Kapitel 11:

The German translation for this lesson is not yet available.

The English transcripts are below.

Lesson Title: Seed Projects

Note: The following is an unedited transcript of a video in the CoramDeo.com Basics Course.

Introduction

Scott Allen: Bob, in this Coram Deo course, we're dealing with big topics of the church and the impact of the church on society and living your whole life before the face of God and worldview. To me, one of the powerful things about the teaching, really, is this session on seed projects because it brings it right down. It says, "We're going to make this big, powerful ideas very practical." I'm so thankful to you for developing this teaching that is now being practiced all over the world. Talk about it. Talk about seeds and seed projects.

Bob Moffitt: Sometimes when we think about discipleship, it seems so huge. How am I ever going to get there? The important thing is beginning taking a step. I ask the question in this lesson how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you take a long journey? One step at a time. How do you become a follower of Jesus? One act of obedience at a time.

I think that one of the primary requests of Jesus, and following his example, is to be a servant, but not to serve on the basis of what is easy. Jesus came, in Philippians 2, as a servant, but not just a servant, a sacrificial servant.I think the way we begin to make the application of all of the things that we've been studying is how do we, as individuals and as a church, sacrificially serve those around us? One bite at a time. One step at a time. One small act of sacrificial service with our own resources at a time.

Scott Allen: The church is to be demonstrating love. This is another thing you teach that I appreciate, Bob.

Bob Moffitt: It's not a project. It needs to be a lifestyle, ongoing-

Scott Allen: Yes. Love is an end in itself. It's not a means to some other end. It is an end in itself.

Darrow Miller:Like the seed. This is one the things that I've marveled at over the years. You convey this concept. Some of these seed projects, they happen. There's ongoing things that we don't see. Some of those seeds become things that are like the mustard seed - they become very, very large. It's the starting with what you have and planting that seed. Then watching what God does.

Bob Moffitt: Exactly. It's watching what God does. It's not what we do, it's what he does when we are obedient.

Video 1 of 3: Purpose, Definition and Key Benefits

Presenter: Bob Moffitt

Today, we’re going to talk about something that over all of the world has become known as seed projects. Some call them Love Actions, some go by different names, but it’s really basically the same idea. What I’d like to do in the beginning of our time together is have you watch a video of a seed project that was done by seven ladies in a cell group, a small group in a church in Kampala that decided to listen to God and ask him what God wanted them to do to demonstrate his love in their communities, the capital city of the country. They decided of all the crazy things to hold a Police Appreciation Day. Appreciate the police in Kampala.

If you’ve been there especially at this time, the police were known as being corrupt. They often bribed you when they stopped you. They weren’t a group of people to celebrate but they approached the captain of the police department and said, “We would like to honor the police of our city.” He said, “You want to do what?” They said “Yes, we would like to show the police of our city that we appreciate them.” So he said, “All right.”

These seven women went to work and they conscripted the major city square and they got the police to provide a police band. They got the choir from their church to come in and offer special music and I want you to see what happened. Let’s watch.

What did you see? Well, you looked at the expression on some of the faces of the police. They can hardly believe what’s going on themselves. The testimony of some of the city officials was that this had a great impact on them. But the rest of the story is just as interesting as the first part of the story and that is after this happened, the police approached this church and said, “Could you hold a seminar or a teaching on ethics for our new police cadets?”This is the police asking the community to provide training for its police. Then eventually that grew into family counseling for members of the police force. The outgrowth of that, one little seed project, was tremendous.

Now, when you look at this project what you see is we can never do that. Well, I’m going to tell you these seven women never thought they could do it either, but as they began to thank and

plan, God put things in place. Now sometimes, seed projects, and you’ll see later on, are very small, but sometimes they grow into something that is rather major.

So as we begin our study of seed projects, what I’d like to do is just look at some of the biblical references to seeds and see what we can learn from those references. Look at the slide and you’ll see five scriptures there. These five scriptures are some of the key references in an agricultural period during which the bible was written that talk about seeds and there are lessons that we can learn from each of these passages.

The first one, Matthew 12:24 talks about Jesus is predicting his death. He says, “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it doesn’t produce fruit.” The principle that we can learn from that is that fruit requires sacrifice. The fruit of our salvation, our salvation is fruit but it came at the sacrifice of Jesus’ life.

