Networks are becoming one of the fastest growing platforms for leaders and practitioners to connect in the global missions community. These networks are leading to the discovery of best practices, new means of sharing information, and cooperative action for the sake of gospel proclamation to the ends of the earth.
The Global Mobilization Network (GMN) believes mobilization is essential to calling the whole Church to committed participation in reaching the whole world.
By Kirk J. Franklin. Reviewed by Alexander K. Zell, assistant professor, Crown College, St. Bonifacius, Minnesota, former international worker in Brazil with The Alliance.
Rites of Passage is a foreign concept to most evangelical churches, literally and figuratively. Somewhere along the way, the local church has lost this important value. Rites of passage are still common among institutions like fraternities and sororities, military and civic organizations. A few church traditions have kept this concept of development for their youth and new converts. The Catholic Church has baptism, catechism, and first Communion. The Jewish bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah still help young people move along the pathways of their faith. The Mormons (LDS) have elderships, Melchizedek priesthood, and the ever-present two-year mission after high school.
In 1900, Andrew Murray tackled the key question to the missionary problem as to why there were so few missionaries. In his report to the ecumenical missionary conference held in New York in April, he thought the answer was simple; it was the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Though I totally agree, I think there is much more to it than simply a Lordship question. I believe it is in how we, the church, view the cross.
A few years ago, my daughter texted me while she and her husband were traveling and praying about their future. She asked, “Dad, why does Christar require one hundred daily prayer partners for those who are serving long term?”
Uber, iPhones, Airbnb, Netflix, and Amazon. The list goes on. Disruptive innovations are taking over traditional North American industries. The missions realm also needs consistent creative effective new ways for how we activate, recruit, and onboard new workers. The environment is ripe for unprecedented breakthroughs in mobilization collaborations in the North American missions’ enterprise.
Ultimately it is the church on the ground, the local community of believers, that is the critical expression of Christ’s love and power in the world. Made up of individuals who have personally placed their faith in Him, this bride of Christ must be the final basis for evaluating our efforts in evangelism. Scripture, early church history, examples of explosive growth of the church elsewhere, and often neglected media case histories all point to the fact that it is the local body of believers—living, working, and testifying together—that has been critical to the growth and multiplication of the Church.
Most people who know something about the late missiologist Ralph Winter, know about his Lausanne 1974 plenary address on unreached peoples (Winter 1975). Some know him from his reinvigorating the discussion about church and mission structures—which he called Sodalities and Modalities (Winter 1974). Still others know him because of his foundational work on Theological Education by Extension (TEE) in the 1960s (Winter 1969).
Some time ago I read in the pages of a mission magazine that came to my desk an amazing statement. The writer was emphasizing his “conviction that the church, not the mission board, is the sending agency.” He added that according to the book of Acts, “the church at Antioch accepted responsibility for the Apostle Paul.” Then he went on to say that “in the 11th chapter of Acts Barnabas heard of Paul, sought him out, brought him to Antioch and helped him serve an internship in that church of not less than one year.”
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