Missions Blog for Churches

Here is the second installment of our trip to Haiti. To see the first clip and some background info, click here.

Mission to the World and Reformation Hope International are partnering together with a Presbyterian Church in Le Plaine, Haiti to rebuild. This is part two of the story.

“I don’t need much. I simply want to be someplace where I can serve. If I am working with the poor then I might want to live in their neighborhood, or if I’m working with students, could I have a national for a roommate?” This perspective expresses the heart of many who are looking at missions today. They want to live in the home of a national, or with a national roommate. They might see themselves living in a village, embracing the same lifestyle and facing the same challenges as the people living there. They are at a unique crossroads of personal freedom and have a strong desire to minister in challenging situations, such as living among the poor. They are ready to embrace life on the edge.

MTW’s new EDGE program will allow participants who desire a stripped-down missions experience to live more closely with those to whom them minister. Featuring lower support costs and hands-on ministry experience, EDGE is a two-year missions experience that will be offered in addition to current intern, short-term, and career missionary tracks.

However, EDGE will not be for everyone. We believe this ministry path will be most attractive to those in their 20s, just graduated from college, or singles who are free to travel and take risks. It may also fit for newly-married couples without kids, or even couples whose kids have moved out (provided the circumstances are right and they have a tolerance for risk). If someone is looking for hands-on experience and a service-oriented ministry, then this could be for them. A caution is that more than any of our other programs, EDGE will take participants to the extreme in terms of personal sacrifice. This is not to say that the opportunity to sacrifice is not present in other programs; in fact, on the surface it doesn’t look much different from our intern level of support. The difference is that this is a two-year endeavor, a lifestyle. It is embracing subsistence living over a long period of time as a means to connect. Click here to continue reading this article…

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.

I recently traveled to Haiti to see some of what God is doing there. We participated in the first worship service in the first church to be rebuilt since the earthquake. MTW is partnering with Reformation Hope, International and The Presbyterian Church in Haiti to bring the Gospel in word and deed to the people of Haiti. Here is the first installment of our trip:

There are a couple of deadlines I want to remind/inform you of. The first is for the PCA Global Missions Conference, November 5-7, 2010, in Chattanooga, TN. The early-bird registration deadline is July 30th. So if you haven’t registered yet, visit www.mtw.org to do so or to find out more.

Also, MTW’s Disaster Response Training fills up quickly. There are a limited number of slots, so if this is something you’ve been interested in pursuing, now is the time to register. Click here to find out more.

MTW has just launched a new micro-website called GoGlobal. This is an online effort to effectively connect with and communicate to the upcoming generation. Check it out and share with others: goglobal.mtw.org.

MTW is featuring the work in Thailand at General Assembly this year. If you’re planning to be in Nashville, come by the MTW booth and pickup your Thailand gift to discover more about what God is doing in this part of Asia.

Here is a video put together by Team Thailand that tells a bit of the story:

Napada Thailand from MTW~Thailand on Vimeo.

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.

During the 2009 PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) General Assembly, MTW focused participants’ attention on India through their annual giveaway. The gift consisted of a coffee mug containing India tea (Darjeeling) and a bookmark with specific prayer requests about some of the needs in India. The mug directed recipients to visit the MTW website to view the following video, which tells more about the work of the Gospel there.

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.