I was a bachelor-pastor for four years before marriage. Once my marital status changed, I knew two major shifts in my approach to ministry would also be forthcoming. The first thing to go was an eighty-hour work week I’d grown accustomed to as a single shepherd. Having an attractive reason to retreat from the study at the end of the day made that initial change fairly painless.
The second change did not come as easily. I had a blas attitude toward missions. Our annual missions conference was a necessary, but flat, event on the church calendar. Missions seemed far removed from the immediacy of sermons, funerals, weddings, kids’ clubs, and budgets. It was too “out there” to arrest my time or interest. That is, until I got married. You see, my wife is an MK.
My missionary-kid wife’s zeal for world evangelization rubbed off on me. She helped me see that missions was much more than potluck dinners, mothball-scented displays, and boring slide shows. But the lasting change in my lackluster attitude toward missions occurred when Wendy and I moved to a small, newly established church in Northern California. As pastor I would teach them a lot about serving God. As a congregation they would teach me much about serving people around the globe.
Missions mindedness had always been the cachet of Crossroads Church. The church had been birthed by a larger Covenant congregation in the neighboring community. As a home missions baby, the infant congregation understood her dependence on volunteers, dollars, and prayer support from the mother church.
Missions for them was not spelled p-o-t-l-u-c-k or s-l-i-d-e s-h-o-w-s; it was spelled g-i-v-i-n-g. The Crossroads congregation was itself a missions project, an outpost of sacrifice and service in an ever expanding secular frontier. The umbilical cord that had sustained life in the embryonic fellowship inspired a similar willingness to support life elsewhere.
First, two young college graduates felt called to parish ministry and detoured into seminary. Then, for one young couple, the lure of cross-cultural ministry became too strong to resist. Both of them teachers, they spent their summer vacation in Southern Mexico on a short-term mission.
Another couple, who had already gone to Mexico, spent the summer among the Cree Indians in Canada. Still another couple left for seminary. Then a few families agreed to help another Covenant church get started by driving twenty miles each Sunday to form a worship nucleus.
It was to this small, yet ministry-minded, congregation that I was called, yet my enthusiasm lagged behind. It was an average-sized church with a stable membership base, but with a great deal of turnover. The mobility of our congregation did not result simply from job transfers; individuals and families would find us, find faith, and find themselves headed to a foreign field.
I was genuinely pleased that our ministry enabled others to hear God’s call. World evangelism was beginning to infect me, but at this rate our church would never make the list of Top Ten Churches in America. I wanted to pastor a successful church.
Then one day, while in a stew over losing so many leaders, the significance of pastoring a congregation with a heart for the world crashed in on me. Crossroads Covenant is a successful church!
No, it isn’t a megachurch and never will be. We have barely scaled the 200 barrier. But we are enormously successful. We are a sending church. We are a greenhouse church that knows how to grow our own missionaries and transplant them into the soil of the jungle or the soiled ghettos of the city.
My depression lifted. The thought was liberating. A small church can be just as successful in cultivating missionaries as a big church, maybe even more so.
With a new appreciation of what, in God’s economy, is truly a successful church, I began to celebrate our unique calling as a greenhouse. I also gained new appreciation for my role as the human gardener of that greenhouse-my lackluster attitude toward missions was long gone.
Upon reflection, I have noticed that the following ingredients have combined to create the missions enthusiasm in our church.
The example of the pastor
One of the most valuable gifts I could give my congregation was to take off. Three years ago I took a six week leave of absence to volunteer among the Eskimos of Western Alaska. My wife and I, accompanied by our two preschool children, responded to a plea for help from a missions radio station in Nome.
Although confident that God had provided this opportunity, I still had all sorts of questions as we juggled our 3-year-old and 1-year-old daughters throughout the seven-hour flight. Could we really make a difference in just a month and a half? Would our church get along without us? Would our girls adjust to life without toys, television, and playmates? Would my college radio skills find unobstructed passage from my memory banks to the KICY control booth?
My concerns were quickly put on ice. Our time in Alaska was significant both to the Alaskans and to us, and upon our return I was pleasantly surprised to discover that our absence had not hampered the church. Quite the contrary: I returned to a body whose heartbeat was stronger than ever.
Because I was willing to answer the Spirit’s promptings, the church learned more about how to be the church to one another. They could visit the newcomers without me. They could call on those in the hospital. More importantly, they learned that the Great Commission is doable. If our family (small children and all) could brave the frontier for six weeks, so could theirs. No longer was I simply challenging my flock from the comfort zone of my pulpit. By taking to the tundra, I had given them an example to follow.
