A New Season: Hope for Our Target People Group
Hope Chapel's Vision, Values, and Strategies

A renewed mandate. God is opening a new season of missions
activity from Hope Chapel. In keeping with all that has been unfolding in our
story for more than twenty years, we now sense God giving us a renewed
mandate to bring forth new and growing church movements among our target people group in the Middle East.

A God-given focus with more to come. As we focus on this target group as a special priority, we expect that God will continue to call some in our midst to other peoples and places. We value such callings and seek to bless those whom God is truly sending. It is our ongoing prayer and expectation that in the years to come God will increase our assignment as a church to include other peoples and places.

What we expect to see by God's grace:

• Church planting movements spreading throughout Our Target People Group. Our prayers, evangelism, business ventures and service will be propelled by a vision of churches that multiply throughout our target people.
• Fruitful mission and service emerging from the maturing
  indigenous churches. God has already given us ways to help indigenous
  churches engage in mission efforts to yet other lands and peoples.
• Glory given to God for what He does in among our target people
  in Christ's name. Hope Chapel lives to glorify God. We pursue this mission with the hope
  that we will see Him loved, worshipped, and honored in among our target
  people, and eventually, in every people group on earth.

How we expect to fulfill our mandate:

• Engage the full gift of Hope Chapel in the endeavor. God has
  richly endowed Hope Chapel with powerful spiritual gifts, financial
  resources, and a beautiful array of expertise and diverse talents. As we
  offer all we are to God in whole-life worship, we anticipate that God will
  engage every one of us in this task. We'll all have a part to play.
• Contribute in partnership. Our best approach will be to serve
  alongside other missionaries, churches and especially indigenous leaders.
• Venture to our target people. We anticipate that over the years, many of us will
  be part of short-term teams and prayer journeys. We also expect that
  some of us will be engaged in creative ways that involve business
  ventures. We are praying that we'll be able to send long-term workers
  to work in partnership with emerging indigenous churches.
• Keep after it. We expect this effort will take many years. We
  are seeking to obey Christ's call on us by remaining faithful over the long haul as He gives us grace, wisdom and strength.
  
  

The Implications

We are talking about Hope Chapel stewarding a God-given vision for the winning of a particular people group . Vision like this goes beyond the traditional view of missions-praying and sending missionaries-to doing all we can as a body, the best way we can, given our resources, in order to take part in seeing our target people follow Christ.

For Hope Chapel to successfully adoptan unreached people group, the leadership and members of the congregation must see that we are involved in far more than just supporting and sending missionaries. We are involved in the winning of a people...a tribe...a nation, that currently has only a handful of churches in their midst. This will mean Hope Chapel itself feels the responsibility and weight of stewarding what God has given us in order to partner with the Body of Christ and win the Target People for Christ.

Our Values & Strategies:

Church Planting

The mature fruit of evangelistic ministry is not individual decisions, but Christian community (the church). Experience has demonstrated that evangelism is not complete without the gathering of new disciples into the dynamic fellowship of a local church. Where few churches exist, the missionary task is to partner with others to spark a church planting movement that will spread throughout the target people.

Church planting is winning people to Christ, discipling them to obey, forming them into fellowships, identifying and training leaders, and releasing them to grow as a Christian community. Our objective is not merely to organize a church on foreign soil, but to initiate a Christ-ward movement that will propagate the gospel throughout the entire culture as a whole - and eventually begin to impact other cultures as well.

Churches Planting Churches

The primary God-given ability to reproduce churches lies within the church and her representative local expressions. Therefore, it should be the local church who has primary responsibility for planting other churches.

You must experience and know community in order to reproduce community, and you experience community through involvement in a local church. You have to experience body-life in order to reproduce body-life. We must send people out to start new churches who we know have experienced authentic church life in their own lives. Otherwise, we will send out people who will plant dysfunctional churches . . . churches that know nothing about community and authentic relationships with one another.

Focus of Resources

A focused approach to cross-cultural ministry is a critical part of our strategy. Focus helps clarify the vision, and clarity of vision will foster ownership.

Clarity of vision and purpose also enhances our ability to make ministry decisions. The typical church missions program is overrun with requests for support of all kinds. How does the church decide what it will and will not invest in? Programs and projects must be submitted to vision. If a particular project helps us fulfill our vision, we will embrace it. If it does not, we will leave it for someone else to pick up. Vision must dictate the nature, life, and resource commitments of all projects and activities.

