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Posts Tagged ‘Christian missions’

Where Have I Been? At the Pepperdine Bible Lectures, Of Course!

Posted in Other, tagged , , , on May 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The 69th Pepperdine Bible Lectures were outstanding—again! In spite of my good intentions to post during the lectures, especially to keep you current on the class that I led, it was just impossible! Too many people, too many conversations, too many outstanding teachers to take in, and too much late night pie and coffee with friends!

I hope you believe in “better late than never,” because with this post, I’ll try to fulfill my intentions.

I had really wanted to post audio recordings, at least excerpts, from the two-day class which I led on “What’s New and What’s Needed in 21st Century Missions,” but I was stymied on two fronts: by technology from doing my own recording and by copyright issues as well, so the best I can do for you is to give you the link where you can purchase the CDs of the class http://www.purelogicvideo.com/page.cfm?pageid=13737.  They really should make it possible to download these files, but I didn’t see that option.

One of the reasons PBL has continued to thrive and grow while other lectureships have failed is because young preachers are given big platforms! 

Jonathan Storment, a friend and the terrific young preacher for Highland in Abilene, opened the PBL on May 1. Jonathan has always been a dynamic and entertaining speaker, but the depth and courage that he now brings with his preaching is a special blessing to those who hear him.  Aaron Metcalf and Josh Ross are two more younger preachers who keynoted before any of the older, established speakers were given the pulpit.

Almost 250 classes are held during the three full days of PBL.  And the range is from textual to philosophical, from field reports to marriage/family, from the best known teachers like Randy Harris, Mike Cope, Rick Atchley, and Jeff Walling to the fully unknown but people with something important to say!

“Lively” would be the word I would choose to describe our class.  I invited Dr. Dan Bouchelle, President of Missions Resource Network, and Dr. Dan Rodriguez, professor of Religion and Hispanic Studies at Pepperdine, to join me in discussing issues surrounding foreign missions in churches of Christ.  We had a great time talking about each other’s ideas.

I’ve given you in the last post the summary of what I was going to deliver. Dan and Dan responded to my ideas and contributed their own. Dan Bouchelle suggested that while I addressed the current situation in American churches creatively, that perhaps I had not addressed the deeper problem that our churches as a whole must become more deeply and completely missional before they will do foreign missions well.

In addition, he said that for the 21st century, we Americans must surrender our patriarchal attitudes toward foreign missions and become co-workers, partners, with existing foreign churches who will more likely know what their part of the world needs better than we Americans could conceive.

Dr. Dan Rodriguez also supported the general tenor of my suggestions, but his personal message was that American churches need to cooperate with each other enough to strategically reach into parts of the world that no single congregation will probably ever have the resources to penetrate—especially those countries in the 10-40 window, which contain the fewest Christians and the largest portion of the world’s population.

I really appreciate so much what both of them said, and they were both quite kind to my rather subversive suggestions regarding the way we do foreign missions.  Don’t forget that you can get the entire discussion through this website: http://www.purelogicvideo.com/page.cfm?pageid=13737.

Dr. Jerry Rushford

Without question, the most spectacular moment of the lectureship was the last night when Dr. Jerry Rushford, director of the PB L for thirty years, passed the baton to his successors Mike Cope and Rick Gibson.  As President Benton said, Rushford could have chosen any number of career paths; a historian, a writer, a preacher, or a professor. But very early in his life he chose to direct the lectureship because he saw a chance to effect a whole fellowship of Christians.

For thirty years, he has been encouraging new preachers by giving them a chance to be heard; he has given foreign preachers and missionaries a classroom or a stage to expose American churches to the needs of the world; he has provided a stage where issues could be discussed with love and respect.

Thank you, Jerry Rushford, for a lifetime of serving the Kingdom in a way that few could have taken to the mountain tops as you have.  And thank you for leaving the Bible Lectures with integrity, passing it on to men of great heart and stature in our tradition.

The theme for next year’s lectureship (April 30-May 3) is “Can I Get A Witness? Faithfully Following the Lamb in Revelation” and promises continued excellence.

I hope to be there. Won’t you come too?

 

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A Preview of Pepperdine

Posted in Other, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , , on April 30, 2012| 1 Comment »

Sherrylee and I are leaving Seattle tomorrow for Malibu and the Pepperdine Bible Lectures. PBL is the last great Christian college lectureship among Churches of Christ. The main force  behind the lectureship for almost three decades has been the director Dr. Jerry Rushford. This is his last lectureship; he has passed the baton to Mike Cope and Rick Gibson, who assume the responsibility for the future of PBL.

