I just read a recent memo from Dr. Rankin (President, IMB) that stated (concerning the subject of relationships with our Southern Baptist Convention churches), "These opportunities to speak serve as reminders that relationships with our SB (Southern Baptist) constituency is an important element of successfully reaching a lost world as well as overseas strategies and organizational structure."
I would heartily agree. I am a firm believer that more and more of our Southern Baptist Convention family are prone to give along the lines of relationship than any other connection. Whether it is their money or their time, our churches are more likely to combine their efforts with the work on the field if a relationship exists between the church, its membership, and the missionary.
How many times have churches that have taken the initiative to work among a people group relocated their ministry with the missionary unit when the missionary changed ministries? Or ceased to continue their ministry at all when the missionary came home?
I believe that a significant part of our missionary strategy, where it pertains to engaging unreached unengaged people groups, involves promoting and facilitating the relationships between the field and our SBC constituency ... especially as we move into the future.
As a pastor in the US for over 20 years, I understand the trepidation that exists in the hearts and minds of those who desire to make a difference, but wonder if it is possible to be successful. This tension is heightened when there is no relationship between the church and the missionary. I'm not sure what the answer is, but somehow we need to increase the amount of "face-time" outside of a stateside assignment every three to four years. I am not convinced they will come if they do not know "to what' or "to whom" they are coming.
David Pope
Ralph Winter has been cited as saying, ... you can go, send or mobilize, but if you have a choice then choose mobilization because it’s a strategic contribution to missions if you can mobilize ten people to go in place of you as one. I don't know the context of that citation or even the exact quote (I'm trying to track it down) and don't want to be seen as criticizing Ralph Winter. (Update: I cannot verify that particular quote. In the Jan-Feb 1995 edition of Missions Frontiers, Dr. Winter did say, Mission mobilization activity is more crucial than field missionary activity and goes on to explain what he meant.) However, I don't think those are mutually exclusive options. The call to go is also a call to mobilize -- those of us on mission want others to join us. So, how do you mobilize churches and individual believers to be on mission in your setting? Are there effective ways to do mobilization from a distance?
For the Kingdom,
Bob A
David is sent out by the IMB and is the Engagement Team Coordinator for Burkina Faso, northern Cote d’Ivoire, and northern Ghana and, in June, will become Engagement Team Leader for the Cluster that the IMB calls the Central Sahel Cluster. The Engagement Team is charged with the responsibility to look at people groups that are not being engaged, verify the research on the status of those people groups, enlist partners (usually, either local Baptist churches and/or US Baptist churches) to engage those people groups, and provide strategy training for those partners.
We have made mobilization a huge part of our ministry here from the beginning. We are partnered with an association of churches, the Concord Association, in and around Fort Smith, AR. This is around 75 churches. The way that we "mobolize from a distance" is to use every tool at our disposal. A simple business marketing concept is that you must hit your target audience at least 7 times before they will buy. We use a blog, write a monthly newsletter, and host a website. We have used Skype to talk to our churches live. We are currently putting together an introduction video to send to all of our churches. We upload video to youtube. I have a very active facebook and twitter account. We are currently setting up kiosks in two of our larger churches to allow people to sign-up to be a prayer partner straight onto the internet. I have also written a devotional guide that includes a portion from mission classics each day. We are about to release this again.
ReplyDeleteThese are just a few things that we are doing. The results have been fantastic. Our Lottie Moon Offerings have all been way up. We have seen many people accept a call to missions through our work. We have many volunteer teams lined up. Last week alone, we had over 1200 unique hits to our blog.
I would love to hear other people's ideas.
Scott, thanks for sharing what you're doing. Prior to your appointment as long missionaries, was there already a connection between the Concord Association and the work where you are? Someone who wrote me "off-line" commented that relationships are **THE** key to effective mobilization. So, how did the relationship between the Concord Association and your PG begin?
ReplyDeleteIf you can share your blog address here, it might be helpful to others to see what you're saying. (This is an open blog, available to anyone on the internet.)
