Module 17
Commissioning — The Sending.

1. Purpose & Place in the Arc

Phase IV has trained the pastor to reproduce himself in faithful men (14), to carry the gospel where it has not been named (15), and to stand inside a network that holds him accountable (16). This last module gathers all of it and points it outward. Its whole burden is one sentence the mentor says plainly on the first day: graduation is not a ceremony, it is a deployment. Twenty-four months of formation do not end at a certificate; they end at a sending. The Antioch church did not throw a party for Barnabas and Saul; it fasted, prayed, laid hands on them, and sent them off to the work the Spirit had called them to (Acts 13:1-3).

We take the sending in five parts, as the published brief sets them. First, the pastor maps the unreached peoples, languages, and villages within reach — we teach the structure of the map only; the actual mapping is his own fieldwork, and no outsider fills it in for him. Second, he builds a three-year sending plan: targets, apprentices, gatherings, provision. Third, he counts the cost with his household, aloud, before witnesses. Fourth, the churches gather and commission him — they lay on hands and send. Fifth, the mentor sets an accompaniment plan for the first ninety days, so the sending is a beginning walked into, not a door closing behind him. This module is the point of everything before it: where formation becomes mission.

2. Learning Outcomes

By the end, the pastor can:

1. Explain from Scripture why sending is the church's act, not a private ambition — none preaches unless he is sent, and the Spirit sends through a body that lays on hands (Romans 10:14-15; Acts 13:1-3).
2. Build the skeleton of a reach map — near, next, and beyond — into which he places the real peoples, languages, and villages of his own field.
3. Produce a three-year sending plan covering targets, apprentices, gatherings, and provision, specific enough for a mentor to check.
4. Name why he will not go alone, and identify at least one apprentice he will raise and take with him (2 Timothy 2:2; Luke 10:1).
5. Speak the cost of his sending — to himself and to his household — plainly and before witnesses, without bravado or false shame (Luke 14:25-33).
6. Describe what the commissioning is and is not: the church's setting-apart and blessing by prayer and laying on of hands, not a transfer of magic power into his body.
7. Receive a charge, commended to God and to the word of His grace, and state how he will fulfill the ministry he has received (Acts 20:32; Colossians 4:17).
8. Follow, and later reproduce, a first-ninety-days accompaniment plan — regular contact, honest reporting to the sending church, and a path for when things go hard.

3. Session Plan

Twelve 2-hour sessions. Sessions 1–3 fix the theology of sending and build the reach map; 4–6 build the three-year plan; 7–8 count the cost, ending with the household before witnesses; 9–10 prepare and hold the commissioning; 11 builds the ninety-day accompaniment plan. A field practicum falls before Session 12, which debriefs and assesses. Teaching cases are generic composites for training only — no real person, village, or people is described.

Session 1 — Sent Ones

• Aim: Fix that sending is the church's act under the Spirit, and that graduation means deployment.
• Core texts: John 20:21; Romans 10:14-15; Acts 13:1-3.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) The risen Lord says: as the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you — mission flows from the sending God, not from human restlessness. (2) None can believe in one unheard, and none can preach unless he is sent; sending is the link that reaches the unreached. (3) At Antioch the Spirit set apart two men, and the church fasted, prayed, laid on hands, and sent them — He calls, and He calls through a body; the pastor is not graduating, he is being deployed.
• Practice: Each pastor states aloud, in one sentence, the field he believes God is sending him to — knowing it will be tested over the coming sessions.

Session 2 — The Harvest and the Field

• Aim: Train the pastor to see the field as a harvest with a Lord, and to survey it before he plans it.
• Core texts: Luke 10:2; Acts 1:8; Nehemiah 2:11-16.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) The harvest is plentiful but the laborers few; the first response to a vast field is prayer to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers. (2) The Lord set the pattern of reach in widening rings — Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth — near first, then beyond, never stopping at near. (3) Before Nehemiah spoke, he rode out by night and inspected the broken walls himself; faithful sending begins with honest looking. We teach the pastor to survey; we do not survey for him.
• Practice: Each pastor lists aloud the tongues spoken within a day's travel of his home, and where, as far as he knows, no church yet gathers. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED — real peoples, languages, distances, and access belong to the pastor and partner.]

Session 3 — Mapping Your Reach (workshop)

• Aim: Build the skeleton of a reach map the pastor will fill with his own fieldwork.
• Core texts: Acts 1:8; Matthew 9:37-38.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) The map has three rings: near — his own village and mother tongue; next — nearby villages sharing his tongue or a short journey off; beyond — peoples within reach but needing an apprentice, partner, or bridge. (2) For each place he notes only what he can learn honestly — is there a gathering, a believer, anyone carrying the gospel there now. (3) The map is a skeleton; the flesh is real names of real places, his work by walking and asking, not guessing. We do not name his peoples or invent their beliefs, for that would be to lie about a field we have never seen.
• Practice: Each pastor draws or speaks the three rings, placing in them only what he knows and marking every gap to be filled by fieldwork. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED — all map content, including any local religious landscape, belongs to the pastor and partner.]

Session 4 — The Three-Year Plan: Targets and Gatherings

• Aim: Turn the map into concrete three-year targets and planned gatherings.
• Core texts: 2 Timothy 2:2; Acts 14:21-23.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) Paul and Barnabas did not only preach; they returned, strengthened the disciples, and appointed elders, committing them to the Lord with prayer and fasting — the target is a church that stands, not a crowd. (2) A three-year plan names where he will go, in what order, and what he prays will gather — an aim to work toward, held humbly, for a plan that cannot bend is presumption. (3) A gathering is measured by health, not headcount: the Word taught, the ordinances kept, discipline and love present, believers baptized — the marks learned in Phase III.
• Practice: Each pastor drafts three-year targets from his map and reads them to a peer for questions.

Session 5 — The Three-Year Plan: Apprentices

• Aim: Fix that the pastor does not go alone but takes and raises the next worker.
• Core texts: Luke 10:1; 2 Timothy 2:2; Acts 15:36-41.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) The Lord sent the seventy-two two by two, not one by one — going alone is neither the pattern nor the wisdom of mission. (2) What he has received he entrusts to faithful men who will teach others also; a plan naming no apprentice multiplies nothing, and an apprentice is a worker being formed to be sent in turn, not a servant to carry bags. (3) Sending relationships strain: Paul and Barnabas parted sharply over John Mark, yet years later Paul called that same Mark useful for ministry — a broken partnership is not always the end of a worker.
• Practice: Each pastor names at least one apprentice he will raise and take, and one way he will train him on the road, not only in a room.

Session 6 — The Three-Year Plan: Provision and Partnership

• Aim: Train honest provision that trusts God, refuses greed, and stays transparent.
• Core texts: 3 John 5-8; Philippians 4:15-19; Acts 20:33-35; Luke 22:35.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) John commends those who send workers on their way in a manner worthy of God, so the church becomes a fellow worker for the truth — provision is the sending church's share in the mission. (2) The Philippians partnered with Paul in giving and receiving, and he learned contentment in plenty and want, trusting God to supply every need; Paul also worked with his own hands and coveted no one's silver, receiving support without shame and without greed. (3) When the Lord sent His disciples, they lacked nothing; provision is real, but God's to give, not a wage owed or a road to wealth — and every coin passes in daylight, as trained in Module 13. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED — local support customs, what counts as a gift or a bribe, honest expectations of a worker's provision.]
• Practice: Each pastor speaks a simple provision line — what he expects to receive, from whom, worked by whose hands, open to whose eyes — and names the ditch he must guard against.

Session 7 — Counting the Cost

• Aim: Train sober self-examination before the sending — the cost is named, not hidden.
• Core texts: Luke 14:25-33; Luke 9:57-62.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) The Lord told the crowds to count the cost, as a man building a tower first sits down to see whether he can finish, and a king going to war weighs whether ten thousand can meet twenty thousand before he marches. (2) The call to bear the cross and hold father, mother, wife, and children as less than Christ is not to despise them but to love Him supremely, above the dearest earthly bond. (3) No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom; counting the cost is the honesty that keeps a man in the field when the cost arrives, because he already knew it would.
• Practice: Each pastor names aloud one real cost his sending will carry — a hardship, a loss, a danger — and states, in his own words, why Christ is worth it. No slogans; a real cost.

Session 8 — Counting the Cost With the Household, Before Witnesses

• Aim: Bring the household into the cost openly, before the sending church, so the burden is shared and the sending owned together.
• Core texts: Genesis 12:1-4; Luke 18:28-30; Mark 1:16-20.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) Abram was called to leave country, kindred, and his father's house, and he took Sarai and Lot and his household and went — the sending moved the whole house, not the man alone. (2) The disciples left boats, nets, and their father to follow; the Lord promised no one who leaves house or family for the kingdom fails to receive far more, now and in the age to come. (3) The pastor's household bears the cost — distance from kin, danger, thin provision — and must count it with open eyes, not be dragged into it blind; so it speaks the cost aloud before witnesses, for a cost counted in secret is carried alone, but a cost counted before the body becomes the body's burden too. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED — whether and how a wife speaks before the gathered church, and the honor dynamics of a family leaving its kindred.]
• Practice: In a facilitated setting, each pastor (with his wife where present) speaks the household's cost before at least two witnesses from the sending church, who receive it and pray. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED on local form.]

Session 9 — The Commissioning: The Laying On of Hands

• Aim: Teach what the commissioning is and is not, guarding against the counterfeit of ritual power.
• Core texts: Acts 13:1-3; Numbers 27:18-23; 1 Timothy 4:14.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) At Antioch the church laid hands on the two and sent them off, and Moses laid his hand on Joshua before Eleazar and the whole congregation — laying on of hands is the body's public, witnessed act of setting apart and blessing a worker for a work. (2) The hands pour no magic into a man and pass no power he can trade or spend; the Spirit gives gifts as He wills, and the church's hands mark and bless what God is doing. (3) This guards the sending from the counterfeits the curriculum names — no charm through the palms, no rite that works by itself apart from faith and the Word. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED — the local form, order, and elements of the service, led by the partner and national church.]
• Practice: Each pastor explains to a peer, in his own words, what the laying on of hands means and does not mean, until the peer is satisfied he has not made it a magic act.

Session 10 — The Charge and the Sending

• Aim: Prepare and rehearse the charge — commending the sent one to God and to the Word.
• Core texts: Acts 20:17-38; Colossians 4:17; 2 Timothy 4:1-5.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) Paul gathered the Ephesian elders, charged them, and commended them to God and to the word of His grace, able to build them up — the sent one is entrusted to God and Scripture, not to his own strength. (2) The word to Archippus is the pattern — see that you fulfill the ministry you have received in the Lord — and Paul charged Timothy to preach the Word, endure suffering, and fulfill his ministry; the charge is weighty, not sentimental. (3) The elders wept, embraced Paul, and went with him to the ship; a true sending grieves the parting even as it rejoices in the mission — love and mission are not enemies.
• Practice: Each pastor drafts, or speaks, the charge he hopes his church will lay on him, and one he would lay on an apprentice — testing both against Scripture, not feeling.

Session 11 — The First Ninety Days: The Accompaniment Plan

• Aim: Build the mentor's concrete plan to walk with the sent pastor through his first ninety days.
• Core texts: Acts 15:36; Acts 18:23; Philippians 1:3-6; Acts 14:26-27.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) Paul's instinct after sending was to return and visit the brothers in every city to see how they were doing, strengthening the disciples again and again — the newly sent worker most needs steady presence in the earliest, hardest days. (2) Paul was confident that God, who began a good work, would complete it — accompaniment rests on God's faithfulness, not on hovering control. (3) Paul and Barnabas returned to the sending church and reported all that God had done; the sent pastor reports back honestly, and the church listens and prays.
• Practice: Mentor and pastor write the ninety-day plan — contact rhythm, reporting line to the sending church, a named person to call in crisis, and the first checkpoint date. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED — travel, communication access, and security shape the form of contact.]

Session 12 — Field Debrief and Competency Assessment

• Aim: Verify the demonstrated competency; assign remediation where needed; commend those ready to be sent.
• Core texts: Review of Acts 13:1-3; Luke 14:28; Acts 20:32.
• Oral teaching outline: (1) Hear each pastor's reach map, three-year plan, and household cost-counting from the practicum. (2) Test the plan for concreteness — real targets, a named apprentice, an honest provision line, a real accompaniment plan — and confirm the cost was counted openly with the household before witnesses. (3) Name plainly what is "not yet," set the remediation path, and commend to God, with prayer, those judged ready to be sent.
• Practice: The competency assessment in Section 7 is conducted and recorded by the mentor.