I think they will do a great job, but maintaining the quality while updating the format is a daunting challenge. As great leaders should, they have already begun asking and receiving input from a broad spectrum of people who have vested interest in the welfare of the lectures. 

I pray they do well. We need this forum for our conversations.

Dr. Dan Rodriguez

On Wednesday, we will be discussing the current state of missions among Churches of Christ, and on Thursday, we will go forward to what Churches of Christ need to do to have effective mission efforts in the next fifty years.  I think it will be an exhilarating conversation with these men who are passionate and informed about missions.

Dr. Dan Bouchelle

I hope to provide at least a summary of the two classes on Wednesday and Thursday for you to read—perhaps even an audio file for you to be able to listen, but today I thought I would give you a copy of the handout I will use on Wednesday.  You’ll recognize it as a summary of the blog series I did on “Re-Thinking Mission Work.”  If you want more explanation and detail to flesh out these thoughts, you can find that series in the side panel.

Even if you can’t come to the Pepperdine Bible Lectures, I hope you can enjoy a portion of it vicariously through these next posts. 

Overview of ”Re-thinking Mission Work in Churches of Christ”

By Mark Woodward

The current model for sending, supporting, and overseeing missionaries from Churches of Christ needs to be re-thought for the following reasons:

  1. The selection process is mostly self-selection with only minimal help from experienced missionaries or those who have skills or information that could guide the selection process.
  2. The choice of mission sites too often is an uncoordinated, non-strategic choice with little input from experienced or engaged persons.
  3. The preparation for mission work, if any, is not readily available for most people who would like to become missionaries.
  4. The support gathering system among Churches of Christ not only discourages the vast majority of potential missionaries from even beginning, but also most of those who do attempt to work their way through it.
  5. The “sponsoring church” system neglects spiritual oversight, is occasionally about strategic oversight, and mostly about financial oversight.
  6. The role of either elders or general mission committees to oversee missionaries/mission churches puts the decisions about mission work too often into the hands of well-intentioned people who have little or no personal experience in missions, and little or only secondhand primary information about how to do missions.
  7. The relationship between the missionary and his/her overseers is generally an employer/employee relationship with financial arrangements being the most important control mechanism.

Some of the changes that I would like to suggest that Churches of Christ implement in order to change our paradigm for missions.

  1. Mission committees should be restructured to have as their sole responsibility, implementation of strategies for raising up and surfacing  missionaries from their congregation.
  2. Hopeful missionaries should be expected to seek experienced and skilled help, either inside or outside of their home congregation, for making all of their First Decisions (Should I be a missionary? Where should I go? Who should I go with? How should I prepare?)
  3. Primary oversight of a missionary should be in the hands of Christians who know the person intimately and care about the proposed work, who likely are even personally involved.
  4. Every Missionary Hopeful should be expected to spend two years in an apprenticeship on the field with a Master Missionary before they are supported to work independently.
  5. Financial support and oversight control need to have more separation, so that both are in the hands of Christians who love the missionary and care about the work.

You can read the expanded blog articles on “Re-Thinking Mission Work” at www.markwoodward.org.

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Traveling Thoughts: Italy, Baptistries, and Phone Calls

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , on April 26, 2012| 3 Comments »

Four hours until we land in Chicago.  We were not scheduled originally to fly through Chicago, but when we got up this morning, we found the notice that our flight to New York from Rome was delayed two hours, meaning that we would certainly miss our connection to Seattle, which is our next stop.

With the cost of making international calls via internet now affordable, I turned on my own mobile phone, called the American Airlines  US office and rescheduled us through Chicago.  No problem—as they say all over the world!

Because Sherrylee and I spent our first Thanksgiving together in Germany in 1971, to call home, we went to the Post Office, informed the clerk that we wanted to make an international call, gave him the number, and then stepped into a special telephone booth in the office to wait for the call to be placed.

In a minute, our phone rang—no ringtones then—and her parents were on the other end. We talked for eight minutes, part of which was taken by Sherrylee asking her mother which end of the turkey to stuff. I remember vividly paying over $50 for that phone call, which, as a point of reference, was exactly what we had been paying monthly for rent at our first apartment.

I’m glad we came to Italy.  Our Rome to Florence flight took a bit longer because our plane was diverted to Pisa because of high winds.  I thought I might catch a glimpse of the leaning tower as we landed, but no such luck.  By the way, if you ever go there, the baptistery in front of the church in front of the leaning tower may be the most interesting structure to visit.

