375-Multiplying Disciples as the Bombs Fall

Hi, Steve Addison here for the Movements Podcast. The podcast for people who want to multiply disciples and churches everywhere. Today we're back in the Middle East talking to Rick and James about multiplying disciples, leaders and churches in a war zone. Yeah, so since the last time we talked, there's been more unrest, more wars. And we've just been ⁓ going back to some of the principles we've been learning from the last wars. It's that in instability and discomfort in places that are hurting, there's the greatest hunger and the greatest opportunity for the gospel. ⁓ it's still very challenging though. It's still very messy. It's not like a clear cut. Okay, people are more thirsty for the gospel, but It's generally like you don't want to waste an opportunity like this because you don't know if you're gonna have an opportunity like this in the upcoming years. So a lot of the things we've been learning last time, we learned from the last war and we've talked about previously. We've been able to repeat those things, even in new work. So last time we focused mostly on another country. And I live in Lebanon. And that other country we we learned that during war, during unrest, during upheaval, people are just incredibly thirsty. And that was an opportunity to see a lot of growth. But recently here even in Lebanon, there's just been a lot of instability and there's been a lot of of war. And we've been able to even with the new work just reapply some of those same strategies to see just explosive growth and multiplication here as well. Lebanon is a very diverse country, a lot of different political sects and a lot of different religious bite minorities. There's no one majority. A lot of people put hope in politics. And I think for the first time, after some multiple wars that have gone on here, people have begun to lose hope in politics. People have begun to lose hope and even question what they believe in. another important thing to note here is that like religion and politics are very closely knit together. And these political parties, they promise, hey, we're gonna bring you victory. We're gonna Make your life better. And people are questioning, are these political parties actually making my life better? Is what I believe in making my life better because of the war, they're finding themselves displaced. They're living in shelters, they're living in tents, they're living in places that are not easy to live in. And meanwhile, their homes are either being occupied or destroyed or unsafe. So people begin to question everything again. And this is what we saw happen in the other country that we talked about last time. But here in Lebanon, this is what we're seeing a lot of this time. ⁓ we're seeing that same thing where people believe they might die tomorrow and they want to know who God is today. And they are a lot more open to hear the gospel truth. Even some of our guys have told us a couple of years ago, if we would have shared the gospel with some of these people, they might have shot us. But now some of these people are believing because they feel like they're at their end the end of their rope. And they see the ways that Islam has failed them, or they see the ways that political parties have failed them. So at times of hardships, not just war, you'll you begin to see people question more. And especially in this situation in Lebanon, where people they're they're looking for value, they're looking for for meaning somewhere. Cause what they thought gave them value before, they're seeing as something that Is putting their lives at risk. Multiple countries have experienced to one degree or another the effects of war. Islam probab promises victory. And people are starting to question: hey, is this bringing us victory? The victory that we had hoped. Is losing our homes and the lives of our loved ones and possibly our own lives. So that people begin to see the hypocrisy as well. And they get to s begin to see the crimes of what a lot of these religious and political parties, since the two come together here, they see the crimes as of the of those political parties and they see the the hypocrisy in it. If they're like, hey, I can no longer be comfortable in this system and I might die soon, then they they really want to know the truth. Last time we had a war in the end of 2024, there were certain segments of the population were like, Man, if only we had someone that an insider that was faithful to share among this people group. The last where there's certain segments of the population here. We we just had no work going on. And we had we were bummed that like we didn't have insiders. We didn't have people that we were working with, or at least just, you know, other people we're working with among those segments of the population to share the gospel. Since the last war, we've we've gotten to find some more local ministry partners who are really faithful, who are really strategic. Where really surrendered to the Lord. Difference is this war here in 2026 and the upheaval that it's caused. We've actually had faithful local ministry partners who are working before the war ⁓ that we've been working with over the last year about that have been really faithful during this time. They've taken risks even to go to dangerous areas where there's airstrikes or dangerous areas where they could be persecuted. With the aim of making disciples and