|
|
 |
|
Did you know?
WorldVenture Central Church
Connections has a new online
home! You can find it by
clicking
here or going to
WorldVenture.com and
entering the Keyword
Central at the bottom of the
main page. There you'll find
current and archived
newsletters, a new missionary
featured monthly, and soon, a
growing collection of missions
resources. Check in often to see
what's new!
SAUDI ARABIAN POLICE
ARREST FOUR EAST AFRICAN
CHRISTIANS
Ten Saudi Arabian
police armed with wooden
clubs raided a private
Christian worship
meeting in the coastal
city of Jeddah on
Friday, June 9,
arresting the four East
African citizens leading
the service. As of June
15, the two Ethiopian
and two Eritrean
Christians remained in
the city’s deportation
jail. More than 100
Eritreans, Ethiopians,
and Filipinos gathered
for worship in the home
at 11:00 that Friday
morning. Startled
worshippers brought
chairs to seat the
policemen, who sat and
waited with clubs in
hand for the three-hour
worship service to
conclude before
arresting the four men.
One Christian who spoke
with the men by phone
reported they were,
“doing fine, with okay
moral,” but did not know
how they were being
treated. (Source:
Compass Direct)
INDIAN STATE
REPEALS ANTI-CONVERSION
LAW
In the state of Tamil
Nadu, Christian leaders
are expressing joy and
relief over the recent
repeal of an
anti-conversion law. The
law specifically listed
Dalits (who make up
approximately one fifth
of Tamil Nadu’s
population) as one group
restricted from
evangelism efforts. The
newly-formed Tamil Nadu
legislature introduced a
bill on May 29th to
repeal the four-year-old
“Prohibition of Forcible
Conversion of Religion
Act.” It went unopposed
to the floor and was
passed May 31st. “Thank
God for this welcome
change,” said Gospel for
Asia president K.P.
Yohannan. “The law had
been a heavy burden on
our state and district
leaders.” Praise God for
his favor toward the
Dalits in Tamil Nadu.
(Source: Compass Direct)
CAPITALIZING ON
WORLD CUP ENTHUSIASM
It’s a well-known fact
that soccer is
practically a religion
among British football
fans, and now an
evangelistic program
about football has
topped the charts as the
most downloaded program
on Premier.tv, the
Christian internet TV
channel in England.
Produced by Athletes
in Action, “The Prize”
covers four football
stories from around the
world—Cote d’Ivoire,
Korea, England, and
Brazil. “It’s a tool for
the church, para-church
ministries, football
clubs, and individuals
wanting to use the
platform of sports for
outreach,” commented
Shawn Keith of Athletes
in Action.
Premier Media Group’s
Chairman, David Heron
adds, “Football will
remain at the front of
the nation's thoughts
over the coming weeks,
but churches shouldn't
feel they need to
compete with the World
Cup. Instead, we should
utilize it. With
programs like The Tim
Howard Story and The
Prize available to view
free from Premier.tv,
this is a great
opportunity to share the
gospel with friends and
colleagues who are fans
of football.” To view
all programs available
from Premier TV, log on
to
www.premier.tv.
(Source: ASSIST News)
Back To Top
Missionaries don't
experience any stress,
right? "Hah!"
answers one missionary in
Rwanda. WorldVenture
recently hosted a three day
conference in Kabale, Uganda
for first-term missionaries
serving in East Africa.
Attendees discussed the
various things that
contribute to missionary
stress, especially for
first-termers, and generated
the following list. May
these categories help your
church as you prepare, pray
for, and partner with your
missionaries.
Missionary Stressors:
(1) Loneliness; (2) Unmet
expectations about
missionary life; (3)
Children’s schooling and
needs; (4) Differences
between spouses regarding
sense of call, desire to
continue, and satisfaction
in ministry; (5) Language
learning and communication
in host culture; (6)
Difficulties with missionary
teammates; (7) One spouse
moving ahead of the other in
ministry and language
skills.
Back To Top
The Missional Leader
by Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred
Romanuk, Josey-Bass 2006
(Reviewed by Suzanne
Johnson)
The word “missional” is
creating a lot of buzz
today. A quick search on
Amazon.com brings up over
twenty books with
“missional” in the title.
Part of the difficulty of
keeping up with the
conversation is that it
seems each party’s
definition of missional—and
their resultant suggestions
for how to get your church
there—varies. In April of
this year, Roxburgh and
Romanuk entered the
conversation with their
book, The Missional Leader.
Their definition of a
missional church, as stated
in the introduction, “is a
community of God’s people
who live into the
imagination that they are,
by their very nature, God’s
missionary people living as
a demonstration of what God
plans to do in and for all
of creation in Jesus
Christ.”
The authors’ starting
point is that “discontinuous
change is the new norm.” By
this they mean that contrary
to continuous change, which
“develops out of what has
gone before and therefore
can be expected,
anticipated, and managed,”
U.S. churches are facing
discontinuous change, which
is disruptive and
unanticipated, creating
situations that challenge
assumptions and require of
leaders a whole new set of
skills. The authors argue
that familiar
entrepreneurial
practices—such as vision
statements and strategic
planning—are not appropriate
for the church in a time of
discontinuous change. They
assert, “We are in a period
that makes it impossible to
have much clarity about the
future and how it is going
to be shaped. Therefore
those leaders who believe
they can address the kind of
change we are facing by
simply defining a future
that people want, and then
setting plans to achieve it,
are not innovating a
missional congregation. They
are only finding new ways of
preventing a congregation
from facing the
discontinuous change is
confronts.”
What, then, do the
authors propose? Something
they call the “Missional
Change Model” (MCM), a
five-step process by which
church leaders and members
move through Awareness, to
Understanding, to
Evaluation, to
Experimentation, and finally
to Commitment. Not all
members of a congregation
will move through these
steps at the same time or
pace; according to the
authors, it takes
approximately four and a
half years for an entire
congregation to move through
the steps and commit.
In order for a
congregation to move through
the MCM, Roxburgh and
Romanuk exhort leaders to
abandon top-down thinking
and practices in exchange
for “leadership as
cultivation.” The leader is
responsible for cultivating
awareness and understanding
among the people of the
congregation; cultivating
networks of people who will
experiment and learn
together; cultivating fresh
ways of engaging the
Biblical narrative; and
cultivating new practices,
habits, and norms.
This book has some
strengths as well as
considerable weaknesses. The
first five chapters are
maddeningly repetitive, and
the pervasiveness of
postmodern phraseology
felt—at least to me—almost
oppressive. While the book
does offer guidance for how
to lead a congregation into
understanding and engaging
their immediate context
(community), there is no
discussion of the local
church getting involved in
God’s mission on the global
level. On a positive note,
even if you do not buy into
all of the authors’ ideas,
prescriptions, and methods
for missional leadership,
this book will give you
plenty to think about. It
asks important questions
about which leadership
models are being embraced by
churches. It challenges us
to engage in meaningful
dialogue in church. And it
alerts us to the fact that
we are in a period of change
unlike anything we have
navigated in the past.
Back To Top
|
|
|
