Missions Blog for Churches

I never thought I’d be posting an article written by an atheist, but here goes. This gentleman is making an argument for more missionaries in Africa. And it’s quite compelling.

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world – a directness in their dealings with others – that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall. [...keep reading this article by clicking here...]

If you want to discover how you can serve God with the business experience He’s given you, the Missions in Business Weekend is just for you.

Who Should Attend:

• Business owners
• Business executives
• Retired businesspeople
• Entrepreneurs
• Spouses (special program)
• Young businesspeople who desire to be mentored

Missions in Business Weekend
August 19-22
The Cove
Billy Graham Conference Center
Asheville, NC

Click here for more information and to download a registration form.

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.

The following is a book review of When Helping Hurts: How to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor…and yourself. You can find out more about this book at www.whenhelpinghurts.org and can order it online here.

When Helping Hurts is a compelling book that will be a significant help to the Church for years to come. The first chapter alone is worth the cost of the book and ought to be read by every church leader in every ministry category. This is not just a book for the missions committee (although it ought to be required for everyone involved in missions) or the Outreach Director, or the pastor. I think every Christian in America would benefit. Most evangelicals would be rattled.

There are several benefits from this book. Since most people read book reviews to try and determine whether they want to buy and read the book, let me mention those benefits.

It doesn’t just pick on the Church or her leaders. This book is personal; it will pick on you. It was deeply convicting to me as I read it. I realized that as many times as I have been moved by stories about the fatherless and the widow, the poor and the sick, I am not purposefully living for my life, and leading that of my family, to intersect with these members of society. I have forsaken the needy by my enslavement to convenience and stuff. My house is conveniently situated away from poverty. I hardly see the needy. And then there is my busyness. All my important tasks that keep me far away spending myself on “behalf of the hungry” (Is. 58:10) are often where I find my own significance and worth. I am convicted that although I hold to the position that all humans are created in the image of God, I don’t live as such. And I realize that I do have a god-complex (although every time I read that phrase in the book, my first reaction was, “No I don…..okay, I do. I do.”).

The authors are not writing from lofty chairs in academia. They pen their own confessions. One of my favorites is, “I confess to you that part of what motivates me to help the poor is my felt need to accomplish something worthwhile with my life, to be a person of significance, to feel like II have pursued a noble cause…to be a bit like God…I sometimes unintentionally reduce poor people to objects that I use to fulfill my own need to accomplish something. it is a very ugly truth, and it pains me to admit it, but ‘when I want to do good, evil is right there with me’ (Rom. 7:21).” [p. 65] They also give a number of examples that show where they blew it. This communicates not only humility, but also a sense that there’s a bit of a journey involved. Helping the needy will never become neat, clean and orderly.

This book is highly biblical, both in its use of Scripture for application as well as in developing a theory of poverty that serves as the framework. You won’t be able to get past a few pages at any point in the book without being confronted by biblical truth (and a helpful reference). And it does not do what many books on this subject do, namely, present steps and practices for alleviating poverty dissected from the Bible as the source of these truths or from the Holy Spirit as the source of divine power. Rather, the authors continually remind you of the authority of Scripture and our dependency on the Holy Spirit for power and guidance in the journey. One good example is early in the book, as the authors lay the groundwork for the importance of relationships in assisting the poor and sick. They take the reader back to the relationship in the Godhead, the Trinity. And from there they expand and explain how ministry flows through relationships. The poor are not going to be helped, without hurting them, if we just conduct drive-by ministry.

This book is also highly practical. The authors not only explain best practices and steps to take, but they give examples of what they might look like. And they also offer gracious critiques of benevolent practices that many of us have followed. The strange thing is that while reading many of the critiques, the thought ran through my head, “That always seemed a little unwise to me.” You’ll finish with not just new techniques, but will actually have an understanding of why some things work and some don’t.

Many in the church will want to read this because of their local outreach. But this book is just as important for global outreach. In my job, I am continually laboring to help churches understand the importance of their short-term trips not becoming drive-by (or fly-by) ministries. Feeding the poor is wonderful. Caring for the orphan is beautiful. Both are biblical. But to be the best these ministries can be, both need to be in the context (connected to) a sustainable ministry. Biblically, you can’t escape the fact that this is the church. Ministries that are conducted apart from the church die when their leadership dies (or moves, or changes strategies, or gets new vision, etc…). They are simply not sustainable. But when ministry is conducted in and through the church, there is lasting fruit. New believers are folded into that work. And when the US worker (or partnering church) leaves, the church will continue the ministry.

