Archive for July, 2008

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What I need to learn this coming year

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Most recent years I can look back and see a definite theme or subject that has been the main thing God has been teaching me. For instance, my first year in Mexico was all about learning the importance and power of prayer. The past year and a half has been dedicated to simple, organic church principles and the importance of discipleship. I haven’t usually had an agenda about what I will learn in the upcoming months, but this time around I do. In the upcoming ministry year, (a ministry year for us runs from September through August) I really need to learn more about authority and leadership structure in the Church.

The past year and a half, my worldview has dramatically changed regarding the Church. I’m all about simplification, laying aside those practices that are unhelpful and/or unbiblical, and seeing people discover what it is to be the church rather than to go to church. It works great in the early stages of discipling new believers, because they can come together in homes or parks or coffee shops, pray and worship together, teach one another, and minister to one another. No building or salaries to worry about. No institution. Minimal structure.

I know we’re approaching the time, though, where more definite leaders need to be raised up from among those we’re discipling. I’m not sure Jesus had in mind the extensive organizations that churches are today, but it’s hard to deny biblically that some structure is necessary. Positions of leadership and authority did exist in the early Church, and they seem to be given a fair amount of attention in Acts and the Epistles.

This leaves me in uncertain territory. I understand that authority and leadership and structure must exist, but I’m not sure what they should look like. I have certain points of difference with contemporary Western models of church leadership. Also, I have recently been forced to rethink much of what I have believed and practiced concerning leadership and authority. So my big question is how churches are to go about setting up a leadership structure that is in keeping with biblical principles. Will it involve official positions with ceremonies and titles? Is authority earned or ascribed or both? If both, does one or the other have precedence? Was the structure the early Church developed exactly what God had in mind? In other words, should we study early Church history (beginning with the New Testament) and create the exact same structure they did, or was their expression just one of many possible expressions?

I don’t know, but I hope to learn.

If anyone has thoughts on any of this or would like to highlight pertinent passages of Scripture or other good resources, chime in with a comment. I’m already off and rolling studying Scripture, and I will have much more to do this year. I’m excited that Neil Cole of Organic Church fame is working on a new book entitled Organic Leadership. If all goes well, in the coming months to a year or two, hopefully I will be sharing many new insights on this blog in the area of church leadership and structure.

Posted in Personal Reflections | No Comments »

You might be a wackjob if you try this…

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

They say that if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got. As we look at the needs of the world today, do we in the Church really want to keep doing what we’ve always done and get what we’ve always got? If not, then we have to change what we do.

I came across a fantastic list of “wakjob ideas” for campus ministers posted a couple of months ago on Shane Deike’s Movements Everywhere. As I read them, I tend to think the only thing wackier than trying one of these would be accepting the status quo.

Here’s a sampling of ideas, and I would encourage you to check out the complete list:

  • Launch 50 churches out of your current campus ministry (small little viral things with 21 year old elders and you as the master apostle – thats with a little ‘a’ in apostle btw). Tell the students that you will gather weekly to worship and train, but you want them each to start a simple viral church . . . . and you can show them how.
  • Never speak at a meeting again – only lets students share what is on their heart in the mission each and every week. Let mission inform theology and worry about the messes as you move ahead.
  • Never meet with someone one on one again. Only in small groups and only with someone besides you leading the discussion.
  • Never get a new believer involved with what is already going on . . . really . . . only help them start something new in their existing community (like Zaccheus or that Ethiopian dude).

I’ll add a couple of my own ideas specifically related to making disciples of all nations:

  • Make it the goal of every small church on campus to disciple at least one student from another country and help he/she plant a church made up of members from that country.
  • Challenge each church to send out at least one student who spends the first 5 years after college in a foreign country making one disciple and helping that disciple start a new church.
  • Get each church to fully fund one foreign missionary.

Radical? Maybe. Crazy? You can decide. Impossible? I don’t know. How content are you with the way things are?

Posted in Church Planting and Discipleship | No Comments »

Who would Jesus vote for?

