NAMS Newsletter August 2020
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India
Leadership the Jesus Way.
Announcing ‘Jesus-Shaped Leadership’ a new small group Leadership Development Course by NAMS.
“To learn to be a disciple-making leader means to help people enter deeper into dependence upon the Lord Jesus, not ourselves.”
(NAMS Founder, Revd Canon Dr Jon Shuler)
In NAMS, we have always believed that the holy tasks of spreading the good news of Jesus and planting new churches are intimately related to the making of disciples who make disciples AND the raising up of faithful and fruitful leaders who believe and practice this passionately.
Indeed, we believe it is self-evident that the work of God’s church and kingdom cannot be accomplished without called, prepared and consecrated new leadership – who have learned to be utterly dependent on Jesus
The Jesus-Shaped Leadership course is a 7-week small group course on Jesus’ method for raising disciple-making leaders. It calls attention to the kind of leaders he modeled, incubated, trained and sent into the world.
Two free resources (A Participant course book and a Leaders/Facilitators Guide) have just been published on the resource page of our website:
www.namsnetwork.com/resources.html
(under the heading ‘Jesus-Shaped Leadership’)
Our prayer is that this short course will bring focus on the vision, values and godly methods of kingdom leadership development.
Each week’s lesson will focus on a different facet of leadership as the Scriptures and our Lord Jesus taught or instructed. It is hoped that the teaching from Scripture, personal sharing, mentoring and practical application will catalyze a culture of learning, encouragement and accountability for new and seasoned leaders alike. (The Leaders/Facilitator’s Guide will give additional information on how to run each session).
We have also released a new e-book in conjunction with the Jesus-Shaped Leadership course, also available on our resource page. It is called ‘4 Things Kingdom Leaders Do.’ You can access it directly from this link:
https://www.namsnetwork.com/assets/kingdomleaders.pdf
Please feel free to download, share and use these resources.
If you have questions, requests or feedback, please write to us at info@namsnetwork.com or directly to our Global Executive, Revd Manik Corea at manikcorea@namsnetwork.org
Join us for an Easter service led by Rev. Jon C Shuler
Dear NAMS Network and Friends,
The Anglican Bishop of South Carolina has asked me to step in, temporarily, to lead a parish here in my hometown called Christ the King/Grace Anglican Church. We will upload our Easter service to Youtube at 7:00am Sunday morning, US Eastern Standard Time. We would love to have you and your family join us. May the Spirit of God bless you and yours throughout this extraordinary Easter Season.
Jon Shuler
Servant General (NAMS)
The service can be accessed via this Facebook link:
https://www.facebook.com/gracechurchwaccamaw/
NAMS Newsletter February 2020
NAMS Newsletter October 2019
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A handful of rice (by NAMS Global Executive Manik Corea)
The Friends Missionary Prayer Band (FMPB) is an indigenous missionary society in India. Today, it has more than 1,500 missionaries working throughout India. But their beginnings were small and almost insignificant – starting from a small prayer group of university students in the late 1960s in the South of India.
At a Faith2Share Leadership Consultation* in Ethiopia in 2014, we heard the leader of FMPB tell of the early days in their missionary endeavor. Women from their supporting churches decided to pray and to give towards the work of the fledgling group of missionaries. But they did not have money to give.
Each day however, as they cooked their staple diet of rice for their families, they would set aside one cup of rice in a separate cloth – it was ‘for the missionaries.’ Once a week, all the ladies would pool together and collect the rice they had set aside in their cloth packs and then distribute it to the missionaries as part of their support.
This is a wonderful illustration of the principle of intentional, regular investment of our resources into kingdom work that is purposeful – what Paul referred to as a ‘partnership in the Gospel’ (Philippians 1:5). Paul and his team were being helped by the Christians in Philippi to there to take the Gospel to the surrounding nations. Who are you partnering with for the Gospel to go to the nations?
NAMS is growing. We currently have NAMS Companions in at least 13 countries on 5 continents, and doors are opening up at present in at least another 6 or so countries, with more on the horizon. We need desperately to fund our NAMS Base Communities (i.e. at least two or three NAMS Companions on mission in one location) and Global Apprentices in our GAP program (www.namsgap.com), some in places where resources are scarce.
Our primary work is in these NAMS Base Communities (NBC) is to make disciples who make disciples, raise leaders who make disciples and plant disciple-making churches. The contexts we work in are varied and different.
For example, in December later this year, two of our Latin American leaders will lead a team to the impoverished nation of Cuba where a small community of believers led by a couple trained at our NBC in Chile, have begun meeting in the capital and a group of pastors from another city have asked us to work to have a NAMS base there.
Last week, two of our NAMS Companion leaders in India and their wives have just led training for about 40 women from the State of Orissa in how to be disciple-making leaders. The women have set themselves the goal of making one other disciple of Jesus each in the next year.
We are working in partnership with the Anglican Church in Mandalay, Myanmar, to establish a NAMS base that will help them plant churches among their many unreached people-groups. A Covenant of Partnership is being drawn up.
