church

Reaching the Unreached – a book review

/ Phill

“You can’t read this book without becoming uncomfortable or convicted.” declares Jones at the beginning of his book.

Who Is This For?

This is helpful for reaching unreached whether around the block, or around the world.

The author, Peyton Jones, is a Great Commission church planter. He is a student of the Primitive (early) church. He studies the methods of Jesus and the Apostle Paul and adapts them for today’s context/

More importantly, he is an out-of-the-box thinker. He brings a fresh look at old themes and brings practical applications to the work of the mission of God for his Kingdom workers.

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Business as Mission and the Church – a Lausanne Report review

/ Phill

The Business as Mission (BAM) Think Tank of the Lausanne Committee just issued their latest report titled, “Business as Mission and the Church.” It is well worth a read.

Executive Summary

“We believe the local church can effectively disciple and equip their members to have a positive influence on the marketplace.

“The BAM and the Church Consultation Group focused on the role of business as mission in and through the local church. While the modern business as mission movement has been growing and expanding globally for several decades, much of this growth has been outside of local church contexts.

“Yet the BAM Manifesto, published twenty years ago, thoroughly grounded this movement in the Church when it ended with these recommendations:

We call upon the Church worldwide to identify, affirm, pray for, commission and release businesspeople and entrepreneurs to exercise their gifts and calling as businesspeople in the world—among all peoples and to the ends of the earth. We call upon businesspeople globally to receive this affirmation and to consider how their gifts and experience might be used to help meet the world’s most pressing spiritual and physical needs through Business as Mission.

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Underground to above ground church

/ Ari Rocklin

http://globalopps.org/tmbriefs/tv.jpg

The news reports from a country torn by civil war, where safety for locals and foreigners is getting increasingly challenging, focuses on the instability and mayhem. A viewer safely away in the comfortable peaceful west could not be blamed for thinking, where is God in all this?

While these images flash across large high definition TV screens, there is a greater story going on behind the scenes of destruction. Only a few blocks behind the latest bombing event, is a small but growing church of locals, all recent converts.

A year earlier a tentmaker had arrived to this area to work as a “construction” worker. At work he had been challenged by locals who were adamant in converting him to their majority religion faith.

Over time the tentmaker earned their trust through good humor, good questions, time spent together at meals and his ever present joy in work. One by one his co-workers heard about Jesus. Some claimed having seen a man in white in their dreams with out stretched hands beckoning them to come. Then the miracles started, as his co-workers started sharing in secret that they had accepted Jesus into their lives and had earnestly begun to read their Bibles.

They were impacted by the knowledge of a sure salvation, the character of Jesus who did not retaliate and in the Bible which made sense while being logical and reasonable. They fell in love with a God who loved everyone including their enemies and being able to have a relationship with him.

They started meeting with the tentmaker in homes and cafes, studying the Bible and watching videos.

Soon the group grew too big to continue meeting in homes and emboldened by the rapid changes in their country, they rented a location where they could meet in the open.

Then the police came to the tentmaker’s home. Politely but firmly they told him to stay away from the group as his presence there was jeopardizing everyone’s safety. If he promised to stay away, the police assured him that the group and their meetings would be protected.

It was with tremendous sadness that the tentmaker agreed to these terms even though it meant he could not continue to meet with his spiritual children that were so precious to him.

Not long after, the tentmaker had to leave the country for unrelated reasons. But the church continues to meet and grow in increasingly threatening conditions.

The lesson for us reading this is that God is not lost in the clouds, His Kingdom is growing when all we see is death and destruction. Pray for the persecuted church and the tens of thousands of people coming to Christ.