I completely agree that relationships are the key. In 2004 (I think) I was on staff at Grand Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Smith, Arkansas. We had no missions pastor, so I kind of stepped into that role in addition to my other responsibilities. We began to develop a strategy for missions, and I began to push us to look for a UUPG. About the same time, I met Tim and Annie Tidenberg who spend their Stateside at our mission house. Tim challenged me to come out to Tanzania. After the first trip, our church voted to adopt the Pare People group as our UUPG. Right after my first trip, I met Greg Ford who is the missions pastor at First Baptist Church just down the street. He told me that he was talking to Tim as well about Tanzania, and our partnership between Grand and First was born - the two largest churches in the Concord Association.
ReplyDeleteOver the next couple of years, both churches led many vision trips and prayer-walking trips. During this time, my wife and I felt led to jump into the work there full-time. We served in Tanzania for 7 months and were forced to take a medical stateside to have a baby prematurely. Everything turned out fine with the baby. During that time in the States, Greg introduced me to our new Director of Missions for the Concord Association, Jeff Thompson. Jeff is a former IMBer who served for 4 years before having to resign for medical reasons. Shortly after meeting him, the Concord Association voted to make us their "End of the Earth."
It has been an interesting journey full of divine meetings. I have really tried to take to heart that we as IMBers are to LEAD Southern Baptists to be on missions. Because of this, I have actively tried to develop these relationships. For example, last month I sent an email to every pastor in the Concord Association. The second and third largest churches in the Association responded and are considering sending volunteer teams out later this year. I believe that God's hand was in this, but I didn't just passively sit by and do nothing. I have seen too many missionaries who are lone rangers and have very few, if any, connections in the States. Because of one simple email, I have potentially mobolized hundreds of people to prayer and a greater understanding of global missions.
My blog is http://paremtns.wordpresss.com.
What I'm seeing in what you said:
ReplyDelete• Relationships
• Being proactive in creating those relationships
• God's opening the doors for appointments
• Being open to what God may be doing even when you don't understand His purposes (your unexpected medical stateside)
Thanks, Scott.
(NOTE: The following is the text of an e-mail from John West to me in response to this blog post. John gave me permission to post it as a comment. --Bob A)
ReplyDeleteSome thoughts:
--> Pope – in a brief article - has raised the major points as they relate to the local U.S. church.
--> When equipping local U.S. churches to be on mission the 2 main points are:
• The pastor must be on board & vocally supportive.
• Relationships are the key
--> SC or engaging churches maybe a good short term strategy – if we are not trying to cover the map for “covering the map's” sake.
--> Of the 50,000+ SBC churches how many could implement this type of strategy – the market is quite small – is it worth going after?
--> Points to consider in mobilization -
• Out of culture Christians are good.
• Near culture Christians are better.
• In culture Christians are best.
• Are out of culture Christians (U.S. church) being mobilized to engage Macro UUPG’s over Micro UUPG’s ?
+ Mobilize the macro’s to reach the micros – the near culture – the in culture
--> Why are some of the IMB AG’s not employing the SC or engaging approach in their areas ?
--> In review – how successful has the SC/engaging church model really been in reaching UUPG’s
• My interviews with both field personnel and the SC/engaging churches leave real questions in this area.
--> Is this the best use of the U.S. churches resources ?
--> What happens to the local U.S. churches during economic downturns ?
• Do they pull back their boots on the ground ?
• Do they keep their boots on the ground but pull back in their financial support of SBC mission causes ?
--> Did West Africa get into this model because they had high personnel turnover
--> Should we look for one model to reach the world? Your info on contextualtion answers this quite well – no. For some reason we seem persist in this approach i.e. church planting movements
This is a subject that needs open discussion with U.S. churches, field personnel employing this approach and field personnel that have chosen not to employ this approach.
John West
Missions Pastor
Lakeview Baptist Church, Auburn, AL
Great observations, John, and I'm glad you joined in the discussion. I want to give a few responses but hope that David Pope or Clint Bowman or someone else will weight in with their experiences.
