OMS Canada
  • Home
  • PRAY
    • Prayer Warrior >
      • Prayerline
  • GO
    • By Country
    • By Skill
    • Embark
  • Give
    • Projects
    • Missionaries
    • Planned Giving
  • More...
    • Starfish Kids Sponsorship >
      • SFK for Kids
      • SFK Newsletters
    • OMS International Ministires
    • Blog
    • FAQ's
    • Resources
  • Contact Us
  • Outreach Magazine
  • Global Impact Report

OMS BLOG

Picture
CANADA

Challenge #6 - Producing and sustaining (and financing) high quality, long-term missionaries.

6/20/2019

0 Comments

 
In many cases our missionaries represent the best our churches have to offer and today’s missionary recruits have many advantages over previous generations.  Younger candidates have much awareness of the world and experience crossing cultures.  Second career candidates have rich life experiences, skills and expertise.  But many also have much to overcome.  Many have not grown up in the church.  Some have grown up in churches where Scripture teaching has not been solid.  Thus they may think and act more from a cultural than a biblical worldview.
Potential missionaries struggle with issues related to their family backgrounds, life experiences, relational issues, spiritual development, and expectations.  Our culture heavily affects our churches and congregations, and our culture does not tend to produce the Godly qualities described in the New Testament.
From the beginning the Church in North America has been closely connected to the culture and we still cling to it as the culture deteriorates.  We live pretty much at the level of our culture.  For the majority this includes a relative level of wealth, ease, and physical comforts but it also includes accommodation to habits, attitudes, practices, sins and weaknesses that compete with spiritual development.  In many churches people come to Christ with high expectations of personal benefits and little expectation of life transformation and change.  People in the church look and act much like people outside.  The moral looseness of our “Christian” society is an embarrassment to Christians around the world.  Church leaders sometimes set the pace by identifying with the culture through edgy language, film clips, and dramatic sketches.  Christians in general spend much time with the media and little time in the Bible, and consequently few are able to think and act consistently from a Christian worldview.  Our spiritual arrogance and independence are not good models.  Our freedoms to eat and drink and wear and say and do whatever we want are a hindrance and shame to many of the churches we want to help elsewhere in the world.
We are accustomed to a luxurious lifestyle, a stark contrast to most people in the world.  Habits and desires do not disappear when one decides to become a missionary.  Those who have never lacked anything may struggle in living situations that are still upscale compared to the people to whom they minister.  Such western missionaries are in an awkward position to teach others Scriptural attitudes toward money and sacrifice.  As one missions pastor told me, “Our church has a good missionary candidate training program but we can’t teach them how to live a simple lifestyle.” Christians and potential missionaries from our culture may sometimes appear to have little to offer unbelievers.
Dysfunctional backgrounds must be overcome.  Those who have struggled with abuse, addiction, broken families and relationship issues carry additional baggage that tends to surface under the pressures of cross-cultural conditions and spiritual challenges.  Our large spaces and independent lifestyles allow us to avoid people with whom we have problems.  Such issues are often not so easily resolved overseas.
Living in a world where Christianity is taken for granted does little to develop conditioning and toughness to withstand cultural and religious animosity and persecution.  As one woman in the third world said incredulously, “If you haven’t suffered persecution how do you know what it means to be a Christian?”
In spite of these issues, many godly people, young and old, are moving into significant mission roles, for which we can be enthusiastic and grateful.
 
 
Take Action
  • Note that younger generations have many natural cross-cultural relationships that facilitate working with people of other nationalities and languages.  Provide opportunities and training for building relationships and witnessing across cultures locally.
  • Go against the current.  Teach and practice the New Testament model of being set apart for Christ.
  • Challenge people to a self-denying, counter-cultural lifestyle.  Be clear about sin, purity and holiness.  Develop a culture of expectation of life transformation.
  • Develop accountability groups to help people live true to Christian convictions in both their personal and corporate lives.
  • Communicate broadly your hopes and dreams in missions.  Observe your congregation members for spiritual maturity and the promise of cross-cultural gifts.  Recruit individuals for involvement in your missions ministry and challenge them to cross-cultural missionary service.
  • Promote your strategic missions interests and point people toward them.
  • Carefully screen and nurture prospective missionaries.  Use your God-given judgment to help guide them.  Don’t be afraid to ask them to wait and grow when you see warning signs.  Send your best.
  • Be sure that missionary candidates have thorough exposure to the church and life in another culture.
 
Picture
0 Comments

CHALLENGE 5: MAXIMIZING MISSION TRIPS

6/13/2019

0 Comments

 
Probably everything that can be said about mission trips has been said.  And probably everything that has been said is true somewhere. However, it is too big a phenomenon to ignore.  
The last twenty years have seen an explosion of mission trips.  Some estimate that one million Americans go on mission trips annually at a cost of $1 billion.  Early on mission trips were mostly undertaken to stimulate missions commitment in the sending church: more giving, and praying, and producing more long-term missionaries.  For years many of us have encouraged congregations to send their pastors and leaders to the mission field to give them first-hand experience and build their missions commitment.
Now people are traveling everywhere in the world for all kinds of reasons and no reason at all, and missions trips are part of this trend.  Daniel Rickett said that mission trips are at the tipping point of becoming tourism.  On the contrary, many Christians have seen needs elsewhere in the world and discovered ways they can contribute.  Almost all new long-term missionaries have been on one or more mission trips.  Others have maintained contact with people in remote parts of the world.  Nearly anyone you ask will say the mission trip was a “life-changing experience.”  The results of more research are coming to light, with mixed results.  It seems a life-changing experience isn't what it used to be.  Some people are attempting to build a life made up of a series of life-changing experiences. Some people who go on a mission trip come home two weeks behind in their work and find the washing machine broken, a tired wife, and a houseful of dirty laundry. This turns out to be another life changing experience, partially neutralizing the earlier one.
Mission trips are changing the way we view missions and do missions.  Mission trips are a means to accomplish mission work on the field, to enlighten and disciple the ones who go, and to influence the congregation back home.  At the same time, trips consume a great deal of missions energy both at home and on the field.  Those who go return exhilarated, worn out, and two weeks behind.  Unless the fires are deliberately stoked, they tend to die out.    
While much good work is accomplished on trips, there are not infrequent reports that trips were more costly than beneficial, if not down right detrimental, on the mission field.  The permanent life change we hope to see in the one who goes gradually fades back into normal American life.  The congregation may not get the full impact because there is little opportunity to communicate and because of a failure to think clearly about what needs to be communicated.  Not too long ago I heard a missions trip report that included no mention of giving, one appeal for prayer, and several enthusiastic appeals for people to go on trips.  The primary result of most trips is more trips.


Mission trips are a means to accomplish mission work on the field, to enlighten and disciple the ones who go, and to influence the congregation back home."
I’ve never heard anyone say that their church’s regular missions budget (outside of giving for mission trips) has grown because of their mission trips.  I'm sure it has happened but it doesn't appear to be a general expectation. It is clear, however, that an increasing proportion of many missions budgets is going to help support the trips.  One of my friends told me that their church had notified a long supported missionary couple that they wouldn’t be able to support them any longer because they needed the funds for more missions trips.
While most new missionaries have taken mission trips, there is little evidence of a surge of new long-term missionaries.
An increasing number of churches are making trips a major part, sometimes the primary part, of their missions ministry.  Others are using trips not for doing ministry but primarily as a discipleship tool. One young leader in a mega church told me that the reason they do mission trips is merely to disciple their people. There is no doubt that mission trips can be an effective discipling tool but subtly mission trips are becoming something we do for ourselves rather than a means of stimulating greater missions involvement and effectiveness in the world.  When we find ourselves “using” missions as a tool for our own benefit, or doing missions in a certain way because it provides a means for personal involvement, and not to accomplish something for Jesus out in the world, we have gone off course.
The challenge is to do mission trips in such a way that they are productive on the field, they disciple the people who go, and they stimulate the congregation to greater missions commitment.  This is no small challenge.
 
Take Action
  • Force yourself to think objectively what roles mission trips play in your reason or purpose for doing missions.
  • Design and conduct trips that will contribute to your long-term missions goals and priorities.
  • Establish goals for each trip.  In most cases these goals should include what the receiving group wants to happen on the field, what you want to happen in the life of the person who goes, and what you want to happen in your congregation.
  • Plan the trip follow-through as carefully as the rest of the trip.  Make sure everyone knows in advance what is expected in the follow-through.  And follow through.
  • As part of the trip preparation, clarify that goers should expect God to bring significant change to their lives.  Challenge them to be ready to accept it.  One goal for every person who goes is a lifetime involvement in missions in some productive way.
  • Provide a mentor for every one who goes to meet at least monthly for six months after the trip.  During the meetings the mentor will help the individual discern and begin to implement what God has been teaching him or her as a result of the trip.
  • Arrange in advance all the avenues necessary to ensure the trip has the appropriate impact on the congregation or appropriate segments of the congregation.
  • Evaluate every trip in relation to its goals.  Make corrections for future trips.
  • Leverage your trips to increase missions prayer in your congregation and to increase your missions budget.  Use your reporting time to emphasize spiritual need, spiritual results and to appeal for prayer and long-term funding.
  • Fund the trips primarily outside the missions budget. 
Picture
0 Comments

CHALLENGE 4: BALANCING NEW STRATEGIES WITH COMMITMENT TO LONG TERM MISSIONARIES

6/7/2019

0 Comments

 
Church leaders always have to decide how to best use limited resources for Kingdom benefit.  Which takes priority, investing in promising and productive missions strategies or supporting and caring for current long-term missionaries?
Historically congregations have been connected to missions through their missionaries who are their primary concern. Some churches idolize missionaries, the people who gave up everything to live for Jesus in far away places in the world.  The support and welfare of their missionaries is their number one priority.  One pastor told me, “We have never missed a check for our missionaries, and as long as I’m the pastor we never will.”  They may have little idea what the missionaries are trying to accomplish, but their prayers are on behalf of the missionary and rarely the people they serve.  They would not think of asking whether a missionary is effective or their ministry is strategic but whether he is safe and healthy.
Many churches do not have specific missions goals and priorities.  Until recently the most common church goal was to raise as much money as possible for missions.  Less attention was given to what was accomplished or attempted with the funds raised.  Local church lay leaders are often unaware of various parts of the world and know little about cultures and mission strategies.  They support and trust missionaries and mission organizations that have their own goals.  The church missions strategy is a collection of the strategies of supported missionaries and organizations.
Many churches have lost touch with a number of the missionaries they support.  Few people know them and they have little idea of what or how they are doing.  New missions leaders may want to evaluate their missionaries but they may have unreasonable expectations.  Is a church entitled to evaluate the ministry of someone with whom they haven't communicated and of whom they have only perhaps 5% of their support?  Further, what standards apply?  Could you use the same standards to evaluate your church?  Others are highly critical of missionaries whose results aren't dramatic.  They seem to assume church growth in a difficult environment should be rapid and dramatic like it happens to be in their church.  One young missions pastor in a large suburban church told me their elders were considering disengaging with their missionaries in the 10/40 Window.  They wanted to take a “high impact” approach like their ministry in the Canada.  It seemed to be a new idea to him that “high impact” might look different in the 10/40 Window.

Becoming more strategic while taking care of our missionaries is a major challenge."
Occasionally a new missions committee takes their responsibility to become better stewards of missions resources seriously and they develop a good strategy.  Wise leaders will consider the input of, and the consequences to, their far away and dependent missionaries.  Alternatively, missionaries who may have pioneered the missions ministry in the church or been long time workers from the church may be unceremoniously dumped because they don’t fit into the new strategy.
Increasingly church leaders recognize that the congregation has become disconnected from missions and they work to get more people connected and involved.  With fewer and time-limited services, there is little opportunity to help the congregation to learn to know all the missionaries on their roster.  Even the missions team can't keep up.  This leads to a desire to reduce the number of supported missionaries so that the church can focus more heavily on the ministry of a few.  The same reasoning makes it difficult for new missionaries to obtain support unless they are highly regarded members of the congregation.
In reaction to the criticism that "churches only want your money," raising money has become an almost taboo topic in churches.  In days past churches enthusiastically raised funds for missions.  When people in the congregation were approached by individual missionaries for support, it was understood.  As one fundraising missionary told me last week, "Young people don't have supported missionary models visiting and having dinner and being touted at church anymore.  Support-raising, except for mission trips is foreign and odd."
The most natural forms of congregational involvement are mission trips and projects in the community.  These require a great deal of planning and management.  Many missions leaders are so busy with organizing these complex involvements along with their other church responsibilities, that they have little time to think about how or whether these high-involvement projects contribute to the larger goal of world evangelization. Becoming more strategic while taking care of our missionaries is a major challenge.
 
Take Action
  • Take good care of your missionaries.  Get to know them.  Appoint an individual in the congregation who knows them to be their advocate, to keep in touch, to pass along their accomplishments and needs.  Concern yourself with their goals, progress, and dreams.  Pray for them.  Help them communicate with segments of the congregation and develop personal friendships among your members.  If you've been out of touch for a long time, be patient.
  • Help your missionaries from a developmental perspective.  Work with their sending agencies.  Do what you can do as a church to help them become as effective as possible.  If you have a small proportion of their support, don't expect to provide a high proportion of guidance or evaluation.
  • Read and learn everything you can about the world, the situations of peoples and nations, missions trends, and the methods and strategies God is using effectively today.
  • Develop strategies and pursue them as your missions budget expands, as new missionary candidates surface, and as current missionaries leave the field.
  • Watch for good partners, both Canadian and international, who are pursuing the same goals.  Undertake partnerships where working together you can accomplish more than going it alone.  Work closely with your denomination or your favorite sending agency or partner.
Picture
0 Comments

    Archives

    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018

    Categories

    All
    Am I Called To Be A Missionary?
    Commands Of Christ
    Discipleship
    Excitment In Estonia
    For The Church
    God's Heart For The Nations
    Growing In Christ
    Habits Of Grace
    Happenings In Haiti
    Musings Of Mozambique
    Prayer
    Radio/Television 4VEH
    Seminary News
    Spiritual Disciplines
    Spiritual Warfare And Missions
    Stories From The Field
    Understanding Missions
    Value Of Legacy Giving

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • PRAY
    • Prayer Warrior >
      • Prayerline
  • GO
    • By Country
    • By Skill
    • Embark
  • Give
    • Projects
    • Missionaries
    • Planned Giving
  • More...
    • Starfish Kids Sponsorship >
      • SFK for Kids
      • SFK Newsletters
    • OMS International Ministires
    • Blog
    • FAQ's
    • Resources
  • Contact Us
  • Outreach Magazine
  • Global Impact Report