developing leaders. We have like the five level levels of leadership that we implement here. It's for us and it's also for our local ministry partners to help them understand the nature of the work and the way we can develop leaders. Level one is a faithful seeds ⁓ faithful seed sower. They're capable of entering in into the lives of the people around them. They're oikos map. their friends or family, they're able to look at people and enter into those relationships and share the gospel message. We want as many L one leaders, faithful seed sowers, as we can possibly have. And our goal is every single believer can at least do those two things. They can share with those around them. A level two leader is a church planner. So they're able to then also disciple and to at least have a a church in their Their house or a church on the beach or a church under the tree on the river or, you know, in some cafe. They're at least able, they're trained in the basics of how do we take a new believer and start discipling them and baptizing them? And how do we meet together for church? A level three leader is able to do all those things. In addition to that, they're able to develop leaders. So it's not just them planting a church, they're all training others. plant churches. It's not just them sharing the gospel, but they're training others to share the gospel. They're training others to do discipleship. So when you look at their their ⁓ generational map, whether it's disciples or churches, you just start to see multiplication. You actually see at least a couple generations because they're really good at developing leaders and training other leaders to develop leaders as well. Those first three, three levels, you know, we're trying ⁓ both in the country we we live in now in Lebanon and also in other country we're working in, we really focus on tightening the those things down. Because at the end of the day, the majority of people are gonna be L ones, L twos, and L threes. Majority L ones, you know, faithful seed sowers. But then we're gonna need a lot of level twos, ⁓ church planners and a lot of level threes, like multipliers, if we're gonna see large areas saturated with the gospel. We would ⁓ focus on our training package on that would include everything to help someone become either an L one, an L two, or an L three. We would focus on entry and sharing the gospel first, you know, like how does so what does someone need to become an L one? ⁓ And we would do it in a way where it's like, okay, I'm gonna take somebody and I'm we're gonna go train someone together, more in a one-on-one setting, not in a big room setting. And we would do model assists, watch and leave through this process. Like I trained someone and they'd watch. Next time I train someone else and we do 50 50, you know, I'd help help them as they try to train. The last time I just watched this this brother do the training in front of me. And then now he's equipped to train people in an L one training. And basically everything someone needs to know to enter the the lives of the people around him. Him or her and share the gospel message. And then we would do the same thing with like an at level two, two training. We would get more into the ⁓ just basic tools we use to help start discipling a new believer in the basic, ⁓ the basics of our faith. You know, we would just take them through a story set. You can model assists, watch, and leave. Same thing with church. How do we do a church meeting? You model assists, watch, and leave. So the training package was very clear for our disciples. And they would think, okay, if someone's an L one leader, I know I need to teach them how to do discipleship in church to get them to become an L2 leader. For leadership development, this whole model assist, watch, and leave process is one of the foundational tools for leadership development. So people are picking that up. There's not a specific training for it because the training is the model assist, watch and leave process this whole time as they go on. And they model syswatch and leave. The first phase, how do we make sure we have a tight training package, so to speak, from L1 to L3? What we're seeing now over the last several months is a greater need for level four leaders and level five. And a level four leader is basically someone who got to level three in their own context. They multiply churches and they know how to multiply disciples. But the thing is A level four leader is able to go to a different context, whether it's a different village, a different province, sometimes a different country, able to go there among a place where they don't have a very big ⁓ Wakeos map, where they don't have a lot of relationships there. And they're able to pour in and train other people who become L one, L two, or L three leaders. So that's basically our level four explanation. And then getting into level five. Usually it's more of a team of people who are able to manage resources, who are able to connect churches together if there's a greater region, like helping them keep in touch with one another. And they're able to see the gaps. They're strategically thinking, We haven't reached this province yet. Who needs to go? How are we gonna get them there? Those are the five levels of leadership. And right now we see a lot of multiplication. There's a lot of people becoming level one, level two, level three leaders. But we want to see more of that in