Missional Living

15 01 2014

missionalliving

Missional Living seems to be the new buzz word for publishers and authors. Our staff is currently reading a book together called Everyday Church by Chester & Timmis where this idea of missional living has been fleshed out in their church in the UK. My pastor, Brad Lewter, and I are about to teach a class out of a study called Missional Essentials by Ford & Brisco. The basic idea of missional living is that we live our everyday lives together in community with other believers and unbelievers, and the gospel is spread through organic relationships.

The reason that I am excited about the possibility of this idea making its way into the life of our church and churches in America is because it is a Biblical approach to reaching people with the gospel. It also acknowledges the fact that our society and culture are successfully pushing the church to the margins, and that in this post-Christian era, we must change tactics to reach people. Usually our churches host big events at their church and ask their congregation to invite their friends. When someone actually brings an unbeliever to church, we call that evangelism or missions. We have even gone as far as letting people think that they are doing evangelism if they paint faces at a church-sponsored community event. In the Bible Belt, where our church is located, these events can still be somewhat successful where the church has not been completely pushed to the fringes. Although, our experience is that the fruit from these events continues to decrease each year. We just cannot afford to assume that when we host a large evangelistic event people are going to show up, so every year we spend more and more money on advertising.

Back in November, our church hosted a huge event where we gave out 1,000 turkey dinners and shared the gospel with around 2,000 people. It cost us about $30,000 to do this event, and we utilized more than 200 volunteers. Our pastor shared the gospel very clearly, and many people responded. We even baptized – that day – over 40 people. Every person that responded was invited to come back to church that next Sunday through an invite card and a phone call on the Saturday before in order to receive a free Bible, eat a great breakfast, and attend a new believer’s Bible study. We had three people show up on Sunday and one of those has stuck it out the last couple of months. The bottom line is that we spent $30,000 and countless man hours to reach one person and see them become a disciple (remember our mandate is to “make disciples,” not converts). Is that one person worth it? Of course, but could we be better stewards and reach more people with less time and money? I think, yes. Some would argue that we need to do events like this to simply be a light in our community. If that is all that we are doing, then we would be no different than any charitable organization – Christian or not (we have about the same results). And, yes, of course, Jesus fed the poor. If we were effectively reaching people with the gospel and making disciples throughout our church, then an occasional event to give back to the community would be appropriate. But when we rely upon these events to do our evangelism for us, we are going to continue to lose ground.

Missional Living invites every person to live intentionally to reach their friends, neighbors, and family for Christ with the help of a close-knit community of believers. The gospel does not move from big event to big event, but from house to house. When someone accepts Christ through a personal relationship, they are much more likely to become a disciple, church-attender, worshipper, giver, etc. My resolution for 2014 is to begin living this way with my family, and to begin to mobilize as many in our church to live intentionally through education and example. It is funny when I think about it… this is the way that we lived in Tanzania to reach the Pare Tribe.


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God Created the Nations

2 08 2013

created

So from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth…
Genesis 11:8

When Noah and his family exited the ark, God told them to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth (Genesis 9:1). They did the first two really well, but they completely disobeyed the third command to fill the earth. They certainly were fruitful and multiplied according to the record in Genesis 10, but instead of scattering all over to fill the earth, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and started building a city with a tall tower as the centerpiece. God came about that time to see this city and the tower that they were building. God decided to make them obey this first commandment that He had given to Noah by confusing their languages and scattering them over the face of the whole earth. Thus we have the creation of the nations or tribes.

As Christians it is important for us to remember that God created these different tribes, people groups, cultures, languages, and ethnicities. It is also His desire to see a representative from each of these tribes redeemed and worshipping before His throne (Revelation 7:9). This means that as God loves His creation, so must we. Certainly these cultures, just like our own, were affected by the Fall. They are full of sinful attitudes, sinful traditions, and sinful superstitions. But we must recognize the fact that God has called us to love them and be a witness to them, and that eventually we will live with them forever in eternity for those who follow Jesus. We tend to think that eternity will be made up of just our culture group with Chris Tomlin leading the worship. This is called ethnocentrism. This malady causes us to lose sight of anyone but those in our own culture, and in its worst form causes us to be racist. God is calling us to love the nations, not to despise them. This includes the Northern Pashtun Tribe who predominately make up the Taliban. We have made enemies of them, but God still loves them fiercely and calls us to do the same.