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

I understand that many people, especially in evangelical circles, have strong opinions one way or another about the answer to this question. For a variety of reasons, I am mostly staying away from political stuff on this blog during the election season. I do have one thing I feel very strongly about, though, that I decided to share. I reject simplistic answers to the question of who Jesus would vote for, and I’m not at all sure that it’s even a good question. I do believe, however, that Scripture gives ample guidance as to the attitude of Christians towards candidates for political office, whether we support those candidates or not.

Below is the text of an email I wrote several months ago. Lest this be (mis)interpreted as my endorsement of a particular candidate, I would like to point out that I wrote this email very early in the primaries when, between the two parties, about 10 candidates were in the race. I wrote it in response to a forward I received that was very defamatory towards Barack Obama and largely based on sensationalism, exaggerations, misinformation, and at least one outright lie. I reacted strongly to the forward.

Here’s my response:

Good political debate about the pros and cons of a particular presidential candidate is a healthy and important exercise. But we need to check things out for ourselves and debate issues based on facts, not propoganda that others are trying to get us to help spread. See this article on the previously forwarded email:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

I understand that just because something is in the media does not mean it is a fact, but certain things can be verified, like whether Obama put his hand on the Koran when he was sworn into office, or if Obama refuses to salute the flag. Christians should be known above all others for being fair and truthful regarding all candidates, but I feel like sometimes we’re some of the worst. Defaming candidates with lies and half-truths is not a very good testimony…We need to be good about investigating things for ourselves, and not just taking someone else’s word.

I am not saying this as an endorsement of Obama; the truth is I have not yet decided who I will be voting for. But I think that as Christians we are called to fair treatment of the candidates. I have no problem with someone thinking it’s a bad (or good) idea to vote for Obama when there is reasonable, factual support for that opinion.

I’m getting this off my chest now, because if I don’t, all the email forwards that fly around are going to be driving me nuts by the time the elections roll around. Please understand that this isn’t an attack [on any individual]. I have been saying these same things in online forums and in a number of different conversations lately. I just want to encourage us to live to a higher standard this time around. This election season, let’s show an unbelieving world that Christ makes a difference in our lives.

In the political arena, I don’t think the biggest stumbling block for non-Christians is that Christians believe in God and (theoretically) want to see government run on His principles. I think the far bigger stumbling block is the distinctly un-Christian way we often conduct ourselves where politics is concerned. Let’s honor God with the way we act the rest of this election season. Remember, the way we treat people and the way we treat God can’t be divorced. He said, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Matt. 25:40)

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A meeting with the senator

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Last week, we were privileged to have a visit from one of our state’s senators on the federal level. He was in the region for several days in order to visit his constituency in a couple of dozen villages. A professor friend of ours arranged for the senator to come visit us at our GFM base.

I expected the visit to only last about ten minutes if he came at all, but the senator graciously spent a full hour with us. We really enjoyed getting to know him a bit; he is a very humble and personable guy. He came to see the various projects we are doing, so we showed him our drip irrigation system, our well drilling and hand pump technology, and the water filtration we’re working on. He even came up to my and Erin’s apartment to see the biosand water filter we have in our kitchen. (We are hoping to start a business selling these filters in the fall.)

The senator was interested in what we are doing, commended us for our efforts to help the people of our region, and gave us his contact info in case we ever need assistance with anything. We all dressed up for the occasion, and the women served café con leche (coffee with milk). We spent a good 20-30 minutes over coffee discussing Mexico, its government, and the senator’s work. He narrowly missed being elected the governor of our state in 2004, but he is determined to win the election in 2010. We had the opportunity to explain that Jesus is the reason we do what we do, and we gathered around and prayed for him before he left.

The opportunity of the visit, from our perspective, just landed in our laps, but we are grateful to God for the opportunity to meet an influential person in government. I am encouraged these days by some positive things I see happening in the Mexican government on the local, state, and national levels. God wants those in government to rule in a way that honors Him, so we welcome any opportunity to pray for governors and to encourage them to act justly and in the interests of the needy.

Here are a couple of photos from the visit:

The senator meeting our staff and summer interns

The senator meets Lauryn

Me explaining our drip irrigation system and other projects to the senator

Posted in Ministry Updates, Photos | No Comments »

Points to Ponder #5 – How to win the world in one generation

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

(Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of this 5-part series.)

