This is Matt. He’s a follower of Jesus, husband, father, deacon, servant, and owner/operator of a famous chain of chicken restaurants. And this is his story.
In Oct 2012, Matt and 2 others from their church in the States came over to help me with a church planting training. Over 3 days, we trained around 60 men and women in how to share the gospel, disciple new believers, and plant healthy churches. From this larger group, 10 men said that they wanted to receive more training in how this all works. Each of them had tried something they learned and had filtered themselves out. For the next 3 months, I met with them as a group and talked more about how God could use them to see His glory spread throughout Bihar.
With the help of others from Matt’s church, we were able to again filter this group down to 6 men who were ready to take the next step to see healthy churches multiply across their districts. So beginning in August, I met with these 6 men each month for a few days, and we also visited each of them in their home to see where they live and visit some of their churches. Each of these men learned more about how to go from doing the work themselves to becoming trainers of how to multiply new churches.
So Matt and another church member returned to the FLL in March of this year. At this training, the 6 men were able to bring some of there new leaders from the new work. Over these 3 days, 21 men and women gathered together to be refreshed in the big picture vision of seeing God’s glory spread among all places and all peoples in Bihar! So why is this awesome? Because Matt was able to begin with a group of 60 and then 18 months later see a group of 6+15 of faithful men and women who have a vision for church planting. This is a real life example of how 2 Timothy 2:2 is supposed to happen.
But that’s not all…because from this group of 6, there is 1 who has really caught the vision for all peoples in all places. Recently *Peter was at my house, and we were discussing what UUPG’s mean. After explaining it to him and giving him an example, he replied, “There are some from that people group who live just a half mile from my house!” The next weekend, Peter went through that village, using the Luke 10 method he had learned. One house from this people group invited him in, and Peter was able to share the gospel with them. Now, as of the writing of this email they have not yet put their faith in Jesus; but they have expressed interest in having Peter come back and continue sharing with them.
So, what began 18 months before with a large training and then filtered down to 6 who then have raised up another 15 new leaders has now seen the first (of hopefully many) UUPG engaged with the gospel for possibly the first time ever!
Thanks to Matt (and all the other volunteers) and his church for making this possible through the giving of their time and money to see God’s glory spread across this great country!
Also if you are in the Louisville area, stop by the Mall St. Matthews Food Court and talk to Matt while you “eat mor chikin”
Ramblings & Thoughts 