Targeting

Manual for Engagement
by Pari Rickard and Michael Cordich

Target 2000 Frontier Missions Office, Amsterdam

Where should our DTS/Impact team/King's Kids/Operation Year go on outreach? How can we multiply our efforts in evangelism? How can we ensure lasting fruit for our labours?

These questions are asked and asked again each year on our teams and bases. Is there an answer? We believe there is and the answer is serious targeting; hearing from God a particular nation, city, or people group. The material in this unit is condensed from is from 'UNREACHED BUT NOT UNREACHABLE: A Manual for Engagement of Unreached Peoples in the Decade of the '90s.' (It has been called the 'Readers Digest Version'.) If we follow the guidelines in this section we will discover a way of maximising our skills, and resources. The manual is available from YWAM TARGET 2000 Frontier Missions Office, Harpenden

Target 2000 --- All Nations, All Peoples
Objective: To complete our part of the Great Commission by targeting, engaging and pioneering in least evangelised nations, world-class cities and unreached people groups and megapeoples in order to raise up or facilitate ministries and/or indigenous multiplying churches equipped to evangelise within and out from their nation, city or people.

Goals

 * Engage and/or pioneer the over 450 world-class cities by 2000 AD. (With a special emphasis on the 109 least evangelised cities.
 * Engage and/or pioneer by the year 2000 all nations where there is currently no YWAM presence. (With a special Emphasis on the 40 least evangelised nations.)
 * Engage and/or pioneer 150 unevangelised megapeoples by 2000 AD as well as other unreached peoples.

The 1988 TARGET 2000 goals crystallised our mission's commitment to refocus on the world's unreached peoples. Those leaders present laid our objectives and plans centred around four stages of missions activity: Targeting, Engaging, Pioneering, and Multiplying for the spread of the Gospel to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Tribals, and Chinese unreached people groups.

This unit of the manual gives the main headings for the four stages.

Stage 1 Target
Target: to prayerfully choose a city, nation or people group with the objective of bringing the Gospel to all of its individuals and strategically planting an indigenous movement of evangelising churches.

Targeting involves the decision of where to initially aim and the process of prayerful research for keys to the evangelisation of a specific people group found in a nation or city. This decision is often made through intercession, trailblazing trips into the area containing the unreached people group, divine guidance and through research.

Stage 2 Engage
Engage: to set aside resources, conduct plans and send people with a view of interceding, making contacts, developing a team, and executing a strategy for pioneering long-term work in order to disciple people in a targeted city, nation or people group.

To 'engage' involves the beginnings of the actual implementation of the strategy---first at the base---but also on the field.

Stage 3 Pioneer
Pioneer: to pioneer is to establish a mission work, or an indigenous fellowship/multiplying church where there has been no church, with the intent of reaching into the targeted population with the gospel.

A location is pioneered when teams are in location, the work is established and the Gospel is beginning to multiply into individuals' lives, new churches and the surrounding society. Normally this cannot be done in less than five to seven years.

Stage 4 Multiplying
Multiply: without multiplication of the church in mission, the results of our evangelism can fade out with the next generation, One of the primary purposes of establishing the church in an unreached people group is to provide for the discipling of new believers, enabling them to evangelise and disciple their generation and reach out with the Gospel to other 'ta ethnae' who have not heard.

Steps in Targeting

 * Appoint and anoint 'watchmen'. No vision can become a reality unless someone is designated to carry it out. They will need the time, authority, ability and resources to do their job.
 * Develop a burden for the lost on the base. Discover what burdens for the lost that the staff members on the base already have and encourage them. Look to see what further burdens the Lord wants to give.
 * Adjust your course to do the job. Deciding on the right strategy for your base will require a reassessment of your base's present activities and goals.

Steps in Engaging

 * Build relationships with the field. Most of our activities in YWAM are 'field-led' so as much relationship as possible will be needed. Because the task of reaching a whole people is so great there will need to be coordination with others with the same target.
 * Do on-site field research. Preliminary research can be done from home but only on-site research will provide enough information to formulate appropriate strategies. Use whatever teams possible to research: individuals, couples, DTS, Summer-of-Service, Impact teams, King's Kids....
 * Develop Strategy Plan the activities, sequences, people and resources to accomplish your objective.
 * Recruit for all schools and teams with a long-term view in mind. Challenge young people to forsake all and go. Give them the facts about how rough it will be and expect them to go.
 * Design training programmes for frontier missions. 'Sending our frontier missions/church planting teams/relief and development teams without training them is like sending a fireman to a fire without any water!'
 * Develop support structures for teams. It should cover pastoral, strategic and logistic support. Because of the duration of the endeavour these need to be long-term support.

Steps in Pioneering

 * Plant churches that multiply. Consult the following materials prepared by George Patterson and Kevin Sutter: 'Church Planting Guide', 'Pastoral Training Manual', and 'Pastoral Studies'.
 * Recognise the different YWAM bases involved in the venture. Different bases will have different roles: multiplying bases help coordinate and assist teams and other bases by identifying, locating and describing the harvest field and mobilising a mission force to reach them; service bases is strategically located so as to bridge workers into sensitive or restricted locations; frontline bases are usually pioneering into areas of critical need.
 * Minister to all spheres of society. While it is certainly true that the salvation of the individual is the ultimate goal, there is no historical record of lasting righteous change in a nation without the initial existence of local churches. Furthermore, church planting without committed action to meet the needs of the
 * surrounding people invariably has led to the alienation of the church from the people it sought to save.
 * Dig in for the long haul. It will take a long-term commitment to provide the nurturing environment in which the new converts can grow to maturity and be able to stand, reproduce and affect the nation.
 * Stay on target. Missions history has shown that many missions and missionaries have been diverted from their original calling due to the greater receptiveness of another local people group than the one they are trying to reach. The Lord may expand or add to the original vision but he is unlikely to abandon the original vision.
 * Depend on other missions and missionaries. It is important to remember that there are still many other organisations with much more experience than we have. It is to our advantage to seek the advice and counsel of those who are more experienced. We don't need to repeat the mistakes of others.

Steps in Multiplying
Every work or church pioneered by YWAM should become a staging ground for multiplication until the task is finished. As we see the work of the Gospel multiplied, we must always remember that our end goal is not just multiplication but it is to present before the throne of Jesus those who know and love Him from every ethnic nation, tribe, tongue and people. By God's grace, this we shall do.

Where then should our teams and individuals go on outreach? How then can we multiply our efforts in evangelism? How then can we ensure lasting fruit for our labours?