We are working with the Presbyterian (uniting) Church of Christ in Thailand to reach university students at their main Student Center in Bangkok.
We are also working with Christians and churches to make disciples and plant churches in Nepal, India, Kenya, Egypt, DRC, USA and the UK, among other nations.
We are looking for people ready to give us a ‘handful of rice’ set aside for global mission and to support us in the work God has called us to.
Will you pray for us? Will you give towards our projects – which we would love to give you more details about ? Or give a one-off gift? Will you partner with us for the Gospel? If so, click below to ‘Donate’
Write to us at info@namsnetwork.com to ask to join our global intercessors group or to learn more about our work.
* Faith2Share is a network of global mission agencies and mission movements collaborating together for discipleship and mission, that NAMS is a member of. http://www.faith2share.net
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Discipleship is a process….Not a program (By ).
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We have been given a clear mandate – to make disciples (Matt 28:19). The original mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus by creating intimate, relational environments of multiplication and transformation. Churches and missions who are focused on discipleship grow and multiply quickly. Discipleship is the process by which we maximize the potential of our people and equip them for reaching their communities and the Nations.
Stranger on the bus – Interview with NAMS Regional Team Leader
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No Equal
In Jesus’ name, we have authority over the devil and all his forces. My family story is a testimony of this!
Almost 26 years ago now, a team from Campus Crusade came to share the gospel in Ammerbasti village of Kanchanpur, Nepal – my home village. One day my father went to watch the Jesus film. He was moved by it, and spoke to the team members. They shared the Gospel with him. After that, he began to attend a church in another village. Those were difficult days to become a Christian, as we were in a Hindu village. Soon, a rumor started spreading that my father was now a Christian. He was now facing persecution – and when the situation worsened, my father fled to India, leaving behind his pregnant wife (my mother), who was not a believer at that time.
A few months later, I was born. A week after my birth, our house was tragically burnt up in a fire. Our relatives and other villages blamed my father was causing the fire because the gods and evil spirits (the chief spirit of which was called Vir) were angry and had cursed our family.
Life became very difficult for my mother. Eventually, my father secretly returned to our village and took us away to live with him in Punjab, India. There, a Christian man from Kerala called Dr. Thomas who was studying there, started discipling my father. My father began to gather with other people to read the Scriptures and prayer. Sometime later, my mother also became a believer and was baptized.
Five years later, because the situation was improving back in Nepal , we moved back to our original village. We shared a house with my extended family – my grandfather and uncles. It was a two-story house and my family lived on the upper level of the house. My grandfather and uncles continued to worship the spirits. In fact, my grandfather could call on the spirits through black magic.
However, he realized that after my family moved back, he could not summon the spirits anymore. He asked my father if he did anything to the Vir (or chief spirit). My father told him that because of God’s Spirit in them, no other spirit could bother them. He told my grandfather that the Holy Spirit is the God of the universe.
The next day, my grandfather confessed that he tried to call on the Vir to return to their house but it was to no avail. He realized that the Holy Spirit must be stronger than the Vir, so they should follow and worship Him. At that point, my father gave him a New Testament.
My grandfather began to read. He read in Mark’s Gospel (11:12-25) where Jesus cursed a fig tree. He told my father that if your God is the real God, then let him also dry the big tree that was in front of their house. As we prayed, God did a great miracle and within a month, the tree in front of our house had dried up and died.
As a result my grandparents, uncles and all their families believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and were baptized. Our Lord Jesus has no equal, as my family have come to learn. All glory to God.
Today, Pankaj pastors a church in Kathmandu, Nepal and is a NAMS Global Apprentice with 2 others young adults. God is using them to bring the Gospel and making disciples in Nepal in a new generation. Will you support our GAP program by praying for us and giving towards the support and raising up of new Global Apprentices like Pankaj?
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Help us bring a new NAMS Global Apprentice from India to Bangkok, Thailand
Help us bring a new NAMS Global Apprentice from India to Bangkok, Thailand
The NAMS Global Apprenticeship Program (GAP) exists to raise up the next generation of disciple-making leaders. Global apprentices live on site, train and grow in faith, experience and knowledge within the stimulating environments of one of our NAMS base communities.
John Gansalves is a young leader in India that we have identified would greatly benefit from being part of this program. God is calling him to serve at our base community in Bangkok, Thailand for a one year period. During his time with us, John will gain experience in cross cultural mission and ministry, be trained and equipped to be a disciple-making leader and serve the base community here through his many gifts and talents and the experience he brings of children and youth ministry in India.
During his exploratory trip to Bangkok in August 2017 it became very clear how the Lord could use John in the unique context we have to evangelise and disciple students, migrants and refugees.
Please pray for John and NAMS GAP as we seek to raise the $12,000 required for him to be a Global Apprentice in Bangkok, Thailand for the next twelve months.
If you would like to give towards his support, please go to the link below.
NAMS Network 