Our team uses a process called the Four Fields to do our discipleship and church planting work. It provides a structure that we believe comes from Jesus’s teaching and was followed by the Apostle Paul as he planted churches. We use it to think about the steps that we want to take to see a discipleship and church planting movements spring up in the areas where we are working.
Here, we will use the Four Fields to describe more of the specifics of the work that we do:
Field 1 – The Empty Field
Empty fields are places where the Gospel has not entered. This could be as small as a family or a group of friends who have not heard the Gospel all of the way up to a city, a people group, or a country where Jesus is not yet known.
Field 2 – Sowing Gospel Seed
We sow Gospel seed as we share our testimonies of God’s work in our lives or we share the Gospel, God’s story of grace and forgiveness for our reunification with him.
Field 3 – Reproducing Disciples
For new disciples who respond to the Gospel, we want to see them grow to maturity. This primarily happens through 3/3rds Groups, studying the Word of God and putting it into action. 3/3rds Groups can take place anywhere, including a park, a cafe, or in a home.
Field 4 – Reproducing Churches
3/3rds Groups mature from being discipleship groups to becoming churches. These new churches are now led by local, indigenous leaders who follow basic Biblical patterns of church development. These churches are responsible for continuing to move ahead, reproducing new leaders and teaching them to return to Fields 1, 2, and 3 for the purpose of starting new churches.