11 Practical Steps Toward Caring for Orphans

Along with crisp air and beautiful leaves, November also brings an awareness of broken families. It’s this month, more than any other, where our gaze is directed, perhaps uncomfortably, to the fatherless. That’s because November is National Adoption Month and November 11 is Orphan Sunday. Many people live their whole lives without giving any thought to the fatherless. Orphans remain comfortably out of sight and out of mind. The idea of neglected image-bearers stays beyond the boundaries of our carefully crafted bubbles.

Despite whatever unwillingness on our part to engage the global orphan crisis, our heavenly Father aggressively pursues these vulnerable people—and he clearly instructs us to do the same.

Ignorant?

God identifies himself as the “father of the fatherless” (Ps. 68:5). He teaches us that pure religion is to “visit orphans and widows in their affliction” (Jas. 1:27). He commands us to “seek justice, correct oppression, and bring justice to the fatherless” (Is. 1:17).

Despite our seeming reluctance, we are informed. We can’t say that we are unaware of the broken state of families. We’re aware that children in our zip codes and across all time zones are growing up abandoned due to death, poverty, illness, and sin.

We are not ignorant, we are merely indifferent. Brothers and sisters, this cannot be. Followers of Christ must not be known by our indifference but by our love.

Engaging orphans and vulnerable children can seem daunting, which is why many believers are reluctant to jump in. But if we want to side with the Father, we will act to bring justice to orphans.

Eleven Practical Steps Toward Caring for Orphans

So how do we begin to take steps of obedience towards caring for orphans? Consider the following steps.

Be informed. There are an estimated 140 million orphans worldwide. Only about ten percent of all orphans are “true” orphans, meaning they have lost both parents. About 125 million children considered to be orphans have at least one, if not two, living parents. In the United States, about 110,000 children are waiting to be adopted into families. Some 420,000 children are in foster care. Educate yourself on this growing number of fatherless children. Here are some resources to get you started:

• Follow Jason Johnson’s blog about foster care and adoption.
• Read Adopted for Life by Russell Moore.
• Learn more about the global orphan crisis from CAFO (Christian Alliance for Orphans).
• Read Orphanology by Tony Merida and Rick Morton.
• Subscribe to the Think Orphan podcast hosted by Phil Darke.

Use your voice for the voiceless. The voiceless aren’t voiceless because they have nothing to say; they’re voiceless because no one listens when they speak. But you have a voice. Scripture commands God’s people to speak up for the voiceless (Prov. 31:8). Use your voice to raise awareness of the plight of orphans within your relational networks. Tell people how they can join God in his work of caring for orphans. Be a voice for the voiceless.

Pray. We are not the savior of the fatherless but we can confidently approach the One who is. Cast yourself before God’s throne to plead for the salvation and care of the vulnerable. Our Father hears the cries of his children (1 Pet. 3:12). We can fight for orphans on our knees. We know their needs, both spiritual and physical, and we can go to our good Father and petition his help.

Become a foster or adoptive parent. This may be the first idea that comes to mind when you think of how to care for orphans, and rightly so! Adoption and foster care require sacrifice and a huge investment into the lives of orphans, but the church should be leading this movement as we are a people who have benefited from adoption into our heavenly father’s family. Take advantage of some of the resources mentioned under “Be informed” above to learn more.

Partner with parachurch organizations that care for orphans. Adoption is great but with over ninety percent of the world’s orphans ineligible for adoption, it’s not enough. We must find other ways to help. Partnering with organizations like 127 Worldwide who work with local leaders around the world caring for orphans is a wise solution. Invest in organizations that are committed to meeting the physical and spiritual needs of the fatherless.

Leverage your skills and networks for orphans. When orphans “age out” of group homes and institutions, they become vulnerable to gangs, criminal activities, prostitution, and trafficking. Invest in job training both locally and globally for these young adults to give them the means to provide for themselves and their families. Connect your networks with the vulnerable as they transition into adulthood. Invite them to your church. Help them find jobs.

Serve adoptive families. Adoption is very expensive. One way you can help adoptive families is to sacrificially give towards their adoptive costs and encourage others to do the same. Get creative: host fundraisers; have yard sales; make and sell t-shirts; donate services to be auctioned off to raise money; get certified to provide respite care for foster families; or bring meals to families as they welcome the fatherless into their homes. Serve families who are on the front lines of caring for orphans.

Extend your pro-life ethic beyond the womb. Support life from the womb to the tomb. When we encourage parents to choose life for the unborn, we must walk alongside and help them care for their children. We must welcome these children into our families if the birth parents are unwilling to raise them. Being pro-life is more than being anti-abortion. It means being pro-children and pro-adoption.

Meet orphans. Take time to invest in the lives of vulnerable children in your community. Go on short-term mission projects to visit orphans around the world and share the gospel with them while encouraging their caretakers. Befriend families with foster kids. Hear their stories and tell them the story of the heavenly Father who never abandons his children. Invite them into God’s redemptive story.

Support church planting in vulnerable communities. Invest in pastor training and church planting efforts around the world. Loving the fatherless means more than providing food, water, and education. It means giving them access to the gospel. It means investing in the eternal good of their cities and villages by planting gospel-proclaiming churches. Consider partnering with great organizations like Acts 29 to advance the church around the world.

Raise up future generations to embrace caring for orphans. Parents, if you want orphan care to be normal in your family, then expose your children to the global orphan crisis. Work together as a family to love the fatherless. Teach them God’s Word and pray for their obedience. Set the example of obedience and lead them to reflect God’s heart for the orphan.

Change Your Culture

God’s Word is clear on our role in caring for orphans. Our access to Scripture is unprecedented and unlimited. We have printed Bibles, podcasts, commentaries, Bible apps, teachers, pastors, and books. What we do not have is room for excuses. We know what the Bible says, but knowing is not enough. Doers of the Word step into obedience.

In his book, Radical, David Platt writes, “We learned that orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they’re not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.”

Change starts with you. It starts in your home, your church, your neighborhood, and your workplace. Change your culture by reflecting the Father’s heart for the fatherless in your speech, attitude, and actions. Inspire others to be obedient to God’s command to care for orphans.

It starts with one step. Then one step turns into two, and two steps become three. Before you know it, you’re walking in obedience.

Take that first step and follow Christ into the world for the good of the fatherless and for the sake of his glory. You don’t have to single-handedly solve the global orphan crisis. You can’t. But you can step out in faith. Christian, get your feet moving.

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Christy Britton is a wife and mom of four boys. She is an orphan advocate for 127 Worldwide and writes curriculum for Docent Research. Her family worships at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. She writes for several blogs, including her own, http://www.beneedywell.com/. You can follow her on Twitter.

You Don’t Have to Be Busy to Belong

One evening when reading our dinner devotional book, I read about the Feast of Trumpets, a once-a-year event when the Israelites were called (literally) to repentance. The trumpet would sound and they’d remember that their time was God’s gift and whether they’d spent it well or not. Nancy Guthrie writes, “God set up a yearly holiday called the Festival of Trumpets to blast the people out of their spiritual laziness.”

Sometimes I wish we’d get a trumpet blast to arouse us out of our spiritual stupors, so we’d be forced to see how we use busyness to block our ears.

Slowing Down

We need trumpet calls and wake-up calls. We need to say no to the things that lead us away from the story of God and lead us to follow a story of the suburbs. The suburbs keep us busy because we think the more we move, the more we work, the more valuable we will be. If we hope to nurture a life of faith, we’ve got to stop moving long enough to hear God’s voice.

The gospel says: come to the desolate space. Tantrum, scream, cry, face your fears of insignificance and irrelevancy there. Then find rest in a rest that is not of your own making. Find Jesus. And having found Jesus, we will be sent out, and he will ask us impossible things—not to test us but to show us (even in the food we eat) that he provides not only for our hungers but also for the hunger pains of our communities.

God will be found by us in the desolate spaces. Going to desolate places might look like recalibrating our time to fit what we say we value. It might be removing our phones from our nightstands and choosing to not document our lives on social media. It may be committing to read our Bibles even when we’re not sure if God will show up.

Our time is not our own to fill like an empty shopping cart—with whatever strikes our fancy and fits our budget. Our time (like our money) is a means to love God and serve others. Paradoxically, only as we give of our resources will we be filled. This isn’t American bootstrapperism where we muscle it out to be generous; instead it’s slowing down and acknowledging that we have a Father God who sees our needs and kindly answers them for our good and his good pleasure.

But if our schedules are packed too tight—like our closets—there will never be room to let in anything new, including God. Our daily habits, our weekly schedules, and our purchases all add up to how we spend our lives. Anything we turn to that dictates our daily habits also shapes our hearts. We hunger for good work and restorative rest, and yet we stay busy because we fear we won’t find anything in the desolate places. But what if instead of circling the suburbs or distracting ourselves, we simply stopped? What if we said no more often? What would happen if we slowed down?

We could begin to live ordinary time well.

Living Ordinary Time Well

When we live ordinary time well, we practice disciplines that increase our hunger for the right things—not the quick-fix chicken nuggets of the soul, but the nutritious meal. We pray. We read our Bibles. We give. We serve. We partake in the sacraments and dig our hands into the life of the church.

When we live ordinary time well, we choose to spend our time for God’s kingdom instead of building up the kingdom of self. When we do, we don’t have to force our days, plans, or even our memories to provide total satisfaction. In her book Simply Tuesday, Emily P. Freeman writes, “Part of living well in ordinary time is letting this day be good. Letting this day be a gift. Letting this day be filled with plenty. And if it all goes wrong and my work turns to dust? This is my kind reminder that outcomes are beyond the scope of my job description.”

When we stop moving, we realize time was never our own. Then, our days can be received as gifts.

If we slowed down and pruned our schedules, we’d begin to decenter ourselves. We’d practice sustained attention and even be bored. We could begin to imagine what finding holy in the suburbs would look like in our hearts, families, and neighborhoods. We’d give our children the tools to know how to be comfortable in their own skin without having to perform to feel loved. We’d give them (and us) a better way to live in a culture that says you have to stay busy to be seen. We’d show them a better way to belong than through joining a frenzied, success- and image-driven culture.

You Don't Have to Be Busy to Belong

The upside-down kingdom of God in the suburbs stakes this claim: you don’t have to be busy to belong. When we stop striving, we don’t have to hoard our time or treasure. God’s kingdom testifies that rest is possible, not just checking out from the rat race in your favorite version of suburban leisure, but more than that, we can experience a deep, restorative rest.

The gospel says that in Jesus we’re held, protected, loved, and valued simply because we are God’s children. But to imagine a vision larger than what our suburbs sell as success and productivity, we have to have the courage to slow down.

There we have the space to wrestle with all that our busyness hides and there, we pray, we will find God.

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Taken from Finding Holy in the Suburbs by Ashley Hales. Copyright (c) 2018 by Ashley Hales. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

Ashley Hales is a writer, speaker, pastor's wife, and mother to four. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and after years away, she's back in the southern California suburbs helping her husband plant a church, Resurrection Orange County. She's the author of Finding Holy in the Suburbs and a contributor to Everbloom. Connect with Ashley at aahales.com.

Lessons from Building a Culture of Discipleship

Three years ago, I had just been let go from a worship leader position because of my spiritual immaturity. Just like the twenty-some years leading up to that point, I felt like I was missing something. I was going to church, serving every weekend, and trying my best to become like Jesus but it just wasn’t working. What was I doing wrong?

There has to be more to Christianity than this, I thought.

I was right.

Not long after I was laid off, a couple of guys I knew from church invited me to join what they were calling a discipleship group. They explained it as a time of accelerated spiritual growth for the purpose of replicating what you learn. There would be homework and memory verses, along with reading the Scriptures together and praying for each other.

After laying out these expectations, they looked at me and said, “We want you to go home and pray about this and see if it’s something you’re willing to commit to.”

“I’ve already prayed about it,” I said. “When do we start?”

DISCIPLESHIP CHANGES EVERYTHING

The next six months with that group transformed my life. Through discipleship, I found what had eluded me for so many years—a true sense of calling that superseded everything else and brought the kingdom of God right to me.

Discipleship changed my life. And it’s what I’ve given my life to ever since.

Now I’m the associate pastor at Hillcrest Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC, where I've have been tasked with overseeing discipleship. We’re on the second round of D-Groups—discipleship groups of three to five men or women that function like the one I was invited into.

We don’t have things fully figured out, not by a long shot. But I have learned some things along the way. If you’re serious about discipleship or trying to turn the culture of your church in that direction, I hope you can learn from some of these lessons the Lord is teaching me.

EVERY CHURCH IS UNIQUE

Early on, I was guilty of trying to apply the things I read in books or heard in conferences to my local church. There’s nothing wrong with learning and trying things, but I was attempting to take a model designed for a large church and apply it to a body of about 75 people.

Reading good books, asking questions, and learning from others who are doing discipleship well are all key parts of establishing a discipleship pathway. But when we just mimic an idea without considering our body of believers, we miss the point entirely.

While there are many amazing blueprints out there for discipleship, we must be careful to consider how a discipleship strategy will mesh with our particular church culture.

BE REALISTIC ABOUT THE SUCCESS RATE

Some of the discipleship studies I read and some of the teachers I sat under said that the majority of people participating in discipleship groups experienced a multiplication success rate of around fifty percent (meaning fifty percent of those who participated in a group went on to replicate the process with others afterward). That seemed low.

But here’s what I learned after helping start D-groups at my church. 2 Timothy 2:2 says, “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Notice that the instruction to pass on what has been learned isn’t for just anyone, but to those who were faithful.

I’ve been guilty of getting so pumped about D-Groups and what they’ve done for me that I forced the model on others who hadn’t yet proven themselves to be faithful. Too often we jump in front of the Spirit’s leading and throw people in discipleship contexts because we’re eager for them to experience transformation. But if they’re not hungry for the experience, our efforts fall on deaf ears.

Let me be clear: eagerness is not a bad thing; we just have to be sure the Spirit stays in front. Don’t assume that because someone doesn’t grasp the call to make disciples right away, or if someone doesn’t want to join a group right away, that you have failed or God has failed. God is in control of all things, and perhaps the year you spent with that person was the groundwork for what’s to come.

Our minds are finite but God’s is not. He doesn’t measure success the way we do. We have to keep this in mind or we will naturally put percentages and expectations on something that can't be measured on this side of eternity.

REDEFINE, UNLEARN, AND LEARN FOR THE FIRST TIME

Everything we’ve been doing at Hillcrest is redefining, unlearning, or learning for the first time. It takes most people a good bit of time and teaching to really grasp disciple-making and to unlearn what they think discipleship (and even church) is about. Some have never even heard of the concept of discipleship.

For several months, we taught on discipleship through the book of Luke. At the same time, our initial discipleship groups were up and running, and those in the groups were able to explain what it was like to others in the church.

It takes time for people to buy into discipleship because most churchgoers today were never personally discipled by someone. Be patient with people, be clear with your communication and language, and help people see the beauty of discipleship that involves all of their lives.

PEOPLE ARE DESPERATE TO BE DISCIPLED, BUT THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY’RE LOOKING FOR

I have found that there are a lot of people who, deep down, really want a discipling relationship, but they don’t know what they’re looking for. Their souls are crying out to be taught and shown what it means to follow Jesus, but they are either fearful, don’t know how to ask for it, or didn’t know such a thing existed.

