from July 18, 2010 prayer email

ACMC is a 35 year old missions mobilization organization. We were an independent organization until we came under Pioneers umbrella three years ago. This is the 5th and final reflection designed to better familiarize you with Pioneers.


Our mission statement reads “Pioneers mobilizes teams to glorify God among unreached peoples by initiating church planting movements in partnership with local churches.”

Pioneers eight core values are:
1. passion for God
2. unreached peoples
3. church planting movements
4. ethos of grace
5. the local church
6. team centered
7. innovation and flexibility
8. participatory servant leadership

In this reflections I will focus on our seventh and eighth core values: “innovation and flexibility” and “participatory servant leadership”.

INNOVATION AND FLEXIBILITY. These are values that I aspire to, but they don’t come naturally for me. I prefer well defined processes and structures. However, in the rapidly changing world we live in, innovation and flexibility are important values for any organization that seeks to stay on the cutting edge. There is such remarkable diversity encountered in any cross culture work, making these practices essential to being effective. Additionally these values are highly regarded by many from the emerging generations in our own culture.

PARTICIPATORY SERVANT LEADERSHIP. This is one of the striking distinctives of Pioneers and a big part of what won my heart over to this organization back in 2007. Our leaders are humble, servant hearted men, who are truly men of God. Their leadership style is participatory, not autocratic. Every person on our team has a meaningful voice at the table. This creates participation in and ownership of important decisions. I find this value to be a rarity in both secular and Christian organizations. It is in stark contrast to many of our larger local churches who have chosen to embrace a pastor as CEO model of leadership. It is a leadership style that I highly value and thrive under, and it is a leadership style that I seek to practice.

from July 4, 2010 prayer email

Our ACMC staff met in Orlando on 6/27-30. We do so twice a year to help stay connected with our colleagues spread across the U.S.

We devoted a major chunk of our time together to interacting around the topic of “incarnational ministry”, one of the 16 areas in which we provide practical help to local churches as they engage in their mission efforts. One of our staff taught a 3 part series tracing the theological underpinnings for incarnational ministry from both Old and New Testaments. Another staff member facilitated 3 interactive sessions around Robert Lewis’ book, The Church of Irresistible Influence (which we had all read prior to our gathering).

front row (Kelly & Connie McClelland, Pat Noble, Joe Steinitz)
middle row Dave Shive, Danny & Judy Armstrong, Kevin Bradford, Blake McDaniel, Frank Emrick)
back row (Sandy Good, Devon Mackey, Lee Christenson, William Griffin, Ken Baldarrama, Larry Walker)

One of the significant take aways from this gathering was a commitment to begin work on four new practical mission resources for local churches on missions strategy, short-term missions, prayer, and missions leadership team. I will be serving as the point on the new resource on developing an effective missions leadership team. I am passing the baton to another staff member in my role as point for our web site, and will take on a new role as point for new resource development.

On our last day together our staff met with Steve Richardson and Ted Esler, Pioneer’s U.S. president and executive VP. We interacted around a number of strategic and current issues impacting Pioneers. At the top of the list was the upcoming departure of Pioneers’ VP for church resources, Kelly McClelland. Kelly has led ACMC since we became a part of Pioneers in March 2007. To the person we will greatly miss Kelly’s godly and effective leadership of our staff team. We pray for God’s best and great fruitfulness as he follows a new course that he senses God leading him to pursue outside of Pioneers.

For the past year plus I have been interacting with Dr. Kevin Bradford about the possibility of our partnering together in the central U.S. region. Kevin was able join with us for this gathering. Lord willing, Kevin will relocate next summer to Norman, OK after 20 years of high impact leadership development and missions mobilization work among Latins near Sao Paulo, Brazil. I am delighted by God’s wonderful answer to my prayers for a strong partner and colleague in this region.