This post was written by Coleen Harvey about her experience working with the Catalytic team in Romania.In May I had the privilege of living in Romania and observing the team there. An Expedition Team was working in one of the cities that we visited so that was fun for me, too. In comparison to ministry in other places, it was a joy for me to find students so willing and open to talking about Jesus and the gospel! One of the Expedition Team’s observations of ministry in Timisoara was that it seemed like God had started a revival there!
One of the things I appreciated most about what I observed with the catalytic team in Romania was that the whole team owns their entire scope. I was on a catalytic team once where we each had our own parts of the scope, but the team didn’t feel any responsibility for the whole scope. “Your city is not part of our scope, so don’t ask us to help you with yours!” was the team’s response.
We experienced the same thing on the Moscow Metro team – each of us had our own part of the scope, but we also cared about all the campuses in our city. If one of us needed encouragement or help on one of our campuses, then others came to lend support to the other.
Each staff person on the Romania catalytic team has their own set of cities and KVs to develop so that the KVs can build movements, but occasionally the entire team travels to places that are not their own to help another team member do something that is more than one could do.
One thing I noticed was that it appears that they have a balance of healthy involvement and expectations in helping to get to the entire scope. They worked together in each of the cities in their scope – but the entire team didn’t travel together all of the time. (A potential danger is having the expectation that everyone goes everywhere together all the time – which will wear out your team very quickly! So watch that you don’t do that on your team.)
There was a time when I was in Romania that Marius went to help with orienting the Expedition Team in a city that was part of Amalia’s personal scope. This made me think of the apostle Paul and how he sometimes sent other people on his team to revisit cities in his place. This is a great example of the catalytic principle of “ministry by proxy” (proxy is ‘an authorized substitute’) as seen in Acts 18:18-19 and 19:22. It also a great example the “owning the entire scope together” principle.
Owning the scope together allows the team to grow stronger as they serve together. Owning the whole scope gives each member of the team a chance to get to know the KVs in all of the cities so that they can see faces and know the personalities of each the KV leaders as they pray for their shared scope. I think it helps the team to grow deeper in their relationships on the team and in their appreciation for the things each member adds to the team. Imagine how it helps team to grow in unity! I love this sense of team work!
Questions to consider:
Does your team own the scope together? If so, what are the benefits?
How might individual members not owning the whole scope affect your team’s vision?
How can you work together as a catalytic team to own the scope together without causing each other to burn out?
What are other ways (opportunities, people, etc.) could you use to apply the principle of ‘ministry by proxy’?
Passages to ponder:
Where else in Scripture do you find situations when other believers owned both their own parts of the scope as well as Paul’s scope as a whole?
What other examples of Paul sending others in place of himself to meet with ‘KV’ teams? What can you learn from these examples?