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Summer Mondays!

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , , on July 18, 2011| 4 Comments »

Lost Luggage

Summer Mondays are the most exciting day of the week at Let’s Start Talking!  Beginning the first Monday of May and extending through the last Monday of August,  this first day of the work week is a day when we try to make sure that all LST staff members are totally accessible—and, if they are not out of the country on an LST project, they should be in the office.

We discourage taking comp days or vacation days on Summer Mondays.  This year the 4th of July fell on Monday—but the LST office was open!

Summer Mondays require our full attention at LST because Summer Mondays are big travel days, and travel days can be very unpredictable.  Let me explain.

This year LST will organize approximately 120 different short-term mission projects to 25-30 different countries.  Between 60-70% of these projects will happen between May and August. It used to be even more.

For the first twenty-five years, LST was primarily working with university students, so summer months were the only times they were available for short-term missions.  About five years ago, however, we started focusing on recruiting from churches. Not only was the pool of potential workers much larger, but adult church members were not locked into the summer months as the students were, so many could go in the Fall and/or Spring!

In 2010, LST sent twice as many adult church members on LST projects than university students!  In 2011, LST will have recruited, trained, and sent approximately 500 workers, with about 160 of those being college students and the rest being church members.

In spite of this demographic shift, the summer months are still the heaviest travel time.  And because Monday is not only the day of departure for teams, but also the day that all of the student teams return to the U.S., it is the day when things go wrong!

Just a few weeks ago, a campus minister was traveling with his team to China. They flew from their homes to Los Angeles, where they were to catch their international flight.  When you check in for an international flight, the agents always make sure you have a valid passport and the proper visa—because if the airlines take you to a country and you are denied entry, then they have to fly you back immediately at their own expense. (That happened to me once on a flight from Rome to Tirana, Albania, shortly after that country opened up!)

The campus minister and his team made it through security and all the way to their gate, but while they were waiting to board their international flight, someone stole his passport which contained his visa to enter China!  He, of course, could not continue, so they called LST—as they should have—for help.

Well, the team went on without him, but we were able to help him replace his passport and get a replacement visa from the Chinese—and re-book his ticket, so that he was able to fly out on Wednesday—just two days late to his project.  That’s a typical Monday issue for LST.

Just a couple of weeks ago, one of our church workers in Asia  fell and hurt her back enough that the week before she and her team were to return, she could not sit or walk at all. She actually conducted her reading sessions while lying flat on the couch!  But how does she get to the airport with her luggage, sit in Economy seating for 15-20 travel hours in order to get home from Asia??  To make this particular problem even more interesting , our staff member that was coordinating with her team was in Rwanda, Africa, on her own project. Nevertheless, she did a great job staying in touch with the worker in Asia and our office, so that we were able to get this worker home with minimum discomfort.  That’s a Summer Monday’s work for you!

Flight cancellations for storms or mechanical difficulties are just pretty routine on Mondays. The LST team doesn’t even break a sweat for those blips on the screen, we have faced them so often! Lost luggage and lost tickets are a cake walk!

Right now we are dealing with a harder situation with a new LST site, hosted by American missionaries to an island in the Mediterranean.  We felt like this new work was going to be difficult from the beginning because the church was very small and the avenues for recruiting Readers very limited, so we asked two of our most seasoned workers to go first and try to work out the difficulties. They have done a fabulous job—but it has still been difficult even for them. Many Readers are refugees, others are just short-term visitors to the island, so few of the Readers have been dependable about keeping their appointments.

In addition, the host missionary’s wife has had to have surgery on the island for a pretty serious condition, so both he and she are not able to do all for the project that they certainly had intended to do. Next week a student team of five is scheduled to go to this site, so we have spent the last week trying to decide if they should still go. Today, Summer Monday is the day that we will meet and make that final decision.  Pray that we are wise! If the team does not go, much preparatory work and effort seem lost, and there will be people on the island who do not hear the Good News!

Summer Mondays are great days to watch God work!  

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How To Change An Engine With The Airplane in Flight!

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , on July 11, 2011| 4 Comments »

Building a new airplane is easier than changing out an engine while the airplane is flying! For existing churches, shifting to a new model for doing mission work is more like the latter than the former.

