ReachGlobal Link

OPENING UP THE MISSIONS BOTTLENECK

2012-01-30T20:11:00.001-06:00

By Steve Scott
Steve served for twenty years as an Evangelical Free Church pastor, seven of them as a missions pastor.

• Does your team long for more people to be involved in your church’s missions ministry?
• Is your missions team overwhelmed?
• Does the congregation as a whole seem disconnected from the church’s missions ministry?

A “yes” to any of those questions may mean that your missions team has become a bottleneck for missions.

Often, six to ten people on a committee hold all the missions cards in a church. Our missions committee made a decision to deal out the cards. Within four years, we went from seven people serving on a committee to over 140 missions ministry volunteers.

The key was to restructure the missions program to resemble a youth ministry model with many people doing one or two ministries about which they are very passionate. This involved several steps.

First, we determined the Key Result Areas (KRAs). In our case, we divided the responsibilities into six KRA’s: Administration Team, Candidate Development, Short-term ministry, Advocacy (projects, training, and education), Local Outreach, and Missionary Care.

Next we determined an implementation plan. We could not change everything at once, so we started with two areas and added others as key leadership was identified. Our first team was the Administration Team that provided general oversight and handled the finances. We also added Missionary Care that first year. The next year we opened up Candidate Development. The third year we did Local Outreach and Short-term Teams. The fourth year we started Advocacy.

The third step for implementation was to find a champion for the particular ministry area or responsibility. This is critical. The right people make all the difference!

Fourth was to provide each champion with a charter for the ministry area. This set the vision, provided boundaries, and defined reporting and support structures.

Fifth was to support the champions. Quarterly check-ins determined if there were any gaps regarding strategy, mobilizing people, training, or implementing projects. Each champion had different gaps in their ministry areas, but my role was to help fill those gaps.

Finally, the champion would report at least once a year to Administration Team representatives. This kept the budget people connected to the front-line ministry workers and provided an opportunity for celebrating the champion’s vital role in the success of our missions program.

Opening up the bottleneck improved every aspect of our missions program. We involved more people, mobilized many first-time volunteers, and brought relief to the original, overworked missions committee.

From Doing Missions to Being On Mission

2011-11-30T08:15:00.001-06:00

by Dan Witwer

Hershey Free Church is now 38 years old and has a long history of international ministry. Like your church, we are living through quantum changes in resource availability, questions of what is a mission field, and what are best practices in gospel declaration and doing good. During the past 38 years, God has raised up (or the West has finally recognized) godly, skilled, vision-filled national leaders. The contour of missions has changed and continues to do so even as you read this brief update. Hershey Free is in the process of thinking how to be strategic and effective as Christ’s church in the world. Here are two areas that we are working on:

1. We are blurring the line between local and global disciple-making. With the shrinking embrace of a Christian worldview at home, as well as clusters from many people groups arriving in North America, it is tempting to focus all of our outreach efforts at home. These culture shifts present tremendous opportunities at our doorsteps, but we do the glory of God a disservice if we ignore the remaining continents. At Hershey, we have renamed our outreach ministry Engage3. Engage is ‘how’ we do outreach with and among the lost, the least, and the last. The exponent 3 indicates ‘where’ we do ministry—in our neighborhood, region, and the nations.

2. We are emphasizing next steps in relational discipleship. Hershey’s staff and elder leadership have been casting a vision away from an individualistic approach to following Jesus to a cooperative, communal, and together-oriented journey of faith that emphasizes next steps. As Christ-followers grow together, we seek God for ways to engage with others who need to see and hear the forgiving mercy of Jesus Christ. We do this when life’s routine is steady as well as times when floods and fires interrupt that routine. Sometimes the engaging next steps take place in our community (recently flooded by Tropical Storm Lee), or in earthquake-ripped Haiti, or Christian-persecuting locations in Central Asia.

These two emphases are causing us to rethink our leadership structure for missions and past policies, but we fully expect that outreach will increasingly be a normal part of life at Hershey Free.

Elephants Are Not Just in Africa

2011-10-31T10:00:00.000-05:00

by Susan Demel

A coworker asked, “How are you?” as he passed me in the hall. Like many people do, I responded very quickly with, ‘Fine’. Then an unusual thing happened, he turned around and marched over to me emphatically stating, “That was a pat answer.” (pat adj.- Trite or glib; superficially complete or satisfactory)

After I dusted myself off, I reflected and gave a genuine response. “Today is a bad day,” I said. I was relieved. It didn’t alter the circumstances, but it changed something in my mind and heart to be open about it.

Imagine for a moment that you are walking out of your office or down the street. Someone you know greets you and asks, ‘How are you? How are things in missions these days?” What would you say? As you imagine your response, consider the feelings that arise and the thoughts that emerge. Would you be honest about the likely scenarios playing out in your setting, or would you give a pat answer? “Fine, thanks. Everything’s great.”

It’s likely that some of us have meetings where uninvited elephants have taken residence at the table. Elephants are not only in Africa; they live with us -- topics and issues that go unspoken and unaddressed.

It’s likely that some of us have inherited strong personalities’on teams or boards who have been with the church since the early days -- folks you can’t move and must, instead, mow around.

It’s likely that some of us have too many things that need tweaking. When we get traction in one area, we lose ground in many others. It feels like a constant dance with two steps forward and three steps back.
It’s likely that some of us transfer the complexities of leading and facilitating missional efforts into twisted evidence of our imagined incompetence.

It’s likely that some of us rely more on our minds and our meetings then our great big God. Do we trust more in our abilities, or do we believe and act in alignment with Proverbs 3:5-6? “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.”

It’s likely that some of us have allowed busyness to depersonalize the work we are doing. We have let it get in the way of our own active expression of compassionate missional involvement.

Why don’t we reveal reality? Why don’t we just say, “Today is a bad day,” or “This is a particularly hard and draining season we’re in”? We don’t have to give a poetic psalm in the moment, but we have the opportunity to give a vulnerable response, even if all we can muster is a grunt.

