I've been pondering something a lot lately and wonder if any of you have any thoughts along these lines....
I think most of us here have recognized how far Christendom in general has departed from the simplicity that is in Christ as far a church is concerned.
Along with the organizational, corporate management, denominational "top down control syndrome" in churches has come the very same sorts of trends in the work of missions, Gospel outreach and missionary enterprise throughout the world.
Our son has a real heart for evangelism, has been on a number of missions trips to other countries and has a real longing to invest his life as a missionary. He does recognize that the clergy/laity distinction among "Christian workers" is not scriptural. He recognizes that "Bible schools" are not God's way of training and equipping ministers in the Body of Christ. He has felt no liberty to use the common and accepted methods of "fundraising" and has seen the Lord provide miraculously for each and every missions trip he has participated in.
However, every opportunity he has had has been in co-operation with institutional churches and traditional missions organizations!
My problem is this: (1)I have to acknowledge that 95% or better of all the missionary work in our generation has been done through such institutions and organizations.
(2)While I can't criticize what they have done, I can't help but believe that God has a far better way to bring the Gospel to all nations... -apart from a mindset that distinguishes "full-time Christian work" from other saints, -apart from "fundraising schemes", asking for "support" or "charging" for ministry, -apart from submitting to organizations for "accountability" and "direction" in one's service for the Lord. (Far too often, I have seen and experienced such organizational struictures becomeing a positive hindrance to believers knowing and responding to God's call and direction of their ministries!) -apart from the supposed "necessity" for seminary or Bible school training, and -apart from the expectation of "planting churches" with "sanctified buildings" and "Reverend pastors"!!!
(3)I do want to encourage my son to follow the Lord's call on His life and not to discourage him, so how can I guide him or encourage him in a truly new covenant ministry of cross-cultural evangelism?
How can I be of help to him, and how can we be a help to other young people in our gatherings who have a heart for missions, and what should we be doing to be expressing the heart of the Lord for the lost and how should we be cultivating a vision for the harvest and be actively involved in reaping, by praying for laborers, releasing them to work to which God has called them, and in what ways should we be financially helping such endeavours on sound new covenant principles?
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Bruce. Firstly, let me applaud you and your wife for raising such a godly, young man! Secondly, we do alot of traveling ourselves so I can definitely relate to your plight. My wife is presently enrolled in a Bible college that is very missionary-minded and we feel that pressure to "do it their way" but we know already that we are not free to do so. In fact, we are leaving for India at the end of the month to go and visit the brethren there and in Nepal. I often tell many a brother that sometimes "we gotta dance with the one who brung ya." But in our case our partner is Jesus so we must follow His leading. Next summer we will probably be working on an internship with Vision International University , as I know Steven Mills, the zonal leader for much of Africa. I just recently told my wife that I will NOT conform to their way of doing things even if it means not going. Alot depends on where one is lead and what he will do. There is such a need for godly instruction right now, as well as discernment,(probably discernment more). I also try and find other believers who are like-minded in understanding the Master's ways. That can be difficult also. But all in all, God will be faithful and rest assured that whatever you do in His name will be fruitful. Tell your son to GO and follow after Jesus. Your local congregation should also help him in funds as well as in fund raising but know that ultimately it is the Lord who has promised us to provide. I know this sound so simple--it is! I hope this helps and do pass on our best to you and yours. If your son wishes to travel with us we would consider it a privilege and honor. God bless you my brother in the faith! Maranatha!
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I see that this is a fairly old post, but a critical one. I will respond as if to Bruce directly, but hope others will chime in. And I hope Bruce is still around? LA --- Our passion is for missions, so getting our mind around house churches has been especially challenging, but gradually we've realized that the Jesus Way IS missions, and that institutions will always be second best at doing what God wants FAMILIES to do.
After years of seeking, studying, tweaking and listening, this is a summary of our family's current thinking:
"Our vision is ministry to families, as the basis of fellowship, mission, and social reform. Agricultural training for both health restoration, independent provision for the household, and viable skills for entrance into closed communities overseas in terms of frontier mission. It is part of our commitment to a lifestyle of simplicity and kingdom-centered purpose. Our view of the family is that of home-centered community: raising children at home, keeping the home as the center of life, not a mere pit-stop, and of encouraging a wider household than merely nuclear units."
