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Rethinking Mission Work, Pt. 3: Why Educating Churches Doesn’t Work!

Posted in Christian Missions, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , on May 16, 2011| 12 Comments »

Although both of the first two posts in this series contain serious areas of concern with respect to the way Churches of Christ do mission work, today’s post is where we really want to get to the most critical issues of all!

In the first post of this series, I talked about the process in which those who want to become missionaries must prevail. In the second post, we reviewed the limited number of support/oversight opportunities available to the potential missionary in Churches of Christ.

Local churches Are ill-equipped to truly oversee foreign mission work.

Typically, churches who agree to provide oversight of a foreign mission effort have very little idea of what they are really agreeing to. For most congregations, total oversight means they have hired another employee (the missionary) and that they have ultimate responsibility for the missionary’s

  • complete job performance,
  • all monies given by them, both personal and work-related funds,
  • all work-related decisions, including those made by the mission congregation.
  • all doctrinal issues and/or congregational practices
  • growth strategies, including types of facilities

Any serious differences in opinion in any area or dissatisfaction within the overseeing church results in loss of financial support, the premature return of the missionary family, and often the complete termination of the missionary efforts at that site.

The most common variation on the total oversight model above is financial oversight, which usually means the overseeing church simply provides regular financial support to the missionary and as long as no criminal or moral irregularities occur, they are satisfied and continue this relationship of benevolent neglect until one of the following occurs

  • the missionary chooses to return to the States,
  • the overseeing church loses interest in the missionary—often because of excitement about a new missionary, or
  • the mission site is not seen as one that excites the overseeing congregation any longer, often because a new site seems more appealing now.

Attempting to Educate Local Churches

 

Mission professors at our Christian colleges as well as several groups like Mission Resource Network (MRN) and Sunset (SIBI) have tried for years to educate churches of Christ about missions. In spite of valiant efforts, the truth is that most congregations are woefully ill-prepared to provide oversight of a foreign mission work—much less several works at multiple sites.

We need to seriously consider whether it is realistic to expect every congregation to develop mission expertise—and then not only to continually renew this expertise, but also to educate succeeding generations.

 

Here are the difficulties that battle against education as the solution to the serious flaws in our missions paradigm:

  • Very few congregations have members who have any personal experience in mission work. The most experienced have often only visited a foreign site for a few days.
  • Knowledge gained through expert instruction is secondhand information that too often becomes a mission template that may or may not be appropriate for a specific mission work or site.
  • Turnover in mission committees or elderships who oversee missions is enough that even if some members are satisfactorily educated, what about the new ones who replace them?
  • The education that our institutions offer must by design be general, that is, mostly general policy oriented. In the application of these general policies to a specific site, whose judgment prevails—the missionary on site or the overseeing church who now has been through the mission policy course?

In my opinion, Alexander Pope was right when he said, “A little learning is a dangerous thing!”

Responses

Recognizing the weakness of the church education model, many larger churches have responded by limiting their mission focus to only a few workers that they fully support in one or few sites for long periods of time. By limiting the number of workers and the number of sites, they are able to gain a degree of expertise and feel more competent about their oversight.  With longer missionary tenures, overseeing churches are able to pass down this expertise more easily.

 The challenge of this corrective measure, however, is that it puts a virtual cap on the number of workers on the field, limiting the number to what a relative handful of people in a few large churches feel comfortable managing.

Other churches deal with the oversight dilemma by limiting their active responsibility to financial oversight only—although they are often reluctant to admit this. As long as the missionary reports regularly and accounts properly for the funds, these churches are happy. They may or may not have any emotional relationship to the established church or mission site. They do not wish any further commitment as long as they can report to their congregation that they are doing mission work.

Smaller churches (under 500 members), since they do not feel capable of major financial commitments, are rarely willing to accept oversight responsibilities. They limit their involvement to sending checks to the larger churches and enjoying the visits of “their” missionaries, when the larger churches bring the missionaries home on furlough.

Conclusions:

Exceptions exist to every statement I have made, but Sherrylee and I have been involved intimately in missions in Churches of Christ for over forty years. If you will accept the general truth of what I have stated, then these are the necessary conclusions!