If you talk to those who have led discipleship groups they’ll tell you that the time spent with their groups is the most productive and rewarding time in their weeks. I believe it, because it was God’s plan for us. Disciple-makers are fulfilling that calling and are shown their true purpose for life. It changes the way they do business, the way they do home life, the way they structure their personal time, and, ultimately every aspect of their lives. They begin looking for opportunities to share the good news with people in their spheres of influence, not just verbally but through their actions as well.

If you want to see a bored Christian come to life, teach them to be a disciple-maker.

BE DOERS OF THE WORD

The most important thing I’ve learned about discipleship is that it has to be shown, not just explained. James says to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (Jas. 1:22). I can’t stress enough how important this is. I try my best to preach this to my own soul every day.

James goes on to say that faith without works is dead. I can’t think of more profound insight into Western Christianity as this one. We have a lot of talking and very little doing. But we can’t teach people to follow Jesus without actually showing them what it’s like at some point.

Imagine a young man who had a rough upbringing. God reaches out to him through a series of events in his life. He seeks out answers and eventually crosses the line of faith and baptism. He shows himself to be faithful by consistent involvement in the church community. Then he gets plugged into a D-Group and starts meeting weekly with other guys to memorize Scripture, confess their sins, and learn about God.

All good things!  But there’s no one showing him how to do the things he’s learning.

How much more effective would it be if you invited this young man into your life? How much more would he learn if he watched you spend time with God every day, and he was shown how to apply spiritual disciplines in a practical way. How quickly would he grow if you let him walk through life with you as you love your spouse, raise your child, pray, serve, fail, repent, and pursue holiness?

This is a kind of discipleship most of us have a hard time desiring. Perhaps we’re busy or preoccupied, so we don’t take the time to invite people into our lives. But what does that teach them? Or maybe we don’t invite people to imitate us because we’re not living a life worthy of imitation.

We have to ask ourselves tough questions about what’s keeping us from investing in men and women the way we’re called to. We have to ask ourselves if we're being doers of the Word.

SPEND YOUR LIFE CHANGING LIVES FOR CHRIST

Training others to be like Jesus is well worth our time. But we don't live what we don’t believe.

Nothing in my life was the same after I was discipled. I believed in Jesus but didn’t know what to do or how to do it until someone showed me.

If you’re already discipling people, keep going; keep teaching other faithful men or women to teach others. If you’re new to discipleship, jump in. You’ll find what you’ve been searching for, and your life will never be the same.

Telling the Old Story in a World that Craves the New

The world jumps over itself for what’s edgy, new, and creative. Yet for believers, we have an old and unchanging story to tell. ­­ The tension between innovation and tradition is not a new conversation in the life of the church. Whether it’s an emerging social media platform, the latest music, or the next trend, cultural shifts so swiftly we often find ourselves grasping to hang on.

The church, in contrast, is always looking back to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), and we gladly rally around the old, unchanging story of a gentle Messiah who was crushed for our sin and raised to life three days later.

Unfortunately, with the ebb and flow of a rapidly changing culture, we might be pressured to come to the Bible with the same expectations.

We may start to wonder if we are equipped to face the challenges of our day—even when we know Scripture is unchangeably and immovably true—as if it’s outmoded or archaic. We come to a quiet time and search for undiscovered angles, to the point of blurring the meaning. We might even start doubting that Scripture really can speak to us today.

When we start to wonder if the Bible’s not enough in light of the particular struggles of our cultural moment, here are some important truths to keep in mind.

THE BOOK IS FROM HIM AND FOR US

When we constantly feel the need for something new or exciting to come from interacting with Scripture, we have forgotten the most important thing about it—its author. Feeling like we must find something novel or exhilarating each time we come to the Bible will send us scavenging for truth while missing the Giver of truth.

It’s as if we think our own intuitive creativity and knowledge surpasses the God who ordered the stars in the heavens and fashioned the wings of a butterfly. Paul asks, “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” (Rom. 11:34). Even Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, warned that we could not fathom the work of God (Eccl. 11:5). The truth is, we could never know the God who created the world if he had revealed himself to us through his Word and his Son (Heb. 1:1-2, John 1:1).

Because our God is faithful, we can trust that his revelation is all we need to hear pertaining to godliness and life (2 Pet. 1:3). We can rest to know that God has revealed his plan for the fullness of time by speaking to his people through his Word (Heb. 1:1-2; Eph. 1:9-10).

Each word of our Bible reveals the character of the God who created us. We must come to it humbly, allowing his word to tell us what questions matter, and wait as God shows us the unchanging truthfulness of his Word. No doubt he will speak to us in ways we had not noticed before. He desires to speak to us! But some areas we are left with real questions to ponder and wonder, humbly before God.

There is much we will not know, but we can be encouraged to know that each word is given or withheld with purpose (Rev. 22:18). Th book is from him and for us. Let’s remember that the purposeful words of scripture depict the truth, plans, and purposes of its Author. These truths are binding on all peoples across all times and places (Eph. 1:7-10, cf. Acts 17:30-31). 

THE MESSAGE NEVER CHANGES, BUT THE WAY WE COMMUNICATE IT HAS TO

The Bible has been poured over, commented on, and debated for over 2,000 years. When we talk about the Bible, we’re not saying anything new. And if we are, we’re in trouble!

We desire to stand, so we are tempted to go to the Bible looking for something no one else has found. Instead of seeing our repetition of an old text as a limitation or as unoriginal, we can see it as an encouragement and confidence, being faithful to the truth handed down “once for all . . . to the saints” (Jude 3).

We can look back at well-known church fathers and theologians, missionaries and martyrs, pastors and leaders, and see how the same God and the same truths grounded and spurred them on to a life of faithfulness to the truth. The church has always been finding ways to communicate old (but good!) news to new audiences. The message is unchanging, but the way we communicate that message is always changing.

We stand surrounded by a “great a cloud of witnesses” to the same truth, the same story, and the same God (Heb. 12:1-2). We should be encouraged by the example of generations before us, how they read Scripture, and how Scripture’s unchanging truth still speaks specifically to our cultural moment.

Let’s dig deep into the Bible, but not to search for ways to make it shine more attention on ourselves. Rather, let’s see how we can retell the same old story in a brand new day, all to his glory.

GOD NEVER CHANGES, WE DO

Finally, while it’s true that God’s word does not change—we do. And we do so constantly! R.C. Sproul has stated that if anything defines human existence, it's change.

And our impermanent selves are what we bring to the Word each day. We come to the text with different knowledge, different circumstances, and different places in sanctification. Yet we also come to God’s Word with his Holy Spirit, who is constantly working in our hearts through each changing situation. He is removing blind spots, giving insight, and revealing the truth. This is why we can read the same passages repeatedly but still see new truths.

We don’t need to do mental gymnastics to get some sort of profound new insight. Instead, we can rest in the Spirit’s work to grow our hearts closer to him (Phil. 1:6). We can press on to know the Lord, and rest in knowing that when we do, God will respond and reveal himself through his Word (Hos. 6:3).

THE STORY THAT NEVER GETS OLD

We don’t need to feel inadequate because our story never changes—it is our lifeline. It’s the solid hope to cling to for a world drowning in ever-changing uncertainty. So let’s enter our Bible studies and conversations with humility and confidence in the truths that have lasted from the beginning of time, and will continue to last for all eternity.

The unchanging God, the Ancient of Days, has revealed himself to an unstable and shifting people. Through his Spirit, he has chosen to make inconsistent people more and more like their consistently faithful God. And that story (John 1:1) never gets old.

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Brianna Lambert is a wife and mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She has contributed to various online publications such as Morning by Morning and Fathom magazine. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.

3 Principles for Passing on the Gospel

Their stricken faces said it all. The men and women of the U.S. Olympic 400-meter relay teams were disqualified and in disbelief. The U.S. had owned the 400 relay in years past. Now, in 2008, the teams hadn’t even qualified.

In just a thirty-minute span, both teams’ hopes were dashed at the fumbling of the third and final baton handoff. When you’re running a relay, the handoff is critical. Runners take extra care to ensure a smooth handoff because when they drop the baton, they don’t finish the race.

RELAY THE TRUTH

Christians have an even more important handoff to make: passing the gospel on to the next generation. Paul, arguably the most skilled believer aside from Christ to ever hand off the gospel, once instructed his young protégé Timothy in how to pass it on well, saying, “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2).

Paul is challenging Timothy to pass on what he has heard to faithful men and women who also are able to pass it on. What has Timothy heard from Paul? The gospel. The truth of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

By this time in their relationship, Timothy would have seen Paul testify to this gospel hundreds of times. He also would have seen Paul pass it on hundreds of times. Paul understood the gospel does the next generation no good if it never receives it. The gospel is like a relay race; we’re either fumbling the handoff or ensuring it’s passed on with care.

In 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul summarizes his most critical advice for passing on the gospel in three principles.

1. BE A PUBLIC WITNESS

Paul’s first principle for passing on the gospel is that a believer’s faith is not a private matter. Christians are called to be a public witness for the Christ they profess. We see this in Paul’s mention that Timothy has heard the gospel from him “in the presence of many witnesses.”

Paul was not known for being quiet about Jesus. His beatings, imprisonments, and ridicule all testify that Jesus invaded all of Paul’s life, not just his private time. Paul didn’t keep his faith to himself. If he had, he wouldn’t have been killed for it.

Surely Timothy noticed Paul’s public witness. He was the recipient of at least two letters from an imprisoned Paul (1 and 2 Timothy). While the consequences of Paul’s public professions surely made a mark on the young Timothy, Paul’s faithful example of announcing the good news to anyone who would listen would have also left a mark.

And this is true of followers of Christ today. If you intend to pass on your faith to your children, your friends, or your neighbors, you must learn to be a public witness to the gospel. If you compartmentalize your faith out of Monday through Saturday, so will those you teach. The gospel is not a personal issue, it’s an all-of-life issue.

Passionate believers are easy to spot no matter when you’re around them. Their love for Jesus is not a secret to their friends, family, and coworkers. Their gospel is not stuck between the pages of their Bible but overflows into their everyday lives. Like Paul, their faith is so explosive that they can easily point to examples of publicly sharing about who Jesus is and what he has done.

What we pass on is what will live on. Paul passed on the gospel he received, he encouraged others to do the same, and he led by example. Are you doing the same?

2. INVEST IN PEOPLE ON PURPOSE

Paul’s second principle for passing on the gospel is to make passing it on an intentional part of life. His relationship with Timothy wasn’t an accident. It was the result of having eyes to see and ears to hear those who were hungry for godliness.

Nor was their relationship the only mentoring relationship Paul was a part of. The letters to Titus and the various churches make that clear.

Paul intentionally identified and invested in future leaders. He set aside time and energy and resources to build into their lives and show them how to follow Jesus. He saw passing on the gospel as a critical part of his calling.

Are you taking seriously the call to pass on what you have learned? Do you learn and read with a pen in hand so you can pass it on to someone else, or do you receive information in one ear and lose it out the other? Have you identified a younger man or woman you can invest in? Are you showing them how to follow Jesus?

If not, it might be because you have no idea where to start. This brings us to Paul’s third principle.

3. INVEST IN THE RIGHT PEOPLE

His third principle for passing on the gospel is that we are to invest in the right people. We are to pass on the gospel to other faithful men or women who will be able to teach others.

When it comes to investing in someone, Paul tells us to identify a man or woman who has proven themselves to be faithful, and who will be able to teach others. Notice the tenses used.

When it comes to identifying someone who’s faithful, we are to look to their current resume for examples of their faithfulness to Jesus. We should be able to point to times where they’ve displayed faith, courage, wisdom, etc., in the name of and for the sake of Jesus. We should be looking for people who have been and are now faithful to Jesus.

Being able to teach others is a forward-looking goal. Paul said to entrust the gospel to other faithful men and women, “who will be able to teach others also.” That means they aren’t necessarily able to do so now.

Let’s simplify this. Paul is saying we should pass on the gospel by intentionally investing in other men and women who are faithful to Christ and who will be able to teach others to do the same one day. That means we invest in those who display a vibrant, active faith in Jesus, and we do the hard work of teaching them so they can turn around and teach others one day.

“The gospel came to you so that it could pass through you,” says pastor and author Robby Gallaty.

You received the gospel, yes, but part of the reason you received it is that it’s headed to someone else—and you’re the intended vehicle. If you’re not investing in people who will turn around and invest in someone else, your efforts to pass on the gospel will be stunted.

We can never truly know who will pass it on and who won’t, of course. But if you’ve invested in someone for any amount of time, it quickly becomes evident who is taking seriously the call to pass on the gospel and who isn’t. Give your time to those who are hungry for the gospel and who demonstrate faithfulness to live it out.

Each Christian is called to run a race of being faithful to Christ. That race is always a relay that requires a handoff. So be a public witness. Invest in people on purpose. And invest in the right people.

Don’t fumble the handoff. Ensure the gospel is passed on to the next generation and finish your race well.

Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of three, and the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing, check out his website or follow him on Twitter.

What is Discipleship and How Do We Do It?

Discipleship. It’s a word we throw around in the church, and it’s a word that’s not explicitly used in the Bible. We do find the word “disciple” in Scripture—a noun that means learner, pupil, or follower. Jesus uses this word to describe his followers—those who learn from him, walk closely with him, and obey his teachings.

We also find the phrase “make disciples”—a verb phrase that is found in the Great Commission where Christ’s disciples (and all his followers from that moment on) were told to preach the gospel, baptize new believers, and teach them to observe the commands of God.

But what is discipleship?

INVITATION TO A PROCESS

Christ charges his followers to go and make disciples, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:16-20). This “teaching” includes the sharing of nuggets of wisdom with a believer that you may only encounter once.

But this command is also an invitation to more. It is an invitation to a lifelong process of teaching, also known as discipleship.

Discipleship, as we define it today, can look many different ways, but it must include this aspect of teaching one another to observe the commands of the Lord. This doesn’t have to happen in a coffee shop and it doesn’t have to involve a hard and fast structure or a deep curriculum. It doesn’t have to be conducted by a pastor or minister.

Rather, as believers, we are charged to teach and disciple one another by inviting one another into our lives, sharing what we know to be true about the Lord, and encouraging one another to walk in obedience to God’s commands.

Discipleship is not an activity reserved for the pastors and staff of your church. In fact, the primary way the church body will mature and multiply is through the commitment of every single church member to disciple those behind them.

BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING

Hebrews does an excellent job of summing up what discipleship is:

“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” –Heb. 3:12-13

This word exhort literally means to call to one’s side, to comfort, to instruct, to encourage, to request help, to strengthen. The author of Hebrews hints at the ever-present temptation for believers to be “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Jeremiah teaches that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9).

As believers, we are all desperately in need of the strength and exhortation that other believers can provide. We are all desperately in need of discipleship.

Inherent in this instructing, teaching, and exhorting is a level of vulnerability and humility that is key to discipleship. In order to be encouraged and admonished, you must be known by someone at a level that allows them to call out your sin and challenge you to deeper obedience.

This is what we are called to as believers, as disciples, as “Christians engaging in discipleship.”

We are called to know one another in a way that we are able to instruct and strengthen one another.

No Christian is exempt from this and no Christian is unequipped for this.

The life of a believer is a life in community with the church. And if you have been redeemed by the Lord, if you have been brought from death to life, if you have any knowledge of the Lord, then you have a story that can encourage, exhort, and strengthen a fellow believer or nonbeliever.