Sometimes when I look at the thousands of seed projects that I know of that have been done around the world, it seems like the greater the sacrifice, the greater the fruit. Sacrifice means giving up something that you would have used for yourself and instead, you use it for the benefit of others.

A second passage, Mathew 13, the parable of the mustard seed. The lesson here is obvious that nothing is too small or insignificant to give to God for him to use it to multiply and produce fruit.

The third passage, John 4:37-38, Jesus is talking about one sows another reap. Well, what’s the lesson? One lesson from that is that each task is equally important. It’s more fun to harvest. I like to use the illustration or the question of what would happen if God called you to go into a new community where the gospel hadn’t penetrated and to be a witness of God’s love in that community and you’ve worked for years to be able to demonstrate, to express, to proclaim God’s love. Then another missionary or church of a different denomination came in and all of a sudden the Holy Spirit began to work and all your hard work was harvested by somebody else.

Would that be okay to you?

Well, as a human being we sure react against that and we think, “Oh man, that would be tough.” What Jesus is teaching us, it doesn’t matter who sows and who harvests. What matters is that we’re obedient to the task that God has given to us. So, that’s a very important principle that comes out of seeds.

Another one is 1 Corinthians chapter 3 in which Paul says God is the one who causes the harvest to grow. No matter whether we plant or we harvest, we can’t take the credit for it because what we do is we give what we have to God, and he’s the one that causes it to grow.

The last scripture, 2 Corinthians chapter 9 is sowing generously. What’s the lesson? The more generous we are, the more we sacrifice in terms of what we give in order to demonstrate God’s love is the more God is given glory. Our generosity brings glory to God.

These are just some very simple but really key principles as we look at seed projects. I’d like us to look, if we can, then about what is the purpose of a seed project. Well there are two purposes, two primary purposes. One is to give the church, a local church, a simple effective improvement tool to help the church begin to demonstrate. Notice the word begin is underlined in this slide. Because seed projects often are small, we don’t see a continuation of the effort of the seed project, sometimes we do, but it’s to begin to demonstrate God’s love to people on the outside of the church.

You know, it’s important to begin simply. My grandson and I a little later on this year are planning to go to Spain and do 100-mile walk together. He and I started to walk together when he was just a toddler, about three, four years old. I used to be someone who loved to climb mountains, I still do. Not too able to do it like I’d like to now. My grandson, Christian, if I asked him to go climb a mountain with me when he was three years old he would say, “Yeah, grandpa, let’s go.” Then if we tried to climb the mountain he would really hurt himself, skin up his knees. The next time I ask him to go on a walk with me or to go around climbing he’d say, “No, grandpa, I don’t want to do that” because he would remember that he tried to go with me before and it wasn’t a good experience.

Seed projects are for local churches to have a simple tool that they can begin this process of demonstrating God’s love to the rest of their community. You don’t want to make the beginning projects so big that they stand a good chance of failure. You want there to be a good chance of success so that as they’ve had these successes they can begin to do larger projects.

The first purpose is to give the church a small effective tool that it can use to begin to demonstrate God’s love outside the church. The second reason is to enable local churches to be proclaimers of the gospel indeed, not only in word, but through the demonstration of God’s love for the people in the community.

I want to give you a definition of the seed projects. Look at the screen with me and let’s look at that because I’m going to ask you to memorize these things, what are the purpose, what’s the definition, what are the characteristics, etc. Well, let’s begin with the definition. The definition is this, a seed project is a small short-term ministry by believers, and it’s done with local resources to demonstrate God’s love to people outside the faith community.

There are four parts to that. You’ll see in this diagram these four parts work together, a seed project then it’s a small short term ministry done by the local church with local resources to demonstrate God’s love to people outside the church. That’s the definition. Now let’s move on. There are three benefits. There are more than that, but there are three principal benefits to a seed project.

The first benefit is holistic evangelism. Now, please understand, we don’t do the seed project in order to see evangelism accomplished. It’s a natural byproduct of the demonstration of God’s love. When people are touched by Jesus through his disciples, through the members of the church, they’re touched by the Lord’s love. That impacts them. People are drawn to Christ.

