It is becoming clear that sustainability and unhealthy dependency in missions needs some serious evaluation. Our church missions team felt a stirring to take a closer look at our missions involvement. We called upon Five Stones Global. The training we have received from them has been absolutely invaluable.
Our Pioneers team contacted Five Stones Global for counsel and help. We as a mission have been forming new teams to reach the unreached peoples of the Amazon…Five Stones Global’s insight and counsel has been vital to our coming together as missions serving the tribal people of the Amazon. We look forward with hopeful expectation to see what God will do in the future. We have already started a pilot project that would serve as a role model for sustainable and reproducible outreach by an indigenous church that is currently seeking to take the gospel to another completely unreached tribe group. We greatly appreciate Five Stones Global and all those who have helped Five Stones Global help missionaries like us.
Missionaries, led by the Lord to engage in cross-cultural missions, faces many challenges and first-time opportunities. ‘Where do I begin? What should I do?’ Or, ‘What should I not do?’ Five Stones Global focuses on the importance of missionaries working from the beginning of their ministry toward the end goal of leading churches to be self-reliant. To lean continually upon the crutch of foreign resources is not a viable option. Five Stones Global’s expertise, via qualified personnel and trustworthy resources, will help missionaries avoid having the day that, “I wish I had known these principles before starting my ministry.’ Five Stones Global’s practical and doable principles for establishing self-reliant churches should be part of every cross-cultural worker’s toolkit.
After your teaching on sustainability, I went to my church and shared the same challenge Now, my church members are supporting the church planters who we send out from our church. This response is a huge breakthrough for our churches in Nepal.
Since my husband and I work with a world-wide missions organization, I believe Five Stones Global’s teaching will be very valuable to us in the years to come for training our young staff and students before they venture out onto the foreign field. I appreciate their laid-back style and non-pushy presentation of the wellspring of information and experience that was obviously within their hearts and lives.
Thank you for your heart for the indigenous church. You’ve paved the way in teaching churches that the indigenous way is the most effective.
Five Stones Global’s name came up in our Perspectives finale dinner last night, among people who you made a STRONG impression and changed our view of the real and spiritual world. Several people are taking steps toward the field as a result of the class. We are all asking God for next steps. God is mobilizing His people.
I’m Darcy Gem, a Filipino, missionary in Battambang, Cambodia for almost 9 years now. Oh boy, everything you said is just sooooo true. I, together with my wife have started ministries with methods that are not sustainable and cultural adaptable. I really loved the story you shared about the Mongolian believers who milked their yaks and would throw a cup of milk up in the air as an act of worship. I am sharing new ideas with those whom I disciple every week.
Also wanted to pass on that I very much appreciated Jean’s recent work, ‘We Are Not The Hero,’ [Jean Johnson-Five Stones Global Missionary & Coach] both personally and professionally. As an active duty US Army Chaplain and trained counselor, I found her insights and research very helpful and challenging.