Incarnational or just another program?

I remember about 9 years ago when I was attending an alliance church in South Carolina, the husband (K.M.) of a couple I was beginning to know, and really like, told me that he was tired of program-based ministry and wanted to be involved in people-based ministry. I didn't have the slightest idea what this man was talking about, and it was no fault of his. I was really saddened that the couple would be leaving the church to go find something that I really thought was six of one, half a dozen of the other. K.M. now I understand... took me 9 years of processing, but I totally understand why you left and why you chose the (Alliance) church you did.

What's the next sliced-bread type of program that the church is going to develop? How can we utilize that program to attract every third Tom, Dick and Harry to the church? (by the way, that would be a very Harry church). I see and hear this type of searching often (maybe not in these exact words). When are we going to stop searching for programs and start searching for people?

Folks... keep me accountable! I want to spend some major time outside of the church relating to the people in their cultural context here in Paraguay. That means carrying my thermos with one metal straw and sharing that with complete strangers. Investing time where the people are.


God didn't encourage us to build a tower to reach him... He came to us (incarnational). If our mindset is that we need to find the "right" program in order that the people will come to us, we need to change. We need to utilize the RIGHT model we have been given and be more christ-like (Phil. 2).

The question we need to grapple with is "How are we going to go to the people?" If you are a New Yorker, are you going to go to the deep south and ask "Hey, wasa madder wid you?"? You southerners, you going to go to New York and ask "Y'all fixin to be right with Jesus?"? Not much chance of success with those approaches. How are we going to go to our neighbors? How are we going to relate to them in order to catalyze opportunities to share? As a missionary, how am I going to enter the host culture?

Los resultados (the results)

Thank you for praying.

This morning we arrived at 9:15 and stayed for one hour in the barrio. We shared all the bread and hot chocolate with the people there. At every opportunity we told them that our desire is to share the love of God with others and this is the reason we were here this morning. We had opportunity to talk with the parents so that they could get to know us better. Typically, the parents were thankful but very quiet. However there was one home where the lady opened up quickly.

She shared the difficulties that she has been experiencing in her life and asked if we could pray and possibly help out in some way with counseling. These are the difficulties she shared:
1. Her sixteen year old son was involved in an accident two weeks ago. A motorcycle ran into his car. The man on the motorcycle died three days later.
2. Her son Cesar (who attends our Sunday School program) has been misbehaving in school to the point that the administration has called it to her attention. She is wondering whether he needs psychological counseling.
3. Her youngest son has two to three bumps on the back of his head. Puss was coming from these sores and more recently worms. She was following a treatment from the doctor, the situation seemed to be getting better. But now it has returned.

I closed our time together with prayer but also I realized that this is a great opportunity for us to come along side and support this family in prayer as a church. I scheduled a visit for this evening at 8 o'clock. During our weekly prayer meeting Pastor Daniel and myself will return for more prayer and counseling while our church is praying back at the building. Please lift us up throughout the day and possibly this evening in your prayer meetings.

Two things of importance happened as we were leaving the barrio. One lady told me that her 5 children were attending our Sunday School due to an invitation that was given two years ago. And then a lady stopped me and asked if I could take a photo of her 1-month old. The family then invited me into their home and showed me thier "family photo album." The photos were largely made up of photos I had taken earlier in the year and sent home with the children. God was showing me the seeds that have been planted and was reminding me of the harvest that is yet to be experienced.

PLEASE, fight by our side in the battle with your prayer (Exodus 17:12). If you aren't lifting up your arms as Moses did for Joshua, how can we ever expect to experience the victory? PRAY! PRAY! PRAY!

Pray this morning

Please be in prayer this morning as a member of the church and I enter the barrio (neighborhood) where many of our Sunday School students are coming from. We have between 15-20 students coming every Sunday from this barrio. None of the parents/guardians have come out to the church. Today marks a major step in relating with these parents: entering their world with the love of Christ.

We'll be going with bread with a "dulce de leche" spread (this is very sweet and very typical for the Paraguayan). Also we will have hot chocolate. Pray that:

1. this act of kindness touches the hearts of these people
2. that the Holy Spirit will use this to reach more of His own
3. that we will experience safety

Be sure to check back later this evening for an update (with photos).

Update: La Iglesia Alianza de Asunción

Here's an update as to what is taking place in the Asunción church

Young Single Women's Ministry
Karen is beginning a new ministry that will take place every third Saturday of the month. The young ladies (girls) will come together in our home to discuss a topic of common interest, enjoy a short devotional, and some of pastor J's sticky buns. Yesterday was the fisrt get-together and they had seven in total come out.

Pray that this will be an opportunity for the young women to reach out to their non-Christian friends. And also pray that this would be a positive model for the Paraguayans to reproduce.

Cell Groups
We are continuing to develop Cell Group ministry within our church. We have come through our first round of training leaders and are currently holding 4 different cell meetings a week: The Spurling's Group (Monday nights), Clarita's Group (Thursday nights for single women), Alfredo's Group (Saturday evening for young people), and Jorge's group (Also Saturday evening for young people). Currently we are training new leaders as well as continuing with the training of our already formed leaders.

