Comments on: A Hundred Different Directions

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:44:19 +0000

This could easily be a description of my home church in the U.S. I’m struggling with if “a hundred different directions” is necessarily a bad thing. My church, like most, is not equipped to send out missionaries and relies in mission agencies. Honestly, if my church sent missionaries directly to the field, they wouldn’t do a good job of it. My point is, they rely on mission agencies as well as local food banks, pregnancy centers, and campus ministries to help them carry out their mission. This does look like a hundred diffrent directions, which is messy, but not nessisarly wrong.

One thing I am bothered by is the lack of theological foundations for each of the hundred ministries. It seems that the loudest, not the most wise, voice gets the ear of church leadership, and thus the church. As someone with theological training and missions experience, it can be frustrating when missions-committee members with no training and very little knowledge of the Bible are second guessing the need for your work. The recent high school grad going to Guatemala for a few weeks next summer is given the same ear as a seasoned and PhD training missionary.

By: fletchboy

fletchboy — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:52:02 +0000

I enjoyed reading this post! I have seen it time and time again. It seems to me that churches either get the “Jerusalem” part of Acts 1:8 or they get the “uttermost” part of it. Then people rush around filling in all the cracks. I think the church needs to do what you have intimated…to figure out what GOD is asking you to do as a church. He has given you certain gifts, skills, passions, opportunities, people…etc… I believe that is a blueprint for how you should reach out to Jerusalem AND all Judea AND Samaria AND the uttermost part of the earth! If you get a handle on why you reach out to your local community and accent the commonality of that and the other things you do, ranging out to the pioneer church planting work you are doing among an Unreached People Group, it shouldn’t be so hard for people to “own” it when they see the philosophy behind all that you do matches! Keep up the good work! Glad to see you are grappling with it!

By: tony sheng

tony sheng — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:34:26 +0000

great post. i’m in the middle of this as well.

By: stepchild

stepchild — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:35:24 +0000

Kari,
Wow. It’s great to hear that 1) you even recognize the struggle between different ministries and 2) that you’re taking steps toward unity/understanding on the matter. I pray that you both find ministry outlets that compliment the other.
Good to hear about the Perspectives course. I went though it in seminary. Really good stuff. I’d love to hear your opinion of it as you go through.
Thanks.

By: Kari

Kari — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:09:08 +0000

The timing of this post is perfect. We haven’t run into this issue in our church, but in our marriage. God has gifted and called us to different ministries (although some are the same) and I had been trying to ‘pull’ for my priorities and not supporting his as I should. But last week we started the Perspectives course together online – which will hopefully unify and strengthen us to be more effective.

Thanks for the post.