The last of the Points to Ponder we have been sharing with our mission trip teams this summer:

Have you ever wondered how we could win the world to Christ in our lifetime?

The Great Commission, that command Jesus gave all his disciples to do while He was gone, boils down to this: make disciples. Tragically, we get distracted with programs and organizations and structures and almost anything other than making disciples like Jesus said to do. Making disciples, according to what Jesus said, very simply amounts to teaching them to obey everything He commanded.

Teaching everything Jesus commanded includes teaching disciples to make other disciples. That was one of His commands; therefore, a disciple, by definition, is one who makes other Christ-followers. Jesus spent His public ministry, first and foremost, raising up a group of followers and telling them to do the same. This is because He knows the power of multiplication.

Guess what would happen if just one follower of Christ, in the next year, raised up one new follower and taught him also to make one new disciple each year? On down the line, every new disciple makes one new disciple a year and each new one is taught to do the same. Get the picture? At the end of the first year, you have two followers of Jesus, at the end of the second year you have four since they each made one new disciple, and so on down the line. If things continued this way with no break in the chain of multiplication, the entire population of the world would be following Jesus in 34 years. (And that’s accounting for a lot of population growth.) Amazing!

And, by the way, this year if all people who call themselves followers of Jesus each made one new disciple and taught them to do the same, in four years the entire world would be won to Christ. Four years! That’s the power of multiplication.

When we look at the needs around us and the fact that over 2.5 billion people have no self-sufficient church among them capable of making disciples of the rest of their people group, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. We either get discouraged and do nothing, or we try and do everything, figuring, “It’s up to me to win the whole world”. Neither response is healthy or productive. The second response is the one that runs many professional clergymen into the ground as they try and build gigantic organizations and programs that will somehow turn the tide of lostness. The best action would be for us all to start obeying Jesus and disciple a few people around us as followers of Christ. This should be our first and most important work. If believers everywhere would only take this to heart, we would take territory from the kingdom of darkness on a scale rarely, if ever, witnessed before in human history.

So how about you? Will you take to heart the command to make disciples of all nations and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded? Or did Jesus just give that command to special people not like you?

Posted in Church Planting and Discipleship | 2 Comments »

Points to Ponder #4 – In God’s Image

Monday, July 14th, 2008

(Click to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this 5-part series.)

Continuing to share the Points to Ponder we are presenting to our mission trip teams this summer:

In whose image does the Bible say we are created? God’s, right? So whose idea was it to have so many different languages and cultures in this world? It was God’s idea, wasn’t it? God created every single different people group, with its distinct language and culture, in His own image. Together, all people and cultures on this earth display the image of God.

This places a great premium on honoring and preserving other cultures at the same time we are looking to see them transformed (or fulfilled, perhaps) by the truth of the gospel. Over the past couple of centuries, Western missionaries have not always been strong on this point of honoring and preserving cultures. The same type of imperialism that led Europe to trample tribes, civilizations, and entire continents in the colonial era has crept into our mission work. We have tended to require people to change their culture, becoming more like Westerners, in order to follow Christ. Instead of delivering the gospel message and allowing people to apply it in their own context, we assume that their application of gospel truth should look the same as our application of it.

Think about what happens when we do that. If a group has to lose part of its culture in order to follow Christ, they are losing the unique way in which they could have responded to God. If God created all people with their distinct cultures and customs in His image, the world is losing a unique representation of God we could have seen in that people group. We never get to see, for example, how a particular tribe would have worshipped God or passed on biblical truth to younger generations. We miss out on how one group may have observed communion in a unique way that would have emphasized some characteristic of God we tend to overlook. God doesn’t get prayed to in languages that may have hardly ever been used to say one respectful word to Him.

Our job as cross-cultural missionaries is to be ambassadors. We have a message to deliver on behalf of Jesus Christ. It is not our job to tell people what their obedience to that message should look like. That is the Holy Spirit’s job. If we can help people respond to God in a way fitting to their context, the world will gain an ever-growing display of God and his glory as more and more nations come to worship Him. This will finally culminate in that unimaginable worship service foretold in Revelation 7:9,10, when all nations are before the throne, worshipping the Lamb of God.