Every Christian is capable of discipleship and called to discipleship.

THE STRUCTURE

Countless models, structures, books, and curricula have been created in order to lay out a process of how to “do discipleship.” There are seemingly infinite resources on what it looks like to mature a believer in the faith. This poses a benefit and a challenge to those seeking to engage in discipleship.

Oftentimes, a believer seeking to disciple another believer is overwhelmed simply by the sheer amount of material and opinions regarding this topic. They feel the pressure to pick the right curriculum, to have the right material to teach, or to understand a complicated discipleship structure and process.

While it is true that discipleship is an intense and important process, believers need to give themselves permission to step out from under this pressure because, believe it or not, discipleship can be simple.

While the method and structure of discipleship may vary, there are a few vital factors to consider: intimacy, commitment, vulnerability, and prayer.

From my experience, discipleship is most effective with a very small group (2-4 is ideal for fostering intimate connections) of same-sex believers, who are committed to meeting regularly and who desire to be vulnerable with the difficult and ugly parts of their lives. These groups must be bathed with prayer and members must be committed to relying on the Word of God, not their opinions or desires, to guide and direct them.

Books and discipleship structures can be helpful, but for those seeking a simple process, these four elements provide a great place to start.

THE CHALLENGE

One of the lines I hear most often from young men and women in the church is, “I would love to be discipled, I just don’t know anyone who would want to disciple me.”

Funny enough, I often hear wise and experienced men and women in the church say, “I would love to disciple someone, I just don’t know anyone who would want to be discipled by me.”

Church members, you’re looking for each other!

If you are a young believer who is seeking this type of relationship, I encourage you to ask a more spiritually mature man or woman in the church to begin meeting with you. I guarantee you that person will be honored and excited about the opportunity to pour into your life.

If you are an older man or woman who has wisdom and a life of experience walking with God, I encourage you to find a younger believer to meet with. I guarantee you they will be thankful for the opportunity to learn from you.

As believers, we must bravely pursue discipleship relationships if we desire to grow into mature followers of Jesus.

THE CAVEAT

While there are likely many incredible men and women in your church who can disciple you, be careful to never let the role of a spiritual mentor come before the Holy Spirit’s role of discipleship in your life.

It is the Spirit who gives life and indwells every believer. It is he who applies Christ’s benefits to us and it is by his power and instruction that we grow in our faith.

There will be a time where you are awake at 2:00 a.m. in a crisis of faith or a time of deep confusion (if this hasn’t happened to you yet, just wait, it will), and before you reach for your phone to call that wonderful spiritual mentor in your life for advice, I challenge you to first reach for your Bible and dig into the Word of God for the truth that is there. I challenge you to spend time in prayer and to seek guidance and comfort first from the Lord.

If you don’t have someone in your life right now who can pour wisdom into you, press into the truth that is found in the Bible and be encouraged by the living Word of God.

It is crucial that, as believers, we all learn how to feed ourselves from the Word and to go first to the Lord for wisdom and guidance and comfort. And then we can bravely seek exhortation and wisdom from the trustworthy disciples in our lives.

DISCIPLESHIP FOR THE GLORY OF GOD

So what is discipleship and how do we do it?

Discipleship is a lifelong process of growing in knowledge of and obedience to Jesus Christ.

As Christians engaging in discipleship, this means we humbly teach, strengthen, and exhort one another to know and follow Jesus more closely. This means we bravely pursue relationships centered on intimacy, commitment, vulnerability, and prayer, all the while relying on the power of the Spirit and the Word of God to mature and mold us.

We do all of this for the purpose of more deeply knowing God and magnifying his glory among all people.

Lauren Bowerman has been privileged to call many cities, states, countries, and continents home. Her transient life has cultivated in her a deep love for diverse cultures and people. As a writer and a pastor’s wife, she is passionate about encouraging God’s people through writing on her blog (www.lauren-bowerman.com) and through discipleship.

4 Ways Every Member Can Strengthen Their Local Church

Every church member is like an individual Jenga block. Each block is vital to the stability of the structure. If just one block is out of place, the whole thing becomes unstable. But when each block is in its appropriate position, the structure is stable.

Individual church members need strengthening and encouragement in various seasons, and the church as a whole is no different. God has ordained that the local church's flourishing would not be left solely in the hands of the pastors, elders, and deacons. Her growth and strengthening happens through the godly leadership God has set into place and through the many members that make it up.

Here are four ways any church member can strengthen their local church.

1. BE GENEROUS

Members of a local church should be committed to making God’s people a priority in their lives. Acts 4:32-35 tells us that men and women in the early church gave their possessions to other Christians in need. This text is not justifying socialism, as some claim, but describing a principle of generosity: God has been generous in saving us through the sacrifice of Christ, so the church is generous in sacrificing all it has.

We are called to be generous with our wallets, but we are also called to be generous with our lives. We are all tempted to be stingy with something—our time, finances, emotional energy, resources, etc. The goal for every church’s generosity is given in Acts 4:34, which says that none of the believers in their midst was in need. The context of Acts 4:32-35 is monetary needs, but the principle of generosity expands beyond money and into people’s emotional, physical, and relational needs, among other things. Are everyone’s needs being met in your church right now?

We are not just called to be good but to do good, especially to those in the household of faith (Gal. 6:10). We can strengthen our local churches and do good by giving not just our stuff, but ourselves. We all have something we can give God’s people. Give what you have. Be a listening ear during times of grieving. Share wise words or advice in decision-making seasons, or tears during a tragedy. Sometimes the most generous gift you can give is your time. One way to be generous with our time is to share it with younger believers.

2. DISCIPLE SPIRITUALLY YOUNG CHRISTIANS

I work with college students. They want to be invited into older men’s and women’s lives so they can learn what it looks like to walk with the Lord in different seasons. But few of them are ever invited to an older person’s life. I say this not to condemn those who haven’t extended an invitation to a younger person, but to press the need for intentional, intergenerational discipleship in our local churches.

Paul describes how he and his companions lived among the church in Thessalonica by saying they shared with the church “not only the gospel of God but also own selves” (1 Thess. 2:8). Paul and his friends verbally taught them the truth of the gospel, but they also lived among the church and displayed these truths as they shared life with them. This took time, energy, and intentionality.

I am the woman I am today because of women who generously shared their lives with me throughout college and adulthood. They taught me Scripture. We studied God’s Word together and prayed. Other times, they shared their lives and I observed the daily ins and outs of what it looked like for a young mom and wife to love her family, share Christ with her neighbors, and know Jesus deeply.

Scripture makes it clear that we need one another. In the Garden of Eden, and still today, it has never been good for mankind to be alone (Gen. 2:18). Is there a young man or woman you can invite into your life? Is there an older man or woman you would love to learn from? Reach out to them today.

3. SERVE IN YOUR GIFTINGS

Christians are united in Christ and therefore to one another. We are under the same Spirit, the same Lord, and the same God that produces varying gifts in each of us (1 Cor. 12:4-6). The church is to be dependent on Christ, the head, and interdependent on one another, the body. The body should function with a sense of unity (togetherness among our distinct gifts) and not uniformity (complete homogeny in our gifts).

A manifestation of the Spirit is given to each person in the church to be used for the edification of God’s people (1 Cor. 12:7). This means every believer in the local church is necessary for her flourishing. A congregation cannot be made up of only teachers or only encouragers. We need men and women that are wise, exhorters, discerning, and helpers to shave healthy churches.

God has given you certain gifts of his Spirit so you can help strengthen your local church. It’s difficult to use your gifts if you don’t know what they are, though. If you don’t know your gifts, learn by serving widely in your church. Get involved in different ministries and opportunities and ask yourself: What do I enjoy? What have others affirmed I am good at? Where do I feel a burden to help or serve?

When you learn your gifts, be generous with them. As you serve God’s people you will see that Christ’s bride, like yourself, is in the process of being conformed to her Maker’s image.

4. BE PART OF THE CHANGE

The body of Christ is made up of imperfect individuals being renewed into the image of Jesus each day. It’s safe to assume your church has weaknesses, and it is all too easy to sit on the sidelines and point out everything wrong with our churches. Even if you’re right, you should be careful how you talk about Christ’s bride (and anyone’s bride for that matter).

You can strengthen your local church by being a part of the change and growth that needs to happen. If you see an aspect of your church that needs strengthening, assume you may be part of the solution.

As the early church grew rapidly, the widows were being overlooked in the daily bread distribution. The Apostles commissioned seven people to fulfill this ministry for the good of God’s people. As a result, Acts 6:7 says the Word of God continued to spread and more were added to their number. This is a beautiful example of church members fixing their own problems.

Just as every Jenga block is vital to the tower, every local church member is pivotal to the church’s growth. As members, we can seek to help strengthen our churches by generously using our gifts, discipling young Christians and being a part of the solution to problems we see.

The strengthening of the local church, and by extension the global church, happens through the members that make it up. We each play a role in helping to prepare Christ’s bride to meet her Maker. Let us do so with generous hearts and willing hands that seek to do good to those in the household of faith.

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SharDavia “Shar” Walker lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband Paul. She serves on staff with Campus Outreach, an interdenominational college ministry, and enjoys sharing her faith and discipling college women to be Christian leaders. Shar is a writer and a speaker and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Christian Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

You Don't Need a Passport to Reach the Nations

I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.” – Rom. 15:20-21

I was twelve when I first read these lines from Romans. The unstoppable advance of the gospel immediately captivated me.

Stories of missionary heroes like David Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, and John Paton flooded my mind as I considered what gospel-pioneering work would look like.

With a Bible in one hand and a machete in the other, I envisioned myself blazing a trail through the dense African bush, fighting off snakes and lions to reach remote tribes with the gospel. I was convinced this was the life God was calling me to live.

Twenty-five years later, I’m still just as excited about reaching the unreached. But my role in this work has looked entirely different from my childhood dreams.

DASHED DREAMS OF REACHING THE NATIONS

Initially, passion for the gospel’s advance led my wife and me to leave the comforts of family, friends, and homeland to church-plant in a Muslim village in West Africa. But our baby daughter’s struggles with malaria led us back to the States.

I was crushed.

My childhood dreams of reaching the unreached had been dashed.

Or had they?

These days, I’m not sweating bullets under the scorching African sun. Instead, you can usually find me shoveling snow on yet another frosty day in western New York. I’m not halfway across the continent, but a few miles up the road at the local university, studying the gospel with young men and women who’ve never heard the good news. Instead of cutting my way through a jungle with a machete, I’m digging my way through conversations with chopsticks.

Through this season of ministry, I’ve discovered something that never occurred to me when I first read Romans 15. I had always thought of the unreached peoples as only being “out there.” But the truth is, they’re very much here, too.

We don’t have to cross the ocean or cut down a trail to get to the nations. The nations have come to us.

THE UNREACHED IN OUR BACKYARD

One of the most dynamic mission fields of our time might easily be one of the most overlooked. This past year, more than one million international students from all over the world attended colleges and universities in the U.S. Many of these bright, ambitious men and women came to us from countries closed to traditional missionary endeavors.

Some will be only here for a year. Others, for quite some time. After completing their studies, many will go on to become influential leaders.

An article from the Washington Times stated that nearly 300 current and former world leaders once occupied American classrooms before ascending to prominence in their home countries.

The potential to see the gospel advanced globally through international student ministry is truly staggering!

AN EXCITING—BUT CHALLENGING—OPPORTUNITY

Almost anyone involved in international student ministry will tell you that most of these students are curious about religion. Unlike their American counterparts, international students are open to discussions about Christianity.

And they’re eager to make American friends. Being far from home, many long for a sense of community. They are an ideal mission field that is ripe for harvest!

Making disciples of the nations within our nation, however, is not for the faint of heart. The challenges can be overwhelming.

Since English isn’t their first language, communication can be complicated. Most of these students have cultures and worldview perspectives that are drastically different from ours. Some come from countries completely closed to the gospel and therefore lack basic categories for basic biblical concepts. Even those from “Christianized” countries often have a seriously distorted understanding of the gospel.

Patience, love, and a long-haul mindset are essential if we’re going to reach these men and women for Christ.

HOW YOU CAN REACH THE NATIONS AT HOME

If you’ve read this far, you might be thinking, “Micah, I get what you’re saying. Reaching these people sounds awesome, but kind of scary.” Maybe you’ve never interacted with someone from another country. Perhaps you’re worried that you won’t know what to say or how to act. How would you even begin?

If you’re near a local campus with international students, let me encourage you to consider the following:

Partner with local campus ministries

Partnering with a student ministry on campus is probably the best place to start. There are a number of campus ministries effectively reaching international students. Our church has been able to establish a healthy, working relationship with one such ministry.

Through our partnership, we’ve had numerous opportunities to make connections and develop meaningful relationships with students. Some of them have come to know the Lord and are now radiant followers of Christ. Others are attending gospel studies led by some of the men and women of our church.

Working together, I’m thankful that my church body can multiply our time, efforts, and resources to advance the gospel.

Meet the international student advisors at your local college

I recently talked with a young man who is involved in a thriving international student ministry at his local church. When I asked him how his church started their outreach, I was struck by the simplicity of his response:

“We met with the international student advisors and asked them how we could help students adjust to college life. They were happy to have us help with things like picking up students from the airport, showing hospitality, and helping students learn about the city.”

Through simple acts of service, members of this church established relationships with both students and faculty that have opened doors for disciple-making ministry.

Organize an ESL conversation club

Opportunities to meet Americans, make friends, and practice English are usually big hits with international students, especially those with families. With a little planning and training, nearly anyone can organize an effective ESL (English as a second language) conversation club. Select a few conversational topics that might be of interest to students. Open your gathering with a few ice-breaker activities to help everyone feel comfortable with one another. Divide the students up into smaller groups where they can receive more personalized attention and opportunities for discussion.

As relationships are established, encourage volunteers to follow up with students in their groups to set up one-on-one gospel studies.

REACH THE NATIONS RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE

God may not be calling you to cross the ocean to reach the unreached. Instead, he might be asking you to drive a few miles up the road.

Through international student ministry, you can labor so that “those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand”—and you won’t even need a passport.

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Micah Colbert and his wife, Debbie, live in Buffalo, NY with their three children. In addition to planting and pastoring Gospel Life Church, Micah also works part-time as an ESL instructor in the city. Currently, Micah is working on developing disciple-making materials to help churches effectively engage in international student ministry and ESL outreach. You can visit his website at www.internationalbiblestudy.com.

What if Pastors Stopped Sharing the Gospel?

What if, at a major continental conference, we asked every pastor in North America not to lead another person to Christ for the remainder of their ministry? If someone wanted to enter the Christian faith at their church, the pastor would redirect them to his people. It would no longer be the pastor’s responsibility to reach or attract unbelievers. If anyone was going to come to Christ, it would require direct participation from the individuals within the church body.

This is obviously a hypothetical situation for the purpose of illustration. But consider it for just a moment: if pastors stopped sharing the gospel and bringing people to Christ, what would happen to the church? With pastors pulling back, would church growth come to a screeching halt?

A CHURCH IN DECLINE

Plateaued and declining churches outnumber growing ones four to five in North America,[1] and denominations are reporting that high percentages of their churches are reaching few. America’s largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, reported in 2016 that 47 percent of their churches baptized two or less.[2]

You might think that reducing the pastor’s mission scope could have nose-dive level repercussions. Pastors are, after all, the main communicators of the gospel in our churches today. They also tend to be the most educated and socially adept people in God’s assembly (not that they don’t have some relational quirks and awkward tendencies). For those two factors alone, the mission of the church could substantially suffer if pastors were to stop sharing the gospel. But could it be that we'd see something surprising occur within the body of Christ?