I recently had a lengthy conversation with the minister of a new church plant about how his church could adopt a new paradigm from the beginning of its existence; I also have been approached by a person wanting to do missions that would like to explore establishing a different way of doing support/oversight.

I’m eager to continue these conversations and work on the very practical questions that arise when building a new plane—but I’m also scheduled to talk to a couple of established churches in the near future who have established mission programs, but who feel the need for re-thinking the way they do mission work.  This is the more difficult–but not impossible— task!

A Plan for Transitioning

Step One:  Reach consensus on the desire for a better model for the church’s missions program.  If the call for change is coming from the elders, perhaps the preacher, then it is easier for the mission committee, the current missionaries, and the members of the congregation to be persuaded.  The lower in the church hierarchy the call for change begins, the more difficult it will be to reach consensus.  The most resistant person/group is likely to be where the most ownership/control of the mission program currently lies—unless they are the ones calling for change! 

Step Two:  Establish the goals and the broad parameters for the new model.   For instance, if a church wants to adopt a greater member-driven, relational model as I have been suggesting, then the goals might be something like these:

  1. 80-100% of the total membership of the church will be actively involved in mission activities, including local outreach of every kind, short-term missions, youth missions, internships, and co-mission groups that support missionaries with prayer, oversight, and financial support.
  2. All future missionaries will be raised up from among our members.
  3. Current missionaries will transition to support from a Comission* group over the next three years.
  4. More members will contribute more funds to support more missionaries than ever before.
  5. The church’s Mission Committee will be transformed into a group whose sole mandate is to achieve the mission goals of the church as stated above.

Step Three: Begin to educate and to implement!  Start by reconstituting the Missions committee—perhaps with new people, but not necessarily. The most critical factor in reconstitution is that the new Mission team is 100% on board with the new model.

This is the team who is now responsible for educating members, for instance, about Comission groups. These are the people who will need to work with the preacher and ministers, and especially with the youth and adult education program to encourage a vision and a desire for missions of all kinds from all members.

It might be that those on the earlier Mission committee who are closest to the established missionaries would be enlisted to help them understand the change and to assist them in developing a plan/strategy for building their Comission group.

Yes, there is a process of deconstruction that is occurring; the old engine has to come off. The biggest fear, I suspect, is that in the process of attaching the new engine, the plane crashes, that is, the current missions efforts disintegrate.

Here are some of the bad scenarios that could occur:

  1. The people with power won’t give it up! It could be an elder or elders, it could be a missions committee chair or person, or it could be the missionary the church has supported for thirty years!  If they cannot be persuaded, then either they have to be removed from their position of power or the plan to change has to be abandoned.  There is no workaround here!
  2. Supported foreign nationals are virtually unknown to the local members.  National evangelists on American support have to be put in a different category from American missionaries on church support. We cannot lightly abandon people who have no other obvious means of support. The American church has a moral obligation to help their national worker find a new means of support and to continue helping them until they do. (This is one reason I’m almost always opposed to national preachers getting American support.)
  3. Members are not willing to support a current American missionary.  Since we are talking about moving to a relational model of support/oversight, an American missionary that has no relationship with Christians in the U.S. is going to have great difficulty building a Comission group.  Since relationships were not originally a prerequisite, I do believe a church would have to provide a missionary ample time and opportunity to establish new relationships before moving them out of the budget.

I’ll close with some lines from Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll that seem somehow appropriate here:  How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle! 

Next, I want to address one of the strongest criticisms addressed to me in the course of these latest posts: “Mark, you have a very low opinion of the church!”  What do you think?

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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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Rethinking Mission Work, Part 11: A Chord of Three Strands

Posted in Christian Missions, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , on June 2, 2011| 6 Comments »

Separating money and power is the most critical action that Churches of Christ need to take to fix its broken model for mission work. That the current model is broken can be disputed, but is very difficult to refute in light of the following:

  • Too few new hopeful missionaries are willing to become full-time, church-supported, church-overseen missionaries.
  • Many new and current missionaries are replacing church oversight/support with funds from individuals and private foundations to sidestep the current  church/oversight model.
  • Many churches are moving to mission efforts that are more “controllable”—which means they are either exclusively short-term missions, or much closer to home where local leaders can oversee more actively, or they are some form of humanitarian aid rather than missionary-centered evangelism .