new places. We even have one province we recorded nine generations of of house churches. And we want that to happen other places. It's a lot less simple, you know, of like, hey, just train someone and let them share among their own people. We have to figure out how to get these people to other places. It's the whole idea of like you're moving hot coals around. I think five or six generations is what we've we've tracked here as well. Lebanon, it's small geographically, but if you look at all the different people groups here, all the segments of the population here, you almost need to start getting t into L four work if you're gonna see all Lebanon saturated with the gospel. So even over the last season and during the war, it helped reduce a lot of the ⁓ distances, not only geographic d distances of reaching other segments of the population, the social distances too, because that's over a million people, about A fifth of the population got displaced during the this war in 2026. Different people groups moved to other parts of the country to other people groups, other segments of the population. These people groups were a lot closer because of the war too. Some people who traditionally live in one part of the country move to a whole other part of the country. Why? Because they're trying to get away from the war or they're trying to find a safer, more stable place. And they were able to share with other people groups. When you have a believer get dislocated, get removed to somewhere else, they're put in places where they're shoulder to shoulder now with other people groups. And they're able to show the love of Jesus. And that's something that's really attractive to people. And when people hear their test testimonies and they're like, You're from this people group, you're from an Islamic background, but now you follow Jesus. What happened? They want to know, they want to hear what happened, and it's a huge witness. But a lot of our work is about how do we get more harvesters. Everything we do exists so that way there's more level one faithful seed sowers. That's the most important thing. And we want more people sharing the gospel. L twos, L threes, L fours, L fives. The end goal is like, hey, we're trying to make sure we have as many people trained at least in how to share the basic gospel message. So that's where leadership development comes in. We've really tied down the L one through L three training. Now we're focusing on okay, how do we make level four leaders basically people who are able to like go to another context and start new work and essentially move coals from this place where we have what you would classify as a movement, even here in Lebanon, and move those coals to other places to start further places. So that's kind of more the nature of the work we're looking at now. James. What are you learning? I'm just amazed, Steve. During the the twenty twenty four war we knew that God was at work and the more harder to reach people groups in Lebanon, but we just didn't have any access, any entry point into those places, into those peoples. And we were praying and praying and praying. And God in twenty twenty five, January, opened up the door and sent us a guy. And we got to know him and got to work with him and got to prepare him. And he really went through a dark night of the soul. The persecution was really heavy in his life, you know, his brothers trying to kill him and his family's disowning him. And he went through a very, very dark period. But by God's grace and through Rick and his love and persistence, you know, this guy's come out the other side of that now. And he's sharing the gospel really faithfully and is raising up leaders. Then this new war just began. This this latest war, you know, that we live through from March until I don't really think it's over yet. And But now, you know, there were there was a very well equipped team of harvesters in place to enter into the chaos, to risk themselves, several of whom died as an as a result of working in a war zone, of sharing the gospel in a war and and these brothers are paying the price. I was out to have a have another child, you know, and we made it back and he really wanted to talk about what he was experiencing emotionally during that time in his life. And We sat down and we opened up ⁓ I think it's Zechariah thirteen, ⁓ whereas you know, the the sheep are gonna be struck and they're gonna be scattered and a third of you I'm gonna throw into the fire, you know, and I'm gonna burn you like silver is burned or like gold is burned, and then you're gonna come out pure, you know. And we talked about this and and just said, Listen, you've been through the refiner's fire. That's what I think about you. You guys are going through pa pain and suffering, but that's refining you. Making you more like Jesus, but it's also it's just stripping away attachment to the earth. I met that brother and ⁓ Rick's been telling us heaven opens up, receptivity. We gotta train, train, we've got a mentor, we gotta work the thing. There's another side of this is God's been shaping that brother over quite a period of you know, a year or or two. Yeah. And And I imagine that's going on in the lives of a number of your key leaders. That there there's a chaos factor here of maybe we've lost this guy. You know, he's fallen into a black hole, his his family's disowned him, trying to hurt him. He's gone off the radar, but but then God