Seminar in Missions

During these three weeks (May 16-June 3), I am in Abilene teaching two courses in ACU’s Seminar in Missions.

It is a transitional time. Becky and I taught Introduction to World Evangelization for probably our last time. For much of the past seventeen and a half years we have taught this course three times a year (Fall, Spring, Summer) to hundreds of students. The skit of “Sceptor and Hoe” moves from this undergraduate missions course to an application in some of our Church Planting Workshops.

Sherwood Lingenfelter, author of Ministering Cross-Culturally (and other books) and provost of Fuller Theological Seminary, is this years’ resource person at the three-day Mission Focus between the two sessions of the Seminar. One evening Lingenfelter met with faculty members at Sonny Guild’s home. He made a comment about church planting that I thought was insightful. He said that church planting cannot be learned in an institution but must be learned like “the laying of bricks,” within the contexts of active incarnational ministry.

I will shortly begin teaching Folk Religion and New Spiritualities. I anticipate a good group of students serving as missionaries and ministers from many part of the world. I am reorganizing the course and putting it on PowerPoint for the first time. I find that this course is ideal for domestic church planters who will minister in post-modern contexts where new spiritualities are flourishing as well as those who minister among Spiritists in Brazil, Shintoists in Japan, and practitioners of African Traditional Religion.

During evenings and in-between activities, Becky and I have enjoyed making presentations to some possible future church planters. We are amazed at the number of people coming into church planting and the developing interest in church planting.

In the midst of all the activities in Abilene, we continue to make plans for the Dallas-Ft. Worth Church Planting Workshop which will be hosted by the South MacArthur Church of Christ in Irving, August 26-27, 2005. The topic of the workshop this year will be “What kind of Churches Should We Plant? The Nature of Missional Church Planting.”

We have also been organizing the Discovery Labs for church planters entering Mission Alive, scheduled for June 20-23 and Sept. 8-11.

We ask for your prayers as we juggle the many activities of our life and ministry.