Saturday, August 29, 2009

THE UPWARD SPIRAL - How missions zeal leads to missions zeal, which leads to missions zeal




Missions zeal leads to missions sending, which leads to missions news and missionary visits, which leads to missions zeal

A zeal for missions in local churches leads to churches sending missionaries. This leads to churches supporting and then sending missionaries themselves. This leads to missions news and visits by missionaries and a heartfelt commitment by local congregations as they personally “own” the missionary task. This leads to missions zeal, which, again, leads to missions sending….
An upward spiral!

There is a truth in missions history, and it is this: God often calls missionaries by means of other missionaries. God often draws people into involvement in missions by means of involvement in missions.

Because of this, I have been very busy on the road!

As a missionary passes through local congregations, speaks and makes missions real to people, God often chooses this particular time to plant the missionary call in the listener’s soul. God often implants the missionary call into a soul after exposure to another missionary – like a virus!

I have a goal to mobilize and recruit more missionaries. I long to help fill some of the vast needs that I see every day overseas. My heart aches and I have wept over things that I have seen. I want you to come and weep with me; and also work!

I am aware that God works by means. One means by which God calls missionaries into service is by bringing a real, live missionary to talk to a church. For some reason, there are many Christians who want to serve in missions, but their ideas about possible missions service floats in their minds in a fuzzy way that is not actionable until a real, live missionary can be consulted. It often seems that, to make missions actionable, it takes the presence of a missionary, someone who people can see, hear, and ask questions to. Then, missions becomes real, tangible and doable.

I know that I am not eloquent or flashy. I think these deficiencies are actually advantageous to my task. How? This lack of smoothness allows people to see me for who I am, an imperfect servant whom God is using to advance His Kingdom. These deficiencies that others see in me might, in fact, embolden others to serve in missions; “If he can serve, certainly I can serve too.” And if the Lord is pleased to use even this aspect of my service, then I rejoice.

So, please join this upward spiral with me. Tell people about missions. Send me your questions. Let me speak to your group about missions. Put people into contact with me. If they are not impressed with me, then so much the better because, if I can serve, maybe they can too!

Good missions quote by Jim Elliot

“It makes me boil when I think of the power we profess and the utter impotency of our action. Believers who know one-tenth as much as we do are doing one hundred times more for God, with His blessing and our criticism.”

Lecrae - Send Me



I am an Ozark Hillbilly. I don't like rap. But I heard about Lecrae and I checked out his video, and I can praise God for it. He has solid lyrics and has been on the Al Mohler show and does a good inner-city work in Memphis I believe.

Below are the words. The beat might stretch some out of their comfort zones, but I guess the piano and Fanny Crosby might as well in some cultures.

I was drawn to the words and the passion and I will add this: I would love to see the black churches in the US make a reversal out of their predominantly bad theology and begin to once again engage in missions on the levels that they did prior to the Civil War, when many, many went to Liberia and other places in Africa as missionaries. Now, blacks make up 13% of the US population but only a fraction of the foreign missionary force. I would love for God to reverse this trend and I pray that God would mobilize this demographic:



Send me I'll go,
send me I'll go,
send me I'll go,
lemme go lemme go!
(repeat x4)

i seen it with my own two,
there's no way i can show you
a perfectly poverty stricken people with no view.
And i bet you can't believe this,
they never heard of jesus.
Heard young butler, lil wayne, and young jeezy.

No one's signing up to go on missions this summa.
Rather sit at home and watch exibit pimp in a humma
while a nine year old is shot down.
No one's screaming 'stop now!'
no bridge illustrations for criminals who on lock down.

People deep in africa
looking for an answer bra'.
In china man,
they're dieing man,
until they know who died for sins.
So look what grace did.
Not for us to stay here
inside our comfort zones
at home in mama's basement.

Get out on the grind y'all.
Ain't no better time doll.
I know y'all read the great commission.
Let me just remind y'all:
make disciples of the nations.
Teach'm to obey the lord.
Have to lead someone to christ before i face the lord.

Send me I'll go,
send me I'll go,
send me I'll go,
lemme go lemme go!
(repeat x4)

hey! After, 1,000 years in the west and the churches
get'n bigger daily without understand'n worship. (say what?)
Some regenerate but a lot ain't saved.
You walk outside and be surprised cuz the block ain't changed.
And the numbers they be get'n me.
Something just ain't hit'n them.
America ain't christian they practice'n the ritual.
That's why we should be missional.
Hey, what you think i'm spit'n for?
The united states is die'n
and in the east is looking pitiful.

Some places if they catch you
they'll arrest you.
They'll serve you,
but they still need the word too.
The gospel should be heard too.
We claim we ain't ashamed,
but we ain't hit the block up.
Were in our christian bubble,
while our brotha's get'n locked up.
Lord i wanna stock up,
pack a bag and walk up
in a country where my faith may get me shot up
anywhere i go, whether my city or far abroad,
i just wanna show' christ the risen holy god.

