WE CANNOT DO IT ALONE. We reach our goals by building teams. We need others’ gifts, talents, and resources to see church-planting movements occur. First, we team with God by assessing how He is at work and how we can join Him. Then, we gather others around the vision for a CPM among a people group. As this group prays, plans, and works together, a Holy Spirit produced synergy results in a greater advance for the Kingdom than any one person or organization could foster alone.

Each team is made up of three groups of people. First, there are IMB missionaries. These missionaries were appointed to work within a specific people group to win them to Christ and to help facilitate a church-planting movement. But on the mission field there are often many Great Commission Christians (GCCs) representing many different organizations all working toward evangelizing the same group of people. We search for those out of this second group of missionaries that have a heart for church planting and ask them to join us in accomplishing this God-given task of a church-planting movement. Most importantly, national believers make up the third group of partners on each team, for they are the ones who will continue the task of church planting long after the rest of us have gone.

While implementing FIRST priorities, teams seek to develop the following attributes:

Just as God covenanted with us, so we seek to covenant with one another as a basis for a good community. These covenants define how we will be with one another and what unites us.

The team must have a clear sense of divine mission that is visionary. The visionary team is focused, goal oriented, and prayerful.

A team’s culture supports the values of the kingdom of God and follows the vision set before them. Creating such a culture keeps the team aware of its covenant and cause. A strong team culture keeps the team focused on what God calls it to do and be.

A ministry team whose members covenant together to give visionary leadership creates a kingdom culture that models collaboration and trust—a necessity to being used by God.

The team’s responsibility is to give away responsibility. Their task is to empower others so that they may learn, grow, and be all that God calls them to be.

Teams must be learning and developing. They are growing communities that are being shaped by the Spirit more and more into the image of God.