brings him back. I'm just sort of thinking in terms of for both you guys, your your roles. There's there's a part of this is here's the five levels of leadership. Let's work this because God's doing something amazing. And there's another part of yeah, we're we're on the the ship in Acts twenty seven and it's about to sink. You know, he's shaping the lives of Luke's on that ship and Aristarchus and Paul. Paul ends up in the water. There's there's that work of God in the lives of the leaders that you're dealing with. Correct. Yeah. Out in the valley where I've been working for the past four years or so, ⁓ one of one of our most faithful leaders and one of my dearest friends, ⁓ you know, he recently ⁓ his wife decided to divorce him finally. You know, at the at the very beginning of his faith, she left and she came back because they had a A young daughter and they decided to stay together for the daughter. She's grown up and she's flown the coop, you know, she's in university now. Yeah. And so this guy's wife decided that she was done, done tolerating this infidel. And she made she made the whole thing about his faith in Jesus. She left, yeah, she went back to her family, she gave him a forty eight hour ultimatum and said, Either you turn away from following Jesus and stop evangelizing, or I'm leaving you. ⁓ and so he said, Well I there's nothing I can do. I can't. You're not giving me a choice. I have to follow Jesus. She's got nephews in her family that are a lot more hardline radicals. ⁓ shortly after that, you know, this guy was on the way to a meeting with another leader in a city and they're on on this backcountry road and there's no traffic and then this Jeep Cherokee that's totally blacked out and completely tinted windows just comes out of nowhere, hits him as hard as he can and just hit and run, you know. This guy's car flips over sideways. There are some bystanders who came out and had to pry these pry the door open and pull these guys out of the car. So I'm talking with this guy, I'm like, how do you feel? And he says, I feel like I have alligator skin. I don't feel anything anymore. You know, I'm like, I'm just numb. My wife hates me. My daughter hates me. You know, and they're trying to kill me. And he's just recently been through one of the darkest depressions. and then yesterday we were sitting together. ⁓ And it's like I just see the spark in his eye, you know, like he's coming back. Yeah. Yeah. And he's gonna be okay. And ⁓ Yeah. Yeah, we you know, we read so much of the Bible together. We read First Peter, looked at Peter's talking to you. Anybody that suffers as a Christian ought to do so with honor, with dignity. You're doing it. You're suffering because of your faith. We read Second Timothy, be a good soldier, share with me in the sufferings. And we just read all these passages that are deep about suffering, and it's just given so much depth. To the word of God, so much life to the Bible, because it's just so applicable for this brother. He wouldn't make it without the word. And without and without God just being there with him, sitting in his suffering. You know, it just brings new meaning to Isaiah 53, you know, that Jesus is a he's the master of sorrows. He's a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. All of our guys have walked through this. All of them have walked through serious forms of suffering and persecution. And we've just watched Jesus be with him and and walk through him. ⁓ and that's just rolled out for generations. I think I think God has been busy shaping a generation of leaders who are able to endure the persecution so that they can serve as an example. And it's it's given context to so much of the Bible, to what does it mean to serve as an elder when all of your people, all the sheep are getting beaten, all the sheep are getting murdered, all the sheep are getting persecuted. Why do we have to go from house to house and we can't have big meetings? You know, like it There's this clandestine thing where you're trying to shepherd people and love people that are being targeted by their society. And it's just shed new light on all that. I think that's that's part of what I'm learning. is you know how to how to walk with people and shepherd people through their suffering and how to balance that between You know, we're excited about new places and we gotta keep working on the strategy and we gotta keep the gospel going out. And the more people believe, the more suffering there's gonna be, you know. It doesn't get better, it just gets worse. 'Cause more and more people come to Christ and then they suffer. And and so it's just a fact. It's just a fact and a reality of life as followers of Jesus. And you know, we're a bit insulated from it as as as foreigners, as Westerners. I feel like at least Ninety to ninety five percent of our time is a lot of like shepherding character development and just showing these guys that we love them and we're there for them. Because that's what they need when they're being persecuted. We've heard another Arab believer share this before. They almost need this ripcord. They need to know that they have someone that they can depend on and someone they can turn to. And someone that they can talk openly with. So a lot of what we do our day ins and day day outs is spending time with these guys and showing them that they're loved and working on their character and encouraging them to persevere. And we don't have to encourage them to persevere from our own experience because like James said, our suffering's different. The word is full of it. Like the word is written to persecuted people. When you see the word through the lens of per the persecuted There's so much it so much more of it just comes to life. 