I get e-mails as often as once a week from people around the world that are doing these seed projects and they tell me of the people who’ve been drawn into the kingdom, not because the church went door to door doing evangelism, but when they saw the demonstration and they were touched by the demonstration of God’s love. They wanted to know more about what was it that caused these people from the church who were of a different religion to listen without any expectation. Holistic evangelism is by demonstrating the lord’s love in the physical, social, wisdom area people are drawn to the reason behind that demonstration and that reason is Jesus Christ.

The second benefit of a seed project is that it frees the local church from dependency on outside resources in order to do a seed project. If you’re familiar with missions, contemporary missions, one of the great banes of missions in the past is that we have left a legacy that basically says without our having intended to say it is that you need the help of churches outside of your own local community in order to demonstrate God’s love. You’re so poor. You don’t have anything that you can use to bless.

Well, that’s not true. What God calls us to is to give what’s in his hand. Like the little boy at the feeding of the 5000 on the side of the lake. He didn’t have anything except his lunch which he gave sacrificially and willingly to Jesus who used and supernaturally multiplied what that little guy had done. God is calling us to do the same thing. God is saying, “Give me what’s in your hand. Don’t wait for outside resources. Start with what you’ve got.” It’s not that outside resources are bad, but God wants us not to wait for that.One of the purposes or benefits of a seed project, it helps us to begin to do things with what we already have in our hand and frees us from the mentality and the paradigm of dependency on the outside.

The third benefit, and there are others, but the third one that I want to identify is that as we begin with small things, it gives us experience for something which is bigger.

As we begin to get experience like with my grandson walking through the park, playing on the swings and the chin up bars, things of that nature, it gives him confidence to be able to go with me when he gets older to climb a mountain. The same thing is true with the local church. We may not have confidence to do something grand, but let’s do what we can with what we have and that experience builds and gives us confidence for something else.

There are three principal benefits, three benefits: holistic evangelism, number one, freedom for independency, number two, and number three it’s experience and confidence for something greater. You see those in this slide right here in a graphics form. It just helps to see it graphically and help to remember it. The three principal benefits, say them in your mind with me, holistic evangelism, freedom for independency and experience for something larger.

What I’d like to do now is talk about 10 primary characteristics of seed projects and we’ll do that when we come back.

Video 2 of 3: Ten Characteristics

Presenter: Bob MoffittWelcome back. What I want to do now is to give you 10 of the critical characteristics of a Seed Project. These 10 characteristics did not come out of a textbook. We’ve been doing seed projects since 1986 around the world. Every one of these 10 characteristics have come out of the experience of the seed projects that we’ve done. The more of these characteristics that are included in the planning and execution of the seed project, in general, the more successful that seed project will be in terms of the demonstration of God’s love.

Again, I don’t want you to think that these 10 characteristics are ideas that came out of our heads. No, we began to realize and see some consistency between what was being done and the success of what was being done, at least the visible success, and began to compare what was happening in those. We saw that the more of these characteristics that were implemented or included in a seed project, the more successful it was, so which are these. These characteristics are not lies, but they’re characteristics that you should consider as you plan your seed project. If you decide to not include one of them, there should be a good reason for that.

Okay, let’s begin. The first one is that a seed project is motivated by God’s intentions, not on the basis of the needs in the community. Most human in secular and even Christian NGOs, their response, the things that they do to respond to a community is to look at what the needs are. They prioritize the needs, and choose one of those needs, and then that’s the one that they design their project around. That’s not where you start with the seed project. The place you start is on your needs, and you ask, “God, what do you want us to do?” Not “what is the greatest priority in terms of our community-need survey”, but “what do you want us to do in this situation”.

Let me tell you a story. In the very early years of our ministry, there was an incredibly poor village in Mexico. They were … I don’t have time to tell you the whole story, but they were producing the only income they had by growing marijuana. The government sent in helicopters to spray and to kill their marijuana. They in turn, shot through the plastic glass window of the helicopter, and killed the pilot and the co-pilot. The government couldn’t find them because these were mountain people, and they knew how to stay away from the federal allies who came in.

Through a series of miracles, God led a missionary to these guys on the hills. The leaders of this community became converted at one time. They asked the missionary, “Okay, now that we’re following Christ, now that we’re following Jesus, what should we do?” If you’ve been a typical western missionary, you would have said, “Well, you guys need sanitation. You need clean running water. You need a school. You need a clinic.” The missionary wisely said, “I don’t know but God does. Why don’t we go into the forest and fast and pray, and ask God what he wants

you to do as new believers.” They did that. They were illiterate, but he read a scripture to them. They spent a lot of time in prayer. They fasted and prayed for three days.