The same is true in Florence where the Baptistry of St. John  is a must visit.  As it was explained to us, these early medieval churches built their buildings to reflect their theology. A large building would be built, large enough for a very large pool of water into which you went down and walked out of to be baptized. This building not only would be highly adorned and appropriately decorated, but often the artwork—or so it appears to us—was really the medieval version of Powerpoint slides thrown onto all the walls and ceilings for instructional purposes. The art of baptistries tends towards the stories of God’s redeeming work , which seems highly appropriate to me!

But the theological lesson continues. The baptistry would always be built outside of the church, but not too far from the front door!  So in Florence,  one would be baptized, exit the building through the famous doors called the “Gates of Paradise” and then walk into the church as a new-born member of the Body of Christ, straight to the altar to participate in communion.  The theological instruction for the new Christian is unavoidable!

Makes me wonder about our baptistries?  I’ve seen baptistries under trap doors under the pulpit! Then there are those high above the pulpit—or low and over on the side behind a curtain.  In fact, almost all of ours are behind a curtain. What does that say??

We had about an hour of wandering in Florence before we met two missionaries from Ancona, Italy, who rode a train several hours both ways to meet with us. Brian and Kyle have been part of a team, which has worked in Ancona for the last ten years. Wonderful guys who didn’t know that much about LST, so we spent some time together talking about possibilities.

Our second day in Florence, we had a delicious lunch with Mike and Anto Mahan and their two children. They have ministered to the Church of Christ in Prato, just outside of Florence for many years and have hosted many mission interns over the years, but will host their first LST team from York College this summer.  We like to meet personally with new hosts to make sure everyone has the same expectations.

After rushing to the airport this morning, then, to catch the flight to Chicago, which left an hour earlier than the New York flight, just enough time remained before we needed to go through passport control and security to meet with Andrea and Heather Gentile, a great couple who are part of a team planting a church outside of Rome. He is Italian and she American; in fact, their teammates are of the same configuration.

Sherrylee and I have the best job in the world. We get to travel to Scotland, Ukraine, Greece, and Italy, meeting with local Christians, U.S. missionaries, national evangelists; we get to listen to them tell excitedly about their work; sometimes we get to encourage them ; we always pray with them.  We talk about the Kingdom of God and what we might be able to do together to bring glory to God!

The churches we have visited this time battle for God in fields, where the spiritual warfare is vicious. But we must never forget that even in Europe, we are more than conquerors!

 

 

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Traveling Thoughts: Don’t Missionary Kids Know Better?

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , on April 19, 2012| 2 Comments »

Why would missionaries’ kids become missionaries when they grow up?

Haven’t they seen how living in a foreign place makes you weird?  Haven’t they experienced the long, heart-rending absences from family, baseball, and apple pie?  Don’t they know how insecure they have lived their whole lives with their parents’ income entirely based on the charity of people they hardly knew and who hardly knew them?  Don’t they know how much better they could have lived if their dad had had a real job?

But everywhere we travel in the world, including Scotland where we are today, we meet our frontline missionaries, and an unusually large number of them are the kids of missionaries.

Today Sherrylee and I spent several wonderful hours with most of the members of the mission team in Falkirk, Scotland.  About eighteen months ago, they began arriving to plant a new work in this small but important city which lies about in the middle between Glasgow and Edinburgh. One dad and mom with four kids are on the team, two single women, and two young married couples.

Currently, about 30 people gather weekly in Falkirk—which is the sign of a blessed work among western European church plants.  Among their latest attempts to reach out to those they live among is to invite an LST team for this coming summer.  The Scots do speak English, but many of the immigrants and international students in Scotland do not, so this team sees them as an opportunity—and I think they are right.

One of the characteristics of growing mission churches throughout the world, as I have observed, is that they are not jealous of their national identity, but rather have completely open doors and open hearts to whomever God brings them.  This team loves the Scottish people, but they also love the Polish people and the Chinese, and the many other nationalities that God has brought to Scotland.  They believe and are acting upon Acts 17:24

 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.  God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

Robin and Chrissy Vick are members of this wonderful team. Robin is the son of missionary parents, and his love for the mission of God is evident. He talked about his commitment to Scotland, that he declined opportunities to join mission teams to other places, that he and Chrissy prayed and prayed for team members to join them, but were committed to go without others if so called.

Why do missionary kids become missionaries?  Here are a few of the reasons as I see it!