Send me I'll go,
send me I'll go,
send me I'll go,
lemme go lemme go!
(repeat x4)

i know they're die'n in the streets over in the middle east.
Some kids sink in piece
others hold'n up a piece.
If the violence doesn't cease,
then at least the deceased
might know jesus as their savior as their bodies hit the streets.
And i know this is a graphic view.
And i pray that it's attack'n you.
Track'n you to act and do
what you see in the back illusion.
Mathew twenty-four and fourteen.
We should read it twice
before we think that life is just a battle
see we free in christ!
Look dawg! Life is more than church work and football!
What if you were dead and seen that christians overlooked y'all!
This is why we leave the couch
and leave the comforts of our house
to show a die'n world a god they'll probably never read about.

The great commission says make disciples of all nations.
Have we even made them in our own nation?
Come on christians!
Missions exist because worship doesn't.
People don't worship the god who made them.
We're ambassadors.
Let's go!

Send me I'll go,
send me I'll go,
send me I'll go,
lemme go lemme go!
(repeat x4)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbVstiSoweA

A good video about missions and evangelistic motivation

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Books on Spiritual Warfare - a very important missionary topic






The devil is real, is active, and is vicious.

We need not fall into Christo-animistic ritualism, fear, or the addressing of any spirits.

We rely on prayer, addressed to God, and in the normal means of grace.

Here are some books on the subject of spiritual warfare, a subject that is popular of late and also very important in missions.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Must all missionaries be pastors? An appeal for women workers.





The crying need today in missions is more elder-qualified long-term resident missionaries.

However, in our zeal to increase trained clergy and to send out pastor-educated men, let us not forget the great contributions of women in missions.



I have actually had people tell me that there is no role for women in missions except for in the role of a missionary wife.

I have actually had churches introduce my family as "Missionary T...J... and his wife....Teresa" - and it seems the impetus for this phaseology was the refusal to refer to a woman as a missionary.




THAT IS JUST SILLY!



If you eliminated all women from the mission field you would be eliminating well over 60% of the missions labor-force. YES, the MAJORITY of missionaries are of the female gender. The right man for the job turns out often to be a woman.


I suppose that Aquila should have just left his wife Priscilla at home and she deserves a rebuke rather than commendation for helping Apollos learn greater Gospel truth.




While only men should exercise ecclesiastical authority, why must we stress the restrictive verses of Scripture?

Why do we want to highlight what women cannot do, rather than all that they can do?



Okay, women cannot be pastors of churches, but they can teach women and children, many have done great work in literacy and translation, many have exercised compassion in medical ministries, schools and orphanages. Under the male ecclesiastical authority of a church, a women can fill a great number of roles. Are we enabling them to do so? Are we being more restrictive than Scripture in helping every member of Christ's Body to serve Him in their fullest capacity?


Here is one huge need right here:

Seeing that women in the Mslm world are often unable to be reached by male missionaries, missionary women may be the key to reach this large demographic of the world's population - Mslm women - perhaps a BILLION souls!

Prayer as a missionary warfare weapon


"Until you believe that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for."

- John Piper



"The number one reason why prayer malfunctions in the hands of believers is that they try to turn a wartime walkie-talkie into a domestic intercom."

- John Piper.

A Wartime Lifestyle


Excerpt from "Commitment to a Wartime Lifestyle" by Ralph Winter



The Queen Mary, lying in repose in the harbor at Long Beach, California, is a fascinating museum of the past. Used both as a luxury liner in peacetime and a troop transport during the Second World War, its present status as a museum the length of three football fields affords a stunning contrast between the lifestyles appropriate in peace and war.

...On one side of a partition you see the dining room reconstructed to depict the peacetime table setting that was appropriate to the wealthy patrons of high culture for whom a dazzling array of knives and forks and spoons held no mysteries. On the other side of the partition the evidences of wartime austerities are in sharp contrast. One metal tray with indentations replaces fifteen plates and saucers. Bunks eight tiers high explain how the peacetime capacity of 3,000 gave way to 15,000 on board in wartime.

How repugnant to the peacetime masters this transformation must have been! To do it took a national emergency, of course. The survival of a nation depended on it. The essence of the Great Commission today is that the survival of many millions of people depends on its fulfillment.

But obedience to the Great Commission has more consistently been poisoned by affluence than by anything else. The antidote for affluence is reconsecration. Consecration is by definition the "setting apart of things for holy use." Affluence did not keep Bordon of Yale from giving his life in Egypt. Affluence didn't stop Francis of Assisi from moving against the tide of his time.

Will wartime priorities work?

