Program Overview
Preface
As you explore this site and learn about Truth Centered Transformation, please remember that NO PROGRAM, BY ITSELF, CAN TRANSFORM LIVES. Transformation happens as people walk in obedience to God, understand His truth, and apply it to all areas of their life. This program teaches people to realize and apply God’s truth. However, IT IS GOD ALONE WHO PRODUCES TRANSFORMATION. The real recipe for success includes prayer and fasting, seeking God, and daring to walk in obedience to Him even when it does not make sense. This program is simply a tool—a very ordinary tool.
Wholistic Discipleship
This is not a community development program. Our focus is wholistically discipling churches. While one of our key goals is to see communities move out of poverty, our experience has shown that this has happened as a result of wholistically discipled churches acting in obedience to God.
For us, wholistic discipleship is made up of these four areas (there are more on each in the section: core principles):
- Understanding how the Bible applies to every area of life. For many, the sacred-secular divide has impacted their thinking, leaving them believing that only those things related to spiritual practices or moral issues are important to God. Many Christians have little understanding of how their faith impacts areas such as health, family relations, agriculture, money management (aside from tithing) and work. As people start to understand how the Bible speaks to each of these areas, they start to mature and change.
- Truth. Satan’s lies—in the form of fatalism, superstition, and fear (to name a few of the most common)—often keep people from trying to change. The lie that Christianity only saves us from hell means that many Christians have no vision for life on earth. We need to understand God’s truth to really be discipled and grow wholistically.
- Skills training. Even if a Christian understands they need to care for their health, they don’t always know how. We offer training in areas such as health, marriage, parenting, money management, and agriculture so that Christians have the skills to do these things well.
- God’s intervention. We understand that our efforts alone are not enough. We believe that as we try to obey God in all areas of our life, seeking Him, He will bring change to our communities.
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:14
Program Outline
The program has three goals, to see:
- God glorified.
- Churches strengthened and growing in number.
- Communities move out of poverty.
The program consists of:
- ten training modules for churches,
- which take place approximately every 6 months over five years.
- Each module is taught over 3-4 days.
This structure provides churches time to apply the principles before they receive more training. We believe that the trainings themselves will not generate change. Rather, it is the application of these ideas and obedience to God that will foster transformation.
Typically Local Facilitators (trainers) work part-time for us, visiting with each church between trainings, encouraging them to apply their new-found knowledge.
The objectives of the training are to:
- Help churches to understand God’s truth as it applies to every aspect of life and overcome the lies that hold them in poverty.
- Encourage churches to use their own resources to demonstrate God’s love to those around them.
- Teach basic skills in areas such as money management, health, agriculture, marriage and family.
We also produce a magazine that encourages the churches with stories and testimonies from other areas, reinforces the ideas in the trainings, and brings additional basic teaching. Often we hear stories of a church reading a testimony of what one church did and then replicating that project in its own community.
Program Participants
This program is designed to work with churches in small, poor, highly collective, rural communities.
If you desire to use this material in an urban area or among the materially non-poor, please see the Frequently Asked Questions and contact us regarding adaptation and limitations.
Simple practical training
to help churches
experience God’s
transforming power in
every area of life
© 2021 Reconciled World
