from October 17, 2010 prayer email

Below is an article I wrote recently for plantR, Austin’s local church planters’ web site, titled “BIFOCAL VISION”.

We find the primary marching orders of the local church in the 5 New Testament Great Commission passages. Center stage in each of these passages is the responsibility of all Christ followers, as sent ones, to incarnationally engage in evangelism and disciple making, individually and corporately. This is the foundation of any effective church planting model.

What we understand theologically, we tend to practically dismiss and rationalize away. A key element in four of these Great Commission passages is the priority of the unreached globally – “of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), “Go into all the world … to all creation” (Mark 16:15), “to all nations” (Luke 24:47), “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). It is not enough, if we profess to follow Christ, to focus exclusively on local opportunities for demonstrating and proclaiming the gospel (where 10-20% are already believers), and then discipling and banding into reproducing communities those that come to know Christ. We must have a bifocal vision – on our local community and on the nations where Christ is not yet widely known (especially where less than 1% are already believers).

As a former bi-vocational church planter, I know how hard it can be to attempt to keep all the plates spinning in the first few years of a new church plant. This is especially true if your model is not simple and your mature colleagues are few. However, it is vital that the key principles and practices that you hope to see your new church practicing 10-20 years down the road be engrained from day one. It is extremely difficult to seek to broaden or change your church’s DNA 3-5 years down the road.

New churches that seriously embrace a bifocal vision from day one consistently discover that local engagement feeds international engagement, and vice versa. Missions (intentional local and international cross-cultural outreach) is not just one more activity to squeeze into an already overflowing agenda. You can cultivate a focus on living missionally where you live, work, and play. And simultaneously recruit and equip those in your new church to go, send, welcome, and mobilize others, while engaging in one or two prayerfully and strategically selected opportunities among the least reached outside the U.S.