This is an idea whose time has come. It is easy, simple, saves money, and I think it seeds the mission of God in N America for generations to come: STOP FUNDING TRADITIONAL CHURCH PLANTS and instead fund missionaries to inhabit contexts all across the new mission fields of N America.

Traditionally denominations have funded church plants. They do this by providing a.) a full time salary plus benefits for three years, and b.) start-up funds for equipment, building rental etc. to a well-assessed church planter (read entrepreneur). The goal is a self-sustaining church in three years paying its own pastor’s salary and assorted sundry costs of running the church’s services. The costs are astounding, perhaps 300-400,000 dollars or more to get a church plant going.

Today, in the changing environments of N American post Christendom, this approach to church planting is insane. For it not only assumes an already Christianized population to draw on , it puts enormous pressure on the church planter to secure already well-heeled Christians as bodies for the seats on Sunday morning. This in itself undercuts the engagement of the hurting, lost peoples God is bringing to Himself in Christ.

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Next year marks the one hundredth anniversary of Roland Allen’s small book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? In that landmark text in mission studies, Allen argued that Western missionary methods had little in common with Paul’s missionary practices in the New Testament. The apostle and his partners did not establish large, permanent institutions, nor did they stay in one place for a decade or a career.

Allen wrote during the height of Western optimism, paternalism, and colonialism, and it took time for his ideas to gain traction. Yet the book eventually grew in influence and helped spur the shift toward contextualization and indigenization in world mission.

David Fitch wants to do something similar for North American missions and church planting. Fitch is Lindner Professor of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary and the author of several books, most recently The End of Evangelicalism….

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Almighty God, by whose Spirit the Scriptures were opened to thy servant Roland Allen, so that he might lead many to know, live and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ: Give us grace to follow his example, that the variety of those to whom we reach out in love may receive thy saving Word and witness in their own languages and cultures to thy glorious Name; through Jesus Christ, thy Word made flesh, who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Diocesan Bishop of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Oke-Ogun Diocese, the Rt. Reverend (Dr) Solomon Olaniyi Amusan has assured missionaries, especially those serving in Oke-Ogun Diocese, that a great reward awaits them, provided they served the Lord willingly and cheerfully.

While addressing the second session of the First Synod of the diocese recently at St Paul’s Anglican Church, Oke-Abe, Igbeti, on the theme Missionary Reward, the bishop defined a missionary as a person commissioned to take the gospel to another culture and reward as payment for good or evil.

He, however, noted that a reward is thought of as the return for good while punishment is thought of as the return for evil.

Amusan also reiterated the fact that ”˜the missionary’s reward is glorious, it is forever and ever, it is abundant, it is according to God’s standards and the gifts are both temporal and eternal.’

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…the church that knows Christ risen and ascended and takes up the challenge of confessing Christ coming to judge and to reign will not only be renewed in its sense of mission, but will also (of this I am confident) find there open before it new possibilities for an ecumenical understanding of its own sacraments and order, and for resolving differences related to its privileged participation in the present and future of Jesus. Moreover, it will not falsify or evade its special eucharistic participation in the past of Jesus, it will gladly exchange the heavy yoke of heroism for the lighter yoke of martyrdom. There is no better articulation of its faith in the Coming One than that.

–Douglas Farrow, “Confessing Christ Coming” in Nicene Christianity, ed. Christopher Seitz (Brazos Press, 2001), p. 148

An Anglican delegation present at the 2010 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh will meet again next week in Toronto to prepare a book about their experience. The nine Anglican delegates participated in what has been called a milestone in the global ecumenical movement.

Bishop Mark MacDonald, national indigenous bishop for the Canadian Anglican church, attended the conference. In an earlier interview with Episcopal News Service, he characterized the gathering of 300 people from 60 countries as one of “building the relationships that will carry the worldwide church to a new level.”

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Lord God, in whose providence Jackson Kemper was chosen first missionary bishop in this land, that by his arduous labor and travel congregations might be established in scattered settlements of the West: Grant that the Church may always be faithful to its mission, and have the vision, courage, and perseverance to make known to all peoples the Good News of Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.

