Missions - to be or not to be.

I ran into a man in PA that was not against all missions, but was questioning the concept due to the cost effectiveness of the venture. Spending thousands to go to other countries and seeing only a few if any converts didn't seem a wise use of the Lord's money. That was many years ago.

Today many are seeing the fields of missions coming to America and wonder why go anywhere, why not evangelize here. This is a good idea since many of those people have families elsewhere and the gospel will naturally spread.

One of the missionaries that we supported found his ministry abroad changing to the point there was no point and while home on furlough found that there were thousands of those he had ministered to in his home town - settled in the area and started a church.

Others see giving money to national people that live in countries around the world so that they can commit their full efforts to witness rather than having to work for a living.

I have not personally run into anyone that outright rejects missions as a concept but am sure they exist. Did run into a strong Calvinist that held that missions was an incorrect concept - we didn't talk about it much

 

My first short term mission trip was to the Yucatan Mexico, I had one lady in our church ask me why do you want to go there for. Never did understand that

 

Some within my denomination (not including myself) believe that missions, or all types of evangelism, are wrong since they "attempt to do the work of the Holy Spirit". As Calvinists, we believe that salvation is entirely the work of God, so some people then reason that if we try to save souls we must be putting ourselves in the place of God. I do not share this view, and it is only a minority in the denomination that do believe this, but it is still a worrying view.

 

My church's mission strategy is this:

1. As a corporate local church body, we support about 30 different missionaries throughout the world. Some of them have come from other churches, but some of them have come from our own local church.

2. In recent years, the Nashville area has become a haven for refugees from many countries in the "10/40" region of the world [40 degrees N latitude/10 degrees S latitude].
As a result of this, we've experienced an influx of people from countries that probably wouldn't even allow American missionaries to enter (much less evangelize). EXAMPLE: Nashville now has probably the largest number of Kurdish refugees than any other metropolitan area in the US.

Many of these folks come from Islamic backgrounds and were allowed to enter the US as "political refugees." IOW, we don't have to send missionaries thousands of miles away to reach these people groups----These folks are coming to us.

Thus, God has given us a very unique opportunity to reach these people by merely driving a few miles away.

The Lord has blessed us with a physical plant that from Monday - Friday is used for our Christian day school, but on the weekends is used to house both an Ethiopian congregation as well as a Korean congregation.

A few years back, we were blessed by God to start a Laotian congregation. This is now an independent, autonomous local church.

In cooperation with this Laotian church, we are also working to establish a Burmese congregation.

There are probably another 30 - 50 foreign people groups within a 75 mile radius of our church campus that need to be reached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Please pray that our church will be able to minister to them as well.

 

JonC:

I'm a member of Lighthouse Christian Fellowship that's located in the SE area of Nashville [Antioch].

You can reach LCF's website at www.lighthouseministries.org

You will find more information on LCF's missions philosophy by clicking on the "Missions" tab.

 

What a fantastic undertaking. Your church will definitely be in my prayers and has the potential to be a really great success story. Also, thanks for educating me on the influx of Kurdish refuggees. I knew Nashville was more culturally diverse than what is generally known but I was unaware of their growing presence.

 

My home town in NE grew by 50% via south of the border folks, however the town is now experiencing a large influx of Somali folks. Missions is changing!