  1. Most missionaries self-select and quality of preparation/training varies widely!
  2. The number of missionaries that Churches of Christ can send to the field is limited to those that large churches can and will both oversee and financially support.
  3. The number of Christians directly involved in sending missionaries is virtually limited to the number on mission committees in large churches.
  4. The oversight of missionaries is done primarily through financial control, usually by people with even less training or experience than the missionaries themselves.
  5. Spiritual oversight is grossly neglected.
  6. The number of missionaries in Churches of Christ is limited to those who either have good large church connections, and/or good fund raising personalities—neither of which are essential qualities for doing good mission work.

In the next posts, we’ll talk about alternatives to the current paradigm, but my suggestions are out of the box—just warning you!

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Rethinking Mission Work Pt. 2: Finding Oversight and Support

Posted in Christian Missions, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , , , on May 12, 2011| 9 Comments »

After making most of the first decisions, the potential missionary still lacks two very essential components before he/she can go to the mission field: financial support and oversight.  Historically, Churches of Christ have opposed missionary societies  and/or sending agencies, primarily because of a belief that the New Testament pattern requires congregational autonomy, especially in the area ultimate accountability for both the mission funds and the missionary.

Just a quick tangential comment:  in spite of a strong belief in congregational oversight, the major decisions about the mission work, such as the place and type of work, team members, training needs, and date of departure, are usually made independent of and prior to acquiring funding or oversight.  This is probably because these first decisions can be made independently, while the potential missionary is totally dependent on others for financial support and oversight. In addition, these first decisions  are part of the mission package that must be created  to sell  to congregations that might assume support and/or oversight. I wonder whether the “promotional” aspect of this package doesn’t have the potential to skew the strategic possibilities of the mission plans??

Current models for securing support and oversight among Churches of Christ

  1. Single congregation model – The potential missionary meets with a larger congregation (500+ members) and convinces either the elders and/or the mission committee that he/she is worthy of their support and that the mission project is worthy. The local congregation then provides all of the personal funding as well as working fund and assumes complete oversight of the work.  This model is usually viewed as the ideal arrangement for missionaries in Churches of Christ.
  2. Multiple congregations model – The potential missionary finds one larger congregation (500+ members) who accepts oversight of the mission project, but only provides partial funding. The potential missionary then solicits funding from other congregations until full personal and working funds are secured. The number of additional churches needed may vary from few (2-5) to many (20+). These contributing churches then funnel their funds through the “overseeing” congregation. They have no oversight responsibilities.  This model dominates Churches of Christ.
  3. Church/individual model – Same as the multiple congregations model except that in the place of multiple congregations, the potential missionary also finds individuals who wish to support them independently.  These individuals may or may not funnel their funds through the overseeing church.  This model has become much more common in recent years.
  4. Individual model – Occasionally, wealthier Christians are bypassing local churches and themselves sponsoring missionaries. The funds may be funneled through a local church for tax purposes only, but the local congregation is otherwise disengaged from the mission work.

 

Common Assumptions About Oversight and Support

  1. One must usually first find oversight before support is secured. This is because churches and some individuals want assurances that the funds are properly managed and that the potential missionary is accountable to someone before they are willing to make any financial commitment.  The expectation is also that the overseeing church will be a major contributor to the worker. Other potential contributors see themselves as only supplementing the overseeing churches contribution.
  2. The overseeing church must also be a major contributor. .  If the worker happens to have grown up in a larger church or is a relatively long-term member of a larger church, then that is where their hopes lie. However, since only a handful of these churches are actually expanding their mission program in any given year, it is not uncommon that the desire of the potential missionary for funding and oversight and the schedule of the home church for expansion of their mission budget do not coincide.

If the potential missionary’s most familiar congregation cannot or will not accept  oversight, then there remain only two options for obtaining oversight and support:

  1. They can start looking for another large church—all of which are overrun with solicitations–or find a small church who will give them “temporary oversight” so they can solicit funds from other small churches and individuals until such time that they can find a larger church to assume oversight. The assumption is that if enough financial support can be found to reduce the financial demands on a larger church, it will be more willing to assume oversight.
  2. They can accept oversight from a smaller church—probably one that knows them well–and spend weeks, months, and sometimes years visiting other small churches  and individuals, trying to collect enough commitments to realize their mission plans and go.

