from May 16, 2010 prayer email

ACMC is a 35 year old missions mobilization organization. We were an independent organization until three years ago when we came under Pioneers umbrella. This reflection is part 2 in an effort 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.”

In my last reflections, I listed Pioneers eight core values. Today I will focus in on the first two: passion for God and unreached peoples.

PASSION FOR GOD. This should be the foundation for all Christian service. Sadly, I regularly meet good people who have a passion for ministry, but lack a passion for God. Unfortunately, this was my personal experience for many years. These individuals’ service is sincere, but self energized, hollow, and lacking power. It is only as the life of Jesus Christ is lived out through us that we are supernaturally empowered to truly serve His Church and the lost of this world. As consumed as the apostle Paul was with his missionary work, he had a greater passion. That passion was to know Christ. “I consider everything a lost compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ … I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death.” (Philippians 3:8, 10). I seek to keep this as the consuming passion of my life as well.

UNREACHED PEOPLES. Missiologists define an unreached people group as a people group that is less than 2% evangelical Christian (in many cases a fraction of 1%). Years of missionary work have repeatedly demonstrated this to be a threshold that must be broken through before the Church of Jesus Christ within that people group has the capacity to complete the job of evangelizing the rest of the group without dependence on outside missionary involvement. This is the work of frontier missions. The apostle Paul was deeply committed to missionary work among unreached peoples. “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.” (Romans 20:15). 97% of the world’s unreached people groups lie within a geographic area called the 10-40 window (north Africa, Middle East, central / south / east Asia). Joshua project has identified 639 unreached people groups of 100,000 plus people. From a strategic vantage point, these people groups should be the top priority of our missionary efforts today.

from May 3, 2010 prayer email

Although ACMC is a 35 year old missions mobilization organization, we were an independent organization until three years ago when we came under Pioneers umbrella. I intend to devote several of my upcoming twice-a-month updates to helping you get more familiar 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.” I resonate with every word of Pioneers’ mission statement.

Pioneers has eight core values that direct much of the organization’s day-to-day behavior and decision making.
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

As I have looked at the core values of different churches and organizations, I have encountered two kinds of core values (aspirational values and actual values). All eight of Pioneers core values are actual. And you may notice that four of our eight core values overlap with key phrases in our mission statement – teams, unreached peoples, church planting movements, local church.

The mission statement, core values, and the quality of the U.S. leadership of Pioneers are the things that drew me to the organization when I came on board three years ago. And they are what keep me with Pioneers today.

Pioneers recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. We work exclusively among unreached peoples (less than 2% evangelical Christian) in six regions of the world (East Asia, Eurasia & Americas, Mid Asia, North Africa & Middle East, Southeast Asia & Pacific, and Sub-Saharan Africa). We have 1958 workers on 191 church planting teams in 84 countries serving 130 people groups in 65 languages. Our U.S. headquarters is in Orlando, FL, with 62% of our world-wide workers coming from the U.S. There are 7 other mobilization bases around the globe (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ghana, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Singapore).

from April 18, 2010 prayer email

Grace Community Church is a small non-denominational church in NW Austin, located a couple of miles from where we live. GCC has a significant, decades long commitment to a traditional involvement (prayer and financial partnership) in missions. Today I had the opportunity to preach in their Sunday morning worship service on “two defining questions”.



Question one: “who is God?” My response: “our God is a missionary (sending) God”.

Question two: “who am I?” My response: “I am sent in the same way as Christ”, based on John 20:21.

My primary challenge to the congregation was to live missionally where they live, work, and play, recognizing that God has called most of us to reach the lost in our natural spheres of influence.

We briefly considered a top 10 list for missional living:
1. proximity
2. priority of the least reached
3. presence
4. partnership
5. practice missionary methodology
6. prayer
7. practical service
8. practice hospitality
9. probing questions
10. proclamation

How about you, do you see yourself as sent in the same way as Christ? Are you demonstrating and proclaiming the gospel well where you live, work, and play?

from April 4, 2010 prayer email

Although Christmas has a much higher profile in American culture, Good Friday / Easter is the Christian holiday that best represents the essential core of the Christian message. “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures …” (I Corinthians 15:3-4).

Good Friday is all about forgiveness and restoration of a broken relationship with a deeply offended God through Christ’s death in our place. Easter is all about new life, spiritual power, and future hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the grave.



It has been more than 37 years since Christ radically changed my life as a freshman in college. I am so grateful. Who knows what my life would look like today apart from His presence and transforming touch.

Each of us who has placed our faith in Jesus has experienced the reality of Good Friday and Easter in our lives. All of our sins (past, present, and future) have been nailed to the cross. We are forgiven, declared not guilty. We are no longer enemies of God, but beloved sons and daughters. We have been made new creatures in Jesus Christ. We have living permanently within us the powerful Holy Spirit, who enables us to live a life that pleases God and that advances His Kingdom. And we have a future hope beyond our wildest imaginations awaiting us when we move from this life to the next.

With all of this why are we continually tempted to go back to a system of living built around self reliance and performance measures. “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” (Galatians 3:3). Let us this Easter be reminded once again of the need to live a dependent and supernatural life. A life dependent solely on the once-for-all substitutionary work of Jesus Christ and made supernatural by the moment-by-moment empowerment of the Spirit of God.

from March 21, 2010 prayer email

Every March, Dallas Theological Seminary cancels classes for a week to host their world evangelization conference. As a member of the DTS class of 1984, it is always a joy to be back on campus and participate in this significant annual event.



I had the privilege of representing ACMC as one of the more than 40 mission agency exhibitors who were part of the conference held March 8-12. This event provided opportunities for lots of good interactions with other sending agency reps, future pastors, and future missionaries. I also led one of two dozen brown bag lunch discussions during the week. My topic was “mobilizing your church for effective engagement in missions in the 21st century.”

The conference speaker for the week was Dr. Michael Frost. Author of The Shaping of Things to Come and Exiles. Frost spoke passionately each day on missional living and the missional church. Great stuff.



My biggest take away – identify a definable group of people that God has clearly called me to seek to reach for Christ and identify a partner to work closely with me in that effort. How about you? Who has God clearly called you to reach? If you don’t know, isn’t it about time to start asking God for that clear calling?

from March 7, 2010 prayer email

Grace Baptist Church is a nearly 70 year old independent Baptist church of 800 in a college town of 50 thousand, with Kansas State University at its core.

On Saturday evening I consulted with three members of GBC’s missions leadership team as they grapple with issues related to sharpening the focus of their global outreach efforts. The MLT recognizes the need to transition from having only a financial involvement with their 30 missionary partners to a paradigm where they will engage more deeply in a few strategically selected works.

I preached three times on Sunday morning in corporate worship services. This was the fourth of four Sunday mornings devoted to their month-long missions focus. Previous speakers had addressed issues related to the role of music, orality, and Bible translation in the missionary task. My message was titled: “God’s Word: powerful and transforming” out of Matthew 13. I spoke on the responsibility of every believer to embrace in a missional lifestyle, proclaiming Christ in their personal spheres of influence and among the least reached globally. I used the parable of the sower to illustrate that we will encounter four very different responses as we engage in sharing the gospel.



Sunday evening was GBC’s closing missions banquet. I had the opportunity to speak on “the task remaining”. We rejoiced in the tremendous progress made with the gospel through the past 20 centuries, with unprecedented progress globally in recent decades. And I challenged folks to confront the 7 greatest hurdles remaining to bring closure to the Great Commission mandate.

During this missions month, the congregation has been repeatedly challenged to pledge $180 thousand to 2010 missions engagement through their faith promise process.

from February 21, 2010 prayer email

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