I firmly believe God calls each one of us to a particular ministry. God has called me into Mission Work and Youth Ministry. I feel that there are many souls in this world that can be won for Christ that do not attend a formal church. For me, that ministry and mission field is with teenagers. I have a burden to see young people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus. I firmly believe we are just but one generation away from a world that will have no knowledge of Christ. I have a passion for teaching young people about the Christ I believe in and follow. I want to take time and invest my life in the lives of young men and women.
If we are to be effective Ministers, we need to apply the principles of missionary work to our ministry. We need to spend time looking at areas like evangelism, cultural norms, music, language, and decision making processes used by our local culture. Missionaries spend months studying the culture before planning a strategy to reach the “nationals”. As Pastors, we must be diligent in our study of the culture in which we minister. We need to have many avenues of contact in order to impact our churches and communities. We must enter into the world of our Glocal Community if we are to be effective. We must spend time listening to music, watching TV shows and movies, and pick up on the dialectic cues of that cultures language.
As Ministers we must be able to multi-task. As counselors, we must address the problems and issues that people experience. As sociologists, we must examine cultural trends and know how much influence they have on our community. As teachers, we must communicate God’s Word in their language. As theologians, we must have a vibrant relationship with God and make Him known to our people. As missionaries, we must know the local culture and penetrate the areas where people live, work, and play.
In order for indigenous churches to be started and continue reproducing, the local people must become involved. The local people need to be trained to do the ministry. We tend to only train a few workers, and soon they become frustrated and overworked. All members of the local church should take part in sharing the gospel with the people the come into contact with. Local congregations must be given the tools to become equipped for kingdom work. If not they will become dependant upon the church staff, and when they leave the ministry will die.
In the New Testament, churches were spontaneously expanded. There was no great appeal by the apostles to coerce the local church to go start new congregations. The Great Commission was understood as a tenant of the Christian Faith. They just went and did it. Wherever the Apostles went, they started new churches. They were discipling new believers and then turning them loose to do God’s work. We often time think only “School-trained” people can do the work in a local church, but that is not the case. These new converts were uneducated men who yielded their lives to the leading of the Holy Spirit. We as a church need to return to this way of mission’s work. It worked back then and it will work now. Until we realize the power a local believer has in the church planting process, our world mission effort will become retarded and frustrated.
If we are going to be the church that God called us to be, we must humbly take His message of saving grace to all. The church as a whole does not think about the “The Third Church” because many people see that is being across the ocean. The do not see as it being right in their backyard. They say, “Reaching those people is the missionaries job.” Many do not realize the “Third Church” is right in their neighborhood. We must help our people grasp a Glocal Vision to reach “all” with the Gospel of Christ.
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