Are we concerned about our image if we admit difficulty, afraid for the security of our position or of the feelings of inadequacy that may come flooding over us? Let’s be optimistic, thankful and grateful in the great and promising moments and in the hard times as well. But let us not pretend that all is perfect and well. If we do, we may miss a unique opportunity to be real with one another, and we may forfeit a chance to be transformed by God, who is brilliant at meeting us in our honest, vulnerable, messy moments.

FINDERS KEEPERS: IT'S ONLY NATURAL

2011-09-28T16:20:00.001-05:00

By Paul Donaldson

The first day we had 15 students on an Asian university campus join us for Bible study (our max from the two prior years). Two weeks later, we had to expand to a second classroom with 60 first-time readers studying together in small groups facilitated by our team members. When we left, at least three groups continued – a first ever. What was different?

We changed our Bible study time from a large group, single-leader model to a “discovery” format, introduced to me by Paul Watson* last year. The basics are:

1) Share how life’s going.
2) Read the scripture passage.
3) Retell the Scripture passage as a group.
4) Ask:
• “What does it teach about God?”
• “What does it teach about people?”
• “If you believed this is true, what would you change in your life?”
• “Who do you know that needs to hear what you’ve learned?”

After reading/retelling Genesis 3, I asked what we could learn about God.

Student 1: “God is merciful.”
Me: “Which verses tell you this?”
Student 1: “God said if they ate from the tree they would die; but God let them live, gave them clothes,.. they deserved to die.”

We received responses like this to the simple, open questions every day!

Our primary task lay in teaching the format for study, and as quickly as possible, transferring the facilitating to a student leader.

If students asked questions, instead of making the facilitator’s answer the first option, we strove to direct students back to verses in the passage, asked another student what they thought, or offered to talk more outside the group. We simply wanted to give students a chance to read the Bible so they could make an informed decision about what to believe for themselves. Isaiah 55:11 (God’s word being sent by Him will accomplish what He desires)

*http://www.everydaydisciples.com/2010/07/16/using-small-groups-to-disciple-people-to-christ/

Straight Talk About Results in Missions

2011-08-31T09:10:00.002-05:00

By T.J.Addington, Senior Vice President with the Evangelical Free Church of America

Missionaries are under increasing pressure to prove that they are getting results in missions today. Impatient sending churches are sometimes quick to criticize and even pull support when their version of results are not realized. This is both a good thing and a bad thing...depending.

At the expense of irritating some local church leaders, I want to suggest that the pressure for quick results in missions is not only unbiblical but hypocritical. In the United States it takes on average 168 people one year to bring one person to Christ. A church that sees ten percent conversion growth in any given year is on the very high end of churches nationally (on average). So a church of 500 would see 50 conversions in the course of a year and that would be considered very healthy. Think about that. Five hundred people and 50 conversions. Now apply that same standard to missionaries (what a team of ten or so) working in hard soil (consider the Muslim context) and we complain that they are not seeing quick results! If we applied the standards to ourselves that we apply to missionaries we would often get a failing grade! Yes we have many large churches and the vast majority of those who make up the congregations have transferred in from other churches while the vast majority of mission conversions are first generation Christians.

The West loves fast results. Missions is rarely about fast results. It was not for Paul and it will not be for us. It took nearly 300 years for Paul's early efforts in missions to see Christianity flourish in the Roman Empire - 300 years.

As the leader of a mission organization, ReachGlobal, one of our guiding principles is that "We measure results." We want to know whether or not we are being effective. In addition, we deploy in teams for maximum synergies and insist that all staff have annual ministry plans and Key Result Areas - including me. We are always looking for best practices and as another one of our guiding principles states, "We practice entrepreneurial thinking." In addition, our Central Ministry Focus is to develop, empower and release healthy national leaders. So we are all about multiplication over addition. All well and good - except - we cannot control when "harvest" comes. We can control our intentionality and best practices but we cannot control the harvest. In fact, there is no excuse for lack of intentionality in missions but the fact remains we do not control the harvest - only God does.
Here is what I know from Scripture: God intends to bring an amazing harvest in His time, in His way and through His power. We are asked to simply live in His power, see through His eyes and live in faith-filled expectancy. Harvest will come but we do not control the timing.

But I know several other things from the New Testament and Paul's example in particular. First, the harvest is never easy. Read Paul's litany of tough experiences in 2 Corinthians 11. There were places where Paul saw significant harvest and there were places where he did not.

In the first 25 years of Robert Morrison's ministry as the first Protestant to China he baptized only 10 people. Twentyfive years and ten people baptized. Yet, Morrison is widely known as the reason that Christianity came to China in the 1800's leading to the largest church in the world today. What if Morrison had been told after ten years of almost no results to come home and find a place where the harvest was better? Read the history of missions in India and many other places and the lesson is the same.

This goes to Paul's reminder in 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 that some of us sow, some of us water and some of us reap. He asks, which is more important, the sower, the one who waters or the reaper? Remember: wherever there is a significant harvest, there was behind that harvest those who labored for years in obscurity, sowing and watering. Like Morrison, they may never see the harvest in this life and while those who get to harvest get the accolades in missions, it was those who did the harder work of sowing and watering and praying that deserve the bulk of the credit.

ReachGlobal works in over 75 countries. In some countries the spiritual results are easy to see and large but only because someone before us did the hard and tedious and tough work of sowing and watering. In other contexts we are doing the tough work of sowing and watering and perhaps others will see the harvest.

In all cases, we need to ensure that the investment we make in missions is being used wisely and that we are ministering with great intentionality. And we need to be people of prayer (in the local church and in missions) that God would break through. But we do not control the timing of that breakthrough. That is true domestically and internationally.

What do you think Paul would say if we told him that we only went to places where the harvest was significant? That would rule out most of the Muslim world (one billion), much of Europe and many yet to be reached people.

I lived in Hong Kong from 1960 to 1971 where my parents were medical missionaries. When we left there were five or six churches. It was slow-going and hard. Today there are 55 Free Churches, including the largest EFC in the world (10,000) to say nothing of the many other evangelical churches that saturate the territory. The church in Hong Kong stands on the shoulders of those missionaries who labored there, sowing and watering for many years, seeing only meager results.

