Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘missions’

Day 2 – Proximity to God!

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , on November 1, 2011| 3 Comments »

Today we stood on Mount Carmel in Israel, the home of King David’s wife Abigail and the place where Elijah did battle with the prophets of Baal (1Kings 18). It’s a great story of face-to-face altar combat, with Elijah talking smack to the false prophets and then destroying them—literally.

What did surprise me though was what could be seen from the top of Carmel. Looking southwest you can see Caesarea, which is located on the Mediterranean coast of Israel. Turning just a bit to your left you can see the mountains of ancient Samaria. Continuing in the same direction, Mount Gilboa rises above the valley, yes, the place where King Saul fought his last battle, then fell on his sword (1 Samuel 28-31). Without even moving your feet, but just by shifting your eyes to the left you see “the hill of Moreh” where Gideon did battle with the Midianites (Judges 7) and then Mount Tabor, where the judge Deborah sent Barak into battle (Judges 4).

One more slight turn in the same direction and you see the modern city of Nazareth nestled in the mountains above the plain of Jezreel.  The trees block your view further north or the list of geographical sites associated with biblical history would just keep going on, I’m sure.

It’s not that one can see these sites at all, rather that you can stand in one place and see all of these places at one time! 

I wonder if Elijah, while waiting on Mount Carmel for the prophets of Baal to get through with their empty incantations and gyrations, looked around and thought about all that God had already done to show Himself to people.

Imagine Jesus, Joseph, and Mary on their way to Jerusalem, walking down from their mountain home in Nazareth into the valley of Jezreel and Joseph pointing to this mountain and that mountain and this river and that rock and this pillar and over there—teaching Jesus the history of Israel every time they turned a new corner on their journey.

Perhaps God picked such a small and insignificant piece of His Creation for this very reason—for proximity, so that the very mountains He created could tell the stories of His marvelous ways!

 

Read Full Post »

Day 1: Arrival

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , on October 31, 2011| 3 Comments »

What is the first image you see when you get off the plane in Israel?

The whole transatlantic trip yesterday was quite uneventful—which is exactly the way you want it to be.  Sherrylee and I had arrived at the airport in DFW two hours early, and it paid off. When we got to the ticket counter, we checked on the possibility of upgrading to business class in exchange for mileage. The airline agent was very helpful, but it took over an hour to make it happen, but it did!

The ride across the Atlantic was a little bumpy, and the movie selection was not exciting (Captain America  and Green Lantern). I did finish the book I was reading Moneyball, which I found fascinating. The book is so detailed that unless you are a hardcore baseball fan like I am—and, yes, I’m still wearing black for the Texas Rangers—you probably want to stick to the recent movie release Moneyball with Brad Pitt. I haven’t seen it yet, but it has been highly recommended to me.

We arrived early in the morning in Frankfurt, rested for about four hours, stored our winter suitcase in the hotel luggage room as planned, and then headed back to the airport to check in on El Al, the Israeli national airlines.

I’ve been fascinated with El Al, since all the trouble of the 70s and 80s, with hijackings. During the 80s, there was actually a small bomb in the Frankfurt airport which was left near the El Al ticket counter, so for thirty years now I have had a mental note not to spend any time near their counters in foreign airports.

El Al has the reputation for the highest level of security, but I have always been thankful for security, so other than waiting in a couple of more lines, the extra security was just as it should be—effective!

The loading/unloading ramps in many airports now have lots of advertising. I love the Chinese bank that puts pictures comparing cultures: a squid in one culture is YUK and another YUM!  A cricket in one culture is GOOD LUCK and another culture A PEST! But that was not what was on the ramp when we walked off the plane in Tel Aviv!

I expected perhaps a picture of Old City Jerusalem, or a menorah, an ancient church, or the Dead Sea—something representing the deep, deep religious and cultural heritage of this country.

No, the first image on the wall across from you as you exit the plane is a big golden BUDDHA! In Thailand, yes, but not Israel!  Because it was all written in Hebrew, I don’t even know how the picture was being used, but the incongruity was unnerving!

Fortunately, I found equilibrium again after meeting our tour guide Nabil and our driver Omar. Before we were even outside of the airport, Nabil turned and said, “Are you a Christian?”  I said, “Yes.” I returned his question, and he said, “Yes, I am a Roman Catholic, born in Jerusalem.” Apparently his family has been Christian as far back as he knows. Today I want to find out what it is like to grow up Christian in Israel.  Nabil went on to describe himself as a Palestinian Arab Roman Catholic Christian with Israeli citizenship.