Posted in Cross-Cultural Ministry | No Comments »

Scripture as we live it

Monday, July 14th, 2008

Alan Knox, who is an excellent blogger in my opinion, has been doing a series entitled “Scripture…As We Live It”. You can find the entire series here. Is it as convicting to you as it is to me? Here’s one example of a passage of Scripture he has “remixed”:

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind unless they’re wrong, having the same love unless they’re wrong, being in full accord and of one mind unless they’re wrong. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit unless they’re wrong, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves unless they’re wrong.
(Philippians 2:1-3 remix)

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GFM’s scouting in Thailand

Sunday, July 13th, 2008

Grant and Jenn, our directors, are over in Thailand this summer with a handful of interns. They are scouting things out for future GFM expansion to Thailand. If you want to hear more about what is going on over there, you can check out Jenn’s blog and Zach’s blog.

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Points to Ponder #3 – Can you find…in the Bible?

Sunday, July 13th, 2008

(Click to read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.)

It’s high time I resumed my Points to Ponder series. Points to Ponder is a new element in our mission trip program this year. We take about five minutes each day and share with the mission trip participants some thoughts we’ve been chewing on lately, allowing them to do the same. As I mentioned when I started this series, it would normally cost you a $450 mission trip to come to Mexico and hear these, but just for being a reader of my blog, you get them absolutely free!

This third Point to Ponder is adapted from a blog post by David Watson.

The easier something can be reproduced by new believers, they better the chance that a disciple-making movement can multiply. Our job in making disciples is to teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded us – nothing more, nothing less. One of the frequent errors of the modern church is teaching traditional church culture and practices as if they were biblical truth. Tradition is not inherently wrong, but it is of secondary importance. People do not need traditional Christian culture in order to have a changed life; they Jesus and His gospel of the kingdom.

Cross-cultural church planters cause many problems when we require our disciples to adopt our extra-biblical practices. We should, rather, deliver the gospel message as the ambassadors that we are and then help new believers apply the truth of the gospel in their own cultural context.

With that in mind, can you find in the Bible where we see the following things?

Can you find a place in the Bible where…

  • it tells us to bow our heads and close our eyes when we pray?
  • it tells us not to drink alcoholic beverages?
  • it tells us not to dance?
  • it teaches that a person must be ordained in order to baptize a new believer?
  • it teaches that a person must be ordained in order to serve the Lord’s Supper?
  • it teaches that a person must be ordained in order to lead a church?
  • it instructs us to perform ordinations?
  • it tells us we have to dress in a special way to lead or attend the assembly of believers?
  • It tells us how often to have meetings of the church, how long those meetings should be, or on what day they should be?
  • it says that the church should have a special building to meet in?
  • it says that church leaders or pastors have to be seminary or Bible school trained?
  • it says that the pastor is the supreme leader of the church, or the only leader of the church?
  • it says that one form of music is superior to any other form of music, or that some form of music is not acceptable for worship, or that a particular form of music is required for worship?
  • it says the dead must be buried in the ground? (As an example, Hindus in India usually cremate their dead. They have been told by most Western missionaries, though, that this is wrong and the dead must be buried.)
  • it says that a man who has multiple wives before becoming a Believer should agree to divorce all but one of his wives after becoming a Believer or in order to become a Believer? (This issue is tricky, too. We have a tribe near us that practices polygamy. When Paul gave the qualifications of an overseer, he said he should be the husband of one wife. How do you raise up church leadership in a place where everyone has multiple wives?)

Posted in Cross-Cultural Ministry | No Comments »

Introducing GFM Videos

Friday, July 4th, 2008

This summer, we have an artistically-inclined guy we have set to work making daily highlight videos of our mission trips. He is uploading them to GFM’s new YouTube channel, which can be accessed via globalfrontiermissions.com/videos. Check it out! The videos are pretty neat and will give you a better feel of what summers are like down here.

Posted in Global Frontier Missions | No Comments »

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