Disciples of the Nations: Multiplying Disciples and Churches in Global Contexts

By Paul Sungro Lee and Rollin A. Van Broekhoven

Written by someone who lived and experienced cross-cultural mission proportionally each in America, Africa, and Asia, Disciples of the Nations provides readers both practical and scholarly models of the world mission in the context of global multiplication of discipleship and church planting. Field-tested and validated effective through empirical researches, Professor Paul Lee and the Evangelical Alliance for Preacher Training/Commission team expanded the kingdom of God into fifteen countries of Africa and Asia by producing thousands of disciples and planting over three hundred local churches through the multiplication of Christian leadership training. Lee shares the secret of the exponential growth in this unprecedented volume. This is a must-read for anyone aspiring to be used by God to manifest a kingdom-building lifestyle in cross-cultural contexts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Feb 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781725290815

Paul Sungro Lee

PAUL SUNGRO LEE is International Director of the Evangelical Alliance for Preacher Training/Commission, a ministry that trains Christian leaders and facilitates church plants around the world. A scholar-practitioner of the world mission, he is the author of Missionary Candidate Training and Disciples of the Nations among others. With his wife, Eunice, he has ministered in America, Africa, and Asia, including the gospel-restricted countries, and is a leading voice of the global missionary movement.

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Prologue

When I first wrote Missionary Candidate Training: Raising Up Third World Missionaries, I had the dimmest clue that it would be translated into the major world languages and put into use in various churches and schools of the Majority World as their missionary training text. It has encouraged me to carry out this daunting task of a book writing again. Since then, further and deeper investigations have been articulated in the quest for fruitful cross-cultural discipleship and church planting that might work in global contexts.

I’m a firm believer in cross-cultural discipleship. I also believe in the Great Commission, which should be a life mandate and practice of everyone who professes Christ as Lord and Savior. Having lived and ministered for equal portions in Asia, America, and Africa and seen God using this scared, reluctant, and introverted man and my international team to disciple Christian leaders of all ages and to plant over three hundred churches to impact fifteen nations of Africa and Asia for nearly a quarter-century in partnership with organizations like the Christian and Missionary Alliance, among a dozen others, my conviction became solid. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to merely share my experience but to validate it through research. Hence, the research reflected in this book has been scientifically validated to provide objective data for the readers. This book aims to help readers grasp a sense of real, tangible missionary work.

All in all, this is a byproduct of my love story with Jesus, who found me years ago while I was still seeking God and life purpose. I’ve sensed God’s unchanging love throughout my life despite all my shortcomings and mistakes. He is the one I wish to magnify in this book, not anyone else. I pray you will likewise sense his love as you go through the pages. This book is, by no means, a complete reference for world mission. Yet, it is my humble prayer that this mere collection of my experience and research in Africa and Asia may serve as a reminder that God is still willing and able to use anyone who is committed to following him and his mandate to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). It portrays a confirmed life story of a man and his co-laborers who endeavored to follow Christ in the United States, Kenya, South Korea, and the Philippines. Readers will, of course, need to transliterate the contents into their own time and space to make it more relevant to suit the contextualized demands of one’s community.

I must mention that I’m deeply grateful to Les Norman, whose visionary work and humble life in Nottingham, England, has served as an example of a disciple-maker for the nations and inspired many around the world. Hosung Maeng of rMaeng2 and Wipf and Stock Publishers has helped the publication of this book in every way. His continuous support and motivation are saturated in every page of this book. A good portion of the book content came from what I taught at the International Graduate School of Leadership and other Christian and Missionary Alliance–related seminaries around the world. My students helped me acquire valuable missiological insights since they represented fairly over twenty nationalities, many of whom came to study from the Creative Access Regions. Numerous disciples of the nations of past, present, and future—they are my inspiration, source, and reason for this book.

Paul Sungro Lee

March 2020

Part I

Called from the Nations

1

Tugging of God

Learning Years

But you stay here with me so that I may give you all the commands, decrees and laws you are to teach them to follow in the land I am giving them to possess. (Deuteronomy

5

:

32

)

It is one thing for someone to love football and play it for a hobby; it’s another thing for him to play football for living as a professional. Certainly, there is a different level of commitment involved. The former may not need to go through extra challenges and hardships of training but just indulge in the excitement of the sport. However, the latter should seriously consider various factors involved in his career and dauntlessly welcome both the pros and cons of commitment. Likewise, I tend to perceive that knowing about missions somewhat differs from knowing missions. This book was written with that principle in mind. After all, it is a blend of research and fieldwork.