When they came out of the jungle, they believed that God has spoken to them this way. “The first thing I want you to do as my followers is to build houses for the seven widows in your community.” This community had been through a long series in history of blood feuds, where one person would kill another one because of what was going on in their community. There were seven widows as the result of these blood feuds. God instead of telling them to put in a clean water system, or to build a clinic, or to start a school, He said, “The first thing I want you to do is to build houses.”

These guys did not live in houses. I was there. They were hollows, pigs and chickens living with the people. It was awful, but in obedience, that’s what these guys did. They built seven houses. In that culture, if you are going to build a house, the very first people you build it for would be the leaders of the community, not the widows who are at the very bottom of the social scale.

News of what had happened in that little community named Topos Analco spread through the whole state of Guerrero. Leaders from villages all over the area came to see what in the world possessed the leaders of this village to build houses for the lowest status people in the community. You know what happened? A revival broke out in the region of Topos Analco. People had seen a demonstration of love by a God that they had never known before.

God knew what was needed. What was needed did not come from a list of priorities that was developed by a community-need survey. I’m not against community-need surveys, because that helps us to understand the needs at least that we can see. The first characteristic of the seed project is that we don’t do what appears to be something that is going to meet the greatest visible need in the community. What we do is we look to see, or said in a different way, we listen to hear what God knows is the greatest need.

Second characteristic is it’s covered in prayer. Too many times as Christians we often have a perfunctory prayer at the beginning of our efforts to demonstrate God’s love. “God, please bless what our plans are.” Rather, remember what Nehemiah did all through the building of the wall in Jerusalem. Much bigger than the seed project, but the same principle applies. Nehemiah prayed all through that process of building the wall, the opposition that he faced. We need to do the same thing in our projects. We need to cover what we do from beginning through the project to the end in prayer.

The third characteristic is that it’s simple and short. We don’t try to eat the elephant. Sometimes in a context, they say, “How do you eat an elephant?” My African friends immediately know what the answer to that is. “You eat it one bite at a time.” The same thing is true in terms of what we do in seed projects. A seed project is not going to solve the problem, but you take a bite out of the problem, so it needs to be very simple and very short. Don’t try to start a Daycare center which takes forever, or don’t try to get government funding for a nutritional program that’s ongoing. That’s not a seed project. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s not

the way to get started. Whatever we do as a seed project, remember the seed projects are a way to get started, is that it’s simple and short.

The fourth characteristic is that it’s wellplanned. One of the problems in many churches, especially those that come from a Pentecostal orientation, is you get a great idea, and you just go do it without planning for it, without thinking about what resources are going to be needed, about who is going to do what, et cetera, et cetera. The project often fails because it wasn’t well planned.

The fifth characteristic is that it’s done with the local resources. Local resources aren’t just the resources that come from the pockets of the people in the church. If it comes from the community, that can be a resource. I can remember in the Dominican Republic, one of the churches that we worked with, they built a bridge over a small stream. They didn’t have the money to do that, so what they did is they went to a local hardware store, told them what they were planning on doing, and said, “Would you donate the concrete? Would you donate the rebar?” From different factories and hardware stores, they were able to get enough resources to be able to build the bridge. That’s local resources. What’s not a local resource is getting money from the government, getting money from an outside denomination. No, it needs to be done locally.

The sixth characteristic is that it doesn’t manipulate. You’re probably asking the question, “What do you mean it doesn’t manipulate?” You know what? Christians are great at manipulating. If I told you about what happens in many Islamic communities, you would recognize it, but you don’t recognize the very same thing that we do. For example, I know in Ethiopia that you’ve got Muslims going to poor communities and saying, “If you will become a Muslim, we will pay the tuition of your child, or we will pay your health needs, your hospital needs.” You immediately, don’t you, recognize that as manipulation. Do you recognize that Christians do the same thing?

