What is Church Planting? (WEC)

Are we to Reform cultures as missionaries?

"We are not here to transform or reform someone else's culture. Culture is not to be conquered, or converted, but incarnated, inhabited, and impregnated with the seed of the gospel....Jesus disciples are like water: We can take the shape of whatever person or culture we are without losing the essence of who we are. Like all water, we turn bad by standing in one place and not being in motion in mission."

(So Beautiful. Leonard Sweet, David C Cook Pub, 2009, pp182,3)

God as Father Is Not One of 101 Islamic Names for God

"The Muslim faithful have 101 names for God. They are missing only one: Father! This is our treasure."

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, 2003 installation address in Rome. (www.opusdei.us/art.php?p=6908)

The Mission Invitation Is To Come Encounter Jesus

"All lives are changed that encounter Jesus the person. Evangelism is a Spirit-led encounter with the resurrected Christ. The same can be said of teaching, preaching, play, fellowship, sacraments, worship, justice, and all the other `church' activities. Unless we are pointing to Jesus, introducing and helping others to encounter this Word-made-Flesh who challenges our core assumptions, engages with us in unexpected ways, and turns our lives bottoms up, then we are not functioning as a church."

("So Beautiful". Leonard Sweet. David C. Cook Pub, 2009, pp 104)

Warning! Can Community Development Offer Ease & Comfort at the Expense of Relationships?

"South African pastor Fourie Vandenberg tells of leading a mission trip to the north of Namibia. The first thing the team noticed in the local kraal (Village) in which they were staying was that the women had to walk every day to a well with a huge heavy bucket on their heads to fetch water..
`We immediately decided to do something about it.'
Within two weeks flashy new water pipes were delivering water to every little hut in the kraal.
Within a week after the installation of the plumbing the villagers removed all the pipes and piled them politely on the out skits of the kraal.
When Fourie asked why they had plundered the plumbing and undone all their hard work, the Namibians explained that it is customary for the women to walk to a well with other women sharing their experiences about life. Carrying heavy buckets on the head while chatting with friends:`It's not a bad thing: it's a good thing.'
When the walk to the well was taken away and life was made `never so good,' life was really made ever so difficult."

(So Beautiful. Leonard Sweet, David C. Cook Pub, 2009, pp 102)

Often times I feel we have things to save us time, just so that we can crazily run after other things, things that just don't matter much.

Relationally we end up cutting ourselves off from one another. For example; eating a meal together in many cultures, and throughout history, was/is a deep meaningful event. It communicates unity, acceptance, shared journey, relationship. Now we view eating as something to get out of the way quickly, so we can run off and do something "productive". We take both hands and shove a sandwich in, wash it down with some coffee, and run.

We have lost the spiritual importance of feeding our body, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and inviting others into proximity with this temple, by sharing a relaxed meal around a table in conversation.
Relationship always trumps stuff.
Relationship always trumps lists.
Relationship always trumps production.
Well at least in a dream world.

Oh How I miss the relational elements of Africa some days.

The "Missing Link" for the "People" of South Sea Islands

In 1833 Charles Darwin went to the South Sea Islands looking for the so- called "missing link." As he studied the cannibals who lived there, he concluded that no creatures anywhere were more primitive, and he was convinced that nothing on earth could possibly lift them to a higher level. He thought he had indeed found a lower less developed Level of humanity. That would fit his theory of I evolution.

Thirty-four years later Darwin returned to the same islands. To his amazement he , discovered churches, schools, and homes occupied by some of those former cannibals. In fact, …..Many frequently gathered to sing hymns.

The reason was soon learned: Missionary John G. Paton had been there proclaiming the truths of Salvation! Darwin was so moved by their transformation that he made a generous contribution to the London Missionary Society. Darwin's "missing link" thus remained missing. -Henry G. Bosch

Is the Devil Ignoring You?

"I believe hat the enemy divides all people into two categories; those
he can ignore and those he has to fight. I want to be one of those that
he has to fight."

(Robert Logan & Tom Clegg. "Releasing Your Church's Potential" regal 1997, pp 4-12)

Gandhi &The Power of the Scriptures

"You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more
than a piece of good literature."

(Mohandas Gandhi)

Missions Is Deeper than "Going"

Most people tend to think that missions is all about getting people to the field. This is an important part of the picture, and we do work vigorously to mobilize people to go. But the vital thing is to be doing the most strategic work in the smartest way possible. You can work very hard to get a lot of people to climb a ladder only to find that it is leaning against the wrong wall. The Cause of Christ needs good information and good strategies in order to succeed.

(Rick Wood, Mission Frontiers. March-April 2009, pp4)

36 Km of pure Humility. I Cried Like a Baby Last Night!

36 km that humbled me Last night

Got this email from a co-worker in Africa - Eugene is on the right. Taught the guy many times, and know his home village of Bebou like the back of my hand. Here is the story about what his "Mentally Handicapped brother did after the leaders Graduation yesterday where Eugene graduated as a church leader.

"After all was over and we were taking picture after picture after picture, a guy showed up looking really angry and covered with sweat (Left). It looked like someone had dumped a bucket of water on him. It was quite amazing. Wisdom brought him to Eugene and had me take their picture together. The guy acted a little strange and didn't say a word. Then I realized it was Eugene's brother. I've always heard that he has Down's Syndrome. Looking at him, I don't think that's the case, but he's obviously mentally challenged or however you say that in PC terms these days......Anyway, Eugene's brother walked the 36 kms from Bébou yesterday morning to be there for Eugene's graduation. That's why he was so sweaty. He missed the whole thing but he didn't care. He grabbed Eugene right after this picture and started sobbing crying "Pastor!" "Pastor!" It was really really touching. Eugene just hugged him and told him it was okay and he was glad he was there and to stop crying. Bless his little heart. 36 kms on foot in blazing sun to see his brother become a pastor. That's love, disabled or not."

NOT Called to Plant Churches?

“You might say `I’m not called to plant churches.’ Yes, you are! It’s always the will of God to have a people who worship His Son in the nations. You’ll never have to worry about making God mad if you try to plant a church. It seems crazy to me that people are under the delusion they need a special calling to save souls, to disciple them, and to get them together to love Jesus”

("Apostolic Passion", Floyd McClung. "Perspectives on the world Christian Movement", 1999, William Carey Library, Pasadena California . Pg 186c)

Waiting for a Mission Vision?

“If you can’t see very far ahead...go ahead as far as you can see.”

Dawson Trotman

("Skills for the Task". Greg H Parson, Mission Frontiers Jan-Feb 2009. Vol 31, No 1, Pg 30 USCWM)

Islamic View of Sin is Often Vertical Rather than Horizontal Shame versus Guilt

This is a keen insight that also apply to the animistic people I lived among. Relationships are paramount.

Guilt is a normal reaction of a Western Christian to sin. His conscience is smitten; this leads to remorse and often to repentance. Sensitivity to and the definition of sin depends on many factors. Conscience is conditioned by culture, moral codes, and parental teaching. Sin is regarded primarily as a rebellion against God and secondarily as rebellion against fellow man.

"By contrast the Muslim focuses on the penalty for sin. He does not usually experience sin as guilt but rather as shame and embarrassment losing face is the crucial issue. Lynn Silvernale describes this reaction to sin in the life of a Muslim Bengali. “Shame or embarrassment is a primary social control, that is, it causes a person to try to keep himself in a socially acceptable position.. . . The Bengali governs his behavior by asking himself, ‘What will people say?”

Three-wheeled cycle rickshas are very common in one Muslim country. The drivers arc notorious for their behavior on the road. Often the police will grab one of these drivers and punish him by making him grab his ears, stick out his tongue, and do scores of deep knee bends. The public laugh and ridicule as they pass by. The embarrassment of this simple, nonviolent mode of punishment bums deeply into the heart of the offender.