  • They learn very early in life that God loves the whole world, not just the U.S., not just the western world, not just the free world, not even just the Christian world, but the WHOLE world!
  • They learn the special skills that are needed to navigate foreign places. They know that languages, dialects, accents can be learned and used appropriately. They understand about visas, and negotiating foreign airports. They are not put off when their money is not green and the coins have pictures of foreign rulers on them with holes in the middle.
  • They are not afraid of other systems. So what if their kids go to European schools! So what if they have socialized medicine! So what if their country has a parliament and a queen instead of a president and a congress.
  • They know the answer to the question that so many potential American missionaries hear: why do you need to go over there? Don’t we have plenty of people here that need to hear the gospel?  They know that not only does Nashville have plenty who still need to hear the gospel, but there are thousands of Christians living in Nashville with huge resources to do that work.  And how many are living in Falkirk? And what are the resources.  That’s why they choose Scotland!

Not all missionary kids become missionaries.  But many do—and we should all give thanks for them and for their parents!

And some of you young parents might want to think about moving!!

 

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Only 10,000 Hours to Go!

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , , on January 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

In the first month of my first semester at Harding, a senior student named Ron McFarland walked up to me in the aisle before chapel and said, “Hey, would you like to go on a mission campaign?”  Completely intimidated and equally ignorant, I replied confidently, “Sure!”

I went to an interview with Owen Olbricht for a spot on the Campaigns Northeast team from Harding for the next summer.  One of the first questions he asked me was why I wanted to go—and I literally had no answer because I had no idea what a missions campaign was!  I was only 17 years old and already felt like I had gone to the moon to leave Texas and go to Arkansas to college.  Clueless!

I was accepted—but was completely unprepared for what I had committed to do—so, of course, I was afraid and tried to drop off the team at least once.   Ignorance, inexperience, fear, and no relationship with anyone else going all were a certain recipe for disaster. The promise of training was my only hope!

 In retrospect, the training I received was minimal. The twelve of us met weekly in a classroom of the Bible building. Sometimes we had mimeographed handouts of information on Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and other exotic religious groups we would certainly meet in Pennsylvania. We did go over the Salvation Sheet, which is the outline of scriptures that we used to present the need for salvation to those who agreed to study with us.  Mostly, we listened to stories from people who had gone before.

Six years later, Sherrylee and I left for full-time mission work in Germany. This was shortly before the introduction in our fellowship of mission majors, mission internships, and psychological testing. In fact, our only training for the mission field was our experiences on Campaigns Northeast.  Four summers of knocking on doors, talking with literally hundreds of people of all sorts about salvation, and working with mission churches in the Northeast United States may have been the best training available at the time.

Here’s what I know about training for missions—or equipping, as we prefer to call it now:

  • Everyone who does short-term or long-term missions needs serious preparation! Don’t put your youth group on the bus, don’t let your retiring Boomers on a plane, and don’t send your preacher overseas without their having been equipped and prepared for the foreseen tasks.  This is so obvious, but most short-term workers go ill-prepared!
  • Preparation and training involves more than just providing information! Reading a book on cultural faux pas in China is helpful, but not enough! Telling the youth group not to wander off is a start, but not complete. Some of the poorest works I know about were instigated by academic-type missionaries who knew everything about their field and about missiology—but did not know people.
  • Nothing can replace experiential training! We learn by doing. In my day, that meant we learned by trial and error on the field. Today, supervised internships and mentoring programs offer great opportunities for long-term workers to receive hands-on training.  Short-term mission workers are the ones who often are short-changed here.  In fact, short-term missions are often used as a training event—which is one of the reasons for the distaste for short-term missions among some missions people.
  •  Short-term missions should not be used as a training exercise when they involve real people!  It’s like sending an army recruit to the battlefront for two weeks to teach him how to be a soldier. Or sending a first-year medical student to operate on people for a couple of weeks to give her a taste of what it is like to be a doctor.
  • There is no single perfect path for mission preparations.  A short-term trip to China and a short-term trip to Africa may have some common moments, but MUCH of the experience will require very different skills, therefore, very different preparation.  In fact, mission preparations for sub-Saharan  Africa would be very different from preparations for North Africa.  So why do we think that one curriculum, one missions philosophy, or even one mentor can adequately prepare missionaries for the diversity of the world we live in??
  • A spiritual and theological preparation is foundational to any mission work, either short or long term!  Needless to say, these areas are most often assumed to be in place, and, therefore, skipped over for lack of time or money or personnel, or whatever!  But do you know what those teenagers believe who are going to Honduras?  You may know what they have been taught, but do you know what they believe?  So you have found someone willing to go to China, but what is their picture of church?  If their only reference is American church, they most likely can only operate within that frame.  But that frame doesn’t really work in China today, so now what??

