The Church Revitalization Podcast – Episode 189
Do you (or your church) love the thought of participating in the movement of the Gospel around the world?
Do you (or your church) desire to see the strength and effectiveness of the global church increase?
Do you (or your church) want to see disciples on every continent become disciple-makers?
Do you (or your church) see the value in building up leaders that can lead well into a challenging and uncertain future?
We do. If you answered “yes” to one or more of those questions, then you are in a position to help us increase all of those things. God has blessed The Malphurs group immensely! We have a dedicated team to make those things happen. We have decades of collective experience. We have tools, resources, and processes to quickly and effectively support churches. And we have loads of opportunities to take advantage of. What we don’t have enough of is money to make it all happen.
As a well-known leader in church health and leadership development, The Malphurs Group is uniquely positioned now for a significant global impact on the Church. We need you as a partner.
Subscribe below to never miss an episode.
What is the need?
More than 98% of Europe’s 810 million residents do not have a relationship with Jesus. What we mean is evangelical Christianity is only surviving in small pockets. It is well understood that the continent has become postmodern and secular, even (and in most cases especially) in countries with state sanctioned churches.
An estimated 550 million people in Central & South America are not actively following Jesus. While the Catholic church has anchors in numerous countries, like Europe, evangelical Christianity is lacking.
Asia has the largest concentration of non-Christians in the world. Despite expansion, the Asian Church cannot keep pace with population growth, especially in the face of fierce political opposition. Amazing stories of the underground church thriving are encouraging and should spur us on to greater support there.
African pastors have limited access to high-quality Bible and leadership training resources. Africa is an exciting place for the Church. The pastors and leaders there are hungry for training and resources. They have great vision for Gospel expansion in spite of being in some of the most disadvantaged positions.
Pastors and church leaders around the world are humbly asking for help so their churches can become the disciple-makers they envision. They want a greater Gospel reach and need the training and tools to do that. Many have no formal theological training. They are just doing their best to serve in a call from the Lord.
Training local pastors is cost-effective.
The International Mission Board estimates that the cost to train a missionary from the United States and send them somewhere in the world is about $60,000 per year. If TMG is fully-funded, we can train pastors at scale for a one-time cost of about $2,200 and have someone in place ready to work without waiting for cultural integration or language skills development.
We’re not saying missionaries are not needed! On the contrary, we need more! But, equipping indigenous and international pastors is an effective strategy that has been under-utilized by the American Church.
How does TMG support the global church?
- The Church Revitalization Podcast has been on a strong growth trend since its inception in August of 2019. In April of 2023 it was downloaded in 55 countries. It is the least expensive and broadest training tool we have, and we are committed to its continuation and growth.
- Online training: In 2022, we launched https://healthychurchesglobal.com. A video-based training resource for churches outside of North America. It costs nothing and it is the same training that we provide for U.S. churches. No corners cut. The same quality training that we do here, we do everywhere.
- Group training: Through international conference speaking, conference break-out sessions, and seminary student groups, we can bring key concepts to pastors and leaders in short-term trip formats. Later in 2023, we will be in Ethiopia doing training for seminary students and then in Turkey doing workshops at a pastor’s conference. If we had the money today, we could also book trips to Burundi in East Africa, India, Columbia, and Nepal.
- One-on-one church work: As of right now we have individual churches requesting one-on-one service in Germany, Sweden, Slovakia, India, Mexico, and numerous African countries. This is the most effective means of helping churches make significant changes and effectiveness of their evangelistic and discipleship work. However, it is also the most expensive and limited since our U.S. team that is equipped to do the work internationally is limited in number right now. This is not the end of the TMG strategy, though. Read on.
- Training indigenous guides: The real value of one of our U.S. teams going someplace in the world to work one-on-one with a church is when we can pair that trip with a local indigenous or international pastor to train them to do what we do. We would like to work ourselves out of our jobs! This is the key and the value mentioned above. By establishing a trained pastor in a nation, region or city, that pastor can then multiply our efforts and continue the work in their own language and culture for maximum effectiveness. With your help in funding, we have strategic leaders in Columbia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Burundi, Uganda, Zambia, and several in Europe that want to become trained as TMG Certified Guides so that they can do what we do with churches in their local countries. . This is how we’ve designed our ministry to grow.
TMG has a very unique stated core value. It goes like this: “We say yes.” We value saying yes to the pastor that reaches out looking for help. It takes a lot of humility and courage to ask for help, and it takes a sincere heart for the church to pursue something greater. We want to always say yes. Right now we’re having to say “Yes, but we’re not sure when.” We’re in a holding pattern to fulfill all the requests.
What can you do?
Become a donor. Maybe you’re an individual and can only do a little each month, or maybe you’ve been blessed with greater capacity and a heart of generosity. You can help.
Maybe you’re a pastor or church leader who can bring this opportunity to your global mission decision-makers, and make TMG one of your global mission partners. You can help. For those churches that are able to make significant gifts, we want to gift back to you what we have to offer as well, and that is training and resources. For churches partnering at certain levels, a TMG team member will gladly visit your church each year to help you make a great strategy for your church.
To make a donation right now please go to our donation page at The National Christian Foundation and use their secure form.
To have a discussion with us about what a partnership with your church may look like and to answer your questions, please schedule a meeting with A.J. at https://calendly.com/ajmathieu/donor-interest and download our 2023 Vision Partner Packet to review with your team.
If you’re a pastor or church staff member and a mission partnership isn’t possible for your church, we have another way to support our ministry and your own church too. In September of 2023 we are launching a new online resource called the Healthy Churches Toolkit, and we’d love for you to become a customer. At a price that will be affordable for any church you’ll have access to over 100 print resources from Aubrey Malphur’s books along with new tools that will release every month. You’ll get the full training for our Strategic Envisioning process, Leadership Pipeline Development training and a lot more. Use the form below to let us know that you’re interested in that when it launches, and you’ll get a discount code for special pricing.
If you’re not sure if it sounds like something you’d want, check out this sneak preview:
Finally, I just want to tell you how much we appreciate your connection to us. Whether you’re a client of TMG past or present, a podcast listener, a previous student of Dr. Malphurs or just someone that found us in a Google search and read an article, thank you. Your heart for the Church and mission of Christ drives us to do what we do. We care about the same things as you and we want you to be wildly successful at the mission Jesus gave to you.
Watch this episode on YouTube
A.J. Mathieu is the President of the Malphurs Group. He is passionate about helping churches thrive and travels internationally to teach and train pastors to lead healthy disciple-making churches. A.J. lives in the Ft. Worth, Texas area, enjoys the outdoors, and loves spending time with his wife and two sons. Click here to email A.J.