We need a better theology of missions today. A theology rather than simple expediency.

God intends to bring an amazing harvest in His time, in His way and through His power. We are asked to simply live in His power, see through His eyes and live in faith-filled expectancy. Harvest will come but we do not control the timing. The question is whether we will partner with God, not only in harvest but in sowing and watering. Those who focus only on the harvest have settled for expediency. Those who focus on all three focus on a biblical view of global missions.

BOOTCAMPS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH

2011-07-29T12:30:00.001-05:00

by Rafe Wright

Short-term mission trips are life-changing! They can be a 21st-century, water-walking experience with the living God.

A 2003 trip to Asia was a major catalyst in my wife Laurie’s life. Her experiences launched her into a lifestyle of missional living and deeper church involvement. It was the key event that moved us to adopt our twin boys from Russia.

Short-term trips are boot camps for spiritual growth. The process begins the moment you commit to the trip. There’s an intensive time of spiritual preparation. There is often spiritual testing from the Lord. You’ll be equipped with theological, cultural and team building and ministry specific skills for your work. You’ll be stretched in faith and boldness as you build prayer and financial support teams. All this before you even depart.

Then you go! There’s something unique about stepping out in faith, outside of your culture and comfort zone, and placing yourself in total dependence on God. Your only agenda, your only to-do list, is to be responsive to God’s leading moment by moment. And this happens because you’re free from daily routines, responsibilities and the ambient noise of a busy life. You’re free to have a personal encounter with God that broadens your parameters of how you see Him, the world, and even life. Short-term trippers return from mission on a spiritual high, and many gain a new vision for life at home.

These trips also forge collaborative partnerships to amplify Kingdom work. In 2010, we partnered with Victory Living Word Church Uganda to plant four churches in the bush north of Kampala . Pastor Makumbi Johnson said a normal plant would consist of a dozen new converts, with hopes to double that number in a year. In partnership, we took medical, dental and vision clinics to the people there. Together, we began four new churches that kicked off with 65, 65, 90 and 225 people at the first services. Pastor Johnson’s team said only by God’s grace and a collaborative partnership could this be!

Think I’m overselling it? It’s impossible to sell it enough, honestly. Real encounters with God are like that. It takes a personal experience to understand.

Your comments?

RELIEF MINISTRY IN JOPLIN, MISSIOURI

2011-06-30T11:10:00.002-05:00

By Quentin Washispack

“Let your light shine before men so that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven.” - Matthew 5:16

On Sunday, May 22, an F5 tornado hit Joplin, MO at 5:30 PM. At the time, I was leading a meeting of 16 people who were preparing for a China trip in July. One of the guys going to China whispered to me that he had to take a phone call from his brother who lived in Joplin. He returned with the news that a massive tornado had destroyed a large portion of the city.

New Life Church (www.newlifechurch.tv) is about four hours from Joplin. By Friday morning, we had 50 people ready to go to Joplin. We partnered with Ignite Church (www.ignitechurch.tv) in Joplin which is at the corner of 7th Street and Maiden Lane, just a few blocks from the destruction.

Some of our people helped in the disaster zone with chain saws to cut trees and limbs. Others helped tear down houses and bring items to the roadway. The city of Joplin wanted wood in one pile, metal in another, sheet rock in a third and household trash in a fourth. We helped one family tear down their entire house. We moved next door to help an elderly lady. It was too overwhelming for her and she asked us to back off so she could process some more. We moved across the street and cleaned another family’s yard.

Other members of our team stayed at Ignite Church and helped receive and organize food, clothing, toys, hygiene items and minister to displaced people. The church was a temporary shelter for 20 people. The children’s rooms, nursery and hallways were used to store all the donated items.

On Sunday morning, we helped the church set up chairs outside for an outdoor service because the interior of the church was being used to shelter people.

A man named Lee traveled from several states away to come to Joplin. His wife had divorced him, and the tornado hit Joplin on his birthday. He felt compelled to come and help. He ended up at Ignite Church and was put in touch with one of our New Life Church teams to go into the city to help with tornado relief. Lee was a broken man emotionally and spiritually. He ended up trusting Christ while helping a family. We gave him one of our T-shirts. All of his other shirts were decorated with skulls and cross bones. He is now growing in his walk with Christ and helping others.

The next weekend, June 3-5, we sent 37 people to Joplin to continue the relief efforts. We plan to send a team every weekend in June. These trips are resulting in wonderful bonds among people, and moving them closer to God. They help our people to serve God and their neighbors, and they present an opportunity to share the gospel with a needy world.

What projects and ministries is your church doing this summer to meet such needs?

ARAB CHRISTIANITY TODAY

2011-05-27T21:52:00.000-05:00

By Lincoln Bruner - Editorial Director, ReachGlobal

After a recent trip to Lebanon and Jordan, I was thrilled to get word out to the greater EFCA community of God’s work there about Arab people.

My colleague, Jim, and I published stories about the Free Evangelical Church of Beirut, a Sudanese church planter and a free medical clinic serving Iraqi refugees. We wrote the stories, posted them on the ReachGlobal website, and then, well ...

The stories got read, but the numbers didn’t follow the attention riveted on the Middle East right now.

This may be partially our fault on the distribution end, but anemic readership of these articles underscored a sad fact: On the whole, brave as they are, Arab Christians in the Middle East remain forgotten by the Western Church.

Why? It seems that the plight of Christians in the birthplace of Christianity ought to draw close attention. But stereotypes are like block walls – easy to form, hard to break. And there are at least two stereotypes that I think might push the way we in conservative Christian America think about Arab Christianity.

The first is that the entire Arab world is Muslim. Even though 10 percent of Egyptians and 40 percent of Lebanese people are Christians, it’s too easy to watch world news and conclude that all Arabs are Christian-hating zealots. That’s not even true of most Muslims, let alone most Arabs, but the stereotype holds power over our thinking.