One of the things that the whole fresh expressions story has, I think, helped many of us to see more clearly is that we need to push away the notion of church as simply something to which people sign up in one go and in one way. And we are discovering, sometimes discovering the hard way, just how complex, how varied, people’s journeys are towards the heart of church because those are journeys towards the heart of God’s purpose – if my starting point here is right. And journeying towards the heart of God’s purpose is really quite a long business; in fact it’s one you never come to the end of. Literally never.

But I think that helps us a little bit in looking at how the church does, as a matter of fact, take something of the shape we usually think about in the New Testament. And if we read the Gospels I’d want to say with some emphasis that the Church begins where Jesus is with others and exactly how it shapes up to be something more like what we usually mean is quite a story but it begins with that encounter.

And as we read the Gospels what we see of course is an extraordinary spectrum of different kinds of encounter….

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For all of its lewd jokes and potty-mouth banter, “The Book of Mormon” commingles the profane and the sacred, dramatizing the culture shock, the physical danger and the theological doubts that infuse what one might call the missionary narrative. That narrative has been lived out for centuries by Western missionaries in a range of denominations, and it has been expressed in recent decades in a spectrum of art and literature.

“The Book of Mormon” forms part ”” admittedly a loopy and idiosyncratic part ”” of that corpus of work. Both the musical’s respect for faith-based idealism and its criticism of fundamentalist certitude have informed such films as Roland Joffé’s “The Mission” and Bruce Beresford’s “Black Robe,” novels including “The Call” by John Hersey and “The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver, as well as nonfiction accounts like “The Rebbe’s Army” by Sue Fishkoff, which is not even about Christians but the Hasidic Chabad movement’s emissaries to wayward, far-flung Jews.

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A thirteen hour time difference, over 9,000 miles, and the International dateline separate St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Texas from a new church plant in Cambodia’s province of Pursat.

That kind of distance might make a direct partnership between Cambodia and Texas seem nearly inconceivable, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, St. Vincent’s put up half the funds necessary to make the new church plant a reality and has sent teams over to work directly on the project.

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A recent rise in the number of people accused of witchcraft””particularly African children””isn’t just an issue for missionaries to address, say scholars. It’s also a problem they may be contributing to.

An entire track of the annual missiology conference at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School this February was devoted to witchcraft, a topic usually neglected by the field.

“We had thought this was a phenomenon that would die out,” said Robert Priest, professor of missions and intercultural studies at Trinity. “Instead we are finding that the conditions of modernity””urbanization and social differentiation under capitalism””are contributing to accusations getting stronger and stronger.”

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In Tokyo, the Rev. Claudia Genung Yamamoto, a United Methodist missionary, discarded her planned Sunday sermon text at West Tokyo Union Church, where she has served as pastor for nearly 17 years.

Instead of speaking about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, she focused on Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”

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Six missionaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) will return to the ministries they serve in Egypt by the end of March. The six were among 10 missionaries temporarily evacuated from Cairo Feb. 1 on flights arranged by the U.S. government, because of protests against the government of former President Hosni Mubarak.

The ELCA missionaries, along with one missionary from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), flew to Istanbul, Turkey, and eventually arrived in St. Paul, Minn. Most have been staying in ELCA apartments reserved for missionaries on home assignment while in the United States.

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Check it out–nice title: mission omission.

Almighty and everlasting God, who in days of old didst cause thy Word to grow mightily and to prevail: We praise and magnify thy holy name for the manifestation of thy Spirit’s power in this our day and for all who are labouring to spread the gospel of thy salvation throughout the world; and we pray thee so to prosper and bless their endeavours that thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The monumental changes taking place in Egypt should be a clarion call for Western Christians to “run toward Egypt” and take advantage of an opportunity decades in the making, said a Christian worker deeply familiar with the country.

“How long have we been asking the church around the world to pray for the [unreached parts of the world]?” Ron Robinson* asked. “I know for 29 years I’ve been asking American churches, churches in the United Kingdom, Korean Christians to pray for Egypt — that doors would open” to share the Gospel.

