www.engagemagazine.com for Tuesday, August 1, 2017 Issue #122
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Video: Disturbing Our City by Engage MagazineTuesday, July 25, 2017
To download this and other video stories, visit: vimeo.com/groups/403365/videos/203891440
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Called to be missionaries -- at 60+by Gina Grate Pottenger Bill and Theresa* never imagined that after 35 years of pastoral ministry, and sending off their own daughter and her family to be Nazarene missionaries, that they would hear God calling them to cross-cultural missions, too.
Today, the couple have been serving with Nazarene Global Mission for about a year. They are providing support and leadership development for the South Asia Field, and living in Sri Lanka.
“We had been in our last pastorate seven and a half years, and started feeling the stirring of the nest,” Theresa said. The couple assumed God was preparing them to move and pastor another church. They waited to see what God was doing.
Meanwhile, they visited their daughter with her husband and their children in Spain, where they were serving as Nazarene missionaries at the time. Their son-in-law encouraged Bill to consider volunteering to teach some theological education classes to Nazarenes in Spain through European Nazarene College during a sabbatical.
Bill and Theresa signed up to attend a Cross-Cultural Orientation weekend, which is required of potential volunteers before they are sent out on cross-cultural service. They were surprised that during the training, they felt God drawing them toward long-term mission. During the closing interview with a former missionary, they were told, “You could do so much more than just volunteer. We need you on the mission field.”
“When the missionary said that, the Lord just grabbed my heart in such a way I couldn’t speak,” Theresa said. “I waited to hear what Bill would say. Bill said, ‘If God calls us, we will go.’”
At the ages 62 and 63, they answered God’s call with a “yes!”
Theresa had originally sensed a missionary call when, as a child, she gave her life to Christ. Yet, she resisted that call until she was 16 years old. During a worship service at a Nazarene World Youth Congress, which was a global convention for Nazarene youth, Theresa submitted to whatever God would ask her to do in her life. With that final consecration, she fully expected God to send her into missions.
But God led her to a life of pastoral ministry with Bill in the U.S.
Yet, now that decision as a teenager to go wherever God would send her made the decision easy when the door opened to Sri Lanka. Arthur Snijders, director of the Eurasia Region, and Annemarie Snijders, missional assistant, were seeking mature pastors and leaders to provide support and development for leaders in Eurasia. They invited Bill and Theresa to serve on the South Asia Field.
When they announced their resignation and missionary call to their local church, the congregation was excited to become a sending church – sending their own pastor family into global missions.
A number of young people thanked the couple for showing them it was possible to go into cross-cultural mission later in life, Theresa said.
“They had this idea that, if they don’t go to the mission field as a young person, they’ll never go to the mission field. That was the idea. It was encouraging to them to think, ‘I could still have some years of preparation.’ So I think that was a positive blessing.”
Based out of Colombo, Bill and Theresa serve the whole South Asia Field, which includes Nazarenes in Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.Bill has been working with the leaders of Nazarene Compassionate Ministries to help further develop this indigenous ministry in Sri Lanka and Nepal. He has also visited Pakistan and is helping two churches there to be built this year. Bill has also been working with regional and field leadership to organize a new pastor education program for the field; it is now a 10-Percent Giving Special for Nazarene churches who want to give.
Theresa takes care of the mission finances and works in the office. She also serves with M+Power, Eurasia Region’s volunteer missions program, and is currently mentoring volunteers. She is working on a shipment of children’s books which will be delivered to each of the Sri Lankan child development centers. Where there is a need for support in ministry, she serves.
The couple enjoys working in the Eurasia Region along with their daughter and her family.
“It’s been a role reversal,” Bill said. “I’m not the dad anymore. [She] knows far more about missions than I do.” [Last names omitted for security reasons.]
