Christian Standard | November 2018 by Christian Standard Media

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letter publisher FROM THE

I’ve been praying. I’m writing this on Labor Day weekend—our submissions to the magazine are made well in advance of the printing and posting dates—and recently I’ve been praying for Babs Johnson, hospitalized and in a coma after a serious brain aneurysm a couple of weeks ago. I’ve gotten to know Babs through her husband, Russell, a man with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of goodwill and incredible passion for the church. I asked Russell to write an article about his grandfather, iconic missionary J. Russell Morse—his namesake—for this issue, and he was happy to do so. He gathered family together to attempt an almost impossible task of condensing the life story of one of our greatest missionaries, if not the greatest, into the confines of a single article. Sometimes lives are lived so richly for God that, as Russell would say, “It’s like a gallon of gold in a quart jar!” He loves Christian Standard too. His grandfather was a regular

contributor to the magazine in his lifetime, often sharing stories about the overseas work. Throughout his life, J. Russell Morse blazed new trails for unreached people groups and endured hardships that bring to mind the sufferings of some in the New Testament. His love of Christ, passion for the lost, and endurance in the midst of hardships have been passed down and lived out by Russell and Babs. I know that physical hardships such as Babs is enduring are common to human beings. Our hospitals and nursing homes are filled with people battling illness and affliction. But it’s rare when those who are suffering have made such a mark for the kingdom of God. This past weekend, news outlets filled the airwaves with the funerals of Aretha Franklin and Senator John McCain. Their services took place in great venues, and famous people paid their respects and offered eulogies. It’s a stark contrast to C H RIS TIA N STA N DAR D

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how we tend to operate in the service of our Lord. We live our lives and make our decisions primarily for an audience of One. We live and die by his unending mercy and grace. He alone sustains us, and though our bodies fail, he doesn’t. I know, as Russell and Babs know, that God is and will always be faithful, and the only eulogy we need to hear is his eternal voice saying, “Well done!” I am praying for Babs’s complete restoration to a good measure of health and for Russell and their family as they minister to her.

Jerry Harris is publisher of Christian Standard Media and senior pastor of The Crossing, a multisite church located in three states across the Midwest. @_jerryharris /jerrydharris

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Volume CLIII. Number 11. Christian Standard (ISSN 0009-5656) is published monthly by Christian Standard Media at 16965 Pine Lane, Suite 202, Parker, CO 80134. Periodicals postage paid at Parker, CO, and additional offices. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Christian Standard Media, 16965 Pine Lane, Suite 202, Parker, CO 80134. Phone: 1-800543-1353. SUBSCRIBERS: Send address changes to Christian Standard, 16965 Pine Lane, Suite 202, Parker, CO 80134. Send old and new addresses, complete with zip codes, at least six weeks before delivery date.

Christian Standard is published by Christian Standard Media, www.christianstandardmedia.com.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FEA T U R E PRAYER, POWER, PURPOSE: J. Russell and Gertrude Morse

by Russell Johnson

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

I N E V E RY I S S UE 2 | L E TTE R F RO M THE P UB L ISH E R

Jerry Harris

the POCKET SUPERHERO

6-7 | L E TTE R F RO M THE E DITO R

by greg pruett

Michael C. Mack

10-12 | MOVE ME NT

50 54

Catalyst Community David Dummitt

The Silent STRUGGLE of Suburban Poverty

13-15 | E 2 : E F F E C TIV E EL D ER S Living a s Missio naries Gary Johnson

by kelly carr

16-18 | ME TRIC S

Sur ve y She ds Light on Our Missio na r ie s Kent Fillinger

Transforming Communities Through BUSINESS AS MISSION

19-21 | HO RIZO N S

Seven Insider Facts About ICOM Emily Drayne

by fenton lewis

22-25 | IMAG IN E

62 68 72

Po ve r ty Enc ounter Mel McGowan

Mix. Weigh. Seal. Ship.

26-27 | MIN ISTRY L IF E

by ben simms

My He a r t Po unds Within Me Vince Antonucci

28-30 | RE L E VAN C E

One o f the Gra ve st Spir itua l Da nge r s of Our Era Haydn Shaw

Rethinking SHORT-TERM MISSIONS

by josh rouse

34-43 | F E ATURE ARTI CL E

Pray e r , Po w e r , Purpose: J. Russe ll a nd Ge rtrude Mo r se Russell Johnson

What Makes the FASTEST-GROWING Churches GROW?

78-79 | IN TE RAC T

by jim nieman

80 | N O N DE NO MINATION A L I S H Caleb Kaltenbach C H RIS TIA N STA N DAR D

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letter editor FROM THE

The cafeteria in my old workplace was a microcosm of the world. When I worked at Standard Publishing in the early 1990s, the seven-acre building was divided distinctly into two parts: the front housed the editorial, management, and sales departments, and the back was the printing plant. As you might suspect, the editors in this Christian publishing company were active in their faith; many were teachers, preachers, and elders in their local churches. There was no spiritual requirement to work in the back. The cafeteria was situated in the middle of the building. My first day I noted the lunchroom’s standard operating procedure as employees naturally segregated themselves at the tables: editorial folks with their kind and factory workers with theirs. I could understand why this occurred. We simply feel more comfortable with people we already know, and a certain amount of risk is involved to sit with “strangers” with whom you probably have little in common.

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I had been a Christian only a few years at that time, and I was a bit of a rebel. I started sitting with a group of guys about my age who worked on the printing presses. Over several months we got to know each other well, as we ate lunch together almost daily, went to football games together, and just hung out. We became friends who trusted one another. One of the guys confided in me about what some of the people from the back thought about the folks from editorial— that we were snobs who didn’t want anything to do with them. In fact, he told me, they had a nickname for us: “Paper Christians.” It was an ingenious though unworthy designation. All they knew about us was what they saw on the paper they daily printed, stapled, sorted, and mailed. But more than that, they saw us as Christ followers in word only, by what was printed on our baptism certificates, business cards, and the plethora of words we published in magazines, books, VBS materials, and Sunday school curriculum, but they never got to see what we produced through our lives.

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Then he told me what he thought we thought about them—that they were all ignorant factory workers who were godless, faithless, or uncommitted. We shared a laugh together at the inaccurate impressions each group had of the other, and we were both glad we didn’t think of one another that way. We had broken down the stereotypes and the barriers through friendship. The culture in which we live consists of a variety of subcultures. The church as it exists today has become a subculture of its own; for many, their Christian subculture is their whole life. They “go to church,” surround themselves with churchgoing friends who go to Christian concerts and shop at Christian-owned stores (found in the Christian-business directory). They isolate themselves in much the same way as people did in the Standard cafeteria. It’s all so antimissional. As I read the articles in this month’s issue, I was reminded again and again of the cost Jesus called us to as his disciples. It’s obvious in the Gospels and Acts that he never intended for his church to be a safe, comfortable subculture. No, his church is to be a risk-taking adventure that involves going, not staying—even if that simply means walking across a lunchroom to befriend people God is seeking.

In our cover story, Russell Johnson tells the story about his grandfather, J. Russell Morse, and his family, who entered into a treacherous mission to reach people far from God. They were persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and starved, but they persevered in carrying out God’s mission. If they could do all that, I thought to myself, I can befriend a few people in my neighborhood or in my mountain-biking group or in any of the other circles where God has placed me and let him use me there. So how can we as Christ’s church break out of our safe subcultures in order to cross cultures . . . or just cross the street? What is the church doing in your location? What can we do better? I’d love to hear from you!

@michaelcmack @michaelcmack @michaelcmack /AuthorMichaelCMack

CS Blog This Week’s Bible Study This Week’s Communion Meditation News Story of the Week The Restoration Movement Archive E2: Effective Elders Blog Nondenominationalish

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move ment BY DAVID DUMMITT

Catalyst Community // An Interview with Jessie Vaca about the Changing Landscape of Global Church Planting

When I consider all of the great things happening in the church around the world, one that really excites me is an initiative led by NewThing called “Catalyst Community.” Simply put, Catalyst Communities bring local leaders together to pray, dream, and strategize how to work together to grow God’s kingdom right where they are. I spoke with Jessie Vaca, NewThing’s global reproducing catalyst, to learn more about how Catalyst Communities are changing the landscape of church planting around the world.

David Dummitt is the lead pastor and planter of 2|42 Community Church in Michigan, one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in the country. He is also on the lead team of NewThing, a catalyst for reproducing churches worldwide. /DavidDummitt

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Q; What’s the overall goal of Catalyst Communities? A: Catalyst Community is designed to equip

Q: What exactly are Catalyst Communities? A: At NewThing, we aim to equip local networks of churches all over the world to plant more churches. Catalyst Communities are gatherings of local, indigenous leaders that help them create strategies for reaching people far from God. I love that Catalyst Community is not just a conference or a teaching session; leaders are coming together to do real work developing aggressive strategic action plans for collaborative church planting. A full Catalyst Community gathers three times over the course of two years. The gatherings are sequentially focused around three objectives: 1. Leadership development: During session one we equip local church leaders with practical ways to develop more leaders. 2. Missional culture creation: In session two we work with indigenous leaders to help them figure out how to activate people for the mission. 3. Multiplication of movements and networks: Session three focuses on helping leaders understand how networks work. We also help them implement reproducing church practices like apprenticeship and coaching. This is my favorite session because it’s where leaders really gain traction to move forward. With a fresh vision that they can accomplish more through collaboration with other church leaders, these new networks quickly take off and begin multiplying churches.

C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

networks of churches to reproduce more churches; it’s a catalyst for church planting. Our goal is to gather like-minded leaders from multiple churches that are willing to work together to advance God’s kingdom through collaborative church planting. Our ultimate goal is to hold a Catalyst Community in every country around the world. We’ve been in about 20 so far, but we have opportunities popping up everywhere! In the last year alone, we have held Catalyst Communities in Thailand, Laos, the Philippines, Uganda, Belarus, Albania, El Salvador, Botswana, and elsewhere. Later this year we’ll be heading to Columbia, Peru, and Brazil.

Q: How do you follow up with global networks, and what success rates are you seeing with the growth of the global church? A: Once we have launched a new church network by completing Catalyst Community, we have ongoing follow-up and coaching with the local leader. We aim to connect with the leader every month. We are seeing off-the-charts success rates. Our network in the Philippines grew by 54 churches in one year. In Macedonia—where prior to Catalyst Community the network had planted one church in 10 years—six churches were planted in a single year. And our Laos network grew by 285 churches in two years!

Q: You work with indigenous leaders. Why? A: History tells us that when the Western church

approaches global mission and church planting from an imperialist mind-set—a “we’re going to bring our white, Western Christianity to you” approach—we do a disservice to the global church. It’s ineffective, and the church then fails to grow and thrive. Contextualization is essential, and who better understands a culture than someone who lives there already? The best way to move the global mission forward is to equip our indigenous brothers and sisters who live there, love Jesus, and want to make an impact. - 11 -

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- MOVEMENT -

Q: How are you being introduced to these indigenous leaders? A: Rather than approaching leaders who don’t Q: What can churches in the U.S. learn know us with the attitude of, “Let us teach from the global church? you our Western idea of what church should A: Christianity is growing rapidly, and dare I be,” we try to get to really know someone we refer to as a “person of peace”—someone with relationships and influence in their region. These individuals are natural bridge builders gifted at bringing people together from across multiple denominations. We build a relationship with that person and let it grow over time. We get to know their dream, heart, and vision for what God is calling them to do. Then we come alongside them to help them move toward that. We are introduced to these “persons of peace” in a few different ways. Most times it’s through word of mouth or a warm introduction. Other times global leaders have read Exponential by Dave and Jon Ferguson, or Hero Maker by Dave Ferguson, or they’ve heard Dave Ferguson speak somewhere, and then they contact us.

Q: How can churches in the United States support the church around the world? A: American money still makes a big

difference, specifically American money given with no strings attached . . . no dictates for how it should be used. One of the biggest problems I’ve seen is how “strings” inhibit indigenous leaders from investing money in the ways best for the local church. One great way U.S. churches can support church planting around the world is by learning more about being part of Catalyst Community. We need apprentices at all levels of leadership. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

say more authentically, in the rest of the world. Part of what we can learn is that just because we’re big doesn’t mean we’ve got the most influence. We can learn to both lead and follow. I’ve had the privilege to experience the church around the world, and on a personal note, I have learned I don’t really trust God, at least not like our global brothers and sisters trust him. When I develop strategic plans for my own church, I tend to create plans that I think have a high likelihood of success whether God shows up or not. But when I meet these pastors from all over the world, who may or may not have even a basic education, I see them trust God with crazy-big, audacious plans. They have a reckless dependence on God. There’s a trust factor, a faith factor that inspires me every time I see it. They really believe God is going to show up. And he does! I am blown away by the growth of God’s church throughout the world. He’s uniting his church to do more together than would ever be possible alone and allowing leaders like Jessie to create environments that equip and empower indigenous leaders to chase their God-sized dreams. If you are a leader who is interested in learning more about how your church can partner with Catalyst Community to invest in global church planting, reach out to Jessie at jessievaca@newthing.org. 