The second is that the descendants of Ishmael somehow deserve less status than the descendants of Isaac. The truth is that Christ died for all people. Aside from the fact that there are far more Arab Christians than Jewish Christians in the world, we would do well to remember that Christ obliterated the walls separating one people group from another. That should draw us closer in heart and deed to our Arab brothers and sisters.

Recent political events, now being called the Arab Spring, have opened up the Middle East in exciting ways. Those events also have left many Christians across the Middle East much more vulnerable to attacks because of the disruption in power structures.

Our Arab brothers and sisters need our prayers and help like never before. Will we dare to stand with them, or will we allow stereotypes to carry the day?

THE WORLD AT OUR DOORSTEP

2011-04-28T11:57:00.000-05:00

By Bill Walder

We didn't need to travel to China, Bangladesh, Columbia, Ghana, India or Turkey in order to befriend international students. We merely drove to Pittsburgh (less than an hour away) in order to have the pleasure of meeting some incredibly wonderful people from many nations. My wife and I have been involved with PRISM (Pittsburgh Region International Student Ministry) for about two years. It is one of the most delightful and rewarding aspects of our ministry lives.

Our involvement began as we hosted a picnic at the home of a couple from our small group. Games, food and rich conversations were the stuff from which relationships began. Out of that day, the small group and the international students developed connections that grew during their schooling, and continued after students returned to their home countries. Several from the small group continue to be actively involved in reaching out to new international students as they arrive each year.

Most of the international students in our ministry have been on the graduate level. These highly educated, intelligent individuals are totally confounded by the abundant generosity and love shown by PRISM staff and volunteers. They come to the U.S. with few material goods. In most cases, just items of clothing and their computers. They move into unfurnished apartments and may sleep on the floor for some time until they can scavenge discarded items from others' trash.

The school year begins with PRISM's "Garage Give-Away" event. A large church near several university campuses is filled with furniture, bedding, cookware, dishes, sweepers, and decorative items. Volunteers help students gather their free goods, then drive them to their apartments. A "Welcome to Pittsburgh" night informs them of all the events and opportunities they can take advantage of through PRISM. More than three hundred students are blessed by these Christian servants. Many of the students are drawn to activities during the year, attracted by the depth of love they experience through the PRISM staff and volunteers.

Our own family has hosted international students for birthday celebrations, Thanksgiving dinner, and Christmas activities. We were able to introduce one Asian couple who were Muslims to an Amish and a Mennonite community where they saw the gospel clearly presented in the local museum, and again over an Amish dinner. My wife, our daughters, and several other women from our church developed a special bond with the Asian wife of this couple. In a going-away party in her honor, this woman confessed tearfully that she had never felt such love in her own country. She described it as "not normal" for people to love strangers and do so much for them. That night there were several discussions around God's grace in salvation, His love that motivates a Christian to good works, and the transformation of being a new person in Christ.

My family and our church friends that have volunteered with this international student ministry have been blessed beyond words. We will always have open hearts for them. Their eagerness for friendship and spiritual discussions has been a pleasant surprise and treasure.

Did you know? There are nearly 700,000 international students studying in the U.S. If your church is (or desires to be) ministering to international students, post comments or questions here.

UNPLANNED LIFE EVENTS USED FOR GOD’S GLORY

2011-03-30T09:00:00.006-05:00

by Hal Kemp

How do you respond when unplanned events or situations come your way in the course of daily living? I think most of us would just as soon avoid those kinds of happenings. We become very comfortable with the routines of life. But then along comes something that brings about a change of direction and we wonder what is happening. We ask God “why?” or “why me?” or say “not now.” I have recently concluded almost 47 years of local church and overseas cross-cultural ministry since college. As I look back, I clearly see God’s hand in how he has lead on this exciting journey of faith.

God, in His plan, drew me to Himself as a young boy in a church that was very missions minded. The seed of missions was watered by attending Urbana at the end of my university years. After teaching high school mathematics for three years and then going to grad school, God further planted a seed in my heart for teaching missionary kids in the Philippines. My wife and I and our three children spent ten years in that ministry.

Since the early 1980s, after returning from overseas, God has given me the privilege of serving in a local church in California in the global outreach ministry as a layperson, then as an elder, while working in the business world. I served on the full-time staff for the last seven and a half years as Global Outreach Director. It has been a joy to serve the Lord and to have had a small part in getting the gospel to the least-reached in the world. I have especially enjoyed the personal relationships with our supported missionaries and the privilege to visit and encourage a number of them in their places of ministry. Communicating with them and with the congregation about them through various means is so critical.

In looking back to my boyhood and seeing how God has led in my life, I certainly did not know how He would use various events and people to direct my life. But, the exciting part is that He is not finished! The following verse captures the thoughts for my wife and me about the future: “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of grace of God” (Acts 20:24 ESV).
How has God used the “unplanned” events in your life for His glory?

A Church-Based, Church Planting Initiative

2011-02-26T07:30:00.000-06:00

By Mark Fugere

Here is a snapshot of collaboration between churches with a desire to see a church planting movement launched among an un-reached people group (UPG - a people in which there is no indigenous Christians or insufficient numbers of indigenous Christians able to evangelize their people). The journey began eight years ago. It is my hope that this will serve as a catalyst for people to begin asking God what He may desire to initiate on a global scale through their church.

1. God sized Dream – This was the critical first step, where a vision would begin to take shape as the dream is nurtured and encouraged, or dismissed and discouraged. We must dare to pursue God given dreams for the sake of His glory.
2. Church Leadership – At this point the dream was shared and the godly counsel of church leadership was sought. Here the dream in seed form was presented to the Mission teams, Senior Pastors and Elder Boards of our churches. If this were to be more than a dream it would require the ownership and input of the local church leaders. As leaders we should be looking for those within our churches that the Lord is using to stretch us to potentially join Him in a new initiative.
3. Commitment – Next the decision was formally made by the churches leadership to embrace the vision of initiating a church planting movement among an un-reached people group. A written agreement was developed between churches, missionaries and mission organizations.
4. Exploration – This was the step where active engagement of leaders and the congregations became tangible. A team of leaders from partnering churches were sent to visit a number of UPG’s and mission organizations on the mission field as the congregations answered the call to pray.
5. UPG Selected – A formal adoption Sunday was held where we committed ourselves, our churches and our resources to doing all that we could to see this people group with healthy reproducing churches planted among them.