Mission briefing: Be a Sender by Howard CulbertsonNot infrequently, people think the only way they can participate in to-the-ends-of-the-earth evangelism is by flying to another country. They are wrong. “Going” is just one avenue of world mission involvement. Indeed, those who leave home to become career missionaries need a cadre of consecrated and zealous supporters back home.
A few years ago, Steven Hawthorne wrote a chapter in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement about those who support the “Go-ers” (as he called missionaries). Hawthorne, who grew up in a Nazarene parsonage, titled his chapter simply, “Senders.” He noted that the Apostle Paul may have been thinking of human Senders as well as God when he rhetorically asked: “How can they preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:15).
The Apostle John was certainly clear in his encouragement to people to become Senders for missionaries.The Amplified Bible renders verse 7 and part of verse 8 in III John as: “For these [traveling missionaries] went out for the sake of the Name [of Christ]. So we ought to support such people.”
How do Senders support and take care of missionaries? Well, the III John passage seems to refer to material support. The same is true of Paul’s words to the Romans about a planned trip to Spain (Romans 15:23-24). To be sure, money – lots of it – is needed in world evangelism. However, Senders can and must do more than give money. As one example, in almost every one of Paul’s letters, he requested prayer for his ministry from his Senders.
R. A. Torrey, the founding head of Moody Bible Institute, believed that. Torrey once wrote: “The man or woman at home who prays often has as much to do with the effectiveness of the missionary on the field, and consequently with the results of his or her labors, as the missionary."
In addition to money and prayer, Senders contribute to Great Commission fulfillment in ways ranging from keeping missions bulletin boards updated to locating and shipping needed equipment and supplies. Indeed, a variety of gifts and talents can be used to facilitate the work of missionaries serving far away.Here are half a dozen areas in which Senders can support missionaries:
-- Emotional support (giving encouragement via emails, cards, Skype conversations, showing up at deputation services and more).
-- Mobilization (raising global missions awareness in one’s own local church or district).
-- Financial support (giving and encouraging others to give).
-- Intercessory prayer for world evangelism (praying and calling others to prayer).
-- Logistics help (providing house and transportation for missionaries on home assignment, making arrangements for shipping things, ironing out details for events and more).
-- Re-entry assistance (being a “safe” listener, helping returned missionaries find their way around, and more).
Senders have been known to be so passionate about supporting missionaries that they adjust their lifestyles to pray more, serve more and give more.
Be a Sender. Impact the “ends of the Earth” from your own doorstep.
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What churches should know: Protecting their missionaries by Bob KlamserNot too many years ago, one of the major tasks of the missions pastor (or missions committee) of a local church was to find as many ways as possible to tell the story of the church’s missionaries. We wanted people to know who our missionaries were, where they were working, how many new believers there were. We wanted to spread the word about their victories, their needs, their struggles. If they were under any kind of attack,we wanted to mobilize prayer warriors. In short, we spent much of our missions time trying to raise the profile of our missionaries.
Today’s environment is very different. For many missionaries, one of the greatest sources of danger is the information that families, friends, and yes, churches, post online about them. Many of today’s missionaries are serving in places where traditional access, visas, and all the other legal issues associated with expatriates living overseas must be handled with great care and discretion. Sometimes language and terms that are perfectly normal and common in the church environment at home can be literal death sentences where missionaries serve.
The digital landscape is literally the newest battlefield in the earthly conflict between good and evil. The internet, email and social media can be tremendous force-multipliers for Great Commission ministry. But, they are also the frontier on which the adversaries who oppose missions work and even Christianity itself are mounting a campaign to stop the spread of the Gospel. The digital landscape carries potential risk for the missionary in two broad ways: Email and social media messaging to the missionary can be intercepted and read by adversaries; and, items posted on websites, electronic bulletin boards, blogs and other searchable forums can easily be read by adversaries.
Perhaps it is appropriate to pause here to address a question that many of you have: do enemies of our missionaries actually read our websites and blogs and social media? The answer is that today’s terrorists are incredibly skilled at working in the cyber world (and not being detected). It is almost impossible to overstate their expertise. In many locations, the government is equally skilled.