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e2:

effective elders

Living as Missionaries

“Clean your room.” Do you remember saying that to your child or being told that by a parent? It’s straightforward. Clear. Easily understood. A parent simply expects the child to clean his or her room. Nothing more. As a dad, I remember telling my sons to “clean your room” over and over again. Yet, instead of actually cleaning their rooms, what if my sons gathered their friends together and discussed what “cleaning your room” means, or they spoke of various cleaning methods, or even memorized the phrase, “Clean your room.” As a dad, all I wanted them to do was to actually clean their rooms. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

BY GARY JOH NSON

Dr. Gary Johnson serves as an elder/senior minister at Indian Creek Christian Church (The Creek) in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is a cofounder of E2: Effective Elders. Gary offers resources and coaching as he works with elders to lead with greater focus and confidence. / e2elders @e2elders

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Missions for All of Us

Something similar can be said of our relationship with God, our Father. He told us— long ago—to “go and make disciples.” Yet, all too often, we sit with one another to discuss what that phrase means. We explore different methods to “go and make disciples,” and many of us—including me—have memorized that which we call the Great Commission. Still, our Father simply wants us to obey this command. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

What if we spent more time making disciples than discussing disciple-making? The Great Commission requires that we “go.” In some way, we must go and enter the world of someone who is not a follower of Jesus. We often equate this with world missions. We invest resources in sending people to other people groups in other places. Yet, every single Jesus follower is a missionary. Missionaries travel not only across oceans to the other side of the world, they travel across the street and around the corner to reach neighbors who are far from God. As missionaries, we might walk across a room— at school, at work, even at home—to reach someone in our family or circle of friends with Christ. The need is great for each of us to serve as missionaries. Of the 7.6 billion people in the world, 4 billion are not Jesus followers. Stated more clearly, 10 of 15 people are not saved; 2 of every 3 people need Jesus. Does that statistic reflect our family or circle of friends? You and I are missionaries to them. Moreover, if our entire family is in Christ, it’s time for us to widen our circle of friends with individuals who are far from God. - 14 -

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- E2: EFFECTIVE ELDERS -

The Power and Pattern Before ascending to Heaven, Jesus said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Notice the power and the pattern. The same power of the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead (see Romans 8:11) is the power that enables us to be missionaries, witnessing to those we love and for whom we care. Fifty years ago, on September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy made a startling announcement during a speech at Rice University. He said, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Being witnesses for Jesus—first to our family, then to our friends, our community, and beyond—is not easy. We choose to be witnesses for the Lord, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Though it will be hard, take heart. The Great Commission comes with a Great Companion, who promised, “I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.” He came to us, is in us, and empowers us. Also, notice the pattern in Acts 1:8. Beginning in Jerusalem and extending to the ends of the earth, the followers were to be witnesses for Jesus Christ. The geographic movement appear as four concentric circles: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. We can use the same pattern—template— for serving as missionaries. We are to take Jesus to the people in our lives who are yet to become Christians; beginning in our own homes, reaching then to our extended family, then into the neighborhoods where we live, and finally to the schools and workplaces where we go day after day. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

Three Practical Challenges for Elders What if, as elders, we lived as missionaries? Would it make a difference in the congregations we serve? Could we impact the lives of yet-to-be Christians with whom we are doing life? Yes, undeniably so. As a fellow elder, let me share three practical challenges that are good, better, and best. • A good challenge is for each of us to support the International Conference On Missions this month. Think of a way to invest in the conference, whether financially or by personally attending. • A better challenge is for each of us to go on a short-term trip to encourage and assist missionaries who are serving the Lord on the field, whether locally or globally. • The best challenge is for us to “go and make disciples” of those individuals who are near and dear to us—when we do so, we lead by example. Perhaps then a great awakening will take place and our congregations will become a wave of witnesses sweeping across town and around the world. Our Lord said, “Go and make disciples.” Don’t merely memorize the verse, and don’t just sit and discuss the methods of doing so. Let’s get up and go.  - 15 -

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met rics BY KENT FILLINGER

Survey Sheds Light on Our Missionaries To coincide with this issue’s focus on global missions, I partnered with the International Conference on Missions to conduct a survey to learn more about our Restoration Movement missionaries. The survey was sent out via ICOM’s email distribution network in August and a total of 118 people completed it. While the sample size is small, the focus of the survey is significant. To my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has gathered this type of information about our missionaries. I hope we can build on this foundation as more and more missionaries participate in the future. I sorted the survey responses to include only missionaries serving either part-time or fulltime. I didn’t include the survey responses from volunteer or retired missionaries or from missionary recruits preparing to serve on the field (the population size for these groups was too small to identify any clear themes).

Kent E. Fillinger serves as president of 3:STRANDS Consulting, Indianapolis, Indiana. /3strandsconsulting www.3strandsconsulting.com

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Personal Budgets

I focused on analyzing the results from three categories of Restoration Movement missionaries who all raise their own financial support: • Independent missionaries serving internationally • Missionaries with a sending agency/ mission organization serving internationally • Missionaries serving at a mission organization/agency in the United States

Serving Situation, Location, and Duration All of the missionaries with a sending agency serve full-time internationally, compared with only 85 percent of independent missionaries serving full-time. The full-time rate for missionaries serving at a mission agency in the U.S. was a little lower, 82 percent. Among missionaries serving internationally, 26 countries were reported as single fields of service. Several of the missionaries noted they served in multiple countries. The largest percentage of these international missionaries serve in an urban or city setting. Missionaries with a sending agency were more likely to be serving in an urban area than independent missionaries (57 percent to 46 percent, respectively). Likewise, most of the missionaries serving at a mission organization in the U.S.—74 percent—reported the focus of their ministry is predominantly an urban or city setting. Long-term mission service was the hallmark of the survey respondents: 22 percent of the missionaries with a sending agency reported serving more than 36 years as a missionary, while 38 percent of the independent missionaries have served more than 31 years on the field. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

Missionaries were asked to share the approximate amount of their total personal annual budget for the most recent fiscal year. Missionaries serving with a sending agency reported having the largest personal ministry budgets, on average, followed by the missionaries serving stateside at a mission agency. The average personal budget of an international missionary with a sending agency ($70,871) was 19 percent higher than the average independent missionary serving cross-culturally ($59,454). The stateside missionaries working at a mission agency landed in the middle, with their personal budgets averaging $62,486. The range of responses included a low of $4,000 and a high of $250,000 for the independent missionaries in this study. The budgets for missionaries serving with a sending agency ranged from $15,000 to $174,300.

Financial Partners and Donors Not surprisingly, missionaries serving with an agency had more financial partners providing ministry funds. The average missionary with a sending agency had a total of 41.2 partners, which included churches, Sunday school classes or small groups, individuals, and foundations. By comparison, independent missionaries had a combined average of 32.5 financial partners. Individual donors were the largest source of partners for both categories of missionaries, followed by churches. Despite this, church partners gave the largest percentage of the missionaries’ overall personal budgets—61 percent for both categories. Individual giving comprised a larger percentage of income for the missionaries with a sending agency (36 percent) than the independent missionaries (32 percent). The independent missionaries received a higher percentage of their total giving from foundations and Sunday school classes or small groups (8 percent) than did - 17 -

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- METRICS -

missionaries serving with a sending agency (3 percent). The average size of the financial gifts from partners of independent missionaries ($152 per month) was larger, however, than the average monthly gift from partners of missionaries serving with a sending agency ($143).

Benefits The survey included 27 possible benefits for missionaries. From the wide-ranging list of benefits, the following nine benefits were the most common for the missionaries to have included in their personal ministry budgets. The four benefits that these missionaries

9 MOST COMMON BENEFITS FOR MISSIONARIES

INDEPENDENT MISSIONARIES

MISSIONARIES WITH SENDING AGENCY

MISSIONARIES SERVING WITH A MISSION AGENCY IN THE U.S.

Computer / Internet

52%

90%

72%

Airfare / Travel / Excess Baggage Fees

65%

86%

63%

Cell Phone Allowance

65%

76%

44%

Office Supplies and Postage

65%

71%

66%

Paid Vacation Days / Paid Time Off

43%

71%

75%

Car / Vehicle Allowance

52%

62%

13%

Housing Allowance

43%

57%

69%

Health / Medical Insurance

57%

53%

Ministry Project Funds

65%

57%

47%

were the least likely to receive were: college funds for children, a sabbatical, school fees for children, and disability insurance. Fewer than 20 percent of missionaries received any of these benefits.

internationally with a mission agency. Nine percent of the missionaries serving with a mission agency in the U.S. were in the 18- to 29-year-old range.

Demographics

The majority of missionaries surveyed were married, and most had two to three children.

More than two-thirds of the respondents in each of the three categories were men. The highest percentage of male respondents were found in the category of missionaries serving with a sending agency, 73 percent. A veteran group of missionaries completed the survey—60- to 69-year-olds were the largest grouping of respondents in all three categories (ranging from 23 to 46 percent). No one under the age of 30 was represented in either the group of independent missionaries or the group of missionaries serving

Ninety-two percent of the missionaries serving at a mission agency in the U.S. had a bachelor’s degree or higher (the national average for adults over age 25 is 33 percent). The “least” educated group were the independent missionaries, with 80 percent having a bachelor’s degree or higher. Overall, 38 percent of the missionaries had a master’s degree compared with only 9 percent of U.S. adults. Nineteen percent of the missionaries have a doctoral degree, while only 2 percent of American adults do. 

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hori zons BY EMILY DRAYNE

Seven Insider Facts About ICOM

Emily Drayne lives in North Carolina and has served with the International Conference On Missions since 2011. /emilydrayne

The strategic focus of the International Conference On Missions is no secret—it’s apparent in the name—but there’s much more that goes on beneath the surface. Do you know these seven insider facts about ICOM? See if you’re an ICOM expert! C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

@edrayne0530 @edrayne0530 www.theicom.org

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The 2018 conference was being planned three years ago When planning a conference for 7,000 or more people, featuring more than 600 booths and 30plus meeting rooms, the choices of convention centers that are both affordable and sizeable enough are limited. That’s why ICOM selects a city four or five years in advance. We consider both the locations of other conferences and our historical locations. We also choose our presidents a few years in advance. As an international missions conference, it makes sense that we have both national and international presidents. In odd years (2017, 2019), we have an international president. And since the majority of attendees are Americans, in even years (2018, 2020) we have a missionsfocused American president.

The idea for a missions conference came from an unexpected place The idea for the missions conference was born in Los Angeles. J. Russell Morse and John T. Chase had the idea for a “missions emphasis day” before the North American Christian Convention, and the first such meeting occurred in 1948 in Springfield, Illinois. Attendance grew until the event needed its own gathering. In 1954, the National Missionary Convention met for the first time as its own convention. The conference has had two fulltime directors since then: Walter Birney (1966– 2009) and David Empson (2009–present). The National Missionary Convention became the International Conference On Missions in 2011 and now has 7,500 to 8,000 attendees annually. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

We are dedicated to making disciples who make disciples ICOM is dedicated to the Great Commission. In 2012, we launched a “Reset Tour” that focused on what was lacking in the American church. Making disciples was one of the main outcomes of that field study. Since then, ICOM has hosted more than 40 meetings of “4 Chair Discipling” led by Dann Spader and other leaders. This has resulted in preconference training, many churches adopting this method of discipling, and some churches asking about next steps. Another preconference training and workshop series, “Disciple Making Movements,” led by Eric Derry, has also been successful the past few years. We plan to continue such discipleship efforts.

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- HORIZONS -

We know how to pinch a penny! We pride ourselves on keeping our costs low. A family can register for our three- to four-day conference for $80—that’s unheard of these days. We contract with hotels to get the lowest price and the most amenities possible. Sponsors help underwrite the cost of our ticketed events. Sponsors also help lower lunch costs. To benefit our exhibitors, we ask the host state to raise funds to cover the facility fee of the venue. We want our missionaries to be able to have a booth that highlights their mission and shares their needs. (Some grateful missionaries have told us they wouldn’t be able to attend if our prices were higher.) ICOM seeks to encourage missionaries, and this is one of the best ways we can do it.

You know you’re at ICOM if you see KFC buckets Many years ago, Kentucky Fried Chicken donated about 200 buckets for us to use during offering time. The tradition continues. These buckets may be more well-traveled than some people who attend the conference! Each year, we find new drawings and messages written on the buckets by ICOM guests. After all these years, we probably deserve some complimentary chicken for all of that free advertising.

We have the best staff around!

I love our team at ICOM. We are able to have serious staff meetings and, in the same day, go out to lunch together and play goodnatured pranks on each other. Among our seven-member staff there is a good balance of males and females, millennials and boomers, experienced and less experienced, etc. We wear multiple hats, and with the help of our families and friends, work year-round to make sure the conference runs as smoothly as possible. Our team has an open mic policy. Any team member can share their opinion on anything that’s brought up during a staff meeting. It creates a sense of buy-in when all workers’ opinions are valued. And every staff member has their own “I am ICOM” story—we have all been impacted by ICOM in a special way. Ask to hear our story when you meet one of us! C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

You can have an ICOM story, too! A foundation of ICOM is to “enlist new workers for the harvest.” People of all ages make missional commitments to serve him every year. Time and again we hear from missionaries that their biggest need is more kingdom workers. It’s possible the kingdom worker they need is you! We’d love for you to join us at the conference. But if you can’t attend, choose to be part of the online community watching from all over the world. We need more kingdom workers! You may have known a few of these fun facts, but I hope you learned that ICOM is much more than an annual conference. We have been gathering for 70 years with the hope of encouraging those serving on the field, equipping those who are preparing for kingdom service, and enlisting new workers to carry out the task of world evangelism. 