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell describes the 10,000 Hour Rule, which he identifies as the 10,000 hours of practice that great success requires.  Abraham Lincoln reportedly said,“ Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”

I wonder if all of our mission workers wouldn’t be much happier and much more effective if we recommended—no, insisted—on more and better preparation—somewhere between four and 10,000 hours!

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Do You Really Support Our Troops!

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , on January 25, 2012| 4 Comments »

I watched the President’s State of the Union speech last night. Very intentionally, President Obama framed his more controversial and political proposals with non-controversial, military bookends. He started with the removal of troops from Iraq and finished with the elimination of Osama bin Laden.  At every mention of the troops with their sacrifices and victories, both sides of Congress and all visitors stood and applauded.

 If there is one thing upon which Americans generally agree, it is that the country stands behind the troops on the ground!  Even when we disagree over why they are there or how long, no one ever goes on record saying our soldiers did a terrible job!

I couldn’t help but wonder if the American church of Christ feels that same way about its boots on the ground! I’m talking about the foot soldiers we send out to combat the kingdom of darkness all over the world—aka missionaries.

Times were when these soldiers of the cross seemed to be highly respected.  Missionaries like McCaleb, Shewmaker, Benson, and later Gatewood, Hare, and Bixler were well-known names with heroic stature in our churches.  Because of the big splash the Brazil team made in the early sixties and because of their innovative approach, they too continue to enjoy notoriety, especially in older, established churches.

I wonder how many of us can name five missionaries that have entered their field in this millennium—or even the last quarter century?  Unless you are on a mission committee that sent some recent workers or a teacher of missions, or working in a missions organization, I’m afraid of the results!

Our churches are still committed to missions, and we are still sending out new missionaries, so what has changed?  Here is a short list of some of the things I fear have reduced our enthusiasm for the troops:

  • Because it is now more expensive to go abroad than to work at home, churches are choosing more domestic mission projects.
  • Also because of economics, churches are choosing to support national preachers instead of Americans. National preachers are viewed as requiring much less support, no travel funds, and no benefits!  What a deal!
  • Foreign mission work is seen more as a competitor to local work. This sometimes has economic roots and sometimes geo-political.  When the nation is tired of foreign entanglements, the church becomes tired of them as well.
  • Because of fewer services per week, i.e., many churches only meeting Sunday morning for a general assembly, with other meetings done in classes or in homes, fewer are willing to open their pulpits for missionary reporting.  The average member in the pew has very little exposure to the work and sacrifice of current missionaries.
  • Mission work is low on the ladder of ministerial respect.  Fairly or unfairly, one hears the comment that people go to the mission field who can’t make it or who don’t want to fit in at home.   Test yourself: rank in value to the kingdom the following types of ministers:  mega-church preachers, small church preachers, youth ministers, campus ministers, worship ministers, church planters, and foreign missionaries.
  • A nineteenth-century attitude toward foreign missions predominates, which says missionaries should go to third-world countries and live in poverty, working only with people who are physically needy.  Interestingly enough, as Africa has become one of the most Christian continents on the planet, it has become an even greater magnet for American mission work! If there are more Christians in Africa than in the United States, perhaps American missionaries should be choosing to go other places. (I’m not saying that we should not continue to aid African Christians in their work. American Christians still have much more wealth than African Christians.)

This list is certainly not exhaustive, but perhaps will stimulate the conversation about missions among us.

I would love to see the day return when foreign missionaries are greeted with standing ovations, when churches line up to invite them to speak of their work, when mission committees bang on the doors of Christian colleges and missions organizations, looking for good people to send to their mission points.

What can you do to raise the stature of those soldiers of the cross who serve faithfully and sacrificially in the spiritual battlefields of this world?

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The Night Train to St. Petersburg

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 13, 2011| 2 Comments »

The work in Russia in the early days after the collapse of the Soviet Union was extraordinary. Last year, I told you the story of how LST went to Moscow in the summer of 1991, and working out of a local school, began reading the Bible with people who would literally cry sometimes because of their joy at finally hearing a Word from God. (See “A Personal History of LST”)

One of the most moving stories from those days was about the person who had the only Bible in the small Russian community, so he rented pages from his Bible and people paid him to have an hour to read the story of Jesus for themselves.

