Our Journey in believing in Church Planting – creating dependency on Jesus

Church

CONTINUED FROM BEFORE: As I continued to think about what he had said, I realized, underneath his feelings of loss, was another sentiment; “I can’t live the same fullness of life that comes from following Jesus with you, without you”.

I’ve asked questions quietly in my mind ever since about how we can give people the tools for this life, without them being reliant on the tool giver. How do we show people to follow Jesus and not to rely on following us. It’s harder than it may seem, because for many of us, the discipleship, teaching, friendship we give as we reach people, is giving them truths and lessons, that we received from God. So if that creates this dependency that we cannot sustain how do we do it?

In the following months I read about the AIDS crisis, giving aid to those in poverty, and studied to try and find things that really worked to see the kingdom of God take place in communities in Africa. As I read these academic authors, one theme continued to stand out; Self-sustainability. As I read case studies on how projects succeeded or failed, the key was, could the people sustain the project without outside influence? If the could, the community was changed, for good, when they couldn’t money was wasted, machinery left to ruin, and bitterness amongst both those who sought to help and those who received grew. So I was convinced that whatever we did in South Africa, after a certain time of showing people how, we had to find a way to ‘give it away’ in order for it to be ‘fruit that remains’ (John 15).