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imag ine BY MEL MCGO WAN

Poverty Encounter // Immersive Environment Tells Povertyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s True Story This December, the world will have the opportunity to understand poverty in a whole new light. When Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hunger Fund (CHF) first told me about their idea for a walk-through attraction about poverty, I knew it would be a project like no other. Born in the mind of CHF president and founder Dave Phillips years earlier, the project had already taken shape to some degree. He and his team had brought the idea to friends within Walt Disney Imagineering for help conceptualizing the project. Then, they brought those ideas to my team to create the well-articulated concept drawings to help secure financial support for the project. It was imperative to CHF that the sets for the exhibit be realistic, immersive environments that tell the true story of

Mel McGowan is cofounder and chief creative principal of PlainJoe Studios. He is a leading master planner and designer of churches in America. @visioneer /visioneer

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international poverty in new and compelling ways. We ultimately created the attraction’s layout and schematic designs. We’ve seen some of the project under construction, and when it opens in Los Angeles, California, in December, Poverty Encounter will be a moving and compelling experience that families will never forget.

A Passion for the Gospel and the Church I was first amazed by the idea of Poverty Encounter, not just by the radical concept of the exhibit, but by CHF’s heart for their mission: supporting the work of local churches around the globe. CHF is passionate about supporting the local church, whether it’s in the developing world or here at home. And Poverty Encounter makes that message clear. The ultimate goal of Poverty Encounter is to ignite hope in the redemptive power of the gospel proclaimed by local churches in communities worldwide. The exhibit sheds light on the opportunities for evangelism, salvation, and hope that local churches create when they provide food and essential resources to their communities. It’s a front-row seat to what’s possible when the church takes a stand against suffering and starvation. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

Poverty Encounter guests visit scenes where children live in extreme poverty, like this garbage dump village in Central America.

Scenic fabrication and installation by IDF Studio Scenery.

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Immersive and Realistic

A tour through realistic settings like the brickyards of Asia helps Poverty Encounter guests understand the complexity of poverty worldwide.

Scenes modeled after some of the world’s worst disasters communicate the hardships families survive day by day.

Follow the tour to see the underground sewer systems where some of Europe’s poor orphans go for warmth in the winter.

all Scenic fabrication and installation by IDF Studio Scenery. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

Poverty Encounter is a walk-through attraction that tells real-life stories of suffering and believably portrays the realities of impoverished communities. Visitors will come face-to-face with the gut-wrenching truth of the conditions millions of people around the world live in each day. “God put the concept for Poverty Encounter in my heart about 12 years ago, so to be opening this December is truly the result of answered prayer,” Phillips said. The exhibit re-creates realistic scenes— including the sights and sounds—from places like brickyards in Asia, garbage-dump villages in Central America, and displaced-people settlements in areas struck by natural disaster. I can imagine what it will be like to walk with my own children into the home of a family that has lived in a landfill for generations, surviving off the refuse of others. That experience will cement the needs of others in their minds forever, compelling them to hold onto a worldview that values the poor and acts for the underserved. “We have been bringing in focus groups as part of the design process for several months now,” Phillips said. “Based on their feedback, the information presented is proving to have an impact on both our adult and child visitors.” Perhaps my favorite part of the exhibit is how it ends. CHF is using the exhibit to provide actionable solutions that visitors can take part in immediately. Not only will visitors learn how CHF helps feed the hungry, they’ll have an immediate opportunity to work in the CHF warehouse and fill boxes of food that will be shipped to needy families. - 24 -

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After experiencing Poverty Encounter, volunteers will pack food for distribution to the poor through local churches supplied by Children’s Hunger Fund.

Bringing the Story Closer It’s not possible to take all of CHF’s U.S. volunteers and donors (more than 25,000 annually) to personally see their international operations. Poverty Encounter gives them a chance to witness these circumstances in ways that photographs and video can’t express. For its visitors, the exhibit is meant to inspire deep empathy and a renewed passion for serving hungry children. “Our goal is to share the stories of real children and help visitors understand not only the pain and the hardships, but also the joy that children living in these conditions can have,” Phillips said. “We aim to shift their perspective about what it means to care for others around the globe.” “Whether living in a garbage dump in Guatemala or a home here in the U.S., kids are kids . . . they all smile, they all laugh, they all have dreams.”

A Network of Mercy Poverty Encounter will also shed light on and raise support for CHF’s distribution model. CHF’s operations are built around the idea that churches in underserved communities often need support from people who have the resources to provide it. This creates opportunities for everyone to get involved in the effort. Local churches, trained for gospel-centered mercy ministry and relational evangelism, then distribute the food through home delivery. As relationships with families develop, the church comes alongside those who are in need in their community. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

A SoCal Destination CHF hopes Poverty Encounter will attract families, school groups, and travelers from all over the country. When visiting Southern California attractions, families will also want to include a visit to learn about the poor and act on their behalf. Americans often don’t understand the situations in which local churches around the world find themselves. Poverty Encounter is a fresh way to help each of us understand their challenges and do something about it. “Not everyone can take an international trip to witness poverty with their own eyes,” said Phillips, “so we aim to bring their stories to you.” To learn more about CHF and Poverty Encounter, and to sign up for notifications when tours are available, go to www.childrenshungerfund.org/povertyencounter.  - 25 -

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mini stry life BY VINCE ANTONUCCI

My Heart Pounds Within Me When our kids were younger my wife and I took them to a big waterpark. Our son was 5 and our daughter was almost 3, so we spent the day in the kiddie pools. Each pool had slides and all kinds of fun stuff. We played in one for a while, then walked about 100 yards to a second kiddie pool where we let the kids splash around. We then walked another 100 yards to the next one, where my kids repeatedly slid down one big slide. My wife walked over to the other side of the pool to a big mushroom umbrella shower. My son, Dawson, came down the slide and asked, “Where’s Mommy?” “She’s over by the mushroom water shower umbrella thingy,” I answered. “Can I go get her?” he asked. “Sure,” I told him, “Go ahead.”

Vince Antonucci serves as lead pastor at Verve, “a church for people who don’t like church,” in Las Vegas. He is the author of I Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt, Guerrilla Lovers, Renegade: Your Faith Isn’t Meant to Be Safe, and God for the Rest of Us. He regularly speaks at and consults with churches and blogs at http://vinceantonucci.com. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

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About five minutes later I grabbed my daughter and said, “Let’s go get Mommy and Dawson.” When we got to the shower, my wife was still under it . . . all by herself. “Where’s Dawson?” “What are you talking about?” she asked. “I sent him over about five minutes ago.” “I haven’t seen him.” I started looking all over the kiddie pool area. I didn’t see him. I thought, Don’t freak out, Vince, he’s here. Umm, he’s wearing a blue bathing suit. I looked for a blue bathing suit. No. OK. It’s OK. Look for light brown hair. No. Maybe he’s in one of the slides. No. I yelled, “Dawson!” It had now been about 10 minutes since we had seen our son. I continued to look. Soon it was 15 minutes. I thought, I am never going to see my son again. I’m never going to hold my son again. I started totally freaking out. The kiddie pool area was sort of in a valley. I ran up the stairs to the sidewalk so I could have a better view of the whole pool. I looked down. He was not there. My heart was racing. My throat clenched up. My head was pounding. I looked again. He was not there. Blue bathing suit? No. Light brown hair? No. On one of the slides? No. I looked up the sidewalk to my left. No. I looked down the sidewalk to my right. No. I looked in the pool again. No. It had now been close to 20 minutes. I again looked to my left, and far down the path I saw what appeared to be a light brown-haired C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

kid weaving between people. I couldn’t see the color of the bathing suit. I called out, “Dawson? Dawson?” Then I yelled, “DAWSON!” Finally, the boy looked up, and it was my son. “Dawson!” He saw me, and his face went white. We ran toward each other and he dove into my arms, crying. I asked, “Where were you?” “I went to find Mommy,” he said. “I thought she was at the pool we were at before.” “You went all the way to the other pool by yourself?” I asked. I held him . . . and held him . . . and held him. And I understood, as I thought of those moments when I wondered if I’d ever see or hold my son again, how God must feel about all of his children who have wandered away from him. I could relate to God’s cries in Jeremiah 4:19, “Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me.” What was tormenting God? His heart was broken for his lost children who had wandered far away from him. That’s why Jesus came—he was on an all-out search and rescue mission to bring God’s lost children home. As I held my son tightly, it was as if we were the only ones on that crowded waterpark sidewalk. For a moment all the yelps and shouts and laughter were hushed, and all the commotion was calmed. My torment turned to joy in finding my lost son. It reminded me of my mission to help God’s lost children get back into his arms. 

Submit your own 500- to 700-word essay telling of an experience through which you learned a vital ministry principle by emailing it to cs@christianstandardmedia.com with “MinistryLife” in the subject line. See more information at www.christianstandard.com/contact-us/submit-articles. - 27 -

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rele vance BY HAYDN SHAW

How the Baby Boomers Introduced

One of the Gravest Spiritual Dangers of Our Era

The traditionalists (those born before 1945) were loyal to the churches they grew up in—or at least, if relocating, they were loyal to their denomination. Certainly some traditionalists left one church for another when they became upset, but they were the last generation to largely stay put within the same church. The boomers (born 1946–64) introduced church hopping and it has stunted spiritual growth as much as anything the past 50 years. I realize this is a bold claim, so let me back up and explain two things that have changed and how they led to church shopping and hopping.

Haydn Shaw is a minister who speaks to and consults with churches and religious organizations to help them grow. He is founder of People Driven Results and is a leading expert on helping different generations work together. For more about this topic, see chapter 4 of his book Generational IQ: Christianity Isn’t Dying, Millennials Aren't the Problem, and the Future Is Bright, from which this article is adapted. Learn more about generations in the church and find free resources at http://christianityisnotdying.com. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

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From Loyalty to Quality Boomers began to evaluate their churches from a more self-focused perspective: Am I growing spiritually? Am I happy? Are the minister’s sermons relevant to my life? Their hyperindividualism shaped their ideas and images of church. They believed they could pick and choose what they liked about their church. So they left the church they grew up in for whichever church best suited their needs. Because of a greater awareness of other intellectual options and as a reaction against denominational infighting, boomers were far more likely to switch denominations or marry outside their denomination (according to Lyle E. Schaller in It’s a Different World and George Gallup Jr. and Timothy Jones, The Next American Spirituality). Over the last 20 years, as boomers chose nondenominational churches based on the quality of their programs, music, and preaching, denominational labels began to appear in tiny letters underneath the church name or disappeared completely from church signs. This greater focus on quality over denominational affiliation also gave rise to nondenominational parachurch organizations such as Promise Keepers and Women of Faith. Why go to your denominational conference, which offers only a small slice of what Christianity has to offer, when you can join 50,000 other people and hear the best communicators of your generation? I’m a fan of the greater focus on quality because it reaches more people. A technology upgrade when I was growing up was a new flannelgraph in the fourth-grade boys’ Sunday school class. Attention to quality has transformed the religious landscape (Schaller, It’s a Different World). C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

It’s a sweeping generalization, but I know of few churches that have grown beyond 200 over the last 30 years if they continued to emphasize allowing everyone to lead or participate regardless of their talent. The boomers left the small churches of their childhoods for ones that have better programs and more polished worship. (While they knew Miss Stella was the only one willing to do it, they just couldn’t take another Sunday of hearing her play the piano like she was wearing mittens.) Appreciating quality in our churches isn’t wrong, but I think church hopping is one of the worst things that ever happened to our spiritual lives. You can’t date and dump churches and grow deeper spiritually. If your church is practicing spiritual abuse or heresy, or if it is filled with anger and bitterness and you aren’t spiritually strong enough to deal with it, by all means, get out of there. (I also recommend to parents that if one of your teenagers hates their youth group, find a good fit for them even if it means you drive an hour each way and sit in the car while they are there.) But most churches aren’t horrific; they’re full of humans, and that makes them imperfect, frustrating, and sometimes boring. - 29 -

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From Commitment to Infatuation A church can be just like marriage. I didn’t grow much spiritually when my wife, Laurie, and I began dating, because everything was new, shiny, and exciting. She was amazing— what wasn’t to love? It was only after dating three years and getting married that I had to grow up in order to love the real Laurie, whose complaints about my not putting things away were getting old. Thirty years later, I love my wife more than ever, even though she still complains I don’t put things away, and even though I don’t have the same feelings for her that I did at first. Those first feelings were infatuation, which was really about how she made me feel. Today, many years later, it is not the same feeling . . . it’s a much better one. I am crazy about, and committed to, this woman. Church hoppers are hooked on a feeling more than on God. When they find a church they like, it’s all new, shiny, and exciting. The sermons are different and the people are wonderful—unlike those needy or irritating people from the last church. Then a year passes, and they discover that these people are needy or weird just like the people in the last four churches. Three years later, the worship songs don’t move them anymore. They wonder why their minister can’t preach more like the guy they’ve been listening to online. And they begin to wonder if God perhaps wants them to go someplace where they can be fed spiritually, because they’re certainly not feeling it here. Individualism brought God close; hyperindividualism applied a consumer’s attitude toward churches, and it has stunted the spiritual growth of boomers and the generations that have followed. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

John of the Cross (who lived in the 1500s) compared Christians who need those warm and exciting feelings to infants who want to be held and regard their parents with selfcentered love for what Mom and Dad can do for them. In response to this temptation, John talked about the “dark night of the soul,” when God withdraws his warm and supportive feelings from us so that we can begin to love him more than the feelings of being close to him. John of the Cross described how God takes us out of his arms, places us on our feet, and asks us to walk beside him. When we take individualism too far and become hyperindividualistic, we can’t get beyond our attachment to an emotional experience of Christ. We leave a church in search of a new “Jesus buzz” before we grow up through the dark night of the soul, or learn to love ordinary people, or deal with our boredom. I hope we learn to go to church not so much for what it gives us but because this is Christ’s body; this is where the Holy Spirit is at work. If we are constantly searching for a better place, we’ll miss what he put us on the earth for, we’ll live small and shallow lives, and we’ll get older and grouchier. We’ll be like those boomers who are now going on eco-vacations because they’re looking to do some “good” in the world, when we could have just shown up right where we live and made a difference for eternity.  - 30 -

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PRAYER, POWER, PURPOSE J. RUSSELL & GERTRUDE MORSE AND FOUR GENERATIONS OF MINISTRY TO SOUTHEAST ASIA AND BEYOND BY RUSSELL JOHNSON Starting from humble beginnings, the Morse family has made an eternal impact in lands few others had ever tried to reach. The Morsesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; journey has taken them through some of the highest mountain passes in the world, where they discovered dozens of tribes who had never heard the name of Jesus. The early years were often devastating and discouraging. Several of the Morsesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; friends were buried on unnamed mountainsides halfway around the world from their families. In time, some of these missionaries were left homeless by surging floods. Others struggled to survive in villages where they did not know the languages and customs. Some were imprisoned and tortured by communists. Their faith was tested in every season. But through decades of perseverance, the gospel of Christ prevailed.

