Missions and the long patient journey
‘They may be ordinary and unflashy, but healthy churches are the consecrated common sense that builds for eternity. They’re the Bible’s missions strategy. Just as the gospel “sounded forth” from the first-century churches in Macedonia and Achaia (1 Thess. 1:8), so it continues to sound forth from churches today. Sometimes God moves in surprising ways, but generally the harvest doesn’t come immediately. It’s “first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear” (Mark 4:28). The sower doesn’t even know how the seed sprouts. “By itself,” the earth produces grain.’
Read more
(GSiV: Thinking through methods and missions; Expecting Rapid?; Debate about methods of church planting and discipling; Unreached People Groups and Overemphasis on Speed; A Plea for Gospel Sanity in Missions; Dangerous Desire for Church Growth; Miller: Success, Failure, and Grace; Church Growth, Planning, and Multiplication; Starting Churches: Making Disciples; Analysis of T4T; Phương pháp ‘Môn Đồ Hóa Dựa Trên Sự Vâng Phục’ là chủ nghĩa luật pháp phải không?; Rapid; Missions: Success, faithfulness, rapid, deception)
Missions: Staying and Going (How Senders Win the Nations)
In this article, the author gets at some key issues that especially can help folks think through if they going to live for the Lord by staying in their home country.
“We miss out on the highest, fullest joys when we keep what we should give. This is true for the goers, those who risk their lives to take the gospel to unreached peoples. And this is true for the senders, those who gladly spend and are spent to support those who go.”
“If someone looked closely at your spending and giving, would they see that you’re at war? And if so, what would they say you’re fighting for? If you haven’t started supporting God’s work among the nations, what if you worked to identify one missionary, maybe through your local church, whom you could start prayerfully supporting today?”
- Strategic and Aggressive Simplicity
- Make War for Souls
- Make War Against Greed
- Make War from Joy
- The Army Behind the Army
-Marshall Segal
Read the whole thing here
(GSiV: Baptist; A Mindset All Reformed Folks Need; GSiV Resource Page; Grateful for the Reformation; What is Reformed theology?; A Few Confessions of Faith in Vietnamese; Philadelphia Baptist Confession of Faith)
Thinking through methods and missions
Methods matter in ministry. They matter in overseas ministry too. Consider this article to think through key issues.
- ‘We long for (good) results and are prone to succumb to mechanistic ways of thinking–If only we implement A and B, then the strategy will lead to C.’
- ‘Listening to God’s word chastens triumphalist or mechanistic thinking, reminding us that, in the work of missions (or parenting or pastoring, for that matter), the success of our labors depends not on our carefully honed methods but on the authority of him who calls.’
- ‘The effectiveness of their ministry does not depend on the latest strategy and how well they can implement it, nor does it depend on the winsomeness of their speech or the depth of their sociological research.’
- ‘When the going is slow, when the soil is hard, don’t look first for a new method to advance the gospel.’
- ‘No amount of human strategy or ingenuity can twist the arm of his sovereign strength.’
Read the whole thing here
(GSiV: Expecting Rapid?; Debate about methods of church planting and discipling; Unreached People Groups and Overemphasis on Speed; A Plea for Gospel Sanity in Missions; Dangerous Desire for Church Growth; Miller: Success, Failure, and Grace; Church Growth, Planning, and Multiplication; Starting Churches: Making Disciples; Analysis of T4T; Phương pháp ‘Môn Đồ Hóa Dựa Trên Sự Vâng Phục’ là chủ nghĩa luật pháp phải không?; Rapid; Missions: Success, faithfulness, rapid, deception)
Mục Sư Có Thẩm Quyền Gì?–part 2
‘Thêm vào đó, giáo hội Tin lành đồng ý rằng các mục sư hoặc trưởng lão (tôi dùng các thuật ngữ có thể thay thế qua lại cho nhau) không có thẩm quyền tha thứ tội lỗi. Chúng ta đồng ý rằng họ không phải là một nhóm người được biệt riêng ra cho công tác hòa giải. Martin Luther đã nhấn mạnh, “Thật sự không có sự khác biệt giữa giáo dân và các mục sư… ngoại trừ chức vụ và công việc, nhưng không phải ‘đẳng cấp’; vì tất cả đều cùng một đẳng cấp” (Works of Martin Luther, 2:69). Và chúng ta đồng ý rằng họ không bao giờ có thể được ngồi vào vị trí gọi là “chiếc ghế của Phi-e-rơ,” và nói những điều đúng một cách tuyệt đối có thẩm quyền ngang với Kinh Thánh. Mục sư có thể phạm sai lầm, và những lời họ nói phải được kiểm tra xem có đi ngược lại với lời Chúa hay không như cách mà các người Bê-rê đã làm (Công vụ 17:11). Chúng ta hãy xem cách chính Phi-e-rơ đã làm rối loạn thể nào (vd., Ga-la-ti 2:11-14).’
