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Archive for the ‘Christian Missions’ Category

A Teenager Writes About Missions: Guest post by Cassidy Woodward (our granddaughter)

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , on October 31, 2013| 4 Comments »

You have to stop and read this! Cassidy is a young member of the Body of Christ, but her voice is already powerful and the Spirit of God is strong in her.  And she tells the truth.  She is special to us for many reasons, but let’s just all give thanks for her and for all the other teens who really love God with all their heart! Their devotion and commitment encourage our hope  for tomorrow.

20130621_171423Teenager. The word teenager makes some people nervous.  Loud, strange music. Weird clothes.  Completely different vocabulary.  Teenagers have the reputation of being concerned about clothes, popularity, dating, reputation and having fun. But if you’ve spent time with teenagers at The Hills lately, I think you’ll be surprised! And I mean surprised in a good way! Most of the students I know are concerned about the world—we want to make a difference. We care about friends, family, school, making the most of our lives and even missions. We want to stand out but not for our clothes or our music or even for what we say. We want to stand out because of what we do.  We want our lives to reflect Christ and we want to make Him look good. We aren’t afraid to do big things for God and we love being at a church that encourages us to dream big!

I was born into a family that loves the church and loves international mission work.  I’m 14 years old and I’ve been to 11 countries on 5 continents to share Jesus with people who don’t know Him. My parents and my 2 younger brothers and I went on a Let’s Start Talking project to Italy this past summer where we helped people practice English using the Bible—we went with 2 of our friends who also go to The Hills. Last summer I was on a team to Rwanda with several families from The Hills. God has definitely given me lots of adventurous ways to serve Him with our church family.  And each adventure has helped me grow closer to Him.

In July of 2011, I went on a 3 week LST project with my mom, my brothers and some family friends to Natal, Brazil.  Let me confess something…I was a brat.  I had just turned 12 years old and, honestly, I had not been very kind to my family for a while.  I don’t know why but I was just always frustrated with them and my brothers were really, really annoying to me all the time.  I left the USA dreading this non-stop time with my family. I don’t know exactly what happened to me on our mission trip but I came back changed.  I returned loving our time together and being grateful for my family. I had been baptized a couple of years earlier but the Holy Spirit was really working on my heart during those 3 weeks.

I had been on several mission trips before this one but this would be my very first time to read the Bible alone with people.  There I sat, 12 years old, across from 5 different non-Christians ranging in age from a 11-year-old Brazilian boy to a 52-year-old woman who was practicing Spiritism. I didn’t know it but my mom would sit across the room praying for me, reminding herself that the Spirit in me was stronger than anything in this woman.  Maybe that’s the beauty of being young and innocent—I wasn’t intimidated at all—only the usual nervousness of meeting someone new and sharing Jesus with them.  The Bible says that God can use the weak and overlooked of this world to show His wisdom and power (1 Corinthians 1).  Who would choose a 12-year-old bratty girl to share Jesus with a Spiritist over 4 times older? God, of course!

If you want to change your child or grandchild’s life, take them to do mission work.  You don’t even have to go to another country! There are people in this city who don’t know Jesus! There are people in your neighborhood who don’t have hope! And if you can take them to another country, go! There is something life-changing about spending every day for 3 weeks focused on the Good News of Jesus. It’s hard to be unkind to your family when you’ve read the story of Jesus with people all day.  It’s tough to be a brat after you’ve shared your faith with a stranger. And when you read about how great God’s love is, you want to love people even more.

Even little brothers.

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For Those With Fire In Their Bones

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , on October 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

You are not the preacher. You are not the head of anything at church. But you have just started a great ministry  or you have a great ministry idea that you would like to see get traction and grow.  What do you do now? Here are a few tips from our experience of trying to get Let’s Start Talking established in lots of churches. This is what we have learned from watching people enthusiastic about short-term missions try to work with their home congregation.

