CRM Empowering Leaders

The Big One

Most people who travel to Africa are looking for the “Big Five.” The buffalo, elephant, rhino, leopard and lion. I remember going to South Africa for the first time in 2007 searching for the “Big Five.” It took me three visits and six separate expeditions of looking to finally locate all five for my experience, the most elusive – the leopard – being last.

Nowadays I continue to go to Africa, but now I go for the BIG ONE…moving churches from maintenance to mission. It is sometimes more elusive to discover churches willing to change their operating paradigm than it is to find a leopard. Still, I search.

South Africa is a nation of division and class separation that is hurting for healing. We all know that the Gospel and all of its benefits is the only hope no matter the continent or the depth of woundedness. For this reason, my team – the reFocusing team – has commissioned me to pour our training into churches that will not only see benefit for themselves but also impact and influence other churches.

My wife, Sherry, and I are spending more and more time in South Africa developing networks of leaders representing various churches and faith tribes to begin a movement of valuing mission over the status quo. It is taking hold! Here is a recent letter from one of our reFocusing participants, a pastor in the Johannesburg area.

"O boy, I have been through a tough time. But I can say everything is going well. Let me explain, what kept me busy and what kept me silent. It is all your fault. Since you came into our lives with reFocusing, a lot of things changed. Suddenly, our congregation started to grow with non-believers. You wouldn’t believe me, but we have grown now with almost 20%, most of which were non-believers. I praise the Lord for what happened. Since we started to change the Church from where we have been to a missional movement – there was movement. I am visiting new members like mad at the moment."

"Big things are happening at the moment. The fact that our congregation is growing makes other pastors and congregations curios of the process. On 27 and 28 September we have a National Church Congress. Guess what? They asked me to lay out the program, and the theme of the congress is: Is your Church Missional?"

Now we have more churches wanting to be a part of reFocusing than we can adequately handle. Still, we will do everything we can do and God will do the rest. We are currently praying for facilitators and looking for God to call together an indigenous South African team to carry the movement forward for the next decade and beyond. We believe thousands of churches will be affected by reFocusing, not only in South Africa, but in places other team members have also planted seeds – East Africa, Nigeria and soon in Lebanon.

Recently, a businessman in one of the churches participating in reFocusing felt a calling in the Awaken workshop (a discovery tool provided to members of local churches in reFocusing) to reach out to orphans (a huge cultural challenge in the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa). Soon after he was able to save his company hundreds of thousands of dollars on a project in a rural area. He went to his boss and asked what would happen with all their savings. The answer was ‘build the bottom line.’ This man asked for, and received, $300,000 of the profits to build an orphanage in the area, effectively fulfilling a beginning to his life call discovered in the process of CRM’s work in his church.

Stories like these are only the beginning of a movement that is less than one year old. Imagine what will happen after three years, five years and beyond. It will happen because of CRM, reFocusing, the team God has called together, and the people who sacrificially support us to be the agents of change.

The next time you come to South Africa, put it on your agenda to not only seek out the Big Five, but look for the sixth big thing God is creating in the land – churches that matter because they believe in propagating, not just congregating. This is the essence of the mission and the Commission of Jesus’ church.

________
Phil Underwood
ReFocusing