A missionary society is one way that other churches attempted to solve this problem, but it is not an acceptable solution in Churches of Christ.  In fact, another center of financial authority is really no solution at all, so I am not suggesting anything resembling a missionary society as a solution.

My suggestion for a new oversight/support model  is based on the following primary characteristics:

  • Division of power
  • Division of responsibility
  • Gift-oriented tasking
  • Covenanted relationships

My suggestion is a tripartite model. Two of the parties have already been described at length: the Missionary and the Co-Mission support group. (See previous blogs for those descriptions!)  These two begin and have their core identities within our congregational structure.  Because the third member of this triad has no authority and exercises no oversight, it will work better as a missionary service organization outside of local church structures.

The single task of this third entity is to serve the Missionary and the Co-Mission group by carrying out their financial instructions.  This organization would receive funds on behalf of the missionary and disperses funds to the missionary as instructed.  I can also imagine that this organization could be extraordinarily helpful to Overseers and Missionaries by offering financial information like:

  • Cost of living information resources for specific countries
  • Best practices for banking in specific countries
  • Information of health insurance
  • U.S. tax information for missionaries
  • Foreign tax information
  • Best practices for accounting/reporting for contributions to missionaries

In no way is the missionary service organization involved in oversight or raising support, so there is no authority or control issue as with a missionary society. On the contrary, because of its neutral position in this triad, it is in a great position to serve those who oversee, those who support, and the Missionary equally well.

You may be a bit surprised that I have introduced the words oversight and accountability into our conversation.  If I have not said it explicitly enough yet, let me say that I do not believe it to be biblical or wise for anyone to be without accountability in the body of Christ, not elders, not preachers, not members, and not missionaries. I believe strongly in the mutual submission prescribed by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:21, “Submit one to another out of reverence for Christ!”

What I am describing is a chord of three strands: the Missionary, the Co-Mission group, and the service organization (to be named later!) These three become accountable to each other by means of a mutually agreed upon Covenant, a Covenant which is built in stages.

Stage One of building The Covenant would be the commitments that the Hopeful Missionary makes with those he gathers into the Co-Mission group.  And each time a new person is added, they would need to prayerfully commit to joining in the Covenant. As the First Decisions are made, the Covenant changes—but not unless both parties agree! How can two walk together unless they be agreed? (Amos 3:3)

Stage Two begins when it is time to start fund raising and when the services of the missionary service organization become essential.  At that time both the Missionary and the Co-Mission group sit down with the service organization and create new descriptions of both financial commitments and service commitments. In others words, the Missionary and Co-Mission create the financial instructions to the service organization, and the service organization commits to the services it will provide and describes any financial responsibilities or tasks that either the Missionary or the Co-Mission group takes on .

The Covenant then becomes the physical description of the relationship into which these three parties have entered for the mutual benefit of all.

Perhaps in another forum, I can expand on what kinds of things should be in a Covenant, and later, I’d like to talk about the kinds of financial covenants that work best between supporters and missionaries, but for this series, I’ve said enough to get the broad parameters of a paradigm shift into the public arena for discussion.

I would like to conclude this series by suggesting a few very concrete actions in which some of you might be interested. If you will respond, then I will follow up in the future with action:

  • I would be happy to sit down with church leaders to talk about shifting their paradigm.
  • I would be happy to organize an exploratory meeting of some kind for open conversation
  • I would be happy to make an edited and expanded version of these thoughts available in print, so that they might be distributed and read by more people.

I look forward to your response—privately or publically.

 

 

 

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Rethinking Mission Work, Part 10: First Steps To A New Paradigm

Posted in Christian Missions, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , on May 31, 2011| 1 Comment »

To summarize my previous posts, the primary issue I see with the way churches of Christ support and oversee missions are Selection, strategy, financing, and spiritual/physical care are all in the hands of a small group of men who have no firsthand knowledge of missions, who do not have personal relationships with the missionaries, who at best have limited exposure to mission theory, and who often have a broad palate of other responsibilities in their congregations to compete for their attention.

I must repeat: these elders, deacons, and mission committee members are good men and well-intentioned. The system, the model is what is flawed.  I would like to put some ideas out there to start a serious conversation about a new model for missionary oversight/support that would have the following characteristics:

  1.  Make relationship a greater part of the formula
  2.  Open the system so that the people who care the most about a work can be more directly involved.
  3.  Determine leadership according to gifts, not by who controls the checkbook.

Let’s suppose that , because of the inspiration received through points of contact with this church and because of participation in short-term missions sponsored by this church, this member of our church wants to become a full-time missionary and announces this to his/her fellowship circle at the church.

Because this happens often in this church and because this church is of moderate size, the church has appointed two or three people with gifts and training in what Scripture calls discernment to help this person be sure of their calling. If a congregation is small or lacks such gifted people, then they reach out to other congregations or to mission organizations that could provide this service for them.

After having worked through this phase and if both the applicant and the church still agree on the calling, then the Hopeful is asked to gather a group of spiritual supporters to walk with him/her through the First Decisions. These spiritual supporters should be prayerful people, people who already have a relationship to the Hopeful, people who are supportive of the Calling, and people who are willing to commit themselves and their gifts to the Hopeful.

Now, the task of the Hopeful as well as the entire spiritual cohort is to prayerfully make those important First Decisions: selection of field, selection of type work, developing a team (if appropriate), and making preparations by filling the gaps of knowledge, skills, and spiritual formation.  Following the advice of the Apostle James, if the group finds it lacks wisdom—or any other input needed for these important First Decisions– they should ask for it, first from God and then from people whom He has prepared with such wisdom. That list might include current and former missionaries, missions experts, people with cross-cultural experience—whomever God has gifted with experience or information that might be helpful in making these important First Decisions.

After the Hopeful and his/her Co-Walkers have prayerfully agreed upon a plan, including the path of Preparation, the financial resources to implement the Calling must be addressed.

Most probably, the cost of the Preparation itself will be the first financial question. I would assume that the later cost to finance the mission itself will be something that is learned later during the preparatory period as more information is gathered. Working to estimate and raise the cost of Preparation is probably a better first step toward the Calling than trying to start with the larger financial needs that will certainly come later.

And how should these first funds be gathered?  Those with the most invested already will likely be the first to commit financially. The Hopeful’s spiritual support group has walked this far already, has prayed intensely for the Hopeful, has invested time and gifts in the Hopeful—I can’t imagine that these people will not be interested in supporting this Hopeful financially.

And if that is not enough, then who will ask others? Who will vouch for the selection, the path for preparation? Who will be more persuasive in asking others to join them in supporting this Hopeful than his/her Co-Walkers??  And won’t this all happen rather naturally? And won’t  these requests be between friends as opposed to our current model that sends Hopefuls out alone to strangers?

Certainly the home church would be asked, but the difference is that as with individuals, so with churches, contributions do not come with an assumption of oversight. Oversight of this Hopeful is in the hands of his/her Co-Walkers. They know the person, the needs, and the plan better than anyone else in the world. They are invested spiritually, emotionally, relationally—and now financially–in this mission!

No accountability is lost in this model. The Hopeful is accountable to his/her Co-Mission group. The individuals in this group are still accountable to their elders! Perhaps not all of the Co-Mission group members even belong to the same congregation. That is not a prerequisite. It would be not only be foolish, but difficult and inappropriate for a set of elders to micromanage the group by reason of authority.

But who collects and handles the money?  Not the Hopeful!  The Co-Mission group. It volunteered for spiritual duty, not funds collection and management. If you leave it in the church coffers, the money/power problem remains! So what do you do with the money practically to avoid power issues?

That’s the next post. Stay tuned!

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Rethinking Mission Work, Part 9: Blowing Up Mission Committees?

Posted in Christian Missions, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , , , on May 27, 2011| 5 Comments »

All the money for missions is controlled by a very small group of men in churches of Christ.

These are all good, well-intentioned men—elders, deacons, mission committee members—but if churches of Christ have 200-300 congregations that oversee virtually all American missionaries , which typically includes managing the funds that are contributed by individuals and smaller congregations, then my best estimate is that a couple of thousand men control all of the mission work of churches of Christ.

Is this good?

Typically, most congregations have a small mission committee that receives requests, selects which works to support, determines the amount that they want to request, and passes that request on to the elders—an even smaller group, further removed from the request—who make the final decision.  Some churches do use variations on this standard approach.

