What did I learn from Ex-tend?

I think I can sum up my learning experience into 2 main points.

Firstly about leadership...leadership starts with leading yourself into effective discipleship with Christ, disciplers are first disciples and leaders should be the first followers, the ones who are leading by example, not by showing how much they know or how wise they are but by being intentional about their own relationship with God, by firstly following after God in the hope that this will equip them to lead others in following God. This is a learning curve that everyone must undertake and realise that it has to start on a personal level,  enabling you not to preach your expertise on a topic, but to simply pass on what you learn to others...

This then runs into the second point...faith without works is dead. I think the second thing, which was a massive theme for us especially over the second week was this idea of going beyond your belief, beyond "knowing" things and into "doing" things...putting discipleship into action, and giving of yourself wholly to the tasks that God places before you. As we put our faith into action in a township on the outskirts of a South African town we witnessed not only blessing in the lives of the children we worked for and with, but the lives of those who were helping us from the church we were attached to. To see the transformation in personalities, and to see a visually emotive response from the church itself in the way it reacted to the work we were doing was amazing, to see people inspired to go and "do" things for God was truly humbling and at the same time purely inspirational for us.

This then comes back to leadership, it doesn't matter if you have done Ex-plore, Ex-tend or have never encountered an Exodus team before, we are all leaders so far as we have people in our lives we have influence over. This then brings with it a responsibility of leadership for the way we conduct ourselves and go about our lives as disciples. Being intentional about your own discipleship will reap amazing results, it will change you, influence those around you and transform those around you. This for me is the revelation of God's kingdom on Earth.

Chris Agnew