from October 7, 2012 prayer update

One of the things I most enjoy about my work is the opportunity to connect face-to-face with church missions leaders from Pioneers partnering churches. Late in September I spent five days in Tulsa and NW Arkansas connecting with five of these churches. Churches like these five are absolutely core to Pioneers accomplishing its church planting mission among the world’s unreached peoples.

Fellowship Bible Church in Tulsa is a church I have had a long-term consulting / coaching relationship with. Their recently formed executive missions team is seeking to bring focus to the missions efforts in their church of 1000. As part of this process they recently worked at clearly identifying the DNA of their church, so they can align their missions strategy well with it. They have made progress toward developing a purpose statement, a vision statement, and core values for missions. The next step for them will be to grapple with eight important strategy related factors. The answers they identify as they interact around each of these factors will enable them to develop a clear strategy and roadmap for their future missions efforts.

Asbury United Methodist Church in Tulsa is a missions minded mega-church. MaryAnn Smith, their missions director of 25 years, recently retired. The new missions director, Jim Davis, was hired in August. Jim is a 40 something, newly married, former civil engineer, and former lay missions leader from a large Presbyterian church in Tennessee. It was great to meet him and get acquainted.

Fellowship Bible Church in Springdale AR has a lay led missions leadership team. Their chair, Mike Gibbs, teaches business classes at area colleges. It was great to meet Mike for the first time. And to discover that as someone who is my age, he is still seriously considering the possibility of going to the field long-term.

Bella Vista Christian Church in Bella Vista AR is located in an historically affluent retirement community. In recent years there has been an influx of young families into the community, creating a growing multi-generational congregation. Missions is led by David Conrad, a single, energetic, 26 year old associate pastor. I had a great time meeting with he and the retirement aged lay missions leadership team chairman at BVCC. I also held an initial consultation with their missions leadership team discussing key concepts related to developing a missions strategy and congregational mobilization.

Fellowship Bible Church Northwest Arkansas is a missions focused mega-church and a key Pioneers partner church. They have workers with us in Indonesia, Mexico, Tibetan China, and Turkey, and are committed to seeing church planting movements among the people groups they engage. Missions pastor, Dick Nelson, is a long-time staff member at FBCnw, leading a team of missions staff and interns. This was my first opportunity to meet Dick. I look forward to getting much better acquainted.

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Below is a link to information about unengaged people groups around the world: www.joshuaproject.net/unengaged.php. With no access to the gospel, these are people groups where “there is no church planting methodology consistent with evangelical faith and practice underway”.

There are 1367 unengaged people groups worldwide. None of them are in the U.S. 848 (62% of the total) are from 10 countries (all in the 10-40 window): Chad, China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Laos, Nepal, Nigeria, and Sudan. New missionary work among these people groups should be a very high priority among U.S. churches that are seeking to be missions-minded and strategic.