As Christians, we are called to be in this world but not of it. This means that what we do as followers of Jesus does not always make sense to the world. One of these things is to love all the people of the world so much, that we would lay down our life for them. Christians will say that they love the Vietnamese. What they usually mean by that is that they have the best soup kitchens, but how many Vietnamese do they even know personally? Do they consistently pray for the Vietnamese people to come to Christ? Would they be willing to move to Vietnam in order to reach the millions of Vietnamese that have never heard the gospel? This is a different way of living. As followers of Jesus, we are not afraid to make friends with our Muslim neighbors and to attend their mosque with them. We intentionally frequent international food restaurants with the purpose of meeting representatives of unreached people groups. We can point to places on a world map that most people have never heard of. We invite international students to our homes during holidays. We go to some of the most dangerous places on the planet.

If God truly created the nations, what should our response be to that? Our lives will look different than even many people who attend our churches and racist jokes will no longer be funny. Since God created and loves the nations, He sent His only Son, Jesus, to the nations, who in turn sent His followers to the nations. This is God’s pattern. The question, then, is are we participating in that pattern or merely acting like the rest of the world.


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Why the Unreached Are Unreached

31 07 2013

whyunreached

 

I just spent a week in Wyoming on the Wind River Indian Reservation among a beautiful tribe of people called the Northern Arapaho. I have been to a South American country to work with Indigenous Tribes along the Amazon River Basin. I have walked among a completely unreached, unengaged tribe in the isolated mountains of Central Asia. I have even lived for three years working with an unreached tribe in Tanzania.

Before I get to the topic, some things need to be defined first. What does it mean when we say, “Unreached?” When speaking about a tribe of people being unreached, it is universally recognized by missionaries and missiologists that the tribe in question has 2% or less of their population being evangelical Christians. This is no arbitrary number. It has been studied that in most cases a tribe that has more evangelical Christians in its population than 2% of its total has a viable church that has the opportunity to spread the gospel among its own tribe. You might even go as far as asking why this is important. In Matthew 24:14 Jesus says, “This good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed in all the world as a testimony to all nations. And then the end will come.” The word “nations” in this passage of scripture literally means “tribes” or “people groups.” Therefore, Jesus is saying that before He returns and ushers in the end of this age, all of the tribes will be reached. We see a glimpse of the future in Revelation 7:9 when John writes about seeing a “vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language…” (italics mine) If this is true, and I tend to believe in the truth of the Bible, then this makes unreached people groups a priority for churches. With only an estimated 6,900 people groups left unreached, we are literally seeing the end in sight. It is possible that we could be the generation that has the blessing of ushering in the return of Jesus Christ.

With all of our technology, communication advances, and transportation ease, why are these last unreached people groups still unreached? I believe, having seen it firsthand, that there are many common reasons that all play a role as to why a group is still unreached. First and foremost, we have to recognize that Satan is still very active in this world and maybe more so as his time runs short. He has had these groups and their land in his grasp for generations and generations, and he will not give them up without a fight. Many of these tribes remain unreached, because the church has not engaged in the spiritual battle. Individuals may have fought in the past, but it will take the effort of many praying for extended periods of time before the battle can be won. I am encouraged that more and more churches are recognizing the fact that it will take more than a 3-year partnership to see these remaining peoples reached. We can no longer afford to move on to another people group after just three years and know that we have accomplished anything. This brings me to the next reason these tribes are unreached. Most of these groups are calloused or hard-hearted toward Christianity. The Muslim Tribe in Central Asia sees it as a Western religion, and if one converts, that one is considered a traitor to his family and culture. The point is that in different ways, Satan has gained a deep foothold in these people both individually and culturally. These are holds that only God can break, and through His mercy, He has chosen to use you and me to be His ambassadors and soldiers.