  1. Don’t even start unless you are committed to doing whatever it takes to succeed yourself! Lots of people want to start things for other people to do. Just forget it! You should be able to accomplish the ministry yourself—at some level—or you will never get others to buy into it. For LST, this means that if you are not willing to go, you will not be successful in getting other people to go.
  2. Try to get the blessing of church leadership from the very beginning. If the preacher and/or church leaders are opposed to your ministry idea, it is not likely to survive. It might possibly survive if they are indifferent, but the chances are much better if you have their blessing.  Notice, I said blessing, not commitment. See below!
  3. Do not expect to get leadership commitment to your ministry until you have proven that it will be successful! LST actually made this mistake in our Centurion project which launched about three years ago. We asked churches to commit to a goal of sending 100 workers with LST over a five-year period—with no financial commitment whatsoever.  Although a few churches committed, we were absolutely shocked at how resistant most churches were to making any kind of a commitment at all.  We have since modified our approach, so that we only ask for permission to test run LST in their congregation to see if their members have a good experience with it.  Church leaders are much more open to us with this approach.
  4. Don’t reinvent the wheel! Join with established ministries who have proven track records and who can help jumpstart your ministry. So you think your teens should do mission trips to learn to share their faith! Rather than asking your youth minister or some parents to plan and organize such a trip, why not ask a ministry like LST YoungFriends to help you, since we have been planning short-term missions, including special ones for teen groups, for thirty years! If you want to start something for the poor, why not contact existing ministries and partner with them–or after-school programs, or abused women, or English As A Second Language outreach??
  5. Be spiritually prepared to be ignored. If I were a church leader and if I knew what kind of transformation happens to every person who spends two weeks on an LST project, I would do everything in my power to make it possible for every person in the church I was leading to participate—there, I said it as boldly and honestly as I can.  However, the fact is that a very small percentage of Christians really want to engage their faith as actively as most ministries require. If you, as the promoter of your ministry, let the massive indifference discourage you, then you are defeated! You must be willing to do your work without recognition, without popularity, and without any other reward than the smile of the Father!  If you need more than this, you will give up!
  6. God has His own schedule for growth! I love flowers—Sherrylee calls them annuals and perennials and I have a vague idea what that means. But I really love flowering trees. I love the blooms on our fruit trees, I love the beautiful white flowers of the Bradford pear trees, and I really love the Oklahoma redbuds!! The time from seed to bloom is very different for these plants. In reality, only God knows the proper time and season for your ministry to bloom. You can choose to acknowledge God’s sovereignty here—or you can try to set your own schedule. Occasionally, we may be able to hothouse something into rapid growth—but these efforts are rarely long-lived. I recommend you let God be in control.
  7. If you are called by God to a ministry, you will never be truly happy until you are answering the call—so get on with it!  I love the story of Jeremiah, called by God to be a prophet to the nations, who yells at God and says, “You deceived me! I did what you called me to do and I’m having a terrible time! In fact, I’ve tried to quit several times . . . but I couldn’t because your word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones–and I can’t keep it in.” (Jer. 20:7-9)

Reposted from September 2010.

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20% of Non-Christians Do Not Know A Christian!

Posted in Christian Culture, Christian Missions, tagged , , , , on August 26, 2013| 1 Comment »

SikhsIn an article that appeared in August web-only edition of Christianity Today, Abby Stocker wrote about “The Craziest Statistic You’ll Read About North American Missions.”  Her article opens with this paragraph:

One out of five non-Christians in North America doesn’t know any Christians. That’s not in the fake-Gandhi-quote “I would become a Christian, if I ever met one” sense. It’s new research in Gordon-Conwell’s Center for the Study of Global Christianity’s Christianity in its Global Context, 1970-2020. Missiologist Todd M. Johnson and his team found that 20 percent of non-Christians in North America really do not “personally know” any Christians. That’s 13,447,000 people—about the population of metropolitan Los Angeles or Istanbul—most of them in the United States.

The study shows that it is not the atheists and agnostics clustered together in academia or Hollywood or the liberal unbelieving media whom evangelicals love to hate that make up the majority of those who do not know a Christian.

No, mostly it is the immigrants and those they live among.  Here is the chart that was published with the study:

stats

And although Christians make up one-third of the world’s population, eight out of 10 people in the world do not know a Christian.

Sherrylee and I just went to a wonderful Journey to Generosity retreat and in the opening session, we were confronted with the fact that Americans hoard much of the world’s wealth.

So is it worse to be poor because we hoard our wealth—or to be LOST because we hoard Jesus??  I’m not so sure it is not the same thing if looked at from our side of the equation.

So why do you think that 79% of the Sikhs in North America don’t know any Christians?  It’s not because of a scarcity of Christians; it’s not for lack of churches they could visit?

Well, how many Sikhs do you know?  How many Buddhists from Asia live in your community?  How many Chinese?

Just last week there was a Chinese couple in Wal-mart and I could tell they were searching for something that they couldn’t find, so I asked them if I could help.   They were looking for that kind of ice cream with many flavors in it, so I found the Neapolitan and they were quite pleased.  I wish I had been even friendlier and asked about them and . . . .who knows what might have come from a little conversation about ice cream.

They might already be Christians!!  But I don’t know because I didn’t take the time to even offer to get to know them.  And because of that they may still be one of the many Chinese in our country who don’t know any Christians.