LST went first to Moscow, but soon thereafter was invited into Saint Petersburg, where we have continued to send workers yearly.  My first trip between the cities is a great illustration of those early days.

Everything had to be done through a Russian liaison. In those first days, many of us hired a Russian couple named Volodya and Lena. ( I can mention their names because half the people in Russia have the same names, so I’m not invading their privacy.)

One of them would meet you at the international airport, take you either to your hotel or sometimes to their apartment, where you could stay, called the people you needed to talk to, negotiated for you for rented space, told you where to eat and where not to eat, taught you how to ride the subway system, and exchanged money for you.

You needed this kind of help for several reasons. Few people spoke English, so you needed them to translate, but Russia was rather lawless in this transition from Communism to Russian democracy and people were poor, so there was a lot of street crime.

 As Americans, we were prime targets for petty crime of all kinds as well as just exploitation. Prices for Americans would not only start out ten times higher than for Russians, but then would be raised again in the middle of the transaction. The people we would rent classrooms from would try to change the rent on us weekly, so it was an environment where you needed to work through a Russian liaison for some assurance and stability.

I needed to go to St. Petersburg to meet with the Christians there about bringing an LST team the next summer, so I decided to take the overnight train, not really knowing what an experience it would be.  Lena took me to the ticket office where she negotiated my ticket for me—getting a price well below what the agent had first said it would cost!

The next day, Volodya accompanied me to one of the Moscow train stations, telling me basically not to talk English in public. I felt pretty cloak-and-daggerish, especially going into the dimly lit train station. We get to the train that I’m supposed to ride and Volodya instructs me to wait for him, so I wait as he approaches one of the train conductors and talks with him for several minutes. At the end of the conversation, he pulls a set of pencils, a small $3.00 calculator, and some chewing gum out of his pocket and gives them to the conductor. This is what he called “tipping” and was what seemed to make everything work in those days.

He called me over, told me everything had been arranged and that I was safe and should not worry. I was taken care of–and handed me over to the conductor. The conductor took me to a small, spartan compartment on the train that was obviously a sleeping compartment, let me in, shut the door and locked it behind him. That was a little spooky!  But I was taken care of . . . so I settled in for the overnight trip.

There were two bunks, and I was given the top one. At the end of the bunk was a rolled up mattress with straw stuffing—yes, I’m pretty sure it was straw—zipped in a mattress cover with a sheet, wrapped in a blanket.  So I unrolled it and lay down and read until the 10 watt bulb in the compartment was no longer adequate to read by and until I relaxed enough to get sleepy.

Much later that night after I was asleep—lightly—I heard the compartment door being unlocked, then slid open. The conductor came into the room—not the same one, but a lady conductor! I pretended to be asleep, but was aware that she was checking on me. Then she took off her jacket and blouse and lay down on the bottom bunk! Well, that kinda woke me up!

But she had been “tipped” to make sure I arrived in St. Petersburg safely—and she did. She got up about an hour before our arrival, put her uniform back on, and went out very quietly, not to disturb me—as if I had done anything but sleep fitfully all night!

Just before arriving, she brought me hot tea and a biscuit for breakfast, then escorted me off the train until I was met by our contact in St. Petersburg.  I thanked her with my best Russian. She acknowledged, but didn’t smile. Russians really don’t smile a lot.

This small little adventure reminded me not only how we are constantly dependent upon God, but that most people in the world are good people, just trying to live from day to day.  For a few pencils, a calculator, and some chewing gum which she probably took home to her kids, she had allowed this unknown American to sleep in her compartment—risking her safety. Maybe she didn’t sleep much either.

I wish I could have told her about Jesus. I hope someone else has.

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50,000 Unpaid Missionaries??

Posted in Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , on June 27, 2011| 2 Comments »

Paradigm shifts are always resisted! I want to address today some of the resisting comments that have been posted about Re-Thinking Mission Work!

I said that our system is broken because we require our missionaries to first be good fund-raisers. Some argued that the skill set for fund raising is similar to that of a good missionary, so it is a legitimate filter.  If they can’t raise money, how could they be a good missionary?