Do you know the word syncretism?  If I had internet connection now—which I don’t—I’d link you to the definition, but its basic idea involves the blending of diverse cultural or religious elements in a particular culture.  This may be the word that explains Buddha and Nabil—I don’t know yet, but that is one of the things we will watch for on this trip.

It’s 4am, and I’m sitting in the bathroom because I’m jetlagged and don’t want to wake Sherrylee up by turning on the light.  I think I’ll go back to bed and see if I can catch a couple of more hours of sleep before we start our tour of Galilee today!

Shalom!

Read Full Post »

Eight Hours Until Departure!

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , on October 29, 2011| 1 Comment »

Eight hours until departure—that is, six hours until we leave for the airport! Sherrylee and I are pretty well packed for our twenty-seven-day trip—just our toiletries to add after showers this morning!

We have two carry-on suitcases, one school-size backpack, and one purse to carry on the planes. In addition, we have packed one “winter” suitcase because we are going to be in relatively warm countries for the first two weeks, but the last thirteen days will be in northern Europe where it will definitely be winter. That winter suitcase has Sherrylee’s boots and our winter coats.

The winter suitcase is possible because we have a seven-hour layover in Frankfurt on our way to Tel Aviv. We like it that way because when you land in Frankfurt at 7am, it is really only midnight “body time”. So we have taken a dayroom at a nearby hotel where we can sleep for five hours before flying on. The added benefit is that I will put our winter suitcase into their luggage storage for free and then pick it up when we come back through two weeks later.  You can store luggage at the airport as well, but it costs something like 5 Euro per day per bag. I’d rather apply that 60 Euros to a few hours sleep and a hot shower!

Last Minute Decisions

Do I take my computer or just my smartphone?  I do have a phone that will work wherever we go, and we use T-Mobile because it is a very common carrier in and around Europe, so taking my phone is a given.  You do have to watch how you use it though because it is expensive to do two things with it: make phone calls and use the internet!  We use it primarily for unavoidables or emergencies. I don’t answer it if I don’t recognize the person calling. I’m not going to pay 2-3 dollars to hear some pre-recorded telemarketer!

But I do use it to scan my email each day and see which ones need to be addressed quickly! I used to carry my laptop computer for this, but if email were all I needed a computer for, I would leave the computer at home.  I don’t like the extra hassle at the airports, the problems with logging in at hotels, nor the weight in my backpack.

BUT, just for you I am taking it this year, so that I can blog more easily! I tried last year using hotel computers, but did you know that many countries have different keyboards—a real pain! And often, at least in the hotels where we stay, there are only one or two computers and they won’t let you tie them up for an hour at a time.

To help avoid lots of computer time though, I have been downloading several apps to my smartphone (Android) especially for this trip.  Kayak is a great search engine for travel, so that is now mine! I also downloaded Priceline’s app because I still have to make hotel reservations for the last part of our trip in Europe.  I love to get 4-star hotels for 50-75% off!! I’m using Pageonce to track our flight information. With these apps, I don’t have to pull out the computer and try to get online in airports or at poorly wired hotels. I can do most of our travel arrangements with my phone, if need be.

I also bought a Garmin for this trip because we will be driving all over western Europe for the last 15 days. If you rent one from the car rental place, they cost you about 10 Euro or $15/day, so I figured I could buy one and get the European maps for it and pretty much break even.  Navigation systems are time and nerve-savers when you are driving in foreign countries—and they all speak English!

Last-minute To Do’s!

Here’s my list for the next few hours:

  • Get about $500 cash from the local bank—all in newer $100 bills.
  • Pick up the cleaning!
  • Leave the car with at least ½ tank of gas.
  • Call my Mom again and make sure she has our itinerary
  • Update itinerary and distribute it to our families
  • Check-in online before we go to the airport
  • Email contacts at our first stops and just verify that they will meet us.
  • Update our personal finances so that there are no bad surprises about our checking account while we are on the road and they are hard to fix!

That’s it!  It’s 7:45 am, time to wake Sherrylee up! Ben will pick us up and take us to the airport in exactly five hours.  If there is any time, I may try to go to Kellan’s flag football game!

Let’s have fun on this trip! Pray that we have great conversations about spreading the Word everywhere we go! I’m really excited because we have three firm appointments in Israel and Jordan to talk about LST—and maybe another one!

