My wife Grace and I were missionaries in Asia for 21 years. After a year of studying Cantonese, we began our church-planting ministry in Hong Kong.
Each year, the two of us were able to lead 40 to 60 people to faith in Christ and start one new church. We thought we weren’t doing too bad. At that time, our mission organization had given each missionary a guideline:
“Each missionary should start at least one new church every five years, or they should transfer to another region since they were falling short of the East Asia region’s standards.”
In our annual report each year we were able to report dozens of people coming to faith in Christ and the starting of a new church, so we thought we were doing pretty well. We continued our service in Hong Kong until the year 2000. Then, after a stateside assignment in the United States, the Holy Spirit led us to shift our ministry to a large neighboring Asian country. Before that time, it had never occurred to us to serve in that country. In fact, we were afraid to go to a new place. After a time of sincere prayer, we made the decision to obey his calling. So we contacted our mission agency and requested a transfer of our ministry assignment.
In October of 2000, we were sent to Singapore for one month to participate in Strategy Coordinator (SC) training. A Strategy Coordinator is a missionary who develops and implements a strategy to reach an entire people group or population with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
On the first day of training, our training director asked each missionary unit to prepare a three-year master plan (mission strategy plan) and set an end vision within the three-year time frame. I did not understand what they meant by end vision, so I asked the training director, “What does end vision mean?” He responded, “Ying, it is very simple: how many people can you lead to Christ in the next three years and how many churches can you start?”
After hearing his explanation, Grace and I discussed how in three years, we had barely been able to bring less than 200 people to Christ and had only started three churches. As we studied the new region that the Lord was leading us to, we learned there were three cities in the area each of which had a registered population of 5.8 million. But then, we discovered that there were more than15 million temporary factory workers from all over the country that had come to these three cities to work in the thousands of factories! So there were actually more than 20 million people in our new mission assignment.
This was a lot of people! We thought to ourselves, if we were only able to lead around 200 people to Christ and start only three churches in three years, this number was so pitifully low. Even if we worked very hard to lead 1,000 believers and started 10 churches, the number was still too small for a population of 20 million. So we prayed and studied the Bible diligently every day, asking the Father to give us the best strategy to share the gospel.
I remember when our training director challenged us to find more than 100 different ways to share the gospel and put it in our strategy plan. There was a quote on the wall that touched my heart: “How many people in your city will hear the gospel today?” We prayed and studied the Bible every day to ask God to give us a strategy for how to spread the gospel as quickly as possible and for people to turn to the Lord.
We continued to read the Bible and pray daily until one day, in the middle of the night, we suddenly realized the best strategy for evangelism is in Jesus’s Great Commission! We’ve known this Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) since we were children, memorizing this passage of scripture. We were even able to sing it as a song. But in that moment, we discovered that we had never really followed his Great Commission!
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
- Matthew 28:19-20
The Six Main Points
“Go,” not “Come” The beginning of Jesus’s Great Commission is the command, “Go!” But instead our traditional practice has always been to say, “Come!” We are always inviting people to come to our church, come to our fellowship, or come to our group. To invite people to come may be our common practice, but Jesus said we are to go and find lost persons. If we do not go, how can we lead people to the Lord? Today, everyone has their road that they must take, so if we do not go, how can we find them? “Go” is a key concept. As long as we “go,” we will be able to do things. If we just stay in one place, people will not automatically come to us. We cannot just wait in the church, nor can we wait for someone to come to our small group at home – they will not come automatically. So the first command is, “Go!” Friends, let us decide to go now! As soon as you go out, you will see the way that the Lord has opened for you. When you go out, you will see those who need you. If you stay, you will miss the opportunity to change or influence them. Staying does not demonstrate an obedient heart towards the authority of Christ.
