Advocacy
Outline
I. What adopting a people means.I. What adopting a people means.
II. The advocate’s personal involvement.
III. The advocate’s deliberate aims.
IV. The advocate’s required skill set.
V. The advocate’s partnerships.
VI. Steps to entering into advocacy.
VII. Recognizing worthy national workers.
VIII. Theological tenants of advocacy.
IX. Dangers to avoid in advocacy.
X. Spiritual hindrances to effective advocacy.
II. The Advocate’s personal involvement.
1. Is a true visionary with a world perspective, doing one’s utmost
to bring the Kingdom to earth.
2. Holds a goal of seeing Christian fellowships established throughout
whole nations.
3. Puts one s own and others assets to work reaching out, seeking
constantly to widen the
parameters of operation.
4. Has proven entrepreneurial skill, having demonstrated ability to
start and maintain businesses or
ministries.
5. Makes Periodic visits to the field, knowing and following a large
number of workers.
6. Hold a view bigger than that of one s organization or denomination
without becoming disloyal to
the same.
7. Brainstorms with other advocates, stimulating one another to greater
faith and effectiveness,
learning each others strategies and methods.
III. People advocacy’s deliberate aims.
1. To initiate and establish mega-group group movements.
2. To sparking research, hold vision conferences, foster partnerships.
3. To ensure appropriate training of local Christian workers within
the people, educate some
workers from literacy through seminary.
4. To work with every ministry and denomination reaching the same people,
helping them to
achieve maximal results.
5. To cooperate with DAWN-type national initiatives and national vision
conferences.
6. To start or expand businesses, foundations and ministries that can
make Christians.
7. Adopts other people groups over time as lessons are learned and
networks are formed.
IV. The advocate’s required skill set.
1. International travel: finance, passports, visas, insurance, baggage,
health precautions, patience,
honesty.
2. Research on people groups: history, culture, politics, religion,
economics, customs, change, and
is working amongst them, who ought to be working
amongst them.
3. Strategy planning: assessment, vision, purpose, goals, organization,
plans, calendars, evaluation
and change.
4. Networking and cooperation with visionaries, donors, organizations,
ministry specialists,
sympathetic authorities.
5. Recruiting and mobilizing: competent nationals, specialty ministries,
donors, expatriate
volunteers – those who are there, who want to be
their, who ought to be there.
6. Ensuring feedback through written reports, audits, field visits,
open door policy.
7. Partnership formation: assessing advantages and inconveniences,
learning strengths and
weaknesses, formulating agreements, receiving and
giving reports and recommendations.
V. The Advocate’s partnerships.
1. Overlapping core values to ensure compatible motives.
2. Pre-planning to ensure fulfillment of the people’s felt needs.
3. An authority structure that the partners can respect.
4. Realistic, careful and complete budget.
5. Accountability procedures for control of assets and resources.
6. Regular reporting on progress towards agreed goals and use of resources.
7. Giving sincere credit to others where credit is due.
VI. Steps to entering into advocacy.
1. Spiritual fitness: understanding biblical Christianity, love for
God, for saints and for sinners,
obedient to Christ inside the church and in society.
2. Research the group s culture, mores, world view, decision-making
patterns.
3. Contact local Christians, finding the Christian workers and helping
them to envision greater
ministry.
4. Think with workers about completion, getting a fellowship within
reach of every geographical
and social group of their people in the world.
5. Contact the good workers once or more annually to plan the next
step to get a people
movement going among their people.
6. Identify with workers the required ingredients to work their plan
(evangelism, new workers,
Bible, radio, literacy, leader training, children
s homes).
7. Form networks of national and expatriate ministries that have specialties
and resources to
support the work.
VII. Recognizing worthy national workers.
1. A vision for reaching the entirety of the people group.
2. Culturally normal members of the unreached target people.
3. Spirit filled, living in dependence on the Lord.
4. Already committed doers of Christian ministry who will continue
with our without our
partnership.
5. Good public reputation, not immoral or dishonest.
6. Good sense or practical wisdom with accountability for money and
assets.
7. Trainable and moldable.
VIII. Theological tenants of advocacy.
1. God wants everyone everywhere to learn the truth about Jesus Christ.
2. The prophets predicted that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
would one day cover the
earth.
3. Christ will not return until the Good News has been proclaimed to
every people group in the
whole world.
4. God has given us the spiritual, intellectual and material means
to accomplish world
evangelization.
5. God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Christ and walk in daily
dependence on his
leading and enabling.
6. God has a key to reaching every people.
7. God has given different gifts and resources to individuals, organizations
and nationalities,
requiring them to work in unity.
IX. Dangers to avoid in advocacy.
1. Wanting to see one s own organization or denomination appear more
successful than others.
2. Trusting and supporting a national institution operated by another
people to reach a people from
whom they are culturally and geographically distant.
3. Moving rural workers to urban centers for training or taking any
worker to the West for
education.
4. Sending busy workers for training from a ministry where the leaders
have not requested it or
released the worker.
5. Creating dependency through salaries, perquisites or use of foreign
methods and equipment.
6. Engaging in social uplift activities that are separated from evangelistic
efforts, sending well-fed
souls to hell.
7. Assuming that national workers be sufficiently insightful and visionary
to know what to do and
how to do it.
X. Spiritual hindrances to effective advocacy.
1. Lingering resentment resulting from failure to forgive from your
heart those who have offended
or failed you. Matt. 6:14
2. Chronic fear, anxiety or worry resulting from failure to exercise
faith, believing that God is in the
situation with you and will perform works of righteousness.
1 John 4:18
3. Self-centeredness resulting form a desire to see oneself, one’s
organization or one’s
denomination succeed more than other or get the
credit for any success.
4. Recurring guilt feelings resulting from failure to repent before
God or to ask forgiveness of
others for offending or failing them. 1 John
3
5. Hidden sense of shame resulting from failure to forgive ourselves
for past failures or from failure
to ask God to remove painful memories of past sins.
6. A legalistic Christianity resulting from failure to exercise a love
that seeks to know God and
make him known through sharing, caring, bearing
and praying.
7. A stagnate Christianity resulting from failure to obey Christ in
the church by teaching, worship
and fellowship, and from disobedience outside the
church by evangelizing, doing good works
and promoting more just social structures.
Dr. Eugene Davis, President of Foreign Mission Foundation Tigard, Oregon. People Group Advocacy published, October 1997. To purchase this book, please contact: Gene Davis.
See Caleb<>
Project web site for more information on Advocacy.
|
|
Webmaster
1/20/99
