A group of friends and I have been having a little conversation on Facebook, and I thought it might be helpful to share some of it here.
Setup Scenario & Question
In my local church, one area is that I am now serving in a missional living area, meaning I’m overseeing all the missions of the church, along with another person. The missional and incarnational portion of our body is very lacking and we’ll be working with the small groups leaders to help develop that and get our bodies into motion…
… We’ve identified seven areas in our community that are clearly in need of Jesus and clearly in need of help. Please be praying for us as we go about developing and equipping Christ followers to be disciple makers…
… Right now, we’re trying to think local and team with organizations in our community to give opportunities to serve and love people. We’re establishing missional communities and I’m going to be taking leaders through Hugh Halter’s “Flesh.” I also will be teaching on Sunday morning at some point on the missions vision I helped create, PRISM (Practical, Relational, Intentional, Simple, Missional)*. If any of you have an ideas for ways to help get a group mobilized, let me know…
My Response:
“Sounds like you are running down the right tracks bro. Glad to support you as we can via Facebook messages.
2 things I’m thinking:
1) Having opportunities to break people out of their norm (like serving projects, short-term trips, etc.) helps in allowing them to open their minds/hearts to different ways of living. Creating those kinds of opportunities is helpful to create “another reality” for people to begin to evaluate how they live…and how they could.
2) The Least Reached on our globe have to have people like you and I advocate for them…so workers will Go and Live & Share the Gospel. Here’s something you and the people you are shepherding should know: Those unreached peoples are in desperate need of the church to be the church. Don’t leave the “uttermost” & “unreached” out of the conversation and emphasis of your work bro! I hope that’s helpful.
P.S. Here’s another inspirational video which draws attention to the need to GO to those who are least reached:
*This PRISM illustration is really good and is the product of J. Daniel Rollins and his team. Please give him credit if you are going to “flatter” him by “imitating” or “plagiarizing” it .