What if across the wide spectrum of the Church, a mood of solemnity took place? A spontaneous-heart-and-knee-drop holy moment, where the church body in every region rises from its seats, comes to God’s altar, and with contrite and repentant hearts cries out, “Lord, we sense your Spirit in this. You are calling us to fulfill the very thing written in your Word. Lord Jesus, as your body, with our pastors now stepping down, we are ready to step up—to bear responsibility for bringing the gospel to the whole world! And we are willing to learn from our pastors all that is necessary to do that task more effectively.”

Seeing this heartfelt outpouring, pastors, too, all over the land might drop to their knees, exclaiming: “Lord, you have entrusted me with your people. I have been given the highest call to be their shepherd, but also the leader of your army. So Lord, make me a powerful equipper. Use me to unleash through them your symphonic gospel. May we see revival like the church has not seen since its first-century inception!”

Can you imagine this? I can.

BACK TO REALITY

Before you get too overwhelmed, there will be no such conference. No pastor has to stop living on mission; they can continue to be God’s messenger and minister of the gospel, uniquely called and qualified.

What I hope you get from this hypothetical scene of gospel-less pastors is a sense of how “pastor-centric” our congregations are. I believe the average church is far too dependent upon their leaders. From consultations with various church leaders, it seems to me that the lack of belief in church member’s mission abilities, coupled with inadequate training, is hindering the church’s potential impact at such a scale that it is unprecedented. Right now, North America has more unsaved people outside the immediate “joining circle” of the church (won’t attend with a simple invitation) than ever before. And our culture is continuing its plunge into pluralism.

A recent LifeWay study revealed that only 6 percent of churches are growing at the population rate of their communities.[3] Another survey from Christ Together found that 73 percent of respondents (all of whom were believers) were ineffectual with any non-believer.[4] The way churches are set up, with the pastor being the prime conduit of the gospel and a high ratio of church members being unengaged and ill-equipped for their gospel disseminating role, is not going to cut it any longer. Major cultural sectors will remain unreached unless God’s people rise into a new level of missional prowess.

I submit we have entered a new mission-necessitating era for the church’s growth. Yet even with the plateaued or declining numbers in so many congregations, many pastors are trying to do mostly the same “come and see” attractional devices to draw outsiders to check out their churches, when what is happening culturally has rendered this singular strategy insufficient.

MOBILIZING MEMBERS FOR MISSION

I played four years of college football and will always be a huge NFL fan. Though I am not part of the New England Patriot’s bandwagon, one day I listened to an interview with Patriot players who mentioned what their hoodied master, legendary coach Bill Belichick, required of them: “Do your job! Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing. We need you to do your job, each one of you, and on every single play. Fulfill your responsibility, and we’ll compete at the highest level.”

What if the church adopted a similar playbook? What if pastors truly embraced their role as given in Ephesians 4:11–17? What if pastors heard the call to “Do your job! Equip the saints. Stop stepping on their mission responsibility. Do what Christ is calling you to do and expect them to do their roles.”

It was Paul, under the Spirit’s inspiration, who was first to see this divine architecture in its most nascent form. God’s infinite wisdom conveyed the eternal plan for how his church would redeem the whole world. In Ephesians 4, Paul discloses a simple top-down-and-out structure designed to create the highest level of mobilization. It is so simple it’s easy to miss: God has given gifts to equip the members for his ever-expanding work.[5]

GETTING EPHESIANS 4 RIGHT

Despite specific instructions from this Ephesians 4 passage, teaching pastors still do the bulk of the mission enterprise. Too often, a church is measured by its preaching prowess, not the messaging exploits of her people. Too often the pulpit leads others to Jesus, not the people. Too often it is church staff, not the men and women in the pews, who are baptizing. Why do we settle for roles that diverge from Scripture, as well as the equipping example of Christ, who raised twelve everyman types to lead his movement?

I long to see pastors switch their metrics and begin measuring themselves by their equipping effectiveness and their people’s mission fruit. To get there, we would have to stop reinforcing a dependency upon leadership and a sequestering of viable mission skills, and instead devote ourselves to creating solid structures for achieving the member’s empowerment.

I am not proposing a restriction on pastoral proclamation, of course. But I am proposing a focused effort to train and mobilize the men and women in our churches to be the primary agents of gospel proclamation. If we make this shift, we will find ourselves closer to God’s ecclesial design, we will unleash the potential of our movement, and we will see a resurgence of the people’s “acts” that made Christ’s name famous in the first place.

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Gary Comer is the author of six books, including the newly released, ReMission: Rethinking How Church Leaders Create Movement. He founded Soul Whisperer Ministries, an organization dedicated to helping churches develop missionally. Gary is a motivational speaker, faith-sharing skills trainer, community group campaign catalyst, discipleship path designer, and development consultant. His ministry is also international, involved in training leaders in the United Kingdom, Kenya, Egypt, and India. Connect with Gary at soulwhispererministry.com, or on Twitter/Instagram at @gcomerministry.

[1] Jared C. Wilson, The Prodigal Church: A Gentle Manifesto against the Status Quo (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 35.

[2] Kevin Ezell, Southern Baptist Life, 2016.

[3] Rebecca Barnes and Linda Lowery, “7 Startling Facts: An Up Close Look at Church Attendance in America,” Church Leaders, April 10, 2018. Available at: https://churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/139575-7-startling-facts-an-up-close-look-at-church-attendance-in-america.html/2

[4] Ryan Kozey, “Your Church on Mission: What’s It Going to Take?” (presentation at Southwest Church Planting Forum, October 29, 2014).

[5] Read JR Woodward’s Creating a Missional Culture for insight into the five top equipping gifts.

Are You Ashamed of the Gospel?

I share the gospel like it’s a gift card at a kid’s birthday party—an obligatory present I hope they don’t open in front of me. Know the feeling?

If so, then we’re in good company.

Timothy was a young man in over his head and out on his own. He was being sent into the marketplace, the town square, and people’s homes to tell them that Jesus was crucified, buried, then rose from the dead after three days and that this was good news for them, who were sinners by nature and separated from God.

A SPIRIT OF FEAR AND TIMIDITY

Timothy, the young mentee of the Apostle Paul, was known to be a reluctant leader who was often timid and fearful. For some reason, he was prone to sickness, so much so that Paul mentioned his “frequent ailments” and told him to stop drinking water only and instead to drink a little wine, which was helpful for controlling stomach infections in that day (1 Tim. 5:23). On top of that, Timothy was young for his position of influence.

Because of his natural bent towards timidity, his recurring sickness, and his youth, Timothy was tempted to be ashamed of the gospel. That was a bit of a problem for the man whom Paul commissioned to guard the gospel in Ephesus, where he had recently founded the church.

Timothy was being asked to take the gospel of Jesus into a culture that didn’t want to hear about it. The people of Ephesus were living in one of the wealthiest places in the world. Many of them would have been living comfortable lives and were perfectly content to appease the gods so they could continue their pursuit of pleasure and happiness.

Things were going pretty well for the Ephesians, so who needed God? Who wants to hear about a suffering God that was killed on a cross then raised from the dead, and is now calling us to lay our lives down and follow him?

No wonder Timothy was timid and tempted to be ashamed of the gospel.

And no wonder we’re timid and tempted to be ashamed. Surely you see the parallels in his task and ours? Like Timothy, you and I are called to take the gospel to work and into people’s homes in a time where many are apathetic or hostile to what they think of as Christianity. They’re not quite sure what it is, but they know they don’t want anything to do with it because they’re doing just fine. After all, they’ve got a roof over their head, a job that pays, and a smartphone in their pocket. Why add God to the mix when things seem to be going okay? Why can’t they just keep pursuing the American Dream?

These cultural pressures make it seem so difficult to share Jesus with our neighbors and friends and family, even though we believe it to be good news for them. Why is it so hard?

REMEMBER THE GOSPEL

Fortunately, we have a record of Paul’s advice to Timothy. In his second letter to the young Timothy, Paul writes,

“Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” – 2 Timothy 1:8-10

In this exhortation, Paul tells Timothy to remember the gospel. He tells Timothy not to be ashamed of the gospel because God saved and called him to a holy calling. God set Timothy apart. God called Timothy not because of his own merits but because of God’s own purpose and grace in Christ.

The same is true of you, if you’re a believer. God has set you apart. God did that not because of your own merits but because of his own purposes and grace which he gave us in Christ, which was his plan all along. Now that plan has manifested itself through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah who conquered death and brought us life and immortality.

Paul was reminding Timothy of the gospel he believed. He was calling Timothy to preach it to himself, for it is in remembering the gospel we believe that we receive the power to proclaim it. As we preach the gospel to ourselves, we are reminded of its powers and God’s grace, and it gives us the strength to preach the gospel to our friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors.

Paul knew this from experience. He braved angry mobs and academic elites. He faced people from his own culture and background. Oh, and most of these people wanted to kill him. Yet he stood strong and shared the gospel with them anyways. How?

FINDING CONFIDENCE IN THE GOSPEL

Later in this passage, Paul tells Timothy exactly where he gets his boldness from when he says, “...I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Tim. 1:12).

Paul isn’t ashamed of the gospel because he knows the power and majesty of the One he believed in. Paul’s faith in Christ convinced him that God is able to guard what has been entrusted to him, which was the transmission of the gospel to the nations.

Paul knew Jesus. He didn’t feel like he was on his own when he shared the gospel. He knew that God was ultimately in charge of the gospel he had been entrusted with—and God cannot fail. Even before time began, God had one plan for all of humanity—to rescue and redeem them by the blood of Jesus so that people from every tribe, tongue, and nation would bow down before him and scream out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty!”

Paul knew he was a chosen instrument. He knew he was important and loved by God. But he also knew that God could take the gospel to the nations with or without him, so it was simply an honor to participate in its spread during the short time he had.

The courage to share the gospel comes from the gospel. That’s what Paul means when he says to “share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God” (2 Tim. 1:8). God gives us the gospel, saves us by the gospel, then gives us the power to share the gospel.

DON’T BE ASHAMED

Are you ashamed of the gospel? Are you afraid to tell people about Jesus? Then remind yourself of the God who saved you.

When I’m fearful of sharing the gospel, I must remind myself of what I was like before knowing Christ—I was dead in my sins in which I once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, carrying out the desires of my body and mind, and was by nature a child of wrath (Eph. 2:1-3). But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved me, even when I was dead in my trespasses, made me alive together with Christ—by grace I have been saved (Eph. 2:4-5)!

Oh, when I remember that God willed for his own Son to be crushed (Is. 53:10) that he might inherit broken, imperfect sinners like me, how can I not share his gospel? Father, keep the taste of your grace always on my lips and let me not shrink from lavishing it on your children. Remind me of the grace and mercy you poured out on me as I go and pour it out for someone else.

Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of three, and the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing check out his website, or follow him on Twitter.

6 Breathtaking Examples of Motherhood from History

Fifteen years ago, I was eight months pregnant and hungry—not just for food, but for godly wisdom on how to raise children who know and love the Lord. My husband and I had no idea how to be distinctly Christian parents to this baby that was on her way into our world. We spent my first Mother’s Day at a parenting conference, which began a lifelong quest to find out how moms before me raised their children in the Lord. History offers today’s Christian women “older women…to teach what is good…that the word of God may not be reviled” (Tit. 2:3-5).

Here are six historical moms who show us what it looks like to raise our children in the Lord.

MONICA – mother of Augustine of Hippo (332-387)

Monica mothered a man who became one of our most influential church fathers. Augustine shaped not only many of the doctrines central to the Christian faith, but his clear thinking and theology forged the church of the next millennia. Augustine was not always a follower of Christ, however. As a young adult, he rejected his mother’s faith with disdain. Unwed, he lived with a woman, fathered a child, and pursued a life of hedonism.

Monica’s early hopes were for her son to live a life of status and privilege, but they evolved into a drive to see her son saved. At 31, Augustine was in the midst of a noteworthy career in philosophy, education, and rhetoric when skepticism gave way under the Bishop of Milan’s influence and the power of his mother’s prayers as he surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Augustine was fully aware that his mother’s prayers were instrumental in his conversion. In his autobiography, Confessions, Augustine said, “My mother placed great hope in [God],” and she “was in greater labor to ensure my salvation than she had been at my birth.” He praises Monica’s persistent prayers on his behalf throughout all of his works. After her death, he grieved that she was "now gone from my sight, who for years had wept over me, that I might live in [God's] sight."[1]

Lesson for moms today: Labor in persistent in prayer (Phil. 4:6) for your children and rightly see their salvation as utmost of value. Invite God to change your worldly goals for your kids into Christ-centered ones.

SARAH EDWARDS – wife of Jonathan Edwards, mother of eleven (1710-1758)

Sarah was married to Jonathan Edwards, a Reformed preacher and theologian, and a key player in the First Great Awakening. The legacy of the Edwards’ home life is famously exhibited in a list compiled in 1900 of the life work of their eleven children and their descendants: college presidents and professors, lawyers and physicians, judges and senators, public servants from mayors to a U.S. vice president, authors, and hundreds of ministers and overseas missionaries. Sarah’s motherhood impacts every corner of American history.

Jonathan was known to be driven and passionate. He spent as many as thirteen hours a day studying. Visitors to the Edwards’ home report that though Jonathan was indeed involved in family life, the brunt of household duties—rearing the children and tending to guests—fell largely on Sarah. However, she created a happy home, an environment built on routine, rigor, and discipline.[2]

Lesson for moms today: Serve your family wholeheartedly, as to the Lord, trusting him to make himself known through you for generations to come (Col. 3:17). Through everyday acts of service, mothers can make a historic—and eternal—impact through their children.

SOJOURNER TRUTH – former slave, abolitionist, activist, and mother of five (c. 1797-1883)

Sojourner was born a slave in New York and first sold away from her parents at the young age of nine. Later she married an older slave, bore five children, and was widowed. In the years just prior to emancipation in New York, Sojourner was promised freedom by her master, who reneged after she completed the work they agreed upon. In response, Sojourner took her infant daughter and walked to freedom in broad daylight, saying that she had nothing to hide, as freedom had been promised to her. Her master eventually caught up with her, but her remaining year of servitude was purchased by an abolitionist family.

Shortly after gaining freedom, Sojourner learned that her former master had illegally sold her five-year-old son to a slaveholder in Alabama. Incensed, Sojourner set out to demand the return of her son. She personally navigated the judicial system in Alabama, took the issue to court, and won—making her the first black woman to win a case against a white man. Reunited with her son Peter, they moved to New York City where Sojourner heard the gospel and believed. Following her conversion to Christ, Sojourner said, “The Spirit Calls me and I must go.” She set out to be an abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and preacher of the gospel.[3]

Lesson for moms today: Pursue justice—no matter the cost. Be brave and committed to the truth. Love righteousness and justice (Ps. 33:5), not just at home, but all around you.

AMY CARMICHAEL – mother of hundreds (1867-1951)

Born in Ireland, Amy’s first ministry experience was in Belfast amongst “Shawlies”—impoverished girls who worked in the mills and could only afford to wear shawls rather than hats. After hearing Hudson Taylor speak, Amy felt called to missions overseas. She served briefly in Japan before an illness forced to return home. She suffered from neuralgia, a disease that caused great pain and weakness and required weeks of bedrest.

