Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘evangelism’

Empowering Partnerships

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 17, 2010| 1 Comment »

In the “Seven U.S. Standards of Excellence In Short-Term Missions” published by the SOE, the first one after God-centeredness is empowering partnerships—and for a very good reason.  Out of unpardonable ignorance, we American Christians have viewed ourselves as the only source of mission strategy, the only spring of mission compassion, and, regrettably, the only well of resources that God can use for taking the gospel to the world.  Lord, forgive us of our arrogance!

The way this flavor of hubris shows itself concretely in short-term missions is in the following ways:

  • A church is looking for a good STM for its youth group, so they call their missionary and announce that they will bring 40 kids for 10 days in July. . . . and we know you will be grateful!
  • A church sees a small, but vibrant mission church in a developing country and decides to send down a band of construction workers to build them a building.
  • A church sends a note to their missionary contact that they are prepared to come with puppets and all to do a two-week Vacation Bible School, if the locals will put them up in their homes.
  • The local evangelist agrees to provide food and housing for the STM workers if they will provide the funds. The workers will provide the funds but need receipts. The national minister is highly offended, but the American workers find his/her actions very suspicious.

Some of you may not even recognize a problem in the above scenarios, but the idea of an “empowering partnership” is absent from each one. In its place, a one-sided power-based, culturally insensitive, and borderline paternalistic attitude exudes from the American Christian side of the equation—mostly because we don’t really believe that we are in a partnership. We may be betraying the fact that we prefer a charitable relationship over an empowering partnership.

We made some of these mistakes early in our ministry, but we have tried to learn from them, so let me share with you some very concrete actions that Let’s Start Talking does to avoid these mistakes:

  • LST only sends teams when we have received a formal invitation. I know you think this is what everyone does, but, in fact, it isn’t. I know that many mission sites feel compelled, virtually coerced to receive mission teams for any number of reasons. If your site can’t say No to you because you support them or because you are white or because of any reason whatsoever, then it is not a real invitation to come.
  • Each missionary and/or national evangelist is respected as a true host. We are thankful for his/her invitation; we are grateful that they want to work with us; we are eager to serve them. They are the initiators, just as if they were inviting us into their home.
  • The important details of every stm mission project are mutually agreed upon before any final commitments are made—on both sides. From the dates of arrival to the times of every event to the cost of using the telephone, we try to clarify details prior to arrival so that we do not even accidentally trample the desires or feelings of the local church.  This is tricky cross-culturally and takes great effort, but it is essential.
  • The real needs of the hosting congregation are foremost. If it is not good to host American groups during U.S. school holidays—which is rainy season and/or winter in other countries—then don’t expect a mission site to want you to come then. If the burden of hosting 20 people is too great, then either cut the group to five or don’t send anyone. If the hosting church needs funds rather than two weeks of preaching, which would be the better gift????  And if you don’t know what the needs are, you just haven’t asked.
  • We meet with potential hosts, get to know them, and don’t accept invitations until there is mutual trust. Of course, we trust us . . . . but what about the indigenous leaders of the local church? Do you trust them to tell you the truth? Do you trust them enough to give them your food money? Do you trust them enough to let them buy the supplies for the project? Do you trust them to tell you when the best time to receive a group is? And are you only flexible about your plans, but hate it when they are irresponsible and change things? Do they even have the power to change anything?  All very tell-tale questions for any stm mission trip!

I think the word “partnership” is just a modern bit of jargon for what the New Testament called “one another.” Re-read those many passages and apply them to the relationship you have with potential stm sites and then you will know if you are a loving neighbor . . . oops, I meant empowering partner.

Read Full Post »

Standards For Short-Term Missions

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , on May 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Anyone involved in the organization or planning of a short-term mission at a church should be aware of an organization that has done much to set and define the highest standards for such mission trips. The acronym is SOE, which stands for Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Missions.

They publish and describe seven standards of Excellence for any short-term mission project.  If you just want to see the standards, please go to their website, but what I would like to do is to describe each standard, explain the rationale behind it, and then show you what it looks like in practice.

Standard 1 — God-Centeredness

Every person planning a mission trip, whether as organizer, host, or participant should be crystal clear about the purpose of the trip. Is it totally for the glory of God?  Is each activity planned in such a way to express godliness?  Are the methods used biblical as well as appropriate for Christians in the hosting culture, and will the expectations/desired results advance the kingdom of God?