A consequence of the Muslim perspective is that it is difficult to communicate the biblical meaning of sin to a Muslim. His outlook is horizontal rather than vertical. Often the key criterion of a definition of sin is whether or not a person is caught. ......Repentance and tears come quickly to people with this perspective when they are apprehended in the act. But seldom does guilt lead Muslims to take the initiative and confess a sin of social consequence. The ideal would seem to be a merger of the vertical and horizontal guilt before God along with the shame and embarrassment one feels in relation to other human beings. These forces acting in concert can serve as an effective deterrent to sin."

(Muslim Evangelism: Contemporary Approaches to Contextualization. Phil Parshall. Gabriel Publishing. 2003 p. 96-97)

Muslim Cultures see Extraction Evangelism as Abhorrent!

A case for family conversion & methodologies

"Note also the remarks of Michael Youssef, who says, “As a Christian Arab, I know that Arabs do not like alienation. Their whole life is centered upon family, friends and peer groups. We, therefore, have put unnecessary barriers before them in emphasizing the individualistic approach in evangelism.”

This last point is of greatest importance. Up to the present, the most common form of evangelism employed by Westerners has been to win individuals to Christ. This has, in group-oriented cultures, led to extraction from society and, often, to total alienation. This approach should be repudiated. In Western culture, which sees individualism as a positive trait, this is an acceptable form of evangelism. In Muslim countries, however, it is abhorrent. New approaches must be probed that allow for whole groups to come to Christ at once. The high value given to the interrelatedness of society must be retained. This is a good and positive sociological characteristic that must be appreciated and preserved.

(Muslim Evangelism: Contemporary Approaches to Contextualization. Phil Parshall. Gabriel Publishing. 2003 p. 90-91)

Missionaries - Put your watch away & your Calender down if you Love these people!

It's hard to adjust to new Cultural views of time & events. But buck them and cause relational damage.

"In another part of Africa, a church service went on and on without regard to the lateness of the hour14 The missionary looked again and again at his watch as his level of irritation soared. The service continued on into the night as more people than usual wanted to testify of the work of God in their lives. When the African pastor stood to preach, it was nearly midnight. The missionary was so upset that he stormed out of the church and went to his home nearby. When the service showed no signs of ending, he switched off the main electricity supply, causing the church to plunge into immediate darkness. Usually the lights at the mission station were switched off at ten o’clock, so the missionary felt he had been more than reasonable. When the African pastor realized what had happened, he broke down and cried. The missionary was highly time-oriented in a Western sense, whereas the national church was event- oriented. They were enjoying themselves immensely and had planned to stay on, without regard to time, until the event ceased to be meaningful."

(Muslim Evangelism: Contemporary Approaches to Contextualization. Phil Parshall. Gabriel Publishing. 2003 p. 44)

Atheist Confesses Christianity Changes Africa for the better.

"As an Atheist, I truly Believe Africa needs God"

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset

Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece

Missionary Decisions: A Suit for a “Pastor” or Food for a poor Christian family?

Yes this was my literal dilemma last night.

A group of men are graduating from our TEE  Training program in January 2009. This is the second class of self supporting graduates since we began in 1995. These men have retained their jobs, remained with their family, and studied and served their churches as tentmakers (self-supporting) for 10 years to get  to this point.  A mile stone.

However, I have never understood the propensity of the African leaders, “The PASTOR”, to desire to look like Southern Evangelical fundamentalists in both look and preaching style. Most missionaries I know are glad to drop the suit and tie. The African context offers very classy and functional formal attire. Buy or have it made local I say. 

Anyway, I was packing my bags last night and stuffed in supplies for 33 simple bucket drip irrigation systems for 33 poor families living on less than $1 a day. This will extend the growing season in Burkina Faso by 8 months of the year, increases production by as much as  30% in regular growing  season, and by 60% in dry & drought season, over traditional watering methods. Cheap, and lasts 10 years.