Despite her poor health, Amy remained steadfast in answering God’s call to share his love overseas. She set out for Bangalore, India in 1895 where she joined a band of Indian Christian women who traveled from village to village sharing the gospel. Amy worked hard to become fluent in Tamil and understand the Hindu religion and culture.

Along with her teammates, she established the Dohnavur Fellowship, which became a home for children rescued or escaped forced servitude in Hindu temples. Over time, Amy became Amma, or “mother,” to hundreds of rescued babies, children, and teenagers. About twenty years into her maternal role, she fell and was so badly injured that she was forced by restraints to stay in her bedroom for the rest of her life, which lasted another twenty years. That time, though undoubtedly painful on many levels, was not wasted. Amy welcomed little ones into her room and penned nearly 40 books.[4] [5]

Lesson for moms today: Lack of biological children doesn’t preclude you from being a mother. Be a mother to the motherless. Show your religion by loving the orphan (Jas. 1:27). Spend ourselves on the least of these. And don’t let anything stop you from proclaiming the gospel.

ALBERTA KING – mother of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1904—1974)

Alberta Williams King was a minister’s wife, an organ player and choir founder at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, member of the NAACP and YWCA, and mother of three children, including Martin Luther King, Jr.

In his autobiography, King said, “My mother confronted the age-old problem of the Negro parent in America: how to explain discrimination and segregation to a small child. She taught me that I should feel a sense of ‘somebodiness' but that on the other hand I had to go out and face a system that stared me in the face every day saying you are ‘less than,’ you are ‘not equal to…’ She made it clear that she opposed this system and that I must never allow it to make me feel inferior. . . . At this time Mother had no idea that the little boy in her arms would years later be involved in a struggle against the system she was speaking of.”

Six years after her son was assassinated, Alberta was gunned down while playing the organ at her church.[6]

Lesson for moms today: Champion the “somebodiness” inherent in all people because they are created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26-27) and teach your children to do the same.

ELISABETH ELLIOT – wife, missionary, and mother (1926-2015)

Elisabeth was born to missionaries and zealously pursued missions herself. After studying Greek in college, she went to Ecuador to share Christ with unreached tribes. Jim Elliot was also in Ecuador, and they were soon married. Along with a team of missionaries, the Elliot’s set out to locate and contact the Auca Indians who had previously killed everyone that tried to make contact.

When Elisabeth’s first and only child, Valerie, was ten months old, Jim and four other missionaries were speared to death when they reached with the Auca people. Undeterred from the mission, Elisabeth stayed in Ecuador with Valerie and continued pursuing ministry among the Auca.

Valerie recently said, “Because my parents prayed and hoped to bring Indians to the Lord, when my father was killed my mother had no plan or immediate thought she should leave Ecuador. Human fears would flood her mind, but verses from Scripture gave her peace and assurance we would be taken care of. Mother continued to work with the Indians and continued to pray for them. And the more that she prayed for them, the greater her love grew for these people in need of a Savior.”[7]

Lesson for moms today: Motherhood doesn’t preclude you from mission. Be a mom on mission. Go and make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19)—and take your children with you.

CONSIDER AND IMITATE YOUR LEADERS

The writer of Hebrews admonished early Christians to “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Heb. 13:7).

These six women from history are leaders to the moms of today. Let’s imitate their faith as we seek to raise our children in the Lord.

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Jen Oshman is a wife and mom to four daughters and has served as a missionary for 17 years on three continents. She currently resides in Colorado where she and her husband serve with Pioneers International, and she encourages her church-planting husband at Redemption Parker. Her passion is leading women to a deeper faith and fostering a biblical worldview. She writes at www.jenoshman.com.

[1] https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/301-600/augustine-couldnt-outrun-mothers-prayers-11629656.html

[2] https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/sarah-edwards-jonathans-home-and-haven

[3] http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/truth/1850/1850-16.html

[4] http://www.bu.edu/missiology/missionary-biography/c-d/carmichael-amy-beatrice-1867-1951/

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Carmichael

[6] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/publications/autobiography-martin-luther-king-jr-contents/chapter-1-early-years

[7] http://christiannewswire.com/news/4639520474.html

Mad for Basketball, Foolish for Christ

March Madness is upon us. My husband spends hours teaching our boys the art of bracketology. My boys' work ethic displayed through perfecting their brackets is inspiring. Why can’t they apply this passion to their geometry homework? As a mother of four sons, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that any plans I had to engage in a non-basketball-related conversation have been rescheduled for April. During this time of year, my house is overrun with cheering, shouting, and surprises. Whoever decided to call the NCAA Tournament season March Madness rightly understood its effect on basketball fans.

With my free time this March, I’m wondering about madness as it relates to faith. Madness can be defined as, “extremely foolish behavior.” Usually, that’s not a good thing, but March turns that expectation on its head. (And sometimes that madness turns the bowl of Doritos on the floor after a buzzer-beater—but that’s another matter.)

We accept the cultural norm of going a little crazy over basketball, or any sport really, but forget to be enthusiastic about the kingdom of God. Imagine the kingdom-impact of millions of zealous people united in Christ to advance the gospel.

The end of March presents an opportunity for sports enthusiasts to go a little mad. Every day presents an opportunity for the church to be known for our madness for the Lord.

MISSIONS MADNESS

According to Joshua Project, of the almost 7.5 billion people in the world, only about ten percent claim to be evangelical Christians. Three billion live among unreached people groups. Ninety percent of the world is lost, and many of them live in countries hostile to the gospel. What does this mean for the church? It means we need more madness for evangelism.

We have been entrusted with the most significant mission of all time. We are commissioned to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19). We are gospel-advancers; the gospel doesn’t advance when we retreat. We must go.

We must reject the assumption that someone else will go. Why not us? We need to embrace the unfamiliar for the sake of the gospel. We may need to abandon the comforts of our current zip code so others may know an eternal home in heaven.

We can’t be casual about advancing the gospel. We must passionately combat the darkness with the light. We must get a little crazy about evangelism.

DISCIPLE-MAKING MADNESS

Making disciples starts with making converts, but it doesn’t end there. It continues with the work of discipleship—teaching followers of Christ how to obey his Word (Matt. 28:20).

Particularly in America, we’ve bought into an individualistic theology. I stay out of your business and you stay out of mine. We have compartmentalized our faith to the point that it serves as mere window-dressing to our lives. However, obedience to God’s command to make disciples requires us to be fully invested in one another. We must come alongside each other, helping one another understand what it means to follow Christ.

We depend on one another to point out blind spots, to hold us accountable, to instruct us in the Word, to champion us in our pilgrimage. We must reject the temptation to isolate ourselves from the Christian community. We must seek out spiritual siblings to walk with, discipling one another as we go. We harm each other when we let sin go unchecked in our lives. As believers, we are our brother’s keeper.

Our younger siblings in the faith are counting on us to teach them how to be mad for Christ. In the same way a junior on the team can help a rookie get up to speed with how things work on and off the court, how we lead those younger in the faith than us matters. We need passionate teachers. We need to get a little crazy about discipleship.

WORSHIP MADNESS

We advance the gospel and make disciples because our God is worthy of the worship of the nations. “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord” (Ps. 150:6).

One of my favorite things about my local church is our celebration of the gospel through baptism. New believers share their story of deliverance from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of Christ (Col. 1:13). One of our elders immerses them in water. They rise from the water to thundering applause.

I'm not talking about a polite clap. We shout. We hoot and holler. We whistle. We cry. We celebrate the expansion of the kingdom of Christ and the destruction of our enemy. It gets a little crazy.

Scripture offers a great example of a man whose celebration of the Lord looked a little mad. As the ark of the covenant was brought to Jerusalem, David “danced before the Lord with all his might” (2 Sam. 6:14). When he was confronted by his wife about his embarrassing behavior, his response was, “I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this” (2 Sam. 6:21-22).

“Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (Ps. 145:3). Our God is awesome and worthy of praise. Let’s go a little crazy in our worship.

GOSPEL-CENTERED MADNESS

Imagine a world where every follower of Christ displayed signs of madness for our King. What if we, like Paul, could describe ourselves as, “fools for Christ’s sake” (1 Cor. 4:10)?

If you think a sixteen-seed beating a one-seed team is wild, imagine telling your friends and extended family that you’re moving to Bangladesh to plant a church.

Imagine a small group inviting local refugees into their weekly gatherings to help them transition into our culture and expose them to kingdom-culture. Imagine a people whose free time wasn’t spent on Netflix but in prayer.

Imagine teenagers more concerned with their friends knowing the Lord than knowing the latest app. Imagine college graduates taking their skills to the 10/40 window to live as missionaries. Imagine older saints who understood that retirement doesn’t apply to kingdom work. 

Imagine local churches concerned with building God’s kingdom and not their own buildings. Imagine small groups that heard words of confession and petition instead of gossip.

Imagine families that invite new neighbors over to share more than just lasagna—to share the life-giving bread of the gospel. Imagine parents that train their children to be faithful witnesses, not just committed soccer players.

Imagine being the people who forego the feast of our day to fast for the nations to know the gospel.

ARE YOU MAD FOR THE LORD?

The world watches us get excited over many things—sports, politics, food, entertainment. How often do they see us get excited about the kingdom of God?

When was the last time you were foolish for Christ? How long has it been since you engaged in disciple-making? Let’s not fool ourselves. Disciples make disciples. God is glorified when we are foolish for his sake, not when we are just fools.

I’ll probably get caught up in the excitement of upsets and buzzer-beating three-pointers as my guys enjoy watching basketball over the next few days. But my prayer is that my life will display madness for the gospel, zeal for the church, and foolishness for the name of Christ.

Our zeal for the kingdom should be evident to all. We don’t need to hide our excitement; we need to embrace it, flaunt it. March proves we have a capacity for craziness. Let’s redirect that capacity and apply it to advancing the kingdom of God. 

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Christy Britton is a wife, homeschool mom of four biological sons, and soon-to-be mom of an adopted Ugandan daughter. She is an orphan advocate for 127 Worldwide. She and her husband are covenant members at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, NC. She loves reading, discipleship, Cajun food, spending time in Africa, hospitality, and LSU football. She writes for several blogs, including her own, www.beneedywell.com.

What Does Mission Look Like in the Suburbs?

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” – Karl Marx

I was at a church conference, listening to an impassioned young pastor talk about the work he does in inner-city high schools in his neighborhood:

“Everyone should be getting in on this. It’s the greatest need in our city. Young men without fathers need attentive, compassionate, strong men to pour into their lives and mentor them.”

I listened to him with a mixture of admiration and annoyance. I admired how he’d discerned local mission in his neighborhood and galvanized his community to action. Men putting their lives on the line for young men stirred my heart and excited my mind.

But I was also annoyed (and feeling more than a bit guilty about being annoyed). What if my neighborhood doesn’t have the same problems as your inner city neighborhood?

Does mission in the suburbs count, too?

THE BEST PLACE TO LIVE?

The city where I am living and planting a church (Fishers, Indiana) was recently named the BEST place to live (in all of America!) by Money Magazine (based on factors that a magazine named MONEY would base it on: healthy economy, affordable homes, and a “high quality of life”).

This is a very different environment from inner-city realities described by the young pastor above. So what does mission look like in the affluent suburbs? Should we drive 30 minutes to mentor high school teens in a more impoverished area?

What does mission look like here in the suburbs?

THE HIDDEN PAIN OF THE SUBURBS

My friend and co-pastor Ben says that mission in the suburbs is more difficult to discern because the needs we see most quickly are those that contrast with the American Dream (poverty, homelessness, crime, etc.). But the American Dream isn’t the same thing as the Kingdom of God.

The needs in the suburbs are just as pressing, but it takes some discernment to see them because they’re hidden under the veneer of the apparent fulfillment of the American Dream.

Our church has been inhabiting and praying for our suburban city for three years now. And we’ve noticed a glaring issue largely left untouched and ignored by the affluent, active culture of our city: there seems to bea deep well of unprocessed sadness, unfinished grief, sorrow, and relational pain that people carry with them on a day to day basis.

One recent study suggests that loneliness is rampant, and it’s just as dangerous to our health as obesity. And unlike poverty, homelessness, and hunger, most people who are chronically sad don’t know it. They can’t identify what’s actually haunting them.

AFFLUENCE AND ACTIVITY NUMB US

Part of the reason we don’t know we’re sad is that the affluence and relentless activity of the suburbs insulate us from having to feel our pain. We’ve generally got enough money and power to find a way to numb the pain if we ever start feeling it.

• Lonely? Watch another Netflix show, refresh your Facebook pic of your family to see how many likes you’ve received, kill off that box of cookies.

• Ugly? Get free botox from your neighbor, start a gym membership and lose that weight, buy more expensive (and flattering) clothing.

• Hurting from a relationship? Eat, drink and be merry; change churches; just begin to ignore that awkward relationship.

• Insignificant at work? Find your significance in your kids' performance, or your meticulously cared for lawn, or your car.

• Stressed out and unable to cope? Pop open another bottle of wine, plan a guys’ weekend, play another round of golf, download another mobile phone game.

CHURCH DOESN'T HELP (MOST OF THE TIME)

And our suburban churches aren’t helping.

Worship services are often called “celebrations.” Preachers regularly tell people that the answer to their unhappiness is to “just praise God!” Our liturgies are full of thanksgiving, praise, and exhortation, but often bereft of lament, mourning, and weeping. Our Christian radio stations are full of “positive and encouraging” programming, implying that to be a Christian is to be happy, positive, smiling, and put together.

If Karl Marx thought the religion of his day was the “opium of the people,” there’s a case to be made that the kind of Pop Christianity described above is the opium of the American suburbs.

Drop the kids off at childcare, get emotionally moved by awesome music, listen to an inspirational message about God that tells you to try harder and do more, and God is good all the time and all the time God is good . . . and come back next week for your next spiritual hit!

But none of this frenetic spiritual activity really heals us. It just keeps us sedated and unaware of our immense sadness and pain. Church just becomes another activity to distract me from my pain.

RECKONING WITH REALITY

Instead of this kind of happy-clappy faith, the suburbs desperately need a faithful Christian witness of how to lament pain and evil in our world.

One of our foundational assumptions about life (because we see Jesus make this assumption over and over in his dealings with people) is that God is so real he most fully meets us where we really are.

We need a reckoning with reality, a dealing with “what is,” a rhythm that makes way for healing, and a robust community with which to journey.

We need the emotional safety to name what’s actually going on, a pruning of distractions to become aware of how we are really doing, language to describe “I think that feeling of loneliness and anxiety is really just sadness that I haven’t dealt with yet.”

LEARNING A LITURGY OF LAMENT

Mission in the suburbs can begin with learning to lament. And thankfully, even though most of us aren’t practiced in it, the Bible is filled with lament, especially the Psalms. Lots of Psalms are mainly lament!

Our church gatherings must make room for lament because this is the only thing that can heal our sadness.

We can start with sadness for our own life tragedies: relational ruin, personal trauma, individual sin. And we can enter into solidarity with the suffering of the world as well: victims of natural disasters, systemic oppression, the principalities and powers of racial and economic injustice, broken families, physical and emotional abuse.

