Workshops

Disciple Making Movement, or DMM (sometimes referred to as CPM or Church Planting Movements), strategies focus on creating environments where disciple making can go viral so that disciples make disciples who plant churches that plant churches. DMM strategies locate Persons of Peace (POP)  to disciple, who in turn disciple those in their lives; thus creating a network and a chain of disciples to spread the Word at home and abroad. Come learn how to effectively adopt and use these strategies to increase the effectiveness of your ministry!

In this track:

How can we respond to the needs of different communities using DMM strategies?

Can DMM strategies work in prison?

How can we create networks using DMM without creating dependencies?

Organizations are built around leaders. Leaders lead best when they are cared for, learning, and developing themselves. Success requires vision, empathy, commitment, humility, and faith in your team. This track will focus on both the financial, and human side of organizational development and the leadership skills which lead to dynamic and sustainable wholistic ministry.

• What are tangible ways you can show faith in your team?
• Why is it important to show empathy and humility as a leader?
• How can you make sure your vision and commitment leads to dynamic and sustainable wholistic ministry?
• What approaches can we use to give away power, handing over the keys to our teams?

By 2025, two-thirds of Christians will live in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.  Over the last century, this represents a dramatic shift in the geographic center of mass of the global church away from the West to the Majority World.  The changing face of Majority World missions is now “from everywhere to everywhere” as new paradigms of connectedness, partnership, interdependence, and local ownership emerge.  This track will focus on ministry examples that have empowered the growth of indigenous movements, emerging issues that represent challenges to reaching the Majority World, examples of effective local-global partnerships, and models of integral mission/transformational community development/community health evangelism that equip indigenous believers and churches to reach their nations with the Gospel through word and deed.

                How can we use CHE and its principles to spread the Gospel throughout new parts of the world?

                What are some examples of CHE strategies working in the growth of Christianity around the world?

                What does the phrase “from everywhere to everywhere” look like in regards to Christianity, and what does the involvement of CHE principles look like?

Wholistic ministry is made up of ministers, human beings, made in God’s image, but flawed by the Fall, who are jars of fragile clay carrying the Kingdom purposes of a perfect God. That can be a scary proposition! The workshops in this track will address those issues in the foundation that we build on – to our success, or our detriment. You will engage with issues of worldview, spiritual formation for leaders, cultural understandings that affect methods and outcomes, and other root themes that impact every area of our ministries. Come and strengthen your foundation!

• Are there cracks in your ministry’s foundation that need fixing?
• How can our worldview and cultural understandings impact the foundation of our ministries?
• What are some strategies to repairing the cracks in the foundation of a ministry?
• How does the spiritual foundation of leadership affect the ministry?

With estimates of 3-4 million ‘Go-ers’ heading out each year (and that’s just from North America), Short Term Mission efforts are often self-defined by those same ‘Go-ers’; and they are self-evaluated by those that send them (churches, organizations, etc.) and by those that receive them (also often churches, organizations, etc.). These evaluations have little regard to the successes and failures that all 3 of these ‘participants’ (Go-ers, Senders, Receivers) have experienced over the past 30+ years of this phenomenon.  SOE (Standards of Excellence in Short Term Mission, soe.org), sponsors of the IWMC Short Term Mission track for the past 3 years, seek to change that.  The very ‘Kingdom of God’ essence of Wholistic Mission efforts that also involves the whole body of Christ demands thoroughly thought-out Short Term Mission efforts that seek to support Mutually Designed and Empowering Partnerships, as well as attention to essential details like Comprehensive Administration and Qualified Leaders. These values (and more) make up the 7 Standards of Excellence in Short Term Mission that were developed by leadership from over 400+ organizations, schools and churches.

– Is it possible that even the best Wholistic Mission efforts on the field could be sabotaged by the a poorly trained and executed Short Term Mission team?  Examples?

– Is it also possible that a very well trained and prepared Short Term Mission team could be supporting mission efforts that are actually poor, truncated representations of a Wholistic Gospel of the Kingdom?  Examples?

Because the answer to both of these questions is probably ‘yes’; join us in the Short Term Mission track where we’ll discuss both the philosophical ‘why’ of Short Term Missions, as well as the practical, logistical ‘what’ and ‘how’.

The Vulnerable Populations track focuses on groups of vulnerable people in the United States and around the world including refugees, internally displaced people, people with disabilities, foster children, orphans, and immigrants.

• What do sustainable solutions look like for the flourishing of these populations?

• How do we help without harming? And how do we focus on the physical, mental, social, and spiritual issues at hand?

• What entry points exist in your own community for working alongside vulnerable populations?

• What particular issues should we be most concerned with in regards to vulnerable populations in today’s landscape?

Learn from experienced practitioners based in the U.S. and abroad for a closer look into this important work.

Workshops in the City and Urban Focus track accent cities and urban communities in the developed world. For decades, government, organizations, and the church have worked to provide relief with a focus on “giving things” – not to provide sustainable solutions that allow communities and individuals to move from relief to recovery, and then to development and prosperity.

Economic hardships in these areas have caused a loss of business opportunities and economic prosperity. These areas have also experienced flight by churches and their members. As a result, under-served, under-churched, dying communities are left

behind.

• How can we bring wholistic principles into the developed world to help those in need?
• What do wholistic Biblical solutions look like in America and other developed countries that are under-churched and under-served?
• How can we shift focus from giving/enabling to building relationships that lead to wholistic transformation