Be in prayer that the formed leaders will utilize the teaching that has been given to them. We are realizing that they continue to teach and hold their studies according to their old paradigm. Pray that they would take ownership of the new vision of Cell Ministry.

Sunday School
We've organized our Sunday School program so that the teachers are able to have a break every third month and spend time in the service with the congregation. We've averaged 20-30 children every week in this program. We feed them a small breakfast before the service begins. All the children are in the service for about 15 minutes for corporate worship. After which they leave (with excitement) to their appropriate classes.

This morning the temperatures dipped down below 60. When this happens, you are guaranteed less people in the service as the people are not accostomed to this "cold" weather. To my surprize there were only a handful of children present for Sunday school. My class which normally has 8-12 only had one student. So I got together with a couple other teacher and my one student and we decided that the church needed to leave the building. I reminded them of the importance of an OUTWARD PERSPECTIVE. We must always be GOING as we are making disciples. I reminded them that this is the blessing of being God's children... we get to be hand's on with what He is doing. My student told me, "I'm excited to be doing this!"

In the end, I had my full class and we finished about 10-15 minutes past our normal time. God is Good!

Please pray that our Sunday School will maintain a GOING ATTITUDE and that we will be able to not only reach these children but also their parents.

Fund Raising
Our church has been raising funds for 8 months so that we can give our church a face lift. We want to purchase new carpeting for the pulpit area, paint the inside of the sanctuary, purchase a projector, put up new signage outside on the street as well as some other odds and ends. Our church in Paraguay has partnered with several churches in the states to raise about $3500.00. Each participating church is contributing $350, and that includes the church here. It's been very difficult for the people here to raise those funds as their yearly income is only a fraction of what we make in the states. However, the church is about 2/3 of the way to their goal. We've been able to raise about 3/4 of the monies we need from the states as well. However we are still lacking a couple of partnering churches. If you would like to partner with us, please contact us so that we can give you the necessary information.

We are praising God for what He is doing in the Iglesia Alianza de Asución. Thank you all so much for your prayers and support.

Let's dialogue...

QUESTION:
It's been a while. If anyone out there is reading this blog, they may be wondering "Why has it been so long?"

ANSWER:
I've really struggled with my thoughts on this topic. I'm convinced that something new needs to take place in mission strategy. As I began to pray about it, my "answers" were not what I was expecting.

You can refer back and read the entry that mentions William Carey. William Carey stood up and spoke out against the mainstream of his day because he was convinced of what the Lord was telling him.

I need to come to terms with my desire to be used by God in an amazing way (that's always been my prayer). Is that just an aspiration or is it the reality of who I am? In other words do I believe that God wants to use people today as He has in times past. And more specifically does He want to use me?

When Karen returned from the States she brought with her several books I had ordered. One of those books was written by Bob Finley titled "Reformation in Foreign Missions." What can I say about this book? ... It raises some good points, but unfortunately (in my opinion), the style in which the book was written was antagonistic. Bob Finley impresses me as a man that lives by his convictions and is not averse to speaking up. My only concern with this book is that it was unnecessarily harsh against the body of Christ. Also Bob uses many examples, both personal and historical, to reinforce his position. However, he never backs up his examples with citations (there is not one foot-note in this 264 page book). It's difficult for me to accept things without proper documentation. Here is a quote taken from the book which mentions the Christian and Missionary Alliance:

I would like to mention that it appears to me (although I could be off the mark) that the C&MA policy of local churches being self-sustaining has been carried over in its application to missionary ministries as well. The foreign missions arm of the C&MA in the USA receives support internationally, but its leaders have appeared to me to adhere to a policy that mission boards, Bible institutes and other para-church ministries of the C&MA associates in poorer countries should try to find all their support within the confines of their own countries. Why should we expect mission boards based in lands of poverty to adhere to restrictions which are not imposed on the parent mission in an industrialized country?

Finley, Bob, "Reformation in Foreign Missions" (2005), pages 74-75

I don't understand this comment. I think Bob is way off the mark. I'm not aware that the foreign mission arm of the C&MA receives support internationally.

I felt the need to write the above to communicate that I'm not in full support of Bob Finley's ideas about reformation. However, I again say that he does raise some questions that are worth considering. I've reworded these to reflect what I drew from Mr. Finley's book. I do not think that he would accept these as his own thoughts. But hopefully anyone who is familiar with his book can see how I arrived at the following list of questions:

• Should we use more discretion before entering a country?

There are many countries that have a sufficient missionary and/or indigenous evangelical presence. Should we periodically review why we are in the countries that we are in?

• Is the manner in which we as Americans (or westerners) enter and reside in a foreign culture ultimately benefit or hurt the development of the national church?

In many countries we have more wealth than the people we are reaching. Is there a more responsible manner of living among the nationals?

• Should we begin sharing more liberally our financial resources with our international brothers and sisters in Christ?

There are qualified people that are ready to take the Gospel to their own countrymen, but they lack the financial backing to do so. There are also potential leaders who fall through the cracks because of a lack of funding. Is this an opportunity for the Church to contextualize the Acts chapter 2 principle of "all-things-in-common"?

As the title of this blog suggests, let's dialogue. I want to hear from you. This should be a conversation. Hopefully it won't take you as long to respond as it took me to get started.

p.s. I'm currently reading, "The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church," by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch