The Dagara Team Approach

Above all else, we work for the glory of God. We long to see Him glorified both in our lives and among the Dagara people. To that end, we have written three guiding principles for our team, each of which will be unpacked in the paragraphs that follow:

1. We strive to be spirit-filled disciples of Christ seeking God's glory.
2. By God's grace, we intend to plant indigenous churches and empower Dagara Christians to be a light to the lost.
3. Prior to phase out we hope to witness a lasting people movement of Christ's church among the Dagara.

First, we know that we minister to the Dagara only out of the overflow of our relationship with God. Therefore, we must maintain our own spiritual health. We work at this in a number of different ways:

• We meet together for English worship every Sunday. While we know worshipping with Dagara Christians in their villages is good, Dagara will never be our hearts' primary language. Although the hour during the day is flexible, this time of worship is a priority and not to be sacrificed to village visits.
• We meet weekly in same-sex prayer/accountability groups. During these times we share struggles and successes, joys and hardships, praises and requests, all in an atmosphere of encouragement, humility, and love.
• We meet every other Tuesday as a team for prayer. The other Tuesday is a team business meeting.
• We have a midweek Bible study / singing time.

We recognize that our ministry will be empty and hollow if we are not ourselves attuned to the heart of God. Therefore, we are constantly trying to improve our walk with God by ourselves, in our families, in our relationships with teammates, and in our relationships with Dagara friends.

Second, we are here to plant many village churches. We come only with God's word; we are not in the business of constructing church buildings, passing out money, or buying motorcycles for those who agree to become evangelists, nor do we seek out churches stateside to support individuals here. We do our best to equip each church to be self-sustaining and self-reproducing from its first founding. We follow this basic strategy:

• Choose a village for which we have a contact person (i.e., friend, worker, Christian from another village).
• Visit this village several times, getting permission from the village chief and elected delegate, as well as setting up a time for our initial teaching sessions.
• Teach through our series of 14 evangelistic lessons, offering baptism near the end of the series.
• Encourage these groups of people that come to Christ to meet and honor him in worship on Sunday mornings, to take the Lord's supper, and to serve him throughout their lives.
• Pray with and work alongside those called by God from these villages to spread the news to their friends, neighbors, and neighboring villages.

Third, although we are committed to being here for this season of our lives (roughly 7-10 years), we have come with the knowledge that some day we will be leaving. When that day comes, the Dagara churches must be able to stand on their own and continue expanding God's kingdom in Burkina Faso and beyond. Therefore, from the first moment Christians accept the Lord, we encourage them to make the church their own. As the churches mature and face different problems, we present them with biblical teachings and insights that have some bearing on the issues at hand, but we encourage the Christians to make the final decisions themselves. In this manner, we hope that the church among the Dagara will not merely survive our departure but will in fact flourish once we get out of the way!