Contrasting worship

 Back in the mid-1980s I went to Haiti for a mission work trip with a group from our Region. The first several days we worked to rebuild a youth center that had been burned. For a couple of days we toured some of the mission efforts our denomination supported: a hospital, a seminary, an agricultural center and others. Each of them had an impact on me and others in our group. But, for me, the greatest impact came from two worship services I attended.

The first was a 7:00 AM service held in Creole in one of the churches we sponsor. When we arrived, the building was already full. They were in the process of building on to the back of the building and only had the rafters and roof over that area. People were sitting in the rafters! People were seated on the platform around the pulpit, not in chairs but on the floor. People were moved from the front pew so their mission guests would have a place to sit. The singing was lively. When the offering was received, those who were tithing were asked to come forward and place their tithes in the baskets. (Try that in your church!) When they finished, the ushers were around to receive the financial gifts from others. The service last about 1 1/2 hours. As we were leaving, people for the 10:00 service were already arriving, many carrying chairs from home to ensure they would have a seat.

The second service I attended was that evening at the missionary compound. It was done in English and was similar in many ways to what I was used to. What struck me was the prayer right before the message. The person prayed for the church in America. He prayed that the church's eyes would be opened, that people would be moved from their apathy, that the churches would have a burden for those who were lost and hurting. As he prayed, I was deeply ashamed. These men and women had sacrificed so much to fulfill the work to which God has called them. They were doing incredible things with very limited resources while our churches were doing very little with abundant resources. 

It is my understanding that due to the current political climate in Haiti our missionaries have relocated to the Dominican Republic and working with Haitian refugees who have fled there to escape the turmoil in their country. They continue to work long, difficult hours with still limited resources. I ask you to pray for them, and for all missionaries around the world.

I also want to ask you to consider what your church is doing to address the spiritual emptiness felt in many lives in your community. If your congregation committed to seeking and saving those who are lost? Is it externally focused or internally focused? Do you do ministry from a mindset of abundance or from a scarcity mindset? I have worked with hundreds of churches over the years, and I've heard all the excuses why they can't do more. Reflecting back this evening on my time in Haiti I'm reminded once again that they are just that, excuses. Unfortunately, I have to confess that I've made the same excuses in the past.

Scripture tells us that God gives seed to the sower. He does not give seed to the hoarder. If we are on mission with Him, He will give us all we need to accomplish the work we've been given to do. When we are on mission with Him, then we will be free to worship in spirit and in truth as I experienced in Haiti.

The local church and world missions

 March is the month that American Baptists receive the America for Christ offering. This money helps our denomination support various ministries in the US and Puerto Rico. A percentage also goes to each ABC region to help support their ministries. It is one of four special mission offerings the denomination receives each year. 

In recent years there has been an emphasis on churches having a missional mindset. Such a mindset challenges churches to see their community as a mission field. This is appropriate, and I have challenged churches for years to develop this mindset. I encourage members of the congregation to stop seeing themselves as simply members of the church but to see themselves as missionaries gifted by God to impact their community. I also encourage them to stop seeing their church as merely a church, but to begin to see it as a mission station placed in the midst of a rapidly growing pagan culture.

Unfortunately, some churches, trying to adopt that mindset, no longer see the importance of global missions. Some have stopped giving to their denomination's mission work and diverted that money to local missions. I an aware of one church that had been giving approximately $12,000.00 a year to its denomination's mission work until a new pastor, who was not favorable to that denomination, convinced the church to spend that money to reach local youth. While reaching local youth is certainly a worthwhile vision, both could have been done. Local mission work and global mission support are not an either/or endeavor; it is both/and. Not only did the denomination lose the funding for mission work, the last I knew there was no increase in the number of youth attending the church.

I have long advocated that God honors churches that honor mission. The Great Commission not only challenges us to reach those surrounding our church, it also challenges us to reach persons around the world. God calls certain individuals to go to far-off places to share the gospel, but He calls each of us to help support that work financially. Some churches do that by supporting specific missionaries while others do it by giving to their denomination's mission offerings. Either way is acceptable.