I know of one large, outstanding congregation which has a long history of generous support for missions, a great track record in every way, where the entire mission program and the dispersal of all the mission funds is completely the decision of one brother.  Another one of our exemplary, mission-minded congregations has a model where small sub-committees funnel all financial requests for missions up to a small group of deacons. In practice, if the chairman of this oversight committee is personally unconvinced of the merits of a request, the likelihood of it being funded is very low. I know of another good congregation where the preaching minister must sign-off on all mission funding.

As I have repeatedly said, God uses us in our frailty and in our ignorance. Much good work has been done, so please don’t misunderstand me when I suggest that there must be a better way!

Here are what I see as the basic weaknesses of our standard model for supporting missionaries:

1)      Mission work becomes the responsibility of a small number of people rather than of the whole body of Christ.

2)      Mission information rarely gets out of committee, so congregations are ill-informed and uninspired about their missionaries.

3)      With decisive power in the hands of a few, any change in personnel creates the potential for radical restructuring of that church’s mission strategy. Every new mission committee chairman brings a new agenda. New preachers and new elders often create the same instability.

4)       Centralized money creates centralized power! And power corrupts! Mission committees are notorious for establishing small fiefdoms. Because missions is central to the agenda of most congregations, those who control the funds for missions—elders, preacher, or committees—control that agenda!  Unfortunately, the more experienced they become and bigger the budget, the more indispensable they consider themselves and their own personal missions agenda—sometimes even to the detriment of the overall health of the congregation.

5)      Decisions about financial support are easier than decisions about spiritual needs, so the financial decisions direct our strategies for world missions.

6)      Financial decisions can be very far removed from relationships with those we are supporting.  Nothing good can come from the missionary becoming primarily an employee of the church.

I talked with a missionary once who reported his own conversation with a local preacher who, completely frustrated in a great church using a standard model, said he would just like to blow up the mission committee at his congregation!  Now why do you think he said that??

Twice during the Pepperdine Bible Lectures this year, I sat with great non-American missionaries who said that they were desperately trying to figure out how to survive if they gave up their American support.  Although both have been supported by some of our largest churches for many years, their experiences with our congregational power structure for funding missions had been bitter!  They talked of how often they were confronted and confounded with personal agendas, pettiness, over-control, micro-management—all power-mongering.  It broke my heart to hear them talk, but I could not offer any rebuttal.

My conclusion is that we need a model that separates power and money!  That is where we will go with the next few posts, so stay with me!

 

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Rethinking Mission Work, Part 8 – Building A Clear Path!

Posted in Christian Missions, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , on May 25, 2011| 3 Comments »

I was at the Ballpark in Arlington last night for a Ranger game. You may have seen it on the news because a severe storm hit in the fourth inning, one that brought high winds, heavy rains, hail, and the threat of tornadoes!

About the second inning they asked all the fans in the upper deck to move to a vacant seat in the lower stands, so almost everyone in the ballpark tried to move to a better seat! The instructions for determining which seats were vacant and could you move into the seat by Nolan Ryan were very unclear, which caused obvious confusion.

A bit later, the officials cleared the lower stands, but with no explanation. Still later, I noticed lots of fans being taken down the stairs, through the dugouts into the tunnels under the stadium—not all of the fans, just some!  Not us!

My father-in-law and I moved from the second level down to the ground level on our own initiative. But during the most serious part of the storm, when some were going underground, we stood with thousands of others just looking around waiting for someone to tell us either that we were OK or that there was a safer place to which we should go.  No one ever told us anything!

We survived the storm just fine, but it did remind me that without intelligible guidance and a clear path to follow, most people will just stand around helplessly.  My goal in this series of posts on Rethinking Missions is to suggest a generally clear path that we as a fellowship could encourage hopeful missionaries to follow, with the goal of having more people go into all the world, making disciples and baptizing more people!

If you don’t mind, I want to just use this post to briefly summarize the whole area of First Decisions, which is where we are in the conversation!

The Desire to be a Missionary

The desire to be a missionary arises mostly from inspiration either through exposure to others who are missionaries or through personal experience with short-term missions. My suggestion is that the point of inspiration be moved from the Christian college, which is where the majority of opportunities now lie, to the local congregation.