These questions appear at first to have such obvious answers, that you may even want to stop reading, but let me ask some questions that might suggest where some short-term mission groups get off track.

  1. What do the workers see as the highlight of the trip, closing night of your mission or the two days on the beach before you come home?  Which of these is emphasized in the promotion and recruiting?
  2. You might be surprised at how many mission trips have very little time planned for team devotionals, prayer time,  or spiritual conversations.
  3. Is the mission group being sent off and received on site with prayer by those sending and receiving?
  4. Has the biblical basis for your activities been thoroughly taught, rehearsed, and explained to your team? Have they bought into the spiritual nature of the mission trip?
  5. What are the real goals of your mission trip? Are they spiritual or material? Are they ethereal or measurable?

All Let’s Start Talking (LST) mission projects are described as “Sharing Jesus, sharing ourselves!” In this phrase we have tried to capture our purpose and method.  We know people want to travel, they want to experience new things, they even want to grow themselves spiritually, but we believe that all of these other desires are subjugated to the one objective of sharing Jesus.

To encourage this spiritual dimension, we, in our planning of mission trips, plan prayer time every day and make it the first activity of every day so it doesn’t get lost in the busy and unexpected of the rest of the day.  We do, of course, plan in free time for the teams, but we ask them to use the time in a way so they are refreshed, not exhausted, when they return to their mission activities.

In addition, LST teams find God-centeredness in their primary method of sharing, which is reading the gospel’s own words and using their own experiences with God to illustrate the truth of the Word.  Our biblical basis for this approach is John 20:30,31: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples . . . . But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Wherever else your planning might be shortchanged, God-centeredness must not be neglected or your whole mission is in danger—not in danger of taking place, but in danger of being misplaced!

Next Standard:  Empowering Partnerships

Read Full Post »

Tips for Good Short-Term Missions: Take the Whole Family!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2010| 1 Comment »

Family is the core unit of Creation and the best metaphor for the church of God.  So why should it surprise anyone that families are just great on short-term mission trips.  When Sherrylee and I started LST, our children were 7, 5, and 3, and they went with us every summer. At that time, we got lots of people asking if it was a good use of money to take the children. Terrible question—as if it would be better use of God’s money for Dad or Mom to leave for weeks at a time.  Here’s what we learned about taking families on short-term mission trips!

  1. Your children can have no better Christian experience than first seeing Mom and Dad sharing their faith, then later, working beside them. If you care at all that your children find their own faith and don’t reject yours, then sharing short-term mission projects with them is the best opportunity.
  2. Children are a magnet in foreign countries. Wherever we would go, people gathered around our children, loved on them, wanted to talk to them. This brought us into contact with people in a very natural and friendly way that we would have otherwise never met.
  3. Whole families are a rarity in mission churches. Many women without their husbands find their way to our mission churches. Or you have a college student without parents.  The example of Dad and Mom with their kids all worshipping and serving God together is very special to those we serve.
  4. Multigenerational families are even more special! The only thing better than the whole family going together is the whole family with Grandpa and Grandma—who are probably in the prime of life—and faith.  LST has sent many three-generation family units, so we know the impact on those we serve.  Our daughter and her new husband went with her Grandparents to the Ukraine nine years ago—and they still tell stories about it.
  5. Taking whole families requires sacrifices on everyone’s part, but since when were sacrifices bad for anyone! Our middle child was a baseball player. Every year, we left the country after 2-3 weeks of summer baseball season, which was hard on him.  We always signed him up, bought the uniform, and paid the fees so he could play the 3 or 4 games that happened before we left, but we did not let it keep us home.  We did buy newspapers everyday so he could keep up with the baseball scores, and we made special arrangements with Americans overseas to record the mid-summer All-Star Game. Then when we came through, we made a big deal out of watching it together.  Was it a sacrifice? Yes! But he learned very early that in our family, God’s work came first. And today he is a man of God, which is all we could have prayed for.

I am convinced that if we learn as a family to serve God first, we will do church better. First the little family, then the big family.

Read Full Post »

Tips for Short-Term Missions: Fund-Raising Secrets

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , on May 6, 2010| 2 Comments »

Most people hate to raise money for any reason. Some will do it for charities they believe in, but few want to do it when they appear to be the beneficiary as is the case with raising funds for a short-term mission trip.