As you can readily see, neither of these latter options is promising! But many, many potential missionaries find themselves left with only these options.  The most ambitious for God are sometimes even successful, but most potential missionaries are lost to the mission field, giving up on their call   because they

a) have only a small number of congregations who know them personally and none of those is willing or in a position to offer oversight and/or support, or

b) they personally do not have the resources to fund weeks, if not months, of cross-country travel for full-time fund raising, or

c) they simply do not have the skills for fund raising. Their desire and training, perhaps their giftedness, is being a missionary, not a fundraiser.

In the next installment, I will expand on the problems and challenges caused by bundling oversight and support—which is where I see that our current paradigm creates the greatest barriers to mission work.

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Rethinking Mission Work, Part 1: How Are First Decisions Made?

Posted in Christian Missions, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , , , , , , on May 10, 2011| 3 Comments »

The person who desires to become a full-time missionary supported by churches of Christ has an extraordinarily difficult mountain to climb—unduly difficult—before they will ever reach the mission field. Many never attempt to climb the mountain, and others fall off the mountain in the attempt.

 The current support/oversight paradigm among churches of Christ discourages both potential and existing missionaries. The results are too few long-term missionaries which means less mission work and fewer souls hearing the story of Jesus—none of which can possibly be pleasing to God!

I want to challenge us to rethink the oversight-support model for long-term mission work from churches of Christ and look together at a different model of oversight/support that will lead, I believe, to more missionaries who stay longer and can reach more people more effectively.

Let’s first work our way through the whole process of becoming a missionary as it generally happens among churches of Christ.

First Decisions

 When someone is motivated to become a missionary, he/she/they usually will go through a series of decisive steps before they actually can begin their work.  The basis for all of these decisions is usually the point of first inspiration.

  • If they were inspired by a short-term mission experience, then they want to return to the field they first experienced and work in a similar manner to the missionaries with whom they have worked.
  • If they were inspired by a teacher/mentor, they will make their choice based on the teacher/mentor’s experiences.
  • If they were inspired by a challenge or a public presentation, they will look for an expert (mission professor, missionary, preacher, mission organization.) to help them proceed.
  • Decisions about the field of work are most often driven first by inspiration, followed usually by short-term mission experience in a field or a short survey trip. The experiences and information gained are then supplemented with interviews with current and past missionaries to whom the potential worker might have access.
  • Decisions about the type of work are more difficult.  
  1. First plans are often very broad plans, such as church planting, strengthen the local church, campus ministry, even community outreach.
  2. Some plans are method specific; for example, potential missionaries might decide to start house churches, or do children’s work, or do media-based evangelism.
  3. First plans made by mission teams are often very personality and role specific. For example, the team might have one couple that likes children, so they will plan to do children’s work, while another team member wants to preach, so they will plan for public preaching. Overall their plans still tend to be broad.
  • Decisions about means and types of preparation depend mostly on those advising the future missionary.
  1. Undergraduates/graduate students at Christian universities may begin by taking general mission courses and seeking contact with mentors in mission study groups.
  2. Some desiring to do mission work may seek out higher level mission training, for example, through ACU Summer Mission Seminar, SIBI Advanced Mission Training.
  3. A few parachurch ministries offer mission training.  Continent of Great Cities and Missions Resource Network come to mind right away.
  4. Other people will look for short-term internships on the desired field, if possible, with a current missionary.
  5. Many will work with American churches—often required by sponsoring congregations– and learn to work with and evangelize through an American model.And there are those who will go with little or no specialized training other than their own life/church experiences. This is especially true of those who are a bit older when they decide to become missionaries.

If you haven’t already, go back through this first section and notice the following:

  • All initiative and initial actions come from the person desiring to become a missionary, who is most often untrained, inexperienced, perhaps not completely educated, but highly motivated.
  • While capable professors, mentors, and friends are available for guiding potential missionaries, the number of options for fields, types of work, and for training are enormous. In my experience, most go along a path of inspiration and least resistance rather than a strategic path.

And this is the easy part! Next, I want to lay out the ways we in churches of Christ have typically supported and overseen foreign mission work—and why it is an unsuccessful paradigm.

