Jason Dukes recently wrote a chapter in theMissionBook.com called Seeking the Sick. Read below to get more of Dukes’ thoughts on what it means to be the church among the “unhealthy.”

When you look for your next place to minister, do you search for the brokenness and the darkness?

Jesus said He did not come for the healthy, but the sick. Thus, those who say they follow Him should do the same. If the “sick” really includes those hungry and hurting for the love of the Father and the presence of “on earth as it is in heaven,” then it is valid to conclude the purpose of the church, to make disciples, is not simply to learn the ways of Jesus with the healthy, but also with the hungry and hurting. A church that only caters to the healthy is a church that is denying the validity of the Gospel and its intended implications.

Ill appearance

Seeking the sick may look unhealthy, which is almost counterintuitive; churches are supposed to promote health, right? Yet if we are loving and walking with the sick, critics may ask, “Why do you look so unhealthy, so in need of getting better, so riff-raffy?” This is similar to what critics said of Jesus in Matthew 9.

Giving themselves away
One local church expression in Winter Garden, Fla., runs a ministry that does more than put a Band-Aid on homelessness; they live out the mandates of Isaiah 58 and actually dine and relate with the poor. They not only offer meaningful and transformational services, but they treat the homeless as friends. Out of this ministry come so many stories of both reentering the norm of society and simply helping those who never want a home again (not all homeless individuals want to stop being homeless).

More than anything, their church family comprises a beautiful mix of people who give into one another in a diversity of ways. Critics look at them and remark, “I am not sure I could do that.” But they are doing it, together, and in turn modeling “on earth as it is in heaven” for the rest of us.

Becoming family, life-on-life
Another local church expression exists among the middle class artisans and young professionals of uptown New Orleans, La. They do more than try to attract locals with a hip gathering; they live and work among them, and are becoming family with people around whom many in a church culture would feel uncomfortable raising their kids.

The beauty of transformation abounds in the stories of these creative, talented young men and women. Sure, people say things that may seem offensive in the more cookie-cutter, conventional church. They wade through crises that may repulse some in the more, “I’m really fine,” shallow communities. But this is life-on-life, no matter how complicated or convulsive. And Jesus is wrecking and restoring both self-indulgence and self-righteousness left and right.

Healthy-sick approach

A church balances ministering to the healthy while reaching the sick in two ways: First, by admitting they are not as healthy as they might think they are, and thus relying on the Gospel more than their own perceived goodness. Unless we see ourselves as needy, we will be less likely to welcome others who are needy into fellowship with us.

Second, by viewing each and every person, both connected and disconnected with the church family, the way Jesus views us—as worth dying for. When we selflessly give of our lives, proactively care for one another and for our neighbors, and actually get close enough to see more than the assumed need, then we live out the love of the One who took the initiative and loved us first.

Written by Jason Dukes. Jason is a co-leader of the Reproducing Churches Network, author of LIVE SENT: You are a letter, and pastor in Winter Garden, Fla.

“Valuable information, very helpful! I appreciated your transparency as you shared from your experiences on the field. I don’t know that it could have been better. Thanks for your encouragement!” -David

“This was an exceptional time of training. Thank you so much for your encouragement, ideas and transparency. My kids are well equipped with so much information about the transitions ahead. They loved it!” -Amy

So you want to be a sending church. You wish to actively engage in sharing the Gospel with members of another culture by commissioning some of your own church members to live and work among them.

But you’re lost. Even though you’re sure of this vision God has clearly laid on your heart, too many unanswered questions seem to hang in a cloud above your head. What steps does your team need to take before you arrive on the field? How do you get there? What should you expect when you do? How do you communicate the Gospel once you do?

Take a deep breath; it’s going to be OK. Others have gone before you and want to share what they’ve learned along the way.

The individuals behind The Upstream Collective know these questions all too well. They have asked them, lived them and seen them answered. They have learned not only from observing others, but also through their own trials, errors and victories.

In its effort to help churches think and act like missionaries, The Upstream Collective offers training to churches wishing to engage members of other people groups by sending believers to live among them. This is not a one-time preparation conference; this is a long-term commitment to walk with your church through the planning and preparing, as well as the going and doing.

Three things Upstream hopes to accomplish with the pre-field training for a sending church include helping others:

• Avoid making mistakes and learn from others’ missionary successes
• Identify what a relocated family’s new normal will look like
• Identify strategy and the effects decisions will make on that strategy, all while being responsive to the Holy Spirit

This pre-field orientation can be spread out over a number of days. Topics covered may include:

• The theology of mission
• Doing mission in a post-Christian context and
• Practical tools of a missionary

It also may include a time of worship that challenges the team to experience what acceptable forms of worship may look like in other cultures. Other focal points, however, depend on the needs and priorities of each team. We’re not talking cookie cutters here; Upstream’s training is customized to each church.

