Missions Blog for Churches

The first choice in any journey is determining the direction. When that decision is not a deliberate one, the journey is really more like a stroll: there is no clear destination. But when the goal is clear and the journey is underway, the group looks to the leaders to set the pace.

Similarly, a church’s mission ministry may or may not have a clear direction. If not, the articles in Laying the Foundation and Setting Your Sights will be helpful. Once churches have determined the direction for their missions ministry, they will want to mobilize their members towards that goal. However, many churches find that the number of members engaged in world missions is relatively few. Perhaps missions is seen as a distinct department, an annual event, or a ministry to be started in the future. The challenge facing these churches is inspiration. The articles in Setting the Pace are designed to help missions leaders engage their members in the Great Commission. While there are many ways to motivate members in missions, they will include efforts to educate, involve and focus your members.

The Great Commission is also a Gracious Commission. Some have incorrectly concluded that Reformed theology is a discouragement to missions, with its emphasis on God’s initiative. A proper understanding of Reformed theology, however, has had the opposite effect: countless numbers of Christians have committed their lives to missions, in response to the gracious love God has shown them and in the security they have that God is working in the lives of the people they serve. The article on Global Missions encourages Christians to stand on the theological foundations of the Great Commission.

Do not limit missions education to formal teaching, however. It has often been said that the gospel is more caught than taught. Thus, create opportunities for members to talk with missionaries, hear of the power of the gospel to change lives, and learn more about other cultures and what God is doing there. The article in Laying the Foundation on planning a missions conference may also be helpful.

PARTICIPATION
A critical element for missions mobilization is congregational participation. Church members cannot be allowed to drift into the error that missions is for a select few or a department of the church. Missions leadership must encourage every member to see missions as their personal responsibility, through praying, giving and going.

Praying: Help your members understand that through their prayers, they are sincerely and meaningfully engaging in world missions. The article on prayer will help you encourage prayer for missions throughout your church.
Giving: Your members should also be challenged to support missionaries financially. Giving through faith promise or other means will deeply connect your members to world missions.
Going: Short-term missions projects can have a transforming effect on your entire congregation, as participants return with stories of how God worked in and through their lives. Select projects in keeping with your overall vision, as the participants will develop a heart for the people and ministry. And in keeping with Acts 15:4, be sure to create ways for returning participants to tell the congregation how God worked in and through their lives.

FOCUS
Missions is all about relationship. And the more lasting the relationship, the more members will get behind efforts to develop those ministries. To that end, missions ministries have increasingly discovered the motivating power of selecting one or more sites for on-going emphasis and involvement. Many missions leaders desire a greater impact for their efforts and have found a long-term focus helps accomplish this goal. This direction can take many forms. For example, churches may choose to send members on short-term trips to the same site for several years. Missionaries and national leaders from these sites may be able to visit the church, increasing the direct relationship. Giving and education may be more concentrated. Finally, many churches are joining with other churches to coordinate and collaborate their efforts towards a shared vision. The articles on partnership will introduce your ministry to such initiatives.

FOR FURTHER STUDY
Under the titles of the following articles, the “theme” refers to one of the essential elements of successful missions ministries listed in Window to the World. This list is included in the following pages. A fruitful exercise for your missions committee would be to evaluate your ministry according to each of the twenty themes and begin to strengthen undeveloped areas.

This article is available in PDF format for easier reading and printing by clicking here.

The starting point in mobilizing a church for missions is education. All Christians should be aware of the biblical imperative of cross-cultural missions, how God is working through missionaries, and what other cultures are like. The Holy Spirit uses this information to draw his people into service and support of world evangelization. The following are some of the many ways missions leaders can encourage their congregations to become more educated about the Great Commission. Using a creative variety of topics and venues throughout the year will keep missions education fresh.

Biblical Basis for Missions
A missions ministry that glorifies God must be biblically grounded. Further, there is no better way to capture people’s hearts for missions than to show them from the Bible how passionate God is towards extending his kingdom. The article in the Laying The Foundation series entitled The Great Commission in the Scriptures or Global Missions—Our Theological Foundations that follows here are good places to begin. This material could be copied and distributed to Sunday Schools, small groups, session members, etc. or adapted for a sermon. Mission to the World has also prepared an introductory missions curriculum called The Gracious Commission. This is a series of four interactive lessons on the biblical basis for missions, written from the perspective of grace rather than guilt or need. You can use just one or all four of the lessons in a small group or Sunday school.

Missionary Stories
People relate more to a person than a concept, so you will want to introduce your members to current and former missionaries. Such relationships will help them see that missionaries are just normal people, with similar struggles and weaknesses. Their stories of life and ministry in a different culture will help make missions real to your church. As you introduce your congregation to missionaries, be sure to identify those whose purpose and placement you endorse, as you are implicitly affirming their particular work by arranging a presentation.

