QUOTE
(paste here)
Focus on problems of individuals: Visitation focuses on building relationships that solve human problems, in prayer, and in ways that help each person directly:[1] Okja found something else that helped in bringing people to the Savior: “When I talked with these people we had targeted to evangelize,” she said, “I discovered one thing. If a person ever told me of a need or problem, it let me know that person was receptive. It never failed that I could then lead that person to faith in Jesus Christ.”
The ultimate aim of evangelistic visitation is to find people with needs and problems and then lead them to the Problem Solver, Jesus Christ. A subdistrict leader, Leebu Pak, tells her cell leaders, “Look for problems. When you find someone with a problem, you are almost guaranteed that person will come to Jesus.”[2]
Far more time in ministry is spent upon personal visitation than upon preparing for the cell meeting event. The focus of cell leaders and staff pastors is upon ministering directly to troubled persons face to face on their own turf.[3]
Ministry visits are not social calls nor do they focus on friendships. Ministry visits target specific needs in specific people which the cell seeks to resolve by many personal visits on seeker turf, prayer and signs of caring. Ministry visits begin the spiritual mentoring process in a hierarchy of involvement as cell members, cell leader, section leader, senior deacon or deaconess and staff pastor all visit the seeker in teams, one after another, in order to pray over the seeker’s difficulty. When the problem resolves, the responsibility for success is assigned to Jesus Christ the problem solver. If the problem worsens, the caring solidarity of the visitation increases and the person feels loving support in the isolation of his or her suffering, as in, “When I was in greatest need, it was the Christians who came to me.”
Cell leaders, section leaders, deacons and
deaconesses, staff pastors and elders spend many more hours in personal
visitation than in cell meetings, both in visitation of the lost and visitation
of cell leaders and church members who are struggling.
[1]Hurston, Growing the World’s Largest Church, 99-100.
[2]Ibid., 104.
[3]Karen Hurston, “A Day in the Life of a Staff Pastor: A Study in Contrasts,” Church Growth Today 9, no. 3, under http://www.hurstonministries.org/art_c_05.htm (accessed June 18, 2007).
NOTE (my response)
DISCERNMENT QUESTIONS
RESOURCES
Footnotes:
The quote is from Major League Disciple Making: An Overview of the Best Research on the Cell Church, an online course developed for the Institute for Discipleship at www.BeADisciple.com in 2009. Course materials, including these lectures, can be downloaded here: http://www.disciplewalk.com/IFD_MLD_Class_Links.html
All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Please review the page How and Why We Use Quotes.