I’ve quoted this verse before in describing the reason for the FriendSpeak program, that we offer churches through the Let’s Start Talking Ministry.  But surely the convicting results of this study should make us question whether we truly believe the verse to be inspired by God—or not!

26 God began by making one man, and from him he made all the different people who live everywhere in the world. He decided exactly when and where they would live.  Acts 17:26 (ERV)

Immigrants are in North America for the same reason you are—because God decided exactly when and where they would live.  And Paul says the reason that he put people in the same place was so that they could find Him!

It’s not just “foreigners”  who cluster in ghettos.  Christians do too!

What could you do to reduce the number of people who don’t know a Christian?

  • Make a point to speak to people of other origins in public places.
  • Find meaningful service projects to join or to launch in ethnic ghettos.
  • Adopt an international student from a local university!
  • Host a Thanksgiving meal at your church and invite the immigrant community nearest you, specifically!
  • Inquire about beginning a FriendSpeak ministry at your church (www.friendspeak.org)  and volunteer to be a part of it.

What can you add to this list?

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A Letter to the Grandkids: On Missions

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , , on July 31, 2013| 2 Comments »

passport-for-travel-frontDear C,K,C,C,C,L,A,O, and N,

I can’t believe that right now three of you are in Italy on an LST mission project! And all the rest—except the very youngest ones—have already been on mission trips too!  We are so proud of all of you!  And if you are one of the young ones, don’t worry! I’m sure you will get your chance soon!

You also really have remarkable parents—all of them—because they have gone on mission trips and taken you with them!  Can you believe that some parents leave their kids at home when they go on mission trips—maybe their kids are too young or too rowdy–, but your parents wanted you to go!.  Yours want you to know how fun, how great and awesome, and how important mission trips are!  They are really good parents!!

Think of all the places you have been:  Germany, Japan, Honduras, Rwanda, Italy, Brazil, the Netherlands. Amazing!  Did you know that Grandad was 21 years-old and almost out of college before I ever went anywhere out of the United States. (No, it wasn’t that they hadn’t invented the wheel yet! I’m not that old!)

And did you know that Mimi and Grandad went to Germany as missionaries and lived there for eight years. (That’s why we always say, “Guten Appetit!” after we pray at meals.) Then, starting when Philip was 7, Ben was 5, and Emily was 3, we took them and went on mission trips every summer when school was out.

You might be wondering why mission work is so important in our family!  Good question.

First, mission work is important to our family because we are Christians, and we believe that everyone needs to know about God.  Lots of people grow up in countries where no one knows who God is. They sometimes have been told that there is no God; other kids grow up believing in many different gods.  Do you remember the 10 Commandment song that Mimi taught you when you were little.  Remember, “Don’t bow down to any yukky idols!”  That’s what Christians tell people, so they can know about the one, true God!

Second, mission work is important to our family because we believe Jesus is God’s Son, and God said that everyone needs to know this to go to heaven someday .  If we are going to be called by Jesus’ name “Christ-ians” and if we really love him, then we just naturally want to do what he says. So if God said to go and tell people, then we go and tell people.  Why wouldn’t we?

Thirdly, who is going to tell people that God loves them, if we don’t go and tell them?  And there are so many people in the world!  I think that God has some people for all of us to talk to.  What happens if one of us Christians just sleeps in or is afraid or decides to watch TV instead and some people don’t get told?  Well, don’t worry because God is very close to everyone and has promised that if people are looking for him, they will find him!  God might send somebody else to tell that person, but then wouldn’t He be a little disappointed in us for not doing what we were supposed to do!

Here are a few things I need you to know if you are going to grow up in a family that does mission work:

  1. Your family is not better than families who don’t go on mission trips.  Other people’s families do other things for God.  Some families love to give food to poor people, some families love to mow yards and repair houses for people who are sick or old.  Remember that God’s family is like a body with many different body parts:  Some people are eyes and ears, some people are hands.  Your family might be the feet that like to go places—but it takes all of you to be the whole body of Jesus.
  2. You have special gifts from God for doing mission work!  You’ve been on lots of airplanes and you weren’t afraid!  You’ve slept in strange beds—or maybe even on the floor without a bed. You know how to make friends with people who don’t speak English very well.  You even try a few new foods—sometimes!  These are all special gifts that make it much easier for you to do mission work.
  3. Mission trips are really fun—but not all the time!  Getting to see a new country and meet new people to tell about Jesus is wonderful fun, BUT sometimes the food can make you sick, or big new bugs can bite you, or your bed is too hard, or there are no water fountains and you are thirsty, or there is no one your age to hang out with, or you just get homesick.  What I can tell you is that if you can just not gripe or complain and keep doing the good things that you went to do, a couple of weeks after you get home, you’ll hardly remember the things you didn’t like.
  4. You might want to be a missionary that lives in another country someday!  Not very many people really want to do this, but as you get older, you might just listen to see if God puts this into your heart.  Now, you can’t go on your own until you are old enough and prepared to go, but don’t let that stop you from being excited about being a missionary someday.

