His Kingdom
Come

In June 2019, Nathan and Brooke Dissanayeke, along with children Bella, 6, and Malachi, 2, left their home in Newcastle and moved to Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo to plant a new church called ‘The Brave’. Here they share some of their learnings and challenges so far, and the hope they hold for their city and their nation.

How have the first months been settling into a new country?

We are now eight months into our journey and still only feel like we have just arrived into the craziness of city life here in Colombo. We are, however, starting to get into a rhythm and feeling like this is becoming home. We are growing closer as a family.

We are also now a registered and licensed travel agency. This helped us get our visa to live here and it is exciting but we know this will take some years before we see return from investment.

Have there been any challenges or are things as you expected?

We still miss our home, our friends, family, church and road rules! Life is harder and we feel isolated, and there is also the stress of trying to keep normal family life, finances and friendships. We know these are all normal feelings when moving to a new country and although we are unsure how it will unfold, we take one step at a time into the unknown knowing we are in the footstep God has made for us each day.

What is your heart for The Brave and how do you hope to build it?*

We believe it is important to build the church from the inside out. For us, that means not only building a strong local team but investing in and raising a strong local pastor who will work alongside us to build the church. Having a pastor who understands the culture and language will help us to reach and influence people and it will also build trust with the churches around us. We have had a few conversations with a key pastor who wants to be part of what we are doing, and we are working on how this will look and work moving forward.

Our heart is also for the church to be centred around life/connect groups, rather than just another thing the church does on the side. We are looking to launch our first connect group during 2020 and to use it to start building foundations for what will be our church. As we build connect groups, our aim is then to launch interest services either once a month or every other month. By the end of 2020, we are wanting to officially start regular services in the heart of the city.

Lastly, we plan to launch ‘The Brave Pathways’ – a personal and leadership development program for senior pastors and key leaders. We know that a lot of people have trouble with burnout, stress and communication. There is a stigma here where you have to have everything together and we want to break this stigma and bring a new freedom and joy in being who God has created us to be. We really feel that the

Church in Sri Lanka has lost its joy. If we can help the pastors and leaders ignite their own freedom and joy, we know this will flow through the Church.

How have you been able to start laying the groundwork for The Brave during 2019?

We continue to meet and talk with new people, sowing seeds and sharing our heart for what we are doing here, and we believe God will keep bringing the right people into our lives to build the church. We are also building our relationships with a few key churches which are kingdom minded and excited to support what we are doing. We want to build a kingdom culture of churches working alongside each other to reach this nation. This is something that is especially important in Sri Lanka as there is so much division and distrust between all the churches.

We are excited for what’s ahead and what God is going to do in building His Church. We feel privileged that He wants to use us in this process. We are also so grateful for all the prayers, messages and support from Australia. We could not build this on our own and believe that with this support, we will see a move of God like never before in this nation.

*Due to COVID-19 restrictions during the first half of 2020, Nathan and Brooke have launched the Brave Church online and have also started delivering their mentoring sessions online too.

In a nutshell, what does the ‘sending’ process look like?

“We like to think of the sending process as a coaching process. Every field worker applicant already comes with a range of skills, training, experiences and qualifications, and our goal is to help them move from where they are now, to using all that previous learning, skills and experience on the mission field. We want to identify the gaps in their learning, skills and experience, and target those areas in their preparation. For example, an experienced pastor going to church plant overseas probably does not require any additional ministry training but will need to increase their understanding of cross-cultural communication. On the other hand, a qualified social worker going to work as part of an overseas children’s ministry or project, will need to learn family, cultural and community dynamics, the different legal child protection frameworks in that country, and they may also need to do some supplementary ministry training. The social worker might also have no experience fundraising or engaging supporters for their ministry vision, whereas the experienced pastor will probably be able to draw upon their experience of engaging their church.”

What are the most common challenges people encounter when preparing for life in the field?

“The most common areas we need to help people work through are their own assumptions, which are based on the culture they are coming from, as we don’t want to see them carrying that cultural bias to the field. It is also a big change adjusting from short-term missions to long-term missions. We work to proactively identify and address these skill, knowledge and experience gaps with learning opportunities, training, or even short-term field experiences. The topics that we have put into our Intercultural Missions Course are the most common collection of missing knowledge items – or the knowledge items that require life-long learning, like growing in cultural intelligence – so we believe that will play a big role in preparing and equipping people.”

What are the benefits of missionaries having ACCI backing, rather than trying to go it alone?

“Networking with other cross-cultural workers, a peer support network, as well as opportunities to connect and engage with Australian churches. We also offer ongoing coaching because as people stay in the field, exploring new opportunities, they will continue to unearth more of these ‘gaps’ in their knowledge and understanding, as well as just through the normal change of seasons. The ACCI team has a mix of skills in finance, support-raising, systems, organisation and management, cross-cultural communications, community development, and so on. The team can give wise advice in times of change and at any point during a missionary’s journey. Lastly, ACCI has the systems to manage the finance side of things, so our missionaries can focus on the ministry and activities that they are called to.”

“Why didn’t somebody tell me about this before I came here?”

Preparing for life and ministry in another cultural context is no trivial matter! Particularly if it’s someone’s first time engaging in long-term overseas missions. We’ve heard this agonised question too many times! In response, ACCI has created a new online intercultural missions training course, which covers the perspectives and skills most relevant to engaging in effective cross-cultural life and ministry.