“Our prayers are being answered right now…. This is God’s hand at work.”

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God whose strength bears us up as on mighty wings: We rejoice in remembering thy athlete and missionary, Eric Liddell, to whom thou didst bestow courage and resolution in contest and in captivity; and we pray that we also may run with endurance the race that is set before us and persevere in patient witness, until we wear that crown of victory won for us by Jesus our Savior; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

President Obama today awarded the United States’ highest civilian honor to Dr. Tom Little, a Christian worker for the International Assistance Mission (IAM) who was murdered in Afghanistan last August.

“Tom Little could have pursued a lucrative career,” President Obama said during the ceremony for Little and 14 other recipients. “Instead, he was guided by his faith, and he set out to heal the poorest of the poor in Afghanistan. For 30 years, amid invasion and civil war, the terror of the Taliban, the spread of insurgency, he and his wife Libby helped bring Afghans””literally””the miracle of sight.”

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The Rev. Jerry Kramer, the Episcopal priest who threw his church into the recovery of Broadmoor after Hurricane Katrina, has left the church for a more conservative Anglican community.

Kramer, the former rector of the Free Church of the Annunciation, said by e-mail he now is affiliated with the Anglican Church in North America.

That community is composed of former Episcopalians who split with the U.S. church in 2008 over deep theological differences.

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Episcopal Church missionary Paul-Gordon Chandler is returning to Cairo on Wednesday after a 10-day respite from Egypt’s political uprising.

“Speaking with our friends on the telephone in Cairo, it is clear that they feel empowered, and that the culture of fear that they have lived under within an authoritarian government has disappeared,” Chandler wrote in a letter to friends and supporters. “There is a sense of profound hope in the streets and a common feeling of good will towards each other. Of course the journey to true representative democracy is a long journey.”

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Mexico has always had a reputation here as a place where things can go wrong in a hurry. But the fatal shooting of a Texas missionary across the border late last month has reinforced the widely held belief in this region that the country has become a lawless war zone.

The missionary, Nancy Davis, who had worked in Mexico for decades, was shot in the back of the head by gunmen in a pickup truck who had pursued her and her husband for miles in Tamaulipas State.

Her husband, Samuel Davis, piloted his bullet-ridden truck across the two-mile international bridge here, driving pell-mell against traffic on the wrong side of the bridge to evade the pursuers and reach an American hospital. He arrived on the United States side too late to save Ms. Davis, 59.

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Dear Ones: I can’t adequately describe the struggle Anne and I have been involved in over the past week. We have been torn between a feeling of helplessness that urges us to leave, and a sense that our weakness opens the door to God’s power, and that promise calls us to stay. We have come to the conclusion that the Lord has not released us from a ministry in Egypt yet….

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Several specific topics are worth noting.

First, corruption in church leadership. Corruption and greed are issues especially where the church is growing rapidly and new leaders cannot be developed fast enough to meet the needs. As a result, immature leaders with charismatic personalities abound. “Many use their positions for worldly power, arrogant status or personal enrichment,” the document’s authors complain. “As a result, God’s people suffer, Christ is dishonoured, and gospel mission is undermined.”

Leadership training programs have been instituted in many places to meet the urgent need, but, the document continues, “The answer to leadership failure is not just more leadership training but better discipleship training. Leaders must first be disciples of Christ himself.” Character formation as Christ followers should take precedence over training in the techniques of leadership.

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An American staff member with the CMJ UK, the Church’s Ministry among Jewish people, has been murdered while on vacation in Israel.

Kristine Luken (44) an administrator with the CMJ in Nottingham was hiking in a forest southwest of Jerusalem on Dec 18 with fellow CJM staffer, Kay Wilson, a British-born Israeli, when they were approached by two Arab men asking for water. The men attacked the two women, stabbing each repeatedly. Ms. Wilson feigned death and survived the attack, but Ms. Luken bled to death.

“They came to kill,” Ms. Wilson said, telling the Israeli media that one of the attackers ripped a Star of David from around her neck and stabbed her where in the place where the star had lain.

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There’s rubble in the streets, cholera in the water, anger among the voters – and glimmers of hope in surprising places in Haiti, say Episcopal volunteers.

A team of physicians, nurses and others will be returning to Haiti for the 10th trip this year organized by Episcopalians. The week-long mission, which starts Saturday, will fall on the anniversary of the deadly earthquake that razed much of Port au Prince.

“Haiti is probably in one of the darkest times in its entire history,” said the Rev. Deacon Dave Drachlis of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, who will be returning for his eighth mission this year. “But, believe it or not, there is hope. Hope comes in the presence of people who support our ministries there.”

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About a third of all missionaries for Wycliffe Bible Translators use e-mail to communicate daily with friends, family, and supporters back home, according to a recent survey by Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Wycliffe president Bob Creson said he was a little surprised at how much internet access missionaries had, but he wasn’t shocked. “One of the people I follow on Twitter posts from remote Uganda,” he said. “I get better cell phone coverage in remote parts of the world than I do sometimes at home.”

Nearly 70 percent of those surveyed had more than 40 hours per week of Internet access while in the field. Nearly 75 percent of respondents had regular access to high-speed cable or DSL connections.

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In a conference convened at the Marriott Airport Hotel in Orlando, Florida on November 15 ”“ 17, 2010, Communion Partners, the fellowship of bishops, clergy and laity from The Episcopal Church who are committed to biblical orthodoxy, traditional Christian practice and the Anglican Communion, met to equip and encourage one another for the work of the Great Commission. The focus of the conference was establishing mission partnerships within The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion for the Gospel ministry. The participants heard from the Rt. Rev. Josiah Idowu-Fearon (Kaduna Diocese, Church of Nigeria) about opportunities for mutual ministry in northern Nigeria and in a workshop were instructed about reaching out to our Muslim neighbors. The Very Rev. Kuan Kim Seng (Dean of St. Andrew’s Cathedral, the Diocese of Singapore and diocesan Director of Missions) and the Very Rev. Yee Ching Wah (Dean of the Missionary Deanery of Thailand/Anglican Church of Thailand) introduced those gathered to the need for English-speaking people to come, teach English and share their faith in Southeast Asia. The Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina (the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence) and members of the new Anglican Communion Development Committee (the Rev. Michael Clarkson and the Rev. Robert Lawrence) shared their vision and model for strengthening our bonds with the Anglican Communion through mutual mission and ministry. In addition to the workshop by Bishop Fearon, three other workshops entitled “Discerning the mission ethos of the parish,” “The biblical basis for remnant theology,” and “Mission opportunities in SE Asia” were offered.

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Precious in thy sight, O Lord, is the death of thy saints, whose faithful witness, by thy providence, hath its great reward: We give thee thanks for thy martyrs James Hannington and his companions, who purchased with their blood a road unto Uganda for the proclamation of the Gospel; and we pray that with them we also may obtain the crown of righteousness which is laid up for all who love the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

(ACNS) The second full day of the Cape Town 2010 Congress focused on the role of the church in the ministry of reconciliation””reconciliation of women and men with God’s creation, reconciliation between people of different economic status, and reconciliation between people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds.

Ruth Padilla DeBorst, the General Secretary of the Latin American Theological Fellowship, began the day by leading participants through a study of Ephesians chapter two. She provided thoughtful insights about the nature of God’s transformative power in changing people and societies.

“Jesus made peace by doing justice, by restoring to rightful place and right relations those who were being deprived of them by unjust systems, human greed and abuse of power,” Ruth Padilla Deborst said. “God lives wherever men and women together allow the Community-of-love to imprint God’s image on them, to speak reconciliation into being in their midst, to tear down all humanly constructed walls and spiritually bolstered exclusions so that unity becomes visible, to remind them that once we were all together in death and that our lives, our value and our purpose depend entirely on God’s unmerited grace. God yearns to build the world church today into his earthly dwelling place.”

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