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G12 |
Bogota Story | The Secret is in the 12
| What is a Cell Group? |
Homogenous Groups | Encounters | Consolidation | School of
Leaders
THE G12 VISION To achieve His vision, Jesus worked closely with twelve men that He mentored to take His place on the earth. Following Jesus' pattern, the apostle Paul also trained a number of young men ("Timothys") who later became the great leaders of the New Testament Church. We call this mentoring technique the "principle of twelve." The number twelve is the number of government in the Bible. Jesus established His kingdom and government on the earth by using the same principle that God had used to establish Israel in the Old Testament. Just as Israel had twelve tribes, Jesus had twelve disciples. Using this pattern, Jesus intended to show us a model of how to disciple not only our local communities, but also the nations of the world. The "principle of twelve" was first implemented by Pastors César and Claudia Castellanos at International Charismatic Mission in Bogotá , Colombia . This church has used this discipleship principle to build the largest small group network in the world with over 30,000 small groups in a single congregation! Churches worldwide are implementing this dynamic principle. Its simple, personal, and is easy to duplicate. It is not a program, but the development of "fathering and mothering" relationships that help every believer become a multiplying leader who can disciple others.
THE
VISION
THE GOAL
THE METHOD-THE LADDER OF SUCCESS Success is a very positive word in today's world. Everyone is seeking success. But what does it really mean for a believer? What is success in the eyes of Jesus? As far as Jesus is concerned, there is only one criterion by which we may judge success. All that He has told us to do can be summarized by His final words to the disciples: "Go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to do everything I have commanded you" (See Matthew 28:18-20). Your life will be judged successful only in so far as you have fulfilled this commission of Jesus. It means making and maturing disciples into the character and image of Jesus. The G12 vision is a practical means by which we can all obey the call of our Master and be a success. Success must mean that your vision, goals and purpose in life are fulfilled. But personal fulfillment depends on you fulfilling the call of God on your life - making, maturing and mobilizing disciples of Jesus Christ. Success means fulfilling the Creation Mandate; "Fill the earth and subdue it." And this comes with the blessing of God. It also says , Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Genesis 1:28 Success also means stepping into the blessing of Abraham, God says, “I will bless you and make your name great; And you shall be a blessing… And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Genesis 12:2-3 When you obey the Great Commission of Jesus to disciple the nations you step into the blessing of Abraham and he was blessed in all things! There are four stages in obeying the Great Commission. Each one is necessary for full obedience. They are to Win, Consolidate, Disciple and Send.
WIN
CONSOLIDATE The consolidation process continues through a special encounter weekend. This encounter retreat focuses upon giving the new believer an experience of Jesus. The weekend covers such areas as assurance of salvation, inner healing, deliverance, being filled with the Spirit, and the vision of the church. At this weekend retreat, they "encounter God" through a deeper revelation of “the Cross.” The Encounter is also the place where they vision of the Church is imparted. Following the retreat, they are encouraged to attend a twelve-week class entitled Post-Encounter. Once the consolidation process is completed the new believer is ready to enter the next stage of development begins.
DISCIPLE
Each person on
the school of leaders launches a new cell group. The leader of the
new cell continues to receive support, help and instruction from
their original cell. As each of the members of the original cell
starts their cells the original cell becomes a G12 group. The G12
group is therefore a leadership cell. Multiplication occurs! The 12
grow to 144 leaders each with their own cell. Then the leader is free to go on and plant many more cells. In ICM, Bogota when someone has 250 cells they can become part time members of staff. And they can go full time when they have 500 cells - that means leading around 5,000 people! There is also a call for people who have grown their 144 disciples to go an plant cells and churches overseas. We are particularly concerned about the 10-40 window. That is the part of the world which has most of the world's population of un-evangelized people. A cell strategy is definitely the most effective way of reaching them. Many of these people live in remote areas of the world and are found in countries, which are hostile to Christian teaching .
From all this you
can see the G12 is not just another program. The Discipleship Cell
Explosion is the key to seeing thousands of people born again,
discipled and sent into the harvest fields of the world. Pray, take
every opportunity to learn about and experience this strategy and
start to implement it by climbing the “ladder of success.”
"What
kind of church do you want?" Pastor Cesar says, "I was striving to expand that number in my mind, but I couldn't. So I began to look at the sand of the seashore. As I looked at it, each grain of sand became a person, and I began to see hundreds of thousands of people. Then the Lord said, "That and much more will I give you, if you are in my perfect will." Cesar was encouraged and founded MCI. His goal was to reach 200 people in the first six months. It happened in three months! In 1986.
He went to Korea
and adopted the principles of cell church as taught by Dr Yonggi Cho.