Since those earliest years, thousands have embraced God’s amazing grace. People who had never heard of Jesus discovered his gospel of hope. Many became active in sharing the light of God’s Word with others still living in darkness. The story of the Morse family and the dozens of missionaries who joined them is nearing 100 years. Three themes are woven through the tapestry of this mission: PRAYER—Only God. Faithful prayer gave birth to a mission that gave birth to a movement. POWER—Only the Holy Spirit. God’s Helper alone could have mobilized the people and resources into this harvest of changed lives. The Lord’s strength has provided comfort and endurance in the face of hardship and persecution. The power of his Spirit has sustained good people in the face of excruciating odds. PURPOSE—Only Jesus. What started as a Gospel “mustard seed” effort has grown to impact millions. As we near a century of the Morse mission, four generations of missionaries and fulltime Christian servants have encouraged millions. Multitudes are experiencing a relationship with the loving God and a living hope in an eternal Savior.

BEGINNING A MINISTRY AND A MOVEMENT: 1898–1922 This movement started with a mother’s prayer for one more child to dedicate into God’s service as a missionary. Ruth McKenzie Morse discovered the answer to her prayer in the birth of Justin Russell Morse on February 4, 1898, in Alexandria, South Dakota. J. Russell Morse would become a “Johnny Appleseed” of the gospel throughout Southeast Asia. In the 1920s, America was recovering from the trauma of World War I. J. Russell was in his early 20s and studying at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma. He and his new wife, Gertrude (Howe) Morse, attended a meeting held by veteran medical missionary Dr. Albert Shelton, who issued an impassioned plea for missionary recruits to join him in the work at Tibet’s border. The newlywed couple, sensing God’s leading, responded to the call. They did not know that Dr. Shelton had only eight months to live. The Lord was preparing this young family to lead in ways only he could sustain!

1921 J. RUSSELL, GERTRUDE, AND EUGENE

COVER PHOTO: 1955 RAWANG HOME IN BURMA

On August 13, 1921, J. Russell and Gertrude, along with their 4-monthold son, Eugene, and other new missionaries boarded a steamship and traveled with Dr. and Mrs. Shelton to Southeast Asia. They arrived in the port of Haiphong (Vietnam), then continued the next leg of their journey by narrow-gage train and packhorse caravan. For more than 80 days they traveled on foot on unmarked passages, often climbing through treacherous mountain passes. Some mountain peaks were more than a 15,000 feet high. The determined team finally arrived at the mission station in Batang on December 23, 1921. Tragically, a short time later, Dr. Shelton was shot by bandits while returning home from a medical trip; he died Feb. 17, 1922, with J. Russell and Dr. Harding at his side. Among Dr. Shelton’s last words to his trusted friends: “Hold the fort and carry on the work.” At 24, the Morses inherited a mission vision that only God’s guidance, power, and provision could sustain. Witnessing Dr. Shelton’s life and sharing in his death deepened their resolve to serve the Lord with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength.

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1921 PACK TRIP TO TIBET

PERSISTENT IN PREACHING THE GOSPEL: 1922–1949 The next few years were extremely difficult. In the face of daunting tasks, prayer lives were forged. This Midwest family—which had already traveled halfway around the world, climbed some of the highest mountains, traversed ravines, crossed the wildest rivers, and learned some of the most difficult languages in the world—faced bandits, diseases, and tremendous spiritual warfare. Through all of this, they persisted in visiting and preaching the gospel in remote areas, often where white men had never been. They learned to depend totally on God, who sustained and delivered them. In the years ahead, the Lisu people became very receptive, and soon dozens of churches were established along the Mekong River and the passes into the Salween Valley. They introduced the God of creation, the message of Christ’s love, and the hope of Heaven to thousands. J. Russell witnessed the hunger in their hearts, later recalling how he awoke in the middle of the night, opened the front door, and saw a multitude of people sleeping on the ground waiting to hear more about the God of the Bible. The Morses walked the mountain trails and met the physical needs of the sick, baptized new believers, planted Bible schools, and soon were establishing preacher training events. In 1931, after a 30-day walking venture across rivers with no bridges and over mountains that had little more than a path, J. Russell said he had never been more tired . . . and never more happy to see people responding to the gospel. During the 1920s, two more sons, Robert and LaVerne, were born to the family. Then in the 1930s, Gertrude gave birth to their youngest child, a daughter, Ruth Margaret. In the years that followed, they adopted two sisters, Anzie and Drema Esther. Later, Anzie died of typhoid. The work continued through the next generations, as their children served alongside of their parents to share the gospel with the surrounding villages and neighboring countries. In the early 1940s, the Japanese invaded and bombed China and massacred millions. Allied forces repeatedly flew missions over “The Hump” from Northeast India to resupply the nationalist Chinese—a dangerous mission in which more than 3,000 planes were lost due to weather and high mountains. Allied forces needed search and rescue teams to save downed pilots, so J. Russell and sons Robert and Eugene volunteered; they organized local Christians in this effort, as they were familiar with the terrain, people, and languages. Years later, all three missionaries received Bronze Stars. Their story was told in the action picture magazine Mission Rescue published by the Standard Publishing Company.

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1947 ROBERT, RUTH MARGARET, EUGENE, GERTRUDE, LAVERNE, J. RUSSELL

After the war, the family returned to the U.S. for a brief furlough and much-needed rest. During this time, Eugene and Robert met their future wives, Helen and Betty. Also during this furlough, a handful of Restoration Movement leaders met with J. Russell, Eugene, and Marian Schaefer in the Southern California home of Mr. and Mrs. John Chase. That prayer meeting gave birth to the National Missionary Convention. The NMC’s purpose was to encourage hundreds of missionaries and future servants to enlist in the work of reaching those who had never heard the name of Christ; the event is now known as the International Conference On Missions (ICOM). Over the past 70 years, this annual celebration of service has seen thousands from around the world be enlisted, equipped, and encouraged for mission work. (See more about the NMC and ICOM in Emily Drayne’s Horizon’s article in this issue.) What started with a prayer meeting in California was moved by the power of God’s Spirit to engage thousands in missions for the purpose of reaching millions for Christ.

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STAYING THE COURSE THROUGH CALAMITY: 1949–1956 When Eugene and Robert returned to China in early 1949 with their wives, they did not know they were on the doorstep of a revolution that would change world history. After World War II, the Communist Revolution led by Mao Zedong (formerly written as Mao Tse Tung) began a scourge that slaughtered tens of millions of Chinese and thousands of Americans and missionaries. Upon the Morses’ return to China, the emerging communist armies prevented them from reaching their mission stations. They were forced to turn back to the city of Kunming. With the advancing communists only hours away, LaVerne rented an airplane that made three trips into Likiang and rescued Eugene’s family and mission workers. Ruth Margaret, age 14, escaped Kunming via a Lutheran airlift, before the communists took over in 1949. The entire family escaped the Communist Revolution except for J. Russell, who stayed behind to help with the wounded and sick. On March 22, 1951, J. Russell was arrested and imprisoned. He could not communicate with the outside world for 15 months. He was kept in solitary confinement, starved, tortured, beaten, and humiliated to the point of death (which would have come as blessed relief). The graphic images of missionaries executed convinced many that J. Russell had suffered the same fate. Pictures of missionaries appeared in national magazines, alerting the American public of their peril. Christians across America began to share in a movement of prayer, including an Inglewood, California, congregation that engaged in a 24-hour, 7-day season of fasting and prayer. God responded when J. Russell was released from prison with no formal explanation. He made his way to the border of Hong Kong, arriving on June 20, 1952, with $1.42 in his pocket. At the time, he had no idea that God’s providence had led his wife and son LaVerne to the precise place where they would find the exhausted missionary. Gertrude and LaVerne had traveled to Hong Kong in search of information, not knowing they would discover their husband and father a free man. God had more missions in store for the Morse family. (You can read more of their stories in The Dogs May Bark, but the Caravan Moves On, by Gertrude and Helen Morse.) After J. Russell’s release, they returned to the United States for a time of refreshing. The family visited many who had faithfully prayed for his release. While traveling across America, they spoke to many churches, on college campuses, and at mission rallies, where many new missionaries were recruited. Hundreds of missionaries were encouraged to stay the course, recalibrate their efforts, and reach the lost in need of amazing grace. During this time, LaVerne met and married Lois Elliot.

RELEASE FROM PRISON HONG KONG

1960 CHURCH IN THE PUTAO PLAINS; GERTRUDE IN LOWER LEFT, ROBERT IN CENTER LEFT

GOD’S WORK THROUGH ADVERSITY: 1956-PRESENT Even after the tragic deaths of dozens of missionaries and the devastation to thousands of Christian families, the Lord laid on the Morses’ hearts the need to return to Asia. They were relentless, and God led them to their new mission base in northern Burma. There, in the Putao Plains, they established the North Burma Christian Mission in 1956. Faithful prayer led to the power to persevere, which helped the missionaries see God’s purpose in the harvest of changed lives. During the next 15 years, tens of thousands came to Christ. The kingdom of God moved forward and took new territories that most people had only read about. The Lisu and Rawang peoples, with whom the Morses primarily worked, were fervent in their faith. They were natural evangelists, taking the gospel to dozens of other tribes and peoples . . . and reaching into southern China, Thailand, Laos, India, and Cambodia. This was a season of “Golden Harvest” as thousands responded to the gospel of hope, planting hundreds of churches that are faithful to this day.

1955 DREMA ESTHER, HELEN, LOIS, AND BETTY, WITH CHILDREN

But then the Morse family encountered strong adversity yet again. In 1965, Burma ordered all foreigners and missionaries to leave; the country closed its doors. The family learned the army was coming. In the middle of the night, they, along with thousands of others, began a journey of more than 100 miles on foot. It led them high into the mountains where the Morse family would see few outsiders for more than six years. As they settled into several villages, the Lord’s work began moving forward in places never before visited by outsiders. The people there heard the saving grace of God through Christ Jesus for the first time. The hunger for hope escalated and thousands responded. These years and experiences became instrumental in training the younger generation for their future work in Thailand. (Reader’s Digest published Eugene Morse’s article “Exodus to Hidden Valley” describing that time.)

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Early one morning in 1972, the missionaries awoke to the sound of army helicopters. The Burmese government arrested the entire family. They were escorted through the jungle to a prison where they were held for three months. One day a helicopter took the small children and elderly to a separate prison. This imprisonment, 20 years after J. Russell’s confinement in China, only welded their determination that Satan would not have the last word. Within months they were released into Thailand where the family reassembled in Chaing Mai, and they discovered many other Asian tribes open to the gospel of Christ. The family continues to reach into the countries on every border until this present day. While most of the family was in Hidden Valley from 1965 to 1972, LaVerne became a missions professor at Cincinnati Bible Seminary and started Asian Christian Services, which empowers Asian leaders in local ministries to this day. Ruth Margaret Johnson, daughter of J. Russell and Gertrude, engaged in a life devoted to prayer and generosity toward Asian missionaries her parents had helped to disciple. The grandchildren to this tribe of missionaries are engaged in the Lord’s work around the world. It’s truly remarkable to see how the Lord has taken average people with uncommon determination, grit, courage, and commitment . . . and brought about a harvest impacting millions. The Lord has raised up many steadfast families who are now woven into the tapestry of God’s mission in Asia. In Heaven alone will we fully realize the impact of lives whose eternal trajectory has forever been changed. Even though they have gone to be with the Lord, J. Russell, Gertrude, and their children’s witness still speak. Their message to leaders across the Restoration Movement is this: God’s Word is still heralded through the generations!  Russell Johnson is a grandson of J. Russell and Gertrude Morse. He serves as vice president and relationship manager with The Solomon Foundation, Parker, Colorado. /russelljohnson55 C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

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IMMIGRANTS IN THEIR LANGUAGE

HOW TO SHARE SCRIPTURE WITH

BY GREG PRUETT

the pocket superhero

weary from a long trip, I was tempted to ignore the

Uber driver on my way home from the airport, but then I remembered missionaries are supposed to share the gospel. (Actually, we’re all supposed to do that!) A little reluctantly, I asked the man, “Where are you from?” “I’m from Dallas,” he responded. I could tell the story was more nuanced than that, so I probed a bit more: “Where are your parents from?” His answer intrigued me: “Ethiopia.” “What languages do you speak?” “I speak Amharic,” he replied. Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought to myself as I pulled out my phone and opened up the Find-A-Bible website (https://find.bible) on my iPhone browser. Stalling for time, I asked, “What other languages do you speak?” while my fingers madly fumbled through the website menus searching for Ethiopia. My driver looked pleasantly surprised at the invitation to tell his story, “Oh, well, we also speak the language of our hometown, Tigirinya.” A moment later, a list of Scripture resources for Ethiopia popped up and I saw Tigirinya on the list of 88 living languages in Ethiopia. I clicked the link to open the Bible.is app on my phone and suddenly the sound of the New Testament in Tigirinya, a language spoken by 5 million people in Ethiopia, filled this man’s car, much to his obvious delight. “Oh, I used to listen to this!” he said. After a little more conversation, we arrived at my house. As I got out, I clicked the share button on the upper-right corner of the screen, copied the link, and then pasted it into the Uber app in which a passenger can thank the driver. Just like that, I gave this man the New Testament—in both text and audio—in his own language for free! That’s a superpower in my pocket, and it’s available to you, too.