This initiative was rooted in the seedbed of a course called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. Out of this the Lord planted the dream in the hearts of two people from two congregations to see their churches engaged in reaching an UPG. From this simple beginning the Lord has brought together four local congregations and a church from N.E. India that are praying and seeking the Lord together for His glory among the Brou people of Cambodia. What might the Lord desire to do through your church? As you seek to collaborate with the Lord and other evangelical churches; taking the initiative to fulfilling your part in God’s global mission; you just may discover a deeper level of commitment, a greater sense of ownership and the reason that our churches have been so richly blessed. That we might be a blessing to the nations for the glory of God (Psalm 67).

Your thoughts or questions?

Western vs. Indigenous Missionaries

2011-01-26T17:32:00.003-06:00

By T.J. Addington

There is a quiet but very important debate taking place regarding the place of western missionaries in today’s expensive world. There are some who argue that the day of long term missionaries from the west is over and that we should simply support indigenous missionaries across the globe at a much lesser cost. The implications of how we answer that question are significant.

Let me say up front that I lead ReachGlobal, an international missions organization of the EFCA. Let me also say that I believe that the vision for reaching the world does not lie with organizations but with the local church. The best missions, in my view, are those who exist to serve the missions vision of the local church and provide structure, long term strategic help and best practices.

Let’s talk about money for a moment. It costs around $100,000 per mission family to be on the field in our and similar organizations. That sounds like a lot – but it is not that much different than the cost of pastoral staff for a local church – if you add in the hidden costs above salary such as health insurance, retirement, staff administrative help and perhaps the most expensive cost of all – the expensive church facilities that staff work in. The difference between missionaries and local church staff is very small when you consider the hidden costs that churches must cover in order to staff their ministry.

It is true that missionaries who are not productive do not belong on the field. It is equally true that this applies to church staff in the United States as well. The fact that some ministries don't deal with unproductive staff in both arenas does not negate the need for staff. It makes the case for the right staff who are engaged in the right work.

The question of value for that money is an important one. If missionaries are simply doing what local believers could do one may have an argument for funding locals rather than western missionaries. However, that misses a massive shift that is taking place within the mission world today where missionaries are increasingly not the hands on doers but the mentors, equippers and releasers of indigenous workers. In fact, in ReachGlobal (RG), the central job of our staff is to develop, empower and release. This is something that local believers are not as capable of doing: they need and ask for help in raising up equipped workers for the harvest and increasingly that is the role of personnel from the west.

In addition, simply sending money rather than personnel raises another very important question: dependencies on western money that fosters dependence rather than independence and control (through our dollars) rather than the development of equal ministry partners. A book every church in the west should read is “When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor...and Yourself.” Indiscriminate financial help is often a terrible gift with unintended consequences that the west does not understand. One of my colleagues at the Lausanne Conference in South Africa is a leader from Liberia. His observation is that money has done more to ruin ministry in countries like his than almost anything else.

In years past the west often had a paternalistic attitude toward missions. We had the money, we had the education and we were the experts. Too often we carried that attitude with us rather than developing, empowering and releasing indigenous personnel. Now, some would compound that error with an equal error. Western missionaries are not needed so we will just fund local ministries globally. Neither of these answers is Biblical and it is not an either or dichotomy but a both and. The missions mandate Christ left the church will only be met when all believers, those from the majority world and those from the minority world join hands to share the gospel with over five billion people who don’t know Christ.

From the inception of the church, it has been a mission sending church. Paul and Barnabas were simply the first in the hundreds of thousands of missionaries who have gone from one culture to another with the good news of Jesus. My parental family was in that line of faithful missionaries. The day we stop sending people and simply send our dollars is the day that we have abandoned the call of the church to “go and make disciples of all nations” and the inevitable result will be a quick decline even in giving for missions. What we tell our partners internationally applies to us: No church group is mature until they are intentionally reaching across ethnic, economic, political and culture lines to share the gospel.

The question of whether western missionaries are needed is really the wrong question because the New Testament does not give us the option of sending missionaries. The real question is what should long term missionaries in today’s world be doing? One thing we know they should be doing is raising up workers for the harvest in all parts of the world, doing formal and informal theological training, training church planters and pastors and doing everything we can to see multiplication take place where the gospel is not well known. In many places this means the hard work of evangelism and the making of disciples because there are none present. There are still vast tracts of our globe where the church is small, struggling or non-existent.

Ironically, just as some in the west believe that long term workers are no longer needed, believers in other parts of the world are increasingly sending their own missionaries. Missions has become all people reaching all people and many of our own teams are made up of personnel from different parts of the world. The question will be whether the western church loses out on the blessing of being a player in the world wide missions efforts in the years to come.

Missions does not win when missionaries do not partner with indigenous believers. Missions does not win when western missionaries are left on the sidelines. Missions wins when there is a synergistic relationship between missionaries from wherever they come and local believers wherever they are.

View other articles on T.J.'s blog at:
http://leadingfromthesandbox.blogspot.com/

REACHGLOBAL LINK EVALUATION

2010-12-29T08:50:00.007-06:00

In February 2010 we revised ReachGlobal Link, changing the name, adding a blog site, and attempting to make it more interactive and more of a connecting piece. So how are we doing? We would like to have your evaluations. We have listed three questions to which you may respond.
Thank you for taking time to send us your observations. Have a great New Year!