The Great Commission is very specific in its instruction: “Go into all the world ...” Missionaries don’t get to pick and choose between safe and dangerous locations. Many are serving in places where they face opposition from the public, the government and from terrorists. Christ’s admonition to “be as wise as serpents” is a reminder that being bold doesn’t require recklessness, being obedient doesn’t require suspension of judgment, and making disciples doesn’t require trading missionary lives for new believer’s lives.
Be a Guardian
The digital landscape is literally the newest battlefield in the earthly conflict between good and evil. The internet, email and social media can be tremendous force-multipliers for Great Commission ministry. But, they are also the frontier on which the adversaries who oppose missions work and even Christianity itself are mounting a campaign to stop the spread of the Gospel. The digital landscape carries potential risk for the missionary in two broad ways: Email and social media messaging to the missionary can be intercepted and read by adversaries; and, items posted on websites, electronic bulletin boards, blogs and other searchable forums can easily be read by adversaries.
Perhaps it is appropriate to pause here to address a question that many of you have: do enemies of our missionaries actually read our websites and blogs and social media? The answer is that today’s terrorists are incredibly skilled at working in the cyber world (and not being detected). It is almost impossible to overstate their expertise. In many locations, the government is equally skilled.
The Great Commission is very specific in its instruction: “Go into all the world ...” Missionaries don’t get to pick and choose between safe and dangerous locations. Many are serving in places where they face opposition from the public, the government and from terrorists. Christ’s admonition to “be as wise as serpents” is a reminder that being bold doesn’t require recklessness, being obedient doesn’t require suspension of judgment, and making disciples doesn’t require trading missionary lives for new believer’s lives.
Be a Guardian
One of the most important things the church can do to protect its missionaries is to be a guardian—to help manage information that enemies can obtain and use against them—to literally fulfill the “wise as serpents” admonition. What does being a guardian on the cyber battlefield mean? To some degree, that is going to depend on the individual circumstances of each missionary. But it certainly includes:WORK WITH YOUR MISSIONARY to develop a list of “don’t use” terms and phrases and a glossary of terms and language that is acceptable. It isn’t enough just to prevent use of terms like “missionary” and “evangelize”. The language that the church does use (or approve) must be consistent with the language being used by the missionary in the field. For example, if your website uses the term “worker” but in the country he or she is known as a “student”, a conflict is created that an enemy may well detect and then exploit against the missionary.
CREATE SYSTEMS IN YOUR CHURCH to ensure that the “don’t use” terms never appear on a website, blog post, recorded sermon, social media, or anywhere on your part of the cyber battlefield.
TEACH YOUR CONGREGATION how to communicate with their missionaries. Some churches provide written guidelines... but isn’t this topic a great opportunity for a message on the commitment that we should all have to see the Great Commission fulfilled? Comparing the dangers the apostles faced with the threats against today’s missionaries? However your church handles this, educating those who communicate with your missionaries in how they can be “as wise as serpents” and protect the missionaries’ safety is another key task for the local church.
SEEK OUT YOUR PARTNERS to set up and work with them to create protective barriers. Keeping all these things under control within your church isn’t much help if there are five or six other churches out there, sending and posting items so full of “missionary” terms that there is no hope for the missionary to maintain the profile they’ve worked so hard on. This makes one of the roles of a sending church to seek out those other churches supporting this missionary and work with them to create the same protective barriers at all of the churches.