What this amounts to is believing in Families (+ those the Lord adds to their household) networking together to send SOME of those families to Unreached peoples to live, work and build the Kingdom using the SAME model they are using in their home country, but with additional training and preparation for adapting to and accepting a different culture, and training to facilitate the new church in beginning their own movement. We see the family, then, as being a home base from which apostolic teams venture into others' homes. So, for example, Peter staying at Simon the Tanner's home, then receiving a request to go to Cornelius' home.
So, Bruce, with an apostolic calling on your son I think it is important to ask, "Is there an apostolic calling on our whole family? Or should he become part of another household that does have such an apostolic calling?"
There is an opening in our household for such a one!
"It is my ambition to preach the gospel where he has not been named..." "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord..."
Blessings! Laurie Ann
-------------------- You & Me and Jesus. We are enough!
Yes, I'm still around and glad indeed for your response and perspective! It's so interesting to me that just in the last few days the idea of families being the means that God desires to use has come across my path from two or three different directions!
Also, our son Andrew was in Mexico for the month of October helping a missionary couple move and fix up a home they had bought. While he was down there we received a Canadian House Church Network Newsletter and one of the items of interest was a link to the work of a house church planter, Cody Smith, working in Tepic, Mexico. That was the very town where Andrew was working!!!!
He had a few opportunities to connect with Cody, to hear his heart and to enjoy fellowship together with he and his wife!
You have helped to give us a fresh perspective and this morning we shared your letter with the little gathering of saints with which we meet. Your emphasis on the gathering of saints being a family and extended family of others which God adds was a real encouragement to a number who were here. Their biological families are no encouragement at all to them, but they feel that thier brothers and sisters in Christ are much closer "family" than their own flesh and blood!
Please pray for us as we seek the Lord's direction in reaching out to others in our communities that we might see others born into and adopted into the family of God through the Lord's work in and through us.
This really seems to confirm and expand our emphasis as parents as we've tried to raise and train our kids. We home schooled our kids,have had a home-based business since '85 and in the last 6 years or so have been involved in home churching and Judy continually uses skills she has developed at home (sewing, baking, cake decorating etc to minister to others)!
You might pray for Andrew as well as he plans a trip to the Congo in January. Both my wife's brothers work there as missionaries and Andrew is planning to go there to get a better idea of what the Lord is doing there and to see how he could be of assistance there. The Lord has blessed him with a boss, a builder, (not yet a Christian) who is willing to let him take a couple of months off each summer to go on missions trips as well as other times of the year and yet keep the job waiting for him when he returns! (He was in Ethiopia for June and July, Mexico in October and plans to be in the Congo in January, but because he's a diligent worker, his boss wants to keep him!)
Andrew, at first, started working with this man to finish his apprenticeship as a mason (bricklayer) but has gained a much wider experience in a variety of the building trades (framing, drywalling, electrical, plumbing, painting etc) which he figures will stand him in good stead with any future building projects in other parts of the world.
We feel that the Lord has given our family a real heart for missions and all five of our children have been involved in at least one overseas missions trip. Our oldest son and his wife have a burden for Spanish speaking countries and before they were married had been separately involved in missions trips to Russia, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico and together have been involved in Gospel work in Panama and presently learning Spanish and seeking the Lord's direction about moving to Panama where there is such openness to the Gospel, not found here in N. America.
Our second son lead a team with Teen Missions to Gautemala. He was married in June to a Christian girl who also has a heart for the Gospel and has been actively involved in Gospel outreach especially among Chinese people in Toronto.
Our third son was assistant leader (with Andrew) on a TM team to Poland and the girl he is courting is right now spending a couple of months serving in an orphanage in the Ukraine.
Our daughter has been on missions trips to Dominica, West Indies and Ecuador, S.A. She is now married to the young man who was the male leader of that Ecuador team. He is training as a doctor in the US Airforce and once his airforce service is over, they also have their hearts set on missions service.