This personal fear may be the chief reason why many Christians do not participate in short-term missions. Their churches do not fund it, nor do they themselves have the resources. They simply refuse to ask other people for contributions to their mission trip.  The result is not what anyone wants: mission calls go unanswered, and we do not share in the blessing of advancing the Kingdom of God.

First, I want to offer some different ways of thinking about fund-raising that may help you.

  1. The money you raise is not for you. The money you raise is to benefit those you will share your faith with. Very few of us would be embarrassed to go door to door in our neighborhoods to raise funds if our neighbor’s house burned down with all their possessions. We can do this because it is obvious that it is for others.  The same is true of short-term missions: if we are going to those in danger of dying without knowing Christ, it is just simply not about us!
  2. People are greatly blessed by giving to the cause of Christ. So is it really more blessed to give than to receive? If it is, then with fund-raising, we are giving people an opportunity to be blessed. Each year we have workers who report that someone got mad at them because they were NOT asked to contribute to the mission project.
  3. Fund-raising is often the first step of faith in a short-term mission project. For many, the first step is the hardest; as usual, the first step is extraordinarily affirming of God’s call once it has been taken.  In LST, we even encourage the workers who can easily pay their own way to raise funds just to increase their faith in God’s providence.

Quickly now, I want to list the obvious steps in successful fund-raising. Then we will get to the secrets!

  1. Ask and you will receive.
  2. The more people you ask, the quicker you will get your funds.
  3. Don’t stop until you have reached your goal.

Here are the real tips I have to offer, however, that many people don’t know.

  1. No one will give to you, if there is any doubt about your going. You cannot raise any funds if you even hint at the attitude of “if I raise the money, then I will go.”  No commitment, no funds.
  2. The more personal the request, the more likely you are to receive a positive response. Letters bring a 10% response and small amounts. Phone calls and personal conversations result in 60-80% response and larger amounts contributed.
  3. People that give to you once may be willing to give again. People give out of their available cash, so if they have cash in January, they will more available in March. If you still have a need, they may give again—so ask them.
  4. People give more if they feel the need is urgent. Use your fund-raising deadlines to help donors feel that urgency. Do not give up as you get close to your final deadline; rather, let your potential donors know how critical it is to get your funds before the deadline.
  5. Don’t assume you will get it all from what appears to be an obvious source. That includes your home church, your rich uncle, or anyone else.  Part of the faith experience is learning that God provides in ways that often surprise us.  The people we think have money give us $25 dollars and the poor widow gives us $500.

Fund raising will grow your faith in God. Don’t  be too proud to be improved. Lord, I believe that—but help my unbelief.

Read Full Post »

Tips for Short-Term Missions: Making the Decision

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , on May 4, 2010| 1 Comment »

Honestly, the first time I was asked to do a short-term mission trip, I agreed only because I could not figure out a good enough reason to say no. I was in college, so I even called my parents because I felt sure that they would want me to come home in the summer . . . but, in fact, their answer was, “You need to do what you think God wants you to do.”  I finally committed with my heart and not just my head—and I’ve never stopped. Thank you, Mom and Dad!

So here are a few tips about making the decision the first time, and I say the first time because I do believe that if you go once and do something meaningful, you will continue to find ways to go.

  1. Don’t expect all of your motives to be spiritual. I think many people do not hear the call of God because they love to travel, love to experience new things, love to meet new people. Who do you think gave you these desires? For what possible reason could He have done this? Instead of viewing these as personal or selfish desires, recognize their intended use and go!
  2. In two weeks or less, you can change the focus of your life! Especially if you are at one of those critical points in life, where you are trying to decide what you are really doing that is meaningful?  People who are now unemployed, who fear unemployment, who are nearing retirement, who are into retirement and finding it boring, who are disabled from physical work, who are unhappy in their profession with just punching a clock—a short-term mission project can give you brand new glasses to see your life with.
  3. You will never have more fun! Time spent doing the will of God—all day long—will beat fishing, skiing, cruising, touring, hunting—because it is everything you enjoy about these activities wrapped up into the same package, but framed with an eternal purpose.  When you show someone how to pray, or tell them who Jesus is for the first time, or hear them trusting you with the burdens of their heart because you care about them; when you see the light of understanding go on in their eyes, when you see your new friend baptized—and the huge smile on their face . . . it is so much more than a great round of golf.
  4. “Can you afford it” is really the wrong question. The fact is that a two-week mission trip will probably be much less expensive than a two-week vacation.  However, your investment in a short-term mission trip will come back to you for the rest of your life—and afterwards. Can you afford not to go?  (I’m going to write about raising funds shortly, so watch for those tips too.)
  5. Age doesn’t matter very much! Eighty-year-olds have gone with LST on missions. Eight-year-olds with their parents have also gone. In many cultures, age is revered.  Years ago, a man said to one of our older workers, “I’ve never met a Christian with gray hair.” His comment was the result of too many American Christians thinking that short-term missions were just a youth group or college student activity.  A friend of ours in her 70s just lost her husband this year, but she took her grief and her loneliness to eastern Europe to fulfill a mission call. Now  she exchanges the grief with the joy of pouring her life out for Christ and the loneliness with all the people God brings to her.  Her new life and joy is palpable.
  6. Be strong and courageous and do not be afraid! Fear is our enemy. God spoke these words to His people over and over again in scripture. Count them up if you don’t believe me—then do something to overcome your fears.
  7. Don’t procrastinate. Do it soon! Why should you wait? Does it sound like any of the excuses given for not coming to the Great Banquet? (business, relatives, obligations) Don’t surrender your seat at the table because of just couldn’t decide to do it.