I don’t get to read a ton of books, but this is one that has so impacted my thinking and stirred my heart, that I am encouraging everyone to read it. It’s one of those books. I’ve got a stack of copies with me for my next journey to share with folks. I think it will disturb you too, in the best way possible. Order When Helping Hurts online.

MTW missionary to Japan, Michael Oh, was the featured missions speaker at the February 2009 Bethlehem Pastors Conference (home of Desiring God Ministries). His sermon title was, Missions as Fasting: The Forsaking of Things Present for the Global Exaltation of Christ. Last month I finally had the chance to listen to the sermon on a road trip to West Virginia. Immediately upon its ending I called my wife saying, “You’ve got to listen to this!” It encouraged and challenged me in so many issues that we are facing.

There are a number of ways you can connect with this sermon: read the manuscript in PDF here, read a synopsis of it here, listen to it here, or watch it here.

In the sermon, Oh gives a cursory definition of fasting, then focuses on how missions involves “doing without” on many levels. One exhortation that sticks with me was his question, “Do I simply want to go to school and study hard so I can get a good job and work hard, so my kids can go to school and study hard so they can get a good job and work hard, so that their children…?”

He also confronts the notion (which I agree is incorrect) that “we’re all missionaries.” The great commission is to all of us, but we are not all called out and sent to minister cross-culturally, giving up our home and stability, depending on the support of others, and subjecting ourselves and our families to the risks and challenges in another country.  There is a unique calling of “missionary.”

There are also some great challenges to consider, personally. I could go on, but you’ll be glad if you just read it, listen to it, or watch it yourself.

Tomorrow at 7 pm, at the Orlando Marriott, is the start of the Going Global Conference, entitled, “Mobilizing for Missions.” Plenary speakers include R.C. Sproul, Elliott Greene, Carl Ellis, and others. The conference is sponsored by the Going Global Network, which is aimed at equipping leaders in the African American church. It is a free conference, but registration is requested. Visit www.goingglobalconf.com for more information and to register.

by Bill Yarbrough

Reading Jerram Barrs’ book The Heart of Evangelism has been like a breath of fresh air for me, for a few reasons. The first is that evangelism has been so much a part of my life since my early days in the Jesus Movement. So I consider tools and perspectives that feed and equip the Church for that task to be gifts. Secondly, the book is rooted deeply in a Reformed and covenantal view of Scripture and the world—something I never had (or at least didn’t understand) in those early years. And thirdly, I love what Barrs writes in the first sentence of his introduction: “This is more than 30 years of reflection on what the New Testament teaches us about evangelism; and it is the fruit of more than 30 years of desiring to practice in some poor way what I have learned from that study.” It’s this kind of personal insight that makes this book sing.

There is an emphasis on the Spirit in this book that scratches an itch many of us have in our work around the globe. There has been a tendency to either ignore or minimize the Spirit’s work in many aspects of our ministries, mostly I believe in reaction to the extremes witnessed in parts of the charismatic and Pentecostal streams of the Church…continue reading this article from InVision.

by Keith R. Bucklen

Right now my church is basking in the afterglow of several short-term mission trips. And well it should! What a privilege to be a co-laborer (with the Lord and His servants) in the ministry of the gospel cross-culturally; and what a joy to imagine that God has used us for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom. He has conferred on us a lofty position, to be sure.

But what about short-term missions? Is a week or two in a foreign country really worth it? The cost is substantial, especially when one compares the expenditures necessary to translocate a group of Americans to another country (in our case, another continent) with what that money could produce locally. Just think of the indigenous workforce who could accomplish the same tasks at a fraction of the cost …continue reading this article from InVision.

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.

One of the comments I regularly hear as I meet with missions leaders in the PCA, regards the concern over the disconnect between going to “do” missions across a border somewhere, and living out our mission here, at home. The desire, of course, is that we (and our people) would see the relevance of missional living both here (neighbor) and there (foreigner). And that we would see that missions goes beyond sending money, an annual trip, or hosting a missionary. That said, PCA pastor Matt Adair wrote a provocative article on this subject which can be read by clicking here.