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God’s end-times game changer

Powerful Scripture sharing like this wasn’t always possible. It all started to change back in the 1940s with the novel idea that everyone should have the Word in their own language. Back then, many people had no Bible. So, thousands of sacrificial souls from all over the world invested their lives in translating God’s Word in steaming jungles and city centers, and places in-between. These brave men and women dared to pursue a dream and push forward until they finally crested a hill to change what once seemed impossible now seem inevitable. Today about 1,700 spoken languages and 400 sign languages are still awaiting translation to begin, but more than 130 Bible translation projects are begun per year. So over the next 16 years, every remaining Bible translation project is expected to begin. After another couple of decades, every language that needs Scripture should at least have the New Testament! Plus, just in time to leverage this new Scripture reality, numerous digital Scripture apps have been created over the last 10 years. For example, people worldwide have downloaded the YouVersion app more than 300 million times. We can see prophecy about to be fulfilled: “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). Many people portray this as a dark moment in history, but this may be God’s finest hour. He is even now fulfilling Jesus’ end-times prophecy: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). In these end times, God has used the Bible translation movement to make sharable Scripture available to you on any digital device, in the language of virtually anyone you meet worldwide.

you can do it

But there’s something missing from the movement . . . you. Most people have no idea God is doing this great thing in our day. Most don’t realize they can translate the Bible into the few remaining languages on earth that don’t have it. For about $38 on the PioneerBible.org website, you can translate a verse of Scripture. Try it. In addition to translating the Bible, you can distribute it too! Most people walk around oblivious to the explosive evangelistic potential in their pocket. Most haven’t learned and thus don’t even think about how easy it is to seize opportunities to share Scripture in someone else’s language. Even the people I meet who minister to immigrants often focus on teaching them English and helping them adjust to our culture. They don’t realize they could also be texting them John 3:16 in their own language.

how to master 1,600 languages

Would you like to be able to share the gospel in 1,600 languages without the mess and fuss of studying? There’s an app for that—

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actually several. By downloading the YouVersion app, anyone can share the Word with people who speak any of more than 1,200 languages. The Bible.is app has dramatized audio Scriptures in more than 1,400 languages. And, astonishingly, anyone can now text a link from the JesusFilm Media app in any of 1,600 languages—all downloadable for free. If you meet a person who is deaf, the Deaf Bible app includes video Scriptures in 17 of the world’s 400 sign languages. It’s unlikely you will encounter a person not covered by the Scriptures we now have available. But it won’t work unless you download the apps on your phone ahead of time and learn to use them. If you wait until you run into someone who speaks another language, it probably will be too late. Pause in your reading—right now—and start downloading these four apps onto your phone. Here’s how it works. What if, one day, you are in an airport and you meet a Muslim man who speaks Arabic? He tells you that Jesus foretold the coming of Muhammad in the Bible. You realize he’s talking about Jesus’ promise to send an “advocate” recorded in the book of John. So you pull out your phone, click on the YouVersion app, and search for the word advocate, which takes you to John 15:26. You want to show him the passage, but he reads only Arabic. So, with a click, you switch the language from English to Arabic. You then select the verse and touch Share at the bottom of the screen. The man has no phone, but he has an email address, so instead of selecting Text, you choose Email , and fill in the man’s address. When that man receives the email, he will see not only that verse in his own language, but by clicking on the link he will also have access to all the YouVersion content on his computer browser. He can also share verses on Facebook. And while the Muslim world often will persecute people seen carrying a Bible, Muslims can study the Bible in relative privacy on their computer or phone since it doesn’t look like a Bible.

one-stop digital Scripture shopping

If you can’t remember any other website or app, at least remember find.Bible—it’s one-stop digital shopping for all Scriptures available in the world. This mobile-friendly Find-A-Bible website will help you find Scripture tools for virtually anyone you meet. Suppose, for example, you meet someone in your neighborhood from Ghana, and you discover he has never had a Bible of his own. Help your neighbor by accessing the find.Bible website and searching for his country. After clicking on Ghana, a list of languages will pop up (with the number of resources available in each one in brackets). Follow the links to find the Scriptures. Share them via your phone. And just like that, you are a Scripture superhero.

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S U D D E N LY T H E S O U N D O F T H E N E W T E S TA M E N T

BY 5 MILLION PEOPLE IN ETHIOPIA,

I N T I G I R I N YA ,

A LANGUAGE SPOKEN

“

FILLED THIS MAN’S CAR, M U C H T O H I S O B V I O U S D E L I G H T.

flooding the earth with knowledge of God

Greg Pruett serves as president of Pioneer Bible Translators. /greg.pruett1 @GregJPruett

Imagine how cell phones and digital Scriptures can fuel disciple-making movements, Bible studies, and the creation of new churches worldwide. In 2015, I went to Eastern Europe to train some of our partners to translate the Bible. When we arrived, we learned our partners had brought four pastors from a Romani language group to the training class. These are people we often call “gypsies.” They explained they were preaching, teaching, singing, and praying among their people in their version of the Romani language, but they were forced to use the Russian Bible since they didn’t have one in their Romani dialect. They came to the class hoping we could start a Bible translation project in their language. I immediately searched various websites to make sure a translation didn’t already exist. I had almost concluded that a new translation project was needed, when I found the dramatized audio recording of the entire New Testament on the Bible.is app in their Romani dialect, but it was done in another country. I was afraid it might be a radically different dialect. When I played the dramatized audio for our friends on my phone, their eyes lit up. It was indeed their language, with only minor differences. We downloaded the audio recording for them on Secure Digital (SD) chips and flash drives. They stayed up late into the night listening to the New Testament in their own language for the first time ever. One man said, “When you have the Bible story in your own language you understand it better. When I was reading Russian, I spent so much time trying to understand each word. With this, I don’t have to spend all that time processing words I don’t understand. It’s easy!” Armed with this translation, these dynamic pastors immediately began planning how to start new Bible studies in Romani encampments and dreaming of developing new churches. “Our people love music, dance, and drama,” one of the pastors told us later. “We will need videos in our language too!” I said, “Oh, I forgot to mention it. You also have the Jesus Film dubbed in your language.” I clicked on the Jesus Film Media app, and smiles lit up their faces as Jesus Christ started speaking Romani on my cell phone! This isn’t an isolated case. As I travel, I often meet people who are unaware Scripture has been translated into their language. There is unbelievable and untapped potential here. Every Christian everywhere can now share the Word of God in most every language! How hard is it for you to learn how to use this superpower? Why not take a little time to explore these apps and websites? Surely God will bring opportunities your way to distribute the Word of God to the people you meet. With great power comes great responsibility. You may not feel like the hero that people deserve, but maybe with these Scripture apps, you can be the hero they need. 

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RESTORING HOPE AND FAITH

THE SILENT STRUGGLE OF SUBURBAN POVERTY BY KELLY CARR Grocery shopping can be a tedious task rather than a joyous undertaking—but stepping through this market’s doors in Parker, Colorado, you are immediately welcomed with encouraging smiles. A personal shopping assistant steps forward to guide you among the shelves packed to the ceiling with delicious options. Turning the corner, the refrigerated section has dairy, eggs, and every cut of meat you could want. The most colorful moment comes when you reach the back aisle—there before you lies a rainbow of beautiful, mouthwatering produce. It sounds like a typical visit to Whole Foods or a local farmer’s market—a place filled with items you may typically take for granted. But, instead, you are standing in a food pantry. SECOR was created to offer assistance to those in need with dignity and hope.

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“Everything we do is about restoring hope and faith because people have lost a lot of that in themselves and in life in general,” said Mike Dworak, development director at SECOR. SECOR (Southeast Community Outreach) is a Parker-based ministry founded by members of nearby Southeast Christian Church. While the church remains a supporting partner, SECOR has been a 501(c)3 nonprofit since 2006. SECOR’s leadership and a market, plus Southeast staff members and The Solomon Foundation all share a building, but SECOR will soon move their warehouse and market into a separate building on the same property. The organization assists the underserved in their community with the goal of lifting people up so that they can “discover their God-given purpose to make a contribution to this world.” SECOR team members passionately describe the growth of this outreach and the concerted efforts of so many volunteers who make things run smoothly. Great attention to detail went into designing a safe space for neighbors in need and nurturing an ongoing relationship with clients so that they are seen, heard, and valued. This description may sound similar to other nonprofits and ministries, but SECOR’s biggest difference is its setting. Their headquarters is surrounded by subdivisions, cul-de-sacs, retail developments, and restaurants in the suburbs of Denver—they sit in the heart of the fourth-most-affluent county in America. Poverty is growing here?

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HIDDEN BUT REAL “The vast need drew me here,” Dworak said. “It’s very hidden, but it’s very real.” The fastest-growing segment of poverty in America is now suburban. For the last several years, suburban areas have outpaced urban areas in the number of residents struggling to make ends meet, according to the Brookings Institution. Families have lived out the American dream, settling among good school systems, surrounded by affluent neighbors and plenty of amenities. Yet what happens when tragedy strikes? A lost job. A cancer diagnosis. A broken marriage. Emotional health is not the only thing wrecked—it can also send finances spiraling. When 60 to 70 percent of a family’s income is spent on housing, as it is in Douglas County, Colorado, it takes only one major incident to turn life upside down. The people who might be affected have worked hard their whole lives, so it feels shameful to ask for help. In the suburbs, assistance programs and even bus service can be hard to come by. People feel trapped.

“

Enter SECOR. They currently serve 1,500 families a month in three counties (42 zip codes). Yet this is only a small fraction of the 49,000 families who live below poverty level in this region. Beyond their three free market locations, SECOR offers a range of services to meet the needs of those in poverty: • They run a backpack program providing weekend food for children and their families. • They work with professionals to host free dental and medical clinics. • They partner to find affordable and transitional housing for their clients. • They work one-on-one with each family to connect them with pro bono legal help and counseling services. SECOR is developing a fourth free market because they have discovered another nearby community has need—200 people are already on the waiting list, and the market hasn’t even opened yet. Their model is to go closer to the needs to have a greater impact. And SECOR’s newest initiative seeks to get closer and overcome their neighbors’ transportation issues through a Mobile Free Food Market. Sponsored by Christian Brothers Automotive, now the same vast choices of healthy food in SECOR’s brick-and-mortar markets can be driven right into areas of high need. SECOR sets up, and people can sign in to shop for a ton of food. This will double SECOR’s current impact.

THIS FOOD PANTRY’S HEADQUARTERS SIT IN THE HEART OF THE FOURTH-MOSTAFFLUENT COUNTY IN AMERICA.

POVERTY HAPPENS HERE? C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

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HOW DID I GET HERE? But SECOR is not about services; their ministry is about intentionally building God-honoring relationships and making people feel comfortable enough to get the help they need. “When people come in, they don’t need any more obstacles,” Dworak noted. “Coming through the front door is the biggest obstacle for them. Asking for help is not easy to do.” Dworak doesn’t say this flippantly. He knows the courage it takes—because just a few years ago, he was the one asking for help. Several years ago Dworak lost his job with a parachurch ministry in Colorado Springs. He was devastated. “I remember I thought, I’m done,” he recalled. “I was full of shame. What’s wrong with me? I’m too old. You go through the depression, the mind-set that this is over.” Dworak ended up asking for help and also got Medicaid and food stamps. He remembers a low point when he sat in a room and asked himself, How did I get here? Thankfully that wasn’t the end of his story. As you might imagine, the experience gave Dworak a new perspective and passion for the work he is now doing at SECOR. “The people who walk in the door, they’re no different than us,” he said. “Anytime we think we’re above it, in a blink of an eye, we’re there. I don’t know why I’m working right now and they aren’t. But I get it. I know what it feels like. When folks come in, I tell them all the time, ‘I’m glad you’re here. You’re the heroes. You had to walk through that front door, and that ain’t easy.’” In the communities that SECOR serves, people with PhDs come in, people who formerly made six-figure incomes, yet they are now in a situation similar to people shown in the news around the globe—a state of brokenness. “God made order and structure and beauty. All of that came apart in Genesis 3,” Dworak said. “We get to try to turn back what’s become ugly from the fall and restore the initial plan of God.”

