Unit 4 Objectives
- Explore how your spiritual gifts and skills fit within service contexts and opportunities.
- Learn more about what it means to be a disciple and be exposed to a variety of discipleship methods and tools.
- Learn practically about effective CP and discipleship in your context.
Unit Length: 10-12 weeks
Unit 4 Breakdown
Here is a suggested program that your facilitator can work through with you – you may think of ideas and resources that apply to your specific situation as well!
- Continue with your daily Bible reading plan, making note of your thoughts and what you have learned during these devotional times, answering the following questions:
- How is God calling me to think differently?
- How is God re-ordering my affections, what I love?
- What is God calling me to do today, how can obey Him?
- Regularly share some of your reflections with your prayer partner.
- Continue memorizing prayers found in the Bible. Incorporate them into your own prayers
- Read, discuss and learn more about spiritual warfare:
- Commit to praying specifically for identified prayer requests from teammates.
- Pray specifically for discipleship relationships.
Reflection/Accountability Questions:
- How am I daily putting on the armor of God?
- In what ways is Satan trying to oppose my walk with the Lord? What “hedges” am I maintaining to promote purity?
- What’s bringing me life/refreshing my soul these days?
- Where is my spiritual nourishment coming from?
- What spiritual disciplines am I practicing regularly?
- What fruits of the Spirit seem to be evident or lacking in my life?
- What have I been learning about God, others and myself from my Bible reading?
- Complete assessment tools for personal and spiritual gifting (one week dedicated to completing and discussing the assessments).
- Reflect on your identity in Christ and integration of your Christian life – in action, speech, relationships.
- Have a site visit and debrief.
- Review your Personal Care Plan (PCP)
Reflection/Accountability Questions:
- What am I doing to keep healthy physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually?
- What has culture stress meant for me? Who am I talking to about it? Am I using the resources available to me?
- What am I learning about myself from my new experiences?
- How am I affirming, listening to, encouraging and respecting others?
- How am I demonstrating the priority of relationships over daily tasks?
- What do I find the most rewarding, and the most challenging?
- Practice using the variety of learning tools introduced in the previous units and decide which methods work best for which situations and topics.
- Continue with your learning schedule, record hours, and meet with inbound facilitator to discuss progress/issues and motivation levels. Watch/read these resources…
- Establish lingua-culture learning goals that are linked with other goals of the unit, i.e., learn how to share your story, learn simple vocabulary about discipleship or CP.
Reflection/Accountability Questions:
- What motivates me to continue in language learning?
- How much time am I devoting to language learning each day? Each week?
- What community contacts have I made through practicing what I have learned?
- What am I learning that will help me communicate the truth in some way?
- What am I enjoying most? What am I struggling with? Who should I talk to about this in order to get help?
- Learn more about local perspectives on the spiritual world, how the local fellowship engages with spiritual warfare, and how the Bible speaks into this context.
- Learn more about the differences between Honor/Shame, Guilt/Innocence and Fear/Power cultures. What is most prevalent in your context?
- Find out about the challenges of being a disciple of Jesus in the local cultural context.
- Learn how discipline and/or correction is administered.
Reflection/Accountability Questions:
- What am I doing to actively seek out cross-cultural relationships and experiences?
- Who do I consider a friend in my host culture?
- How am I building relationships through gender appropriate ways?
- How am I actively seeking and acting upon cultural advice from local relationships?
- What do I find the most rewarding, and the most challenging about living in this new culture?
- Learn about a team members home culture, prepare a meal together with food from home country.
- Ask others in your community how they were discipled.
- Increase your awareness of how you relate to and speak to others in your team. How does age, gender, service experience influence your interactions and how you value others?
- Discuss a preferred culture of service, sacrifice, suffering, seeking, submission
Reflection/Accountability Questions:
- What have I learned about the other cultures of my teammates?
- What common ground do I share with each of my teammates?
- In what ways am I honoring and showing respect for my teammates’ cultures?
- Am I insisting on my own way? How open am I to doing things differently?
- What organizational values am I exhibiting?
- Continued participation in your local fellowship.
- Learn what cultural activities are encouraged or prohibited for Christians in this cultural context. Discuss how Honor/Shame, Fear/Power, Guilt/Innocence relate to these activities.
- Continue with regular communication with prayer partners.
Reflection/Accountability Questions:
- How often am I praying for my local fellowship and its leadership?
- In what ways am I actively participating in my local fellowship?
- In what practical ways could I participate with the local fellowship to demonstrate the love of Christ to others?
- How am I communicating with and praying for my prayer partners?
- Be introduced to effective CP/discipleship models and have training in selected models.
- Ask your facilitator for a list of CP or discipleship books/articles to choose from to read and discuss.
- Read There’s a Sheep in My Bathtub – Brian Hogan (Resources) during your site visit.
Reflective/Accountability Questions:
- What does it look like to live out my faith effectively in a culturally appropriate way? How have I done this recently?
- How am I modelling Christ to those around me?
- What does it mean to be a servant of Jesus in my new culture?
- How am I helping, enabling, equipping others to become more like Jesus Christ?
By the end of Unit 4, new members will have:
✔ Ability to use multiple lingua-culture learning tools appropriately and set goals that will help them accomplish their other learning goals.
✔ Learned more about the spiritual context of the community and be challenged re spiritual warfare.
✔ Experienced and able to compare various CP and discipleship models or methods.