Posted on January 27, 2010 - by Larry

Cross Cultural Church Planting Assessments, Part four

I am at a new worker conference this week for  imb. I love coming to these events. I love the energy of the workers here. They all have such a heart to see the peoples of Europe come to Christ. Some amazing stories of how God is working here.

I want to return to the cross cultural church planting assessment posts.

Here is a really important verse in the life of the early church.

Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. 21The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. Acts 11:19

What intrigues me about Acts 11 is that there was a cross cultural witness that took place. The result we find later is that a church was planted in Antioch of Syria. We see in Acts 13 this church became a sending church which also embarked on cross cultural missionary journeys as they sent out Paul and Barnabas.
Over the years as I have studied and taught church planter assessment mainly from a North American perspective but also some  in Europe.  I think there are some behavioral competencies that can be helpful in a person or even a group of persons who are going to work cross culturally in a mission setting.
I would welcome your thoughts on this. I am still developing this idea but I am very interested in helping churches as they think and act as missionaries in another culture.
Here is the first part of the list!
Contextualizer – Ability to read / understand a culture and contextualize  the gospel for that culture.
Cultural Adaptation – The ability to adapt to another culture other than you own.
Ability to Create Ownership – A Gatherer of people around a common vision and community.
Visioning Capacity – Ability to cast a clear and compelling vision.
Intrinsically Motivated – A deep sense of calling that drives the person to be able to create movement.

I will show you five others characteristics that I feel are important for cross cultural ministry on my next post.