Healing and restoration happen when we move beyond merely “standing up for” or “speaking out against” things. Underneath speaking and standing, we find the aching need to suffer in solidarity with actual people.

GROWING ROBUST CHURCH COMMUNITIES

Loneliness and isolation are the privileges of affluence. In the suburbs, we live in large castles of independent self-sufficiency, closing ourselves off to connection and dependence on others.

Much of our pain in the suburbs is due to past and present relationships that are not healthy. If relationships have caused us pain, it will be relationships that play a role in our healing.

Our discipleship must be built on creating relationships of emotional and spiritual safety. At a minimum, this means cultivating a culture where:

• Shame is dethroned through regular confession and proclamation of good news.

• The worst thing about me can be brought into light in community because the grace and truth of Jesus Christ are trusted and celebrated.

• People can share pain without others dismissing, denying, ghosting, fixing, or gas lighting.

• We learn how to be present to others pain; suffering solidarity with each other.

• Hope and healing are held together with despair and pain.

This isn’t easy, of course. Most people have to pay professionals $125 an hour to receive this kind of relationship and care. And of course, professional counseling is important and good and necessary. It’s just sad that it’s often the only place people experience this kind of care.

What if we can create a fabric of community that is able to bear more and more suffering as we learn to name our own in community?

In the suburbs, creating spaces where it’s safe for people to learn to lament is mission, because it addresses one of the hidden ways the kingdom of God needs to come to the suburbs.

Matt Tebbe has been a coach, communicator, and consultant for over 4 years with churches in North America. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and has worked as an adjunct professor at Trinity College. Matt co-founded Gravity Leadership and is planting a church (The Table) in the northeast suburbs of Indianapolis, where he and his wife Sharon live with their children Deacon and Celeste. You can follow him on Twitter or check out Gravity Leadership for more of his work.

Let's Get Real About Women's Discipleship

Less than a year ago, I helped organize a women’s ministry event focused on discipleship. During this hour-long event, we offered women the chance to ask anonymous questions to a panel of female leaders in the church about the practice of discipleship.

It went well. Frankly, a little too well. The five of us participating on the panel ran out of time long before those in attendance ran out of questions. While I was encouraged by the interest women showed in the topic, I left the panel feeling somewhat burdened by the trend I saw in the questions women were asking us.

Many women in my church seemed to struggle with the essential rhythm of discipleship, mostly because they had unrealistic ideas about what discipleship should look like in the first place. They were frustrated by their lack of theological prowess or their inability to squeeze a group Bible study into their schedules, and rather than doing discipleship “wrongly” they were just foregoing discipleship completely. 

In his book Discipling, author Mark Dever offers a to-the-point definition of discipleship as “helping others follow Jesus”. This doesn’t seem to be the definition many women are applying in their personal lives. If Instagram is any clue, most Christian women think discipleship is limited to hosting thoughtfully curated Bible studies in tasteful homes where shrieking children and dirty dishes don’t exist. This glossy ideal sits like a yoke on many women’s shoulders rather than spurring them onward in Christ’s Great Commission.

That yoke leads to many problems, all of which could be rectified by letting go of perfectionism and getting real. Here are three ways to start getting real about women's discipleship.

1. STOP SEARCHING FOR THE UNICORN DISCIPLER

The most common question I hear in women’s ministry is some variation of “where can I get a Titus-2 woman to disciple me?” This isn’t a bad question, but it is sometimes asked with something unhelpful in mind. I’ve watched repeatedly as Christian women adopt a heavy-handed application of the passage in Titus 2:1-5. In these verses, godly, well-respected older women are instructed to teach younger women in the church. While this is clearly the Father’s intended model within a congregational family, sometimes our expectations are more detailed than the text itself!

I know too many women who are desperately holding out for a discipler that looks more like a unicorn than an actual human being. In our minds we sometimes conjure up this image of what sort of woman we want pouring wisdom into us: at least twenty years older, maybe she’s the pastor’s wife or women’s ministry leader; she’s got kids, preferably a lot of them. Yet this older woman with a pastor husband, a women’s ministry to run, and a bunch of kids to raise can magically find the time to meet with us three times a week at a coffee shop to read the Bible.

Not only do we sometimes have unreasonable expectations for those we want to disciple us, but sometimes we find ourselves unintentionally ignoring women in our midst who already want to pour into us. That single sister or college girl is just as capable of reminding you of the gospel as anyone else, and may be the very woman God has put in your life to help you grow and mature as a believer. Let go of the unicorn, and praise God for any woman of any age or life stage who is willing to disciple you.

2. SIMPLIFY DISCIPLESHIP RHYTHMS

Another concern women have about discipleship is about “how” to do it, with many convinced the only acceptable way to disciple someone is to have one-on-one Bible discussions. Interestingly enough, the Bible shows us that discipleship takes many forms.

The book of Acts describes the death and resurrection of a disciple named Tabitha (Acts 9:36-43). She specifically cared for women in Joppa who lost their husbands. As this community was grieving the loss of their beloved sister-disciple, nobody mentioned Tabitha’s hostess skills or if she coordinated the best Bible studies. Instead, these widows wept into the clothes that Tabitha made for them in their time of need. With this simple, unflashy act of faithfulness Tabitha deeply influenced the women of her church community. So much so that when she died two men ran to another town to find the Apostle Peter and ask for his help.

Peter raised this woman who was “filled with good works and charity” from the dead so that she could continue discipling and serving her sisters in the church. She may not have led a Bible study, but Tabitha was a discipleship powerhouse by simply living alongside these women, observing their needs and doing her best to meet them in Jesus’ name. Our own discipleship can be that simple too.

However, the practical servant discipleship of Tabitha is not our only example. In the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul writes a letter to the believers in Thessalonica. Paul is actually engaging in discipleship just by writing this letter of encouragement and instruction to other believers. In chapter 5 of this letter, Paul gives the church some specific charges in discipleship; “admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all”. All of the things Paul detailed here are considered discipleship actionables, and all of these things are incredibly powerful in the life of believer.

Think of the last woman you spent a significant amount of time with. Did she have a physical need? How could you meet that physical need and use it to remind her of her great need for a Savior? Is she experiencing a personal trial? How can you encourage her and remind her of God’s goodness? Are you aware of any sin patterns this woman may have in her life? What words and approach should you use to gently admonish and restore her?

Asking yourself these kinds of questions and letting the answers guide your interactions is discipleship in its simplest form.

To be clear, there is great value in dedicated time for discussing scripture with other women. But if you want to develop a rhythm of discipling others and being discipled, you are also going to have to embrace the messiness of life, and that often means organized study sessions take a backseat. You will have to talk over screaming kids. You will have women flake out because of other responsibilities. You will often talk about scripture while one of you folds laundry or finishes up a work project. All of these things are okay. There is a lot you can learn from another woman just by observing her in her daily routine without any special appointments or studies.

3. KEEP IT ALL ABOUT JESUS

Ultimately the kind of discipleship women need is the kind that stirs their affections for Christ and encourages them to become more like him. But many women worry they aren’t theologically capable of discipling or teaching someone else.

Luckily for believers, there is no prerequisite for discipleship. If God’s word is living and active, then God’s story has the power to challenge and mature believers independent of our abilities or intellect. Your job as a discipler is to simply show others who Jesus is and remind them what he did for them, over and over again. When they are hurting, remind them. When they are angry at their co-worker or spouse, remind them. When they are sinning, remind them. When they need grace, remind them.

THE SIMPLE GOSPEL

The simple message of the gospel is what changes our lives both in the temporal and eternal sense, and the gospel didn’t lose its power after that happened. To assume that God cannot continue to change a person’s heart or sanctify them despite our bumbling words or lack of apologetic knowledge is to underestimate his power. The good news of Jesus Christ and someone willing to speak it is all that is truly necessary for discipleship.

Rachelle Cox converted from Mormonism six years ago and is now passionate about helping women understand God’s good word and good theology. She is a women’s ministry intern at Karis Church, and is beginning her theological education at Boyce College. She loves serving her husband and two children, and writes at http://eachpassingphase.com .

The Freedom to Slow Down

WHY YOU CAN STOP FOCUSING SO MUCH ON YOU

It seems counterintuitive to look at the tension Bob is facing about change in his life, his family’s life, and the life of his friends outside the church, and say to him, “You need to slow down if you want to see that dream move from a thought in your head to a reality in your midst.”

So welcome to one of the many paradoxes of the gospel.

Perhaps one of the best places to view this paradox is in the story we often refer to as "The Good Samaritan." If anything unveils the root reason why Bob can slow down to love and disciple others, it’s this story from Jesus. Simon Sinek is right…we should always start with the “why.”

We find the parable recorded in Luke 10:25-37, and the name we have given it is often used for hospitals, justice ministries, and as the battle cry for those staring down the racial divide, educational gaps, refugee crisis, and many other injustices. These are real issues where we want to see what is good and right have its full effect.

But, in further study of this passage, we find, like the disciples who spent years with Jesus, we may have missed a deeper meaning to what Jesus is declaring in this ancient parable. In fact, we may have missed the very connection he’s making between what we want to see come to fruition in our world and how we actually arrive at this desired destination.

The story begins with Jesus’ encounter with a lawyer, “For behold, a lawyer stood up to put him (Jesus) to the test” (Luke 10:25). This is a man, mind you, who was extremely well educated in the Jewish Law. To say he had the Law of God and all its many facets memorized would not be an understatement. From what we can tell, he apparently has heard about Jesus from others, has gone to listen to Jesus, and in his observation felt there is a serious divide between what God has declared in the Law and what Jesus is teaching.

So, right out of the gate, the lawyer begins his onslaught with one simple question: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (v. 25).

It’s a simple, straightforward question, and with death being a destiny awaiting us all, a very relevant question. Jesus, as a skilled teacher, begins the process of answering the lawyer's question by asking him a question, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (v. 26).

Ready to share his immense knowledge of the Law in a moments notice, the lawyer responds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (v. 27).

Ding. Ding. Ding. “You have answered correctly,” Jesus said. “Do this, and you will live” (v. 28).

You could have heard a pin drop as the lawyer was assured that Jesus' beliefs about the Law and his teachings on eternal life were in line with what God has declared in the Torah. But instead of being satisfied with Jesus’ answer, an eerie look comes across his face as he quickly, and quietly realizes: “According to the Scriptures, If I 'do this,' this Law, this act of loving God with everything I am, and loving my neighbor in the same degree that I love myself…then I ‘will live.’”

Most of us read this and think, “Alright. A clear to do list. I got this. Thank you, Jesus!” But for the lawyer here, this wasn’t a moment of gratitude… it was a moment of sheer panic.

As a lawyer, he knew better than anyone else in his day, how the perfect Law to “love God with all” of your being and to “love your neighbor as yourself” is only done, only met, only fulfilled, if it is done with perfection. Yes, righteousness, “rightness,” is our need to live in the presence of a holy God. There is no such thing as imperfect obedience.

The very Law the lawyer had just used to justify himself incriminated himself.

So rather than face the reality of his need and his inability to meet it, “he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (v. 29).

The question is an escape tactic; a backpedal plot rooted in a man-made spin on the Law, aimed at helping the lawyer get around the demands of loving God and his neighbor with perfection. In response to this move, Jesus goes into a story of a man who was traveling on a long stretch of dangerous, isolated terrain from “Jerusalem to Jericho,” where he “fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.” Scene one of the opening act is set with a character who is broken and desperately in need of someone outside of himself to save him.

Jesus goes on and says, “a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side,” followed by a “Levite” who took this same course of action (vv. 31-32). With scene two, two new characters are added to the plot, one representing the Law of Moses, and the other it’s role in the world. Both are naturally good, informative, and even directive, but neither have any ability to actually bring change to the human heart. Like a mirror, the Law can reveal the dirt on your face. Amen. However, rubbing your face on a mirror will never make it clean.

From here Jesus brings the story to its climax as He says, a “Samaritan,” unlike the Priest and Levite… “when he saw him, ...had compassion.” Jesus went on to spell out what this loving compassion looked like as the Samaritan “bound up his wounds, …set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn to take care of him,” and then covered this stranger's medical expenses as he paid the innkeeper to take care of him until he returned (vv. 33-35). Think of the medical cost today entailed in nursing someone to health who was almost dead. The estimate is upwards of an entire year's salary.

With the full scenario and each character’s role in view, Jesus moves to the heart of the lawyer's question and asks: “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" (v. 36). In other words, in light of the Law you quoted just a minute ago about what you need to do to inherit eternal life, the question here isn’t “Who is your neighbor?” but rather “What kind of neighbor are you?” The lawyer answers, “the one who showed him mercy.” And with the lawyer’s ploy exposed, Jesus makes sure his original question is clearly answered: “You go, and do likewise” (vs 37).

The parable is pure genius.

Jesus uses a story about a man who is desperately in need of someone else to save him after being “beaten half dead”…a guy the lawyer refuses to identify with, who was loved by a “Samaritan”…someone the lawyer will not identify with, to show him what he “must do to inherit eternal life”…a task he cannot identify with.

And perhaps that is the point.

With the beliefs most likely held by the lawyer in regards to what is wrong with the world and what the solutions are to fix it, he was looking for a Messiah who was coming to make the world straighten up and fly right, not “the Lamb of God” who is slain to take “away the sins of the world” (Jn. 1:29). It’s the same song and dance with everyone in Jesus’ context, including the disciples themselves. So, as people who were thinking they needed a guide rather than a Savior, they would naturally see themselves as the Samaritan in Jesus’ story, not the helpless man on the side of the road. Ironically though, it's only in recognizing our death, our inability to live out the demands of the law with our righteousness of “filthy rags,” will we cling to the only One who’s in the resurrection business (Isaiah 64:6).

It is Jesus and Jesus alone who fulfills the Law and “inherits eternal life.” By God’s grace, he has announced his Father’s dealings with the sin problem of our world are “finished,” forgiven (John 19). By God’s grace, his “righteousness” has been attributed to all who believe (Rom 3-4; Eph 2:8-10). And by God’s grace, “all things,” as in everything that feels lost from our acts of pride, greed, fear, hatred, racism, sexism, manipulation, abuse, theft, lying…“has been reconciled” in the life, death, and resurrection of the one who made us, loved us, forgave us, and sustains us all (Col. 1:15-20).

In Jesus, reality has undergone a major shift.

We need nothing else…except to believe in the One who’s made this life-changing news a reality.

Believing we stand complete in Jesus is what allows us the freedom to look at the purpose of the Law, this beautiful picture of love for God and others, not as a to-do list to obtain the holiness the Law demands, but as a picture of what harmony with God and others truly looks like. This by no means removes the call on our lives to what is good and worthy of pursuit, it just changes the posture of our pursuit as the Law, this “ministry of death,” reveals the impossible feat of us ever walking in our own righteousness (2 Cor 3:1-9). It’s a journey marked not by determined action, but rather complete dependence on Jesus who is our salvation and sanctification (Heb. 10:13).

Believing we stand complete in Jesus is what allows us the freedom to die to the project of self, the tyranny of more, and the need to posture ourselves as someone who has it together. The independent life, apart from Him who is “life,” is a myth (John 14:6; Gal. 2:20). We are completely “hidden” in Him (Col. 3). There are no levels in the kingdom, no ladders to climb in hopes to reach your next breakthrough… just a Savior to dwell in. So you’re free to stop giving away all of your limited margin to church programs centered around your growth, and like the disciples, run with Jesus as He ministers to those outside—an actual place of need that drives your dependence and shapes your life.