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“

SECOR CURRENTLY SERVES I,5OO

FAMILIES

A MONTH IN THREE COUNTIES (42 ZIP CODES)., YET THIS IS ONLY A SMALL FRACTION OF THE 49,OOO FAMILIES WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LEVEL IN THIS REGION. N OV E M B ER 2 0 1 8

THE MODEL IS WORKING

ONE NEIGHBOR AT A TIME

Watching God move and change lives galvanizes the SECOR team to keep finding new ways to help.

The SECOR team gets to see God bringing hope to their community and the people who silently struggle there. Perhaps there is a similar silent need near you. Dworak offers this encouragement: “Take a look at the need in your area, and do what you can do. Don’t get overwhelmed, but look at who you are— what are your gifts? What is God’s still, small voice telling you and leading you to do?” As SECOR strives to combat the growing issue of suburban poverty, they know they can’t possibly help every person— they simply follow Christ’s calling and offer love to one neighbor at a time. “At the end of the day, there’s always going to be far more need than people to meet that need because we live in a broken world,” Dworak said. “It’s never going to be fixed, but our call is, ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ It’s a restoration of the kingdom of God here on earth.” 

April, who is in her mid-40s, is one example of a changed life. April has a PhD in counseling but lost her job and couldn’t find a new one. Not long after, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had to go through chemotherapy, yet she and her husband and their two teenage kids had no medical insurance. Her husband worked, and though he didn’t make enough to fully cover all their bills, he made too much to qualify for government assistance. The family found support through SECOR. Later, SECOR workers noticed April hadn’t come by for a while, so they called to check in. It had been a year since her cancer diagnosis. April told them she had completed chemo, was cancer-free, had gotten a counseling job again, and her family is doing great. They no longer need SECOR’s support. Later that month she stopped in and donated a small amount as a thank-you to the ministry that helped them through that tough time. “It’s not a lot, but I want to give something,” April said. Another testimonial came when Dworak was out to eat with a SECOR donor. Throughout the meal the server kept looking at Dworak as if she knew him. “You look familiar. How do I know you?” she asked. Finally it clicked. “I go to SECOR!” she exclaimed. “That’s where I know you.” The woman, who is in her mid-30s, briefly shared her story: She is a single mom who works one full-time job and one part-time job, but she can’t make ends meet.

Kelly Carr, former editor of The Lookout , enjoys sharing and shaping people’s stories as a writing and editing consultant in Cincinnati, Ohio (EditorOfLife.com).

“If it wasn’t for you guys, we wouldn’t make it,” she confessed. SECOR team members hear many similar stories.

/kellycarr

“They’re not sitting around becoming dependent on us,” Dworak said about their clients. “They’re working toward independence, sustainability. That’s our model. So we see those stories and know it’s working.”

C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

@kbirdcarr @kbirdcarr

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TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES THROUGH BUSINESS AS MISSION BY FENTON LEWIS

WHAT IS BUSINESS AS MISSION? While the faith and work movement crosses denominational lines, numerous examples of it can be found in Christian churches and churches of Christ. Let’s take a look at Business As Mission, a model proven to develop sustainable microeconomies. In Business As Mission: A Comprehensive Guide More than 20 years ago, I found myself wrestling to Theory and Practice, C. Neal Johnson defines BAM as “a for-profit commercial business with a desire to serve God beyond teaching venture that is Christian led, intentionally Sunday school or giving to the church. The devoted to being used as an instrument of advice I received—as have many others—was God’s mission (Missio Dei) to the world, and is to quit my job, go to seminary, and become a operated in a cross-cultural environment, either pastor. But I questioned that. God had given domestic or international.” me a unique combination of education, work experience, and spiritual gifting, and I believed I also like the way an international business he had done that for a reason. I thought specialist with New Mission Systems my unique skill-set could be used to help International described BAM: “Legitimate fulfill the Great Commission and the Great businesses create economic activity that Commandment. benefits society and raises people out of poverty. It also provides, for the believer, a [vehicle] So, I began an adventure that took me around for integrating faith and work in the forum the world and eventually led me to launch the where the life of a community takes place: the Marketplace Ministry of Team Expansion. I marketplace.” now help others navigate their own journey of integrating faith and work to join the cause I think of BAM as bringing Jeremiah 29:7 to life. of multiplying disciples and churches among “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to unreached people groups. which I have carried you,” God said through the The idea of integrating faith and work is nothing prophet. “Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” It’s seeking the new, as we see clear examples of it in Scripture peace of the community by bringing a tangible and throughout church history. But there has benefit, with integrity, while also addressing the been a resurgence of it in the last 40 years. spiritual condition of the people. Christians are intentionally and strategically transforming lives and communities through One practical way BAM seeks the peace of the their vocations. community is through job creation, which is vital to lifting people out of poverty in a Today, this phenomenon goes by many names: sustainable way. This is in stark contrast to tentmaking, Business as Mission (BAM), the approach often taken, which is simply to Business for Transformation (B4T), and marketplace ministry, to name a few. It includes give aid. In her book Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for job makers and job takers. It’s happening Africa, economist Dambisa Moyo said no people around the block and around the world. or nation has ever been “given” their way out of Sometimes it’s one-on-one, and sometimes it involves huge projects that affect entire nations. poverty through aid. BAM can be a great model for developing selfRegardless of approach, scope, or place, one sustaining microeconomies that bring both common thread is that God is using obedient tangible and spiritual blessing to the people. But followers to demonstrate and share Christ in what does this look like in practice? and through their work.

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ANNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S STORY Ann* was working as a community health evangelism (CHE) specialist in a West African town of about 85,000 people. The country, racked by political instability and occasional coups, faced a crisis due to numerous HIV-positive patients. These people were also dealing with many opportunistic illnesses common to HIV. While their medical needs were being met and many were accepting Jesus as their Savior, a new problem emerged. The family breadwinners often were too ill to work, so healthier family members needed a way to generate income. Rather than simply give out money or food, local CHE trainers took the nationals through a microenterprise training course. As a result, a small breakfast bar was started, with the revenue used to fund the HIV program and reinvest in small businesses for HIV-positive families. A variety of businesses were launched, including a juicing enterprise, a laundry business, a bakery, and a street snackery. The national Christians then began a small chicken farm that not only supplied eggs for the breakfast bar, but also sold their product at a minimal price to the HIV-positive community. Practical needs were met, medical treatment was received, poverty was addressed, dignity was restored, efforts were self-sustaining, and people came to know Christ as Lord.

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EDDIEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S STORY BAM is making a difference in places other than Africa. Eddie* had been working as a traditional missionary in the Middle East for several years, ministering to Syrian refugees during a humanitarian crisis. After dealing with their immediate needs, Eddie wondered how he might give the refugees a hand up rather than a handout. He also wanted to find ways to model small business for local Christians. His solution? Start a modest restaurant, train locals to run it, then fully transfer the business over to nationals. Eddie recognized the power in training people to launch self-supporting businessesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that he could multiply his impact if he trained others in how to start and manage small BAM businesses that had a kingdom impact. So, to figure out the best way forward, he connected with an elder from a supporting church who had business-training experience. That elder brought other business professionals and partners to the table. The outcome was a new initiative partnering four U.S. organizations with four Syrian organizations and a major regional bank. Together, they are implementing a local entrepreneurship training institute that will teach from a Christian perspective. This will bring much-needed help to the refugees, strengthen the local church body, and serve as a bridge for building trust while they model the love of Jesus.

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KEYS TO SUCCESS Starting a business is hard. Starting one crossculturally with kingdom impact is even harder. “BAM is fraught with well-intentioned agencies, churches, and individuals who may understand the opportunities of taking a BAM approach, but who are unprepared for both the cultural and business challenges that face them,” said Kevin*, a seasoned business professional now working with GlobalHOPE. Kevin’s experiences in North Africa showed him that successful BAM initiatives have several components in common: a competent human resources team (business, legal, and cultural competencies); their own skin in the game (personal investment or capital from friends and family); business and culture coaching from the beginning; and the fact that they are intentionally transformational (including agency input and involvement). Here are four more factors we have found to be essential when approaching any new BAM venture (if you want to make an eternal difference, start by checking these four areas in your life and work):

PRAYER: Any business venture that seeks a kingdom impact must be grounded in prayer. It is essential, as ultimately we’re talking about a spiritual undertaking that is happening through the venue of the workplace. Prayer also enables us to bring God’s best—rather than just our best—to the equation.

POSTURE: The way we approach our overseas partners (or the local community), and our attitude toward them, can play a major role. Newcomers should seek ways to restore dignity and value to the ones being served, rather than acting like an outside expert with all the answers. Walking alongside, rather than telling, makes a huge difference in both entry strategy and the final outcome.

PREPARATION: Once we know of the possibilities, we often want to jump right in. But that can be more harmful than helpful. If you’re considering getting involved, ask yourself, “Am I a disciple worth reproducing?” It’s important to make sure we have the right DNA before passing that along to the next generation. A quick check in three areas of your life can provide insight: • Head: How’s my spiritual maturity and Great Commission worldview? • Heart: What’s my level of cross-cultural understanding and attitude toward those with whom I partner? • Hands: How developed are my vocational skills and to what extent have they been transformed by the gospel rather than simply mimicking the pattern of the world? Growth in one or more of these areas can make us even more fruitful for what God wants to do through our work, so be prepared.

PARTNERSHIPS: The Great Commission is not a spectator sport, nor is it an individual effort. We can’t do this alone. Thankfully, there are numerous ways that individuals, churches, and agencies can work together to be more fruitful. Many cities with BAM efforts bring together like-minded professionals and businessmen to impact their community and the world. Churches are becoming increasingly interested in how to equip and engage members from all occupations as “missionaries” right where God has placed them. And many solid mission agencies are using BAM and other strategies as avenues to fulfill the Great Commission around the world.

“CHURCHES ARE BECOMING INCREASINGLY INTERESTED IN HOW TO EQUIP AND ENGAGE MEMBERS FROM ALL OCCUPATIONS AS ‘MISSIONARIES’ RIGHT WHERE GOD HAS PLACED THEM.”

TAKE THE NEXT STEP Is God calling you to join in the faith and work movement or to invest your time supporting a Business As Mission initiative? Is your church seeking to redefine the term missionary and engage all members from all vocations in fulfilling the Great Commission (both where they are and also cross-culturally)? Is your mission agency looking to develop partnerships to reach the world through the marketplace? If so, send me an email or check out the new networking website www.marketplacerestoration.com for ways to connect, equip, or collaborate with BAM and other faith and work efforts. The world says we should keep our beliefs in a box, but every Sunday pastors across the country encourage us to let our faith permeate every aspect of our lives. Our workplace is no exception. Plus, we can shine there five or six days a week! Our workplaces are in desperate need of the gospel, and communities around the world are trapped by injustice and overwhelming needs. God has equipped us, through our vocations and with a clear understanding of the gospel, to be part of the solution.  *Names have been changed to protect the identities of workers in sensitive countries. Fenton Lewis serves as vice president of marketplace ministry with Team Expansion. Contact him at marketplace@teamexpansion.org. /teamexpansion

@teamexpansion

MIX. WEIGH. SEAL. Lifeline Christian Mission partners with churches, schools, and others to provide the supplies—and opportunities—to serve people locally and globally through food-packing events.

SHIP. C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

BY BEN SIMMS

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Mix. Weigh. Seal. Ship. These four simple steps involve several generations, as participants gather to package shelf-stable meals for the hungry. A meal-packing event is one of the easiest and most popular ways to engage a group of people, whether large or small, in a service project together. The fun begins as you bring your group together, whether it’s your church, school, or employees. You host the meal-packing event at your location across the United States and Canada, and Lifeline Christian Mission brings the supplies to you. Your participants—people of all ages and abilities—gather around a funnel to mix and weigh nutritious and tasty ingredients. Then these ingredients—such as rice, dried beans, and dehydrated vegetables— are sealed in a bag. And finally, the meals are shipped globally or shared locally by churches that participate in backpack programs or food pantries. Over the years, these shelf-stable meals have been used in Lifeline’s ministry programs and shared with ministry partners around the world. They have been distributed as disaster relief and used in developing areas. Meal Packing as a Disaster-Relief Tool Sometimes the need for food is urgent! A major natural disaster can disrupt food sources, flooding or washing away gardens and fields, and sometimes interrupting the ability of people in underdeveloped countries or communities to earn an

income. This can lead to immediate food insecurity that a weakened local economy cannot handle. Some disasters can disrupt food sources for long periods of time. We often think only of international disasters, but in 2017, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma devastated thousands of lives in Texas and Florida, respectively. Through the generosity of many in the U.S. and Canada, Lifeline shipped meals to churches in both states. These churches generously shared this short-term relief with neighbors by helping restock local food pantries with nutritious meals. Meal Packing as a Local Outreach Tool In the summer of 2017 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, members of Gentle Road Church of Christ came together and packed 21,000 meals for the kids in La Ronge, a community north of them. The church then personally delivered the oatmeal packs, which are fortified with vitamins. “Last year there were six suicides in La Ronge and the surrounding communities, including Stanley Mission and Montreal Lake,” Gentle Road pastor Kevin Vance reports. “During our trip up north, we were able to deliver meals to all three communities. I couldn’t help but think about the significance of this fact, that we were taking gifts of kindness to all three of these communities. May the Lord cause these meals to be tangible signs of his love, of his presence, of his hope.” The church packed oatmeal, Vance said, because “it is a culturally appropriate food

that the indigenous people eat. When times are tough they add lard, bacon, fruit, or whatever they have on hand. We did this in consultation with a woman in La Ronge who lives on the reserve and reported that the kids sometimes go several days or even a week without much to eat. We are grateful for our partnership with Lifeline Christian Mission who prepared the meal-packing event for us.” Meal Packing as an Education-Empowerment Tool Enoch Nyador, 2017 International Conference On Missions president and executive director of Ghana Christian Mission, said the meals provide for the empowerment of thousands of students every day . . . students who simply couldn’t learn if they were hungry or malnourished. We also see this firsthand within Lifeline’s own Christian schools in Haiti. “What we’ve seen as a result of being able to feed the children here consistently is improved health, less stunting, and improved ability to learn in the schools,” said Gretchen DeVoe, Lifeline’s cofounder. “But the greatest, eternal impact of having the meal packs is that everyone who receives the food also receives the message that God is the provider.” Meal Packing as an International Community Development Tool “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and