No doubt, good people skills are a prerequisite for both raising funds and missions. Other broad skills like perseverance and the ability to communicate would certainly fit both tasks, so this argument is not farfetched. However, here’s a short list of skills necessary for a good missionary that are not necessary to be a good fund-raiser:

  • Prayerful
  • A thoughtful student of the Word
  • An effective teacher of the Word
  •  A vision-caster
  • A team builder
  • Cross-culturally sensitive
  • A lover of language—often, the ability to learn a new language.
  • A lover of people, not just a manipulator of people
  • Extreme faith and trust in an all-powerful God

I said that we need greater access to better pre-mission training for more people!  Several suggested that our Christian colleges offer plenty of good preparation.

They are right about the quality of training that our Christian universities offer. It is excellent! But access is the real issue.  The general mission preparation is designed for 18-21 year old, full-time students working toward a bachelor’s degree.

  • What about the 90% of young people in churches of Christ who do not attend a Christian college?
  • What about the young professionals who are called to the mission after graduation?
  • What about families—Dad, Mom, and kids—who are called to the mission?
  • What about those who can commit only two years? Is it reasonable to ask them to prepare four years for two of service?
  • What about early retirees and mature Christians?  How will they be trained?

I know about summer seminars, but how many short courses would it take to prepare a novice missionary?

I am happy to report that the idea of required apprenticeships resonated with many of you! It is an idea that I will try to flesh out more in a future posting!

Several readers pointed out the benefits of supporting national workers instead of Americans.  I’m a firm believer that American missionaries should all be temporary and that training nationals to reach their own people—and to send their own missionaries—should be given high priority.  I am strongly opposed—with rare exceptions—to putting national evangelists on American church support.  The problems created by supporting nationals are immense!  Sending money is not a substitute for Going!

I have not called for any kind of centralized organization, but some of you who commented did! Several suggested that the historic stand against missionary societies was never well grounded.  I believe that we can achieve our goal of better mission work done by more missionaries without a centralized bureaucracy—but not with cooperation.  I doubt that we Americans can create a centralized organization that would not succumb to wielding big financial, political, or personal bludgeons, so that’s not the direction I would like to see us go, even if we could get beyond the doctrinal issues.

Look around! The Mormons have over fifty thousand unpaid, full-time missionaries!  All of their missionaries go through several weeks of training at one of the seventeen Mission Training Centers, located throughout the world! Mormonism—which began in the U.S. about the same time as the American Restoration Movement– continues to be a growing world-wide movement with over 14 million members!

What other models for supporting and overseeing mission work are you aware of? Can the current model among churches of Christ  be improved by learning from other religious groups?

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Hard Questions for Small Churches

Posted in Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , , , , on June 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Let’s Start Talking approaches churches on almost a daily basis, asking for a few minutes at one of their assemblies to present to that church’s members opportunities  to be involved in short-term missions.  We do not ask for money, we do not ask for any long-term commitments, nor do we ask for anything that would detract from that church’s current mission efforts.   We do not need the sermon time. Class time, time before or after a service, even Wednesday night would be wonderful!

Why is it so hard to get an opportunity to tell the Body of Christ about specific requests from mission churches who are asking for help in telling the story of Jesus to their neighbors?

One of the most common reasons we hear when churches say that now is not a good time is that their mission work/mission committee is not functioning or is in disarray and they don’t know what they are doing, so let them get their act together and they will get back to LST.  I can’t remember when we have ever been called back at a later date by a church that had pulled themselves together.

In the previous post, we talked about questions that a strong church with a good mission program—at least in their own eyes—might ask in order to be sure they were not deceiving themselves, being satisfied with a mediocre mission effort when they desire and are capable of a great mission effort.

Now I’d like to talk with those church leaders/members in smaller churches, with either no real mission program or one in disarray as described above!  Let’s ask some hard questions and see where the answers lead us!

1.       Why is your church small?  Myriad reasons come to mind as to why a church might be small, some perfectly healthy and other reasons very unhealthy.  Some healthier reasons might include being a new church plant, being in an unchurched area where growth is slow. Unhealthy reasons might include because you are the only right ones, or you like to do things one way—your way.  I do challenge you to list ten reasons why your congregation is small—then evaluate those reasons for health.

2.      How are you trying to grow?  And holding Sunday services does not count.

3.       To what part of the Great Commission are you devoting your available resources?  Sherrylee and I met with a church recently in a resort area that often has no more than five members present, yet they rent a church building for Sundays and pray mostly for Christian tourists to attend. After the service the 4-5 members all went out to eat together, without inviting any of us guests to go with them.  Does this picture feel wrong to you?