The five graduates had a request for suits to be brought over. A person in the states can get them like new/second hand for $5 and was suppose to mail them for me to take over.  My Bags are at the weight limit now. Over weight bags are charged $100 each and I can’t bring myself to pay $400 in overweight charges. I can’t spend any more money.

So for a moment last night I actually took out one coil of tubing and all the irrigation fittings for 10 kits, to make room for the suits.  As I looked at the irrigation stuff sitting in the corner I had a serious personal crisis. I asked myself what I was doing as I started to say to myself, "Food for a family 8 months of the year for the next 10 years or a Suit?"

The Irrigation supplies went back in. I’ll have suits made local for them if I have to. But I am not choosing suits over feeding brothers and sisters in Christ. But at times those are the foolish things we have to weigh on kingdom balances.

What have we become in our values and choices. It startled me just how easily I took the irrigation out to do some “Friends” a favour, and then deny others healthy children. What has church become when these things, these props and performance "churchy" things, outweigh poverty issues?

The Clarity of the situation must be made evident to us from time to time.
So what would you have done last night?

Why It's Hard to Be a MIssionary to Unreached People

“The unredeemed world lives in spiritual darkness. The eyes of unbelievers have been darkened by Satan, resulting in their hatred of the light of truth. For people who have lived a long time in darkness, a bright light that suddenly shines upon them produces pain. They cannot stand the light. They hate the light, and they do their best to put it out. Jesus explained the world’s reaction to His own coming into the world in these terms (John 3:19-20), and He told His disciples to expect exactly the same kind of treatment.

Speaking in modem terms, each group of people on this planet considers its own religion to be one of its most precious treasures. Thus telling them that their faith is wrong or untrue becomes an unforgivable offense and insult against them. The attempt to change their religion is perceived as an attack on their “national identity” This is why Christian missionaries are met with hostility and violence in every place to which they carry the gospel. For his part, the missionary must be convinced that the population to which he takes the Word lives in the lie of Satan and is damned to hell as a result of it. If the missionary is not convinced of this, he will not risk his life to kindle the light in their midst. However, when the ambassador of Christ speaks the truth in love, and meets death with joy, a strange, miracle occurs: the eyes of unbelievers are opened, they are enabled to see the truth of God, and this leads them to believe in the gospel. “

(Suffering And Martyrdom. Josef Tson, pg 182-183. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, William Carey Library, 1909)

“Christians need no Missionary appeals when they are lead by the Spirit.”

(Crucial dimensions in World Evangelization, Hiebert, Glasser, Wagner, Winter, pg 9 William Carey Library, 1976)

Multiplication is the BEST "Church Growth" says McGavran?

“One of the leading exponents for church planting in this century was the late Donald McGavran. In a Dawn Report, Jim Montgomery related the following incident:

During the last months of Mary McGavran’s illness, my wife Lyn would frequently spend time with her. Donald McGavran would be there, too, disregarding his own painful cancer while taking care of his beloved Mary. ‘You can be sure Jim and I will continue our commitment to church growth after you’re gone,’ Lyn said to Donald one day. ‘Don’t call it church growth anymore,’ was his quick response. ‘Call it church multiplication!’ Two weeks before his death, he said, ‘The only way we will get the job of the great commission done is to plant a church in every community in the world.’

There is more interest today in missions, world evangelization and church planting than ever before in history. In AD 100 there were 360 believers for every one believer. In 1500 the ratio was 69 to one. In 1900 it was 27 to one. And in 1990 it was seven to one. Ralph Winter is the founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission. Concerning this shrinking ratio, he says, “In the last 20 centuries the meek have quietly been inheriting the earth!”

(Saturation House Church Planting, Robert Fitts, Sr. Chapter 55 in, “Nexus: The World House Church Movement Reader, Rad Zdero, William Carey, 2007 pg 465.)