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to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27). In 2017, Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, was searching for a way to mobilize their congregation. They wanted to create a first step toward missions and draw their members into a greater mission calling, and so they partnered with Lifeline. Meal packing was an approach that was scalable for a megachurch of Southeast’s size—20,000-plus weekly—and also enabled the church to develop a strategic distribution method that was in line with their mission strategies. Their mission partner, Life in Abundance (LIA), has a proven community development model. LIA figured out a way to distribute meals to the most vulnerable people in communities they were reaching out to in Kenya and Uganda. LIA developed a plan through the local church to distribute meals to refugees, widows, and orphans. This past spring, members from our team traveled to Uganda and witnessed that these meals opened the door for LIA to work with the community to develop longer-term food independence. Back home, Southeast also saw several hundred take the next step toward exploring greater global mission involvement. Meal Packing Leveraged to Engage Your Community Meal-packing events can be used as an outreach tool. Each year, Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky, packs a million meals for their ministry

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partners in Haiti. Local businesses, sports teams, community groups, and others often serve together at the packing event. What an opportunity for the local church to engage the community! It’s also an opportunity for churches to serve together. We have seen great examples where churches in the same town host a joint meal-packing event. Meal Packing Leveraged to Engage Your Entire Church Family It can be a struggle to find a service project—or any project—in which your entire church family can be involved. Yet, a meal-packing experience does just that. One benefit of meal-packing service projects is that they typically are multigenerational. Preschoolers, senior adults, students, and parents can all pack meals together. Churches can use these events to model and teach about service, sacrifice, and caring for those in need. Meal-packing events coincide with service-project weekends and even Sunday morning “Be the Church” days. “I love the fact that you allow younger kids to come and help out and are always so encouraging to them,” said Faith, the mother of an 8-year-old boy. “It means so much to have somewhere where Isaias and I can serve together and feel like we are making a difference, and he can start learning at a young age how to give of himself to help others.” “We have so much fun, get to meet new people, and make new friends. We love what Lifeline does and feel so honored to be a part of it.”

Meal Packing Leveraged to Help Your Missionary Churches can find it difficult to tangibly express their love for their missionaries and the communities they serve. Lifeline can come alongside a church to help a missionary it already supports. Meals often provide resource relief to the missionary, helping them provide for kids in their home or school. These meals also provide outreach and evangelism opportunities in the missionary’s communities. When Northside Christian Church in Wadsworth, Ohio, and Westerville (Ohio) Christian Church came together to pack meals for their missionary in Zimbabwe, the meals fed the village for several years. By partnering together, these churches filled an entire shipping container with meals for the people of the Mushayamunda village. The missionaries used the meals during a drought to provide food security for their community. More than Meals Since 2007, more than 45 million meals have been packed at 800 different events by 275,000 participants with Lifeline. But packing meals is simply one of many ministries we use to share Jesus’ love. In all we do, we seek to extend hope and elevate people everywhere to experience their God-given potential. If you’re curious about hosting a mealpacking event, go to www.Lifeline.org/ PackMeals. You also can contact us at Connect@Lifeline.org or (614) 794-0108. A variety of recipe options are available for local or global distribution. 

Ben Simms serves as president and CEO of Lifeline Christian Mission. / LifelineCM

@LifelineCM

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@LifelineCM

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RETHINKING SHORT-TERM MISSIONS 3 Practices to Help (and Not Hurt) the People We Seek to Serve

BY JOSH ROUSE

SCENARIO 1:

SCENARIO 2:

A short-term team paints three buildings on a nongovernmental organization’s campus and hosts a VBS for more than 200 so-called “street kids.” They go home proud of what they were able to achieve. The problem (aside from “street kids” being a derogatory term)? They don’t realize those same buildings had already been painted by other short-term teams twice that summer, and those same kids had attended more than a dozen similar VBS programs in the last two months. Either the host organization doesn’t feel empowered to decline teams they don’t really need, or, worse still, they profit from shortterm teams. This shifts their motivation from meeting the physical and spiritual needs of their community to bringing in more and more short-term teams in order to pay the bills.

A short-term team fills their suitcases with supplies to donate to their host organization upon arrival. They spend the week building a structure of some kind (a school, a church, a home). They finish their project and go home, thrilled with their accomplishments. The problem? All the supplies they brought were available in-country. Instead of purchasing them upon arrival and benefitting the local economy, they flooded the small community with free foreign goods, driving the need for those products down and potentially putting some local shops out of business. The team never considered the unemployment rate in the country either, which is predominately a manual labor force. It turns out local workers could have built the building better and cheaper than the short-term team, and the money would have gone straight into the pockets of nationals to help feed and clothe their families.

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SCENARIO 3:

SCENARIO 4:

In the face of so much poverty, a short-term team wants to feel like they’ve made a real difference in some way. They meet an Englishspeaking man who mentions some things he doesn’t have money for, so they decide to give him $100 (U.S.). One team member donates his watch to a 10-year-old boy with whom he played soccer all week. Another team member goes to the market, buys new shoes, and delivers them to a local family’s home. The problem? The host organization has identified more than 80 families in that community whose needs far exceed that of the man who was given $100. (He simply had the means to communicate his needs to Englishspeakers.) Also, the day the team went home, a group of older boys beat up the 10-year-old, stole his watch, sold it, and split the money among themselves. Finally, the community begins to show hostility to the family with the new shoes. All the neighbors who witnessed the exchange are battling feelings of jealousy and resentment.

A short-term medical team travels abroad. Upon arrival, they’re excited and energized to see the line of people already waiting for their mobile clinic. They operate on more than 75 patients in just one week. The problem? When the team leaves, they take all of their medical knowledge and expertise with them. The community is left without medical care for the remaining 51 weeks of the year. Also, some of their patients die from postop complications because no one was there to provide ongoing care.

Sadly, I’ve witnessed each of these situations firsthand, instilling in me (like so many others) a cynical view of short-term missions. And with around 2 million Americans paying billions of dollars to participate in short-term trips each year, how can we be sure we’re part of the solution and not the problem? After all, statistics regarding short-term missions seem to suggest there is little to no long-term impact on the community or the short-term travelers (in terms of spirituality, financial giving to missions, prayer for missions, likelihood to become career missionaries, etc.). So, are there steps we can take to make certain we are, in fact, helping the communities we claim to care for and not harming them, or should we simply consider discontinuing short-term missions? I, for one, still maintain hope the American church (and the developed world, in general) has something to offer the rest of the world. With all the resources we have at our disposal, I have to believe we have the ability to meet some of the physical and spiritual needs around the world, even on a short-term basis. That being said, we must drastically change our approach to short-term missions to ensure we aren’t doing more harm than good. Here are three practices anyone with a stake in short-term missions can take:

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ADEQUATELY PREPARE Preparation begins with doing your homework. I recommend that team leaders and/or missions pastors prepare in four areas. First, do your research to choose a reputable host organization—one with good financial practices whose programs are predominantly led by nationals. Try to steer clear of organizations that profit from short-term teams. Second, require teams to attend multiple meetings prior to traveling. And don’t forget to hold a debrief meeting upon returning home to make sure travelers process their trip in a healthy way and channel their post-trip enthusiasm properly. Third, be sure travelers commit to learning at least the basics of the language. Will you become fluent in those few months leading

up to your trip? Probably not. Will you show respect to those you encounter abroad by demonstrating even a rudimentary understanding of their language? Absolutely. Think of the safety implications too—imagine you find yourself separated from your team or in an emergency situation without an interpreter present. Wouldn’t you like to be able to communicate to some degree? Fourth, encourage all short-term travelers to spend time researching the country’s culture, customs, and history. This information can drastically change a traveler’s experience abroad and help prevent unintentionally offending nationals. Moreover, it can give travelers a deeper understanding of a country’s issues, hopefully contextualizing the work the team is doing there.

USE SOCIAL MEDIA RESPONSIBLY When it comes to short-term missions, nothing frustrates me more than social media faux pas . . . for example, posts that patronize a group of people or contain ethnocentric undertones. As Abbie Thiebaut of Experience Mission writes: You know the ones I’m talking about— dramatic before and after photos of construction projects, selfies with children in tattered clothes, and intimate glimpses into broken situations around the world. Unfortunately, these posts often send the wrong message about the heart behind the trip. Surely there was more depth to the experience than what these posts seem to convey! So, how do we best represent short-term missions on social media? For starters, simply be mindful of how you characterize things. Instead of focusing on the poverty, the food you didn’t like, the cold showers you endured, or how dirty everything was, try to find the

good everywhere you go. Developing countries already have enough PR problems. They need more people to notice the beauty of the land, the resilience and kindness of the people, and the splendor of everyday life in someone else’s shoes. Try not to emphasize the impoverishment of nationals or exaggerate your contributions to them. This can often be interpreted as a savior complex—Western people going in to “fix” the problems of struggling nations or people of color without understanding their history, needs, or the region’s current state of affairs. Team leaders and/or missions pastors, instead of using terms like “mission trip” or “missions,” which can often carry a tone of condescension, encourage your team to use terms like “shortterm trip” and “global outreach.” Even a slight change in terminology can help teach your team a better, more respectful way to refer to your trip.

SERVE WITH HUMILITY Humility is paramount to the success of a short-term trip. One’s willingness to learn from others, to be flexible regarding delays and scheduling changes, to be patient with the language barrier—all communicate (much louder than even your words can) one’s level of respect for the nationals and the host organization. Humbly defer to them on the best practices for giving gifts and let them set the agenda while you’re there. In the book When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself, Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert put it this way: Stay away from the “go-help-and-save-them” message and use a “go as a learner” message. We need no more STM [short-term mission] brochure covers with sad, dirty faces of children and the words “Will you die to self and go and serve?” Such a message places too much focus on the sacrifice the STM team is making to change people’s lives—a level of change that is simply not realistic in two weeks—and on how helpless the poor people are without the team’s help. I believe we should humbly ask ourselves the question, “Do I want to legitimately meet a need, or do I just want to make myself feel good?” If every short-term traveler did so, I’m convinced it would instantly transform our approach to short-term missions, causing us to reevaluate everything we do abroad. We would replace our easy yet unhealthy practices with much more difficult ones that focus on meeting a community’s long-term needs. We might purchase locally sourced supplies in-country instead of bringing our own. We might begin to focus on sustainable development—teaching and training nationals to better themselves and their communities

instead of patting ourselves on the back for seeing hundreds of patients. We might even stop visiting orphanages with our teams since statistics indicate it’s harmful to the long-term development of children. We might consider employing nationals to do projects better and cheaper than our short-term teams ever could. Recently, I came across an excellent example of this. A well-known, long-term missionary wrote a blog in which she described her organization’s approach to short-term teams. Though it was a delicate, difficult conversation, they managed to convey their position with grace, even persuading a short-term team to stay home and, instead, hire local labor. After all, if we truly believe in the concept of the church as the body of Christ (Romans 12:48; 1 Corinthians 12), why would we perpetuate the idea that everyone who is serious about their faith needs to be part of a short-term trip? This is a dangerous notion, in my opinion; in fact, I would argue the mission field is filled with people who should have stayed home! Let me be clear: It is not my intent to shame or slander short-term travelers, churches, or organizations. I simply hope we all begin to take short-term missions seriously and strive to be good stewards of the resources, skills, and time with which we’ve been blessed. Our approach to short-term missions is broken, and the church’s reputation is at stake because of it. If we don’t begin to take steps to improve our methodology, I fear the world will see the church as irrelevant, incapable, or indifferent when it comes to global needs. So, the least we can do is this: Commit to adequately preparing short-term teams, be mindful of how we discuss global outreach (inperson and on social media), and humbly serve where and when we’re needed. 

Josh Rouse serves as global outreach pastor at Northeast Christian Church, Louisville, Kentucky (www.necchurch.org). @joshrouse

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BY JIM NIEMAN

What Makes the Fastest-Growing Churches Grow?

How do you explain your church's tremendous growth in 2017? That’s what we asked lead ministers of the fastest-growing churches in three attendance categories from Christian Standard ’s annual survey of churches: churches of 1,000 or more (megachurches and emerging megachurches profiled in May), churches of 250 to 999 (large and medium churches—June), and churches 249 and fewer (small and very small churches—July). All three churches have one thing in common—new facilities— but that wasn’t the only explanation for their growth. We spoke with and/or emailed questions to: • Aaron Brockett, lead pastor of Traders Point Christian Church (Whitestown, Indiana), which grew 29.5 percent to an average attendance of 7,623 in 2017 • Cody Walker of Hope City Church (Joplin, Missouri), which grew 32.5 percent to an average attendance of 742 in 2017 • Warren L. Whitaker, senior minister of Cornerstone Christian Church (Springfield, Kentucky), which grew 65.5 percent— from averaging 110 in 2016 to 182 in 2017 Here is what each church leader had to say.