American Baptists have four special mission offerings each year. These go towards different ministry objectives of the denomination, and each of them should be supported by ABC churches. Let's not tie the hands of those God has called to serve in a mission field by failing to support them with our prayers and our financial gifts.

The church as missionaries

 The church in North America, as we know it, is currently involved in a major transition. For the past two or three decades we have believed that we were still at the center of life for most people. That wasn't true, but we preferred to believe it was. As a result of our confusion, we were surprised that our numbers were decreasing as well as our impact on society. Many were challenging our mistaken beliefs by pointing out that the traditional church was dying, but many of us refused to listen. Our refusal to listen has resulted in approximately 100 churches in the US closing its doors every week.

We failed to recognize that God was calling His church to once again become missionaries into its community. America is no longer a Christian nation, if it ever was. We are a rapidly emerging pagan society (my favorite way of looking at our nation today) that desperately needs missionaries to proclaim the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ in a way that connects with our current generation.

This will require that we explore new ways of understanding the life of the church in today's postmodern world. We can no longer hide behind the walls of our "sanctuaries" singing our hymns and praying the same prayers we have prayed for years and believing we are doing the work of the Kingdom. I am convinced that in 2024 God is calling His church to become missionaries to the communities in which it serves. This means that today's church must reinvent itself.

First, we must stop thinking of ourselves as simply churches that gather once a week, listen to a sermon, sing a few songs and return home inspired to eat lunch. Churches today must begin to see themselves as mission stations placed in the midst of this rapidly emerging pagan society to proclaim the saving message of Jesus Christ. Likewise, church members can no longer be content to view themselves as just members of a church but to recognize that God has called them to be missionaries in their community. God has given them spiritual gifts that are to be used to minister to others, and every member of every church must begin to use those gifts as missionaries.

Secondly, we must recognize that the culture we are called to reach is often much different than the one in which we were raised. The music is different, the worldview is different, the beliefs about truth and morality are different, the way they pursue spirituality is different. We can complain about these differences or we can adjust how we minister to this younger generation in a way that recognizes these differences.

Throughout church history the music has undergone many changes. Most traditional churches that sing from their hymnbooks fail to recognize that some of those songs were quite controversial when they first appeared. Many traditional churches today want to protect traditional hymns from being replaced by more contemporary music and fail to realize that these traditional hymns were once viewed as a scandalous attempt to replace "true" Christian worship. That fact is that there are many great worship songs today that will speak much more to today's culture than the ones written in the 1800s found in our hymn books.

Any time a missionary enters a new mission field, he or she must adapt themselves to that culture. That is not compromise; it is a simple acceptance that they have entered a new culture. They must learn to eat new food, listen to the music preferences of the people, learn new languages, identify the cultural practices of the people and learn how to best present the Gospel to this mission field in light of what they have learned.

The church in North American can do no less if we are to be faithful to our calling to reach this current generation.

Supporting mission work

 When I began serving a small, rural church as their bivocational minister I soon learned they did not have a lot of money. Their budget was very small, and they weren't meeting it. But one thing I learned surprised me: they gave 10 percent of their offering to our denomination's mission fund to support mission work around the world. I was not only surprised; I was elated. One of my firm beliefs is that God supports churches that supports missions. Even when money was tight, we tithed our offering to the denomination's mission work.

God did bless us financially, and a few years later I asked the congregation to consider increasing that support to 15 percent of our offering. We would do it one percent a year over five years so it would not be such a big jump at one time. They agreed to do that, and when I finally left that church to begin serving in a judicatory role that little church of 55 people was giving over $12,000.00 a year to mission work plus we were supporting all four of the special mission offerings our denomination had. In fact, a year after I left, the church gave $14,000.00 to mission work while building a $200,000.00 addition to the building without borrowing a dime! Before you decide that this church must have consisted of a few wealthy people let me assure you that was not the case. The majority of our congregation were retired or blue collar workers. Few had a college education. To my knowledge there was no one in the congregation that would be called wealthy.