This is the day the Lord has made! To Him be the glory!

 

 

Read Full Post »

The Best Mission Field Ever?

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , , , on October 15, 2011| 7 Comments »

Campus ministries are perhaps the most undervalued area of kingdom work in spite of having the greatest potential for kingdom growth.

In the last week, Sherrylee and I have visited three different campus ministries. In a normal year, Let’s Start Talking will work directly with 15-20 different campuses. In our history we have probably worked with as many as fifty different campus works.

Here’s what you find on almost every campus that offers such great potential for the kingdom:

  • Thousands of impressionable people searching for who they are and what they want to become.
  • Hundreds, if not thousands, of foreign people who are eager to learn everything they can about American culture, including Christianity.
  • A whole community with a lot of discretionary time. (I know they don’t think so, but going to class 15 hours a week  in addition to preparations rarely comes up to the 40 hour work week, and they usually do not have family obligations.)
  • A whole community in a learning and experiencing mode.
  • A whole community in the age of challenging the values they received from home.

To me, all of the above describe a great mission field! If all of the above is true, then why is campus ministry such a neglected area of ministry?

One reason for neglect is that campus ministry is poorly defined! We aren’t sure what we are supposed to be doing—or what the best approach would be! Is the purpose of campus ministry

  • the protection of Christian students who might find their faith attacked by higher learning?
  •  outreach to Christian students who don’t attend your church?
  •  outreach to foreign students?
  • in-depth Bible study for the nurturing of believing students?
  • provision of a Christian environment for students?

Another reason for neglect is that there is no specific educational path to become a campus minister. Virtually all of our Christian universities have majors or emphases in Youth Ministry, I know of none who have such a program for campus ministers.  This absence may be because of lack of demand, but I suspect it is something else. The result, however, is that potential ministers don’t know how to become one and churches don’t know who is qualified to be one—not a promising situation.

These questions are all inter-related, aren’t they! If a church doesn’t know what they really want the campus ministry to do, then they don’t know who to hire. The potential ministers don’t know how to prepare, and the colleges don’t know what to offer—if anything!

In the meantime, thousands of students are left on their own spiritually. We vaguely hope that those who are seeking will come to our church on their own, find a group of peers that they will like and who will like them, and listen to our sermons.  That seems a pretty poor way to reach out to what could be the most receptive community of people in our neighborhood!

And my worst fear is that we are negligent in this area because of the economics of campus ministry. Students have two big black strikes against them:

  • Students have little money, so they do not contribute; they just take.
  • Students don’t usually stick around to become long-term members of the local church, so they are a poor investment.

So why should a local congregation invest in reaching out to them?  Of course, you will recognize right away a business model for growing a congregation, not a Spirit-led model for growing the kingdom of God!

Students are also a little messier. They test values, they challenge tradition, they lack “proper” respect for authority, and worst of all, they don’t dress appropriately!!

Here are a few suggestions for your church to think about:

  • If there is a campus near you that does not have a campus ministry, at least determine the demographic of the students and see if you don’t currently have resources enough to do something with some part of that campus!  If there are international students, could you start a FriendSpeak program to help them with their English and share the story of Jesus with them?
  • If you see great potential on your campus, contact one of the churches with a vital campus ministry and ask them to mentor your leadership!  Do this before you go out and just try to hire a campus minister. Know what your purpose is first.
  • If you have a campus ministry and/or a good campus minister, make part of his/her job description to mentor emerging campus ministers.  Provide the necessary time and money for this task of multiplying and training new workers.

The common statistical wisdom is that most people experience conversion to whatever religion they will choose between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five!

 If this is true, we Christians have no choice but to focus on all those unchurched people in this age group—and lots of them are in college.

Going into all the world is pretty easy when the whole world is next door to your church building on a local campus! 

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

If You Wear The Badge: Remembering 9/11

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 10, 2011| 3 Comments »

The towers had fallen, the Pentagon was on fire, but no one knew what was going to happen next. We had a small TV at the LST office, and as much as we tried to work that day, we all kept drifting back to the TV to watch the reports. 

We didn’t express our personal fears at first, but eventually someone voiced the question of who will want to get on an airplane and fly to a foreign country now? What impact did these terrorists make on the willingness of Christians to go into the world?

