me. I am increasingly excited to be used by the Lord for His Kingdom come. Thanks to you, Keith and Kay, to Bekele and to your team for a conference that will produce eternal rewards. [from a participant]

Some came from far. Others were nearby. As the Bold Moves conference began in late February in Manila, 229 people from 89 countries gathered to explore Bold Moves: Boldly Multiplying, Boldly Expanding, Boldly Partnering and Boldly Leading. Directing a global conference with visas, around-the-clock arrivals and departures, establishing a meaningful agenda and executing it in atimely manner is in itself a bold move!

My prayer for weeks before the conference was from Luke 19 as Jesus expresses his love for Jerusalem. He laments that “you did not recognize the time when God visited you.” I felt God wanted to visit Bold Moves participants with a fresh breath  of the Holy Spirit, a renewed vision and tools to overcome barriers. He wanted to invite us to closely follow our God who is boldly moving towards “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:14)

My prayer  was that we each would recognize the time when God visited us in Manila.

My prayer was overwhelmingly answered. There is a renewed dependence, vision and commitment. We have identified the big challenges. We have discussed the barriers. We have developed pathways to success. Participants departed saying, “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” (Acts 4:29)

Resource

Reflections on the Bold Moves Conference

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Reflections on the Bold Moves Conference

28 February – 2 March 2018
Manila, Philippines

This was my first GCM conference and it was the best organized conference that I have attended with our organization. I liked that it was global and I could meet people from around the world. I liked how practical it was – writing down the next steps and emphasizing what the Lord is saying and how he is leading. I liked all the talks and the workshops. [Eastern Europe]

The 4 clear themes, the women time, the best practices (huge impact to have had Joey and his wife in person). [Latin America and Caribbean]

Seeing best practices, big challenges table times, clear directions of how to take notes and put ideas into the notebook. [Central Asia]

I liked learning a new process together to find a solution to a Big Challenge. Best practices to learn how others trusted God and made progress. [Southeast Asia]

The Bold Moves Conference was designed and executed by a highly-competent and highly-committed team from Albania, Panama, Australia, the Philippines and the USA.

Eventually, there were 229 participants from 89 countries with 17 cancellations due to visa difficulties or other issues. Among these participants, 51 were women representing the highest number of engaged women leaders in the history of Global Church Movements. The meeting was held in Manila, Philippines at the Crimson Hotel in the Alabang area.

The conference theme was Bold Moves: It is Possible. There were daily subthemes of:

  • 4G :: Boldly Multiplying.
    Achieving multiple streams of 4th generation church multiplication in every country)
  • 1:1000 :: Boldly Expanding.
    Establishing a church accessible to everyone, in every village, neighborhood, high-rise and digital space)
  • 1:1>2 :: Boldly Partnering.
    Intentionally engaging kingdom-minded partners in a -led paradigm to share in the mission.
  • 50X :: Boldly Leading.
    Becoming a movement leader, a leader of leaders with a goal of every GCM staff influentially leading 50 other leaders.

The conference was designed with these values in mind:

  • This conference should focus on problem solving, identifying and overcoming the big challenges and barriers limiting our 2020 goals.
  • This conference should intentionally engage women leading church multiplication. This was not conceived as a “wives’ track” but designed to engage those leading church multiplication.
  • This conference should intentionally welcome key leaders and partners who are not GCM staff. Key denominational pastors and leaders, partner organizations and key volunteers were fully engaged in all aspects of the conference, including problem solving and identifying best practices.
  • This conference should catalyze and energize the “wisdom in the room.” The focus should be on engaging the participants rather than plenary presentations.
  • This conference would not have live reports but would use video to capture the best practices each region of the world is learning in a compelling story format so that the knowledge is most easily transferable throughout our global movement.
  • A leadership development process would be used to tackle 3 big challenges. Identifying pathways to overcome these challenges would be important. But equally important would be helping global leaders with a systems-thinking approach to creatively and collaboratively overcome barriers.

Extensive discussion opportunities focused on best practices and an immersive, 6-hour problem-solving exercise. All participants engaged on one three wicked big challenges:

  • How do we achieve multiple streams of 4th generation in every country?
  • How do we expand our scope to achieve a church for every 1000 people in every country?
  • How do we partner in new and more effective ways to effectively engage all the kingdom laborers in every country?

These responses are common in the evaluations received:

  • Daily 20 minute introductions by our Vice President Bekele Shanko set the tone for each day. The combination of current reality based on observations from the 2017 reports related to the day’s sub-theme and future vision delivered every morning in the context of the daily theme for the day was very powerful.
  • High level of participant engagement. Every hour there were new and meaningful discussions.
  • Highly integrated conference. Many have commented on how integrated the conference was around the overall Bold Moves theme and the daily Bold themes. Pastor Dale Hummel of Wooddale Church led daily times with Biblical truths around the sub-themes.
  • Best practices discussion. Each morning, video and live presentations were visionary and demonstrated how others had overcome faith barriers to move forward in multiplication, scope, partnering and leading.
  • Big Challenges. This immersive experience in collaborative problem solving based on the popular TED Talk How to Make Toast [See the website DrawToast.com] was mentioned by many as one of the more meaningful opportunities to engage with other leaders in a way that gives them confidence, a practical plan and hope that these barriers can be overcome.

My prayer for weeks before the conference was from Luke 19 as Jesus expresses his love for Jerusalem. He laments that “you did not recognize the time when God visited you.” I felt God wanted to visit Bold Moves participants with a fresh breath of the Holy Spirit and a renewed vision and tools to overcome barriers. He wanted to invite us to closely follow our God who is boldly moving towards “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all the people groups (nations); and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:14)

My prayer was that we each would recognize the time when God visited us in Manila.

My prayer was overwhelmingly answered. There is a renewed dependence, vision and commitment. We have identified the big challenges. We have discussed the threats. We have developed pathways to success. Participants departed saying, “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” (Acts 4:29-31)

Resources