Here, John Symons and Ian Grant, the course’s creators, describe how completing this training can help anyone with a passion for God’s mission in the world! In particular, IMC will empower new field workers to maximise their impact once they arrive in their ministry context.

“How will this course help me prepare for long-term field work?”

“The content in these modules emerged from a comprehensive survey of our experienced field workers. We urged them to tell us what perspectives, principles and skills they considered were necessary for new cross-cultural witnesses. We believe that the 11 modules we’ve crafted, filmed and field-tested, will help people think through at least three critical areas: the attitudes with which they’ll approach their field ministry, what they’re going to do, and how they’ll go about it.

Engaging with the IMC perspectives will save both potential misunderstandings and time, once you’re amongst the people to whom you’re called. It’ll hopefully also prevent you from reinventing the wheel, setting off in a wrong direction, and ending up with broken relationships. Completing the course will challenge your attitudes, provide motivation, and instil confidence that you can start well, and genuinely learn your way into a great future!”

“So, how does this course differ from other training I might have already undergone, like university or Bible college degrees?”

“Our course is designed to challenge mindsets, provoke thinking and impart vital skills, rather than to provide a ‘complete knowledge base’ for people. It’s designed to initiate people into the whole cross-cultural dimension, by raising awareness of issues that are generally invisible when working in a largely mono-cultural context. We desire to make you go and discover more, or to provoke further enquiry in a specific area that you think you’ll need in your ministry context.

IMC is very strongly focused on the range of work in which ACCI mission, relief and development workers in particular, are likely to be engaged. It’s quite pragmatic, and oriented to the process through which onboarding team members will progress, in order to become ACCI field workers. Being able to craft the course this way was one of the motivations for creating it. We do strongly encourage people to also choose any other qualification, education or training that will accurately qualify them for their anticipated ministry context.”

“How important is it that people engage with these insights and skills before they embark on long-term field work?”

“No one course, can provide all the answers, or help people avoid all the pitfalls, however, we believe IMC will push people in the right direction. Its most important result is that it will help focus your mind on asking the right questions! This will get you thinking in the right direction and pursuing the right information, which should launch you in the right direction. It will also hopefully improve your ability to deal with pitfalls, should you stumble upon them!”

“How can people get the most out of it?

“We’d say that as you engage with, and work through this course, you’ll need to be thinking about how the materials you’re reading and hearing impacts the context in which you intend to minister. For example, how does it impact the ministry in which I anticipate I’ll be involved? You’ll need to engage with the course on that level and discuss the issues that arise from that thinking with their field supervisor.”

“I’m in! Can I sign up for free?”

“Yes, you can sign up immediately! And you get our first module, and one other module for free! The course is online right now, at acci.talentlms.com/catalog and can be started at any time, with new modules being released every month.”

Module 1 – Welcome! God’s Mission – Your Place! Available now!
Module 2 – A Biblical Theology of Mission. Available now!
Module 3 – Culture, Worldview and Belief Systems. Available now!
Module 4 – Cross-Cultural Communication Strategies. Available now!
Module 5 – Biblical Responses to Injustice. Available now!
Module 6 – Planting and Developing Churches in Context. Available now!
Module 7 – Self and Family Care. Available July 1, 2020
Module 8 – Working with Others on the Field. Available July 1, 2020
Module 9 – Managing Effective Ministries and Organisations. Available August 1, 2020
Module 10 – Supporter and Funding Engagement. Available September 1, 2020
Module 11 – Child Safe. Available January, 2021

It wasn’t long after Phillip Porcheron was saved that he felt God calling him to missions. Not knowing where or how God would use him, Phillip began serving faithfully in his church, taking whatever opportunity he could to learn and grow in his faith. He served as a musician, home group leader, deacon and later, as a lay pastor. He also attended Bible college and worked with Teen Challenge as a counsellor and coordinator.

In 2007, some 25 years after he first felt the call to full-time missions, Phillip moved to the island of Samar in the Philippines. After working initially with pastors he’d established relationships with during previous short-term trips, Phillip began forging new paths. Since 2017, he’s ministered in Catarman City, northern Samar, a very underdeveloped region where people lead very basic lives.

Here Phillip works in partnership with the Filipino AOG to run a Bible college program, through ICI College, for potential pastors who will one day plant churches in the area. “It is difficult to get graduates from Bible colleges outside of the area to volunteer to be pastors in northern Samar, as conditions here are difficult for pioneering, [so] the best option for securing long-term pastoral leadership is to raise up local church members who demonstrate a potential for leadership,” he says.

Phillip also ministers in existing churches in his area and is heavily involved with getting any new church plants off the ground; often providing initial ministry and administrative support. With the help of teams from Australia and local churches, he also runs evangelistic campaigns in Samar to help lay the groundwork for future churches. In fact, in June 2019 during one of these campaigns, he and the visiting team from Australia saw more than 1,000 people give their life to Christ, with many also receiving prayer and experiencing miraculous healings.

“[We then] follow up those who make a commitment to Christ at the crusades, develop Bible study groups with these converts and eventually form these groups into house churches,” Phillip says. “Once the churches are established, then larger facilities can be rented for holding services and allowing for growth. At that point, the churches will be registered with the [Filipino AOG] … and administered under the local district leader.”

In 2020, Phillip will continue to train and develop leaders and assist with church plants; he also plans to start a Bible study in his home. “Eventually, I hope to develop this into a house church and raise up a local leader to become the pioneer pastor of the church,” Phillip says.