So our kids have learned that, as they obey the Lord in the assignments He gives, He is quite capable of bringing suitable mates with similar desires across their paths without them having to go searching and dating to try to find "Mr. or Miss Right" on their own! As they have watched other young people in group settings, they have each gotten to know the one whom they believed would be their lifelong spouse. Then, before pairing off, have sought parental advice, confirmation and guidance as they commence a courting relationship with the one they believe has been the Lord's choice for them.
My wife, Judy, taught all of our kids not to go looking for a suitable spouse, but rather to list the qualities and characteristics they wanted to see in their future spouses. Then she counselled them, "Seek to BE THE KIND OF PERSON THAT THAT KIND OF PERSON WOULD ALSO WANT AS THEIR SPOUSE and trust God to bring such a one across your path!"
Laurie Ann, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by an "apostolic calling upon our household" but the Lord certainly has given us all a deep interest and desire for involvement in Gospel outreach to the ends of the earth.
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective with us! Would appreciate hearing more of your family's journey and vision which the Lord is developing in your hearts!
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Bruce, this in one of the most moving pieces I have read in a long, long time, brother. What a thrill to see God honor your efforts. brother. Judy's, too.
Carolynn and I are seeking to raise our six children in the LORD, but I fear they may be side-tracked and lose interest in the King and the Kingdom as they go off to college (2, so far, as day students). I am where Job was: Job 1:5 Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom.
I understand that there are no easy formulas about leading young adults closer to Christ and his high calling, but would you or any others, mind to enlarge a little more? I long to participate in the harvest with my own children now and in the days ahead but I don't want there to be any compulsion. Please join with me in prayer. Much thanks!
As for us, our thinking on this is very radical, but for what it is worth I will share it. I realize every family must seek God for themselves, and find God's own will, but we have challenged the idea that college should be the "default answer" for Christian young people.
For example, I recently read Tom Wolfe's "I am Charlotte Simmons" which is a sordid, disgusting novel about college life that is SO TRUE TO LIFE I CRIED WITH RE_SURFACING MEMORIES! He researched the top colleges in America, and chronicled the debauchery, cynicism, abuse and anti-humanity going on there through a fictionalized but very realistic character - the small-town girl who thinks that college will be a place where being smart and ambitious will be accepted, where the "life of the mind" will be going on.
I had forgotten how bad the college was for the pure-hearted, how hard it was to hold onto any kind of virtue, or even just enthusiasm, when in such a base, cynical environment. I had forgotten how ridicule and contempt were the response to goodness, academic interest, or good intentions. I had forgotten how "normalized" orgies were, how goofy it was to be shocked by illegal behavior, how "nice kids" would be passing drugs at parties some thought would be straight. I highly recommend reading as much of that book as you can stand before you send another child off to that environment. No criticism, just a warning.
As I read that book, I thought, Oh, yeah, that's why I didn't encourage my dd to go there, even though I pushed her to apply! I was re-affirmed in our decision.
When deciding how our kids should get ahead in life, we thought about many options, and realized that very few careers that require college suit the "Let them work with their own hands" standard of supporting oneself.
Also, since we have realized that Families are God's answer to problems, not institutions, many common career choices are out of the running. Public education, allopathic medicine, government, even law all circumvent God's plans for people to raise their own families, order their own life, and hold people accountable for their actions.
So, our daughter is developing her writing skills through self-study, rather than going to college for "Literature and Liberal Arts." Our son is in an apprenticeship with a skilled worker, learning a business from the ground up. All our children are being trained for biblical ministry, through modeling and practice.
It was a real "God thing" how my son got this apprenticeship. He had no clue what to do when he finished high school, and a series of circumstances led him to the opportunity, and he was hired over a number of other applicants. God particularly showed his handprint in the fact that his boss wanted him to start his apprenticeship the DAY AFTER we had already scheduled Dan's graduation party.
By putting the word out that we wanted our kids to learn a skill, and by mingling with like-minded families, we've been able to skip college and see God provide another way, that we feel is more in keeping with the vision of family centered life -- for example, my son's career could be a "cottage industry" right in his own home, rather than having to go work in a corporation or institution.
And our two grown children are whole-heartedly on board with our vision of "Families at home and to the nations". I have three more to go, but I see that they are all accepting the family norms, too, as it is modeled by the older kids.
Blessings! Laurie Ann
-------------------- You & Me and Jesus. We are enough!
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