“Mission training for church-based teams is not one-size-fits-all. The process has to consider team dynamics as it is rolled out,” Upstream’s Larry McCrary said.

Sending church training can also involve on-the-field acclimation once team members arrive in their ministry location. The learning relationship then continues as the team on the field continues to adjust to its new home. Yet those who relocate are not alone in reaping the benefits.

“We believe these skills not only help (churches) as they work abroad, but also as they work in their own communities,” McCrary said.

The core of helping a church think and act like a missionary may seem rather simple.

“At root, this is about walking in the ways of Christ,” Almost an M said. “Jesus was the incarnation of God that lived and walked among the people.”

Comment below with questions about this type of training Upstream provides, email us at info@theupstreamcollective.org or contact one of the Upstream leaders for more information.

Written by Natalie Bunch. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in North Carolina. She served as a missionary writer based out of Prague, Czech Republic, from 2007-2009, and plans to return to full-time international mission work with her husband.

God’s Stories
God’s Stories was developed to communicate to an Arabic audience the narratives of who God is and how He relates to his people. Native directors worked together to produce these visual forms of chronological Bible storytelling. Read Almost an M’s take on the project and catch glimpses of the videos at the God’s Stories YouTube page.

LovingMuslims.org
LovingMuslims.org is exactly what it sounds like—a resource for non-Muslims to help understand the culture of their Eastern-born neighbors and learn how to communicate love and truth with them. This site offers a prayer guide, group study, 9/11 resources, video testimonies and more.

theMissionBook.com
This online book has many authors—and the next could be you. Read through posts from Ed Stetzer, Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch, Caleb Crider, Larry McCrary and many others who have experienced God’s teaching and molding as they’ve pursued His mission for their own lives. Visit theMissionBook.com to gain a variety of perspectives on what it means to be on mission, and tips on how to be effective in doing so.

Unfortunately, the popular method for many churches wanting to engage in international mission is to pick from a list. Whether it be “UPGs” or Spanish-speaking countries or those inside certain longitudinal/latitudinal coordinates, the method of the moment is often nothing less than throwing darts. Yet throughout the book of Acts, it is the Spirit who sets apart, sends and directs people as they go. Ignoring His direction is nothing short of disobedience.

Today’s popular method is also on display in many of our American churches as it pertains to living missionally in our cities and neighborhoods. A church leader casts a “vision” for certain types of local outreach focusing on a few particular ministries from which the congregation can choose. It is likely that some within the church are gifted to carry out the local ministries chosen by the leader, but often many others are not.

It is the Spirit who gives gifts as He wills (1 Cor 12:11) so we, as a unified body, may make disciples among the nations. When we corral everyone into ministries to which they are not called and for which they are not gifted, we deny them the opportunity to “walk in the Spirit” and act according to the gifting they have received.

Conversely, I believe the most biblically consistent manner for determining the people/places to whom a church is sent is simply by asking God, who has orchestrated the Church and given the Spirit to lead. The pastor who equips must know the people he shepherds, help them understand their gifts and equip them to walk in their specific gifting. Thus, the manner in which the church joins God on mission is determined not by the passions and desires of an individual, but by the totality of the gifting within the local body. In other words, the missional direction is determined in obedience to the Holy Spirit according to the gifts He has given to the body.

Instead of engaging in (even good) things to which her people are neither called nor gifted, why would a local church not seek to be unified with other local churches that may be called and gifted to accomplish those things? Why not pray for/with those other churches, offer resources for the work to which they are called and ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers to those places (Luke 10:2)? Would this not lead to the greatest of outcomes–our churches operating as one, uniting by the Spirit and working together to accomplish the mission to which we are called (John 17:20-21)?

A church that thinks and acts like a missionary thinks and acts according to her sent-ness. This means we must recognize our gifts and our shortcomings. We will sometimes be on the front lines and sometimes unseen. Sometimes we will be getting our hands dirty and sometimes falling on our knees. We must surrender our will completely to the Spirit and give up our control, following His lead and giving all the glory to the only One deserving.

Written by Rodney Calfee. Rodney helps churches think and act like missionaries both domestically and around the world. He lives with his family in Birmingham, Ala.

One of Vandiver’s goals is to assist believers in befriending Muslims. Arabic-speaking Americans help meet the refugees’ basic needs through English and culture classes. What Vandiver has discovered is many Muslims then begin to inquire about Jesus.