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Becoming a Good Missions Church, pt. 5 – Getting Leadership on Board

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , , , , , on March 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Fifth in Guest Series by Tim Spivey, senior minister of New Vantage Church (San Diego, CA)

It’s one of the most frustrating things in the world to have a deep passion for something and not be able to get leadership to care much or embrace it. Few places have I seen this frustration more common or misunderstood than when it comes to global evangelism. When you meet resistance proposing something to church leaders, it isn’t typically because they hate ministry or people or they want to be frustrating. The resistance you face is often based on stuff under the surface. Everything below is a generalization. However, if you are meeting resistance, some of these attitudes may be in play. Let the generalizations begin 🙂

In general, elders tend to fear conflict, ministers tend to fear failure. Church members tend to feel like the church is overstaffed and spends too much money on themselves. The minister feels like the church is under-staffed and under-resourced. None of this makes for easy persuasion or full buy-in from leadership.

If it were me, I would focus on getting the preacher on board first. Preachers tend to me more open to new initiatives and they know how to get the elders on board. Like it or not, they are also usually the functional leader of the church by virtue of having high visibility and an open mic for 30 minutes every Sunday. Some will disagree with this…but without the preacher’s support a ministry will have about half the octane it could have otherwise. The good news is that most preachers don’t know they have the power they have…and tend to care more about ministry than power-brokering anyways. However, when you propose something new, or want to go to the “next level” in global missions (or anything else), here are:

5 Things Your Preacher Won’t Tell You He’s Thinking (Some are reasonable, some aren’t)

  • “I think you might pitch the idea, and leave me with the workload.” Create a ministry that requires little more than vision-casting and cheerleading from him. Preachers enjoy these and do them well.
  • “I think you might blame me and the elders if it doesn’t work.” If it doesn’t work, don’t blame them.
  • “I think this will mean less money and human resources to carry out the work of the local church.” Most churches actually drastically underfund local ministry. I would recommend finding ways to get the job done without pulling additional funds out of local ministry. I would also find ways for the missions ministry to add value to the whole life of the Body…not silo itself.
  • “I need you to help me understand how this works, because people will judge the ministry’s success by the numbers.” This is sad but true. A ministry that doesn’t “work” will hurt credibility for all involved. Have a clear way to measure “success,” even if not by numbers–though numbers matter. Just make it clear.
  • “I’m always looking for new ministries that will work and bless the church, but ending ministries is nearly impossible.” Offer to try it as a pilot or experiment, and have a concrete end game in mind.

If you can find a way to put these concerns (many of which are shared by elders) at ease…odds are…you’ll not only get leadership on board–you’ll have real champions for your area of ministry.

 

 

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Becoming a Good “Missions Church,” pt. 4 – Alignment

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , , , , , on March 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Fourth in a Guest series by Tim Spivey, senior minister at New Vantage Church (San Diego, CA)

No-silosBuilding on the three previous posts, here are a couple of introductory steps you can take that will help your church more effectively embrace God’s call to global mission:

Seek alignment. Understand the church is like a mobile. Everything is connected, and this is a great blessing. Look at your existing ministries and see how your missions ministry can be properly aligned with what the church is already doing. In some churches, church planting, short-term missions, benevolence, long-term missions, etc. are all very separate ministries with independent objectives and marked territory. For the purposes of involvement perhaps this feels good. However, if ministries are organizationally, strategically and philosophically siloed, it will take twice the money and publicity to achieve half of the results with half of the joy.

“Alignment” means riding the wave of where the church is already going rather than charting your own course. It means building missions ministry around the broader objectives of the church, and with all church ministries in mind. This will not only bring the blessing and support of church leadership to missions more quickly, it will relieve “sideways energy” in the church system that creates a tug of war effect–lots of effort, little movement. If everyone heads in their own directions, the church will stuggle to make progress of any kind. With alignment, forward progress is much easier and results exponentially enhanced.