ReplyDelete• The Senior Pastor is key, as you have said. His biblical responsibility is leadership and that's in all areas. At Parklands Baptist Church, in Nairobi, for example, the Associate Pastor has been the primary actor in that church adopting and engaging a couple of UPG's. However, without the vocal support of the Senior Pastor, the efforts would have likely been fruitless.
• Our experience has been that more churches can become engaging churches (i.e., SC churches) than one would initially think. Size matters less than heart and obedience. For instance, Beulah Baptist in Hopkins, SC -- a church that averages only 150 in attendance -- has engaged a PG in West Africa and make multiple trips per year. This model is not for every church but probably for more than we think.
• I'm sure that the engaging church model is not successful 100% of the time. Again, though, one example. In one case in West Africa, long term residential missionaries had made 4 attempts to engage a PG without success. (I don't know why they weren't successful.) A church in the US got a vision to reach that PG and began sending multiple teams per year that partnered with a local, near-culture Baptist church. After about 2 years of work, there were 30 believers and 2 churches among this PG.
• West Africa adopted the engaging church effort for multiple reasons, but declining long-term personnel was certainly one factor. The other, more important reason, was the overwhelming number of unreached PG's, many of them micro-PG's (populations of less than 100,000) in West Africa and a passion to reach them.
• It seems to me that the principles of the church planting movement (CPM) approach are good, biblical missions -- broad seed sowing, intentional church planting, deemphasis of extra-biblical requirements for church and leadership, etc.
Just a brief response to the David Pope blog...First, I respect John West's insightful remarks, given his wisdom and breadth of experience. Certainly there are a number of perspectives to be considered in the effort to anticipate some long range consequences. In our case (FBC Belleview, FL) as a "mid-sized" church we have seen a modified engaging church experience (beginning with the PrayerPlus Partnership) result in a transformation in the culture of our church through engagement and personalization. The benefit has been as much for us as for the UUPG. We adopted the Koti People and have come to see every evidence of a valid CPM (not by our observation, but by observers on the field). This experience has given global focus...families and indivuduals have responded to career missions, more and more people are going on short term trips, church planting stateside has become a priority, and LMCO 2009 giving topped $71,000. This all through the personalization that engagement has provided.
ReplyDeleteRonnie Walker
FBC Belleview, FL
Ronnie, thanks for your comments and for sharing what FBC Belleview has done as an engaging church. For non-Southern Baptists who are reading, "LMCO" is the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, a major part of the international missions funding for the Southern Baptist Convention.
ReplyDeleteA lot of folks reading this will be familiar with the concepts of a CPM. But, would you share with us what you're seeing among and hearing about the Koti people as evidences of a CPM?
Response as per request from Bob A. ---
ReplyDeleteCPM (Church Planting Movement) has at least 10 common characteristics. Extraordinary prayer, abundant evangelism, intentional planting of reproducing churches, the authority of God's Word, local leadership, lay leadership, house churches, churches planting churches, rapid reproduction, and healthy churches. We entered a PrayerPlus Partnership with the Koti (pop. 65,000; folk Islam) through the International Mission Board beginning in 1998. After only 18 months we were able to begin sending teams in to prayer walk and do some limited evangelism. We connected with an evangelical group from Osaka, Japan, plus a SIL couple working among the Koti. Our line of communication related to the work has been through them primarily. With increased prayer focus and frequency of short term teams we were able to see effective disciple making and leadership development through the work of the ministries mentioned. Without going into infinite detail, the bottom line is the 10 characteristics noted above became more observable and were being reported; in particular indigenous (trained) lay leadership began assuming responsibility for the work and the missionary personnel began pulling back as per predetermined strategy. One of our contacts reported in 2009 that a "CPM appears to be in place among the Koti." Early 2010 the report stated that in 2009 "986 people were baptized, 40 new works opened up, and 70 more leaders are active. January 30, 2010, a team of indigenous Koti left their immediate area to take the Gospel to the Mwani people, a neighboring people group north of Angoche, Mozamgique." Trusting our sources, we see this as indications of a valid CPM and the result (in part) of our partnership.