“As we meet the needs of our North African and Middle Eastern friends, they often ask questions about Jesus, who is mentioned 44 times in the Koran,” Vandiver said. “Eighty-six percent of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists do not have Christian friends. We would like to change this stat.”

The SENT Collective exists to help the local church reach its community—including Muslims and other people groups—with the Gospel. One way it’s doing this is by hosting a SENT lab Aug. 11-13 in Austin.

The lab is open to all believers, and includes classes on mapping local communities, mobilizing believers and multiplying disciples. Upstream Collective’s Larry McCrary will lead the discussion on mobilization.

“The nations have come to Texas,” Vandiver said. “We want to equip Jesus followers to make disciples who make disciples among the nations in our state.”

Written by Natalie Bunch. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in North Carolina. She served as a missionary writer based out of Prague, Czech Republic, from 2007-2009, and plans to return to full-time international mission work with her husband.

Recently Todd Littleton, pastor at Snow Hill Baptist Church in Tuttle, Okla., wrote an article for TheMissionBook.com touching on this topic as related to the Church.

“Circumstances change, but our desire and intent to participate in the activity of God remains the constant. At least it should,” he writes.

Littleton admits that seasons come and go—sometimes a church is “in season” and sometimes it is “out of season.” However, as Paul indicates, the body of Christ is always to be ready.

Yet a church can become distracted. Something that was supposed to be a means to an end slowly becomes the end to which a church is bent toward. Littleton gives the example of local Sunday services.

“Formation and transformation may be encouraged in these gatherings, but rarely produced by them. In other words, these events support the patterns of flesh-on-flesh disciple making rather than lead to them. Over time, the pressure to report larger and larger gatherings makes the pattern of gathered worship an end. When the Sunday worship becomes an end rather than a means, the church is distracted from the mission of God as ‘sent into the world.’”

Littleton notes financial giving as another example. A church may seek to gather money for missions, but somehow these funds get transferred to the hiring of “professional missionaries.”

“In the course of supporting ‘missions,’ American churches may find it easier to give through channels that keep an integrative participation in ‘missions’ at bay,” he said. “Rather than embody the Way of Jesus, Christians become conduits in support of others who take on an elevated status for their sacrifices.”

Littleton noted even church-planting efforts can become an end instead of a means. He pointed out how one denomination is measuring its effectiveness “not on formation and transformation of persons and structures, but instead on numbers of churches planted.”

We are to emulate Jesus, who seemed to always be focused on God’s mission. While in Luke “Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem,” it appears He was bent on His purpose even before this statement.

“It seems as though no matter how near or far from Jerusalem Jesus traveled, He always had a sense of his sent mission of God,” Littleton said. “The Church should carry that same posture into the world as God’s collective of missionaries. The aim in these local communities of faith is then anchored to this posture.

“A Church ‘for’ the world looks like Jesus living ‘for’ the world in His day. Its only limitations under the Spirit are its imagination and will.”

Littleton recommends a church evaluate its conduct. Possibly it would be productive to ask, “Would our community know if we ceased to exist?” or “What would be missed by your absence?” Then a church may be able to take proper steps in being ready both in and out of season.

Written by Natalie Bunch. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in North Carolina. She served as a missionary writer based out of Prague, Czech Republic, from 2007-2009, and plans to return to full-time international mission work with her husband.

That makes sense, with 500,000 Haitian Americans thriving in the association’s New York City metro area, a 75-mile radius from Times Square. The group’s largest church is the French Speaking Baptist Church of Brooklyn (FSBCB), which started in a living room in 1965. They “almost immediately began chapels in New Jersey and Manhattan,” according to Russ, and today have planted more than 50 churches in French-speaking areas of New York and around the world. The current pastor, Jean Baptiste Thomas, has been on staff since 1965, and leading the congregation since 1969. He was bi vocational for 20 years. In fact, Russ said most of the area’s Haitian pastors are bi vocational.

How do they do it? Russ said training leaders is a major component of FSBCB’s strategy.

“Various expressions of Bible schools and certificate programs have been housed at this church since 1987,” he said. “Indigenous leadership development is the hallmark of their strategy. Their students are members of their churches and they end up pastoring the churches they begin.”

Rev. Valeus Lacoste has been a pastor for 13 years, and currently shepherds the French Speaking Baptist Church of Nassau. His role is to mentor upcoming Haitian pastors and encourage them in their development of Haitian churches in New York.

Whenever Lacoste hears about a new group of Haitians living in a certain area, he encourages pastors to plant churches there.

“We usually begin with prayer meetings at the local centers or in someone’s living room,” he said, “and invite Haitians within the area to worship and pray with us.”

From the beginning of a church plant, Lacoste said he and his colleagues look for local worshipers who have a desire to serve. After evaluating their biblical knowledge and church experience, they guide these individuals toward becoming local leaders. If someone wants to be a pastor, Lacoste encourages him to attend seminary; if he simply wishes to serve, Lacoste advocates that he to attends one of their Bible schools.

As for a church-planting budget, they collect from church offerings, “according to the grace of God,” and fundraisers.

Russ, whose job involves encouraging missional thinking and church-planting, pointed out the Haitian churches’ community-based ministries that reach back to their homeland.

“Most, if not all, of our churches have some kind of mission back in Haiti,” he said, “churches, orphanages, etc.”

It seems as though thinking and acting like missionaries is what these Haitian churches in New York City are all about.

Written by Natalie Bunch. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in North Carolina. She served as a missionary writer based out of Prague, Czech Republic, from 2007-2009, and plans to return to full-time international mission work with her husband.

You could begin at any one of several starting points. As we look at the mission landscape, we want to start with the first of three concentric circles–cross-cultural opportunities nearby. Nashville’s foreign-born population has more than quadrupled in size between 1990 and 2010. What’s more, Nashville has the fifth fasting growing metropolitan statistical area for a foreign-born population in the United States.

Tennessee as a whole is 12th in the nation for receiving foreign-born refugees and immigrants. One hundred thirty-five languages are spoken in Nashville area schools. Thirty-five of the 70 identified ethno-linguistic people groups in the metropolitan Nashville area number 1,000 or more and are less than 2 percent evangelical. The four largest unreached people groups in metropolitan Nashville are East Indian, Kurdish, Somali and Vietnamese, all of which number over 10,000.

This is our global training ground.

The second circle involves connecting with believers and church leaders from all over the world who have come to live in America. How can we serve our city by partnering with local Chinese, Vietnamese, Latino and Arabic congregations? Who are the Christ-following students at local universities? These people are bridges to the world; they understand different cultural perspectives and can teach us. They can be our consultants.

The third circle is to send. What if we, with churches of other cultures, developed an exchange program that involved swapping our budding leaders to serve on each other’s pastoral staffs for one year? After a year in another culture, they could come back and become a bridge person to that culture in our global training ground and with our consultants.

Furthermore, this kind of mutual exchange could give those individuals the gift of seeing how the world cannot be accurately viewed from a single cultural perspective. This is crucial because the best way we can fully understand the complexity of the Gospel message is to learn from others who are seeing the story from different angles.

We are all called to be on mission, wherever we are. Knowing where to start can be a challenge, but opportunities to reach the nations may be closer and more tangible than you think.

Written by Michael Carpenter. Michael serves as the Missional Instigator at Mosaic Nashville. Mosaic is an 8-year-old urban church plant that dreams of becoming a community that lives by faith, is known by love and is a voice of hope to the world around us.

So many of the amazing stories of what God is doing around the world is coming out of places where the Gospel is being preached for the first time. The practices are basic to evangelizing and discipling, and the church Jesus is building is being created in new and varied expressions that have incredible capacities to multiply and grow. We want to see this same kind of movement in Europe.

After spending 10 years in Asia and moving to Europe seven years ago, I’ve experienced a learning process of adapting and contextualizing to a new type of soil – a post-church and post-Christian context. Part of that has involved recognizing two basic starting points. One I have come to call reformation and the other, renaissance.

Renaissance reminds me more of the soil in Asia where little or no reference point of church culture or witness exists and things are starting from scratch. Reformation, on the other hand, is the attempt I see by many to get existing believers and churches to once again move toward missional lifestyles and embrace the whole of the Great Commission. Both are missional and heading to the same goal and end vision, but are quite possibly starting at different locations and in need of slightly different tooling and tweaking. This may have stunted the translation of what is working in the East to get it working in the West. I still firmly believe it can work, and it has been my struggle, joy and I believe a God-called role to help with this translation of church planting and disciple making movements into the Western European context.

Other conversations still need to happen as far as pastoral and apostolic strategies that will aid us in getting there – how they are different and often put into competition with each other when a partnering and recognition of how they could flow into each other might be better. However, that is a conversation for another day. What we want to gain here is the possibility that the soil in Europe lends itself to both reformation and renaissance, and that these are different starting points. If we recognize this we will be better at adapting and contextualizing our methods and best practices to equip those both inside and outside of traditional church structures to be church, do church and be on mission with God.