Here are some steps to this effect:

  • Seek a firm grasp on the mission and vision of the church. Ask, how can we build a missions ministry that affirms and accentuates that vision? If missions becomes a para-church ministry in the church, it will never soar, and those involved in it will find themselves wondering why leadership and the congregation don’t seem to care much about it.
  • Have those who lead ministries in the “externally-focused” areas meet together. Relationships are everything in the church. Knowing one another better and communicating what’s going on will help coordination and make it easier for people to give to one another when necessary down the road. Tomorrow’s post will talk more about the importance of relationships in global missions ministry.
  • Integrate those ministries by choosing to do things together. Could a short-term missions team be sent to build up and encourage your long-term missionaries instead of going to countries that aren’t a part of what the church is already involved in? Could some of the church’s benevolence money go to support the poor overseas? Here’s another one–can the global missions team play a part in helping further the cause of the poor and and reaching the international community around the building through a ministry like Friendspeak?
  • Trade out traditional “mission reports” for storytelling opportunities in sermons, giving time, communion, and other things that weave the narrative of what God is doing globally through all of church life. Consider having one of your missionaries video a communion thought or a brief thank-you for the morning and stream it to the screen. Now they aren’t a visitor from a faraway land. They are part of the church.

Those are just a few possibilities. There are many more. There are two more posts in this series. One with more practical ideas–and one talking about getting leadership on board.

How have you seen partnership between ministries rather than “siloing” pay dividends in furthering God’s mission in the church?

 

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Becoming a Good “Missions Church,” pt. 3 – Integrate & Mind the Goose

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

World_face_north_america

Third in a series of guests posts from Tim Spivey, senior minister of New Vintage Church (San Diego, CA).

Today’s post offers some relatively blunt observations regarding the relative strength of a church and it’s ability to be a good “missions church.” I offer these with redemptive intent–wanting churches to become all God wants them to be.

  • My experience is that struggling churches struggle for good reasons. It usually has something to do with leadership issues, and those issues by nature permeate all aspects of the church. It’s important for the sake of missionaries these issues are dealt with. Typically (though not always), churches will do mission work with the same level of health and excellence they do local ministry. Bad local ministry, bad missions ministry. If they don’t show care for what is happening locally, they typically won’t care about what God’s doing half a world away. This is another reason to pay attention to local ministry…it buoys the eventual effectiveness of whatever happens overseas.
  • A lack of well-formed theology and ecclesiology manifests itself in silo thinking. In this mindset, church-planting, benevolence, global missions, local ministry, campus ministry, etc…are all completely different ministries needing their own advocates at the church leadership table. In this way of thinking, each ministry is separate and altogether disconnected. The silo mentality is one of the great enemies of global missions ministry and healthy ministry. The church is a Body, and each part is connected. Both practically and theologically, when all parts are working together for the common good of the Body according to their place, the church grows in unity, vibrancy, and effectiveness. We cannot just report on missions. Biblical teaching on the church, ministry and the nature of evangelism is an important part of becoming a good missions church.
  • Integrated ministry recognizes the symbiotic relationship between all ministries of the church. It leverages the strengths of all for the sake of all. This why effective global mission requires more ingenuity, a strong focus on integration with the ministries of the whole church and less initial funding than one might think.
  • Most churches still view “successful” mission works as those they have supported for many years…regardless of their effectiveness or the real impact of continual support for decades. This way of looking at missions bottlenecks resources at a national level and tends to build co-dependent relationships between congregations and mission points. Relationally, it’s wonderful to continue to support a particular work. However, the relationship can continue regardless of support…as a parent doesn’t cut off relationship with a child once they leave the house. It’s important that mission efforts become self-supporting after some reasonable period of time–for their good and that of the supporting congregation.
  • Here is a difficult one. Struggling churches usually have declining budgets as well. They often will only cut missions as a last resort and will thus kill the proverbial “goose” by first slashing local ministries, cutting salaries, etc. in draconian fashion–which often means more decline, which means less revenue, which means more cuts, etc. This is a noble impulse, but HUGE mistake. Sometimes this must happen–but not usually. More on that in another post. For now, I would recommend cutting what isn’t working wherever it’s located and moving the resources to where the most good for the Kingdom can be accomplished. That’s a delicate process of discernment…but a necessary one.
  • If the “goose” continues to be plucked or starved, at some point, the ministers of the church come to view missions as a competitor rather than an ally in what God’s doing in the church. This is never good…and isn’t necessarily all the minister’s fault. The minister may fear blame for the church’s decline when he or she didn’t have much to do with it–they simply had the ball taken out of their hands. The ministers need to be strong allies in building a vibrant global missions ministry. In fact, I would start building buy-in with them first.