Did you know that Jesus went on a mission trip one time?  Yep, he and his father talked it over and when it was just the right time, Jesus left his father and went on a mission trip.  When he got there, it wasn’t all that fun. At first it was a little fun because people listened to what he told them about God, but then they started saying bad things about him, things that weren’t really true.

But Jesus didn’t gripe. He stayed on his mission trip for about three years. That’s how long it took for him to do everything God wanted him to do. Then it was time to go home, so God just brought him back to Heaven.

Of course, you know where he went on his mission trip.  He came here to this world so that we could know who God is and how much he loves us. Aren’t you glad Jesus was a missionary?

And that’s why our family loves mission trips. 

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What’s Needed for Missions in Churches of Christ!

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , , on May 4, 2013| 2 Comments »

missions2If you are committed to evangelism—you’ll notice I did not use the word missions for fear of being redefined—and if you believe that the mission of members of the Kingdom of God is apostolic (bearers of a message) not just diaconic (servants), then you are a little concerned about the trend lines that I have suggested in the two previous posts.

If you believe that faith comes from hearing the Word of God and that people have trouble hearing the Word without someone to preach it—as Paul argued in Romans 10:14—then you are also concerned that being salt and light in the world is our mission as Christians, but if those seekers who discover the salt and see the light don’t know what to use it on or where the light is leading them, then they could remain hopelessly lost.

No one can come to the Father except through the Son, and no one has found the Son without knowing that Jesus is the Son of God and that He is raised from the dead. They have to hear the Gospel story.  No amount of good that they receive in the neighborhood will communicate the Good News unless those who serve also share the Story.  “We believe, therefore, we speak” (2 Corinthians 4:13)!

The projections of the last post based on the trends and tendencies in my first post could be taken as discouraging—but only if there were no hope!  Trends and tendencies, however, are not prescriptions!  Our God is victorious, so any defeats are just momentary. Even a valley of dry bones can be resurrected to life—and we are not dry bones yet, so there is much we can do to reverse what might seem to some as inevitable.

We need to relentlessly pursue holistic missions! Jesus went about preaching and healing (Matt. 4:23;9:35). We should do the same.

What would happen in our churches if those proposing every evangelistic effort were asked to show how they were going to tangibly show love and compassion to their audience? No evangelism without a compassion ministry component.

What would happen in our churches if those who planned and/or executed every service project, benevolent work, and every relief effort were asked to prayerfully consider and propose an appropriate time and means for introducing the Message to those benefited by their service?  No demonstration ministry without a plan for proclamation.

There is no competition between social justice and evangelism; it should be one and the same.

We need to find our urgency of mission.  Out of almost 7 billion people in the world,  2 billion claim to be Christians.  If we don’t believe in judgment, if we don’t believe in Satan, if we don’t believe in Eternal darkness, if we don’t believe that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life—then we can relax because there is no urgency.

If we believe that Jesus came “to seek and save the lost”(Luke 19:10),  then we can’t relax any more than Jesus did. We have to work—while it is still Day (John 9:4). The Night is coming!

We need to raise up an Army of Youth to fight for the Lord of Hosts! This may require intervention—because our young church leaders/ministers are of the same generation as our children and grandchildren as far as evangelism goes.  This may be a great time for elders to shepherd their youngest sheep!

I would like to see young children learning the heroic and inspirational stories of great Christian saints, then in middle school we should intentionally work with them on sharing their faith—verbally. What do they tell their friends who ask them why they believe in God or why they believe Jesus is the only way.  Group evangelism is especially appropriate for these young teens.

By high school then, having learned and practiced their mission at home, they would be ready for going other places, experiencing perhaps real poverty of both wealth and faith.

During college, they would then want to continue speaking the Name and doing Good in the world, and some—many more—would want to do internships and apprenticeships after college. And those who do not feel called to make it their life, would go into their marriages and their careers with a completely different framework—a missional framework—for every day of their lives.

We need churches who can imagine that God can use their resources to do things they can’t even imagine! 

  • Which churches among us will pick up the list of unevangelized countries and build their mission strategy around that information?
  • Which churches are ready to take on the Muslim world?
  • Which churches have the capacity and endurance to commit to work in the highly industrialized, yet predominantly secular countries?
  • Which churches will choose the nations where it is time for seed-sowing, not for harvesting?
  • Which churches will use the wealth of their congregations in places of extreme poverty, serving and proclaiming, at the expense of their own comfort?