1. How often are you reading ReachGlobal Link: every issue/month, on occasion, not at all?
2. What kind of information are you finding helpful?
3. Tell us what improvements you would like to see in ReachGlobal Link:
4. Other comments:
Send your response to: connect@efca.org

Missional Partnerships: New Approach

2010-11-30T06:00:00.001-06:00

by Raymond Chang

One of the exciting opportunities in global evangelism is how much smaller the world has become. With access to internet and satellite TV, we can be living in one country and enjoying the television shows or newspapers of our home town. To emphasize the classic Disney song, “It’s a small world after all.” With the world becoming smaller and smaller, missions doesn’t seem like some distant remote location, rather it is something that can be very close to home. As a pastor of a local church who is beginning the journey of connecting the global to the local or “glocal” as Bob Roberts calls it, I’m excited about the opportunity to make the connection between the overseas culture to our local culture.

Sadly, there has been a disconnect between our approach to short-term missions and the local church. I was at a missions forum where a professor at Trinity International University mentioned that short-term trips may have no correlation to the people group of the local community. A group to which he referred traveled to Mexico, but there was very little missions done with the local, Spanish-speaking people in their own community.

As part of our training and global effectiveness, our church has decided to make it an intentional process to tie our mission trips to the people group we are reaching. We will take two trips to Vietnam, in January and June. We have recruited local Vietnamese-Americans to help us, but we will also partner with local Vietnamese churches. Our goal is to be involved in both places.

As part of your role in the field, one question to ask is, “How can we help churches develop better partnerships within their own context, and then make the tie with the work abroad?”

Some quick ideas to consider:
1) Vision Trip Abroad Begins at Home
2) Local – Global Connection
3) Church Planting for People Groups in the U.S. (Reverse Planting)

As I think through partnerships, I’m so thankful for my partnerships overseas. Now if we can start at home.

Question: How is your church connecting the local to the global? Post a comment or question.

ORALITY – speaking truth to the masses

2010-10-27T08:00:00.009-05:00

By Steve & Carol, Bruce Renich, and Michael Sheldon

For millions of people – including many in North America – spoken language (orality) still trumps the written word in everyday life. Missionaries around the world are finding new opportunities to use orality as their primary means to share the gospel, as the following anecdotes attest:

From Africa - Steve & Carol
Books are not the primary source of new input for the Congolese and Tanzanians with whom I’ve lived most of my life. That’s not a big surprise, because tribal people maintain and communicate their history and lore through orality-- that is, through stories, songs and poetry.

So almost 20 years ago, we left the comfort of our linear, propositional gospel presentations and turned to narrating the story of God and man (starting with creation and progressing chronologically to Jesus’ ascension). The results? A biblical worldview, faith in Jesus and clarity of doctrine.

During our stateside home assignment another fact became evident: Books are no longer the primary source of news for Americans. As the flood of TV, movies and Internet moves people from literacy to orality, we’ve discovered that pastors, youth groups and home groups are turning to the Bible story as a means of presenting God’s truth.

Books are still with us. Our challenge is learning to speak “the language of story” to an oral world.

From Illinois - Bruce Renich
Last September, in a wild and remote part of Papua New Guinea, I had my first encounter with the orality method of teaching Scripture. John and Cheryl Fornelli (from the Evangelical Free Church in Naperville, IL) had trained a large group of pastors and teachers for seven weeks.

The word of God went like a bush fire around that district. Impressed by the results, I asked them to train a group of our church volunteers going to Kenya in July 2010.

This was taught with very positive results. One teacher was so excited with the method that he went home on the weekend and taught another Sunday school teacher all he had learned. This teacher joined us on Monday and had perfectly learned all the stories! The teachers there continue to work with this method with the word of God spreading rapidly everywhere.

From Oregon - Michael Sheldon
Staring at the confused teenaged faces caught us off guard.

“Who’s Jesus?” “God has a son?” “What is sin?” All legitimate questions, but when asked in rapid-fire succession, we were forced to rethink ministry.

This is the context in which the youth staff at Fellowship Bible Church had found itself— teens having no Biblical reference. Rather than bog them down with topical proof-texts, we agreed that we needed to start at the beginning and let God speak for himself.

God has been faithful. As we wrap up the first round, teens are curious about missions and leading narrations on their campuses.

Is your church or ministry using orality? If so, how and with whom? Post your comments or questions.

Together For Justice

2010-09-30T08:00:00.004-05:00

By Jeanette Thomas

I’m a beginner on the road toward justice - working hard (and often succeeding little) in fleshing out the ways of Jesus in unique and varied contexts. But I’ve learned a few lessons I’d like to share.

Pressing toward Jesus and the Justice He so deeply loves:
1. God wants his people to be champions for justice—not just cheerleaders or donors. We shouldn’t be satisfied with merely giving to reputable organizations or applauding from the sidelines. We ought to be in and among the contexts where God has called us to minister. As God’s people, we’ve been invited “on stage” in some way. How might we be better informed? How might we ourselves be active in advocating for justice or this (just) cause?

2. Becoming a champion is a process; we should expect it to take some time and start with “the next step” we know. Do we need to become less insulated from injustice in our world? How might we do that? Who are the most vulnerable people in our city or in our daily lives? How will we remember them? Do we see and feel their pain?

3. Becoming a champion for justice is about following Jesus. What do the Scriptures have to say about justice—or specific (just) causes? Have we noticed the Biblical language and themes that should inform us?

4. As champions, we should notice how God’s “stream of justice” is already flowing in and through our friends and family, our congregation, and those we’re connected to in some way. How might we join in what God is already doing? Are we praying regularly that God will help us to “connect the dots”?

5. Growing as a follower of Jesus (and justice-champion) often involves a disorienting dilemma. Are we willing to place ourselves in uncomfortable situations? How are we stretching ourselves and reshaping our lives to pursue justice?

6. Action and Reflection work together to effectively create “justice champs.” What tangible experiences have we participated in, individually or corporately? Did we spend time reflecting on what God was doing in and through us? How could our Scripture reading this week lead us to pursue justice in a practical way? What’s one step we might take?

7. Authentic friendships make champions of justice. Have we gone beyond “working for justice” to actually befriending those suffering from injustice? Are we willing to lament with friends who suffer from injustice even if there’s nothing we can do to fix it? What would it look like to wait on a Messiah together?

