Looking forward to your post on Monday.

Can you imagine asking someone how they met their wife? How they fell in love? How they got engaged? And then trying to replicate it….it would look stupid to try to take something so natural and organic and make it a process….but we do this with His bride all the time.

@Karl: Thanks for the insight. I’m glad I’m not the only one feeling this.

@Roxie: I appreciate your candor about a mission field I’m embarrassed to admit I hadn’t even considered before. My nationals here would be equally insulted if a foreigner picked up the bill for the same reasons. In fact, my nationals expect to pay for VBS here (they see it like a day camp, which you would also pay for); when an American tried to offer their VBS for free, no one would attend. Once he started charging, the camp is now always overbooked. And yes, expectations versus accountability is on the short-list of blog posts.

@Mentanna: Welcome to the blog! And no, it’s not cynical. It is true, because numbers are easier to measure than people’s spiritual growth and maturity. The first question we’re always asked is, “How many do you have on Sunday?” I’ve never, ever, EVER been asked, “How are your people’s spiritual growth? Are they maturing in their walk?” Yet that’s the important part because seats filled does not equal the same number of active, maturing disciples of Christ.

cynical or true? a little of both?

Again – I find similarities as we work in North America with Native Americans. Working within the dominant culture is confusing, especially when the Native American culture where we serve is primarily below the surface (think iceberg).

For instance… Random Acts of Kindness has been popular in the last few years. In the nearby town here in Wisconsin, the “white” church began to use this as an outreach to the community. When someone from the church offered to pick up the bill for a Native couple at a restaurant, the Native couple were greatly offended that someone felt they couldn’t pay the bill…

In another instance, a kids’ Discipleship curriculum was promoted to our mission agency as “Cross-cultural.” The only thing cross-cultural was that the characters were of different ethnic groups (none of which were Native American). Nothing was done to teach in a narrative, concrete method, which would have been much more fitting of the cross-cultural tag line.

I guess what I’m saying is that it’s easy to want a “quick fix” – a program. What’s really needed is to strip away the surface efforts, and – as you stated – to concentrate on the genuine relationship building and discipling, which takes time and perseverance, not bells and whistles.

Now – this would be a perfect segue into the tyranny of meeting expectations of supporting churches versus accountability… perhaps another day…?

In fact, the latest trend in the area that we’re prepping to leave is “adoption ministry.” Churches with no missionaries and no church planting efforts are instead switching to adoption ministries, spending lots of money to send young American couples to Eastern Europe and Asia to pick out babies and somehow that is passed off as missionary ministry! No thanks.

I’ll stick with slow growth, friendship-based, small-group to church plant based ministry. Thanks for the post.
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