Writing Your Signature on DTS Outreach

(An Outreach Preparation Tool)

by Aimee Honchen

This is to be used in conjunction with a teaching that has just been given or as part of an ongoing process in the DTS, and by all means is not anywhere exhaustive but just an aid of the learning and application process.

Objective...

During outreach on a DTS, I want the team to come into an active awareness where they are walking in a knowledge of God wanting to create with them, using their talents, abilities, and gifting, to write their signature in history.... In the nations. God is wanting to dream with them, and co-create. .... That they might speed his kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven and be a history maker.

Before we are actually there (on outreach), I want them to be starting to wrestle with, and beginning to grasp the idea that our Living God wants to move in them and through them. He is wanting to extend his Kingdom through them, and that they have RESPONSIBILITY and a vital role and to play. ...Not only during this time, but help them start to grasp the concept in this context of the DTS/Outreach for an awareness that affects their life and whole approach in their personal living, and in the discipling of others in life after DTS.

Learning activities...

Tools to help aid this process that will help enable a DTS to start identifying their possible contributions in the outreach. (Objective: to get them to start to THINK and place themselves in the context/situation before they are actually there. To prepare them. Begin to realize their personal responsibility and things God might be asking them to contribute.

Learning Experience Option 1

Personal Reflection/Processing

Read through Luke 19: 11- 27 (The Parable of the Ten Minas)
Consider the minas (things) that God has given you.
Identify some of them by writing them down on paper.
Ask yourself the question, what can I do with what has been entrusted to me?
Think through how you can use these things in the context of where you are going?
How might you use your gifting written above to meet people and contribute to seeing God’s Kingdom extended on outreach?
Think of some ways you can personally take initiative on outreach, as well as something you can bring some of the team into as well.
Pray and ask God what he might be dreaming about your involvement in, and his people in this nation/place? - write it down to go back to, and begin pray and preparing for.

Learning Experience Option 2

Group Discussion

"You Have Arrived" (break up into groups of 5 or so)

You have just arrived in Almaty Kazakhstan. You have had a place arranged for you to stay, have been greeted by some workers there, and are now left ready to "start your outreach". There has been no plans made for you, no contacts established, and no scheduled set up. The 12 weeks ahead is up to you and God. Where do you go from here? What do you do? (Discuss for 20 mins. Feed back to larger group what your time looked like)

Spend time talking through the process you have just completed in the smaller groups and now as a whole group talk through what you have learned from it and how this could look on outreach.

Learning Experience Option 3

Intercession (in large group)

Allow God to lead you in outreach by the way he is leading you to pray for it beforehand and the things he is giving you his heart for.

Create a discussion during or after the intercession to allow people to share what they have been hearing personally from the Lord and to draw notice of what they have been hearing through other peoples prayers, and what God was doing through the prayer time. (Catch the moment)

Some sample questions to get the ball rolling in a discussion could be..

• What was God stirring within your heart during this time?
• Where there any pictures or words you received that you can share with the rest of the group?
• Were you listening to what others were praying out and/or did you hear a theme or thing you think is important for us to catch as a group and continue to look at?
• Where do we go from here? - Let initiative come from the group.

These are just a sample of questions that might help them engage in what they have just done, or catch what God is doing. It will also help to have them start getting used to having to think about where they go from there, and the whole personal responsibility they all have in it.

This will also help lay the expectation that the responsibility rests with everyone and does not just rest on the leader, or that God will just "make it all work out" but that he is longing to involve us, and have our participation through our being proactive with him.

Learning Experience Option 4

Staff Training

Create a discussion with your staff about how to recognize and draw out peoples gifting and motivations in regards to outreach. This can also include how to help facilitate the team to personally create with God in making history and helping to bring his Kingdom in day to day on outreach.

A way to do this is for you to actually do this with the staff, in the context of your staff group and draw out and discuss from this group how different ones of you recognize gifting, and spot talents etc. (Maybe you can also draw upon a time if you have already done this at the beginning of the school?) Then have a time to share within the group the different things you see in each other etc. This will help build each other up and taste what they want their team to start to get. This then can then be something that can filter down to their teams through them after what you have modeled in this time