I’m not particularly proud of the story of my first decision to go, but I did learn something that stuck with me. Whatever your reasons for not going are, if you will simply set them aside and go, your life will be changed because you are right in the middle of the will of God. I know that is true.

Read Full Post »

Tips for Good Short-Term Missions, Part Two: To Mom and Dad

Posted in Christian Missions, Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , on April 29, 2010| 1 Comment »

The biggest hindrance to Christian youth and college students participating in short-term missions is their parents. I really hate to say that but after thirty years of recruiting college students for summer mission projects, I know this to be true.

Here are a few thoughts for Moms and Dads to think about to help them be more comfortable with what their young people want to do for God.

1. If your goal for your child is that he/she holds on to—even grows in—the faith you have tried to share with them, you need to let them go when they feel called. A great study done by a psychology professor at Abilene Christian University may be all I need to cite:  His study of 25,000 young people in churches of Christ showed that a “summer mission experience” was the top factor correlating with those students who continued in their faith after high school.

2. Before you ask your child to be “sensible” and …….(you fill in the blank with summer school, job, visit Grandma, internship, etc), you should ask yourself what message you are sending about the place of the kingdom in his/her life. Young people tend to “walk by faith” a little more naturally than we adults who have learned what the worst case scenarios are and who try to cover ourselves with insurance against such.

3. Check to see if you are afraid for yourself or are you afraid for your child. Some parents have not traveled much, never been out of the country, never had a passport (even if you are governor of Alaska!). No wonder you are a bit anxious about releasing your student to go to China or Africa or ………  Millions of Americans go overseas every year—for much less important reasons that sharing their faith.   “Be strong and courageous and do not be afraid.” We have to teach our children Christian bravery.

4. You don’t want to teach your children fear of random violence! One year we had a grandmother who offered to pay her granddaughter to stay safely in Oklahoma.  While the daughter was safely in Germany, the Edmond post office massacre occurred near her “safe” home in Oklahoma.  Unless we want to be crippled by fear, we cannot be live our lives afraid of random violence.

5. The best response to your child is to say YES–and to go with them! There is no better activity for Mom and/or Dad than to share some special time serving with your young person in serving the Lord.  Yes, you can do that any weekend at home, but to really step out on faith together, going somewhere very different, meeting people that are very different, but doing the most important task in the world together—there is nothing like it!

Sherrylee and I sometimes wondered if we were ruining our children by taking them with us each summer to do Let’s Start Talking—from early children through their teen years.  I guess I better let them tell you what it has meant to them. . . . but I know that God used it for good, and they are all people of strong faith.  Isn’t that what you want for your children?

Read Full Post »

Tips for Good Short-Term Missions: Part 1 – Church Leaders

Posted in Christian Missions, Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , on April 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I have been directly involved in organizing short-term missions (STM) since I was a freshman in college—45 years ago.  Since 1980, Sherrylee and I have sent over 6000 American Christians on thousands of short-term mission projects in sixty-five different countries through the Let’s Start Talking Ministry.

We have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of short-term missions, but we have always believed that if done well, they were of great value.  For the next few days, I’ll give you some of the things we have learned over the years to help you do short-term missions better.