In the process I benefited personally in unexpected ways. I am a wiser pastor after six weeks in Alaska. I can preach more persuasively on the need to vault cultural barriers with the gospel. My interviews with missionaries on furlough are less abstract. My prayers for those in primitive settings are more informed and frequent. I understand, like never before, what a letter from home means to a far away missionary.
Since our trek to the Northland three years ago, both our associate pastor and youth pastor have led short-term missions projects to Mexico, with significant involvement from those in the church. Pastoral leadership sets the cadence for the mission-minded.
Early education about missions
Our church has programmed missions awareness into our children’s ministries. During the year our Super Church (ages 4-9) channels its weekly offerings and prayers toward mission projects of their choice.
Among other things, they have bought headphones for the radio station in Nome, fifty Bibles for Christians in China, and layettes for the Crisis Pregnancy Clinic in our city.
Each summer our Vacation Bible School includes a mission focus, with guest missionaries giving testimonies and showing slides. (This past year one of our missionary couples even plugged in as VBS counselors.)
Missions trips for youth
For years high school groups in scores of West Coast churches have sent SWAT teams to Mexicali (an outreach program sponsored by Azusa Pacific University). During their Easter vacation these teenagers lead Vacation Bible School programs for Mexican children, help in building construction, and learn how to witness to their faith. Our youth have been involved in similar activities in Baja. The trip expands their lives and their view of the church’s role in the world.
Statistics indicate that an increasing number of Christian kids in junior high school and high school prefer going someplace where they can make a difference in their world versus having a good time at a “cush” conference center. Kids like that need only a challenge and an opportunity.
Regular publicity for short-term missions
Ever since we returned from Alaska, we have trumpeted the need for volunteers in Nome. In my conversations, newsletter blurbs, sermon illustrations, and flyers in the narthex, I have kept the opportunity for service before our people. Two years passed without anyone showing an interest.
Our first taker surprised me. A divorced businessman in our church was forced by his company to retire early. Bob decided he needed a different setting to think through his options.
Where would that evaluation take place? Not on a beach in Waikiki, but in the dusty town of Nome. For two years he had heard and read about the need and the opportunity; when time was ripe for him, he knew where to go.
Adoption of a project
People need to sense that a project is possible, which means I must make it bite-size and specific. For our church, making a “mission possible” has meant adopting a Mexican village. Through numerous visits to Baja, our congregation has discovered a means of hands-on involvement with national Christians on a regular basis.
We send a team of 8-10 people (generally six adults and four children) three times a year. We support, encourage, and assist the local Nazarene pastor in his work in the village and respond to his specific requests for help. We have helped lead VBS, build a classroom building, roof the sanctuary, and bury irrigation pipe. Nothing motivates increased missions involvement and giving like seeing concrete benefits firsthand.
Ongoing visibility for missionaries
Neither an annual missions conference or a world map in the narthex with snapshots of the missionaries is enough to breed world Christians. I found that our church needs regular mission challenges and news about the field.
In recent years we have bumped up the number of Sunday mornings when a missionary preaches. I have found that from time to time our congregation needs and wants to hear other voices calling them to compassionate outreach. We have learned to take advantage of retired missionaries as well as our missions headquarters from which we can secure guest speakers.
Our Sunday bulletins often appear to be as thick as the Sunday newspaper. In addition to denominational missions flyers, we have found that there are many inserts with the wallop of a clean-up hitter available from various organizations that speak to mission themes and needs (e.g., The Church in the World). Routinely we excerpt letters from our missionaries and retype them as bulletin inserts.
Monthly we insert an empty sheet in the Sunday bulletin as an encouragement for our people to write a brief note to the missionary family of the month. These are collected with the offering and mailed in bulk to the letter-starved missionaries.
Funding for short-termers
If our missions awareness program accomplishes its goal, interested individuals, both young and old, will be wanting to test a call to career missions or simply go for a brief assignment. They are tender shoots with a growing desire to go wherever the Spirit of God leads them, fragile plants that we as a church feel obligated to nourish with the financial support necessary.
As a result our fund-raising is an ongoing process. Our congregation has become accustomed to car washes, bake sales, spaghetti dinners, and love offerings at the door to keep our kids and their parents headed to the field. Our local missions giving, which is separate from our coordinated church budget, is managed by the missions committee. They insist that money be waiting in the bank for those wanting to test a call to cross-cultural ministry.
I’m still tepid about potluck dinners, artifacts, and slide presentations. But I am now unequivocally committed to pastoring a congregation of world-serious Christians. There’s an indescribable joy in sending out missionaries who have grown out of the fertile soil of your ministry. That’s one kind of hothouse Christianity I’m willing to defend.
-Greg Asimakoupoulos
Crossroads Covenant Church
Concord, California
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