IMPLEMENT THE ROLE of a digital watchdog. This is another important role your church can provide. This involves monitoring the internet, websites, social media, blogs and any other searchable electronic forum for anything posted about your missionaries. Then, reading the posts to make sure that the content is fully appropriate and doesn’t contain any words or phrases that create risk or danger. Finally, contacting the source of the item in question and either removing or correcting the item. We suspect that fewer than one in 10 churches that support missionaries have thought through these issues and taken appropriate actions. This means that someone has to step up and lead—why not you? These are all ways that the home church can partner with your missionaries in a very real, very meaningful way in the battle to keep them safe and keep them effective on the mission field. And, the church is uniquely positioned because this has to be done away from the mission field and in a place where robust access to the internet and communications is available.Safety and Security
Churches sending missionaries should also make sure that a number of basic safety and security precautions are in place. In many cases these will be handled by the sending agency or mission board, but the home church also has a role to play. When the author served as a missions pastor, he discovered several different cases where missionaries sent out from his church through traditional sending agencies did not have these protections in place.
The first is both basic and critical: Overseas health and medical evacuation insurance. This is insurance that replaces (normally) or supplements (sometimes) the individual’s health insurance. Most typical health insurance policies exclude or limit coverage outside of the home country, and very few offer any meaningful medical evacuation insurance. This type of insurance is readily available and is often offered aspart of comprehensive church insurance programs. However it happens, the sending church should make very sure that all of their missionaries are covered by this type of insurance.
The second is like the first: If there is a need for your missionary to evacuate due to political, environmental, terrorism or similar non-medical reasons, how is that managed? Who decides? Who pays? Are the resources needed going to be available? These are issues that need to be discussed between the sending church and the sending mission agency. Typically, they fall within the sphere of responsibility of the sending agency (not the local church). But if they are not in place, the sending church should take an aggressive role in making sure these issues are decided and the needed resources are available.
The final area may seem to fall outside the “security” world, but that’s actually not the case. This area is member care and pastoring of the missionary on the field. Research and real-world experience all demonstrate that missionaries who are battling spiritual, emotional or psychological issues become less and less effective in their Great Commission ministry the longer these issues go unresolved. Experiencing them in an overseas setting, a foreign culture, and far away from their support systems typically escalates the problems. Many missions sending agencies have member care support, but a number don’t. A complicating factor is that sometimes missionaries are unwilling to discuss these types of issues with a representative of their organization, fearing career consequences. These issues together can spiral into a situation where the health of the missionary is in jeopardy, judgment may be impaired, and that is always a safety and security problem.
These three areas may seem to be the responsibility of the mission board or sending agency, and there is indeed some truth to that observation. The author has served both as a local church missions pastor and as a security consultant to mission and sending agencies, and some experience balancing the role of the local church and the sending agency. Something that has helped the author reconcile this issue is a statement that a good friend, and a missionary sent out from my church, says about his role: “we are overseas staff of our home church”. He’s right—we are his church. When I was the missions pastor, I was his pastor, and those relationships do not change.
How does the local church protect their missionaries in areas of danger? First, by working in partnership with the mission board or sending agency. Second, by protecting them from communications that can sabotage their ministry and even put their lives in danger. And always, by remembering that whether the missionaries have been on the field for one year or 30 years, they are still your “overseas staff ” and you are always their church. [This article was reprinted with permission by Anthology magazine, May 2017, Vol. 5 No. 1, page 36-40. You can read more articles from Anthology on the Missio Nexus website.]
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District support, partnership help replant small church in Scotland by Gina Grate PottengerA church in Scotland is replanted -- and growing -- after district leadership sensed God was not done with this congregation, and a young pastor agreed to take on the challenge.
Dunfermline, Scotland – When then-District Superintendent Philip McAlister arrived at the Headwell Church of the Nazarene on Easter Sunday, 2015, he hoped to bring encouragement to the small, struggling congregation.
Through difficult times, the congregation had been whittled down to almost nothing, but several were still faithful. On that day, just two were in town for worship.A woman and her son walked in 30 minutes late. She said that she had once known the Lord, but walked away from Him. However, the Spirit had awoken her that morning with conviction that she should be in church, so she had come.
“Their presence showed us that the Lord was still interested in His church in Dunfermline,” says McAlister. “The original two said they would do what they could to help. Without them there would be no congregation there today.”