And finally, we need courageous mission efforts! Let’s ban any sentence that starts with

  • “I’m afraid, if we do that . . . .”
  • “I’m afraid we don’t have the . . . .”
  • “I’m afraid our members won’t want to . . . .”
  • “I’m afraid it would take away from . . . .”
  • “I’m afraid someone might think that  . . . .”
  • “I’m afraid that’s bigger than we can . . . . “

The Revelation is clear that the “cowardly” are not at the banquet of the Lamb (21:8).  The  Witnesses are!

Conclusion

 One brother who attended this class at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures raised his hand and said, “Mark, you’ve been too negative. Give us something positive we can feel good about.”

I replied, “If you hear this as negative, then I’ve failed to communicate. While there are trends and attitudes that concern me, I have no fear for the Kingdom of God and great hope for Churches of Christ.

Our churches are living, dynamic expressions of the body of Christ and filled with His Spirit. We are human, therefore flawed, but not without His grace and His blessing, so where we are weak, He can make us strong.

And I’m certainly 100% positive that the Kingdom of God will prevail against the Gates of Hell.  Led by our Redeemer on a white horse, we will continue to attack the fortress of Evil until the final battle is accomplished.  The Victory is won!

I really want to win my little portion of the Great Battle for the glory and honor of Jesus. Don’t you?

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What’s Next in Missions among Churches of Christ?

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , , on May 2, 2013| 1 Comment »

missions2Yesterday, I suggested the following about the current state of foreign missions in Churches of Christ:

  • Greater tolerance has produced less urgency for evangelism.
  • Missions are being redefined as social justice activities at the expense of evangelization.
  • Churches are turning toward more domestic mission projects
  • Churches are depending on missionary organizations more.
  • More older Christians and fewer younger Christians are involved in foreign missions.
  • Churches are opting for safe and successful missions.

If you believe that the above statements are true—even mostly true—then what does the near future look like for missions from American Churches of Christ?

These churches will do less and less evangelistic work, both in the U.S. and especially in foreign countries.  Why?

  • Historically, most of our mission force has come from recent college graduates and young families.  Since this demographic is now the product of greater tolerance (less urgency) and has replaced  evangelism with social justice, fewer will have the motivation for foreign missions.
  • Those who do go overseas will more likely be involved in humanitarian activities than church planting.

As older church leaders become less able to travel themselves and because fewer younger people are evangelistic, churches will outsource their foreign missions and evangelistic work even more. This suggests that independent ministries will continue to grow until the older church leaders give up their leadership to a younger generation of leaders.

If present trends continue, the independent relief organizations and ministries focusing on social justice will increase both in number and scope, and as younger Christians grow in influence and wealth, more funds will flow from evangelistic missions to these serving ministries.

 

One of the difficulties of even discussing this is trying to avoid posturing evangelism against social justice—or vice versa!  Jesus went around preaching and healing—and we should too.  Unfortunately, however, in our humanity we are much more likely to swing with the pendulum than to look for harmony.

That’s what I want to do tomorrow.  In the next post, let’s talk about not about what is, or what is likely, but what is needed and how things could be with regards to missions in Churches of Christ.

 

 

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What is the State of Missions in Churches of Christ?

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , , on May 1, 2013| 4 Comments »

missions2Today, I’m teaching a class at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures entitled “What’s New and What’s Needed in 21st Century Missions”  The things I want to say will be something that you will be interested in also, so I want to share them with you. My plan is to divide the hour-long class into three written parts for you and publish them all this week.

Introduction

As most of you know, Sherrylee and I have been involved in foreign missions in Churches of Christ since 1968, with my first survey trip to Europe, trying to determine where God wanted us to work. This led to our spending eight years in Germany, working with two other couples, planting a new church.

Upon our return to the States (which had been God’s idea, not ours!), we began the Let’s Start Talking ministry, which now 33 years later has taken us to 70 countries where we have visited and worked beside literally hundreds of missionaries and national evangelists and seen as many mission churches from our fellowship.

Our work has also given us two other fairly unique touch points which allow us a sense of the pulse of our fellowship.

First, recruiting workers and raising resources among Churches of Christ has given us opportunities to speak to many of our churches—most often with the mission committees and/or mission elders/deacons in those churches.  Many of our impressions and insights come from these conversations.

Second, almost all long-term American missionaries from our movement have a short-term mission as the experience that launches them on their life’s path. Both our work in recruiting, training, and sending thousands of students as well as our association, often partnership, with other short-term mission groups, and having had this vantage point for over thirty years, allows us to speak from firsthand experience about what has changed or not changed in our lifetime.

