Jan2015

 

Greetings! Happy New Year to all of you! We are proud to be working side by side with two local partnerships in China to advance God’s Kingdom. We are given the opportunity to expand our impact through China to the Muslims in the Middle Eastern countries all the way back to Jerusalem. What a big assignment that God has placed into our hands. We feel honored and humbled at the same time. Please read on and be praying for the great harvest.

Quarterly Newsletter

Jan2015

Partnership Leaders: Happy Leman and Yu‐Yu Lee Contact information: [email protected]

MISSION

VISION

Facilitate the development of church Plant one church in every city in planting movement in China & Taiwan China/Taiwan that has more than one through Kingdom-focused resources million people and relationships 1

NEWS & EVENTS November Trip 2014 A team of six people from The Vineyard Church - Urbana Campus and Cincinnati Vineyard went on this 10-day trip to three cities. We visited our own Vineyard pastor in China and officially joined two local partnerships. Doing Church was taught in three locations and it was very well received.

One older lady said that she wanted to build a church just like the Vineyard (which means the DNAs and values.) Law and Grace was shared in two locations. Leaders of leaders were reflecting and impacted by this that grace should be the one and only thing in our walk with Jesus.

Happy Notes on November Trip 2014 Just Returned! Our November China trip was a great success. Team Leader Yu-Yu Lee was accompanied by Dorothy Carlson, Happy and Dianne Leman, as well as Keith and Sandy Thomas from the Cincinnati Vineyard. In all, we logged about 18,000 miles, 6 plane flights, and talked to more than 250 leaders. These leaders regularly reach and are responsible for close to 50,000 people throughout Mainland China.

Powerful Ministry The Spirit was evident everywhere. We shared on subjects such as law and grace, building churches that last, “Doing Church”, and shared testimonies, encouraged people, etc. In addition, we prayed for close to 100 people and saw powerful ministry. In one city we actually did prophetic ministry for every one of the 150 people present. Below, I am detailing events of three cities we visited. In order to offer protection for the churches (both leaders and attendees) in these cities, I’ll be speaking in fairly vague terms. Because religious freedom varies from place to place, we need to be respectful and mindful of the work that we do.

City 1 In this large and beautiful city, we began our trip. We spent a day and a half with a pastor whose church had been torn down by the government. He’s still positive, upbeat, and excited about the future. We also spent time at a new Christian college as we taught some of their young students. Di spoke on a Sunday morning in a church that allowed only Taiwanese nationals. City 2 In this city we met at a beautiful seaside resort. Unfortunately, the resort was actually closed because the weather in this part of the country was in the 30-50 degree range—hardly the kind of weather for going to the beach. Here we spoke to the leaders of this part of China. As a people group, they were hungry, humble, and wanted us to keep teaching more and more. City 3 Next we traveled to City #3. Here we again spoke to over 100 leaders of believers throughout this city. This city, like City #2, is not widely known to the rest of the world. Yet both cities had over 8 million people each. Again, the leadership was very receptive to what we were doing and wanted us to come over every month if possible. At this time, we do not have enough resources to go that often, but the need is huge and very apparent.

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Teammates did their best to give prophetic encouragement to most attendees in one city. Most leaders were wanting to know what their next steps were. We also spent time with top leaders to share and plan for the coming year. Here is Hap’s detailed recap of the trip in his Happy Notes:

Opportunity For those who would like to go on a China mission trip, there are plenty of opportunities, as we go 4-5 times a year. If there were more people and more interpreters, we could go even more often. Let us all pray about how deeply God wants us to be involved there. There have been many open doors throughout the country. In addition, we have two Vineyards up and running, which require additional time and energy. The Future Right now, we have more opportunities than we can actually manage. We’re asking God to show us where we should invest our time, energy, and resources for the best return. We are blessed to have such a wonderful leader in Yu-Yu Lee. She is assisted by Dorothy Carlson. Together the two make the trip enjoyable in every way. We see God move and have a great time. Final Thoughts It’s exciting to be working in an area of the world where God is moving powerfully. China has unlimited potential as we continue to advance the Kingdom. Thanks for your prayers and support. Blessings, Happy Leman

January Trip 2015 It is a trip to plan with the top leaders in China. We are so much favored that Vineyard teachings (courses from Vineyard Bible Institute) are deemed as the main and plain for one house church network.

A mini team of four from the Urbana campus were on this planning trip. We also delivered two all day workshops: Small Group Leaders’ Training and Encounter God Retreat. Tools were being passed on to

This is a shorter visit in China in order to talk over training needs and do some longrange planning with Pastor G, a house church network leader.

to rush into situations and want to get right down to business, strategy and training, but I sensed the Holy Spirit saying that we need to continue to build strong relational foundations. That sometimes means that things will go slower in terms of strategy and structure but that we need to keep building relationships and friendships because the relationships are the foundation that our partnerships and fruitfulness in ministry will be built on.

Jim’s Reflection on January Trip 2015

Training Needs Going into this I did some serious praying and discussed our long-term engagement with Yu-Yu and Happy. There are basically four areas where we could be engaged in helping the Chinese churches with training. 1. Training pastors and current leaders. This is primarily what we have been doing up to this point. 2. Training new pastors, church planters and leaders. This is something we have been asked to help them design and implement. 3. Training missionaries for the Back to Jerusalem (BTJ) movement. This is also something we have been asked to help them with and that Yu-Yu and I have done significant research on recently by interacting with Dr. John Kayser a friend of the Vineyard and instructor for Bethany College of Mission and Iranian Vineyard Pastor KA. 4. Training business leaders. Basically, we are concluding that we should forget #4 because the other three things will keep us plenty busy! Below are my thoughts on the other 3 and my account of some of the interaction around these with the Chinese leaders. Foundations for Ministry Going into my discussions there were two things that I sensed from the Holy Spirit. Long-Term Commitment First, that we need to realize that this is a long-term project. It is not about doing a bunch of short-term trips. What is needed is a long-term vision for kingdom training built on an extended partnership. Relational Ministry Relationship is the foundation of our involvement in China (and other countries!). It is easy for us as task-oriented Americans

Yu-Yu has excelled in this area but we need to continue to recognize the centrality of relationship to all that we are doing and plan accordingly. One implication of this is that we need to think through our teams and send fewer people from our church more consistently instead of involving lots of people that maybe only go once or go infrequently. This will also take some of the burden off Yu-Yu having to be the only key relational tie. The Trip Only one person who went on this trip with me to meet with our team leader couple who were already in China. He accompanied me in China in order to help with personal and prophetic ministry. He was a wonderful help with this. Change of Plans in City 1 Even though we carefully planned this trip so that I would be in City 1 when Pastor G was there, we found out before I left the States that Pastor G’s plans had changed and that he would not be in town when we were there. So instead of meeting with Pastor G in his hometown to do long-range planning together, I did two days of training for about 90 leaders. On Monday I did small group leader training and on Tuesday I led an Encounter God retreat. A Plan for Training New Leaders Even though Pastor G was not in town, on

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leaders of leaders that they can train their own people to become great small group leaders and to host Encounter God retreats. Here is the reflection from Jim Egli who is the president of Vineyard Bible Institute:

Monday evening we were able to discuss how to train new leaders with Pastor L and others involved in training. They had previously been envisioning something like a clandestine Bible college for young people as so many others churches and ministries have done in China. But I advised them not to do this, but instead to begin something like our VALT and internship—a one year training program for proven leaders to take them from being leaders to being leaders of leaders. We talked about the principles and content of a program like this. They liked this plan and we are currently writing leaders guides to help them implement this. Heresy in City 1 We knew that our partnership and a Korean group were the two main groups that have been invited to teach and train. It has become apparent, however, that this Korean group is a “Jesus Only” church that is intent on teaching their erroneous doctrine in China. So it looks like they will be ending their relationship with this group. Smaller Teams Because this trip was originally envisioned to be a planning trip and not a training trip, the team was very small. The leaders told Yu-Yu that they felt like sending small teams like this works much better because it simplifies logistics and allows things to proceed more undercover. So we should probably do smaller teams going forward.

Jim’s Reflection on January Trip 2015 Continued

Translation Problems Yu-Yu did translation for me on Monday. On Tuesday, a local sister was my translator. She did not do a good job in spite of her valiant effort. This made us realize that even if someone is conversant with the course content, if their grasp of English is not exceptional, that they cannot translate well. To alleviate Yu-Yu having to do all translation we will need to either find better translators in China or take Chinese Vineyard members from the US who tend to be very adept in both English and Mandarin, as well as familiar with Vineyard values and vocabulary. Travel to City 2 On Wednesday afternoon we flew to City 2 to meet with Pastor G who was there speaking at a conference at Pastor Z’s church. We sat in on their BTJ leadership planning meeting and had dinner with these key house church and business leaders. On Thursday morning, we sat in on the missions conference which began with the showing of Pastor G’s 3-hour moving documentary film From Xi’An to Zion which we could understand because of its English subtitles. After lunch, we spent most of the afternoon doing personal prophetic ministry for Chinese leaders. In the evening we finally got about 90 minutes with Pastor G. So instead of getting a couple of days with Pastor G to talk about training, we just got 1 ½ hours and perhaps 30 minutes of that was spent advising Pastor G on a problem that he wanted our input on.