God impressed upon my heart many years ago what has become a significant initiative of this book. I have witnessed discipleship multiplied in chains at parachurch ministries like Cru (also known as Campus Crusade for Christ), which has its presence in some 190 countries.¹ I’ve also learned the same principle working in local church settings when I attended the Called to Awaken the Laity seminar of Disciple Making Ministries International in cooperation with Sarang Community Church, one of the largest Presbyterian churches in the world with sixty thousand members in Seoul, Korea.² However, I desired to see if the multiplication of discipleship could also take place in cross-cultural contexts. I believe I have read virtually every book on cross-cultural discipleship. On top of what the Lord has taught me through those wonderful learning experiences I mentioned, the greatest source of learning, testing, and validation came from what God has been doing through the Evangelical Alliance for Preacher Training/Commission (EAPTC) in diverse parts of the world since 1996. My cross-cultural encounters in Africa and Asia while working with EAPTC virtually paved the way. I have still tarried many years to write this book because I wanted to put into practice firsthand what I was theorizing and see if it indeed worked on the field. I desired it to be a balanced attempt of both orthodoxy (right thinking) and orthopraxis (right practice) in the world mission effort. I wanted to know what I was talking about.

Crossing Cultures

. . . Make disciples of all nations . . . (Matthew

28

:

19

)

The Holy Spirit, the Mastermind behind every missionary works, still does make disciples of all nations. He is calling you today to labor with him for this honorable yet inevitable task—either by sending or by going. But the foremost task remains. How will you incubate all the nations in your heart first so that you may go and make disciples?

It was one sunny yet chilly spring afternoon in the 1980s that I was called by my high school teacher at her office back in the western United States. One of my subject teachers sternly rebuked me and said, You don’t seem to be paying attention to my words. I rarely see you making eye contact with me both in classes and in private meetings. I inhaled deeply, suspecting that my body language had been utterly misunderstood by my teacher, who must have had a genuine concern for me.

My family had just immigrated to a suburban Denver, Colorado, from South Korea. My father found a new job at a local factory while my mother started working at a nearby hotel gift shop. I was enrolled at a public high school and soon found out that I was the only kid who didn’t speak in English in the entire school. My younger brother had even harder times to adjust to his new junior high school. All Lees were struggling in this new settlement that they just ventured into in the United States.

Ironically, my parents did not inform me and my brother earlier about our immigration plan until it reached only two weeks before departure, fearing that we might stop studying hard and become slack and possibly drop out of school in Korea. We were unprepared for what was about to come! Suddenly, I became a fresh immigrant trying to settle in different environments, which I’ve never been previously exposed to. Apart from language acquisition, I was besieged with many new American cultures that I had to familiarize myself with.

One of them was my behavior toward teachers. Back then, it was unthinkable for me to look at authority figures eye to eye, having been accustomed to Asian cultures. Any decent Asian boy and girl would be expected to avoid direct eye contact with teachers and to stare ten to fifteen degrees below their eyes as a sign of respect toward elders. I was crossing cultures, and it wasn’t easy.

In late 2001, I traveled to Burkina Faso, a landlocked West African country, to minister at a pastors’ seminar in the capital city of Ouagadougou. My wife, Eunice, and I had worked as missionaries in Kenya for years by then. I thought I had become quite acquainted with ardent African worship style—but not with this one. There I saw a group of attendees who were praising God by clapping their hands vertically rather than horizontally! It was one bewildering scene, at least to me. Moreover, I soon felt like an odd one out because I kept clapping my hands horizontally while most did so vertically during the praise session. Psalm 47:1 instructs us by saying, Clap your hands, all you nations. Shout to God with the voice of triumph. However, the Bible does not specify how to clap our hands. Crossing cultures certainly has many learning curves.

Eunice and our two children relocated with me to the Philippines in 2016 to team up with the International Graduate School of Leadership (IGSL), which Bill Bright founded in Manila for Christian leadership training. In one of those early days of our adjustment to Manila life, my son, Titus, came home for dinner after playing basketball with Filipino kids in the neighborhood. Somewhat displeased, he began to share about his basketball match at the dinner table. Dad, it was kind of awkward. Those Filipino guys were trying to kiss me at the match! Eunice and I were confused (and frankly concerned) about exactly what had happened that day and decided to investigate further the very next day. As we obscurely guessed, we soon discovered that it was a Filipino way of pointing directions with a lip that Titus encountered during the game. We couldn’t help but laugh only to learn that those kids were pointing to Titus where to pass the ball! He was obviously unaware of such a cultural distinctive. Crossing from one culture to another surely requires adequate preparations.

First Timothy 2:4 confirms that God’s heart desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Making disciples in cross-cultural contexts has been both my life and struggle, which has made me continue to research and experiment as a scholar-practitioner of world mission. I’ve attempted to approach sound intercultural lifestyle in its relation to the biblical world mission in this writing. Heaven will be a place of diversity. We’d better get used to it first from this side of eternity.