Lastly, believing we stand complete in Jesus is what allows us the freedom to stop racking our brains in search of the magic bullet to help us build the church. Jesus said, “I will build my church,” so it’s not something we do (Matt. 16:18). It is easy to lose sight of this promise when we mistakenly place this task upon ourselves or when we face trials, fail, and feel defeated. Just as it’s easy to forget how the early church was a vast movement that brought the news of Jesus to much of the known world with only one resource: his Spirit. No copy of the Scriptures for everyone to study, no seminaries, no large Sunday venues, just the Spirit at work through everyday people who had been “given the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5).

Knowing what He would accomplish on the cross, Jesus slowed down to disciple others.

Knowing what He has accomplished on the cross, we can slow down to disciple others as He works in us, with us, without us, and even in spite of us.

Such good news for the lawyer in us all.

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Gino Curcuruto is part of the Directional Team for The Table Network. He and his family lead a new expression of the church, known as The Table Philadelphia. He, along with fellow The Table Network leaders Russ Johnson & Tony Sorci, co-authored the book, Slow Down: A Timeless Approach. 

Content contributed from Slow Down: A Timeless Approach by Russ Johnson and Gino Curcuruto, ©2017. Used by permission of Missional Challenge Publishing.

Use Your Affluence for Influence

“If you engage in a geographically centered mission in an affluent area, how will you care for the poor and welcome them into your community?” — @BradAWatson

I saw that tweet right before bed and it kept me up most of the night. It's something I’ve wrestled with because I live and serve in an affluent community. How do you care for the poor and welcome them into your community if you live in a wealthy area?

The Bible tells us that God’s people are blessed so that they can be a blessing to others. That means our affluence should be used for influence.

The Biblical Mandate

God’s plan since the beginning has been to bless the world through his people. In the garden, Adam and Eve were told to be fruitful and multiply and to cultivate the world, making it a more perfect place (Gen. 1:28). God promised Abraham he would bless him and make him into a great nation, but that blessing was intended to flow into all the nations of the earth (Gen. 12:2-3). Abraham’s fruitfulness would be a blessing to his family, but it was primarily intended to become a blessing to all the families of the world.

This broader theme of blessing the world through one people carries over into God’s plan for Israel. At the same time, God’s heart for the poor is revealed throughout the Old Testament in passages such as Psalm 72:13, “He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.” More than the just the poor, we see God’s soft spot widened to include widows, orphans, refugees, and others, such as in Deuteronomy 10:18, “He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.”

The fullest display of God’s heart for the poor was incarnated in Jesus, who was born into a poor family. His statements about caring the poor were provocative and shocking, like when he said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God… But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” (Lk. 6:20, 24). Jesus goes further to say that putting our money in earthly possessions is foolish when all of it will come to an end. Instead, Jesus says,

Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. – Luke 12:33

Perhaps Jesus’ most striking words about caring for the poor are found in Matthew 25:31-46, where he says that neglecting to care for the poor is the same as neglecting to care for him. Those who neglect the poor will then hear these words from Jesus,

Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. – Matthew 25:41-43

Clearly, Jesus expects his followers to use their blessings to bless others. For many of us, Jesus’ teaching should directly affect how we think about and use our affluence.

Own your affluence

Many of us don't think of ourselves as affluent. However, none of the worldwide statistics support this thinking.

At the same time, not everyone reading this is making  ends meet, and I get that. I really do. I coordinate pastoral care and benevolence for my church, so I know people are struggling. Just because I live in an affluent area doesn't mean everyone around me is well off.

But for those of us who have a roof over our head, food in the fridge, and air conditioning keeping us comfortable, we need to own our affluence. Once we’ve done that, it’s time to start putting feet to our faith. Here are some ways to do that.

Spend time with the poor

If we want to care for the poor and invite them into our lives and communities, we have to spend time them. The biggest hurdle to caring for the poor in affluent areas is insulation—intentionally or unintentionally closing ourselves off. We don’t have to continue living this way this way though.

Even in a wealthy town like mine, there is almost always an organization, church, or non-profit that is serving the poor and working poor. Seek them out. Give them time and resources. Join their cause. As you read earlier, in Matthew 25 Jesus equated spending time with the poor to spending time with him.

We can't minister to people we don't understand. We can’t welcome people we don’t know. We must be serving the poor where they are.

Open your home

Here's something that would make a splash in your affluent neighborhood: invite a poor person or family to move into your home. Why don't more of us consider this?

Jesus' teaching is laden with instructions to care for the poor, minister to the down and out, and to be hospitable to the stranger. Particularly in the suburbs, many people have homes with extra bedrooms, bonus rooms, and basements, so why not use those homes for ministry?

The early church got a lot of things wrong, but this they got right. “And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:44-47 ESV).

Using houses as ministry bases has been a part of the church since the very beginning. Just because we live in an individualistic age doesn't mean we should be exempt from that history. Thankfully, we're living in a time where this ministry form is having a bit of a renaissance.

Move to the "poor part of town"

Here's another counter-cultural idea that would raise eyebrows in your affluent area: sell your house and move closer to the "poor part of town."

Every town and city has at least one area like this. In our affluence we actively avoid living close to these area citing crime, poor schools, and sagging real estate prices. These sound reasonable enough until you ask yourself if those would sound like good reasons to Jesus.

What kind of witness to the name of Jesus would it be if more believers sold their homes, moved closer to poverty, and used their affluence to enrich the lives of those around them?

A pretty compelling one if you ask me. And it sounds dangerously close to the early Christianity we all claim to long for.

Cultivate church gatherings that welcome the poor

Ask yourself: If I were to bring a poor person to church with me on Sunday, what would their experience be like? Would they stand out? Would they be welcomed? Would anyone talk to them? Would the service make sense to them?

These might be tough questions, depending on your answers, but we should be asking them. If we're surrounded by affluence, over time we'll only be able to relate to affluence, and everything we do will assume people come from the same background.

This mindset makes social diversity much more difficult and weakens our communities. Community thrives in diversity, not homogeneity. We should always be seeking to cultivate a community that welcomes people no matter where they fall on the income spectrum, particularly within the body of Christ.

James 2 harshly condemns partiality towards the rich over the poor when the church is gathered. If the poor aren’t welcome in the gathering of the body then there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the kingdom of God: “Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?” (James 2:5 ESV).

The Church should be marked by a counter-cultural blending of people; a people that no longer think in societal hierarchies or act according to cultural norms. The day of Pentecost brought together people from countries and people groups that actively hated each other, yet the world was turned upside down by the way they loved one another.

Could our churches facilitate this same counter-culture today?

Throw a party

In Luke 14:13, Jesus says we’ll be blessed when we invite people to our parties who can’t afford to pay us back. Why not throw a party for the poor in your area? Feed them a meal, give them space to rest and to laugh. Gather your friends or some churches and throw a banquet for the poor in your area where everything is free. Provide food, dental clinics, healthcare, and free clothing stores. Blessing people that way doesn’t make any sense according to the world, but it makes a lot of sense according to Jesus’ teaching.

Ecclesia Houston does something called a "simple feast" where they gather to share a pot-luck style meal with their homeless brothers and sisters. No money required, you just show up. Oh, and they do it every week.

Churches in wealthy areas often have facilities that are well-equipped to do this sort of thing. Why not use them to serve the poor and integrate them into the community?

The hardest part would be getting the word out to those who would benefit from it, but surely that's something that could be addressed through networking with other organizations and churches in your area.

Use your affluence for influence

When God blessed Israel, He had other nations in mind that He wanted to bless through them. Yes, it was about Israel enjoying the blessings too, but God was primarily interested in spreading His glory throughout the nations by blessing the world through Israel. The same is true of the Church today.

Owning our affluence should lead us to ask why we have resources. Why, out of all the places in the world, were you born in this country, and live in your town or city? It might just be that your affluence isn’t meant for you alone. Instead of seeing that affluence as something we should hold on to, it’s time to start seeing it as something we should give away.

Use your affluence for influence. But use it for the right kind of influence – the kind that brings flourishing and healing to our towns and city. The kind of influence that lifts up those around you and makes everyone better.

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Grayson Pope is a husband and father of three. He serves as Pastor of Community at his church in Charlotte, NC and is currently pursuing  a MACS at The Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Grayson's Passion is to equip believers for everyday discipleship to Jesus.

Connecting Prayer to Mission

This article is adapted from our latest release Small Town Mission: A Guide for Mission-Driven Communities. Get your copy today! —

What does the Bible say about the connection of prayer and mission? Here are some thoughts about it based on Ephesians 6:19-20 and Colossians 4:2-4.

Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. – Ephesians 6:19–20

Paul asked his friends to pray also for me, then he went on to detail how they could specifically pray for his mission. Stop right there. Did you see what Paul did? Paul, of all people, asked his friends to pray for his mission! If you know anything about Paul, he seems like the kind of guy who was naturally talented at sharing his faith and wasn’t fearful at all when sharing the gospel.

Paul realized that, even on his best day, he desperately needed his friends to pray for him and for the grace of God to empower his mission. Think of the most naturally talented evangelist in your church. Just like Paul, that man or woman is in desperate need of the grace of God and for others to pray for them. The same is true for us. What friends should you start sharing prayer requests with for the sake of your mission?

Paul goes on to ask his friends to pray that God would give him words to say whenever he opens his mouth to talk about the mystery of the gospel (Paul calls it a mystery because until this point people in the Old Testament didn’t know when or under what circumstances Jesus was going to arrive). This is interesting because Paul’s sermons in the book of Acts were phenomenal, he was an incredibly talented public speaker, and he was awesome at advancing the mission.

But even with all his natural talent, Paul was convinced that he needed God to give him words whenever he opened his mouth to talk about the gospel. Paul knew that fruitful and effective words only come from God. This makes me breathe a sigh of relief because it’s comforting to know that powerful and effective words don’t come directly from my natural talent, but directly from the grace of God in response to prayer. This is good news for those of us who aren’t naturally talented at sharing our faith.

Paul then twice asks his friends to pray that he would fearlessly declare and make known the gospel. The Greek word for fearlessly means “to have a free and fearless confidence” and it’s the same Greek word that is used for boldness in Acts 4:29. Proverbs 29:25 says, “Fear of man is a snare but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.”

In this proverb, the fear of man is contrasted with trusting the Lord. Fear, in the biblical sense of the word, includes being afraid of someone but it also extends to holding someone in awe, being controlled or mastered by people, worshiping people, or using them for our personal sense of value, dignity, and worth.

In other words, the fear of man can be summed up in five simple words—we replace God with people. Instead of fearing the Lord, we fear people.

Think of if it this way: Jesus is the only one who should sit on the throne of your heart and mind. But when we fear people, somebody other than Jesus sits on that throne. Consequently, we care about that person’s approval of us at least as much as much as God’s approval. We want to please and appease them and we want them to never leave us nor forsake us. You know what that’s called? Worship. That’s because the most important relationship we have is with whoever sits on that throne.

The fear of man will paralyze your mission because you can’t witness to someone that you’re trying to worship. Do you see how worship and mission are so deeply intertwined with each other? The most basic solution for the fear of man is the fear of the Lord. That’s why, like Paul, we need friends who will pray for us to be fearless in our mission and have God as the only one competing for the throne of our heart and mind.

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. – Colossians 4:2-4

Paul urges his friends to devote themselves to prayer. “Devote” is such an intense word! Would your closest friends say you’re devoted to prayer? Keep in mind that being devoted to prayer isn’t necessarily the same thing as being devoted to God, which is kind of like when someone is devoted to talking but doesn’t pay attention to the person they’re talking to. I think we all know people like that.

If you ever do a brief study on how Jesus prayed you’ll quickly notice that when he prayed he focused his attention on the Father. This is often in contrast with how many of us pray because we usually focus on prayer instead of the Father, which is kind of like focusing on the windshield when you’re driving instead of focusing on the road. Those are the kind of people who cause accidents!

We’re also to be watchful and thankful in the midst of being devoted to prayer. At the very least, being watchful and thankful is the opposite of going through the motions. Do you tend to go through the motions in life? If so, then you’re probably going to miss lots of opportunities for mission. That’s why it isn’t a coincidence that Paul immediately proceeds to ask his friends to pray that God would open a door and provide opportunities for him to share the gospel.

Is that the kind of request you ask your friends to pray for, or do you usually just ask them to pray for things like your Aunt Ethel’s broken hip? I mean no offense towards Ethel or her hip, but are tragedies and physical health the only things we’re called to pray for?

Look at your church’s prayer chain; I can almost guarantee that it’s filled with prayer requests concerning tragedies and physical health. It’s obviously good and right for us to pray for these things, but when was the last time your church’s prayer chain overflowed with prayer requests like those in this passage? According to this passage, we are missing opportunities to share the gospel when we fail to pray for open doors. When it comes to prayer requests, are there imbalances like this that should we repent of?

Lastly, Paul asks his friends to pray that he would proclaim the gospel clearly. We should be eager to explain the gospel in a way that our non-Christian friends can understand. Unfortunately, many Christians talk about spiritual topics in a way that doesn’t make sense to the average non-Christian.

Often it’s like we’re speaking Klingon to them. This is unfortunate because almost no one understands Klingon except Klingons. Similarly, nobody understands Christian lingo and clichés except Christians. We also must conclude from this passage that clearly proclaiming the gospel is something that we should actively be praying about.

This is crucial to remember because it’s easy to think that the biggest reason why our mission isn’t going well is because we don’t know how to share our faith. While I certainly think that many of us would benefit from being better trained in how to share our faith, this passage leads us to believe that being trained will amount to nothing if we aren’t devoted to praying.

—

Aaron Morrow (M.A. Moody Bible Institute) is one of the pastors of River City Church in Dubuque, Iowa, which was planted in 2016. He and his wife Becky have three daughters named Leah, Maggie, and Gracie.

Dominion Commission

As Christians, we understand that every single person on the planet is created in the Image of God. The Genesis account of man’s creation communicates this truth (Gen 1:26-28).

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Even though most Christians are familiar with this passage, many are confused about what it actually means. In other words, what are the implications of being a man or woman created in the Image of God?

According to Genesis 1, God’s image bearers were called to express their identity by having dominion over the earth. This dominion commission is accomplished in two ways—filling the earth with children (28) and by subduing the earth (26, 28).

We don't just tell stories. We live them. We orchestrate our lives around a big story that we trust in

Think for a moment about this place in history. God created man and woman in his image and they are unhindered by sin and enjoy perfect fellowship with God, each other, and all of creation. God gives them the gracious task of ruling, and they found joy in the opportunity to procreate little image bearers and subdue the earth. They had everything they needed to be obedient to God’s dominion commission. And they were to do it for the glory of their Maker.

Think about this commissioning in light of Psalm 8:4-9:

What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, And also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, Whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O LORD our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth.

Therefore, as Image bearers we are to have dominion and this is good. However, man’s ability to be obedient to this commission to have dominion has been paralyzed because his relationship with God is severed.

Christians are all too familiar with the dreaded Genesis 3 account of the fall of man:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

In three short chapters, Adam and Eve go from being naked and not ashamed to being naked and ashamed and unable to enjoy a relationship with God and fulfill the task God has given them to have dominion over the earth.

The story doesn’t end there, though. God does something incredible.