Cultural Awareness
The world is a fascinating place, and every missions minded person has a God-given sense of adventure. Develop events that showcase particular cultures through a variety of senses, including visual presentations that depict people and places, meals that introduce members to local tastes and smells, and cultural objects that people can touch. Showing foreign movies is an excellent way to provide insights into other cultures. You can also promote homestay visits, where people from other countries stay in members’ homes for a brief period.

Cross-cultural Issues
Members will be interested in hearing about issues that missionaries face in another culture, and how national Christians live out their faith. Arrange presentations on topics such as how missionaries adjust to living in a new culture, how honor and shame dominate Asian and Middle Eastern values, or how Christians are oppressed or persecuted in many countries.

Forums
Most successful missions ministries host an annual missions conference, with the primary purpose of educating and mobilizing the church for missions. In addition, keep missions in front of members throughout the year by arranging various forums that are smaller and/or a single meeting. Open up a home for an evening with a missionary, arrange a panel discussion on a particular topic, pray for the persecuted church in a special service, or direct members to regional missions conferences. Or arrange a “Meeting For Better Understanding” (see Muslims and Christians at the Table below for more information) with local Muslims.

Missions Books
The following books are some of the excellent material on missions. Make these available to your members, give them to leaders, and/or host a missions book club.

This article is available in .pdf format for easier reading and printing by clicking here.

The following is an excerpt from a recent email I received from GTD. There are a number of events that you, in the church, can take advantage of, including their Church Planting Basics which is taking place as I type this. The next Church Planting Basics takes place in December, but since it’s in Asia instead of Lawrenceville, that may not be convenient for you. So bookmark their website (www.gtdtraining.org) for future dates. The next Train the Trainer workshop is November 10-13 and it is in Lawrenceville, GA. Contact GTD at gtd@mtw.org for more information.

Global Training and Development (GTD), the training arm of Mission to the World, is committed to providing resources and assistance to equip you for a thriving ministry. As missionaries with years of cross-cultural ministry experience, we desire to stand beside you as you seek to advance God’s kingdom around the world.

One ministry area that we want to help facilitate is that of mentoring. To that end, we are redesigning the MTW mentoring program to make it intentionally field-driven and expand its reach beyond the orientation of new missionaries. The enhanced program will provide training, encouragement, and resources for mentoring both new and experienced missionaries, as well as national leaders. In short, our desire is to help make mentoring a natural part of how we engage in ministry. The following resources have been designed to help accomplish this:

The Mentoring Newsletter is designed to equip you with the best tools, strategies, and resources to help you be as effective as possible in your mentoring relationships. This electronic newsletter will include articles written to help you sharpen your skills. An archive of these articles, as well as additional resources, will be maintained on our web site: www.gtdtraining.org/resources. To subscribe, email peter.beck@mtw.org.

Anyone who has ever ministered in a context where their native tongue is not spoken knows the challenges of teaching or preaching through an interpreter. It can be frustrating or at least challenging just to maintain focus. Momentum is difficult to gain. But there are steps to prepare both for you as a speaker as well as for the one who will interpret your words. Dennis Bills, PCA pastor in Winifrede, WV, has written a helpful article on this very subject.

Click here to view the article about speaking with an interpreter.

Pastor Bills’ desire is that this material be used to serve people going short or long term. He is also open to your feedback. You can find contact information and more about him on his personal website here.

A pastor recently contacted me for some book suggestions as his church prepared for their annual missions conference. I thought it might be helpful to put some of the links here as well. Know that this is not an endorsement of every book on these sites, or even the ministries themselves. But these are certainly tools that can be used in any evangelical context, and a Reformed worldview can certainly be expressed through them.

I think stories are particularly compelling, and connect with many people who will never really take interest in theories. There are a few on our “books” page (which you can find here):

Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot, Elisabeth Elliot
A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael, Elisabeth Elliot
Through Gates of Splendor, Elisabeth Elliot
C.T. Studd, Norman Grubb
Bruchko, Bruce Olson
Peace Child, Don Richardson
The Spiritual Secret of Hudson Taylor, Howard Taylor

Another good list is Mongergism’s Book page.

As far as children’s materials, that has been an ongoing need we see in the PCA. There are some folks beginning to develop materials that we know of, but we’d like to find more so we can collect and share with others. There is probably a lot more out there, may not formally prepared, but good stuff and we just aren’t aware of it. As far as books for children:

Amy Carmichael
Corrie Ten Boom
John Patton
Tales of Persia: Missionary Stories from Islamic Iran
Jim Elliot Story – this is actually a DVD; 30 minutes, animated
The Girls and Boys Who Made History series books also have missionary stories in them

Grace & Truth has quite a list of stories and biographies for children on their site. Although not distinctly Reformed, I think there are many useful titles here. I haven’t read/reviewed them personally, but I think you can get a feel for the material from the website.