Moving the point of inspiration to the local congregation has the following significant advantages:

  • Virtually everyone in our fellowship is part of a congregation, so the total number of people being exposed to missionary inspiration is exponentially greater!
  • The inspiration can begin younger and continue through elder years, again increasing the potential number of Hopefuls!
  • Hopeful Missionaries would already have a significant relationship with a congregation, which would make every future interaction easier.
  • Having known the local Hopeful as part of the congregation’s life will help in guiding them through a prayerful selection process.
  • The members of the local congregation will more likely support the Hopefuls from their own congregation, both financially and spiritually.

Even if a person is inspired somewhere else–on a vacation, or at a state university, or from a relative who has done a short-term mission–if the local congregation is the first stop in the selection process, this new Hopeful will have all of the advantages of the relationship to their congregation to build upon.

And if a person is a new Christian, the immediate, affectionate circle of a local church can close around them and provide good guidance and strong relationships for exploring their desire to be a missionary.

First Decisions

We have talked about three main First Decisions for any Hopeful Missionary:

  • which mission field,
  • what type of work, and
  • how should I prepare to go.

Let me suggest a how these stepping-stones to the mission field should line up.

1.            The first decision should probably be the mission field. Some of the beginning questions that a Hopeful should ask—and that the congregation should ask of the Hopeful–might be

  1. What country/city/region are you drawn towards? Why? (I would avoid the “called to” question because that is what the Hopeful is trying to determine with your guidance.)
  2. What do you know about these areas? (With some guidance, they should research the geography, the culture, and the religion.)
  3. What mission work is already being done there? (Both in and out of our fellowship. Again, they may need guidance to know where to find complete information.)
  4. What gifts do you have that will be appropriate for this site?
  5. What will be the greatest difficulties for you personally? For your work?

These kinds of questions will start a great conversation that could certainly lead to a “calling” to a specific site.

2.            The selection of a mission site probably will determine the strategy or type of work.  If the Hopeful is called to a third world country, then internet evangelism may not be a good strategy! If it is an industrialized country, a well-digging ministry would be equally inappropriate.

The strategy for communicating the gospel so that a particular people can hear it should come after a great deal of prayer, of consultation with current workers, after extensive research, and with much guidance.

3.            Then comes the plan for preparation for both the field and the type of work to which the Hopeful is called!  By the time, the Hopeful gets to this stage, a whole congregation has been inspiring and guiding them for a longer period of time, and much prayerful research and consultation has given the Hopeful a significant knowledge base. The plan for preparation should fill two or three significant gaps:

  • Some knowledge is better learned from teachers than on one’s own. This may include basic Bible knowledge, knowledge of God and how He works, cross-cultural information, leadership skills. With guidance, a Hopeful can know what areas he/she needs special preparation in.
  • Some skills may need to be learned:  language may be the most obvious of these, but there may be others: translation skills, musical skills, writing, teaching skills, conversation skills, etc.
  • Experience is often completely lacking!  An apprenticeship under a strong Master Missionary will fill the largest gap!

Preparation sometimes fills these three gaps simultaneously in an apprenticeship, but often a preparation plan needs to be outlined and scheduled sequentially.  The counselors, mentors, and guides gathered along the path can help the Hopeful with this part of the process.

Next

What remains to be done is raising the necessary financial support. I have left most money questions untouched because I’m convinced that we have been guilty of letting the money questions control too much of the whole process.

Now that we have a path for the crucial First Decisions, we are in a better position to rethink the issue of supporting missions!

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Rethinking Mission Work, Part 7 – Make the Preparation Real and Available!

Posted in Christian Missions, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , , , , on May 23, 2011| 4 Comments »

To become a doctor who saves lives, you must have four years of undergraduate studies, two more intense years of graduate medical school, two years of non-specialized guided practice, and then most doctors spend three to five years in a specialty residency, which is a kind of apprenticeship.

To become a missionary who saves souls, you must have zeal and the ability to raise your support.

Preparation for mission work is one of the areas where we can make the most significant changes in our paradigm with the least pain and the most results!  I believe this because I believe our fellowship has made significant changes even during my lifetime—almost all in the right direction.

Before we go any further, let me just say many hall-of-fame missionaries had zero formal missions training! As we talk about what we can do, let’s not for a moment believe that God is limited by us. I’ve always loved the reminder in Proverbs 21:31, “The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.”  This conversation is just about preparing horses the best we can!!