'Cause you see how much, you know, the first Christians suffered and even in the old testament, how many prophets and David and so forth, like they suffered so much to follow God. Yeah. So a lot of it is let's study the word, let's work on character, and let's love these guys and shepherd these guys well. You know Ten ten years ago, maybe eleven years ago, I was up in North India and Lee Park guy called Lee Park and Kumar were taking me through the five levels of leadership 'cause Nate and Shank they'd been pioneering that whole approach. Right. And I'm trying to understand it and seeing the beauty of it, it's just pure gold. And I kept pressing in to understand. And after a while, Leepock looked at me and said, Steve, you're not getting the message. Well, what's that, Leepock? Well, we just love our guys. We love them. We'd do anything for them. And so overlaid like a perfect leadership development thing for a movement, that five levels of leadership. And we'll post a link for it in the show notes. But overlaid that, the guys who pioneered it. Just say, Steve, you're not getting it. We love our guys. You know. And it sounds like you've you've been learning the same lesson. Yeah. The depth of love in and these networks that we get the honor and the privilege of getting to share in. ⁓ the depth of love is just something that's so beautiful. Just feels unreal sometimes. and so strange getting to be a part of it as foreigners, you know. And and they feel strange, they're like, Wow, this is who would have thought, you know? Yeah, we had one believer through some of the work here in Lebanon. ⁓ he's a relatively new believer. He can't read or write. He felt like the the Holy Spirit was telling him one morning as he woke up to grab a Bible and to go up to a specific place, like a specific village. So he woke up and he didn't have a physical copy of the Bible because at the end of the day he was illiterate. So he went to another believer, one of Someone was close to, like, hey, give me your Bible for the day. Also bookmark for me the Great Commission. So this other believer gave him his Bible, book, put a little like piece of paper, folded the page with the Great Commission. And he listened to the promptings of the Spirit. And he went up into the mountains to this village, sat at a cafe, and he ended up sharing with thirty-five people from a different people group. And this people group doesn't know much about Unless you bec you become a leader in in like a a religious leader, you don't know much about what you believe in. It's a very secretive religion. And all these guys are listening to this Muslim background who follows Jesus, share with them. And he sh of all the things, he shares the Great Commission and says, This is what we do. We go and we like Make disciples of all nations and we baptize people in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and we teach them to obey Jesus. And they're listening and they're like, first of all, this guy shouldn't be following Jesus. What's happening? What happened to him? And second of all, he doesn't read or write, and he's very new, and he already knows more about what he believes in than what we know about our own religion that we've been born into. We have to listen to him. And from that, there started to become a a new work among this people group. A lot of those people listening, they were ripe, you know, for the gospel. They received the gospel. And because of that, we started to have a pretty flourishing network of of chur house churches. The work that started a new people group because this guy listened to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. There's this other leader who he got displaced in another part of Lebanon and these Two leaders that one of our main ministry partners was discipling, shared the gospel with him. So he heard the gospel, rejected it, got in a fight with them because he was very committed to Islam. And that night he had a dream of Jesus. In his dream, Jesus told him several things about his name and about how he had chosen him to follow. Like he had chosen this guy to follow him. And The next day he wakes up and he's in shock and he goes to these two guys who shared with him. He's like, I want to follow Jesus. Like you fought with us yesterday. And this this guy has turned out to be one of the biggest leaders that they have among their network. Unfortunately, both of those leaders, they ended up dying in the war in an airstrike. And to this day, when this leader talks about them, he can't talk about them without crying. Like, you know, we're in the Arab world, men don't, you know. Men are even more so than the West. They're they gotta be tough and all that. But as he talks about them, how much these guys loved him, he just begins to cry. So it's hard to love in a place where you could lose people e you know, easily to war or to persecution. But at the end of the day, you know, you have to really love these people and they have to love each other. Well, thanks for listening. And if you're enjoying these podcasts, ⁓ Why not get the word out to people you know? I'm Steve Addison.