4.       What could you do that would increase your “strength”? Could you merge with another church? I was in a small Texas town of about 1500 people recently that had four churches of Christ listed in the phone book. I believe we went to the largest with a membership of about 150. I wonder how long it has been since anyone made overtures about merging with any of the other congregations?   My only solace was that the Baptist had 17 churches in the same phonebook.  Human frailty is not denominational.

5.       What opportunities do you have because you are small that a large church might not have? What if the whole church supported that one young person or the just-retired couple to prepare for missions!  You don’t have anyone?—then why don’t you adopt a new Christian who has a strong desire to serve abroad, but no church home.  Find them through one of the Christian university mission departments.

I’ve worshipped in many small churches all over the world.  Small is not the same as weak.  The fact that eighty percent of American churches of Christ have fewer than a hundred members is often quoted as an excuse, but I keep hearing the words of the Messenger to the little church in Asia Minor, which he described as having just a “little strength.”  To this church he says, “I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut!” (Revelation 3:8)

Rethinking your mission efforts may start—for large or for small churches—with rethinking who you are and why you exist at all.  I do believe that when you know why it is worth all the time and effort to be church together, you will have a much better perspective for pursuing the mission of every church!

 

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You Must Kill All Your Darlings

Posted in Christian Missions, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , , on June 21, 2011| 2 Comments »

In my series on Rethinking Mission Work , I tried to take a few steps back and ask, “Are we as a fellowship really doing missions the best we can?”.  Based purely on my personal experiences with many churches and on anecdotal evidences, what I see is

  • General dissatisfaction among congregations with their experiences in supporting foreign missions.
  • Broad dissatisfaction among American missionaries with their experiences with supporting churches.
  • Trend toward replacing evangelistic work with humanitarian aid as the definition of mission work.
  • Greater emphasis on local evangelism as opposed to foreign evangelism.

Thinking is hard enough, but re-thinking borders on the impossible.  I know this because I taught Freshman Composition at Oklahoma Christian for twenty-four years.  Once a student  forces himself to sit down, to gather some ideas from somewhere on some topic, to write at least five paragraphs that in his/her mind relate to  a single topic, and then to check it for spelling—once a student has done that much work, she is finished! That’s it! What more could be required??  That first draft is perfection!

Virtually all great writers know that the first draft is trash, maybe even the tenth! Envisioning is certainly the first step in the process, but re-visioning may be the most important!

William Faulkner said about revision, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”   To add to our difficulty in re-thinking is our tendency to make “our darlings” into “our doctrines”   We put the stamp of biblical perfection on our assignment and turn it in!!  And we expect to get excellent marks in recognition of work well done!

As I read and re-read some of your comments during the series, both on my blog site and on other sites where the series was re-posted in some form,  I was continually reminded of how difficult it is to re-vision, i.e., to re-see something so familiar to us.

Some commented that their experience at their congregation was just great and that their congregation was doing a wonderful job!

In reply, let me say that describing general conditions always leaves one open to refutation by the Exception! Of course there are congregations doing a great job and great mission committees who have schooled themselves and love their missionaries.

I will say, however, based on my classroom experience that the writer is not necessarily the best judge of whether the writing is good.  Heeding the proverb to “Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips,” (27:2), I would suggest a first step in rethinking is to have an outside evaluation—especially at those churches that have our best mission programs.

If I were coming to help your church look at its mission program, here are some of the questions I would want to ask:

  1. Why do you want to be involved at all in foreign missions?
  2. Where do foreign missions rank in your congregational priorities?
  3. Do you care more about whom you send or where you send them?
  4. What is “non-negotiable” or “untouchable” in your mission program?
  5. What is determining the full capacity of your mission efforts? Available workers? Available funds? Available time?
  6. Does your capacity match your goal?  And is there any room for God to expand any of your capacities?
  7. How do you determine if you are meeting your goals?
  8. How many people in the congregation are involved in the mission efforts in any way, including intentional prayer, private support, short-term missions to your mission sites? Are you happy with the percentage of involvement?
  9. How many are involved in missions outside of the congregation’s program? Are you happy/concerned about this? Is it a reflection on the church’s program in any way?
  10. Do you ask for honest feedback from those you send, and are you humble enough to receive fair criticism from them without it threatening their support?
  11. How long have your current mission strategies/policies been in place?  Do you have a planned periodical review of all policies?
  12. If you could wave a magic wand and change one piece of your mission program, what would you change? What keeps you from making this change without a magic wand?

 

Next, I’d like to look at how to start re-thinking at churches who already know they have some serious issues in their mission program. 

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