More often than not, “partnering in missions,” means small churches give what little money they think they can afford to a larger church or a missions sending agency that will handle mobilization, screening, indoctrination, training, sending, and maintenance of missionaries on the field. This is not “partnering,” it’s outsourcing.
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Missionaries sometimes have a difficult time getting the attention of the busy (and distracted) churches that send them. It’s really hard to compete with the flashy ad campaigns of nonprofits that have contractually-obligated celebrity endorsements and seemingly limitless resources. Costly partnerships in intangible work with unreliable results can be a hard sell. Sometimes, ministry just [...]
You’ve worked hard to build a missions-minded church. You have a couple that are really excited about ministry in Indonesia. You have a young lady who’s been to Kenya over a dozen times. Your church has planted churches in inner-city Detroit and suburban Ohio. You take mission trips to Nicaragua and Lisbon every year. You [...]
Most negative missions experiences are due to unrealistic expectations. (This, of course, is a wildly unsubstantiated claim based on my limited experience and no formal research whatsoever.) It usually goes something like this: “Yay, we’re going to be missionaries! We love the nations! God’s glory! Passion! Finish the task” Then, “It’s okay to be uncomfortable. [...]
Dirty, sick orphans living in garbage dumps in South America. Malnourished children in desolate African villages. Underground house churches in outer Chinese provinces. Sex slaves lining the street in a Thailand slum. A burgeoning pub church in Western Europe. What do these scenes have in common? Streams of Christians on mission trips. In an effort [...]
Tags: ethics, Humanitarian trips, observation
Contextualization is the active work of translating the gospel into a culture that doesn’t have an indigenous expression of Christianity. The problem is that we all seem to be “contextualizing” for a culture that we don’t live in. We all look alike because we were all mentored by the same six guys (John, Rick, Mark, [...]
Tags: contextualization
“If you really cared about the unreached peoples of the world, you’d be more involved in missions.” “If you truly understood the Great Commission, you’d be a missionary.” “If only you were made aware of the opportunities to share the gospel, you’d go on a mission trip.” “If you honestly saw the need, felt the [...]
Tags: guilt, inspiration, Matthew 24, Motivation
We’ve got to stop distinguishing between “missions” and, well, “not missions.” The old paradigm was this: ministry is sharing the gospel. If you preached to believers, you were called a “pastor.” If you preached to non-Christians in your own culture, you were an “evangelist.” If you needed a passport to get there, you were a [...]
Tags: missionary, Missions, tribes
Syncretism is a key missiological concept that refers to the all-too common practice of overlaying one set of beliefs with another, disparate one. People often go to great lengths to reconcile different, even opposing, belief systems in order to make sense of the world around them. When African tribes were (forcibly) “converted” to Christianity by [...]
Tags: Christmas, Culture, Easter, Syncretism
For many would-be ministers, missionaries, and church planters, a full-time, paid position is not going to happen. Some might intentionally reject the paid-clergy model. Others might just not be able to raise the kind of funding that would allow them to quit their day jobs. Either way, lots of ministers are looking for ways to [...]
Previously: Impractical Worship Megachurches don’t just happen. And they’re certainly not the inevitable result of God’s blessing. They are the results of decisions throughout the lifetime of a church. Say a church plant starts out with three couples meeting in a living room. That’s six people meeting regularly to worship God and be a local [...]
Tags: Counterintuitive, friendly takeover, Impractical, indigenous
Unless writing a lot makes one a "writer," Ernest is a former missionary. After more than six years in Western Europe, he moved to Portland, where he drinks too much coffee and over-analyzes human behavior. For more about Ernest, visit the About page where you can read a long-time reader's interview with him. Or, if you don't mind waiting a very, very long time, send him an email.associations attrition Books change Church church planting Coke contextualization Counterintuitive denominations entering culture ethics Evolution Favors Fear Finances Giving gospel Hobby Humanitarian trips Impractical Insuffiecient resources Interesting Person Kingdom learning leaving Megachurch Missiology missional Missions Missions Strategy Mom-and-Pop Money Papers Person of Peace Pragmatism reintroduction Rules small churches threat Training UpStream worldview
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