I had just finished writing the lead article for LST’s Fall newsletter. It was no longer the right tone, so I sat down and wrote the following:

September 11 re-shaped the world in which all of us live.  Our priorities have shifted as individuals and as a nation; the same is true at Let’s Start Talking.  This newsletter was ready on September 10—but some of it was no longer appropriate by the end of the next day.  If we took a little longer in saying to you what is on our hearts, we knew you would understand.

After the initial shock and outrage came a longer period of deeply felt grief. So many dead and missing, so much destruction, our shattered sense of security at home—the horrific reminder that this world is ruled for a time still by the Prince of Darkness—what could we do but grieve!

While grieving, however, we learned something about how to respond to tragedy and darkness.  You too probably noticed the many people running for their lives, running away from falling buildings, from death and destruction.  Everyone was running away—except for the Rescuers!  In the midst of the crisis, hundreds of firemen and police ran towards death and destruction in hopes of saving a few!  The actions of these men and women changed the future for many others.

The metaphor is powerful.  As Christians, we wear the badge of Jesus Christ, serving as Rescuers for God!  We cannot stay home and protect our own interests; we dare not retreat from going into all the world; we must not isolate or insulate our churches, our outreach, our missionaries, or ourselves in the face of darkness and destruction.  Because of the badge God gave us, because of the Name He lets us wear, we must run towards the darkness, into the danger, and look for those few that can be saved.

We at Let’s Start Talking will not forget the example set by the firemen and other rescue workers in New York.  We are calling on God to make us strong and courageous this year. We need you to go with us and support this army of God more than ever!

For those who wear the badge, the job is not yet done! Ten years later, people are still dying in darkness, buried under steel rafters of Sin. No one worried about cost, distance, or duration. Whatever it takes, wherever they are, however long it takes–those were the parameters on 9/11!

We wear the badge. We have only one choice—only one desire:  to run toward the ashy darkness with the hope of leading one more person out of destruction into light! 

Read Full Post »

Who Were the Seventy-Two?

Posted in Bible Study, Luke 10 Series, tagged , on September 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

Each time I choose to use Luke 10 as a sermon text, I learn something new.  Just last Sunday, I used it once again as my text for the Sunday sermon in Columbus, Georgia, and a couple of very important lessons and applications jumped out at me for the first time as I prepared.

Of course, Luke 10 is the chapter that describes the sending out of the seventy-two disciples:

 “1 After this the Lord appointed seventy-twoothers and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.”

Who are these seventy-two people? In Chapter 9, Jesus sends out the Twelve and we know all their names! We even sing songs about them in Sunday school to help us remember their names. We call our sons Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Bart, Tom, Matthew—not so much Thaddeus, but there was a time when even that was a popular name. But who are the seventy-two?

In Chapter 9, the Twelve go out with the same basic instructions and have a successful mission trip. Later in the same chapter, however, they start arguing about who will be the greatest in the kingdom. They had returned in triumph, but Jesus had almost immediately started talking about His death—which to them must have meant defeat, not triumph.

They meet the man with the demon-possessed son and apparently have lost either the power or the faith to cast out the demon because they fail in their attempts, according to the father’s report to Jesus (9:40) Maybe Jesus had talked too much about His death.

Perhaps it was this failure on their part that caused their jealousy first of each other, then of other people who were casting out demons in the name of Jesus but were not one of the Appointed Twelve! Jesus has to first remind them that not high position but humility is of value and then that their appointment did not make them greater than the unappointed who worked in His name.

Then those same Twelve walked with Jesus into an unbelieving Samaritan village and just wanted to nuke all the unbelievers! Jesus rebukes them again for not having learned that mercy triumphs over judgment!

Who are these seventy-two people in Luke 10 then? Perhaps they were some of the followers left over from the 5000 that Jesus fed near Bethsaida (9:10). I wonder what the Twelve thought when Jesus started choosing some of these “loaves and fishes” disciples!  I wonder if they thought they were being replaced?

 I wonder if they secretly were hoping that the seventy-two failed in their mission. Schadenfreude lies hidden in many of our hearts.

The Twelve had so much to learn! Yes, Peter had just made the Great Confession, and, yes, witnessing the Transfiguration was a life-changing event, but they still had much to learn about following Jesus.

I know who the seventy-two were! They were just no-name people like you and me! Their names never surface; never is anyone later identified as one of the Seventy-Two! We don’t know what happened to them after the great experience recorded in Luke 10. I’d like to think that they continued to follow Jesus and were part of the 120 in Jerusalem after the resurrection, or part of the 500 to whom Jesus appeared after His death!