Everyone, not just some Jesus said that all nations – that is every individual, should receive the gospel, become his disciple. But when we used to share the gospel, we would limit those with whom we would share. Even when we were handing out gospel tracts on the streets, we chose the people to whom we handed the tracts. We were wrong; we should offer the gospel to everyone. This requires us to stretch our vision. We must go beyond our limited vision to the Great Commission vision that God has given to us. Remember Jesus’ parable of the sower? The sower was a farmer, and he should have known which parts of the field were ready and good. But this farmer did not follow conventional wisdom. He spread seeds into every corner of the property. He scattered it everywhere. Yes, some seed fell on rocky ground; some fell on the road; there was seed among the thorns. However, some seed fell on good soil, and its yield increased by 30 times, 60 times, even 100 times! It is our duty to sow the seeds broadly by sharing the gospel everywhere, but the growth of the seed comes from the power of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus sent the 70 disciples to share the gospel in Luke chapter 10, Jesus gave them a strategy of evangelism: “Whichever house you enter first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If someone who promotes peace is there (a person of peace), your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you (You are then the person of peace).” A “person of peace” is like the seed that was sown in good soil, reaping a harvest that is a 100 times greater! If we limit the persons we share the gospel with, and don’t share with every individual, we will miss these persons of peace.
A disciple, not just a church member Jesus wants us to make all people (that is, all mankind) his disciples. Jesus did not say that a person can be merely a believer, Christian, brethren, church member, fellowship member, etc. Jesus said it very clearly – disciple the nations! If we just make a person a church member, Christian, or fellowship member, we are not meeting the command of Jesus. He commanded us to make everyone his disciple. Disciples are true learners. They follow the Master’s footsteps and learn all the Master’s skills until they can complete their training and become a Master themselves. This is what it means to be a disciple. So we should not just bring people to believe in the Lord, become a church member, a Christian, etc., but we must train them to become a trainer (a true disciple) who can train others. We have to train everyone to become a trainer (Training For Trainers). We are convinced that every Christian, even a person who has just decided to believe in Christ, who cannot yet train others, is but a nominal Christian. It is not until one can train others that they can grow into a true disciple.
Tell your own story Jesus said to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We all know that baptism is a very important testimony as Christians. So, we must train everyone to tell their own story. In many areas, the environment may not allow you to evangelize, but nowhere in the world will you be restricted from sharing your story. So, we need to train everyone to be ready to tell own story in order to share Jesus’s love.
Train others Jesus said, “Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.” If we are only bringing people to Christ and letting them become fellow church members, our work is not complete. We must train them into disciples who are also able to train others. Only then will we have completed Jesus’s Great Commission. So it is not just training, but training them to the point where they take action to train others.
Obey This point is so important. Without obedience there are no results. Once we obey our mission from the Great Commission, we can get the greatest blessing from God and a special promise from Matthew 28:20. Jesus said, “And surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.” How Jesus taught and trained us is how we should teach and train others. The Lord shared his gospel with us, so we too must share the gospel with others. We must teach others to obey the Lord’s word. This is an extremely important truth; for having the Lord’s presence is totally different from the absence of the Lord. So if we want to receive Christ’s greatest promise, we must obey the Lord’s mandate, and the Lord will be with us until the end of the world!
Saved and Lost
So we put “Training For Trainers” in our master plan. We also wrote that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the lost and the saved. To the lost, we will share the love of Jesus, leading them to believe in Jesus, and immediately train them to become trainers who train others. To the Christians, we determined to train them as trainers to share the gospel and train others to do the same.
We calculated how many people we thought we could lead to Christ each day, each week, and each month over the next three years. We would also immediately train them to lead others to Jesus, and at the same time have them train the new believers. As such we wrote down that if T4T is feasible, we would not need the other 99 evangelism methods.
We then set our end vision: to lead 18,000 people to Christ in three years and begin 200 new churches. Then, we handed in our three-year master plan. This figure was really huge, was it not? Our training director read our master plan and said it looks like a very good plan, but we would have to see what the results would be. We knew he did not believe it was possible, but we were excited to return to our new mission field in November of 2000.
The Present
Each day I wake up and have an extended time on my knees in prayer. Then I enter my area to witness to the lost and train the saved. I use this T4T method, and God has already opened my heart. I am still learning, but I want to share with you what I have learned. “Ying & Grace Kai’s Training for Trainers” is a book we wrote so that we may be able to share our story, experiences, and the T4T method with the whole world.