Another site that is not Reformed, but is evangelical, is Child Evangelism Fellowship. They offer a handful of missionary stories for use in a SS or other class. You can find them online here.

I guess that’s kind of a strange title. But those are some of the topics that are covered in the most recent edition of InVision, MTW’s Newsletter. Steve Collins, MTW’s Director of Spiritual Life, outlines a new part of this department’s ministry. In this article, Steve explains our responsibility as Christians and as a mission agency to prevent child sexual abuse, how to protect and how to respond.

Bill Yarbrough, MTW’s International Director of Latin America and Africa, and Will Traub, MTW’s coordinator for theological training in Europe, write two helpful book reviews. Bill reviews Dick Keyes’ timely book Seeing Through Cynicism. I think this book could help any Christian, but could be especially helpful to church missions leaders who want to care for their missionaries well. Will delves into Richard Bauckham’s Bible and Mission, an investigation into how the Great Commision is a legitimate metanarrative to postmodern hearers. This book will serve churches in understanding better how to impact other cultures, in their neighborhoods and around the world.

In the News Brief, you can read more about the childrens home that has been named for Jan Kooistra and is being built in her memory in India. Jan had a special place in her heart for kids, and especially the fatherless. Although I only met her a few times, I felt like I knew her from Dr. Kooistra’s stories about her during devotions. I grew to have deep admiration for her, and I think this continuance of her heartbeat for the suffering is truly a God-glorifying memorial of His grace in her life.

Finally, you can read a field report about Latvia. Carl & Becky Chaplin are there now, as frontier missionaries in the Baltic Region (at least they’re MTW’s first). They have a great deal of experience and wisdom from their previous missions work, and are gathering a team of others to work with them there. It’s been exciting to watch the process. If you’d like an even closer look at their lives and ministry in Latvia, check out their blog. It is truly one of my favorite missionary blogs. Becky keeps the updates frequent but brief, and uses plenty of photos to help you “see” their lives in Latvia.

Brett Carl, Missions Pastor at Westminster Reformed Presbyterian Church in Suffolk, VA, recently shared their missions manual for other churches to look to as a good example. WRPC has an active missions ministry that desires to do things with excellence. Brett is a leader in missions in the PCA and you can find his contact information by visiting the church’s website at www.wrpca.org.  View the SENTeam Notebook from WRPC by clicking here.

One of the requests I often hear from churches is for missions material or curriculum for kids. There is a good bit of this out there in larger evangelical circles, but not very much within our denomination. Particularly, I’d love to see the development of more Reformed and Covenantal-minded missions material for children.

My guess is that there are churches out there that have created their own, or maybe even some of our own missionaries who have something that is put together. What we need to do is collect it and get it into a format that others can use/share.

If you know of anyone with such material, or someone who would be a good candidate to put something like this together, please let me know (seth.wallace@mtw.org). This could be a great tool for PCA churches to equip the next generation to have God’s heart for the nations.

by, Basil Grafas

I used to pastor a small, rural church in another denomination. There was a lot I liked about the work. We had people come to Christ and lives were changed. I learned the value of repentance and the value of community. On the other hand, we were a highly autonomous congregation that had little if anything to do with any other church, foreign or domestic. That bothered me. And it started getting under my skin when I started preaching through the book of Revelation.

To be honest, I really did not want to do it. Any book that Calvin refused to write a commentary about is too much book for me. It was just that several people in the congregation told me that they would never ever read it, since it had all of those strange images and codes involved. Well, I got angry. The Hal Lindseys and Tim LaHayes had convinced us that the book was all about obscure references to the future and therefore was of little value now. But I had to see for myself. And what I found was not what I expected. I found a book written to church people about the church going through tough times.

Revelation is, if you can get over the confusing word-pictures, a very clear book that is meant to exhort and encourage the church to remain a faithful witness to a world that wishes to hate and persecute it. In other words, it is the ultimately missional book. It is about suffering, despised churches caught in the vise formed by Rome and recalcitrant Judaism, being exhorted to remain faithful (chapters 2-3). We are introduced to martyrs who want to know how long they have to keep this up (chapter 6). Then we find out that these people are not scattered rarities in the church—they are the norm. They are actually part of an army of faithful witnesses who herald the lordship of the Lamb over the world (chapter 7).   (Click here to continue reading this article)

One of the challenges many missions leaders ask us about as we visit churches, regards how to best communicate missions news to church members. There are calendars, bulletin boards, pages on the church’s website (although we all need to be careful with that), inserts in the bulletin, announcements from the pulpit, prayer time, through small groups, etc… But it seems that that no matter which methods a church uses, many are often looking for more effective means, or at least ways to validate that their method is effective.

I would like to hear how your church is communicating to its members regarding missions news. What’s working? What hasn’t? Feel free to email me here, or even better, post your ideas in the comments section below to share them with others.