So, for today’s conversation just remember that I’m speaking from experience not research and that I’m speaking from the context of American Churches of Christ and our foreign mission efforts, not broader Christendom and not global churches.

What’s Now?

Churches of Christ are more tolerant. Most of our churches no longer preach and act like we are the only ones going to heaven!  We have discovered God’s graciousness and admitted our own infallibility, but it has made us a little unsure of who we are or why we should try to persuade others of anything.  We are less urgent about evangelizing because many of those we “evangelized” years ago, we are less sure that they really need it.  Our earlier evangelism had been persuading someone that they didn’t really know what they were doing when they were baptized, so their previous baptism was invalid.  We probably still disagree with them on the biblical teaching about baptism, but we are no longer willing to deny fellowship to someone whom God has offered His gracious forgiveness of their errors as He continues to forgive ours.

The meaning of mission among Churches of Christ is being redefined. Again, this was a needed correction. It was always a mistake to think that the mission of God was always somewhere else—probably overseas—accomplished only by special people. We now talk about missional churches¸by which we mean churches who encourage all members to live their daily lives, confessing Christ in word and deed. But in making this adjustment, a whole generation in our churches now thinks that missions is painting houses, building church buildings, serving the poor, playing with orphans, or any act of what is most often called social justice ministry.

Of course, missions ARE all of the above—but it is also telling the story of Jesus to those who don’t know Him, bringing the Word and the Light to people in ignorance and darkness.  While many have gone on mission trips, very few in our churches under 40 years old have actually shared the Word and told someone the Good News.

Church leaders are looking for mission work that allows greater involvement by their members.  For this reason and others, our churches seem to be looking for more domestic mission sites. Cost, oversight issues, and maintaining relationships all are more difficult with foreign mission points—and don’t we have growing unbelief in the States anyway!

More older Christians and Boomers are involved in foreign missions, through supporting it, but also in going on short-term missions projects. This is a terrific development, occurring mostly because of the changing demographic in our churches. These people are old enough to still be evangelistic, and now they have the funds to do what they have always wanted to do.

One interesting corollary of this is that many, perhaps most of our missionaries are finding their financial support from wealthier individuals instead of from our churches.  Churches are considered too bureaucratic, too self-centered, and too capricious. Getting support from an ardent supporter is considered vastly superior than to run the daunting and often fruitless gauntlet of trying to find supporting churches.

Churches are relying more on independent ministries for missions.  You may see this as either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your own ideas, but I think it is a good thing to admit, at least.  Notice this list:

  • Great Cities   – Latin American missions
  • Eastern European Missions  –    Bibles, literature. and resources for Eastern Europe
  • China Now/China Vision   -placing Christian teachers in Chinese universities
  • Mission Alive    – Church Planting
  • Kairos  –  Church Planting
  • World Bible School/World English School   –  Correspondence courses
  • Let’s Start Talking    –   Short-term missions,
  • FriendSpeak  –   English Outreach in the United States
  • Sunset  International Bible Institute  – training of missionaries and mission internships
  • Missions Resource Network  –   missionary care, missions education, center for                                                                      missions information

Churches are only interested in successful missions.  And why should anyone support unsuccessful missions!  But successful is a tricky word. What most of our churches mean is that the mission is

  • Affordable
  • Accessible
  • Quantifiably impressive and motivating for the local church
  • Safe

So, taking this picture of missions in today’s churches of Christ, what do you see happening in the near future?  That’s tomorrow’s blog—and it won’t be this long, I promise!

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What About “Win-Win” in Mission Work?

Posted in Christian Missions, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , on April 9, 2013| 2 Comments »

win winI believe it was Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People who made the attribute of always going for Win-Win a virtue. In many life situations, this principle seems to be a very Christ-like approach. Win-Win seems to avoid a selfish approach to relationships, or dominance for the sake of dominance, or any form of self-gratification at the expense of others.

Sunday, I was reading in Acts 13-14 on the flight home from Europe, thinking about the places Paul went on his missionary journeys and all the mission points Sherrylee and I had visited on our trip. I enjoy his first and second journeys much more now that we have traveled in Turkey and been to some of the same sites, like Perga, Antioch of Pisidia, and especially Attalia , which is current day Antalya, a site where LST has been active for ten years now.