What are your thoughts and questions?

Check out justice advocate Scott Lundeen’s phenomenal DVD series, entitled Urban Entry at http://www.urbanentry.org/Urban_Entry/Home.html—a great resource for suburban congregations.

Proclaiming Christ to the Unreached

2010-08-30T08:15:00.000-05:00

by Steve Freeburne

At the World Balkan Mission Conference held recently in Macedonia Dr. Chris Gnanakan challenged 200 Balkan church leaders to consider the glory of declaring God's fame to nations still unreached. He noted that God is pouring out His grace all across the globe and He is raising up people to move when He moves and to act when He acts… For these indigenous workers it is a call to missions but for us in the West it is a call to change the way we have done missionary work. It is a reasonable call we have been given. It is a call to equipping and facilitating the sending of indigenous workers as missionaries to the unreached.

What does this mean for the missionary endeavors of our churches in the future?

1. Our churches could be more strategically focused on reaching specific areas of the world that are unreached. We need to move away from sending a little money to large numbers of missionaries and place more financial resources strategically where Christ is not known, proclaimed and honored.

2. Many churches among the unreached are struggling financially and spiritually. They need mature leaders to be mentors and materials in their own language that could help them grow spiritually. We need a fresh vision for coming along side these brothers and sisters in Christ for the purpose of building them up to live within their own culture in a Christ-like manner. The danger we must avoid is doing this in a way that makes the indigenous churches dependent upon outside funding. Therefore our strategic plan needs to have a way to overcome this issue.

3. Indigenous churches among unreached people groups also need a vision for equipping and sending their own. Our role should be one of facilitating the connection between the indigenous workers in the local churches and the indigenous movement agencies. Churches in the US should begin to strategically implement plans using our financial and human resources in this way among unreached groups where the gospel has just begun to penetrate the culture.

In light of these three things I would challenge us all to examine the priorities of our church’s missionary endeavors.

Fish Stories or Missions Partnerships?

2010-07-28T21:48:00.006-05:00

By Roger Charles

Missions partnerships are a lot like fishing trips. Most of us are better at casting our own lines than pulling together on one net. Americans are notorious for our individualism and lack of cooperation inside and outside our normal ministry teams. Look at most of our short term trips and evangelistic outreaches. We gather a few friends, buy bait, and then spread out and do our own thing. No wonder we catch one or two fish, fry them up, then go home and tell lies.
Ok, maybe not lies. But some fishy stories.

I am just not seeing a whole lot of fish on the table. When Jesus called to his disciples to “cast the net on the other side,” the nets were breaking and extra boats were needed to pull in all the fish. We are busier “working with nationals,” more often overseas and more “connected” than any previous generation, but something is going wrong.

We often describe what we do overseas as “missions partnerships.” We confuse some shared vision or a joint activity, or some networking with a real partnership. Effective missions partnerships accomplish limited, concrete goals with a high sense of ownership, marked by appreciation of and mutual benefit from the strengths of each partner. Effective partnerships are deep relationships. They are built on carefully laid foundations, and all partners gain and spend the coin of trust month by month as peers become friends, friends become learners, and learners dream dreams together. Eventually they decide to formally partner together to accomplish some greater things that they could not do alone.

ReachGlobal is helping churches develop long term relationships with each other in numerous areas of the world, including specific ministries in Indonesia. These may begin with a vision trip of key leaders to several ministry locations in the field. Three churches might decide to partner with a Bible school in South Sumatra, to provide two teachers once a quarter. They posture themselves as learners, let locals teach them a new topic about the ministry each time they send a team, and then take this lesson back home to other churches. Relationship deepens as meals together, joint prayer, and trust in the Spirit’s clear leading begin to be the norm. Deeper discussions eventually surface some bigger needs, and enough trust is present to tackle something larger, like developing a training center away from the main campus for bi-vocational church planters. But these large goals are built on the trust and mutual sharing of resources and gifted people by very different entities who are secure in being themselves while learning to work with others.

Let’s move beyond busyness and program and return to relationship based ministry, practicing real community across cultural and organizational boundaries. Growing effective missions partnerships takes time, but deep relationships honor God, model love, deepen cultural understanding and bring in whole boatloads of fish.

So how is that partnership thing working for you? Interact with your peers on this crucial issue by posting comments and questions to Roger’s article.

Healthy Missions Partnerships

2010-05-31T16:13:00.001-05:00

From Healthy Missions Partnership, an online course created by EFCA CONNECT and EFCA EQUIP. Co-creators: Roger Dorris and Andy Krause.

An important and growing trend in global missions is the formation of cross-cultural partnerships among churches. In a healthy partnership, there is interdependence between partners, each retaining its own identity. Three key points are:

Partnership is not a merger or acquisition.
Differences in history and culture deserve respect.
Each partner has "ownership" through the stages of planning, operation and celebration.

In years past it was tempting for Western churches and organizations to "run the show" with missions initiatives in non-Western nations. Making matters worse, the national bodies often acquiesced to that Western dominance. But now in a different day and age, when capable national leadership is found in many locations, the temptation is sometimes reversed. Western partners may so desire for nationals to take the lead, that their own priorities get lost in the national church/organization's initiatives. Both of these extremes are unhealthy, and care is needed to avoid them.

Put in positive terms, each partner needs to retain its own identity and core values. If an American body connects with, say, a Chinese partner on Chinese soil, the American body is still American and can rightfully rejoice in its culture, heritage and way of doing things just as the Chinese partner can and should do so. True, Paul exhorted us to become all things to all men that we might save some, but that principle applies to situations with non-believers. As we partner with Christian churches and organizations we do not have to give up all of our organizational or cultural identities. God has given us those identities for good reasons and we can celebrate our diversity among partners with differing backgrounds. Mutual submission is one thing, but sacrificing our identity and core values (effectively a merger) is altogether different. Care needs to be exercised so that each partner owns the partnership's vision, goals and objectives throughout the stages of the partnership.