How many of the newsletters that we get from our missionaries talk about projects that they’re doing in order to win people to Christ. You’ll say, “What’s wrong with that?” What’s wrong with that is that God doesn’t manipulate. You remember the story of the healing of the 10 lepers? Do you think that Jesus didn’t know that only one would come back? If Jesus was healing those lepers in order for them to come back to him in recognition of their healing and thanksgiving for their healing, how many would he have healed? One. How many did he heal? Ten. Why? Because he was reflecting God’s heart. He healed those lepers, and would have healed them even if none would have come back. "The rain falls on the just and the unjust who like.”

We are to demonstrate God’s love irrespective of the consequences, because it’s a reflection of God’s heart. We have to be very careful that our seed projects don’t manipulate. We simply do it because it’s an expression of God’s love.

Number seven, it’s done for those outside the church. One of the difficulties in our Christian activity is often that what we do, we do for those in the church. We should, but a seed project is

designed specifically to demonstrate God’s love for those who are on the outside, who otherwise, would never be touch by God’s love. That’s why we make this a criteria. Yes, do we want people to come to Christ? With every passion that’s in our being, but we don’t manipulate them to do that. They are not going to come to Christ by being touched by his love unless we go outside of the church to demonstrate his love out there. Number seven is we do seed projects for those outside the church.

Number eight, this is really something that’s so easy to do. Wrong, what we do … The criteria is that we engineer and we plan the seed project in such a way that those who are being helped if they possibly can, can participate in their being out. You remember the story of Ruth and Boaz in the bible? Boaz could easily have just given Ruth the grain that she needed for herself and her mother-in-law Naomi, but he didn’t do that. Instead, he allowed her to go behind the reapers and gather the grain herself. Why? Because that acknowledged her dignity as a human being.

God gave us dignity which is expressed through our own labor and our own work, so wherever possible, when we do a seed project, we need to build in the process of allowing those that we’re helping to be a part of the project. One of the things that is really discouraging to me is a westerners habitué sending a group of kids down across the border into Mexico to build houses for the poor. As being westerners, we’re very well-organized. We sent somebody to make sure that the lumber, and the cement, and whatever else is needed is in place, because we’ve only got a week, and we got to get this house … The foundation poured, the slab poured, put up the walls and the roof, and make sure it can all be done within a week.

We don’t need any interruptions, including the interruption of the family that we’re trying to build the house for helping. What happens? The family that the house is being built for stands around the outside, because as the kids would come and say, “Can I help you? What can I do?”

As westerners, you say, “No, no, that’s okay. We’ve got it planned.” What we really are saying is we don’t have the time to be interrupted from finishing the projects, so we can take pictures of it, and go back home and show our little church what great people we are. Let me ask you a question. Which is better, that we finish the project or that we give the family the dignity of recognizing their ability to participate in their own healing? The principle is that those are helped are able to participate in the project. That’s characteristic number eight.

Number nine. Remember the window of the four areas in which Jesus grew wisdom, physically, socially, spiritually? Our seed project needs to try to build into it impacts in all of those areas so that the people being served can see God’s love for them, not just in the physical area, but in wisdom, and in the social area, in spiritual area as well. We need to intentionally plan for a wholistic impact.

Finally, when the project is done, who gets the glory? Do we want the people to come around and say to us, “What wonderful folks you are” or do we want them to say, “What a good God you have. I want to know more about him?” The final characteristic is that God is praised, not

us. If we’re praised along with it, that’s fine, but we want to draw attention to the reason we’re there, and that’s God and his great compassionate love.

Ten characteristics: motivated by God’s intentions, covered in prayer, it’s simple and short, it’s well-planned, it’s done with the local resources, it doesn’t manipulate, it’s done outside the church for those outside the church, the beneficiaries participate, it’s intentionally wholistic, and finally, God is praised.

In this break, I want you to try to memorize the purpose, the definition, the benefits and the 10 characteristics. We’ll give you enough time during the break for you to memorize those. I’m going to give you a test afterwards to see how much you remembered.

Video 3 of 3: Is It a Seed Project?