Pay close attention to Genesis 3:15:

“I [God] will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman [Eve], and between your [the serpent’s] offspring and her [Eve’s] offspring; he [Jesus] shall bruise your head, and you [serpent and his offspring] shall bruise his heel.”

What is God doing here?

God is preaching the gospel. In one verse, we come to understand that God has graciously saved the newly depraved Eve (puts enmity between her and the serpent); he divides the world up into two communities: those who love God and those who love self (Eve’s offspring vs. the serpent’s offspring). He foretells of a Deliverer we know in this verse as the snake-crusher, which is Christ.

Ephesians 1:7 states, “In him [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” God through Jesus Christ has and is restoring the image of God to his church. This restoration was his plan before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4).

After Christ died on the cross and bodily and eternally rose from the grave, securing salvation for his church, he gives this commission to his disciples:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold I am with you always, to the end of the age.” – Matthew 28:18-20

Do you understand the significance of this truth? Because Christ has secured our salvation, we now have the ability to be obedient to the dominion commission.

The Great Commission is a dominion commission just as Genesis 1:26-28 is a dominion commission. Because of the authority of Jesus and the Holy Spirit indwelling believers we can joyfully make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teach them obedience.

God through Jesus has restored his image to his church and has reconciled us to himself for his glory. Furthermore, he has reasserted our purpose to have dominion on the earth—for his glory. We do this by faithfully heralding the good news of the gospel in the authority of Jesus Christ.

Christ won’t return until all of his children from every tribe, tongue, and nation proclaim his kingship (Ps 110:1). He has appointed that glorious day, long ago (Mk 13:32; Acts 17:31). Our commission to spread the glory of God to all nations will be successful. Christ died so that it would be. Embrace your identity and find fulfillment and joy in the task that God has graciously called and equipped you for.

—

Joey Tomlinson lives in Yorktown, VA with his wife, Brayden and their son, Henry Jacob. He has served as a pastor at Coastal Community Church for almost 10 years and is pursuing his doctorate in biblical counseling at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also a certified biblical counselor with IBCD.

4 Differences Between Small Towns and Big Cities

Significant differences exist between small towns and larger cities when it comes to being on mission. Below are four factors that significantly affect mission in small towns. Some of these have a positive effect on mission; others, a negative effect. This list isn’t comprehensive, but it’s a good starting point for analyzing and discussing the unique factors that affect mission in a small town.

Small towns desperately need normal, everyday people like farmers, factory workers, and small business owners who act like missionaries to reach their neighbors for Christ

Factor #1: Religious Non-Christians 

Not many people in small towns are atheists, Muslim, or new agers. Instead, small towns tend to be loaded with religious non-Christians. They may not go to church very often, but they generally believe that God exists and the Bible probably has something to say about him. Small towns tend to attract and retain people who are more traditional in their outlook on life compared to those in larger cities.

Religious non-Christians are generally receptive to talking about God and church, but it’s fair to say that they are also inoculated against the gospel. When a person is inoculated they receive a vaccine that is a weak strain of a virus. The body’s immune system then proceeds to adapt so that when it comes in contact with the real strain of the virus, it can easily fight it off.

Similarly, religious non-Christians grow up in churches that give them a weak strain of the gospel and, consequently, they build up an immunity to the real gospel. That’s why conversations with them about the gospel and faith often end with them nodding their head in agreement with everything you say, even though they don’t truly understand what you’re talking about.

Practical Advice 

Mission can never be done in the absence of prayer, but you’ll especially realize this when you’re on mission to religious non-Christians in a small town. Patience, taking a long-term approach to mission, is important. You won’t typically see many “microwave” conversions among religious non-Christians; instead, you’ll usually see “crockpot” conversions because it typically takes a long time for them to realize they have a weak strain of the gospel.

But take heart, because the Holy Spirit is sovereign over the crockpot! This is why it’s wise to avoid relying too much on short presentations of the gospel. More often than not, mission among religious non-Christians takes extended examinations of the lordship of Christ and the nature of the gospel before those concepts start to click in a meaningful way. This is why you should consider inviting people to your church, your small group, or to go through an extended one-on-one or couple-to-couple evangelistic Bible study.

People are often starving for a place to belong before they believe. This belonging kind of environment should be a safe place for religious non-Christians to enter into community and see—up close and personal—how their weak strain of the gospel contrasts with the power and abundant life of the true gospel.

Religious non-Christians also tend to have a high regard for the Bible. That’s why they’re generally not freaked out by opening the Bible at church, reading it in small group, or talking about it casually. However, even though they have a high regard for the Bible, the vast majority of them don’t know what it says because they’ve rarely been encouraged to read it for themselves. Therefore, don’t be afraid to conversationally use Scripture to discuss the gospel and faith. You’ll be surprised at how effective this is!

Factor #2: Change and Conformity 

For a variety of reasons, people in small towns are not typically open to change in comparison to people who live in larger cities. But this isn’t necessarily bad, because when people actually do change, they aren’t likely to change back to their old ways. This is often the case when someone becomes a Christian in a small town: they aren’t likely to turn their back on Jesus after they’ve switched their allegiance to him.

Similarly, the lack of change in small towns often leads to a high degree of conformity. For better or worse, there is a relatively narrow range of acceptable behaviors, choices, and ideas that people are generally expected to adhere to in a small town. And the smaller a town is, the narrower the range! For people who have odd personalities or embrace non-traditional behaviors, it’s often difficult to be respected in the goldfish bowl of a small town. In fact, Christians like this might even have a reputation that is ultimately at odds with their mission.

Practical Advice 

A veteran pastor in a small town once told me, “You can’t be weird in a small town. You need to be normal. You can’t scare people and expect to advance the gospel. You can maybe get away with being weird in Seattle or Chicago and still be great at evangelism but that doesn’t work in a small town.” If you think this might describe you, I would suggest talking with your pastor or a trusted friend and get their advice so that mission can advance in your spheres of influence.

Factor #3: Reputations Are Hard to Shake 

It’s often said that newspapers in small towns don’t report the news, they confirm the news. That’s because people know who you are and parts of your life are common knowledge around town (which wouldn’t be the case in a larger city). In fact, many people who live in small towns end up being celebrities without trying, and for all the wrong reasons. Even your police record will be common knowledge because all the citations are listed in the newspaper! For better or worse, people tend to know about the details and integrity of your marriage, family, and business. That’s why reputations are hard to shake in small towns and they tend to follow us around like our shadows.

Practical Advice

The reputation of the gospel is strongly tied to the reputation of our marriage, family, and business. This is especially true in a small town. This reality can be a helpful asset to your mission, or an incredible liability. If you are committed to being on mission in your town, it might be helpful to sit down with your pastor or a trusted friend and reverse-

In other words, if you want the reputation of your marriage, family, and business to point to the gospel, then you’ll need to decide on the series of steps you may need to take to make that happen.

However, as you go through this process, don’t accidentally make your reputation into an idol. If you do, you probably won’t take meaningful risks for the gospel, because your deepest desire will be to protect your reputation instead of advancing the mission.

Factor #4: The “Ten and Done” Principle 

A veteran pastor in a small town made a simple but insightful observation to me a few years ago about relationships in small towns. He called it the “ten and done” principle, and it forever changed the way I understood social dynamics and mission in small towns.

The “ten and done” principle is when people in a small towns typically make room for ten slots in their life for friendships, and once their ten slots are filled, then they are done building friendships. They aren’t necessarily done being friendly, but they are done inserting new friends into their slots. Each person’s slots consist of permanent and non-permanent friendships.

The permanent slots are friendships that are poured in cement. These permanent friendships usually consist of a person’s family, a few friends they grew up with, or other people they’ve grown close to along the way. The non-permanent slots may rotate depending on circumstances and stage of life.

For example, when a young mom has little kids she might have some of the young moms from her play group in some of her non-permanent slots. However, when her kids are older and play on a high-school soccer team, she might have different parents in her non-permanent slots from that group.

Keep in mind that this is only a principle, and not a rule, because it’s not equally true for everyone who lives in a small town. Some people might have a meager amount of non-permanent slots while others might have an abundance of them. Some might have considerably more than ten slots but they’re all permanent, while others might have far less than ten slots, due to their personality and social sensibilities.

Moreover, the cultural climate in some parts of the country can breed unspoken expectations for people to have higher or lower amounts of slots. But even though each person and place is different, the “ten and done” principle generally holds true for small towns across America. Many of us who have lived in small towns have certainly seen it in practice!

Practical Advice 

The “ten and done” principle creates a diversity of challenges when it comes to mission in small towns. If relationships are the foundation of mission in small towns, how should we do mission with this principle in mind? Below is a collection of thoughts that address this question.

New people tend to be the “low-hanging fruit” for mission in a small town, because not many of their slots are filled. Longtime residents need the gospel as much as anyone, but new residents are often the easiest people to connect with for the sake of mission.

Make room for non-permanent slots in your life for the sake of mission. If you don’t have non-permanent slots open, take account of your relationships and ask God how he wants to organize and prioritize your friendships. If you do have non-permanent slots open, be devoted to praying about which non-Christians God might place in your slots.

Don’t assume you know which non-Christians have non-permanent slots open. Be prudent in praying for wisdom and don’t jump to conclusions about who’s interested and available to build a reciprocal friendship with you.

For a variety of reasons, people who are single typically have more time and availability than their married counterparts. And they also tend to have a higher number of slots available than those who are married. Singles often have the potential to be some of the best missionaries in town. If you are single, consider leveraging this season of your life for the sake of mission.

The “ten and done” principle often means that being on mission at our workplaces is remarkably strategic. Many people in small towns have their extended families living in the area and they fill up each other’s slots. Consequently, some extended families in small towns could virtually be considered unreached people groups! One of the most strategic ways to reach these families is to be on mission in our workplaces, because people from these families are forced to be around their Christian co-workers for eight hours every day.

Some non-Christians have all their permanent slots filled with family and childhood friends. Therefore, consider strategically praying that God would boldly bring individual people like this to Christ so that they can be on mission to the rest of their family and childhood friends. This is one way that God infiltrates closed networks of family and friends in small towns. There are many people in small towns who have testimonies where God saved them and powerfully used them to reach their closed network of family and friends. Let’s pray that this would happen more often!

If your family takes up all your slots and they are already Christians, consider holding a family-wide discussion about what doing mission in your town should look like. Family is good and a blessing from God, but is your family’s mission focused on community with each other or are you a community that’s focused on mission?

—

Aaron Morrow (M.A. Moody Bible Institute) is one of the pastors of River City Church in Dubuque, Iowa, which was planted in 2016. He and his wife Becky have three daughters named Leah, Maggie, and Gracie.

Excerpted from Aaron Morrow’s Small Town Mission

Thy Will Be Done

You don’t have to read the papers, watch the news, or scroll through social media to know this pervasive truth: the world is not as it should be. Society is not right. Culture is corrupt. Institutions are failing. The market is not moral. Humans, in our sin, are destroying the earth as fast as we can, only to be outdone by the destroying of one-another. We abuse; we steal; we kill; we neglect. Earth does not look like heaven. While Jesus prayed, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we point to the grand disparity of earth and the notion of heaven and dispute the existence of God. We often wonder: “If there is a God, when will he do something?”

This doubt transforms into one of the best prayers: “God make our world whole.”

Jesus Is God’s Will on Earth from Heaven

Jesus taught his disciples to pray these words amidst cultural chaos, on land that looked nothing like heaven. Jesus had come proclaiming and demonstrating a world of peace, without sickness, evil, or death. Fresh from petitioning God’s kingdom to come into our lives, into our communities, and into our world, Jesus emphasized this kingdom—God’s will on this earth.

In other words, the kingdom is all about God getting his way. It means God ruling with peace, justice, mercy, grace, and love. God’s will is lasting peace and abundant joy.

Jesus calls us to invoke, in our prayers, an imagination of our world looking exactly how God intended. Our minds, hearts, and vocal chords are to call on God to do and be all that he intended: “God be with us. God take charge.”

The poignancy of this line in the prayer is found in the person praying it: Jesus prays as God’s will on earth from heaven. Jesus, himself, is God’s will on earth. He is with them. He is in charge, commanding the earth, weather, and all material. Jesus is God’s will from heaven.

Paul poetically describes Christ’s laying down of all his divine attributes to take the form of man and enter humanity (Phil 2). Jesus’ birth is the advent of this prayers’ answer: God’s will has come to earth! Heaven has dipped into humanity. God is his own answer to this prayer. In Christ, God’s will is advancing on earth.

What is God’s will? Jesus came into the world to make God’s will plane. God’s will is to reconcile humanity to God. The symptoms of this will are the healing of the sick, the mending of the broken, and expelling of evil.

God’s will is to pour his love generously into the world through Jesus. His will is to defeat sin, death, and evil and make all things new by his own death and resurrection.

When We Pray, It’s a Call for Incarnation

“Prayer is a moment of incarnation—God with us.” — Paul Miller

The act of prayer, any prayer, is one that beckons the will of God on earth. This kind of petitioning is what prayer is. It’s a statement of belief, a realization of God’s presence in earth, a cry to the one who can change earth. Furthermore, prayer itself is an act of submission. Our prayers are always a petition for God to be with us. All prayer is about God and his will being made visible in our world.

Our current American prayer crisis comes, in part, from godless prayer. We don’t seek the presence of God in our lives and world. We seek God’s activity—a to-do list. We are more like the people crowding around Jesus in Mark 3:7–12 than we’d like to admit. They pressed to be close to him to use his power for their healing. Jesus flees from these people into a boat for fear of being crushed.

The people wanted healing, not a healer. They were content to use Jesus like a charm, not welcome him as Christ. In teaching us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” Jesus instructs us to welcome God with us. He teaches us to pray centered on his mission.

When we Pray, It is for Home

The gospel message of Christ’s death and resurrection is one that unifies heaven and earth. While the incarnation Christ on earth is God’s will dipping into earth, Jesus’ death and resurrection is the advancement of that will. God creates a new reality of heaven and earth in his resurrection.

“When Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning, he rose as the beginning of the new world that Israel’s God had always intended to make. That is the first and perhaps the most important thing to know about the meaning of Easter…the stories of the risen Jesus have a different quality altogether. They seem to be about a person who is equally at home “on earth” and “in heaven.” And that is, in fact, exactly what they are.” — N.T. Wright, Simply Christian

When we pray, “on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying for home. We are praying as refugees without a native land we can return to. We are praying for the completeness of resurrection life into our life today, tomorrow, and forevermore. We are praying for resurrection hope.

Prayer orients us toward our rest, the risen Christ whose will is on earth as it is in heaven.

When we pray, It’s for His Will

We pray as people between two worlds. We pray on behalf of the world. Our prayers are invitations to God: bring your will into our city, culture, government, and marketplace. This prayer is certainly one of trust and confidence in his sovereignty. This prayer is also one of compassion, empathy, and desperation in a lost and dying world.

We pray for his resurrection hope in every moment of death. We pray for his great reconciliation in the face of every sin. We pray for his advancement and victory over every kind of evil.

—

Brad Watson (@bradawatson) serves as a pastor of Bread&Wine Communities where he develops and teaches leaders how to form communities that love God and serve the city. Brad is the author of Raised?, Called Together: A Guide to Forming Missional Communities, and Sent Together: How the Gospel Sends Leaders to Start Missional Communities. He lives in southeast Portland with his wife and their two daughters. You can read more from Brad at www.bradawatson.com.