Breakthrough Opportunities

6 proposals to powerfully engage church potential

Catalyst Issues Breakthrough Challenge

To spotlight strategic opportunities, last fall Catalyst initiated a contest of sorts. We invited agencies to submit church-partnership proposals featuring places to fast-forward significant breakthrough. Because this was our first effort and essentially an experiment, we limited the invitations so as not to be overwhelmed. By the deadline, 17 proposals were submitted.

Four missions pastors agreed to serve as a selection team (see end of article). They began by defining their criteria for strategic breakthrough opportunities. Then each member independently reviewed and evaluated all the proposals. Their scores were tallied and the entries with the highest scores were then critiqued together as a team. They first anticipated choosing three winners, but the selection team eventually chose six they considered winners. They were pleased that these six represented a broad variety of ministries and global locations.

Learning from the Process

As they shared their critique comments, the selection team realized that they were learning from each other and that the aggregated comments constituted what they hoped would be valuable insights for improvement. In an attempt to heighten the value not only for winners but everyone else too, it was decided to give the writers of these six proposals an opportunity to review the judges’ comments and rework their proposal, if they chose.

The final versions of the six winning proposals are published in this Postings. At the end of each proposal is contact information for the person who can answer questions and provide additional details. Also included is a link for those who would like to read the original proposal and judges’ comments.

Transform Radvanka, Ukraine

International Teams

Although the Roma are still listed as an unreached people group, something is happening in Zakarpattia (Ukraine & Romania). Roma are coming to Christ in large numbers. And our project is right in the heart of the revival. Last year the three Roma churches we work with in Radvanka doubled in size. Ten percent of the Uzhansky Roma Camp are now believers, nearly twice the national average. Christ is at work in these communities and they are now penetrating farther into Hungary and Slovakia.

Our work is holistic. We empower local leaders to break the chains of poverty, oppression, and spiritual darkness so that no one is invisible and everyone has access to food, freedom, and forgiveness. Roma churches face many hardships and challenges. By equipping them to be agents of change in Radvanka, we can create models and empower leaders that can impact the Roma throughout Europe.

The rest of this breakthrough proposal available in article PDF.

Engage: Urban Multicultural Mission in the United Kingdom

SIM

The breakthrough opportunity is with 10-20 local churches across the UK. It is estimated that the UK is 3% evangelical Christian. Building on ethnographic and sociological research into urban centres across Britain, the program is aimed at serving churches in their local and global missionary vision:

• engaging diaspora people, who have no one to tell them the gospel in UK, such as Mirpuri Pakistani, Somali, Bangladeshi (Sylheti), Indian, Iranians and refugees
• equipping urban church-based mission workers for worldwide ministry in the context of the church community

Sustainable Center for Addiction Recovery, Masatepe, Nicaragua

International Teams

Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. In Masatepe, the result of decades of 50% unemployment, lack of basic necessities and opportunities can be seen everywhere. Alcoholism and drug abuse are rampant.  Each morning the gutters are littered with empty bottles and men passed out from the night before.

A Recovery Center, built by a non-profit group that left town years ago, lies vacant. The property includes facilities to host as many as 60-70 men, along with six acres of land. Our goal is to purchase and revitalize this property, and establish a program to break the grip of addiction for those who are ready for a way out.

We believe this project can succeed where past attempts have failed by including farm responsibilities and by using farm income to cover costs. Effectively addressing this problem will not only change the broken lives of men and families, but will be a critical element in literally transforming an entire community. We envision it will serve as a model for future projects in other communities.

Prayer and Gospel Saturation Mapping Team Members

Global Gates

While the unreached people groups of the world have been arriving in N American cities for a long time, many of them have remained unreached for decades despite proximity to many Christians and churches here. We are working with the Mapping Center for Evangelism and Church Growth to better utilize and develop their software for effective prayer and gospel saturation among Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Hindus in North American cities. With the software, we can pinpoint names and addresses of households that fit different ethnic, linguistic, or religious specifications we are focusing on.

Saturation team members will help with very focused prayer (praying for households by name) and/or help with mailing/visitation campaigns to filter interest in the gospel so our long-term teams of missionaries and indigenous Christians are personally following up with very interested seekers. The end goal is reproducible church-planting among these focus groups in strategic US cities and through these gateways to the ends of the earth.

Reaching the Unreached in N Africa, the Middle East, and Beyond

Streams of Living Water (SLW) is Pioneers’ Mobilization Center for North Africa/Middle East (N.A.M.E.). Based inside the Arab world, we equip disciple-makers through mobilizing, training, and sending Arab-world believers.

Many Muslims are questioning their beliefs and seeking answers. But for breakthrough, we believe it is essential we mobilize the Arabic-speaking church to reach their region. Last September we hosted a missions conference with over a thousand national believers. Since then, 25 have entered our school to train for full-time service.

Our vision is to produce church-planting movements through discipleship within churches that intentionally develop leaders who in turn plant more indigenous churches. Through these efforts, God is multiplying indigenous workers who are being trained in church planting that encourages multiplication. Local churches and individual partners can engage with one aspect of our ministry or partner with us on an ongoing basis in multiple areas of this mobilization strategy.

Heart for Cambodia Initiative

OMF International (Canada)

There is no local church in 86% of Cambodia’s rural villages and the country is notorious for its high levels of government corruption. It is one of the world’s poorest countries, and the abuse of women and children in the sex trade is rampant. Mature leadership for the national church is also a challenge.

The current demand for English teaches offers a strategic, potential breakthrough opportunity for the N American church to address Cambodia’s needs. Opportunity is greatest for teaching English to university students in Phnom Penh and to government officials.

These opportunities have a high multiplication potential. The majority of graduates from the Royal University of Phnom Penh will become high-school teachers in rural Cambodia. Reaching these students now has tremendous potential for future breakthroughs across large areas of the country . Teaching English to government officials builds relationships and influence with those responsible for policy development and who could address this nation’s crippling corruption.

Thank You to All Proposal Writers

We want to commend everyone who invested the time and effort to submit a proposal. We hope that all of you benefitted from the process. Our goal was to stimulate more high-level dialog between agencies and churches about how to strategically engage church potential.

The Selection Team

We want to thank the members of our team that took their task very seriously and invested significant time in the process:

RB, North Park Community Church, London, Ontario, Canada
Matthew Phillip, Trinity Church, Lansing, MI
Scott White, Lake Avenue Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA (not the same S White as submitted proposals)
Faith Wise, Providence Church, West Chester, PA

Shall We Do This Again?

This contest could be repeated, if churches and agencies consider it valuable. Having many churches engage with these projects is one way to encourage us to offer another breakthrough challenge. If these proposals are useful to you, would you email us?

If repeated, we will anticipate opening the contest to welcome any submission. We apologize to those who may be disappointed not to have been included on this first effort.