How is your church doing at developing partnerships with national Christians overseas? What advice do you have? What help do you need? Post your comments and questions for Roger, Andy and others.

Register for the next section of Healthy Missions Partnership at www.efca.org/equip/calendar or contact equip@efca.org for more information.

Sending healthy missionaries

2010-04-30T20:05:00.001-05:00

by Greg Carter

Isaiah and Michele excitedly greet the pastor as they leave church on Sunday. "We've just been accepted by Totally Awesome Missions Agency to serve in Dogonistan," they say. "Our agency wants to make sure that we have our home church's support. Can we meet with you to learn what we need to do next?"

Hmmm, how much time do you have to figure this out?

The local church, in its calling to disciple Christians for effective living and serving, can have a significant impact on sending its own people to minister cross-culturally. Given enough advance warning of the interests of people like Isaiah nd Michele in the congregation, the local church can determine unique paths for individuals and couples as they sense God's call on their lives to serve Him in other settings.

Long before beginning to fill out the first application for a missions agency, there are issues in th areas of skill, knowledge and character where the local church can assist the potential missionary. The rigors of living in another culture, without the wealth and breadth of networks and systems that we enjoy here in the U.S., are taxing on even the most capable of people.

The astute church intentionally builds into its teens and adults the values and character that will serve them well in the setting where we pray that some will go: across cultures to serve as missionaries.

While missionary preparation may appear to be a formidable challenge, the local church can assemble the resources (personnel, experiences, reading and education) to give very credible training to its members who desire to go cross-culturally as healthy workers for the Kingdom. They will be both confident and capable as they serve with national believers in ways that develop and indigenous church.

Utilizing a mentoring approach, the local church invests in missions-inclined individuals and couples to develop competencies in building relationships while identifying their strengths and weaknesses. Within a context of trust, the discovery of areas of emotional baggage and dysfunctional practices can be addressed.

The church leaders and mentors will create opportunities to learn cultural sensitivity for service both inside and outside the church in leading ministry ventures. The development of habits that are part of spiritual formation to solidify the future missionary's understanding of her or his identity in Christ will also be included.

Imagine the joy of missions agencies that receive these kind of missionary candidates!

How does your church develop, empower and release healthy missionary candidates? What kind of assistance does your church need in doing this? Post your best practices, comments or questions for Greg and others here.

What is the value of a vision trip?

2010-03-30T17:25:00.002-05:00

by Dan Wentworth

I was recently preparing for a vision trip to Brussels, Belgium, and then to Rome, Italy. A friend of mine who is a pastor at a different church asked me with obvious sarcasm, "How are you going to spin this one as ministry?"

It is my conviction that a vision trip needs no spin. I believe vision trips are not just legitimate mission trips but also that they play a vital role in your church’s overall mission strategy.

After completing a five-year partnership commitment in Brazil, our Global Outreach Team was uncertain as to whether or not we should continue sending teams to that South American country or put our resources elsewhere. After prayer and discussion, it was clear that the best way for us to investigate our next steps was a vision trip. So I headed to Brazil with another pastor from our church. We spent five days prayer walking, talking and meeting with the local missionaries. The result was that we would commit to partner with them for another five years, but this time our focus would be in major cities.

The results thus far have been very encouraging. Three teams have made the journey to Rio de Janeiro in the past two years with a fourth team organizing for this spring. We have done leadership training, Crown Financial Ministries training, as well as youth and children’s evangelism. The local churches we are working with have experienced significant new believer growth and have been greatly encouraged by our partnership in the gospel. Of course, as it always seems to be the case, we are blessed even more.

I consider the only spin needed for a vision trip is to explain why you are not taking one. It takes some effort and financial investment, but it is so worth it.

Proverbs 4:7 says: “Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.”

So what would you like to know or share about vision trips? Post your comments or questions for Dan and others here.

Why are you here?

2010-02-22T16:40:00.002-06:00

by Keith Carlson

Twenty-eight of us were sitting in an open-air lobby tired from a long day but full from a great meal, listening to the night sounds drifting up from the valley below, smelling the fresh air and flowers, and pondering the weighty question just asked. Matt Capehart, our missionary host in Chichicastenango, Guatemala (http://missionsfrontier.org/) had just asked, "Why are you here? For the amount of money you raised to come -- $52,000 between all of you -- I could have hired 50 Guatemalans who need the work to build a whole village, instead of the three homes you will build. So, why are you here?"

The pat answers to that question tend to be along the lines of transformation of the people who go and support for the missionaries visited. But does the data back that up? Are people's lives actually transformed long-term after going on a short-term trip? And are trips a value-add to the missionary, or a dreaded but necessary interruption? For the amount of money we spend on trips, we better figure out those answers.

We don't have all the answers yet, but for the 20+ trips we send from our church every year, we're trying to maximize their effectiveness:

95% of our trips are led by lay people, so assessing and training them is crucial, along with giving them great tools and resources to lead well. We will follow their passion.
We develop long-term partnerships with ministries, so continuity, momentum and accountability is built in. Reciprocal relationships are a value for us.
Adequate time to train the team before the trip is necessary. We mandate as many as six team meetings prior to the trip for bonding, conflict resolution, cultural awareness, spiritual preparation, details and commissioning.
We are not doing as well at post-trip debriefing and follow-up. Ideally teams would meet several times after the trip to begin working out the long-term implications of the trip on their lives, and to hold each other accountable until the life-change sticks.
We need to be ruthlessly honest about the American footprint we leave behind, and be open to feedback and critique until we leave no trace except the aroma of Christ.

One month after we arrived back from Guatemala, we were sitting in a spacious suburban living room. One 14 year-old boy reflected that he had never felt so useful as when he was working on the trip. A 60 year-old woman reflected that she was ready to learn Spanish and join her husband who was feeling called to retire and start serving the Latino population full-time. A young couple said they were ready to follow God even if it was uncomfortable and didn't make sense. And I was gaining more faith in the effectiveness of short-term trips.
What questions or comments about short-term missions trips (and short-term missions) come to mind as you reflect on Keith's article? Post your thoughts below.