Unseen Hand

My intercultural life story began with the unseen hand of God orchestrating the whole panorama on the backstage. Before I came to the Philippines, I had lived approximately a third of my life in Korea, the next third in the United States, and the other third in Kenya. I would have never dreamt nor planned such a roller coaster on my pathway. It certainly took a tender leading of the Master’s hand to guide me so.

I was born into a family with strong Confucian beliefs and minor Buddhist practices. Neither of these religions quenched my spiritual fervor in childhood. It was in my teenage years that I was led by a friend to attend church. He didn’t exactly lead me to Christ, but somehow enticed me to some girls in the church youth group, whom I initially found more appealing. During the 70s and 80s, South Korea was passing the pinnacle of national revival and church growth. A native of South Korea, one of the blessings I’ve witnessed was to see firsthand some of those megachurches with unprecedented quantitative church growth in history, riding on the wave of nationwide revival. Though somewhat controversial with the means to measure the true size of churches, it is undeniable that South Korea still dominates a chart of some of the largest congregations in the world. Many gospel rallies, often citywide, were held in those days of my youth. One day I found out that one of the girls I was pursuing in the youth group was going to a gospel rally. I was naturally inclined to follow her to the meeting.

While my sole interest at that time was to win the heart of this girl, I cringed at the size of the crowd. It was a massive meeting, possibly tens of thousands gathered from all corners of Seoul. I could barely see the preacher from a distance where I was seated. Still baffled by this new experience, the preacher’s voice unexpectedly lit a beacon into my soul. He asserted that out of God’s love Jesus came to die for my sins and to give me a new life. It suddenly dawned on me. I had never heard in Buddhism that Buddha loved me so much that he died in my place. Not a single time I could recall that Confucius loved me to the point of dying for me, let alone anyone. My heart was greatly stirred to wonder why then this Jesus would do such a strange thing for me when I did not even ask for it. It was a revolutionary message to me. Moreover, I had always wanted to live a meaningful life and thus thought Jesus could help me live it. The message of the cross captivated my soul. Why could a stranger take the place of my punishment and love me through such a horrible execution? The Son of God extended his invitation for me to accept his love and will in my life and a chance to live most meaningfully by following him. It was on that day the God I’d been searching for met me in person and showed me what my life and I were worthy of. I realized that I was worthy of the cost of the life of God’s Son. With tears rolling on my cheek, I found myself responding to the preacher’s call to pray to invite Jesus into my life. It was one unforgettable day that only what would come afterward would show me the true meaning of.

From Asia to America

I wasn’t yet sure of what God would have me to do in my life even after that extraordinary day. I still struggled to find a clear purpose in my life. Challenges in studies, peer pressures in and out of school, and temptations from the surroundings did not fade away. But two things were obviously different. I never suffered again from constant nightmares, which had kept disturbing me now and then before I invited Jesus into my life. I was free from those horrendous night haunters. My fears were drowned in the perfect love of Christ. Besides, I began to sense the gentle tugging of God’s unseen hand at every turn of my life. It was initially surreal but it always came with strong convictions. It began to dawn on me that it was God calling me and preparing me for what he would have me to do for the nations in the years to come.

Jesus was constantly knocking at the door of my heart from the early days of my life. I can recall that there was always a Christian friend, teacher, or neighbor whom God used to draw me closer to him. Even after having encountered Christ in my life, his tugging continued. From the moments when I was tempted to sin to the times when I needed strength to get up on my feet again from setbacks, he was there for me.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. (Revelation

3

:

20

)

My teenage years as a new immigrant in the U.S. began rather dumbfounded. Often frustrated and discouraged, I was drawn nearer to the Lord each time I felt downcast. I had surrendered the control of my youthful passion to Christ. Amid many challenging circumstances, unexplainable joy began to overflow my soul every day, and I couldn’t help but share the gospel with my family and my high school rosters. Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God,³ Pierre de Chardin once said. That immense joy is what captivated my soul and energized my day-to-day life. One by one, within two years my family also came to the knowledge of the Savior. From family to friends, I found it exhilarating to tell others about the Lord whom I met and who leads the steps of my life.

As the number of friends in my high school coming to the Lord increased, a praise band was formed for greater outreach, which later became known as the Psalm 150 ministry. The group was mostly composed of my high school friends who used to be rockers, drug addicts, and even gang members, and experienced dramatic transformation after finding Jesus. We shared the gospel one on one at our schools on weekdays and frequently performed at local churches on weekends. I saw this group leading over three hundred high school students in my town by the time I left for college. It was an amazing adventure! I felt I had embarked on what God had in store for my life calling.

First Love

In those years, I fell in love with Jesus for the first time. I was in