Participating in His Mission

These are exciting times! Every day we experience God’s hand in Mission Alive. Church leaders are committing themselves to church planting, local churches are partnering with us to plant churches, and our initial church plantings are beginning. A new era is beginning – an era in which we are once again thinking of ourselves as a missionary people North America!

But I am concerned about many assumptions about "church" that significantly limit our ability to become a people planting authentic missional churches.

Many church leaders assume that the first step in church planting is purchasing a piece of property and constructing a church building. A church defined as “a place where things happen” (Guder 1998, 79) necessitates property and place. A second assumption is that church is a public “service” organized by a staff for the giving of information or for celebration. Church becomes, to some degree, a spectator engagement. These ideas are so culturally embedded in the term “church” that we commonly say, “Let’s go to church,” inferring place, or ask “When does church begin?” inferring service. When American pragmatism is added to this mix, church planting becomes “getting the largest number of people to a service in the shortest period of time.”

Within this cultural atmosphere where “success” is defined by numerical growth, church planting is frequently the reapportioning of the Christian population. Christians sometimes flock to new churches launched with significant capital because they offer better preaching, enhanced children’s ministry, superior classes, and/or inspirational services than other churches and thus draws their members. Megachurches, consequently, consume smaller churches in what might be called the Wal-Martization of Christianity. The goal becomes providing more and better services rather than providing a community of disciples on a pilgrimage through life helping each other be Christ’s disciples and encouraging others to join them as they journey through life to heaven. The first type of church is a social fraternity with some trappings of Christianity. The second is a unique community which is formed by the calling and sending of God and which reflects the redemptive reign of God in Christ.

Within this environment of cultural accommodation the word “church” must be redefined in relationship to the mission of God.

Journey to Houston

Last week Becky and I spent four wonderful days working with churches and future church planters in Houston. We feel God moving in this great city. We are amazed at its size, growth, and potential for kingdom growth.

I suspect that we will look back at Thursday, June 9, as an epic day. We first met in the home of Bob Odle, preaching minister of the Woodland Oaks church, with Steve Austin and Sixto Rivera. Bob is the facilitator of Mission Alive’s Strategy Team in Houston; Steve is the Director of the Texas Gulf Coast Bible Institute that equips Hispanic leaders in Houston, and Sixto Rivera is a Hispanic minister with the Highland Oaks church in Dallas and developing co-worker with us in Mission Alive. We met together to make plans and pray for Hispanic church planting in North America. That evening we met with the board of the Gulf Coast Bible Institute, where I made a presentation and we discussed the role of Mission Alive in equipping learners in the institute as church planters. We were impressed with the dreams for practical training in the Texas Gulf Coast Bible Institute. Students will study in the mornings and do practical ministry the rest of the day.

On Friday, we had a good meeting with a group of church leaders of the Bering Drive church in Houston. I made a presentation about Mission Alive followed by good discussion of the needs and directions of the Bering church. I appreciate the vision of Sean Palmer, the Associate Minister of Bering Drive, for arranging the meeting and being sensitive to the need for church planting in Houston.

On Friday evening, Becky and I met with a group from the Clear Lake church in South Houston. God worked powerfully through our group as we dreamed the dreams of God and talked and prayed about spiritual renewal and His direction. On Saturday morning Becky and I conducted one of our Becoming Redemptive Seminars with the Clear Lake church. About 25 attended including almost all of the missions leaders of the Clear Lake church; three of their elders; Byron and Liz Fike, the preaching minister of Clear Lake and his wife; members interested in missions, and three or four visitors from area churches. We were blessed and encouraged by the fellowship and the participants’ growth in understanding and vision for the God’s mission. On Sunday, I made a simple presentation on church renewal, which I call “Hope for the Flowers” or “Metamorphosis: From Caterpillar to Butterfly,” and following a potluck spent a couple of hours of fellowship and encouragement with Byron and Liz Fike.

It was one of those wonderful trips, full of relationships, a period of seed-sowing. We pray that out of these relationships God will work through us in Mission Alive to launch a church planting movement in Houston. Many from Houston will come to the Dallas-Fort Worth Church Planting Workshop on August 26-27 at the South MacArthur Church of Christ in Irving. Then on March 3-4, 2006, Mission Alive will conduct its first church planting workshop in Houston.

We noticed one perturbing yet typical trend in Houston. Churches of Christ are moving from the city to the suburbs leaving entire sections of the city without testimony to the gospel. It demonstrates the inability of the church to adapt to changing demographics. Churches of Christ must learn to both evangelize cross-culturally and church plant where members are moving thus maintaining our presence in the cities of North America.

Folk religion; God's healing

I have just finished teaching the graduate course Folk Religions and New Spiritualities at the Seminar in Missions at Abilene Christian University. This time I had 15 focused learners ministering in Mozambique and the USA and going to Tanzania, the Czech Republic, Sudan, Brazil, etc. The class interactions were thought-provoking; many of the relationships formed will be for a life-time.

I was once again surprised at the type of learning that took place in this class. The students learned as much about the secular roots of their own worldviews (Yes, even during this time called Post-Modernity.) and the nature and core of Christianity as they learned about folk religion and new spiritualities.

I ask all students to write a three-part paper in this class with the parts of about equal length. The first part describes animistic beliefs and practices of a ministry context (like practices among American “do-it-yourself” practitioners who privately practice new spiritualities in their homes using the “how-to-do-it” literature on taro cards, channeling, etc., found at most book stores). The second section of the paper provides theological frameworks, based on Scripture, interpreting the spiritual realities involved and studying the responses of people of God to similar realities. The final part of the paper suggests models of ministry, bringing kingdom realities into the animistic context. Of course, learners find it much easier to describe the culture than to do theology or develop models of ministry.

The Indian mother-in-law of our daughter Rebecca has been visiting her family and other relatives in San Francisco for six months. She became very sick. The doctors, including her daughter who is a doctor in the San Francisco area, felt that it was a stomach virus. It was, however a heart problem: the mitral valve was not allowing adequate flow of blood into her heart. She became weaker and weaker to the point of death. Rebecca, her husband Ravi, and many Christians prayed for her health. We are thankful that God has extended her life. Her healing is a testimony to some Hindus of the mighty acts of God. We continue to see God powerfully working.