Ronnie Walker
FBC Belleview, FL
A few comments about John Wests' questions. The approach as we developed it in West Africa for engaging micro groups was that we looked for the closest possible resource to engage the micro groups. (The ruler not the yard stick idea.) Sometimes these were not Baptists so we could not engage in church planting activities with them but we could try to encourage them to adopt the micro group and we could offer them training for that purpose. Obviously, we did not take this approach unless the group was an appropriate group to work with. If this failed then we looked a little further away for a Baptist group. Sometimes we had to go to the US to get a Baptist group because there was no other good choice. With over 2000 micro groups in that former region we had to look just about everywhere to find resources to engage them. Sometimes using the nearest Baptist or evangelical group wasn't a good idea due to past history and issues such as fighting over land, slavery, ect.
ReplyDeleteDuring the current economic downturn I am not aware of any of our current engaging churches which have pulled back for finacial reasons, though there may be some. Some are even making more trips to the field than they had originally agreed to make.
Ronnie -- thanks for your follow-up on Belleview's work with the Koti. I appreciate your identifying the 10 Universal Elements that have been found in every identified CPM around the world. I might add that these are descriptive and not prescriptive. The engager can ensure that all of those things are done and a CPM may still not erupt. Ultimately, it is the work of the Holy Spirit in the receptive spirits of individuals in a people group that creates a CPM.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous -- Thank you for your follow up to John West's questions.
Just a brief observation from reading David's blog. For what it is worth, I am a pastor of a small SBC church in South Georgia(@100-120) in attendance on Sunday morning. We personally knew a missionary from our hometown directly involved in West Africa. Our church wanted to get involved in reaching a UUPG. We simply contacted the missionary by email, made plans when they were stateside to meet with them and planned a simple vision trip to go and look at a few UUPG's around the location that this missionary lived. Before the trip was over God had impressed on us the group we were to reach. Because we are small in size we chose to become a partnering church with other churches within Nigeria and churches within the U.S. We are seeking to network by internet, phone,etc... with those here in the U.S and in Nigeria to help us plan our next trip and to see what strategies they are using and what is working for them. We have been twice and can only go about once/year. We stay connected with the missionaries we have met over in Nigeria to keep up with what is happening amongst our group. This has been a simple process and an awesome experience for us. It was just a matter of us getting in touch with the missionary on the field(who knew of the UUPG's that were in the country and were truly unreached, as well as the surrounding countries), planning the vision trip, going, deciding, making our plan of how we will be involved and for how long. If a church our size can do this, anyone can do this. Keep it simple. Find out who the missionaries are in the area of Africa that you feel led to go to, pray, contact them, pray some more, and then plan your visit. Find who to network with and watch the church become the missionary to work where the IMB missionary cannot be all the time.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous -- thanks for this. It's exactly this kind of interaction that I hope to facilitate with this blog. And, it's worth a lot. :) We appreciate churches like yours walking beside us in Kingdom work.
ReplyDeleteWe use several models for this kind of missions involvement. Some examples:
• a partnering church is a church that makes a commitment to work with an existing people group team and to partner directly with the team to implement that team's strategy. The church becomes as self-facilitating as possible in regards to logistics.
• an engaging church is a church that accepts responsibility to plan and implement a strategy for a PG. That church works with a team to determine the PG, to develop sound strategies, and for training and ongoing discussions but the church is the missionary to that PG. They also become as self-facilitating as possible.
• a partner II church is a blend of the first two. They work with the team to implement an overall strategy for a PG but accept responsibility for a segment of that PG -- maybe geographical, maybe a sub-language, maybe a particular demographic sub-group.
• any of the above could apply to a group of churches or to an entire association that wanted to work together to be on mission.