The Boring Church Helper Routine

My church has a new senior pastor – my former youth pastor at the same church, actually. Hearing him talk about doing something for Jesus that excites you strikes a chord with me for a couple reasons. For starters, when I was a teen in his youth group, I did what seemed impossible and started a Bible study \ outreach at the state’s most secular boarding school. I wasn’t even sure that any of my classmates were Christians, and while I discovered a few might have saving faith, I was blown away by who came to the group and the conversations it started with non-Christian friends. I didn’t think these people would come to a weekly study, but they wanted to meet every morning over breakfast plus have a longer weekly study. Years later, at least one of those friends became a Christian, after hanging out with my college friends and eventually joining our church.

It was scary and overwhelming at times, but at least it was exciting. I went on to do even scarier and exciting things in college, starting international student ministries at OSU through Chi Alpha. My campus pastor had asked me to start the ministries and serve as an officer in our group that year. We started the international ministries with me, one international student who sometimes attended Chi Alpha meetings, one Christian American student who wanted to help, and that same friend my high school. He wasn’t a Christian yet, but he wanted to help and was my most devoted volunteer. Through the friendships he made, he became a Christian.

Three months into the adventure, we finally had four students come to a social event, and we were estatic. Two weeks later, they brought more than 20 friends to another event, and two weeks after that, about 75 students attended a welcoming party the day before fall classes started. Our ministry was launched, and I spent the next two years coordinating investigative Bible studies for Hindus and Muslims curious about Christianity, endless social events, trips to airports and Walmart, and discipleship groups for Christian internationals. With everyone’s help, we went from having one international student who sometimes attended to having more than 10 internationals in worship every week and many more plugged into friendships and hospitality services.

Fast forward to today, and the truth is, I’m bored with my current church helper routine. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m active, but only those who know me really well know that I’m not challenged. I’ve felt that way for sometime, but Pastor Darren’s insistence that boring Christianity isn’t good makes me more aware of it. I’ve going to do some news things in the church, like teaching a five year olds class, that I am mildly excited about. There is the possibility of me taking on some new things in our young adults ministry too, as the previous leader moves on and another couple takes on the “pastoral” role.

Yet, I worry it’s just going to be another church helper routine, when what I crave is the opportunity to lead something that gives other people the opportunity to help. There are so many people in our church who want to do something to positively impact the community, but they end up competing with each for the same spots of service in the church.

I want to be the one who starts something new. I’ve got a plan in mind, but until then…. what do you suggest?

My Personal Mission Statement

Knowing I’m struggling a little to discern what God wants me to do about work vs. an overseas assignment, one of the directors at work suggested I write down the long-range vision I believe God has for my life. Being the bookworm that I am, I bought The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and Life.

Working through the exercises in the first couple chapters, I managed to write a mission statement for my life that encompasses my personal and professional life. Here it is:

My mission is to communicate God’s great glory (ie, worth, goodness) to others in a way that compels them to advance the knowledge of His glory in all the earth and especially among unreached people groups.

That encompasses my professional life as it clearly explains my desires to help people see the goodness found in Christ and persuade them to take a more active role in sharing that Goodness with others.

It also provides direction for my personal endeavors, as I want my life and character to truly communicate who God is to my family and friends. And believing that making Him known and bringing Him glory (by life and deed) is the essence of Christian life, I most certainly want to have a part in encouraging those I’m in relationship with to do just that.

That mobilization thing

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the idea that I could me a missions mobilizer. I love to write, I love to design, and I know the Web. I love to communicate the importance of involvement in the Great Commission, and I feel like I don’t get to do that nearly enough. So why not develop a site where I let it all out? Or write articles for sites geared to the emerging church generation, start a MySpace group, participate in online forums, encourage those I’m in relationship with to be more involved, and blog about it all?

I don’t know what the right strategy is, but I do think it’s time for me to start doing this. At work, when anyone suggests that I did more than what was required or otherwise suggests that I shouldn’t expend so much energy in my work, my response is often, “This is who I am; this is what I do. This [promoting missions] is what I will be doing, in one way or the other, for the rest of my life.” It’s time I just start doing it every way I can, whether that’s tied to an organization, employer, church, or not.

Going forward, I want to start a blog devoted to my experiences in missions mobilization and communications. I’ll write about the things I create at work, the message boards I participate in online, the articles I publish on different websites, and the people I talk with at church and elsewhere. The blog will be the journal of my mobilization efforts and my reflections along the way. (My first task is to name the blog. Any suggestions?)