This time, however, as I was reading, I noticed especially how much opposition Paul and Barnabas faced:

  • Cyprus: Elymas (Bar-Jesus) the sorcerer “opposed them”.  Paul calls him “a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right,” and then strikes him blind for a season.
  • Pisidian Antioch: Jealous Jews “began to contradict what Paul was saying and heaped abuse on him. Paul and Barnabas answer them boldly, then leave and shake the dust off their feet as a warning to them!
  • Iconium: Paul and Barnabas spoke so effectively(?) that the people of the city were divided. Some plotted to mistreat and stone them, so Paul and Barnabas fled for their lives.
  • Lystra: The apostles decided to do good in the neighborhood, so they healed a lame man which won them more favor than was good because the people tried to worship them as gods—until they were persuaded instead to stone them!

After Derbe, the two missionaries go back through most of these same sites to encourage the disciples with this message:  “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

Does this sound like Paul and Barnabas had win-win experiences in their mission efforts?

On one of our stops in Europe we had a conversation with a missionary who was working in a country, not hostile but definitely indifferent to the Savior.  There was little danger of real persecution, but a high likelihood of rejection.

This missionary’s approach was to perform acts of service in the community, to gradually grow relationships with people, and to “wait and see what the Holy Spirit will do with it all.”

First, let me say that I believe that God works and accomplishes his plan even through our weakest efforts and in spite of  our best efforts. God’s sovereignty, however, has never left his people without obedient work to do.

I went away from this meeting thinking to myself: this missionary has built a system of missions where he risks almost nothing.  He is offering no words that can be rejected; he is not risking relationships by calling for repentance; he thinks he is a living testimony, and that he is doing the right thing by waiting on divine intervention.

Or he may have just bought into a conflict-avoidance philosophy of the cultural Christianity, broadly espoused and gladly believed in our society, where tolerance of diversity is the supreme virtue.

I don’t believe we have to imitate Paul’s missionary methods explicitly, but I do see Jesus and all of the early disciples not just making friends, not just avoiding conflict, not just doing good in front of people.  I see ALL of them BOLDLY speaking the words of God to people—and all of them experiencing rejection and conflict as a result.

Yes, they sometimes enjoyed the favor of all the people (Acts 2:47), but the word of God is described as a SWORD—a weapon.

I’m pretty sure Christians can’t win-win the battle without the Sword.

I’m not advocating the return to self-righteous bashing of others. I am advocating a return to boldly and overtly speaking the truth in love.

It’s still true today for all Christians, but some more than others:  “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

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Are We Only Interested in Low-Hanging Fruit?

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , on March 16, 2013| 2 Comments »

Low_Hanging_Fruit“Low-hanging fruit” is one of those business idioms that comes close to being a cliché which good writers would try to avoid. I assume it comes from working in orchards, where pickers have no trouble getting the fruit that hangs low on the tree, but that getting above their own reach requires much greater effort—even ingenuity!

I’m sitting here in Turkey thinking about this metaphor in reference to foreign missions among churches of Christ—just wondering if we as a fellowship have been guilty of generally going for the low-hanging fruit.

Before I go any further, I want to categorically recognize the personal sacrifice and commitment of every Christian who left his/her home to go to a foreign mission site. My thinking is more about us as a fellowship, not the individual efforts of our finest who have gone where they were called.

Individuals from Churches of Christ left the country before the turn of the 20th century, but not many, and they are less remembered than those that went to Japan and East Africa, names like McCaleb, Benson, Andrews, Shewmaker, Merritt, families whose work has been legendary into our own time. These first major efforts at foreign missions were a test not only for the individuals who went, but also for the still provincial churches that supported them.

The next great wave of missions was the post-WW II era, those many who went to war-ravaged Europe and Japan especially, preaching to thousands, feeding and clothing people who had lost everything. By the 1960s, these countries had re-emerged materially, which meant they were no longer receptive, so churches in the states became less interested in these fields and looked for new places to work!

Fortunately, South America especially, but also Central America captured our imagination.  The great Brazilian team effort became the new model and standard for foreign missions.  The strength of the churches in Brazil testifies to the quality of work done during the first twenty-five years.  Argentina, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, these countries have stood out perhaps among the Latin American countries—but ask any of those who worked there if response is the same now as it was then. After you ask that question, ask if the interest among US churches in that part of the world is as great as it was then.  I do believe that these two questions correlate.

The 1990s saw the collapse of the Soviet Union. Christians and resources poured into all of Eastern Europe.  For all of the interest in these countries just two decades ago, only Ukraine continues to capture any attention in the States.  Yes, there are still workers in Hungary, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, Russia, Kazakhstan—thank God—but very, very few and the work is very difficult. Reception is slow now, and so the interest of the American church has waned.

Our attention turns: CHINA!! I love working in China and we (LST) love sending people to China. The spread of the faith in China is dynamite!

