Watch this video and consider the religious implications of climate change. How do the people honor their religion if something so vital to their religion dies.
How would we as Christians feel about this?
Now consider the opportunities for caring for the people whose religion would be suffering as a result of the climate issue. How do we love them through these issues?
Note: if you are viewing this in a feed reader, you may need to come to the site to see the actual video.
Now apply these words to how we do church. What do you quantify? Money. People. Baptisms. Sunday School Attendance. New Members.
Quantification in this regard, does 3 things:
1. It devalues the person. Actually, I think it dehumanizes them
2. It elevates the quantifier. In this case, the number of…
3. It celebrates the one who produces the result.
What do you count? How does that affect how you view the church?
1 O Lord, I have come to you for protection;
don’t let me be disgraced.
2 Save me and rescue me,
for you do what is right.
Turn your ear to listen to me,
and set me free.
3 Be my rock of safety
where I can always hide.
Give the order to save me,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
4 My God, rescue me from the power of the wicked,
from the clutches of cruel oppressors.
5 O Lord, you alone are my hope.
I’ve trusted you, O Lord, from childhood.
6 Yes, you have been with me from birth;
from my mother’s womb you have cared for me.
No wonder I am always praising you!
In part 1 of this short series, I described how to do international missions on USAmerican soil. Today I want to offer some ideas on how to do international missions outside of the traditional parachurch mission sending agencies. I want to make suggestions for individuals and families as well as for churches. Finding the location for missions requires us to listen to the heart of God and then consider one of two paths: to adopt a people group and go to that people group or to adopt a city and invest there.
For Individuals
The easiest way to do international missions overseas is the find a job either where your adopted people group live or in the city God calls you to. Many American Christians are taught that being a professional missionary is a higher calling. In the thinking of many, the best and most appropriate way to respond to a call to missions is to find a parachurch missions organization and work through them to be sent to the city or people that God is leading you to. However, being a full-time Christian worker is not the only way to be an effective missionary. In fact, in some circles the best way to be a missionary is not to be a professional missionary. The most effective way many people can make an impact on the city or people group is to enter the culture as traditional employee – someone facing similar work and life situations as their peers.
I have actually found this to be the most effective way to be on mission in the States. I have been more effective and had more opportunities to talk about Jesus as a coworker than as a pastor. They get to see you live out your life and you get to invest in their live in powerful simply by being co-workers. As a pastor, particularly in some areas of the country, people may not even talk with you because you are a pastor.
For people who are interested in working in Europe, the Skybridge Community exists to help people in various business professions connect with each other and possibly find positions.
For Churches
For churches, the process is much more broad. As God leads you to adopt a city or people group, challenge your church through these avenues:
1. Challenge your church to rent a small apartment in the city. Allow members of the staff and other church leaders to take turns living in that apartment while seeking people of peace, those who may be sensitive to the Gospel and who have themselves been seeking God’s presence and activity in their community. This is not a time where the staff member goes to preach or hand out tracts, but a period of learning, praying, relating, and loving. It is a time to ask God to show you people in the city who are seeking God themselves and who can help establish God’s presence in that city.
2. Begin to schedule missional journeys to that city. With the knowledge gained through staff and other leaders, begin to bring groups to the city on a consistent basis to build relationships and love the city or people group. I am not talking about coming over to do what people think of as mission trips, but missional journeys where relationships are developed and cultivated over long periods of time. Use social media to meet people prior to the trip. You should be able to find people who want to speak and practice their English and you can begin to learn the language of the people. You can continue these relationships through social media and continue cultivating those relationships.
3. As God allows, begin to have spiritual conversations with those whom you have developed a relationship. This may take some time. It might take a period of two or more years of cultivating that kind of relationship. When people are comfortable, begin to gather them together for communal discussions of faith. Yet you must understand, this takes time. It requires a long-term commitment and consistency in investment.
If you are small church, partner with other smaller churches in your area to adopt the same city or people group. There is much you can do together in this way.
We need to get away from the professional missionaries – there is still a place for them, but there is a great disconnect with international missions when the church is only giving money. The church needs to be the missionary, not surrender it to parachurch organizations.
Today, my mom, Margaret Ann Moore Phillips, turns 64. Happy Birthday Mom!
She’s been a great mom. She was, when my dad was working, my warmup catcher when I was a pitcher in Little League. She survived breast cancer in 1997. She and dad both travelled with Brenna and I when I graduated with my doctorate last May. She’s always been there for me.
This year, we’re struggling financially, and mom would not give me any ideas about a birthday gift for that reason. However, I do run a publishing company and so I have a consistant income stream there. At the same time, I was being convicted about living a more simple life, to be content with what I have instead of longing for and desiring more stuff. If I would live a more simple life, I could then give generously. So I devised a plan to kill two birds with one stone. There was a way that I could honor my mother with a continual gift that would remind me of her and her influence on my life. At the same time, there was a way that I could give in such a way to influence and invest in a life the way my mom did.
Enter Compassion International. Compassion International exists as a Christian child advocacy ministry that releases children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enables them to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adults.
Founded by the Rev. Everett Swanson in 1952, Compassion began providing Korean War orphans with food, shelter, education and health care, as well as Christian training. Today, Compassion helps more than 1 million children in 25 countries.
One of the great things about Compassion is that you are the only supporter of a child. You get to interact with the child you support through letters and pictures. In addition, you can actually visit your child on the field, which I hope to do some day.
For $38 per month, the children Compassion serves receive, among other things: the opportunity to hear the gospel and learn about Jesus; regular Christian training; educational opportunities and help; health care, hygiene training and supplementary food if necessary; a caring and safe Christian environment to grow in self-confidence and social skills; personal attention, guidance and love.
Compassion works through a one-to-one child sponsorship. A sponsor is someone who has made the decision to personally invest in the life of a child in need. Through sponsorship, children are able to participate in a church-based program that offers life-changing benefits that range from educational opportunities to health care.
Compassion focuses on individual child development rather than broader community development work. Community development is important work that addresses the external circumstances of poverty and is an important complement to our work. However, our primary focus is individual child development—an inside-out, bottom-up approach that recognizes the God-given value and potential of each individual child. Many of these children grow up to become positive influences in their own communities. However, they have discovered that changed circumstances rarely change people’s lives, while changed people inevitably change their circumstances.
With all this in mind, I went to Compassion’s website to sponsor a child. One of the options they give you in searching to sponsor a child is to search for someone with a particular birthday. Here’s where the 2 birds, one stone comes in. I searched for a child with the birthday of January 24, my mom’s birthday.
There were a couple of children who had that birthday, and I chose Karen. Karen lives in Hondouras, and is a beautiful young lady. Karen turns 9 today. She turns 9 on the same day my mother turns 64.
Since mom wouldn’t give me a suggestion for a birthday gift, I decided to honor her by supporting a child through Compassion whose birthday is the same as hers. In a way, I’m honoring my mom by doing what she has done for me over the past 40 years: support, invest, influence, pray, and love.
Let me also suggest that you sponsor a child through Compassion. They serve in Haiti, and this would be a great way to make an investment in the lives of children in this poverty-stricken country. Take a moment to watch this video about Compassion’s work in Haiti:
Loading ...
Recent Comments