Although not as important as the spiritual reasons, there are also physical reasons why these groups are not reached. Many of them are very difficult to get to. When I lived in Tanzania, it still took me hours driving on treacherous dirt roads along cliff edges to get to the majority of the people group. We had a team earlier this year go to Ecuador to work with an unreached tribe. Once they arrived in the country, they still had hours and hours of driving on horrible roads, boating on a dangerous river, and living in the rain forest. Not only are these groups, in many cases, physically distant, but they are also culturally distant. The languages are difficult to learn. The cultures are completely foreign to us and hard to understand. The food makes us sick. These and more are all reasons why these groups remain unreached, but if we believe the Bible, then we have to believe that these reasons must be overcome.

In these last days, God is looking for individuals and churches that are spiritually and physically tough to finish the task.


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The Great Commissions

23 01 2013

commissions

Two Monday nights ago, I was privileged at our Perspectives class to hear from a speaker named Sean Cooper.  He was absolutely fantastic and did a great job of making the story of God crystal clear to those present. One of the things that really stood out to me was when he began to talk about the Great Commission, and he made the statement that it is not just one commission that we are dealing with but multiple commissions. Normally, we think of the Great Commission as one statement that Jesus made in Matthew at the end of His ministry before His ascension. In actuality, Jesus made many statements that had to do with us going out to tell a lost world the gospel message. We do not know who it was that originally coined the phrase, “The Great Commission,” but we do know that its original intent was to encompass all of the commission statements found in the 4 Gospels and the Book of Acts (Matthew 28:16-20, Mark 16:14-18, Luke 24:44-49, John 20:19-23, and Acts 1:4-8). We, also, know that Jesus did not speak all of the statements in the same time and place. We know that at least three of these statements were proclaimed by Jesus at different times and at different places to different crowds.

The Great Commission was not something that Jesus just threw out as an afterthought right before He left. It was the heart and soul of His message the entire 40 last days of His earthly ministry.

Sean Cooper asked us if our child did something that we told him not to do, how many times would it take to be called disobedient. Everyone obviously answered that it only takes one time. There is no question that Jesus was speaking these commission statements to all believers. If He has told us at least three times, and we don’t do it, what is that called? It is simple disobedience.

By seeing the number of times that Jesus talked about this, we get a glimpse into God’s heart. His primary desire is that He is glorified by redeeming every tribe back into a relationship with Him, and He has chosen to use you and me to accomplish that goal. How incredible is the grace and mercy of our God, that He would use a sinner such as myself to be apart of His great story!


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God Connections

10 01 2013

godconnections

 

I am continually amazed at how God works. When fulfilling his purpose of participating in the Great Commission, I see his workings all the more.

This morning I Skyped with a guy in Central Asia talking about mobilizing South Americans to reach people in the Middle East. How awesome is that!

Yesterday I corresponded through email with a man in charge of helping Southern Arapaho churches in Northwest Oklahoma. Come to find out, they took a group on a vision trip last year to Wyoming to work on reaching the Northern Arapaho – the same tribe that we have been working with for the last two years. We are meeting together later this month to talk about us working in Oklahoma and partnering with them to reach the Northern Arapaho for Christ.

These are not just examples of accidents or coincidences. These are connections that only God can orchestrate. One of the things that I find true in my life is that these “accidents” or “coincidences” happen far more frequently when I am working towards completing the Great Commission. This leads me to believe that God really wants all the ethne (nations) to be redeemed for His glory, and He will empower His own work. We are simply invited to be apart of it, and when something really cool happens we get to watch in amazement. Want to see God do incredible things? Get involved in His work of saving a lost world as His ambassador.


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Indigenous Tribes

30 09 2012

 

I am on my way to Colombia again, and I am extremely excited! I love our families that serve there, and I love the people that they are serving. It is extremely difficult work, though. I have had many people question my sanity because of the places that we are traveling, but there is a good reason. The people groups that are left unreached are either a hard-hearted people or very difficult to get to. When Jesus called us to go reach the nations, he did not add an “only if it is safe” clause. The Indigenous Tribes of the Amazon River Basin happen to be both difficult to reach and extremely hard find. Many of them speak Spanish, but their heart language is a little-known tribal language that few outsiders know. The only way to reach them is to travel up the rivers and streams which is expensive and can be dangerous. The environment is hot and humid. There are mosquitoes everywhere. There is disease, hunger, water problems, flooding, etc. On top of all of this, they are very resistant to the gospel. In many cases, they know just enough to know how to refuse you. In every village along the river there is an abandoned Catholic Church. I have heard that the priests show up at the churches a couple of times a year. The rest of the time, the buildings sit empty, rotting in the humid air. In addition to all of this, there is pressure from governments, who have been encouraged by popular anthropologists, to leave these tribes alone, because their culture is being destroyed. Of course, we believe that their culture is already destroyed by sin, and that by sharing with them the love of Jesus, we are allowing them to move toward the perfect culture in which God created them to be.

