Comments on: What are the Alternatives?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:56:05 +0000

Bryan, welcome to the movement. We need people like you who hear the command to go and aren’t afraid to heed not knowing what it’ll look like. That’s what this site, mine, and many others are trying to accomplish. Stick near these fine men, add their sites to your RSS reader and grow!

By: Bryan Riley

Bryan Riley — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 18:18:02 +0000

It is because of these issues we (as a family) are compelled forward. We believe we have a ministry to the least, lost and last – the unreached – AND a ministry to the Body of Christ. We are sent to both. And much of what we do is educate/disciple the Body of Christ about what missions is. Our heart for that is particularly strong because we didn’t follow our call for years because we thought of missions as one thing: going to seminary and then years of training and then years in a mud hut in Africa. And we didn’t have a call to a set nations that we had sensed; we just knew we were called to go and make disciples of the nations. It burned within us. But we didn’t know how to make it happen and the one way we knew didn’t fit what we knew God was laying on our hearts. So we just avoided the whole thing (and nearly destroyed our lives in the process).

(big breath) So, that is why we feel called now, in part, to spend time mobilizing and educating others. God did not mess up telling the Body of Christ to make disciples of the nations, and He didnt’ mess up giving us all a variety of gifts. Every gift set can be used on the field helping finish the task. We enjoy helping see people released into their giftings in cross cultural contexts! And in the context of the various spheres of society.

By: guy muse

guy muse — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:44:52 +0000

Excellent post. We do need alternatives, and posts like this are needed to make us aware of the fact. No changes will ever be implemented until we are made aware that our current actions could be improved. Keep up the good work of drawing our attention to what things might be like if we would be willing to change what we are currently doing.

I linked to your blog on my own today. Thanks.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:57:29 +0000

One of the ways we’ve been trying to initiate change in our next ministry is by way of partner support or what I’ve learned as “People Raising.” In our last ministry, we were almost completely supported by congregations. This time around we’re trying to almost be completely supported by individuals and emphasizing the team/partnership aspect of our work. This includes a real education of the responsibility of senders and the regular communication through short updates rather than monthly tomes.

One thing you wrote really struck me and that was that “the Great Commission is the churches responsibility.” To often we’re getting caught up in the social gospel (which is important) but to the exclusion of the redemptive Gospel. Maybe its because the social gospel is more palatable to the world because it doesn’t necessarily convict of sin?

You’re right though. Those who don’t know of an alternative will continually do the same thing.

By: stepchild

stepchild — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:01:22 +0000

C. Holland,
We had a similar experience while we were on the field. Churches (well-intentioned thought they may be) don’t always seem willing to be in a relationship with missionaries. I think the situation requires even more of the missionary- it isn’t enough to be an “expert” in local culture and customs anymore. Now, missionaries have to be experts in the culture of partner churches, connecting the dots of why missions is relevant and how direct involvement can make them truly missional back home.

You mention that your supporting churches hear from you monthly. What if they heard from you daily? (I know you post regularly to your blog, so maybe they do?). Facebook and Twitter are great ways to be even more active in people’s lives and build relationships.

Don’t be discouraged! This is exactly why I’m working with the Upstream Collective to influence the conversation toward mission. There are churches out there that “get it,” and many more are starting to. We need to change the way people think about missions in order for them to be peers in the work. The question I was trying to ask in my post was- How do we do that? I think that casting a vision for an alternative to the status quo will be the first step.

By: C. Holland

C. Holland — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:30:31 +0000

I ask the same questions that you do, but as a missionary I think I can answer the fourth question: because there is not an ongoing dialogue and natural building of relationships around the mission trip. In my experience, no matter how much communication I’ve done with my supporting churches and individual supporters (they hear from me a minimum of every other month), I don’t hear back from them. Two years go by with hardly a hello, but all of a sudden in Year Three I’m contacted by several because they’ve decided on their own to “do” a mission trip here. Once the trip happens, they disappear into the ether again.

So the reality is that it’s difficult to treat them as a partner when they’re silent for a couple of years, appear with their agenda, then leave without further contact. I’m not asking for big attention, but these are people I know hardly anything about nor have interacted with at all. I can’t be friends/partners with someone who’s not responsive, so the only way I can see them is as labourers or people to be babysat.