It was the 1960s when our Christian colleges really started offering academic preparations for missions. I’m sure I took a course in World Religions, but I do not remember any other specific mission courses being offered, though there may have been.

Later, most of our Christian colleges offered missions majors; some even specialized more by offering a vocational missions major/minor. Almost all of the colleges began bringing in visiting missionaries who would teach mission courses. All of this was intended to improve the preparations for future missionaries.

Another positive shift in recent decades was the expectation that future missionaries should have surveyed their prospective field. The most common survey trip would be 2-3 weeks duration, during which the prospective missionaries are shown examples of what is currently being done  The benefits from survey trips vary immensely in my experience, usually depending on whether the hopeful missionaries plan the trip themselves or whether their survey trip is guided by an experienced mentor.

Another positive impulse in our fellowship has been the development of mission internships. Internships could generally be described as a commitment of six months to two years of working beside a local missionary. Again, most of the impulse for internships is coming from our Christian colleges, although Sunset also has a long history of providing these kinds of experiences through their Adventures In Missions Program (AIM).

So here is the typical pathway of preparation for potential missionaries today:  a young person goes on a short-term mission trip overseas. They come back changed and desiring to do long-term missions.  The very young go to AIM. Those in Christian colleges are pointed to mission courses, which they take as their academic program allows. A very small number become mission majors.

These Hopefuls likely will be offered the possibilities of internships—especially if they are single. But, if they are married, they are more likely to move immediately to the team building phase and start making the First Decisions that we have been talking about in previous posts.  If they can form or join a team, then they are more likely to receive additional preparation from either their mentor or a mission organization like Missions Resource Network or Continent of Great Cities.

Of those Hopefuls who began this pathway, only a few get to this point–very few—too few! Others, especially those out of college or older simply start looking for support, and if they are able to raise it, they go.  That’s it.

While I think our fellowship has made great strides, I’d like to suggest two or three areas where we could continue to make some shifts which could move us to more missionaries, better prepared.

First, if you were to calculate the total number of hours of mission training offered across our fellowship, 90% of it would be through Christian universities and 10% would be through mission organizations (The percentages are just my opinion, not researched information!) What this means is

  • only an extremely small percentage of our fellowship has access to the training. (The figures I remember are that less than 10% of college-aged students within our fellowship attend Christian colleges.)
  • the training is usually bundled with other academic requirements
  • the training is very costly
  • the training is scheduled and paced according to academic requirements which have little to do with greatest access  or the most productive use of time.

As with the selection process, we need to move the part of the preparation that is classroom-oriented off of the campuses and into the congregations! Why shouldn’t all available avenues be used to offer training to all of those surfacing with the desire to do foreign missions in our churches?

Let’s begin a project of capturing our best mission teachers teaching their best mission classes, making it available through DVD and/or webinars or any other way to make the excellent classroom instruction accessible to non-students, to state university Christians, to working families, to retiring Christians–why not to anyone seriously wanting to prepare to do mission work?

Secondly, I would suggest that we shift to a much stronger apprenticeship model. What students rarely comprehend, but everyone in industry understands is that a bachelors degree in anything prepares you only for an entry-level job. To become truly skilled, nothing substitutes for workplace, real-time experiences.  As I mentioned earlier, doctors have 2-7 years of “apprenticing.”  Many professional certifications require huge hours of practicum—which is apprentice-type work.

Being a missionary in a foreign country is an extraordinarily challenging task, and I can think of no better way to complete preparations for one’s own mission work than to work under the tutelage and guidance of an experienced missionary in the target country (or similar country).

And I would suggest a standard practice among us of no less than two years be devoted to a preparatory apprenticeship, one that would include intensive language study and daily work at the side of the master missionary before a new missionary launches out independently.

The benefits of these two shifts in our paradigm are that many, many more people desiring to do mission work would have access to the best training available as they are making their First Decisions. Then with a specific work in mind, they have an opportunity to continue their training on their targeted field in a mentored environment until they were really ready to go out on their own!

Well, I hope that starts the conversation. A blog is no place for details and specifics, but I’m absolutely convinced that all of us want more missionaries who are better prepared. If you don’t like my suggestions, what are yours?

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