It spoke powerfully to Pastor G that we would fly to City 2 just to get time with him, even though we were not on the docket to do any training. I feel like our time with him was productive but largely relational. We were, however, able to talk over key strategic principles about training missionaries, sharing insights that Yu-Yu and I had recently learned from Dr. Kamran and KA. As I said, however, I sensed the Holy Spirit say before my trip that our approach and this trip in particular were to be more relational. Pastor G and I feel a kinship with one another. We were both born in 1956 and feel like training a new generation of leaders and the BTJ missions venture is one thing we can be privileged to work together on in this next season of our lives. When Pastor G and the other Chinese leaders are here this July, I am hopeful that because we will be in control of the agenda and the schedule that we can get substantial time to talk about strategy and do more collaborative planning.

Moving Ahead

Principles for Moving Ahead Here are some things that I believe should guide our strategy going forward. 1. Relational foundations. Relationship is the foundation of our long-term strategy. So we need to think through who the key players—Chinese and Vineyard— and how to grow in relationship and partnership with one another. 2. Smaller teams. The experience of this trip and the counsel of the local leaders means that we should take smaller teams going forward. 3. Long-term Commitment. Because ministry is relational and we are looking at major projects we need to commit to long-term involvement in China.

Training Ventures

Training Pastors This has been the core of our training to-

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date and besides being a pivotal training venue, it helps build trust with the broader church networks in China. The challenge in providing this training has been to do this as frequently as it is needed and to do it in a way that does not overtax Yu-Yu. The Chinese churches have stepped up to pay for our housing and meals while we are there, helping to reduce the cost of the trips. The key to doing these trips more frequently in a way that does not overtax our current base is to draw more churches into the partnership so that we have more trainers and a larger financial base. We also need to get more translators into the loop so that Yu-Yu is not overextended. Training New Pastors and Leaders The local training team likes our idea of targeting proven leaders with a one-year advanced leadership training path. So we are working to put together this training package so that it can be translated and implemented, following the basic design of our VALT/Internship Program as the model. Training BTJ Missionaries The BTJ venture involves much more than training. To succeed in planting churches in the restricted countries of the Middle East will involve identifying the right candidates, training them effectively, sending them out, and giving them the financial, logistic, prayer and emotional support that they require. It will mean clarifying a vision and strategies for the target countries and establishing training bases outside of China. Fortunately Bethany Missions is leading the way in this, working with some of the larger house church networks, and are very anxious to share insights and resources with us. Moving into the Middle East missions will immediately mean we will have more Vineyard partnerships and churches involved because we already have churches in the US and Europe involved in these countries and some long-term workers in place there. Some initial communication has taken place with Bill Hanawalt who coordinates US partnerships working in the Middle East and Central Asia and communication and teamwork will be increased as plans come together.

PARTNER WITH US PRAYER REQUESTS

1. Favor for visa application for the July visitors from China.

4. Open communication and strategic planning with leaders of leaders from China.

2. Protection and travel mercy for the upcoming trips.

5. Involvement of host families and teenage leaders for the summer camp.

3. More churches to join the China partnership to equip Chinese missionaries/leaders to reach to countries in the 10/40 window all the way back to Jerusalem.

6. More gifted teachers/speakers committing on trips once every year or every other year.

UPCOMING MISSION TRIPS

Have you thought about encouraging others in faith, teaching, or serving in Asia? Join us for one of our mission trips! Mar. 2015: Intro of School of Kingdom Ministry (Application deadline is closed)

July 17-27: Friends-to-Friends Cultural and Language Camp in Urbana, IL Host families and teenagers are needed

June 2015: SoKM/VBI

for this event. Please come to the interest meeting on 2/15 and 3/15 to hear more about how you can be involved in the missions reverse outreaches.

(Application deadline is 3/1/2015)

July 6-9: Global Conference in Columbus, OH

Ten leaders from China will come to this meeting. An interest meeting was set up on Wed. afternoon, July 8th. Please come and hear first hand what the Chinese leaders have in mind leading the house churches in response to what God has told them to do.

Sept. 2015: VBI

(Application deadline is 6/7/2015)

Nov. 2015: VBI

(Application deadline is 8/2/2015)

Basic Requirement

Active Vineyard church members who practice Kingdom healing prayers are very welcome to apply.

Registration Information

CHINA & TAIWAN PARTNERSHIP

If you need more information or would like to register for an upcoming mission trip to Asia, please contact:

Dorothy Carlson, Missions Admin Assistant [email protected]

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