The missionary tradition has always stressed a practical measure of austerity and simplicity, as well as a parity of level of consumption within its missionary ranks. But the same lifestyle is often seen as impractical among people back home. Widespread reconsecration to a reformed lifestyle with wartime priorities is not likely to be successful among homefront believers:

---so long as the Great Commission is thought of as impossible to fulfill

---so long as we think that the problems of the world are hopeless or that, conversely, they can be solved merely by politics or technology

---so long as our home problems loom larger to us than anyone else's

---so long as people enamored of western culture do not understand that Chinese and Muslims can become evangelical Christians without abandoning their cultural systems--just as the Greeks did in Paul's day

---so long as modern believers, like the ancient Hebrews, think that God's sole concern is the blessing of our nation

---so long as well-paid evangelicals, both pastors and people, consider their money a gift from God to spend however they wish on themselves rather than a responsibility from God to help others in spiritual and economic need

---so long as we do not understand that he who would seek to save his life shall lose it.



Ours is a save-yourself society if there ever was one. But does it really work?

Underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, and so on. Affluent North

America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal diseases, cirrhosis of the liver, etc. And we're more than ever plagued with the social diseases of drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide and murder. Take your choice. Our divorce courts, prisons, psychiatric offices and mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves, we have nearly lost ourselves. How hard have we tried to save others?

The 20,000 members of the Friends Missionary Prayer Band of South India support 500 fulltime missionaries in North India. If my denomination (with its unbelievably greater wealth per person) were to do that well, we would not be sending 500 missionaries but 65,000. In spite of their true poverty, these Indian believers are proportionately sending over 130 times more cross-cultural missionaries than we are!

The statistics are always embarrassing: We spend as much on chewing gum annually as we do on missions. Our annual giving to foreign missions is equal to the amount we spend in a 52-day period on pet food. The comparisons aren't fair, of course, since fewer of our society are giving to the fulfillment of the Great Commission than are buying pet food.





But the pattern of our society is clear - we're much like Ezekiel's listeners:

"They come as though they are sincere and sit before you listening. But they have no intention of doing what I tell them to; they talk very sweetly about loving the Lord, but with their hearts they are loving money. . .

"My sheep wandered through the mountains and hills and over the face of the earth, and there was no one to search for them or care about them. . .

" 'As I live,' says the Lord God, '. . . you were no real shepherds at all, for you didn't search for them [my flock]. You fed yourselves and let them starve . . . Therefore,' the Lord God says: 'I will surely judge between these fat shepherds and their scrawny sheep . . . and I will notice which is plump and which is thin, and why!'
"
Ezekiel 33:31; 34:36; 34:8,20,22b


God is speaking here of more than just food for the hungry; our whole lives may be "plump" while others' are "scrawny." We must learn that Jesus meant it when He said, "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required."



I believe that God cannot expect less from us in our Christian duty to save other nations than we in wartime require of ourselves to save our own nation.








This article first appeared in the September/October 1994 issue of Mission Frontiers, U.S. Center for World Mission.

What are you doing TODAY to get to your goals in 3-5 years?




The journey of 1,000 miles begins with you getting off your butt and taking action.



Waiting on the Lord does not involve laziness or inaction. We are to be vigorous, aggressive and incessant as we wait. This waiting involves preparation, research, and prayer.


If you want to go into missions, what are you doing right now about it?

Suggestions: (1) pray about it, (2) talk to your elders about it, (3) take the Perspectives Course, (4) Read current missions books, (5) read about the needs of the world, (5) Research the doctrines and philosophies of ministry for various mission boards (start with World Team, www.worldteam.org),

and,

(6) realize that you will not leave the field a week after you decide for missions....the process of becoming a missionary takes several years.





There are many preliminary mountains to climb before you even reach that final summit.

You had better start preparing now.

The sin of letting past sin make you hesitant for future service


Ok, so you were a sinner before you were saved.


GET OVER IT!


Some people are not bold to serve the Lord because they feel as if past sin has taken the wind out of their sails.


This is a tool of the devil for making you idle, lazy and timid in doing great things for God.

If you boldly sinned before conversion, you should twice as boldly serve after conversion





Remember, the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin to save us and put us into service; Satan accuses us to cripple us and defeat us.


WHO ARE YOU LISTENING TO?




Listen to William Gurnall's advice on how to be a Christian in Complete Armor:


His [the devil's] aim is to discredit not the sins but the saints. Here his chief tactic is to deliver his accusations as if they are an act of the Holy Spirit. He knows a charge from God’s cannon wounds deeply; therefore, when he accuses a conscientious Christian, he forges God’s name on the missile before he fires it. Suppose a child were conscious of gravely displeasing his father, and some spiteful person, to harass him, wrote and sent him a counterfeit letter full of harsh and threatening accusations, copying the father’s name at the bottom. The poor child, already painfully aware of his sins and not knowing the scheme, would be overcome with grief. Here is real heartache stemming from a false premise - just the kind of thing Satan relishes.