By the end of 1991 there were 70 cells. Castellanos cried out, "Lord
I need something that will accelerate the growth." God showed him
the missing link, the concept now called G12. • Jesus chose 12 to reach the multitudes. • He stayed with these 12 permanently, until they were trained and He released them, gave them authority and empowered them to disciple the nations. • The call is to find the 12 and to reproduce Christ's character in them.
The
multiplication came 1996 was a particularly remarkable year. The cells grew from 4,000 to 10,500. Now MCI no longer tries to count people. They just keep track of the number of cells. Each cell has between 6 and 25 people and the official MCI figures state there are currently around 28,000 cells. The weekly youth celebration of the church meets in a stadium seating 20,000 every Saturday. There are two services with more than 30,000 in attendance taking in 13,000 youth cells. More than 1,000 young people give their lives to Jesus for the first time each week.
The
secret of success The G12 model facilitates the growth of the cells, the training of new leaders and maintains unity within the church. It promotes the opportunity for everyone to realize their leadership potential and take their place in the priesthood of all believers. The strategy is for every cell to grow to a full number of 12. Once part of a cell every member prays and fasts for others to join them until they have built another group of 12 disciples This way, none of the cells divide. They multiply. Everyone is still being ministered in their original cell from where they receive a high level of mentoring and, in turn, they are able to minister in the cell they have built. The Bogotá G12 model has five stages of implementation called the Ladder of Success: win, consolidate, disciple, send.
The vision really
came to our full attention in 1999, when our LCC Spanish church led
by Pastor Edmundo Ravello adopted the G12. They soon grew from 40 to
2,000 members. And since then many of our churches are on the same
path to success. This is not a model just for South America . It is
vision from the Lord and it can work everywhere. The model of ministry based on 12, is the most effective means of obeying the great commission of Jesus Christ to win disciples and of growing the Church. The key to success in this model is found in leading groups of 12. Jesus taught us this lesson through His own example. He did not deal with people based on their obvious abilities, but according to the potential He knew they had within. Jesus could have poured His life into the multitudes, but He did not; instead He chose 12 and worked to shape their characters. Each of the 12 had completely contrasting personalities and for three years, like the potter with the clay, Jesus molded each one of them. The model of 12 has always been in God's heart. The number 12 symbolizes government. At creation God established 12 months to govern each year; even days are governed by periods of 12 hours each. To govern the people of Israel , God established 12 tribes and King Solomon appointed 12 governors. In 1991, the lord removed the veil from my mind and gave me a deep revelation about the meaning of 12. I had asked myself why Jesus taught 12 and not 11 or 13. I also thought, the larger the number, the faster the work would progress. Why did Jesus invest His effort in just 12 people? Then I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit deep in my heart. He said if I trained 12 people, reproducing in them the character of Christ in me, and each of them did the same with another 12 - the continuation of the process, with every group of 12 transferring what they receive, would lead to unprecedented growth in the church. The 12 that Jesus formed learned to walk in supernatural power because they had to display Christ's character in their own lives. The religious leaders that opposed Christianity were astonished at the boldness of uneducated John and Peter. However, they recognized that they had been with Jesus. The model of 12 is something supernatural that the lord Jesus implemented. He intended that His ministry should grow and move forward in this direction. The model came from the heart of the Father to the heart of Jesus and as I sought a vision to win great multitudes, it came to my heart from the heart of Jesus. One of the first things I learned from the Lord at this time was that to implement the model of 12 one must walk in supernatural power, casting out demons and performing miracles according to each person's need. A price must be paid for the success of the model of 12 and this price is to do the same things Jesus did with His disciples - cleansing lepers, restoring sight to the blind, raising up paralytics and so on. When a pastor develops his or her ministry supported by these types of miracles, the news will spread and people in need of a miracle will run to hear this pastor's message. The model of 12 will bring the multitudes to the Lord's feet. The multitudes followed Jesus for the miracles He performed. To have a church with multitudes, one must walk in supernatural miracles, acting on the power of the Holy Spirit. On one occasion a leper approached Jesus. All Jesus did was look at this leper's need, acknowledge his faith and heal him. The best way is to give them a miraculous solution to their problems. Their faith in God will be strengthened when they realise that He does meet their needs. One Sunday, whilst celebrating our first anniversary, I asked the congregation, "How many of you are present here today because God performed a miracle for you?" Ninety-five per cent of the people raised their hands. Listening to their testimonies later on, I realized that one of the best ways to spread the gospel is to move in the realm of the supernatural. A person, who has received a touch from God, will not want to break away from the faith because the person is grateful to the Lord.
The model of the
12 aids the achievement of the vision to see explosive church
growth. If a person is content with a small ministry, the person
will bear fruit according to that vision. On the other hand, if a
leader believes God for a large ministry, the fruit will be
according to that belief. However, this leader must understand that
it means the Lord will dig deep into their life, and through them,
dig deep into the lives of those they are discipling. The model of
12 is the principle key in achieving this purpose. Ask any medical student “What is a cell?” and they will explain that it is the basic building block of the body.