Presenter: Bob Moffitt

Are you ready for a test? Okay. I’m going to give you some scenarios, nine of them, well, I’ll tell you the answer to the first one, but the other eight are yours. I want you to answer is the scenario that I give you a seed project based on the characteristics that we just studied, okay. So, be thinking because these questions are not as easy as they appear to be. The first one you see on the screen right now and the seed project is a game day for community children as an evangelistic outreach. Now, think of all the characteristics, the 10 characteristics that we just looked at in the last session and ask yourself the question, is there anything in the title of the Seed Projects that would violate some, all or even one of the seed project characteristics? And if it does, it’s no. Okay, so this first one, a game day for community children as an evangelistic outreach yes or no? The answer is no. Why? Because if we do the game day and its purpose is evangelism it’s manipulation. Now, there’s a lot of discussion as I teach this about whether that’s manipulation or not. It’s not manipulation if the kids that are coming are invited to go to either one and it’s optional whether they stay and listen to a presentation of the gospel. But if we do the game day for community children as an evangelistic outreach, the way that’s worded says, “No, that’s manipulation.” So, that would be no.

Okay, see how you do on the next one and I’ll give you a chance to think of each one as we go through. This one, a picnic for hungry children based on a community needs survey. What do you think, yes or no? The answer is no. Why is it no? it’s because it’s based on a community needs survey rather getting on our needs and asking God, “God, what are your intentions? What do you want us to do?” So this is coming from our idea, not necessarily from God’s idea. Now sometimes these two things come together and that’s fine, but it needs to be done because we believe that this is what God is asking us to do, not because, only because we’ve done a survey. Number three, latrine repair at the home of a church member, yes or no? That’s an easy one, no. Because a seed project is done for people outside the church. Now, is it bad to repair the latrine at the home of a church member? Absolutely now, but it doesn’t qualify as a seed project.

Number four, a government sponsored literacy program that’s bathed in prayed, yes or no? Trick question isn’t it? We see it’s bathed in prayer and we think, “Oh, of course, that’s okay.” No because it’s government sponsored, it’s not being done with local resources. Question number five, a garbage cleanup the same day you decide to do it, yes or no? No, why? Because if you do it the same day that you decide to do it, you don’t have any time for planning and this is what a seed project criteria is, it is well planned. Number six, a seminar on nutrition where the organizing committee serves so well that the community participants only attend, yes or no? Is it good to plan well? Of course it is. Is it good to serve well? Of course it is, but is it okay to do something where the community doesn’t participate? No. So, it’s not, it doesn’t meet the criteria because the people participating don’t participate.

Number seven, media coverage for a seed project to get publicity for the church, it’s almost humorous isn’t it? No, because we want God to be glorified not our local church. Next, number eight, the development and operation of a childcare center, good idea? You bet it is. Seed Project? No. Why? Because it is long-term, it’s not short and simple. Number nine, community meeting to discuss the formation of a childcare center as a result of a time of seeking God’s intentions for the community, yes or no? Yes. There’s nothing in the statement of this seed project description that violates any of the ten characteristics of the seed project. Well, these are just a few ways for us to test whether or not we understand those ten characteristics. Again, these characteristics are not laws, they’re not things that bind you, they’re guidelines. But the more of them that you can include in your seed project, the more successful, on the basis of our experience, the more successful it will be.

Okay, what I’d like to do is add three more things. We’ve learned the purpose, we’ve learned the benefits, we’ve learned the definition, we’ve the ten characteristics, now the final thing that I would like to focus with you on; three principles for long-term effectiveness of a seed project, there are three. They need to be balance, they need to be focused, and they need to be ongoing. Let me describe what we mean by that. Balanced means that we need to try to do our seed projects so that they demonstrate God’s love in all four of those areas. For example, here’s a graphic that will illustrate that. You’ve got one church, that’s your church, and you need to be doing demonstrations of God’s love in each area physically, socially, spiritually in the area of wisdom. That’s what we mean by balanced. So you don’t just only do seed projects in the area of the physical needs or the social needs. But when you do a given seed project, you try to think about how you can do that even that one seed project to demonstrate God’s love in all areas.

Number two, a seed project, to be effective long-term needs to be focused. What do we mean by that? It means to be a balanced ministry in all areas to the same recipients, to the same community. For example, look at this diagram. You’ve got your church, one church it’s doing seed projects in all of these four areas, but it’s focused on one community. To help us understand what we mean by that, let’s look at this question. What I call the focused question and this is the question. What do you think the long-term impact would be if your church did four community seed projects in each of the four areas, but you did a physical project in that

community, you did a social project with an emphasis on social needs, here you did spiritual, here you did wisdom. What would be the consequence? And if you only did those four, the consequence would be that that community over here would only see God’s love in the physical area, only see God’s love in the social area, the spiritual, the wisdom area. And we need the people who don’t know the Lord to be able to see his love in every area.

