Tuesday, November 22, 2011

With Grateful Hearts This Thanksgiving


We pray you and your family are prepared to have a wonderful Thanksgiving Celebration.  Joan and I are overwhelmed with grateful hearts to God for His goodness and grace toward us.  This year has been the biggest test of faith of our lives.  However, we have never grown more and scene the hand of God more evident.  1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us that “in everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus”.  We know this to be true in the depths of our souls. 
God has done a deep work in our hearts of healing and renewal.  He has kept us on our faces praying and crying out to Him every day.  Dependence and trust are wonderful gifts when they are centered in Jesus.  Thank you for your prayers for us and know we have been praying for you.  Let us know what God is doing in your lives.
We are also thankful that God after breaking us is using us in greater ways than ever before.  We will be partnering with so many in 2012 to begin Church Planting Movements in strategic places around the world.  We will be trained in December with the most effective Church Planting Movement strategy in history.   In Asia, Europe  and Africa there are hundreds of thousands of churches being planted through this movement.  Co:Mission will be in partnership with the International Mission Board to assist churches in the U.S. to be part of this global movement.  We will be attending this conference in December in the windy city of Chicago.
Sunday November 27, we will be worshiping with our friends at Dorrisville Baptist Church in Harrisburg Illinois.  On December 4th we will be at  Eldorado First Baptist church.  Pray for the time as we challenge these church families to strategic involvement to fulfill Christ’s command to go make disciples locally and globally.
Final details are coming together for our team going to Haiti in January.  Pray for the details to come together for building the house in La Saline.  We also need wisdom on the communities we will be planting more churches when we return with our team in March. 
Finally, pray for provision for this ministry.  We need a great deal of funding to do the work God has called us to do.  We are stepping out on blind faith and scheduling our trip to the Amazon in February.  This will launch our partnership with IMB and World Wide Church Planters to establish a Church Planting Movement in the region.  We know God has called us to this effort.  Pray about giving to this effort that promises to plant hundreds of churches and reach thousands for Christ. 
We love you and pray your hearts are filled with thanksgiving for the goodness of our God.
Until the Nations hear,
Mark and Joan

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Charles Stanley addresses the need for what Co:Mission does!


The way they do missions today is totally different from the way it was done when I grew up in the Philippines.
Forty years ago, it worked like this. An evangelist would go out and share the faith. Some would respond. After they responded, the evangelist would gather these new Christians into churches. (This order is important as we will see in a moment.) The churches would take on an approximate form to a church in America. They would have a choir and a Sunday School and a constitution. (How can you run a church without a constitution?) They would have committees and Wednesday night supper, church counsel, & visitation. In the early days we even built buildings with red bricks, a tall steeple and white columns out front.
Then, we grouped churches together in Associations, State Conventions and National Conventions. We created institutions, seminaries, agencies and so forth. We sent our young ministers to our seminaries and they received degrees that duplicated the kind of degrees they can get here. In short, we not only exported the gospel, we also exported the whole form of the way we do church in America. We exported not only the wine, but the wineskins as well.
Around 20 years ago, we started experimenting with a different model, one that is now known as Church Planting Movements. It is the dominant model of missions around the world these days. I found this statement on the International Mission Board's web page:
International Mission Board’s Overseas Leadership Team adopted a vision statement: We will facilitate the lost coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ by beginning and nurturing Church Planting Movements among all peoples.
Now, the phrase "Church Planting Movements" is probably not all that clear to you, as it was not to me. I think of "Church" as "Church as I know it." These are more like house churches, as was made clear to me on a recent trip to Richmond and a conversation I had with an IMB executive there. These are not churches as we think of churches. The executive clarified this to me adding, "In fact, we try to keep them small and continually reproducing."
These Churches in the Church Planting Movements are more like Sunday School classes than they are Churches as we think of them. They are small groups led by laymen that meet in homes. They are house churches.
I am curious what comes to your mind when you think of the phrase "House Church." It has always had a bit of a negative connotation to me. It has always spoken to me of people who could not get along with the people in traditional churches and decided to just do church at home. But, these are not rebels. This is an intentional strategy. Those who follow this strategy are following the top leadership of the IMB.
One other caveat. I don't see an essential difference between a Sunday School style group and a home group. To me, a group is a group is a group. Whether the group meets on campus on Sunday morning or off campus during the week does not change the essential character of the group. There  are pluses and minuses for both home groups and Sunday School style groups. One is not essentially superior to the other. A group is a group is a group.
I have done a little reading on House Churches in America. I was surprised to learn that many who participate in House Churches in America actually attend a traditional church on Sunday morning. This raises an interesting question. What is the difference between this house church and any other home Bible study? One word: attitude. They see this house church as just that, a church. It is just as legitimate as the traditional church, it just takes on a different form.
Church Planting Movements
This change of strategy is resulting in unprecedented world-wide growth of the church. For example:
Southeast Asia
When a strategy coordinator began his assignment in 1993, there were only three churches and 85 believers among a population of more than 7 million lost souls. Four years later there were more than 550 churches and nearly 55,000 believers.
North Africa
In his weekly Friday sermon, an Arab Muslim cleric complained that more than 10,000 Muslims living in the surrounding mountains had apostatized from Islam and become Christians.
City in China
Over a four-year period (1993-1997), more than 20,000 people came to faith in Christ, resulting in more than 500 new churches.
Latin America
Two Baptist unions overcame significant government persecution to grow from 235 churches in 1990 to more than 3,200 in 1998.
Central Asia
A strategy coordinator reports: “Around the end of 1996, we called around to the various churches in the area and got their count on how many had come to faith in that one year. When they were all added up, it came to 15,000 in one year. The previous year we estimated only 200 believers altogether.”
Western Europe
A missionary in Europe reports: “Last year (1998), my wife and I started 15 new church cell groups. As we left for a six-month stateside assignment last July, we wondered what we’d find when we returned. It’s wild! We can verify at least 30 churches now, but I believe that it could be two or even three times that many.”
Ethiopia
A missionary strategist commented, “It took us 30 years to plant four churches in this country. We’ve started 65 cell churches in the last nine months.”
Abdul
Abdul came to faith in 1987. The team found more than 350 evangelists serving in 29 districts, nearly 2,300 pastors serving among some 4,000 churches, and 89,315 baptized members—all direct spiritual descendants of Abdul. More than 23,000 of the baptisms had occurred during the previous year alone. And that’s only part of the overall church-planting movement now spreading through Abdul’s people, who number in the tens of millions, comprising one of the largest unreached groups in the world.
Consider this chart I found at
By AD 1430, (1%) were Bible believing Christians. 
By AD 1790, (2%) were Bible believing Christians. 
By AD 1940, (3%) were Bible believing Christians. 
By AD 1960, (4%) were Bible believing Christians.
By AD 1970, (5%) were Bible believing Christians. 
By AD 1980, (6%) were Bible believing Christians.
By AD 1983, (7%) were Bible believing Christians.
By AD 1986, (8%) were Bible believing Christians. 
By AD 1989, (9%) were Bible believing Christians. 
By AD 1993, (10%) were Bible believing Christians. 
By AD 1997, (11%) were Bible believing Christians.
It took 1430 years for 1% of the world population to become Christian. Now, we are gaining 1% every 3 or 4 years. The percentage of Christians doubled between 1970 and 1993 from 5% to 10%. WOW!!
If this doesn't seem quite right to you, consider this. I heard a statistic from George Barna years ago that said that North America is the only continent on the planet where the church is not growing. It feels like we are not making progress because we are in the United States. But, in many places around the world we are making rapid progress.
I'd invite you to do some reading up on Church Planting Movements. Do a search on www.google.com and start chasing down the links. It is exciting.
Let's experiment together with how to make Church Planting Movements a reality in America.