-Desiring God
Đọc thêm
(GSiV: “Trưởng lão” và “Chấp sự”; Công Việc của Những Trưởng Lão–part 1; ; Ân điển, chứ không phải những quy tắc / Grace not rules; “Thế Nào Là Một Hội Thánh Khỏe Mạnh?” 9Marks–Part 9; Leadership: Alexander Strauch bằng tiếng Việt–part 1)
Healthy Church and Missions–part 4
‘The work of missions is urgent, but it’s not frantic,’ says Andy Johnson. He’s right. Too many missionaries in their creative and rapid methods forget this. Here’s what else Johnson says on the same page of his book, Missions: How the local church goes global, under the subheading, ‘Beware of a Focus on Speed, Numbers, and Magic Bullets.’
- ‘A word of caution needs to be said as we consider our missions engagements. As we evaluate missions projects, agencies, and workers we need to realize that our natural affinity for speed, big numbers, and shortcuts can sometimes lead to tragic results in missions.
- ‘I’ve personally visited several countries where well-meaning missionaries became so urgent in their desire for speed and numbers, and so careless in their methods, that new churches were declared planted and then abandoned in a manner resembling spiritual abortions more than births. Their desire for shortcuts meant that the slow work of patient biblical teaching was cast aside.’
-Johnson, p68
(GSiV: Missions and Evangelism; Evangelism and Calvinism; Researching Calvinism and Missions?; Healthy Church and Missions–part 1;Faithfulness, Missions (and Speed?); Rapid)
Healthy Church and Missions–part 3
‘… Sending churches (like the man’s long-time doctor) do the best they can to care from afar. Sending organizations (like the man’s employer) feel an obligation to care for the well-being of the missionaries under their oversight. Both present laudable concerns, but both are limited in what they can do. The result is a system that doesn’t care well for missionaries on the field.
‘The spiritual health of missionaries is crucial not only for their personal well-being, but also for their ability to carry out their commission. A lack of pastoral care is more likely to lead to a lack of spiritual health, which in turn hinders the work of the commission.’
Read more here
(GSiV: Missions and Evangelism; Evangelism and Calvinism; Researching Calvinism and Missions?; Healthy Church and Missions–part 1😉
Faithfulness, Missions (and Speed?)
- ‘When the pace and fruit of our work didn’t meet expectations, we began to wonder what we were doing wrong. We had been taught that if our approach didn’t lead to a church-planting movement, then we should change what we’re doing. But maybe, we thought, some ministry locations are more difficult, some peoples more resistant, some mission fields harder than others? An influential movement leader told us from the stage at a worldwide leader’s meeting that such is not the case. “There is no hard ground,” he said. That left one other possibility: we were the problem.’
- ‘Ultimately, lack of response and slow growth are not our enemies. Unfaithfulness is. And when we are being faithful, the pace of growth is not our concern (John 21:22).’
-Scott Logsdon
Read the whole thing here
(GSiV: Missions: Success, faithfulness, rapid, deception; Miller: Success, Failure, and Grace;
Healthy Church and Missions–part 2
Why Do Good Churches Send Bad Missionaries?
“Churches should lead global missions by adequately assessing and equipping prospective missionaries instead of deferring this responsibility solely to mission agencies. In this task, churches should emphasize a candidate’s qualification, vision, and preparation over and above subjective call.”
-Great Commission Council
Read more here
(GSiV: Missions and Evangelism; Evangelism and Calvinism; Researching Calvinism and Missions?; Healthy Church and Missions–part 1)
Healthy Church and Missions–part 1
What is the missionary’s obligation in terms of methods and speed at reaching the lost and disciplining the saved?
“Our task is not one of speed but of faithfulness to proclaim a clear gospel and make disciples in the context healthy churches among the nations.”
-Great Commission Council
See the short video clip
(GSiV: Missions and Evangelism; Evangelism and Calvinism; Researching Calvinism and Missions?)
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Hai Cách Sống
Theo Chúa hay theo…
xem clip (bằng tiếng Việt)
(GSiV: Phúc Âm Là Gì? Một Vài Tài Liệu (Tiếng Việt) / What is the Gospel? A Few Resources in Vietnamese)
Pastor: The blind leading the blind?
‘You only need to take seriously what the Bible has to say about the presence and power of remaining sin to know the great danger in allowing anyone to live separate from the essential ministry of the body of Christ, let alone the person who is charged with leading, guiding, and protecting that body as the representative of Christ. If Christ is the head of his body–and he is–then everything else is just body [the body of Christ]. The most influential pastor or ministry leader is a member of the body of Christ and therefore needs what the other members of the body need. There is no indication in the New Testament that the pastor is the exception to the rule of all that is said about the interconnectivity and necessary ministry of the body of Christ. What is true of the seemingly less significant members of the body is also true of the pastor. An intentional culture of pastoral separation and isolation is neither biblical nor spiritually healthy.’
-Paul David Tripp, Dangerous Calling, pp. 69-70 Kindle
(GSiV: Tripp; The Blessing of Humility; Ray Ortlund; Dane Ortlund; Jerry Bridges; Humility; Sanctification)
QUYỀN NĂNG CAO CẢ CỦA ĐỨC CHÚA TRỜI Ở VIỆT NAM (Ê-phê 1:4-5) 