First, to the church leaders who are asked to send and to support short-term missions, here are a few suggestions for distinguishing the more worthy from the less worthy:

1. Who will be benefited by this short-term mission effort? Some of the possibilities are the Worker, the sending church, the hosting church, and the unchurched/unbelievers that are touched by the work.  Is the work intended to just be a good experience for the Americans going and the encouragement it gives to the local congregation sending them? If so, don’t describe it as mission work. It is edification.  If it is for the hosting church, then it is church nurturing, not missions. If it is for the unchurched/unbelievers, then it is evangelism.  All of these are worthy goals, so decide which you want to support.

2. Does the host really want these people to come? I attended a meeting of local evangelists in a foreign country a while back and the common complaint from all of them was how they felt required to host short-term groups who wanted to come work with them—regardless of whether the group would actually benefit their work—because the group was from a church that supported their work.   It was often assumed that every mission site would love to have a group of 30 people appear on their doorstep, but for many obvious reasons, that is not always the case.  Make sure a real invitation from the site has been issued before you go/send.

3. What’s the purpose and how will it be accomplished? Make sure that the activities match the purpose.  If the purpose is to share the Gospel with people, establishing an obvious way to contact people who do not believe is critical. Then, how will the workers begin a conversation with them? There is room for a variety of purposes, but the activities must match the purpose.

4. What’s the plan for the time on site? The very nature of short-term missions means that good use of the time is critical. Showing up to “do whatever the missionary wants” is simply a way to shift all the responsibility on the local people to do all the thinking and preparation.

5. Have the workers prepared to go? Let’s Start Talking provides all workers with a minimum of 20 hours of preparation. Our college students receive more like 50 hours for their mission projects. There are good resources out there for individuals and groups to use in preparation.  Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use the expertise of short-term mission leaders with lots of experience.

6. Is the cost appropriate? I do not believe at all in the “most bang for the buck” model of missions—but we will talk about that later.  But I also know that spending $3000/person for a five-day short-term mission project when two of the days are mostly getting to and from the site does not appear on the surface to be a wise use of that money.  Church leaders should weigh the costs against all of the outcomes, then make a prayerfully informed decision.

Next, I’ll offer a few tips for those trying to decide about a short-term mission trip—or not!

Read Full Post »

Great Churches Use Holy Spirit Model of Missions

Posted in Great Churches Series, tagged , , , , on April 26, 2010| 2 Comments »

In our fellowship, fulfilling the Great Commission is the responsibility of local congregations, not a large sending agency or mission board.  Let me put it another way:  for the most part, men (elders and missions committees) who have never done foreign missions nor received special training of any sort are deciding who goes to the field, how they will work when they get there, how long they will stay, how much they will receive for personal support and for working funds, and if they are doing a effective work.  Does this make sense to you?

These good men—all volunteers who can be commended for their willingness and the best intentions—are put in untenable positions of controlling large amounts of money, the lives of numerous individuals whom they may or may not know, and are answering to a congregation that usually knows even less about both the people and the mission efforts.

What these men naturally do is fall back on a model they are familiar with from their own experiences. Most are business people so they use one of the following models:

  • Business model: you hire a person that convinces you they can do the job, you pay them enough, but not too much, you give them time to prove themselves, and if they don’t produce, you let them go and look for somebody else.
  • Investment model: You invest in either a person or a site! You put what you can afford into the investment (which changes often with your priorities), you watch it for a while, and if it produces good results, you hold onto it—until a better investment comes along
  • Venture Capital Model: You find a young entrepreneur who has a good business plan, you decide whether you like the person or the plan enough to put money into it. You establish timetables and benchmarks to evaluate the work, and if you are displeased with the person or they do not meet the pre-established conditions, then you simply stop funding them.

Granted, some better congregations actually attempt to educate themselves about missions, usually by either attending missions conferences or bringing in missions consultants.  No doubt these churches do missions better—for a while, but what I see is that there is such high turnover in missions committees and/or elderships that all it takes is one new person on a committee or one experienced person dropping off for the whole mission program of that congregation to be tossed into the air and reinvented.

Here are some positive suggestions for great churches:

  1. Search out people in church (men and/or women) who have mission experience—the longer the better–and give them the mandate to coordinate your mission program.
  2. If no one in your congregation has mission experience, then give up the desire to control some mission work until God gives your church someone with the gift of missions. Instead, send some of your members to the field on short-term mission projects to work with established missionaries and contribute directly to works that you have experienced and trust—with no strings attached.
  3. When looking at new mission work, consider creating a spiritual relationship with this work instead of a financial relationship! The two key words here are spiritual and relationship.  When your church figures out what it means to have a spiritual relationship with a missionary or site first, then the financial side of it will be framed completely differently. Completely rid yourself of the employer/employee relationship model. That one does not work well.
  4. Base the length of your congregation’s spiritual/financial commitment on something other than results. If you believe that “God gives the increase” (1 Cor. 3:6), then are you not trying to evaluate God’s own work. The planting and watering are all your missionaries can do, and for that they should be evaluated.

We need a new model for missions! I don’t have this worked out, but I believe it is probably the Acts 13 model:

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

Let me just put this verse into my own words:

As the Antioch church was together, worshipping the Lord and fasting, it became clear to them that two of their leaders Barnabas and Saul were called by God’s Spirit to go out from them to deliver the Good News to others. They knew these men, one who had been their mentor at the establishment of the congregation and the other who was a fairly new convert from Judaism, but had been gifted by God to work with non-Jews.  The both wanted to go to their home regions, but they didn’t really have a specific schedule, route, or cost estimate for the time afterwards.  After further prayer and fasting, the church still recognized these as God’s plans, so they  sent them with all they needed that the church could gather, they put their hands on them as a symbol of their relationship, and with great love and anticipation, they sent them off.

Great churches will use the Holy Spirit Model for missions. I cannot fill in the details of this model for you, but I believe God will—if you will!

Read Full Post »

GREAT CHURCHES AND EMERGENT CHURCHES- PART 11b

Posted in Great Churches Series, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 23, 2010| 5 Comments »

I suspect that it is people like me that drove the postmoderns to emergence!

As a college student back in the late 1960s, attending a Christian college, I volunteered twelve weeks each summer for four years to work on mission campaigns in the northeast United States.  Our teams went door-to-door, inviting people to study the Bible with us.  We typically had 30-40 Bible studies per week with people of all faiths and no faith. Our single goal was to help each person to be born again—as we understood the process.

We were not mean-spirited, but we often retweeted Paul’s words: “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.” We did not doubt that what we were teaching was true—for everyone.  We were typically immature. I have certainly learned better what the gospel is and can present it more appropriately now, but we were not at all unusual for those times.

Recently, a college student wrote to me, requesting funds for her mission trip.  She wrote:  “We will be helping in any way that we can at a children’s home by painting, serving food, ministering to churches, and even playing with the children. . . . In this short time we hope to spread the word of God to the homeless children . . .  and help them see that there is hope.”

We will definitely contribute to this Christian girl’s mission, but I found her description of this mission trip a bit disconcerting, and all the more so because I know from our own work with students that she is as mainstream in her time as I was in mine.  She has a heart full of compassion, but is not yet aware that “people do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).

Great churches know that compassionate service is integral to evangelism. Every church should be known for its compassion; every church should be known in its community—perhaps the world—for loving the unloved, helping the needy, protecting the weak, and serving everyone.  Then their message will be heard in a more receptive context.

Here’s the problem: virtually all of our young people—I’m talking about under 29 years old—understand missions as the Emergents have defined it, i.e., living a life of compassionate service because you are a follower of Jesus. In doing so you are redeeming the creation here and now.  And who can argue with this wonderful description of missions—but incomplete!

Also, they are right that churches/Christians have separated evangelism (missions) and compassionate service (benevolence) by what we today would call silo thinking.  Look at traditional church budgets for proof. I’m glad to be among those called back to a better understanding of our mission.

I do know, however, that a growing aversion to telling the Good News as God’s truth for all creation with words— typical of the Emergents and many of the youth in our churches—is everywhere. Our churches have substituted service projects for proclamation; our youth mission trips are exclusively service projects.  Two young ministers that I have heard recently both have publically preached the need for less emphasis on evangelism and more on Christian service—as if these two were mutually exclusive.

Great churches know that evangelism is integral to compassion. One of the saddest stories I know is about a young woman who was part of our ministry for a couple of years, sharing her faith boldly with people all over the world. She decided to spend an extended time in Germany, where she began sharing the story of Jesus with a Muslim asylum seeker who was very open to the conversation.  After a couple of months of conversation, this young Christian abandoned her faith in Jesus—completely. The reason she gave was that this Muslim person was more charitable and more loving, serving others with greater concern and greater humility than she had ever experienced in herself or the Christians she knew.

Jesus healed and preached. In fact, in every NT passage the order is first preaching, then healing—if that makes any difference.  If He had healed every sick person and raised every dead person, but had not preached the kingdom of God, how would the masses have avoided dying in their sins?  If He had only preached, would anyone have listened?

Since I started with my own confession, let me end with repentance. For thirty years, my wife and I have led the Let’s Start Talking Ministry. The method has been the same for all those years: LST workers offer to help people practice their English (compassionate service) while using the story of Jesus in the Gospels as the text (evangelism). Our experience is that most people become interested in what they are reading and begin to ask questions of the Christian, which leads to a natural conversation about Jesus, which for some, leads to saving faith.

I do believe that ministry and message are married in our method; however, the balance is probably 10% service and 90% evangelism.  In the future, I am committed to introducing more opportunities for our short-term mission teams to be involved in more compassionate service wherever we send them.  My hope is that we will include the local Christians as well as those who are not yet Christians in this service, so that working shoulder to shoulder, doing good, the non-Christians will see that we Christ followers so love the world!

That’s my plan. Yours may need to balance the other direction. I do believe that every ministry of compassion should not just have a vague goal of hopefully someday somebody noticing that we are Christians.  Each should give prayerful thought and planning to how people who are helped will learn about Jesus.

Read Full Post »

Great Churches and the Emerging Church – Part 11a

Posted in Great Churches Series, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 21, 2010| 3 Comments »

Did Jesus come to “seek and save the lost” or to practice “pure and undefiled religion” by showing compassion on the helpless and needy?  Are Christians about declaring the Good News or about giving cups of cold water?  Does the word missional mean evangelistic or does it mean benevolent?

These are not new questions to those who are widely read in current religious thinking. You will recognize some of the tension brought to Christianity from what is generally known as the emerging church or emergent church movement of the last decade in the U.S., a movement that tries to exchange what they perceive as the “modern” (read rational) out of Christianity in exchange for a “postmodern” approach, one deemed more relevant for our current context.

Allow me to jump to some of the conclusions about evangelism from this movement without providing their arguments—because this is not an attempt to sort out the entire emerging church movement. Emergents generally believe that

  1. Evangelistic  Christians have focused too much on eternal redemption at the expense of living with compassion in the world.
  2. Conversation is more appropriate than proclamation.
  3. The interpretation of any message, including the biblical text, is a private matter.
  4. Insisting on boundaries that contain the gospel, the church or the saved offends, hindering  the spread of the Christian experience.

Bruce McLaren, a leading spokesperson for the emergent group, tells  me where these premises lead:

I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts … rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move. . . .   (Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing, 2004) 260, 262, 264. )

As is often the case, the gravest danger in these premises  may not be in their fallacies but from their truthfulness.

  • When Christians do not love the world the way God so loved the world, our message is hollow. “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness” (Matt. 9:35). Preaching without works of compassion is absent of living proof. Compassion without preaching  is absent the Good News!
  • Conversation is often more appropriate than proclamation. The conversations of Jesus far outnumber the public sermons.  My fear, however, is that the Emergents are really not talking about public versus private, but rather about the truth of the content.  Whereas, proclamation speaks “as the oracle of God,” a conversation may be simply an exchange of similar (or dissimilar) opinions of equal value. Christians should know how to “speak the truth in love” whether publically or intimately.
  • One is tempted to equate the emergent argument of private interpretation with the modern American protestant version of sola Scriptura, which is every man with his Bible starting his own church on the street corner, but that would not be accurate. What this argument really reflects is the postmodern rejection of objective truth.  Since Jesus said he is the Truth, I do not believe Christ followers can hold to “private interpretation.  Neither did the Apostle Peter. (2 Peter 1:20).
  • Again, the Emergents are correct. Boundaries offend; exclusivity offends. Jesus offended. The Story offended. The Church offended. The Acts of the Apostles are full of offense by those who believed that Jesus was raised from the dead.  Understandably, it is the gloating and self-righteousness that Emergents see in Christians that pushes them to the opposite wall.

I live and work in a very evangelistic environment—in the traditional sense. The church I attend is also overtly and aggressively evangelistic—and I’m glad.  Yet even among us, it is not rare to hear watered-down versions of the Emergent heresies.  Kool-aid is watered down, but still can be poisonous. I’ll continue these thoughts tomorrow.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »