Archive for September, 2006

I have been both strongly encouraged and somewhat discouraged in recent months.  Our candidate school in Spring 06 provided a great deal of encouragement!  We had nine couples in attendance and accepted eight couples.  One couple will serve as an Associate couple and one couple is from Canada.  In addition, Pastor Nelson Betoney attended so that he would become familiar with VM.  He will be our advisor as we move forward with ministry to the Navajo nation.

All were extremely sharp couples but particularly gratifying to me was the fact that four of the couples came from fields served by Village Missions.  At least two of the four and perhaps more came to Christ and were discipled by Village Missionaries.  I am extremely grateful that we are being used by God to develop our own missionaries!  Please pray for all these couples as they raise prayer and financial support and as we pray about their first assignment.

I have, however, been discouraged by some recent resignations.  Generally, it appears to require at least ten new Village Missionaries each year just to keep pace with resignations and retirements.  The spiritual need is so great and without missionaries, many churches will permanently close.  We could be so much more proactive in finding fields if we just had the missionaries to send!  Please pray that missionaries will stay the course in their calling by God and that we will grow in our recruitment of new missionaries.

Here are some of my humble suggestions for staying the course in ministry:

1. Cultivate your relationship with your spouse.  Make sure that your spouse is your best friend and that you have enjoyable times together in ministry.  Constantly work at a team approach to ministry.  Carole so often provides the lift and support I need in ministry.
2. Give all your expectations over to God.  You cannot produce spiritual growth in your people.  Your job is to be faithful in the ministry, growing on your own, and letting God direct His harvest.  Otherwise, you will become angry and bitterly disappointed with your people.
3. Make sure that God truly comes first in your life.  Ours truly is the life of the cross in which we forsake all to follow Christ.  We must never allow family, location, circumstances, possessions, or any other person or thing to interfere with our following Christ.  If you are leaving ministry or even changing ministry, make sure that you are still carrying your cross and following the path of Christ.
4. Remind yourself of your call.  I assume that you once became convinced that God called you into this ministry.  He did not call you conditioned upon results or even your enjoyment of the ministry.  We serve at the pleasure of the Master and only for His good purposes and not our own.  I am completely puzzled as to why God would call me, of all people, to do anything for Him.  As the decision to obey God’s call was an extremely important decision, so the decision to abandon God’s call, with the possibility that you might be disobeying Him, is extremely important.  Leaving pastoral ministry is not like changing jobs!
5. Develop, by God’s grace, godly leaders around you and be patient as they develop.  A group of godly men shared with me and were partners with me in my most difficult time of ministry—the church fire.  Other situations arose during those times that were even more difficult.  But we prayed and worked together.  Even having one godly man helps.
6. Laugh at yourself and refuse to take yourself too seriously.  Life is a mere vapor and we are but blades of grass!  God Himself holds all the issues of enormity and eternity in His hand, not our hand.  Therefore, we can laugh and poke fun at ourselves and just plain lighten up.
7. Talk to your District Representative.  We want you to do well and for you to stay the course.  He and his wife have many resources available to help you.  The greatest resource, their listening ear, is instantly available.  They will not think less of you if you tell them you are discouraged or thinking of quitting.  They might have some counsel that will prove to be extremely helpful.  Most of all, they can begin praying for you specifically.  Don’t you realize that Satan will gain a great victory if you quit?  Have others join you in the spiritual battle.
8. Study and apply Hebrews 12:1-3.  This passage speaks of our life as an agony race that we must keep running.  We are to run the race that God has set before us.  Running this race requires memory—remembering those (the cloud of witnesses) who stood firm by faith.  It requires discipline as we get rid of things that weigh us down and trip us up.  Most of all it requires focus, as we look away to Jesus.  We remember what He endured on our behalf.  His great joy was redeeming you and I.  What a joy it is as a Village Missionary pastor to share His joy of announcing the Gospel!

I pray for the day when we advance the cause of the Gospel in rural North America by finding the churches about to close and having the missionaries to send them, so that we have hundreds of spiritually vital churches.  Stay the course and develop some missionaries!

I am writing this Family Newsletter article from Pendleton, Oregon.  I am the main speaker at a Missions Conference at Grace Baptist Church in Pendleton.  This church is the home church of Village Missionary Greg McCallum.  It is a small church (not necessarily by our standards) of only about 80-90 in attendance.

It is interesting to me that many people have expressed surprise about me being here.  They are surprised that a director of a fairly large mission organization would speak at such a small church.

Such reactions have again reminded me how pervasive is the thinking that bigger is better and that small churches should only expect the leftovers.  The idea of hierarchy and status appear to be firmly entrenched in our church thinking.  It reminds me of the attitude James deals with when he writes about giving special attention to the rich person and showing disregard and even disrespect to the poor person (James 2:1-6).

Now, I understand that my being here may not be the best use of my time.  However, the pastor invited me to be the speaker several months ago and at that time, I was available.  I wanted to be open to any opportunity to speak about Village Missions and to proclaim the Word of God, so I agreed.

I have no idea what God will bring out of this conference.  I doubt that there will be much in the way of increased giving to our Mission.  Perhaps God will be pleased to call someone from this church into our ministry, as He called Greg.  The point is that God doesn’t need small or big to accomplish His purpose.  He may intend to do big things in this little place.  Certainly, we who are in Village Missions should embrace that and reflect that in the choices we make.  Undue reverence for the “big” and important or even undue reverence for the “small” and unimportant should be replaced by “faith in our glorious Jesus Christ.”  He alone is glorious.

While here in Pendleton, I visited some communities that might need our ministry.  We had conducted a pilot survey in Oregon in an effort to find potential fields.  We found the names of 132 churches that might need leadership and mailed them a brief survey.  Unfortunately, address lists for churches, especially small churches, are unreliable.  Several cards came back because of a bad address.  I believe we received about ten requests for more information.

Doing my own internet search, I located the Helix Community Baptist Church in Helix, OR.  I traveled to the town and discovered a beautiful church building and parsonage.  The parsonage was being repaired and was for rent—a sure sign!  It took some asking to find someone connected with the church but finally I located Phyllis, the church treasurer.  She was excited about our ministry but wasn’t sure if the church would be willing to sever ties with the American Baptist denomination.  They had recently hired a part-time pastor who preaches Sunday but does not live in town.  Helix is a community of close to 200 people that needs the Gospel.  Please pray for Helix and other towns like it.

I also visited Ukiah, OR and met with the pastor of a small Baptist church, loosely affiliated with Conservative Baptists.  Pastor Ray was a missionary in Ireland who had to come home after his wife became ill.  His supporters have maintained their support and he is ministering full time in that church.  He is 67 years old and wants to retire by 70.  Ukiah is a great missionary opportunity.  As he explained to me, the town is fifty miles away from any law enforcement and attracts quite a group of characters.  The local school has several foreign exchange students in an effort to remain open, but because the Christian presence is limited and no one is working with them, they take over things at the school.  Ray was aware of Village Missions but felt that their church would not be able to afford us.  I explained our new Sliding Scale to him and he seemed interested.  Please pray for Ukiah, OR!

I also called a pastor in Warm Springs, OR.  His church is a Southern Baptist church located on an Indian reservation.  He and his wife are close to leaving because of the finances.  He told me that they would like to be able to see a dentist, but cannot afford to do so.  The church was doing well numerically, especially for being on a reservation, but not doing well financially because of the local economy.  I admired this pastor’s willingness to go there without any outside financial support.

We will need to develop our survey methodology before we can use it in other places.  But in short order, three potential places were identified that need a full-time, resident missionary pastor.  The need is so great!  Please pray that churches would become aware of us, that we would have the workers to send, and that we would have the finances to send them.

The arrival of this New Year has caused me to reflect on the passage of time.  Perhaps you too find it hard to believe that the previous year passed so quickly.  For 2006, I would like to follow and implement the commands of Scripture in Ephesians 5:15 - 16 (NASB):

15Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, 16making the most of your time, because the days are evil.

I want to make the most of my time in my walk with the Lord and in my various roles as husband, father, and Director of Village Missions.  May His sufficiency enable us all to make the most of our time!

Thinking about time reminds me that it has been some “time,” October to be exact, since I updated you about the Mission.  God is moving in many exciting ways, and I would like to take the “time” to share with you some of those ways.

First, I am praising the Lord for the response to our appeal for staff conferences.  As of today, we have received about $50,000 in donations.  I had really no idea what to expect.  This response demonstrates, of course, God working, but also the depth of good feeling about Village Missions.  I have also noticed that some donors to missionaries who hadn’t given in some time not only gave to the staff conference need but also to their missionary.  I really praise the Lord for this outcome for the Mission and missionary.

We had quite a challenge working with our software.  We have recently upgraded all of our Stewardship and Accounting software through the Murdock grant we received.  We are still learning more about the software and integrating the accounting and stewardship areas.  Without going into details, we had some difficulty matching a missionary with their donor.  I personally signed about 200 letters to certain donors that support missionaries and wrote a small note.  I wanted to encourage and thank them personally for supporting their Village Missionary.  Again, without getting a formal report, it seems that at least some have responded with increased giving to their missionary.

A very significant development is the approval by the Board of the Statement of Purpose and Values.  You will find a copy of this statement in this issue.  I believe that this purpose statement describes what we are trying to accomplish as we provide leadership to churches.  It is as relevant for the large church as it is for our smaller church because, small or large, we are trying to develop spiritually vital churches.  In the coming months we will be exploring any other changes that need to be made in light of this new Purpose Statement.

The Board also approved a Sliding Scale for new churches requesting leadership.  As I have mentioned in previous articles, I have been concerned about the inability of some small churches to afford us, especially with the high costs of the Benefit Plan.  The sliding scale works like this:  A church will be required to give 10% of their general fund offering to Village Missions.  If they have some unusual expenses such as having to rent a parsonage or church building, this amount will be deducted from the remaining offering.  We will allow the church to have $600 per month for operating expenses and outside missions giving.  The remainder will first go toward the Benefit Plan and then toward missionary salary.  As the offerings increase, more will go toward the Benefit Plan and salary.  The sliding scale will be helpful to the churches and will result in more going toward our costs as the church grows.  I am very excited about the great opportunity this will provide for struggling churches to receive leadership.

The Board also gave approval to move forward in exploring an expansion in Alaska and in the Navajo Nation.  District Representative Vern Wilkinson and Village Missionary Craig Norwood did some survey work in Alaska in the early fall.  They found many closed churches or churches needing leadership.  Their visit resulted in a request for leadership from Nenana, AK, near Fairbanks.  We are still working out the details of the costs and our strategy for raising funds for the project.  A proposal will then be brought before the Board.

Mike Jones and I visited the Navajo Nation in December.  We learned of many churches without leadership or with pastors who were forced to work full-time in outside jobs.  We met several young men who had been to Bible College but were unable to serve as pastors because of the lack of funds.  One sharp young man, Daniel, works during the summer to save enough money so that he can minister fulltime as a youth pastor during the remaining months.  An Anglo pastor and missionary who was born and raised on the reservation told us that various mission organizations have struggled with turning leadership over to Navajo pastors because they have no financial support.  Consequently, many of the churches are weak and ineffective.  It appears that the ministry of Village Missions would fit quite well.  As with Alaska, we are working on a plan to present to the Board for funding and for providing leadership.

The need in Alaska and in the Navajo Nation is great; much like the need across rural North America when Rev. Duff founded Village Missions.  I believe that God is leading us to continue supplying leadership to country churches (the sliding scale) and to reach new peoples and areas (Alaska, Hispanics, Native/First Nation) in rural North America.  Please pray with me for wisdom and God’s direction as we move forward.  I believe that this is the way that God would have Village Missions make the “most of the time” until Christ returns.