But there is a lesson to be learned: Jesus was not looking for first-round draft picks that would become celebrities! He was looking for people who could deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him.

He was looking for people who did not let anything come between them and following him. Perhaps he had been calling those in Luke 9 for this second mission team, when they turned him down to bury their fathers and say good-by to their families, or because Jesus didn’t really have the proper arrangements for housing made yet (9:57-62).

Jesus was not looking for superstars, but for regular people who would go out in His name—lacking support, warned of rejection, no promise of success! He found seventy-two No-Name Disciples who were not looking for power positions or name recognition, but who were willing to go where they were sent, to talk about the kingdom, and to use their gifts for the good of those they met.

I believe Jesus still uses no-name people for great service in His kingdom in greater numbers than the group of those whose names we recognize.

Not being appointed to The Twelve is no disadvantage. Those who are have perhaps greater struggles, greater challenges, and harder roads. Most of us should be delighted to be chosen to the No-Name group.

In fact, all of us should be thankful to be chosen at all!

 

Read Full Post »

19 Traits of A Missional Church–Maybe 20!

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , on August 29, 2011| 6 Comments »

Missional is one of those fuzzy buzz words that one hears at large church gatherings. You think you know what it means, but maybe you don’t—and you can’t ask anyone because everyone else knows what it means except you!

Simple definitions leave a lot of us asking questions, so here is my attempt to give you concrete pegs on which to hang your understanding of missional .

A missional church is

  1. Where YOU show up, not God. A missional church is joining God in His work, not inviting God to be a part of your work!
  2. Where the members know that the Great Commission says GO, not COME!
  3. Where all of the members are missionaries, not just those out of the country.
  4. Where mission contributions are not special contributions.
  5. Where what happens out of the building is equally important—if not more important—than what happens in the building.
  6. Where “going to worship” happens every day, not just on Sundays.
  7. Where church leaders meet to pray for new work, not just to manage and control old work.
  8. Where members know their neighbors.
  9. Where the community would be diminished if the church closed its doors.
  10. Where no borders are recognized except those of the Kingdom of God.
  11. Where members expect to meet new people at church!
  12. Where members expect to have unbelievers at church!
  13. Where the church is God’s church, not “our” church.
  14. Where its children grow up wanting and encouraged to be missionaries.
  15. Where benevolence and evangelism are the same thing.
  16. Where there is no difference between my life and church life, my time and God’s time, or my money and God’s money.
  17. Where members are not afraid of being in the world because they see it as their mission field.
  18. Where members are motivated by love and gratitude.
  19. Where members extend grace and mercy, speaking the truth in love.

I feel like there ought to be a #20! What if I leave that open for you to fill in. Leave a comment and share with us what you understand a missional church to be!

Read Full Post »

Observations on Great Churches #10 – Great Churches GO!

Posted in Great Churches Series, tagged , , , , , , on August 9, 2011| 2 Comments »

One of my favorite heroes of faith is the Thai minister of a church in Bangkok, who truly understands that there is not a distinction between mission field churches who are “receivers” of missions and churches who are “doers” of missions.  Although working in Thailand, itself a Buddhist country and the object of mission work, the Thai churches that he has planted are reaching out in Laos and Myanmar—and he has plans and dreams for preaching to the 40 million Thai-language Chinese people.

We know a church in Moscow, less than twenty years old itself, who is launching a mission effort into Istanbul, Turkey. Singaporean Christians are sending missionaries into Cambodia and China, while Christians from Ghana have planted large congregations in Western Europe.

One of the most impressive examples of great churches focusing outside, not in, is the Back To Jerusalem movement among Chinese Christians.  Christians from Mainland China have committed to send each other into ALL the countries of the countries, where 90% of the non-Christians of the world live.

If you go to the question and answer pages for mission efforts like Back To Jerusalem, the first question is always: why are you sending people other places; don’t you have enough to do at home? Every missionary and every mission-minded church has been confronted with the same question.  Here is my answer: Of course, the Great Commission includes home, but who will share the Good News with the billions who have never heard of Jesus, if the biggest churches with the most Christians in every country all stay home??

