Next Level Church Planting

Hope you are doing just great today!

During our last stretch in Papua New Guinea and since the Mengen Church has started to give their first independent baby steps. I have been freed up to ultimately and it has been a major eye opener to hang around with national believers from other churches and learn from them and also to get an overall feel of how things are going with the churches in New Britain. It’s great to see what God has done up to know, and to see how He is now opening up the opportunities for the “NEXT LEVEL” of church planting.

But around us, we have a few other churches that have been planted and who are now mature. This has brought introduced us to a “NEXT LEVEL” in our church planting endeavor. We are now starting to work with the leaders from the different mature churches. And our goal is to work with them and disciple them in taking over the shepherding of the broader church, and ultimately work ourselves totally out of a ministry in Papua New Guinea. This vision is very much based on the picture of Christ’s church as being 1 body.

Up to today, we have had many meetings with different leaders from different churches. We also traveled allot to different churches to visit and evaluate how they are doing and to provide input. Check out these following clips to get an idea of what we have been doing:

This next clip is a short summary of the first time ever that we got all the leaders from New Britain together for a meeting at our support centre.

This following clip is another first, where we brought many leaders and their youth together for a special youth event.

The following clip shows how we met with many churches in a certain cluster for a workshop.

AKOLET MARRIAGE CONFERENCE

I am on furlough at the moment but will return to PNG next month, and looking forward to being more closely involved with the leaders in our area. During these recent months two events took place that I would like to share with you.

Recently some of the leaders we are working with, had the opportunity to spend some time in Akolet, for the first ever Akolet Marriage and Family Conference. It was believers form Maleu and Ata church, who went and stayed for 10 days.

The Martins shared as follow:

“The speakers talked to Akolet husbands and wives in joint sessions, as well as some separate sessions for the women and the men. Men were blown away by the fact that Eve was created to be Adam’s companion, and that for Adam to be the leader, that meant he was actually loving and protecting and cherishing Eve, as they should be doing with their wives. Likewise, the women were blown away by the fact that in God’s eyes, they are equal in value with their husbands (just as Adam and Eve both were created in God’s simage, but that they as women have a unique role to submit to and respect their husbands as the leaders of the families.)… One of my favourite moments of the conferencewas when Kewaka spoke to the ladies about mothering (the guys’ got sessions on fathering too), but he said “Let me ask you – who here has ever called your kids ‘pumpkin head’ or ‘crocodile mouth’?” The women were looking guiltily at each other and kind of chuckling,like “Whoa, he knows us!” Apparently these are common insults that mothers fling attheir children, including “Saucepan head” and “Big Nose”. In my almost 14 years here, I’dnever heard any of them. (Let’s hear it for indigenous Bible teachers speaking into theculture!) He then said “Your kids were made in God’s image – you have to stop. Moreover, your kids are in your likeness, your image as well. So you’re basically calling yourselfpumpkin head or crocodile mouth.” Praise God for making this teaching so practical, right down to addressing common insults!”

SEPIK “HAUSBOI” EVENT

Your prayers and financial contributions also helped host another first, which was the youth event hosted by the Sepik believers in another region. The leaders from the Islands were invited to go and present it. The purpose was for elders and young leaders from some of the Island churches to go to the Sepik Region and teach their leaders how to host such events. As you know, this is a youth event that focused on young believing men, but now includes ladies as well. The purpose is to bring these young believers who are engaging with Christ together and see them identify better as a body and develop a Biblical vision for their generation. The feedback we had was that this went down very well!

THANK YOU!

All these events and others are being driven by the church in New Britain and we have some key leaders who are engaging together to facilitate these. We are super excited about this as this is the “NEXT STEP” in the church planting effort in PNG, which sees the national church functioning together, self-sufficiently to sustain themselves. These key leaders are carrying the burden of the work but we are trying to support them in some ways from time to time, as we work with them and disciple them and they disciple us.

Thanks again for your love, prayers, encouragement and financial support.

Cheers
Lourens Laureti