I might add that we also supported local mission work. We gave money each quarter to the Salvation Army for their food pantry. That made more sense than us trying to offer a food pantry where we were located. As I told the congregation, I will be comfortable recommending people to the SA food pantry if we are helping support it. We also made a quarterly contribution to the local youth shelter which provided a place for troubled youth rather than sending them to jail. We saw that as an important local ministry.

If a church is going to teach tithing, it must model tithing. I can think of no better way to do that than to support those who serve in mission fields around the world and the US. While our denomination still takes mission offerings, it also requires our missionaries to raise their own support. Many churches now support individual missionaries which makes a lot of sense. When they come home on furlough they are available to speak to those churches who are supporting them. That can make an important connection between the missionary and the supporting churches.

As I close, I am going to challenge you. If the small church I served can tithe its offerings each week to their denomination's mission work, so can every church. Does yours? Are you teaching your people to tithe but not tithing what your church is receiving every week? Our missionaries deserve our support, and I would encourage you to provide it. Remember, God blesses those churches who honors missions.

Helping others without hurting them

Yesterday I posted about a mission trip I took to Haiti back in the 1980s. A youth center our denomination supported had a fire that damaged the second floor. We were going to help remove the walls and begin the process of building new ones. When we arrived most of the walls had already been removed and a group of Haitian workers were in the process of tearing down the last one.

One of the things I appreciate about our denomination is its approach to doing missions. We don't do things "for" people in need; we work "with" these people to best serve them. We were not going to do this project for the people who used the youth center, we were going to work with them to begin the process of rebuilding the facility.

While I agree with this approach, it's not easy for a Type-A personality like myself to work at the pace of other people. I would have preferred to have attacked this project knowing that we were only going to be there one week, and others in our group felt the same way. But, this is a recipe for doing more harm than good. Working with the local laborers we worked at a much slower pace, but we also built relationships with these workers that helped them feel like they had an important part in this project. For the long term best outcome, this is much more important for Kingdom building than quickly finishing a building project.

It so happens I'm currently reading When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. They report that in 2016 there were 2.2 million short term mission projects costing $1.6 billion. One would think that with this many mission projects that much good was accomplished, and it was, but there was also a lot of damage done in some cases. Sometimes when Americans do mission work the people being served are made to feel inferior and disrespected.

This is exactly what we did not want to have happen with our Haitian co-workers and their foreman. We wanted them to feel respected and appreciated for what they were doing which is why we worked at their pace, using their techniques and including them in everything we were doing. After work one day we accompanied the foreman to his home to see where he lived and enjoyed a cold Pepsi with him and his wife.

One day when we all felt like a mid-morning snack was needed, the missionary with whom we were working went to a street seller of oranges near where we were working to get each of us an orange. That may have been the biggest sale she had that day. Respecting and working within the culture has a long-term impact that can far exceed what we are trying to accomplish.

While working on the building one day I noticed a building that was obviously not completed and had been in that state for a long period of time. I asked our missionary if he knew what that was supposed to be. He explained that it was a house that was being built by a well-known American televangelist as a mission project in Haiti. He said similar buildings are found throughout the island that are started by various ministries and never completed. He explained that they raise money to do such projects, but when the money runs out, they find another "hot spot" that needs help and begin to raise new money for it. I can't help but wonder how that influences the people's thoughts about Christianity.

As churches minister to their own communities and its needs, these are important things to remember. Sometimes, in an effort to help we can actually do harm to people. It's easy to throw money at a problem; it's much more difficult to carefully think through how best to address the problem. While it might feel good to attack a problem and "fix" it, it might be better to take a long-term approach and address it in a way that honors the ones being helped and God.