Great churches—wherever they are and whatever size they may be—understand that they are a part of the call to the Body of Christ to “go into the entire world.” Here are some practical suggestions for leading your church to go into the entire world:

  1. Put the whole world on display. What do your members really know about your own mission work? What do they know about the persecuted church? What do they know about the inspiring mission efforts of Christians around the world?  If your members are ill-informed, then they are uninspired. What can you do to change this?
  2. Talk about world Christians. Many of my personal heroes of faith are men and women that are virtually unknown in the United States. They do not make the lectureship circuits, they are not widely published, they are not center page spreads for Christian newspapers. If you are a church leader, you should get out, meet these unknown heroes, then come home and talk about them!
  3. Avoid protectionism. The era of allowing foreign evangelists and missionaries to talk, to preach, to show their slides in our assemblies has been over for decades. Most leaders decided their members needed protecting, although it may have been more motivated by efforts to keep their contributions at home.  Don’t be afraid. Raise the vision for global work by providing platforms—often—for those who are going out from among us!! Don’t be afraid. The local work will grow as people’s vision for the world grows.
  4. Abandon the idea of “mine” and “God’s”: Our members travel. We fly, we cruise, we RV, we camp, we hike, we backpack, we tour.  How can we give this part of our lives more to the Will of God instead of thinking of it as OUR special time?  At LST, we hear constantly from adult Christians who take their two-week vacation and go somewhere to share their faith that it was work, BUT it was the most re-creational activity they have ever done.  Great churches help their members give all of their life in God’s work.
  5. Great churches have leaders who GO! I really believe that every preacher/minister, every church leader would be a greater leader and better able to inspire if he/she would regularly be personally involved in evangelistic mission efforts—preferably outside of their own culture.

Great churches understand that they are not exempt from going into the entire world.

 

Next:  Great churches understand the relationship between benevolence and evangelism!

Read Full Post »

# 8 Great Churches Are Not Afraid

Posted in Great Churches Series, tagged , , , , on August 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

Occasionally a book changes your basic philosophy of ministry. Struggles In the Kingdom by Jim Woodruff  and John Payne was that kind of book for me as a young missionary in Germany. The verses that undergird this story of a struggling mission church in New Zealand are Acts 14:21-22, where Luke writes that Paul and Barnabas strengthened the disciples and encouraged them to remain true to the faith, saying, “We must go through many struggles to enter the kingdom of God.” Until I believed this verse to be true, I confess being a sheltering, some might say paternalistic, church planter, always trying to protect the young Christians in our fledgling flock. I would say these were my most common mistakes:

  1. Providing all the answers to all of their questions—sometimes before they asked.
  2. Keeping the curtains around leadership closed, so they did not realize our struggles.
  3. Not letting new baby Christians out of the house because they might be exposed to something that would lead them astray.
  4. Not encouraging new Christians to share their faith; they didn’t know enough yet and might mess up and get discouraged.
  5. Pre-empting most difficult conversations by skillful direction away from anything likely to be controversial.

Great churches allow struggle because they are not afraid . Most of our reasons for avoiding struggle or protecting members from struggle are grounded in FEAR—fear of “losing” the struggle.  We can’t tell the members what that church leader really did because they might quit coming; we can’t study that question because it will just stir up too much controversy and make people unhappy. We can’t let them know how much that property really costs because they will think it is too much, and we won’t get to do what we think we should do.

Great churches anticipate struggle and prepare for that day. Notice I did not say that they run from the struggle or that they shelter members from struggles. Paul and Barnabas strengthened and encouraged the churches in preparation for their struggles.

Great churches teach their members about spiritual warfare and encourage them to avoid the trap of seeing the enemy as “flesh and blood.” The church we planted in Germany survived twenty years after the mission team left, but then Satan used personal immorality to attack the church leaders/pillars and this group did not survive as a church (Happily, very few members actually gave up their faith!).  In retrospect, I believe this congregation could have survived if anyone had been able to frame their struggle for them as spiritual warfare, instead of brother against sister—civil war!

Great churches accept struggle as an opportunity to learn, not a reason to quit. Great churches survive and grow stronger with the same struggles that diminish or destroy other congregations. What happens when sin is exposed among church leaders? When the local factory closes and the contribution is halved? When the preacher quits—today! When a member comes back with “new” biblical truths? When the elder’s wife shares that she prays in tongues? When the church leaders refuse to share the church’s financial statement with members? When the missionaries are dropped in order to expand the church kitchen?  Aren’t all of these opportunities to learn more about trust in God and grace toward others?

Paul said, “. . . the fire will test the quality of each man’s work” (I. Cor. 3:13), so fire should not surprise church leaders. Fear that God cannot or will not protect His Kingdom is what gives Satan the power to destroy.

Great churches are not afraid!

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »