Book Overview: Ying and Grace Kai’s Training for Trainers: The Movement that Changed the World 
Wigtake Resources – February 23, 2018 – 199 pages 

If you are looking for inspiration and simple ideas to get your life and congregation more focused on evangelism, you should read Ying and Grace Kai’s Training for Trainers: The Movement that Changed the World. The book tells the story of a viral outbreak of the gospel that started with a Southern Baptist Missionary looking for a way to reach millions, instead of dozens for Christ among the many unreached people groups in Asia. He started with 30 rural farmers in a remote village and ten years later, 1.7 million people had been baptized and the movement began to cross continents using simple evangelistic practices. Today we know this movement and training as T4T or Training for Trainers.

The beauty and the secret of T4T is simplicity. Simplicity leads to reproducibility. Simplicity and reproducibility are key ingredients in viral movements. The simple step-by-step process of T4T is summarized as:

1. Develop a list of unsaved people in your network of relationships and pray for them everyday.
2. Teach your group how to tell their story, repeatedly practicing to become fluent in sharing their story.
3. Teach the story of Jesus, repeatedly practicing to become fluent in teaching the story of Jesus.
4. Have them commit to share their story and the story of Jesus with five people each week.
5. Don’t encourage the growth of one small group, but train everyone to become trainers of their own small group.
6. Never give up on anyone.

Here are just a few of the quotes that jumped out at me:

• It is not until one can train others that they can grow into a true disciple.
• Share the gospel with at least five people each week.
• Keep things simple so that anyone is able to do it and everyone is willing to do it. Once things begin to get complicated, people start to put it off and not do it.
• We should not encourage them to bring others into our small group. We are training them to become a trainer. They must start and train their own small groups.
• Whatever is taught, it should not be a knowledge dump, but training simple enough so that the new believer can grasp and replicate what has been taught.
• The real test of success is the trainee taking what he has learned, and training a fellow believer…

If you are considering a reset in your ministry or a new vision for personal and corporate evangelism. These simple practices born among unreached people groups may be just the thing to spark an evangelistic movement among the lost in your community.

Application:

• Read it to get a vision for simplicity and focus on evangelism for your church.
• Use the step-by-step principles with a group of leaders in your church to begin a new season of evangelistic action.
• Share the book and summarize the principles for small group leaders in your church and encourage them to use these simple practices to spark new growth and new units.

Other T4T Resources: 

• Book: T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution: The Story Behind the World’s Fastest Growing Church Planting Movement and How it Can Happen in Your Community! By Steve Smith and Ying Kai
• Website: www.t4tglobal.org/
• Ying Kai and the Power of Multiplication – Mission Frontiers Article: www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/ying-kai-and-the-power-of-multiplication