The soil in Europe has been experiencing a severe drought of the Word of God. The seed, which is the Word of God, has not been sown abundantly–really hardly at all–for way too long. We may have thought having the Bible translated into one’s mother tongue would be enough, but it has not then, and does not now relieve nor take away the responsibility of disciples of Jesus to be ambassadors by the words of their mouths and the deeds of their hands. The printed Word was never meant to replace our personal witness, and Europe is in great need of more laborers to sow the seed and get ready to bring in the harvest.

The constants will always be to witness and then disciple well – this is what translates. This is lacking in our context. We don’t need more or better forms of church; we need witnesses and parents who will raise up spiritual children who will reproduce. When we see God give birth to new believers, assist in their nurture, give them a strong ecclesiology of being the body with other believers in their context, and commission them right away to take the Good News to their family and friends, they will take on the work, create the best structures and multiply.  God has all the resources He needs.

Pray with us that He will tap the peoples of Europe and raise up more laborers and apostles for the salvation of her peoples and the nations to which she now gives new homes.

Written by Cevin Sweeney. Cevin and his family live and work in Germany.

In the first Reformation the Word of God was given back to the people, but the forms and structures of church remained mostly the same. Authority may have changed from Catholic to Protestant, etc., but clergy and men given prominence still ruled the roost. This new reformation in our day is in part about reclaiming the lifestyle of being a disciple or a follower of Jesus and the priesthood of all believers, hence making better disciples and reorganizing the base DNA and therefore the structure and forms of being church from the ground up. It is a case of the starfish versus the spider.

Church is becoming the people again on mission with God to fulfill the greatest commandment and the Great Commission – love God, love each other and love the lost. This is about rediscovering the qualities of the New Testament expression of church, which goes upstream in an individualized, compartmentalized and consumeristic culture. It is about being church, not doing church; being the body of Christ seven days a week in some form or fashion; building each other up; encouraging one another daily; being generous in heart and pocket in order to be participants in the missio Dei; and with Jesus building His church that will invade evil’s realm and tear down the long-standing gates that have surrounded communities and oikoi because the gates of hell cannot stand against the Church Jesus is building.

As we make use of the terms renaissance and reformation, the difference between the two is basically where the activity stems from: actions flowing from within the church toward missional will be seen as reformation; actions coming from outside of the church, or something new and different toward missional, will be seen as renaissance. At times these two may be seen as competitors, but should be seen as partners, enabling and quite often overlapping each other as followers of Jesus migrate back and forth between the two or co-exist in both spheres comfortably. Tension should not arise between the spheres of operation, whether coming from a reformation or renaissance arena – rather tension should come from whether or not we are being missional.

As is true in the Renaissance of the 15^th century, renaissance today will have within it some questioning of human authority and the status quo. Hopefully, the difference is this time it will not lead to enlightenment and the power of the human intellect, which led to individualism, consumerism and self idealism. Hopefully, this time it is leading to renewed emphases and belief in the importance of others and the potential of banding together. For us that means it is manifested in its greatest and most healing form when it becomes the Church of Jesus – He being the architect and source of salvation, with us coming together as followers in daily expressions of power and community on mission with God.

Reformation left the shores of Europe a long time ago. Many of us still refer to Europe as the land of the Reformation, and have this idea that it is preserved there. But Reformation ideas and practices for the most part exited Europe hundreds of years ago when the reformers and evangelicals all came to the New World. With the exception of England, which has seemed to maintain a continued presence of an evangelical and missional thrust, it has mostly disappeared or greatly dimensioned in other European lands.

Once they were gone, the state churches and the Catholic Church reasserted their authority. Their new enemy was no longer from within, but without – the Renaissance stayed. Humanism, enlightenment, Darwinism, self-realization – this became the new religion and worldview of Europe. If you eat of this fruit you will surely have all knowledge and become just like God. Superior race mentality and survival of the fittest were only outgrows of this quest to become gods and dismiss the existence or relevance of a Creator God. We hailed this as the end of the Dark Ages, but maybe it was just a changing of the guards.

I think the Age of Enlightenment is coming to an end, and young people today are realizing this has not led to a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. They have seen the greed, selfishness and arrogance of those in front of them who have preached individualism and the quest for self-expression, self-enlightenment and self-attainment at the cost of the good of the many. Individualism and self-rights belie a certain amount of inoculation and responsibility toward the misfortune and needs of others. We tell ourselves, “They are lazy or incompetent. They have the ability to change their circumstances if they really want to. I am not responsible for their choices and their plight in life. I am doing well and I am a good person – that is all that really matters.” But is it all that really matters? How long can people turn a blind eye to injustice and poverty and the oppression of evil men over helpless masses? We see this voice crying out for justice and following through as social action becomes a growing theme today.