And don’t forget Africa! Interestingly, all the reports are that Africa has become the most Christian continent on earth.  In 2010, Christianity Today reported 470 million Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa. One in five of all Christians live in Africa. So, does anyone else find it interesting that Africa continues to be the #1 mission site for American Churches of Christ?

I’m sitting here in Turkey wondering where we are? I’m wondering where the Church is that has a vision for the Muslim world.  It will need to be a lifetime vision—probably longer! Who is thinking about Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia?  I just saw a CNN report that Morocco is one of the tourist-friendliest places in the world! Could that mean something for a visionary church?

Where are those who will have the same foresight as our brethren who formed Eastern European Missions or Continent of Great Cities (for South America) or China Vision to focus the Church’s attention on those sites.

I know I’m writing in huge brushstrokes and that there are individuals and individual congregations who have this kind of vision.

But, can we as a fellowship see beyond the low-hanging fruit? Can churches of Christ do the hard work in hard places for many, many years? Can we commit to sowing seeds that may not bear fruit for generations?

It’s not in our nature—but it is in our Spirit! 

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Questions from Scotland

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , on March 9, 2013| 3 Comments »

St_Martin's_CrossMuch of the American conversation among church leaders focuses on the challenges in big churches! As I thought about the questions that I see regularly addressed in minister’s blogs, many of them came with assumptions about their churches that were uniquely American and perhaps unintentionally, but nevertheless, big church questions.  For instance

  • Which is a better kingdom-building strategy, a mother church planting daughter churches, or the multi-campus single church strategy?
  • Which is a better leadership model, a staff-led church or a member-led church?
  • Is Sunday school still the best model or should the teaching of our children be returned to parents and small groups of parents?
  • Worship styles / Seekers worship / and all of those questions.
  • Staffing questions: large hired staff versus volunteers—with all the ensuing involvement questions
  • Ethnically mixed churches versus homogeneous ones—with accompanying language and cultural issues.
  • Leadership issues brought on by generational differences, especially as millennials (and pre-millennials) move toward the first arenas of ministry leadership.

One of the things I love about mission work is that when you are on the real front line of evangelism, it clears the air.  I was just with a small church in Scotland.  You know, I didn’t hear any of these questions on their lips.

Scotland is a country of about 5 million people with a Christian heritage dating back to the second century, though without much history until the sixth or seventh centuries. John Knox led the Scottish Christians out of Roman Catholicism and into the Church of Scotland during the Reformation, so while there is no established church in Scotland, these are still the two largest groupings.

No, that’s not quite right!  While 42% of Scots claim the Church of Scotland and 16% are Roman Catholic, 28% claim no religion. And although 42% claimed membership in the Church of Scotland, the church itself could only account for about 12% of the population as members.  The number quoted to me was 2% of the population attend any Christian worship service on any given week.

It’s not that the Scots have run off into non-western religions, which are represented mostly by the Muslims, Asians, and Indians living in Scotland. And, yes, there is a smattering of occult and even blatant pagan religion, but that’s not where most Scots seem to be.  No, they just are . . .not religious—secular!–not unusually immoral or uncharitable—in fact, there are charity stores and posters everywhere.  And their public schools not only permit, but encourage religious activities and instruction from Christian groups.

I had breakfast with the minister of this small Christian church in Scotland, and I was the guest of a family in this church. Both husband and wife are leaders there as well.  And in none of the hours of conversation that we had, did we talk about any of the questions listed above.

Here are some of the topics with which we wrestled:

  • What do we do when two of the three leadership families in the church have to move away in the same year?
  • How do we give our children what they need when there are only 5-6 children and they are of all different ages?
  • How can we reach out to young families when we are so few young families ourselves?
  • How can one paid minister (only partially from this church and with part coming from the US) take care of the spiritual needs of the members and reach out to seekers?
  • Do we need to recruit workers from America to help out? If so, how would we use them?
  • Where will our children find Christian friends? Who will they marry?  (All of these questions suggest the difficulty of engendering faith in children who grow up where none of their peers believe, of course.)
  • If everybody in the church is involved already, how do we create new growing edges that might encourage growth?
  • The church members, though few, come from every direction across the city, so how do we have strong fellowship and ample opportunity for Bible study and prayer together?
  • How do we integrate the foreign Christians whom we are glad to welcome, but who bring different perspectives, both from their culture and from their home churches that can be very disruptive?

Now, these are not unanswerable questions—nor are they unique to Scotland, but they do seem to be questions of a more basic nature than sometimes make the headlines among Christian thinkers.

And aren’t most of the Christian churches in the world more like the Scottish than like the mega-churches of America?

It won’t hurt all of us to drop back and make sure we are addressing foundational questions, even as our churches grow!

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