Okay, the final one is it needs to be ongoing. And that means many seed projects done over time. Another way to say that is that doing these projects, these demonstrations of God’s love is part of the DNA of the church. So when the community looks at your local church or thinks about it, it doesn’t think about it as only holding services on Sunday and Bible studies during the week. “Oh, that’s the church that has the feeding program. Oh, that’s the church that cleans up our streets. Oh, that’s the church that …” It needs to help the people in the community see that God is concerned about all areas. And the way we do that is we continue to do seed projects. This is not to be done as a response to this seminar or this class. It’s something that we get the idea from the class, but it becomes a lifestyle for our church. So this diagram helps us to see that. We have one church, we have the four areas, we have one community, and that community sees God’s good intentions for them on an ongoing basis not just once.

I want to show you an example of one church in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. And I talked to the pastor after his church had begun to do seed projects, they had been doing it about one year. I called him and I said, “Alex, I know you haven’t probably got a list of them in front of you, but tell me about the seed projects that you can recall that your church has done over the last year?” And this what he told me, I want you to let this sink in, these seed projects had happened in one year, in this one church, in one community. Number one, look at the chart, the fasted one meal a week and they used the resources of that fasting to feed hungry people. I wish I could tell you stories, the detail of the stories because some of them are incredible. They hosted a soccer league in their community that didn’t have a place to meet. They did a medical clinic, in the church, for people of the community. They did a childcare class for mothers of the community. They painted speed bumps, which they call in Honduras sleeping policeman. But they painted these speed bumps in the street because they were so high that when people who weren’t familiar with the area they would drive over them really damaged their cars because at night they couldn’t see them. So they painted these.

They ministered to the social needs of 20 alcoholics that they knew about in their church. They filled potholes in the streets and believe there were a lot of potholes in the streets. Now, that’s not all look at the next slide. This is a continuation of what this one church had done in one year. They collected clothes for needy children. They placed garbage barrels in the community to collect trash. They constructed concrete stairs on a steep path that got slippery when it rained. They distributed bed sheets to prisoners in their prisons and if you don’t, the prisons in Honduras don’t provide bed sheets or even mattresses at least at that time. They collected and distributed school supplies for the children who’s dad’s were in jail. That’s what Alex, the pastor remembered, he didn’t even have it written down but I wrote as he talked to me and he said,

“Bob, these are what I can remember of the projects that we did in one year.” That’s one church of maybe 200, maximum 300 people. Wow.

What do you think the people of that community thought about the people of God in that local church? Everybody knew about that church because they were different. These were people who really cared. What would happen if your church did the same thing? I want to, as we close this session, for you to look at another seed project. Actually, this is a church that did a series of seed projects. They encouraged their people, number one, to individually demonstrate God’s love in their businesses or among neighbors. Number two, they had play and game days for the children from a slum community nearby and they did this every week. They went to visit old people in old folks homes in the city of Curitiba, Brazil. And this video will just give you an example of the multiplicity of the kinds of seed projects that a given local church can do. This is a middle class community in Curitiba. Watch. Okay, now I’m going to give an assignment. Okay, are we still rolling?

Now that you have seen the video, you’ve seen about the definition, the purpose, the characteristics, and the long-term, what’s required for long-term benefits. I want to give you an assignment and the assignment is this, I want if you are working as an individual or if you’re working a cohort, with people that are right there or available to you on the internet. I want you to take a period of time without looking at this video again, without looking at your notes, and just see how many of these things that we’ve talked about in this session you can recall. I want you to talk about the five principles from Seeds. I want you to recall the two purposes, I want you to recall the four—part definition of the seed project. I want you to see how many of the benefits that you can remember. How many of the ten characteristics you can remember, and how many of the long-term effects and those principle you can remember, 27 of them. See how many of them you can come up with either by yourself or as a group and let us here. God Bless.

Contact: Dr. Eva Vaylann actMED e. V.actMED e. V. (www.actmed.org)email: coramdeo@actmed.org

or Disciple Nations Alliance info@disciplenations.org

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