Saturday, August 15, 2009

What can we do about the nations coming to us?

Well, I just got back from a fruitful trip to Atlanta where we plan on starting a new missionary training school in January. We found a part of town that was very multi-ethnic. I drove out of the apartment complex where we are looking at housing our students and there were three Mexican grocery stores right across the street, two Thai restaurants within walking distance, a Pakistani/Indian place right next door, and the largest Hindu temple outside of India about a three minute drive down the road. What an opportunity to reach the nations that are coming to us!

I started talking to different pastors, missionaries, and churches in the area to ask what was being done to reach out to these people and kept hearing over and over "not very much". There are a few churches that are being intentional about teaching English classes, picking up international students from the airport, and doing kid's programs in apartment complexes, but they are few and far between. Our goal as we go to Atlanta will be to expose individuals and churches to the need around the world and how reaching out locally can be a huge part of seeing the gospel taken to all nations. Then, once they are exposed to the need and begin getting a heart and burden for the people, we want to equip them to be missional as a church body and to reach out cross-culturally.

Here is a rough, general description of the types of churches that we found:
1) Uninformed - this group is ignorant about God's heart for the nations and don't know about the need both globally and locally.
2) Uninterested - these churches know about the need but are pretty happy with "letting those people be". They like the way they have always done church because that is how it has been done since they were kids. They generally don't want to think about the changing demographics in their community.
3) Unequipped - this group sees the need and wants to do something about it but don't know how to go about doing anything.

What would you do with the churches that are in these three different boats?

No comments:

Post a Comment