Our bodies
consist of millions and millions of cells working in unison. We
cannot live without them. Within each cell is carried the DNA, the
genetic coding, or “blueprint” of life itself. Through our bodies we
can reach out and touch the world around us. Otherwise we would be
disembodied spirits, unable to influence and impact our world. By
nature cells will seek to multiply themselves, reproducing after
their own kind, or transitioning to fulfill different functions
according to hormonal influences. What is true of the physical body
is true of the body of Christ, the Church. After all, truth is
parallel. ‘Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach and to have power to heal sicknesses and cast out demons” (Mark 3:14-15). Later, the Holy Spirit would reproduce the same kind of ministry in the lives of subsequent believers. After Pentecost, we see the life and vigor of the Early Church are maintained by their large, corporate gatherings in the Temple, complemented with their much smaller fellowship meetings in believers' homes (Acts 2:41-47).
The
apostles had a cell vision After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple , the Church grew rapidly and spread throughout the entire known world of that time. They erected no church buildings of their own. How, then, did they achieve such explosive growth? They continued to meet in each other's homes as “cells”. Throughout the history of the Church, whenever the Holy Spirit needed to move in revival power, the phenomena of cells was used as the structure to convey His restorative works. A prime example is the ministry of John Wesley and his ‘classes' for believers. In more recent history, over the last thirty years, we see those churches throughout the world who are experiencing explosive growth are Cell Churches.
The
hallmarks of a cell Without worship, the group would be dry. Without the Word, they would become sub-Christian. Without fellowship, they would become cold. And without outreach, a cell would become introspective and self-absorbed. William Temple, an Archbishop of Canterbury, once said: “A church that lives for itself dies by itself?” The Church is the only institution that exists for the benefit of its non-members. The G12 structure with its four step Ladder of Success- win, consolidate, disciple, send- ensures that the cell stays true to its purpose. The cell is the primary place for winning new believers, discipling, training and releasing them to become disciple makers of others. We finish where we started. Like the biological cell, a cell of believers will be the basic building block of the body of Christ. They will transmit the DNA of Christ. They will seek to multiply themselves, reproducing after their own kind, via the Ladder of Success. And where necessary existing groups will need to transition to different functions in order to fulfill the four fold agenda of cell ministry.
‘The fruit of the
righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise.”
(Proverbs 11:30) There are a number of keys to understanding how and why this works so well. Key #1: The vision is often presented as running the cells along the homogenous principle. But we must understand that to mean we are running these ministries (men's, women's, youth, etc.) through the cell principle. Three main facts help us grasp the importance of homogenous groups:
This means that men are best equipped to reach out and disciple men, women best reach women, and so on. After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, people, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands (Revelation 7:9) We see aspects of culture redeemed and glorified in heaven! But these distinctions are not barriers between people. Rather, they form the diversity that enhances the unity. We are richer together when we receive one another and the diversity that brings. Key #2 : We are one body, one family and one church. But our unity does not mean we always must do the same thing, at the same time, in the same way in the same place. A family must regularly come together as a family, but there will be times when the children are doing one thing, the teens are doing something else and the mother is engaged in something else and so on. We must always remember that our primary cell is our family. We should first be discipled in our own families. And then we can move out into our homogenous cells. The G12 cell vision is all about building families up – not splitting them up! But we must also understand the power of homogenous groups.
The Dynamic of Homogenous Groups We know this principle very well form the youth ministry. Young people have special interests that enable them to identify with one another. Their music, their style and their mind set all relate to their time of life. We can best address their questions, pressures, and temptations in the context of youth ministry. The same applies to women. Many women's ministries are being raised up today. These recognize the special dynamic that operates when women come together to minister to each other. The same is true of men's ministry. Men open up better in the company of other men. And we need to minister to the men as men who share the same needs, desires and pressures. Key #3: Discipleship is about role models and teaching by example. Only so much can be achieved by cross gender role models. How can a man model to a woman how to be a godly wife? And how can a woman demonstrate to a man how to be a Biblical pattern husband? The principle I ‘like disciples like'. When you disciple others, you reproduce yourself. Jesus' 12 disciples were male, although He had many women followers. In fact, they were often the most faithful, loyal and supportive. Women backed his ministry in practical provision. He elevated them and gave them a high place in His ministry, teaching and mission. But His close disciples (His 12) were men. Even when you take the culture of the day into account (theirs was a patriarchal society in which men and women were separated in most public gatherings) you can still see how this sensibly applies today. Paul gave the older women a clear directive to teach the younger women and to disciple them.
Titus 2:3-5 Key #4: The homogenous principle does not mean the sexes or the age groups are divided and separated. It means that they are discipled as men, women, youth and children to take up their place as disciples in their families and in the wider church body. They become better husbands, wives, fathers, mothers or children. |