Which brings me to the next posts in this series: Concrete steps to improve both your church and the church’s global mission efforts.

I would enjoy hearing to what extent to you believe world missions is separate or different from other ministries of the church? Why?

 

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Becoming a Good “Missions Church,” pt. 2 – Become a Good Church

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 10, 2011| 1 Comment »

Part Two in the guest series by Tim Spivey, Senior Minister of New Vintage Church (San Diego, CA)

 

Step one in becoming a good “missions church” is becoming a good church. I don’t mean churches should take care of themselves first, so to speak. I mean that true global vision emerges from an awareness of what God is doing everyday locally. Good churches have embraced God’s vision for reaching their community through them. This initiates a “flat earth” theology–in which God cares about all people, not just the people in my community. I have yet to see this work in reverse. Churches don’t usually come to believe, “Well if he cares about people in Africa, I bet He may even care about people here in Plano.” It usually goes the opposite way.

Embracing local evangelism is like learning the alphabet when it comes to becoming a globally conscious, “missions church.” If we don’t care about the people next door, we probably don’t care about the lost in Indonesia that much either. I’m not saying we don’t feel guilt about the lost in Indonesia. I’m saying we don’t really care about them the way God would want us to.

I’m defining “good church” (though I prefer “great”) theologically by its faithfulness to Christ and His mission. “Good church” practically means healthy and at least moderately effective in reaching its own community. You don’t have to be big to be a great church. But, being a good church is usually a prerequisite for building a strong missions ministry over time. As I said,  good “missions” churches have what God is doing globally in their DNA and awareness…not just in their budget. Many churches who give a high percentage of money to global missions don’t really care much about it.

Becoming a good “missions church” is actually quite similar to becoming a “good church,” because good churches think globally. Thinking globally, however, doesn’t make you a good church.

When a church is truly struggling, it can be difficult to build enthusiasm for visionary ministry abroad. Why? Sadly, the scarcity mentality embeds itself in the church psyche like a tick. It’s fair to say that sometimes new ventures abroad can defibrillate a dying congregation. Odds are, such ministries will never get the chance. The church can only think of survival. They cannot imagine new initiatives–like a family on the verge of bankruptcy has difficulty envisioning their dream home. If you’re in a church like this, trying to get buy-in from leadership on continuing to grow in global mission will be exhausting and depressing.

So, don’t.

Yet.

A more effective overall approach to the problem is to stay vigilant about local ministry while casting global ministry as akin to it–an extension of it. It’s all evangelism. God cares about all people. Global missions are not more important than local mission. It’s a vital part of being a Kingdom Church. Big difference. A healthy local ministry will allow for the funding, vision and “want to” for new global initiatives. It rarely works in reverse. Maybe it should. But, it usually doesn’t.

Do you agree?

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Becoming a Good “Missions Church,” Part 1

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership on March 9, 2011| 1 Comment »

I’m proud to share with you a short series of guest posts by Tim Spivey, senior minister for New Vintage Church in Rancho Bernardo, CA –and my son-in-law! I know you will appreciate his perspective.

MissionsI presented a session at the Global Missions Conference in Arlington, Texas a couple of years ago on “Becoming a Good Missions Church.” I’ve decided to post some of the material from that class here along with some new perspectives, because it’s an issue churches continue to face. Many churches want to spend less on themselves and more on others, or they want to be more effective in how they do global missions with the money they have.

In the dozens of churches I’ve consulted with or served in ministry at, there have only been a couple I can recall that spent less than 10% of their annual budget on global mission efforts, including domestic church planting efforts and exclusive of benevolence spending. Some spent as high as 65%. That’s an extremely high number in comparison with national norms–and a number that isn’t healthy for reasons I’ll describe in this series.