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Aaron Brocket t - lead pastor

Traders Point Christian Church Whitestown, Indiana

Brockett allows that it’s unusual for a megachurch to grow almost 30 percent in a single year—especially one so “wellestablished” as Traders Point, which started in 1834 and is one of the older churches in our movement. “There’s a certain element of it that I can’t explain,” Brockett said. “Call it the movement of God.” But Brockett sees two practical things that have contributed to Traders Point’s amazing growth in the past decade—the first being a new church facility that was completed just before his arrival (he took over for Howard Brammer in 2007), and the second being the multisite campuses Traders Point has added over the past three years. “We built a new facility about 10 years ago,” Brockett said. That church building is in Whitestown, northwest of Indianapolis—well outside the beltway—and an area that has been growing ever since. It was a wise decision to construct there, Brockett said, but “it made [Traders Point] a regional church” rather than “a neighborhood church.” “People were driving long distances to come to our church,” he said. And while overall attendance has grown significantly—up from 1,600 when he arrived—the physical distance that some people were traveling each week was a barrier to growth among those folks. “They [the people who lived 20 or 30 or more minutes away] likely were not going to serve with us and they weren’t going to invite their friends.” “We probably spent about four years just researching multisite,” Brockett said. “We

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took advice from Craig Groeschel and others who say don’t do it [add sites] until you have maximized your facility.” When church leaders were finally ready to move forward with multisite, “We were primed and ready to do it.” Brockett shared the “why” statement Traders Point developed for venturing into multisite in his September 2017 article “A Heart for Our City” in Christian Standard: “We believe discipleship works best when you can worship within a 20-minute drive from where you live.” To that end, over the past three years, Traders Point has located campuses in three locations a significant distance from its original site (the one built about 12 years ago), but only in areas from which it was already attracting a sizable number of attendees: Carmel and Avon, Indiana, and downtown Indianapolis. By doing it this way, Traders Point’s campuses start with a base membership that already loves the church and is familiar with it from day one. “We want our people to be on mission with us,” he said. And the people who are part of the original groups that start campuses do, indeed, see themselves as missionaries. They are much more inclined to invite their friends, neighbors, and coworkers who live in that area. “Starting campuses has most definitely contributed to our numeric growth.” Of the three campuses Traders Point has started, two are averaging in the 1,100 to 1,300 range, and one is averaging about 800. “We’ve seeded those campuses with about 300 people,” Brockett said. And so there has been growth at the campus locations, “and more people have shown up [at our original site] to make up for the people who have left to be a part of the new campuses.” Average attendance increased by 1,737 from 2016 to 2017.

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But facilities are just one aspect of church growth. Brockett also credits the culture of Traders Point. “We’re fighting for a healthy culture in our church,” he said. “We’re constantly looking at what we’re doing [and] gauging how people react to things.” There are many, many conversations to that end in all the various church settings. As time has gone on, Traders Point has done more in-house hiring. Brockett told of a woman now on staff at Traders Point but who formerly was part of several start-ups in the business world. “She said, ‘You guys operate just like a start-up, only a lot healthier,’” Brockett said. “We’re constantly changing, trying to improve, trying to innovate. We tell our people what we’re trying to do and that serves to inspire them. People can sense that and pick up on it.” Over the past two years or so, Traders Point has been in a “pause” mode with respect to new campuses. “When we got to four locations, it became a lot more complicated,” Brockett said. “The experts are right about that.” But now, the leaders and the church are preparing to move forward. “We’re planning on two more multisite locations in 2019.”

Cody Walker - lead pastor

Hope City Church Joplin, Missouri

Hope City has seen fairly steady growth since opening in 2014, Walker said. The church is located in one of our college towns—Joplin is home to Ozark Christian

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College and several parachurch ministries— but “our vision is to be a church for unchurched people, Walker said. Early on, the church incorporated a line from The Message version of Romans 3 that says, “We are all in the same sinking boat.” “This has been an anthem for us as a church that puts everyone at an equal place at the foot of the cross, with an equal need, and an equal chance to receive redemption through Jesus,” Walker said. “Most people feel judged at church. At Hope City, we stress that we are all in the same boat.” Walker said the growth from 2016 to 2017— which saw average attendance rise from 560 to 742—is in part due to construction of a new facility. “After being portable for three and one-half years, we were able to expand ministry by having a facility seven days a week,” Walker said. And that growth has continued into this year. “We are now consistently averaging over 1,000 in our weekly worship gatherings,” he said. “We added a Thursday evening worship gathering that is the same worship and content of our Sunday gatherings.” The idea, he said, is that folks who will be working or traveling on the weekend can still engage in the life of the church by worshipping on Thursday. “It also opens the door for someone who might be willing to try church on a Thursday night, but not [be willing to show up] on a Sunday morning,” he said. Walker said the leaders have found that “most of the folks who walk through the doors at Hope City want to be connected to a church community where they can serve and be involved. They aren’t looking for a church community that ‘has it covered.’” For most people, the “first step to getting connected is to get on a serving team.” And

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the beauty of that, Walker said, “is that this also serves as the first step toward authentic community and creating a place where people are known.” During its first four years, Walker said, Hope City has found that “with continued growth comes continual problem solving.” “We spend a great deal of time during the week removing barriers to growth. Some of those barriers are spiritual, but many of them are physical and relational.”

Warren L. Whitaker - senior minister

Cornerstone Christian Church Springfield, Kentucky

Cornerstone Christian Church moved into a larger worship space in 2016, but “personal connections” and prayer have played the key roles in the attendance surge, Whitaker said. “We believe personal connection is the greatest factor in our growth,” Whitaker said. “Personal connections develop [into] real relationships and express the value God places on every person. These connections help prevent people from ‘sliding out the back door.’ “We try to take an approach of helping every person in our church become what God wants them to be. But, to do that, you have to really know someone. “Being a small church, we have focused on truly being the family of God,” he said. “We encourage real relationships with God and his family.” The church, located in a city of 3,100, grew an amazing 62.5 percent—from 110 in 2016 to 182 in 2017—after a concerted prayer program was started in the fall of 2015.

“The elders of Cornerstone committed to pray for the members and visitors individually, by name, every Sunday night,” Whitaker said. “We also made regular contact through letters, texts, and calls as a part of this prayer gathering. “Our method was to utilize a prayer book every Sunday [morning] as part of our worship service,” he said. Booklets are passed down each row and people are asked to share their name, phone number, and any special prayer requests. Then, on Sunday night, the elders pray for these individuals. They also send encouraging text messages and make phone calls, increasing communication and offering more support. The prayer books have the added benefit of helping to track attendance. “We want to let people know they are valued as a part of our church family,” Whitaker said. Communicating and showing support has a trickle-down effect, as members “reach out to co-workers and neighbors in the same way the church reaches out to them.” “This process helped us be ready to love and connect with people when we moved into our new building.” That move two years ago saw worship capacity increase from 120 to 180. Of course, Whitaker said, “More space does not equal growth, but if people experience love they will share it with others and fill a space.” Cornerstone is now expanding its children’s ministry area and is considering adding a second service to continue being able to accommodate growth. “External changes are indicators of something happening inside, as well,” Whitaker said. “People will come to see what’s happening, but they stay because they feel the love of Christ.” 

Jim Nieman serves as managing editor of Christian Standard.

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interact OVERCOMING PREJUDICE

ONLINE CHURCH?

Thank you for the edition on race [September 2018]. I am still working through it but I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Personally, I am convinced that God gave us differences as both a gift and as a test. James 1:2-4 says that we will never be “perfect and complete” without such tests. Those who suppose that prejudices can be overcome without the Holy Spirit will fail the test. He could have made us all the same, which would have been easier, but [it was] not in our best interests.

Very interesting contrast as Jerry Harris and Barry Cameron take opposing views on the topic of online church [“In the Arena: Is Online Church Really Church?” p. 39, September 2018]. Jerry says yes; Barry says no. My heart is with Barry, but my mind is with Jerry. I think they’d agree online is not ideal . . . an exception to the rule. But is it an acceptable alternative in some circumstances? I’m with Jerry in saying yes. In my view, the bottom line is motive. Why is the person doing online church? Is it because they are lazy and just won’t make the effort to be part of a face-to-face gathering of Christians? That’s not good; [it’s] not in keeping with true discipleship. But is it because of health issues, or are they located remotely and can’t attend a traditional gathering? That’s different.

Kelly Boyd via email

I wonder if Jesus’ command to “love one another” is not a higher and better way of dealing with racial reconciliation than what man can find on his own [“Andrew J. Hairston: Central to the Struggle,” by Jim Nieman, p. 28, September 2018]. For none of us will get through life without being rejected in some form or another. Thus, whether we sit in an all-white or an allblack church on Sunday, we ought to be willing to reach out our hand in Christian fellowship and unity. Otherwise the message of the cross has lost its meaning.

And in an age where more and more people won’t set foot in a church building due to cultural mores, online provides a window of opportunity. I echo the words of Paul in Philippians 1:18, that in every way, Christ is proclaimed. And therein I rejoice!

Bill Williams pastor, Sunrise Christian Church Ontario, Oregon via email C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

Rick Willis Lebanon, Missouri via email

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GODLY DISAGREEMENT I enjoyed reading this [“The Art of Godly Disagreement,” by Jon Weatherly, p. 34, September 2018]. Very powerful and polite with a good dose of humility. Thanks for reminding me of what’s important when arguing or, um, disagreeing.

Dan Stoffer @dstoffer

Jon, thank you for sharing this article. Great recommendations that I will attempt to practice next time I get into a discussion!

Eastpointe Christian Church @eastpointe614

Just opened the most recent edition of the @ChrStandard and was excited to see an article from my friend, @TroyBorst from @NBCCTAMPA! Good stuff from a great man and minister.

Nate Wheeler via website

Kind of fun opening our @ ChrStandard magazine and seeing this write up of our #esl classes! A big thanks to our amazing volunteers who run this ministry! #FORtheEastside #columbusohio

Lynda Stohler via website

Excellent thoughts for personal reflection. Thanks for writing and sharing, Jon. A lot to chew on.

Michael McCann via Facebook

Great point on including the historical witness of the church in debatable matters. We’ll all be dead debaters someday too.

Victor Knowles via website

Give us your

feedback! /ChristianStandardMagazine @ChrStandard @christianstandardmagazine Cs@ChristianStandardMedia.com

WALKING WITH ENCOUNTER It was really cool walking with Steve Carr [“Walking with Encounter Church,” p. 64, September 2018] a few months ago and showing him Columbia Heights and the job we are trying to do at Encounter Church DC. Really cool to be featured in Christian Standard.

For space, length, readability, relevance, and civility, comments sent to Interact may remain unpublished or be edited. We do read them all and prayerfully take them to heart. If we publish your comment, we will try to honestly reproduce your thoughts with those considerations in mind. Where we disagree, let’s continue to keep P.H. Welshimer’s words in mind to “disagree without being disagreeable.”

Joel Pazmino via Facebook C H RIS TIA N STAN DA R D

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- NONDENOMINATIONALISH -

PRESIDENT TRUMP BREAKS TRADITION, EATS WHITE HOUSE TURKEY Headlines For Christians Who Don’t Take Themselves Too Seriously

BY CALEB KALTENBACH WASHINGTON, DC—President Donald Trump broke the presidential tradition of pardoning the White House Thanksgiving turkey.

“It’s all fake news,” President Trump said. “I’m the most compassionate person you’ve ever met. Let me tell ya, there’s no one with more compassion.

After a speech about why people should be thankful for him, the president was jovial until he saw Fat Gobble. He immediately scowled, pointed to the turkey, and said, “Fat Gobble, you’re fired.”

“But, you know, you gotta eat. I gotta eat. We all gotta eat . . . especially on Thanksgiving. What’s more American than that?

The first lady, among others— including the children of some White House staffers—watched in horror as chefs appeared out of nowhere, seized the turkey by the neck, and hauled it to the kitchen. With feathers still flying, the first lady was overheard reassuring the president’s youngest son, Barron, that Fat Gobble was being taken to a special farm. Some shocked reporters protested the turkey’s alleged mistreatment.

“I had every intention of pardoning Fat Gobble, but I’m hungry, and Fat Gobble looked so delicious, so why shouldn’t we eat him? He’ll bring a lot of joy to people. Especially me. What could be better than that?” “Who would do such a thing?” U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi protested. “He’s taken one of our great American traditions and turned it into . . . one of our great American traditions.” “I wouldn’t have eaten Fat Gobble,” said President Obama, reached for comment in Hawaii. “Michelle considers turkey to be

unhealthy. Fat Gobble would’ve been my ambassador to all the turkeys that America deals with around the world.” Americans took to social media to voice their outrage over Fat Gobble’s death. In response, President Trump tweeted out: “During previous administrations, there was a tremendous amount of collusion with turkeys. It was a total disaster. Believe me, I love turkeys. He just looked too delicious not to eat!” Before eating Thanksgiving dinner, each Trump family member shared one thing they were thankful for. Barron Trump said, “I’m thankful for Fat Gobble’s new home on the farm!” The table grew silent except for the sound of gravy being slurped.  Caleb Kaltenbach is just kidding. /calebwilds @calebwilds @calebwilds

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