Oscar's sons and daughters

One reason for Oscar Muriu's success in growing leaders for a church planting movement is that he didn't know what he was doing. He was young enough not to know it couldn't be done and smart enough to copy from the best. This what he told me. . . All I do is I copy.

You don't have to be clever to copy. And the best place to copy is Scripture. They call that obedience and it works.

In the internship we just copy. We asked ˜What does Jesus do with his twelve?' We came up with five things.

1. Jesus spends time teaching them. After the parable of the seed he takes the disciples aside and tells them to you is granted the privilege of knowing the meaning of this but the others never get to be told what the meaning of the parable is. And so there are times when you can see Jesus (such as Matt 24 about the kingdom) reflecting theologically with his disciples.

2. He puts them into teams. Jesus doesn't actually do one on one discipleship. He does team discipleship. And these guys are good for one another, they have their arguments, they disagree, they are jostling for position, etc and it's actually healthy for them because it helps them, he deals with these things. It brings to the surface real relationship.

3. He sends them out into ministry. Where he is not present with them and they go out in twos and they do what he did. That's why we send them out on our short-term mission where they go and do what they have learned and they come back and report and we sit down and process together.

4. He demonstrates and calls them to a devotional life. Teaches them how to pray, he himself goes and spends time apart. So they're learning how to do devotionals and how to live devotionally.

5. Jesus builds a succession plan into the system. He tells them "I'm going to be leaving you." And so Oscar tells the interns that their last three months are about succession. When you exit this position as an intern, will your ministry collapse because there's no leadership? Or will your ministry continue because you've prepared well.

Oscar says, We are copying what we are seeing in Scripture. Sometimes you copy well and sometimes you don't copy as well. But love covers over a multitude of sins.

Oscar has a saying, You don't plant churches you plant "sons" and some of Oscar's best "sons" are daughters!