4. Story Set & Memory Work

Stories to be mastered orally, each with a one-line handle:

• Acts 13:1-3 — Antioch Sends: the church fasts, prays, lays on hands, and sends Barnabas and Saul.
• Luke 10:1-12 — The Seventy-Two: the Lord sends workers two by two, ahead of Himself, into the harvest.
• Luke 14:25-33 — The Tower and the King: count the cost before you build or march.
• Genesis 12:1-4 — Abram Goes: called from country and kindred, he takes his household and goes.
• Acts 20:17-38 — Farewell at Miletus: Paul charges the elders, commends them to God, and they weep and send him.
• Acts 14:21-28 — The Return: they strengthen the disciples, appoint elders, and report to the sending church all God had done.

[PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED: the mother-tongue rendering of each verse, set to a memorable oral or sung form.]

5. Discussion Questions

Crafted for oral, communal learning; several are honor-shame aware.

1. Why is sending the church's act and not one man's private ambition? What goes wrong when a man sends himself?
2. The harvest is the Lord's before it is ours. How should that change the way we plan a field?
3. What does it mean that our map is only a skeleton until we walk the ground? What are we tempted to guess instead of learn?
4. Why did the Lord send workers two by two? What is the danger of a man who insists on going alone?
5. What is the difference between a plan held in faith and a plan held in presumption?
6. When a sending partnership breaks, as Paul and Barnabas broke over Mark, what keeps it from being the end of a worker?
7. How does a sent pastor receive support without greed and without shame? Which of the two ditches do you lean toward?
8. The Lord told the crowds to count the cost. What cost of your sending have you been slow to name to yourself?
9. Why should the household count the cost aloud, before witnesses, rather than in private? What does the church take up when it hears? [honor-shame]
10. In our setting, what does it cost a family's honor to leave its kindred to be sent, and how can the sending church carry that with them? [honor-shame]
11. What does the laying on of hands mean, and what does it not mean? How would you correct someone who treated it as a magic that transfers power?
12. Why did Paul return to strengthen the churches he had planted? What does the newly sent worker most need in the first ninety days?
13. To whom will you report honestly when the work is hard, and who will come to you? Name them.
14. Graduation is a deployment, not a ceremony. What in your heart still treats it as an ending rather than a beginning?

6. Between-Sessions Field Practice

In the pastor's own field and among his own sending church:

1. Walk the map: Visit or make honest inquiry into at least the "near" and "next" rings; fill real names of places and tongues into the skeleton and mark every remaining gap.
2. Draft the three-year plan: Write or record targets, at least one named apprentice, planned gatherings, and an honest provision line; bring it to the mentor for questions.
3. Raise an apprentice: Have one real conversation with a potential apprentice about being trained and, in time, sent; report how it was received.
4. Count the cost with the household: With your household, and where present your wife, name the costs of the sending aloud; then speak them before at least two witnesses from the sending church. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED on local form.]
5. Test provision in daylight: Put one transparency practice in place for any sending funds and confirm who may see the record.
6. Draft the ninety-day plan: With the mentor, agree a contact rhythm, a reporting line to the sending church, and a crisis contact, with a first checkpoint date set.

7. Competency Assessment

What must be demonstrated to pass (by demonstration, not attendance): The pastor must, before his mentor, (a) present a reach map built on real fieldwork — near, next, and beyond — with honest gaps marked, not guesses; (b) present a concrete three-year sending plan naming targets, at least one apprentice he is actually training, planned gatherings, and an honest, transparent provision line; (c) give evidence that he has counted the cost with his household aloud and before witnesses from the sending church; (d) explain the commissioning and the laying on of hands rightly, guarding it from any notion of transferred magic; and (e) hold, with his mentor, a written first-ninety-days accompaniment plan with a real reporting line and a named crisis contact.

How the mentor verifies: The mentor listens for specifics, not slogans, and cross-checks — the apprentice named is a real person the pastor has actually spoken with; the witnesses to the cost-counting can confirm it happened; the provision line is open to named eyes; the ninety-day plan has real dates and real names. Fieldwork done is the proof; a good plan on paper that was never walked is not.

What "not yet" looks like: A map filled with guesses instead of fieldwork, or left empty; a plan with no named apprentice or no honest provision; a cost never spoken to the household, or spoken only in secret; a view of the laying on of hands as a power transferred into the body; a ninety-day plan with no reporting line or crisis contact. A man eager to be sent but unwilling to be accompanied is "not yet."

Remediation path: The mentor extends the practicum on the one weakest area — most often the household cost-counting or the apprentice — and reassesses. A pastor whose household has not truly counted the cost, or who resists all accompaniment, is not commissioned until that is addressed; the aim is a sending that stands, not a ceremony held on time. Any serious concern is carried, with the pastor's knowledge, to the network and to James Bell before a commissioning proceeds.

8. Mentor Notes

Common errors and cautions:

• Ceremony over deployment. The most common failure is treating commissioning as a graduation to enjoy rather than a sending to walk into. Say "deployment" from day one.
• The invented map. Trainees, and trainers, are tempted to fill the map with assumptions about peoples and villages. Refuse it — a guessed map lies about a field we have never seen. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED for all real content.]
• The lone sender. Watch for the man who wants to go alone. Return him to the two-by-two pattern and press for a real, named apprentice, not a vague intention.
• Provision ditches. Some drift toward the prosperity lie that sending is a road to gain; some toward a false shame that will not receive honest support. Hold 3 John, Philippians 4, and Acts 20:35 together. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED on local support customs.]
• A cost never counted. A household dragged into a sending blind will break in the first hard season. Do not let the cost-counting be skipped or kept private; witnesses matter.
• The magic hands. Guard the laying on of hands from any hint of transferred power or charm — it is the church's blessing and setting-apart under the Spirit, not a rite that works by itself.
• The vanishing mentor. A sending that ends contact is a sending that fails. The ninety-day plan is not optional; a man who resists being accompanied shows the very isolation that ends ministries.
• Local forms and the household's voice. [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED] on the commissioning's shape, on whether and how a wife speaks before the church, and on the honor dynamics of a family leaving its kindred. Never impose a foreign form; never sideline the household's real cost.
• When to escalate. A call the church cannot in good conscience confirm, a household unwilling to go, or a man resisting all accountability are not for the mentor to settle alone — carry them to the network and to James Bell.

9. Doctrinal Anchors

This module serves the Statement of Faith as follows:

• The Commission. The module's spine. The Lord's command to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20) is enacted as a real sending of a real man to a nameable field, ordered through the church.
• The Church (Word, ordinances, discipline, love). Sending is the church's act, not the individual's — the body recognizes the call, lays on hands, commends to grace, and accompanies (Acts 13:1-3; Acts 20:32). The laying on of hands is the church's public blessing, never a private career move.
• The Holy Spirit. The Spirit calls and sends (Acts 13:2) and gives gifts as He wills. The commissioning marks and blesses His work; it does not manufacture or transfer power apart from Him.
• Salvation (perseverance). Counting the cost (Luke 14) and the plow held without looking back (Luke 9:62) sit within perseverance — the sent one is kept by grace to finish, and accompaniment serves that perseverance rather than replacing it.
• The Scriptures (authoritative, sufficient). The plan, the charge, and the service are drawn from and tested by the Word; the sent one is commended to God and to the word of His grace (Acts 20:32), sufficient for the field ahead.

Guardrails against the named counterfeits:

• Against prosperity teaching: Provision is taught from 3 John 5-8, Philippians 4, and Acts 20:33-35 — real, God-given, received without greed, worked with honest hands, kept transparent. Sending is never framed as a road to wealth.
• Against ritual transfer and charm-trading: The laying on of hands is guarded explicitly as the church's blessing under the Spirit, not a magic that passes power into the body or can be traded — stated plainly in Session 9 and tested in the assessment.
• Against syncretism: The map's content, the local religious landscape, the form of the service, and the honor dynamics of leaving one's kindred are all marked [PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED] and carried to national pastors — never invented from outside, never baptized uncritically, never condemned wholesale.
• Against doctrinal novelty: Sending, commissioning, and laying on of hands are taught as the plain practice of Acts and the Pastoral Epistles — the church setting apart and sending its workers — not as a new method of the trainers' own making.