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Session 1: Press On! For the long-term

Q1. What are some common reasons local church semesters don’t last?
What are some ways we can overcome these challenges?

Answers:

1. Support from Church Leadership
-Limited involvement of church leaders and pastors in the local church semester.
-Church leaders and pastors are too busy with other church commitments.
-Frequent changes in church leadership breaks the momentum for local church semester trainings. When the new leaders come in, they would emphasize different directions for the church and the EE trainings might not get the support they need to continue running semesters every year.
-Congregation lacks vision for evangelism. Also there is a lack of a visionary who can see how the EE ministry can help the church to grow a large army of workers for the Great Commission.

2. Difficult to recruit trainees & trainers
– Lack of passionate trainers.
– Existing trainers not taking more initiative to provide leadership to the team.
– Difficult to recruit new trainees for semester trainings due to various reasons, including too many other church activities, fear of stress from the training, busy with pressures of life, etc.

3. Negative mindset and discouragement from past experiences
– Discouragement from negative past experiences stop trainers from coming back to continue training the next batch of soul-winners.
– Absence of urgency and enthusiasm for the gospel, lack of resilience causes people to give up when faced with challenges.
– The XEE semester was badly carried out initially with very little or no result. As such, the people do not believe that XEE works.

4. Competing Priorities
– Church members focused on other church activities.
– Many competing ministries and activities within a church.

Ways to overcome:
• Church pastors and leaders to take responsibility to provide clear vision for evangelism and equipping within the congregation. When they take the lead to encourage church members in a positive way, they could foster a positive mindset and resilience, while encouraging persistence despite setbacks. When the church leadership emphasizes the importance of evangelism and equipping, the whole church will get the message that this is an important ministry of the church and they would know how to better prioritize their time and resources.
• Encouragement is vital to overcome negative mindsets and discouragement. When churches encourage other churches in the EE community, and pastors take the lead to encourage the congregation, a culture of encouragement can be developed where everyone learns to give more encouragement to each other. This work of evangelism and equipping is not easy, but when we know there are partners in the gospel who are cheering us on, the burden becomes lighter.
• Organize gatherings and activities to build the EE community within the local area so that the trainers and trainees may encourage and inspire each another continuously. This will also provide a platform to exchange ideas.
• Continue EE semesters regardless of initial participation levels. It is better to continue with a small group of people rather than to stop completely and lose the momentum.
• To encourage leaders to champion the ministry. We are looking for faithful,
available, and teachable people to rise up in faith.
• Different churches to work together within the same local area to run the
semester. Churches helping churches is a good way to pool resources together (lack of facilitators/trainers/classroom/prospect pools, etc) and to increase excitement for the work of the gospel in a particular geographical area.

Q2. How can we encourage past trainers and trainees to participate
activitely in the local church semesters?

Answers:

1. Regular training and re-training
– Incorporate training as a regular part of the church’s annual calendar so that the trainers can block off their time.
– Train the trainer via refresher course, trainer upgrading and allow opportunities to serve more so that they will be more skilful in discipling and equipping the trainees
– Schedule meet-ups and retreats for past trainees and trainers to keep the fire alive. Encourage them to share testimonies of gospel sharing opportunities during these gatherings. Publicly recognise those who have been faithful to encourage them and others too.
– Plan OJT/CA sessions for trainers to join in

2. Encouragement and Discipleship
– Pastors and church leaders should take the lead and be a role model by participating in the local church semester and giving support to the training.
– Church pastors and leaders to encourage active involvement from past trainers.
– Continually build and maintain relationships with those trained, offering opportunities for growth and service and giving encouragement
– Share testimonies and maintain unity in purpose.
– Reinforce the church’s vision and the Great Commission as top priorities.
– Use creative incentives to maintain engagement and recognize faithful trainers.
– Trainers (besides pastors) to meet up with past trainers to encourage them as well.

3. Prayer
– Ensure continuous prayer and support from the congregation.

4. Resource Allocation and Financial Support
– Setup a fund to help trainers and trainees to continue training others
– Church leadership could consider setting aside budget to provide more training and motivate the EE trainers.

5. Special EE day of outreach
– The church could organise an EE day or outreach day and encourage the trainers to go for OJT/CA together on that day

Session 2: Press On! For the Next Generation

Q1. What are the challenges in your area of influence to equip the next
generation?

Answers:

1. Generational Differences and Distractions
– Young people today are different from previous generations.
– Traditional methods of engagement are less effective due to numerous distractions.
– Need for new, Biblical approaches to guide them back to faith.
– Modern life and cultural challenges weaken faith and value transmission.

2. Lack of Support and Role Models
– There is a significant gap in effective leadership and role models for the youth and children.
– Lack of parental support – sometimes Christian parents object to their children being trained in the local church semesters.
– Parents these days are busy with work, and thus spend little time with their children and thus have little influence in shaping spiritual priorities.
– Lack of guidance from church leaders to the helpers and teachers on how to engage the youth and children.
– Youths may not be interested in hearing the gospel because they don’t see their peers having an effective witness for Christ.

3. Technological and Social barriers
– Technology and media distractions lead to short attention spans.
– Youth are busy with schoolwork, careers, and social influences like anime and video games.
– Adults struggle to connect due to language and creative gaps, and the influence of social media.

Q2. What are some creative ideas to encourage the next generation to
press on in sharing their faith?

Answers:

1. Technology and Creativity
– Appropriately use technology to equip the youth with EE tools.
– Use creative methods and fun activities.
– Have more interactive activities and group sharing during training sessions.

2. Discipleship – back to the basics
– We need to go back to the basics of discipleship with youth and children spend time with them and walk with them in their faith journey, imparting Christian core values and enthusiasm for the harvest field into their hearts.
– Give them more encouragement instead of discouraging them with rebukes or comparisons.
– More personal/physical engagement between the older generations with the younger generation and the creation of ‘safe spaces’ for the new generations to share their heart and obtain Godly advice from the older folks.

3. Encouragement from peers
– Learn the language of the next generation, identify those with leadership potential, build relationships with them and disciple them.
– Encourage the youths who are trained to actively support and encourage other youths to also get trained. Many young people drop off the training because they cannot memorize the presentation, asking their friends who already learnt the presentation to teach them is an effective way.

4. Parental and Leadership Role Models
– Parents and leaders should act as role models and prioritize their own involvement in EE trainings.
– Let us the adults, parents be excited in our faith by doing and showing to our children through our actions of love to our family and friends.
– We need to equip ourselves first and then followed by training the next generation.
– Parents should prioritize sending them to church activities instead of just tuitions, eg, church camps and Sunday services.

5. Church activities to engage in evangelism
– Church could organize competition like sports and board games to reach out to youths.
– Create reels or other digital content to promote the importance of equipping for evangelism.
– Connect with youths through special activities such as art club, music club, having fun outdoors or through podcast.