Satan is a clever investigator. He closely observes the relationship between you and God. Sooner or later he will catch you tardy in some duty or faulty in a service. He knows you are conscious of your shortcomings and that the Spirit of God will also show distaste for them. So he draws up a lengthy indictment, raking up all the aggravations he can think of, then serves this warrant on you as though sent from God.







Re-read the Scriptures:

And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan; even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him be said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment. And I said, Let them set a fair mitre upon his head. So they set a fair mitre upon his head, and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the Lord stood by.”

Zechariah 3:1-5.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

4 bad reasons why people drop out of the pursuit of missions


Many investigate missions but few actually go. Here are some bad reasons why people drop out of the process:


(1) THEY NEVER TRANSFORM THEIR THOUGHTS ABOUT GOING INTO MISSIONS INTO CONCRETE, PRACTICAL ACTION-STEPS:

Many think about becoming missionaries but never do any more. If you want to be a missionary, begin with action...NOW. Talk to your elders, talk to sending agencies, begin to pray for people-groups throughout the world, and begin to cultivate a lifestyle that is consistent with missions.

(2) DEBT:

Many people are saddled with debt and the thought of paying off that debt to go to the field becomes too burdensome for them. Many young people, with good intentions, go to a bible school to equip themselves for missions and then, ironically, the fees for this equipping process becomes a major hindrance to them actually getting on the field.

(3) SPOUSES:

The prospect of serving as a single missionary is too much for some people. Many people think that once they land a spouse then they will go into missions, and then they discover that their spouse doesn't hold an intense desire to go to the field, thus disqualifying them from service.


Often a cute female will express missionary intent to a suitor and then .... ZAP! ... the man will suddenly become interested in missions...until love has blossomed and plans of marriage are solidified. This suitor may even believe themselves to desire missions, but what they truly desire is the love of this cute girl and the desire for missions wanes once the girl is landed.

Or a man will desire missions but may worry about his sexual purity or loneliness. Since it is better to marry than burn, he will find a spouse, hoping that this will enable him to live purer and fight lonelines so that he can then concentrate on the mission field. Yet, this wife comes with many family obligations, hesitations, or health issues, thus keeping him from the field. As the man pushes toward the field, he begins to resent her and she him.


(4) I AM NOT SURE THAT GOD IS CALLING ME


I had one friend vigorously repeat his missionary desires, but wasn't sure that God was calling him into missions. In fact, this friend regularly prayed that God would call him into missions because he so much desired to go...and yet he never went.

Why?

Because he had an overly mystical false view of the call. He never imagined that his intense desire was an evidence of that call and he never took practical action steps once he felt that desire. He never talked to his church leaders, he never investigated missionary organizations, he just harbored his private desires and prayed without doing any legwork - all in the name of "waiting on the Lord."



SOLUTIONS:

If you want to go into missions, take practical action steps. Know that a big part of the missionary call is your desire. Contact your church leaders and let them know and ask for advice and mentoring. Stay out of debt. Stay single or marry someone who is already preparing to go into missions (beginning your missions training now and attending missionary preparation courses is an excellent way of meeting other potential spouses who are already in the process of training for missions and of a like mind).

The Missionary Nature of the Church


“The Church is by nature missionary to the extent that, if it ceases to be missionary, it has not just failed in one of its tasks, it has ceased being Church.”

~J. Andrew Kirk



Missions is not something that the church DOES - it is something that the Church IS, and if a church stops being missionary than it is betraying its very identity.

Many define the marks of a church as, where the Gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered, yet the church's missionary nature must be part of this definition.

Five more essential books for missionary research





Three books for fitting in cross-culturally




Missions is evangelism, but it has a cross-cultural component. Missions entails crossing an ethno-linguistic barrier with the Gospel.

Therefore, a missionary must not only understand theology, they must be able to adapt in another culture and understand how theology applies across cultural barriers (all too often we export American theology without adequately understanding how much of what we value and do is actually culture and not Gospel). A missionary must not only be solid theologically, they must be a hearty and adaptable individual in order to be effective despite the rigors of culture shock and culture stress.


Here are 3 books to help one cope cross-culturally.


Cross-Cultural Connections by Duane Elmer,

Cross-Cultural Servanthood by Duane Elmer

and,

Ministering Cross-Culturally by Sherwood Lingenfelter.

Three more books for people considering missionary service






The Church is Bigger than you Think, by Patrick Johnstone, as well as Johnstone's Operation World and Bryant Myers Exploring World Missions.


These are essential books in showing the worldwise spread of the church and just how global our task is. Want to become a world Christian? Start by reading these books.