Of course, a blog about my efforts to mobilize those within my circle of influence is only as good as my efforts to mobilize. And so I’ll do more to communicate the missions vision to the church. I’ll continue participating in related message boards, but I’ll write some articles for Christian websites, especially those frequented by the younger generation. Some of the missions topics I want to write about include:

• Missions’ Goal – calling all nations to praise Him
• Support roles in world missions
• The priority of the least reached
• “But what if I’m not called?”
• Postmodern missionaries
• Motivations for missionary activity
• Communication tips for missionaries
• Online media strategies for missionaries and agencies
• Top 10 missions books

God’s will and me – missions mobilizer?

I work for a denomination’s world missions agency. It’s not the denomination I’m a member of though, and I had decided to pursue an overseas missions assignment through my fellowship, the Assemblies of God. Now, things have changed a bit, and I may stay longer than planned.

That’s caused me to think a lot lately about what God’s will for my life really is. Clearly, His general will for me is the same as every believer, to love Him and serve Him and be transformed by Him. Specifically though, I know I am called to a lifetime in missions, and I’ll most likely be employed in a related area for my entire career, whether I have a salary or raise support.

I’ve known for a while that mobilization and least-reached peoples are what I’m most passionate about. Communicating the vision and needs to the body of Christ is what I want to do, and I want to communicate it in a way that leads to action. I want to help people go, pray, and give. It also goes along with my desire to provide resources online to missionaries to help them learn how to better communicate with their supporters.

The work I planned to do overseas is primarily in communications – helping to make the missionary’s and region’s needs known to supporters.

Put all that together, and I’m starting to realize that mobilization is where I really belong. This quote from an article on George Verwer’s site explains it well:

“If your heart’s cry is for the whole world,
if you can’t seem to hear God directing
you to go to one specific people or area,
if you’re gifted naturally and spiritually
in communicating and encouraging,
perhaps your strategic niche is that of a
mobiliser. You can encourage, exhort,
prod, lure, hand-hold, cajole and pray whole
churches into a sharper vision of their part in
God’s global purpose.” – Bob Sjogren and Bill and Amy Stearns

New Ministry Strategy and Media Blog

I came across a new ministry strategy and media blog today, Forward Thinking. Recent posts includes topics like strategic volunteering, defensive blogging, and ministry branding. All are written from a decisively Christian view and seem to reflect a genuine desire to glorify God through the strategic use of media, technology, and business principles. For instance, in the post about strategic volunteering, the author demonstrates how the principle reflects Biblical teaching, quoting Eph. 4:15-16 in support. The blog doesn’t smack of a desire to increase a church’s size through slick marketing; rather, it reads like genuine Christian service meant to enable churches to communicate and function more effectively, for the glory of God.

The blog reflects my own desire to merge my skill in communications with my passion for world missions. I’ve thought about starting a blog or website geared to helping missionaries better communicate their stories, but I’ve never got past the thinking stage. Seeing this blog, and the (possibly new) Lucky Rock media ministry \ ministry strategy \ mobile & Web ministry group that it is connected to rekindles my dream .

New Job in World Missions

Well, it’s official. I accepted a job in the World Missions office of a denomination headquartered nearby. I’ll be the graphic designer and Web editor for their foreign missions department. A lot of my work will be to improve and expand their Web site, helping missionaries get the word out about what they do, thereby increasing donations and prayer. I’ll also design banners, prayer cards, and all kinds of other printed materials to support their ministry efforts.

I’m super excited about the job, as you might expect. I had hoped to leave for the Middle East to serve in a similar support (and evangelism) role soon, but with my medical issues not entirely resolved (at least not to my doctor’s satisfaction), that plan was on hold. I’ve been happy with the development of my business, but on a whim, I checked online to see about local jobs and found the designer job at the PH headquarters. It all seemed too perfect to be anything but God’s will. I’ll continue to do some side work for About.com and the EDNF to supplement my income, but I’m enthusiastic about beginning to work full-time in a role that supports world missions.

Update

As the date lines testify, it’s been forever since I’ve written here. Since I last wrote, here’s what has happened:

• I graduated from college in December, 2006!
• I started writing for About Windows on the About.com network
• I redesigned the website of the Ehlers-Danlos National Foundation
• I had a kazillion prolotherapy treatments, which dramatically reduced my joint pain
• I attended the World Missions Summitt and committed to spending at least a year in cross-cultural, missionary work

Topics I want to Write about

Below are some of the topics I’m interested in writing about. I’d love to find websites where they could be published. Otherwise, look for them here.

• Scandalous Grace: From Worst of Sinners to Friend of Jesus
• Finding Pleasure in Serving Christ
• Women in Ministry
• Becoming a World Christian