In view of this, we will focus our resources to:

• Care for and support those we send.
• Clearly articulate our vision for cross-cultural ministry, helping the entire church to understand and embrace what we are planning to do and why.
• Minister cross-culturally in ways that will accomplish the maximum effect in terms of reaching people for Christ.
• Make wise decisions regarding the ministry activities we will and will not invest in. Because our vision is clear, we are able to submit all projects and activities to that vision and evaluate their place, or lack of it.

Ownership

The vision for church planting in among our target people group needs to be owned by the entire congregation in order for us to be successful. Senior church leadership must embrace and own the vision for it to succeed. It is not enough for us to give permission for focusing on our target people. We must own it.

What's more, the "church planting team" is larger than whatever group may be sent to the field. This concept has far-reaching implications. Missions rhetoric has, consciously or unconsciously, communicated the idea of "First-team" (the Go-ers), and "Second Team" (the Senders). This is wrong! We must understand that our team is larger than the unit on the field, and that everyone who is part of the church is part of the team. We desire to see a broad base of Hope Chapel embrace God's vision for our target people and seek to discover their place in the fulfillment of it, whether at home or overseas.

We view the team on the field as an extension of the team here. Therefore, team formation, development, nurture, and replenishment is an on-going process, with a steady flow of people between Austin and our target people.

Team Ministry

We believe that the work of the church is done most effectively in an environment of mutual cooperation and in smaller units of people where there is high goal orientation, and a willingness to work together sacrificially. Thus, team ministry is our primary tactic.

In developing strategies to start reproducing churches among our target people, it is crucial that we place teams central in any approach. The unmistakable pattern of the book of Acts is that apostolic teams went forth to proclaim the kingdom and to plant new churches. In the area of support, teams are vital also.

A team is a relatively small group of people who share …

• a common purpose
• a relational bonding, and
• an effective leadership.

Why Is Team Ministry the Preferable Option?

1 - The team format is the model we find in the New Testament
2 - Teams allow a diversity of gifts to be applied to a common purpose
3 - Teams carry enhanced capacity to engage in spiritual warfare.
4 - Teams can provide nurture and pastoral care for their members.
5 - Team life fosters character growth
6 - Healthy teams are small communities, and Christian community is one of the most powerful evangelistic strategies.

Pastoring well those we send

Someone who is going to be effective in cross-cultural ministry over the long haul needs a group of people who are committed to him, to his ministry, and to his personal needs. A focus on the part of Hope Chapel facilitates a strengthening of the church's commitment and ability to care for her missionaries. Involving the congregation in caring for and supporting missionaries is much more feasible when the location and workers can be promoted together and their needs shared.

Prayer

Praying alone in the closet is biblical and essential, but it can never substitute for the transaction which takes place when believers physically come together to wait upon God in prayer. Fresh moves of the spirit will inevitably follow God's people committing themselves to holy, believing, extended corporate prayer.

With a focused approach to church planting, we can bring this type of corporate prayer to bear on our work. A portion of the prayer life of Hope Chapel can be focused on penetrating the culture of our target people with the gospel, with corporate prayer meetings being offered that fuel the strategies we have chosen to engage in. Individual prayer focus can also include praying regularly for our target people. It is through this type of corporate and individual prayer focus, directed and specific, that the strongholds that have kept our target people from Christ for centuries can be overcome.

Partnership

We place a high value on partnership with the rest of the Body of Christ. We must constantly be exploring the partnership opportunities before us. We will work in partnership with others who have a similar vision, both indigenous believers and other Christians.

Teachability

We have much to learn from others in the Body of Christ and choose to take a posture of actively seeking to learn from others, especially as it relates to church planting among Muslims.

Innovation/creativity

There is no exhaustive manuscript of proven methods of church planting among Muslims. Therefore, we want to encourage creative thinking in regard to reaching our target people for Christ. We are willing to try new methods that seem worth the risk in order to see people reached. In order for a climate of innovation to exist, we must have a tolerance for well-intended failures. There must be freedom to fail.

Power encounter is expected

As recent studies on Muslim conversions have shown, over 50% of Muslim converts came into the kingdom through healings, dreams and visions of Jesus, or some other extra normal phenomena. We want to be open and obedient to all God may want to do in and through us in terms of signs and wonders, actively seeking God to manifest Himself and His kingdom as He desires.

Similarly, we want to be learners and listeners in the area of discerning spiritual strongholds that keep people in bondage. We want to be on the offensive against such spiritual strongholds by living holy lives, filling our lives with praise and worship of God, and praying with discernment against these spiritual powers. This may mean extended times of praise and prayer warfare, including times of fasting as we seek to discern what God is doing and join with Him in it on behalf of these people, that their history may be changed.

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