Although there had been discussion among the British Isles North District Advisory Board about closing Headwell, the group visited the church. The district’s “Church Planting Dream Team,” a separate group of visionary pastors selected to assist in strategic church planting, also visited Headwell. Everyone agreed the church should get another chance.
Sammy Robinson (center in photo below), a young Nazarene from Northern Ireland, was just graduating from a Bible college in Belfast, preparing for pastoral ministry. McAlister asked the young man to consider taking the church as his first official ministry assignment.
“I didn’t want it, to be perfectly honest,” Robinson said. “There was definitely at least one more option on the table which was a lot more attractive, but I told him I’d go away and pray about it. It was the best and worst thing I ever did,” he added with a smile.In August 2015, Robinson began as part-time pastor, with Pastor Nick Daldry who would serve as co-pastor alongside him for one year.
The two focused on helping the church begin a healing process, and rediscover its Nazarene Wesleyan-Holiness identity. After the first year, Robinson has continued alone as part-time pastor.
“With God’s help I’m really trying to instill a culture of prayer and mission into it, but that’s hard graft,” he said. “There appeared a definite need to return to those Nazarene Wesleyan-Holiness and Early Church values right from the outset.”
Slow rebirth
During the careful process over the past two years, the church has experienced a rebirth, with average attendance growing from a handful to between 15 and 20.
“I wouldn’t say we’re numerically strong, but we are definitely spiritually strong and very healthy,” Robinson said. “That’s formed a foundation. When people start coming in now, it’s a lovely atmosphere and a congregation that love each other and in this way are living out the love of Christ.”
Cathie Johnstone felt led to the church in 2015, following a vision she believed God had given her many years before, that God was going to do a great work among those who didn’t yet know him. When she met Robinson and heard his calling to and vision for the church, she said “how my heart burned when it turned out to be the same vision I’d had for all these years.”“During the months that followed, almost everyone expected people to flock to the church, but that didn’t happen,” Johnstone added, “and thankfully it didn’t, because it would have been chaotic. We were reminded that our God is a God of order and there were things that still needed to be organised and put in place before the people came into the church.”
Since then, two women accepted Christ through the church and were baptized. Those who are coming are “just so hungry for the Word of God,” Robinson said. “A few of them have said that they’ve never been so close to Jesus.Most of the current attenders are elderly, reflecting the neighborhood’s relatively large shut-in demographic, but at least one young family from the nearby working class estate has begun to attend, and is inviting friends to visit, as well.
Johnstone said neighbors now receive church members warmly when they have knocked on doors and chatted with people over Easter and Christmas seasons.
Strength from partnership
Headwell’s new health is due in part to the support and partnership of the Trinity Church of the Nazarene, which is just a 30-minute drive away in Perth. Trinity has taken Headwell under its wing by sending musicians to lead worship, because it has more talented musicians than it can use each Sunday. Lending them to Headwell on a rotation is a win-win for both churches. Robinson is also on the Trinity staff part-time, under lead pastor Jim Ritchie, who is also the district’s current superintendent, and who was on the “dream team” that helped decide to keep Headwell open.
“The situation in Dunfermline is one of the creative gospel opportunities which we as a district are pursuing to support a church community in the Kingdom mission God has called them to,” Ritchie said. “The appointment of Pastor Sammy Robinson, with the support and encouragement of the church in Perth, gives us the opportunity to build a strong link between two locations with very different contexts and resources, but with one heart for Jesus. It is a partnership of mutuality in Christ, which I honestly believe gives us strength to rebuild and is a model I anticipate we will follow in other places in our district.”Despite the victories, the path to healing and rebirthing Headwell has not been easy.
“I’ve learned church planting is hard,” Robinson said. “I’ve learned that the days you want to quit the most is whenever God is just about to do something. He is on the move and certainly not finished with us yet!”
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