We recently had the privilege of hosting Josh Hunt for our mid winter Sunday Morning Bible Study leadership conference. The emphasis on investing and building relationships is the key to reaching our society today. Fellowship is premium in a world where we face an epidemic of loneliness. People are looking for more than a "friendly" church. They want a place where they can grow and develop lasting relationships that will assist them in building a biblical foundation for life. If you have not had the opportunity to have Josh Hunt in your church or attend one of his conferences, make plans to involve your leadership. His concepts will make a difference in your thinking about how simple it really is to reach out to people.
Sincerely,
Charles F. Stanley
Senior Pastor First Baptist Church Atlanta

Monday, November 14, 2011

Missions Exists Because Worship Doesen't



John Piper probed our minds with this truth that missions exists because worship does not.  I understand the truth but I think it needs clarifying.  Man does worship.  However, the glory often worshiped is not God’s glory. In Romans 1:23 Paul tells us that man “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man”.  Verse 25 tells us that man “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator”.  
Every time we break the first command by making other things as more significant than God we live out the foolishness of this text.  God longs to be worshiped.  He knows that worship is the highest call His creation can respond to.  We are at our best when we adore the king of kings and Lord of Lords.  David tells us that praise is becoming and that God inhabits the praises of His people.
Missions is telling others about how to get connected to this awesome God!  It brings liberty to people who are in bondage to false gods both here and abroad.   That Testimony is not something that is shared only when we cross the ocean but even when we cross the street.   David expresses God’s heart in Psalms 86:9, “All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord and shall glorify your name”. 
In Revelation John sees the results of centuries of the church being on mission when he declares; “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the lamb” Revelation 7:9-10


Thursday, November 3, 2011

Update from Co:Mission


It’s fall and the leaves are beautiful in St. Louis.  The St. Louis Cardinals are world champs and God continues to open doors for Co:Mission Ministry.  Life is good!  We are thankful that the opportunities to stand before God’s people and share God’s heart for the world keep coming.  The global strategy God has given us continues to stir believers as the army of great commission partners keeps growing.
God also continues to open up new opportunities around the world.   Knowing we can’t go everywhere we are selecting those places that have strong leadership, great openness to the Gospel and little or no Gospel presence.  Two exciting new areas He has opened up for us to harvest souls is the Amazon Basin of Brazil and Kenya, Africa. 
When the former International Mission Board President, Dr Jerry Rankin, was asked what the most fertile harvest field in the world was?  His answer was the Amazon Basin of Brazil.  At present there are no missionaries working this area of over fifty thousand tribes.  Only a few ministries like Co:Mission are laboring in this huge harvest field.  God is creating a partnership that will join this ministry to key leaders in the region.   Together we believe we will see thousands come to Christ this year.
We have also been praying for an opportunity to get to Africa.  Several opportunities came up but none seemed right.  However, recently Joan and I were able to meet with a strategic leader and his wife from Kenya named Pastor Titus and Rose.  Titus has a network of thirty leaders with whom he would like to plant churches.  He shared with us that he needs the strategy, energy and focus of sharing the Gospel that Co:Mission can provide.  We are very excited about building a long term relationship whereby we can reach tens of thousands for Christ and plant hundreds of churches over the next several years.
We continue to be amazed at the faithfulness of our God.  Thank you so much for your prayers.  We are convinced God is only opening these doors and building these partnerships through the prayers of His people.  Please continue to pray as we dedicate November and December to raising the financial resources needed to fulfill this God honoring vision.
Until the Nations Hear,
Mark and Joan