Please be in prayer for these tribes. Jeff and I will be traveling to visit a couple of villages. One of the strategies that the missionaries have found to be effective is to share Bible stories with the tribes, and we will be doing this during our visit.


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Church Partnerships

23 08 2012

I just had the opportunity to have lunch today with Ryan Martin, the Mission Pastor at University Baptist Church in Fayetteville. We talked about how both of our churches could partner together to reach the indigenous tribes in the Amazon River basin in Colombia. We are currently partnered with First Baptist Church of Jenny Lind to reach the Northern Arapaho Tribe for Christ. We have gone to Alaska with FBC Van Buren. We are about to send a team to Central Asia with a church in Louisiana. When my family and I served in Tanzania, we had a number of churches that were partnered with us in our work. Two weeks ago I had lunch with my good friend, Greg Ford, who is the Mission Pastor at FBC Fort Smith. We are looking at potential partnerships.

Church partnerships are healthy. I believe that we need to do more of it. There are many churches out there that are much smaller than we are and can probably not do their own full-blown partnership with a team on the field, but they can partner together with another church. I believe that this idea of churches partnering together to reach the world for Christ is a great way and maybe the best way for the body of Christ to come together. I have tried many other things in the past locally, like doing community-wide concerts or Disciple Now’s or revival services, but these usually never amount to anything, because of all the competition locally. But multiple churches could come together to reach an unreached people group for Christ. That sounds exciting and is an incredible experience to be apart of.

Churches coming together to do missions also breaks down the stereotype that churches do not really cooperate. Jesus says that when people see our love for one another, they will see Him. Jesus’ love is best shared not only by simply doing missions, but by also doing it together with other believers from other churches.

A very exciting thing that is about to take place in our church is that we will be hosting a mission team from Venezuela. They are coming to Fort Smith in order to do mission work among our Hispanic population and to help us begin a ministry to the Latinos in our community. This is taking partnership to a whole new level. We are also extremely excited to be working together with a team in Brazil to reach a city in Italy. Now this is body of Christ stuff! I desire to be apart of something that is big like this, and only God can fulfill that dream. He is allowing that to happen today in unprecedented ways and invites all of us along for the ride. My encouragement to you is to get involved. Don’t stand and watch on the sidelines. Life is too short.

 


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Storytellers

20 06 2012

I had the privilege of spending the last two weeks in the country of Colombia with a great group of missionaries. One of my favorite parts of the trip was getting to go up the river and visit with the indigenous tribes. For the particular trip that we went on, the purpose was to bring food to two different villages.  This past spring they experienced a 100-year flood. Most homes were filled with water, and all of their crops were destroyed leaving most of them with nothing. We were just going to bring them some food to get them through a difficult time. (Our very own Baptist Global Response footed the bill for this trip.) What I was most impressed by was that our missionaries were not “The Bringers of Food,” but were “The Storytellers” coming to bring some food. There is a HUGE difference between the two.

Our tendency, as wealthy Americans, is to just throw money at the problems of the world. Our philosophy is that if we can get enough money to the problem then it will solve itself. Yes, money is needed to help and to solve certain problems, but it is naive and possibly sinful to think that money is the most important thing needed. When we arrived at the first village, it was obvious that relationships between the indigenous people and the missionary had already been established. It was equally obvious that our missionary was known as one who comes and tells us stories from the Bible. This is what I want to be known as. In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul talks about all of our works being revealed by fire as either wood, hay, and straw, or gold, silver, and precious stones. When I am judged by God for my works, I want my works to be gold, silver, and precious stones, not burned up in an instant. Food will fill the belly for a time, but the Gospel saves for all eternity. Food in the present will ease the cravings enough to hear the stories, but we will all die in the end and face an eternity with or without God. It is not enough to just give food or money or build a church building or dig a well or teach them English. We must open our mouths and share the Good News of God’s Kingdom. In the end, that is all that matters.