Percentage of budget does not an evangelistic church make. Think about your personal finances as an example: most of the money God provides us personally is spent on purchasing food, paying rent/mortgage payments, utilities, etc. That doesn’t mean I’m more passionate about utilities than about the Kingdom. It just is what it is. Similarly, some churches think becoming a good “missions church” (a term well worth deconstructing) is basically devoting an ever-increasing portion of their budget to global evangelism. While that is a noble impulse, it isn’t equivalent to becoming a strong “missions church.” Here are just a few reasons why:

  • Many of the churches that spend high percentages of their budget on missions pay little attention or care to the works they support. This is also observable in relative congregational ambivalence toward global mission efforts.
  • Many “missions churches” support works for decades and develop a co-dependent relationship on the works they support. While the fellowship aspect of this model is a blessing, overall, this way of doing missions weakens both the church and ministry they support.
  • Many so-called “missions churches” are relatively inept at local evangelism and subconsciously use missions as an “out-sourcing” of evangelism– which they understand is a clear Gospel mandate. While this is better than doing nothing…a church of 100 that spends 60% of its budget overseas and didn’t baptize a single person last year should pause and consider the purpose of its own existence.

Tomorrow, we begin a new blog series on this subject–much of which can also be applied to benevolence spending as well.

Step 1 in becoming a good missions church is becoming a good church. To that we’ll turn tomorrow.

You can find a link to Tim’s blog site in the righthand column! MW

 

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Christians Protecting Muslims?

Posted in Christian Culture, Christian Missions, tagged , , , , , , on February 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Did you hear the broadcast from Egypt on Sunday that told of Coptic Christians conducting mass in Tahrir Square?  What caught my attention was the report that Muslims surrounded the Christians in order to protect them while they worshipped. (Reuters, February 6 2011).

This action follows many reports of Egyptian Christians protecting Muslim men in the same square as they prayed last Friday. Coptic Christians make up approximately ten percent of the population of Egypt, perhaps the largest Christian community in the Arab world. (For background information, you might want to read this article from Foreign Policy.)

Have you heard about the big controversy among some Christians over whether Christian churches should rent church space to Muslims to conduct their prayer services. What do you think your church would do?

Recently, Christianity Today has featured several articles that raised questions about the relationship between Islam and Christianity as well as between Muslims and Christians.

Why We Opened Our Church to Muslims | A response to “Muslims in Evangelical Churches.” (January 27, 2011)

Muslims in Evangelical Churches | Does loving your neighbor mean opening your doors to false worship? (January 3, 2011)

From Informant to Informer | The “son of Hamas” senses God in his life before coming to Christ. (June 8, 2010)

Dispute in Dearborn | Small ministry creates big waves at Arab festival. (August 18, 2010)

Out of Context | Debate over ‘Camel method’ probes limits of Muslim-focused evangelism. (March 31, 2010)

How Muslims See Christianity | Many Muslims don’t understand Christianity—especially the idea of salvation by grace through faith. (March 1, 2000)

The above list appears in a lengthy article discussing the use of the phrase “Son of God” in Bible translations used in Muslim countries. It is an excellent discussion of the difficulties inherent in cross-cultural evangelism (Christianity Today, February 4, 2011).

 

If you are having trouble even reading the word Muslim without thinking terrorist, then I think you are a pretty normal American Christian.  Unfortunately, I think the dominate word in that last phrase is American, not Christian. But it is very difficult for many of us to separate the flag from the cross, isn’t it!

I am encouraged that in the middle of the political tumult, Christians in Egypt have acted like Christians to those who sometimes even persecute them.  I’m equally thrilled to see Muslims responding favorably to the Christians.

It begins to sound like the early chapters of Acts, you know those verses that describe the good that the first followers of Jesus did among the people who had killed Jesus (2:47) and the “good favor” that ensued from the entire community.

We and LST have been involved in faith-sharing work with Muslims for many years now. Our first experiences were in western Europe–which is struggling with a mushrooming Muslim population. Then later we began work in places that were secular politically though Muslim culturally, both in Asia and Africa.   I have no personal experience in the fundamentalist Arab Muslim countries, but I do know people who have worked there.

So I have many more questions than I have answers, but I am more and more convicted that not only is vilification of Muslim people wrong, but that either intentionally or indifferently ignoring them is equally ungodly.

I am convicted—as you are, I believe—that God so loved the Muslim world as well as the Christian world that He sent His only Son to die for the whole world!  Isn’t that what you believe too?

So how does that change anything for you today?

 

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Guest Videopost on Kids, Videogames, and Missions!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Clint Loveness, a friend and Let’s Start Talking participant has created a great story video that speaks about young people, video games, and missions. You probably want to share this with your teens and grandteens!  It’s just over four minutes, so click below and enjoy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJGuAInoOlk

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