When someone steps up to the podium in church one day to tell about your life at your funeral, what will they say? How will they describe your life? Who will they say that you were? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be be called another “great guy.” I want to be called “The Storyteller” who changed the world for the glory of God.


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Colombia

31 05 2012

I just got back from a wonderful trip to Central Asia, and I’m now preparing to leave out for Colombia in the next few days. It will be my first time to visit there, and I’m extremely excited about it. The purpose for our visit is twofold. Firstly, we will be hosting a prayer retreat for some missionary families. I consider this a huge blessing to be able to meet and encourage our families serving around the world. They have a very difficult job, and my prayer is that we can ease the burden for a little while by giving them some rest and spiritual nourishment. The second purpose of this trip is to see if this might be a place that our church can partner. We would eventually be working with them to reach the Indigenous Indian Tribes of the Amazon River Basin.

Please be in prayer for us and the missionary families. The part of Colombia that we are going to is a very spiritually dark place, but the evil one has had a hold on it for far too long. These families our the frontline soldiers, and it is our responsibility back home to support them in anyway that we can.

One of the missionaries and myself will be going on a long trip up the river to visit with four small tribes that are currently experiencing a severe famine. Our intention is to bring them some food and to continue to build relationships in each of the villages. They have just recently experienced the worst flooding in over 70 years in the area and food is scarce. Our missionary asked us to be praying for his family, because every time he leaves to go to this area something happens with his family. Pray protection for his family as we travel into enemy territory.

I will certainly get back to this blog when I get back from this trip in another couple of weeks. Thanks for keeping up and praying for me.


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Native American Missions: A Dismal Failure

28 03 2012

Native Americans

On Monday evening I had the privilege of hearing Richard Twiss speak about cross-cultural missions. Richard is a Native American of the Lakota Tribe from South Dakota and has an incredible testimony of coming to faith in Christ. At the same time, he has an horrible testimony of many so-called Christian leaders in his life who told him that he needed to do away with all of his Native American-ness. Richard holds a doctorate in inter-cultural studies (cultural anthropology, primal and folk religions and the history of Christian mission) from Asbury Theological Seminary. He is now the founder and president of Wiconi International. “Wiconi” is a Lakota/Sioux word which means “life.” On their “about” page, it is said that their “aim is to provide education, encouragement and offer practical support to Native American families and communities in creating a preferred future.”

During the class Richard explained that Native Americans have experienced mission efforts for more than 500 years, and yet today only 3-8% of all Native Americans are Christ Followers. This is absolutely a dismal failure. Our mission efforts to reach the tribes in the past could easily be called the American Crusades. Under the flag of America and sometimes the banner of Christianity our white forefathers participated in a brutal genocide. When our morals would not allow us to kill all of them, we forced their children into boarding schools to teach (and beat) the “Native” out of them. Most of these boarding schools were run by churches. Is it any wonder that our “mission efforts” have yielded so little fruit.

You say that is the past, and it is. What is going on now, then? Why are we still seeing such failure? Richard called it the “indistinct, white line.” Every summer hundreds of white people head to the Indian Reservations to paint their churches that they never use. Richard said that he will help churches to reach Native Americans, but only if they will commit to go to the same place each year for at least three years – not the churches, but the individuals. He said that it is all about building relationships. We (white people) then have to understand that we have our culture and we have the gospel, and we have to keep the two separate. We must present the clear gospel, but then allow the Holy Spirit to teach the Native American to express his worship and following of Jesus in his own way. We must resist being the Holy Spirit ourselves.

My church, Grand Avenue Baptist Church, has partnered with Dale & Charlotte Bascue in Riverton, Wyoming to reach the Northern Arapaho Tribe for Christ. According to the Joshua Project, they are the least-reached tribe in the Continental United States. I believe that it is our obligation, as Christians and citizens of the United States, to reach out in love and respect to our Native American brothers and sisters, and not to blame them for their distrust or bitterness. We cannot justify going to the farthest corners of our globe without also reaching out to the unreached tribes right here among us.


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