Well, another round of research on cultural cognition theory seems to indicate that if you are seeking to speak to and influence a particular person, it is as or possibly more helpful to match their style or appearance than it is to adopt their line of reasoning. This is according to a recent article on the BBC along with several academic papers that it references.

Check out these world population graphs, which depict the number of people in the world based on latitude and longitude.

What do you think?

In response, Chris Clayman and Meredith Lee wrote ethNYcity: The Nations, Tongues and Faiths of Metropolitan New York. This book provides readers with a thorough description of 82 pieces of New York City’s beautiful cultural mosaic. Each two-page spread outlines quick facts about a people group, and info on when they came to New York, where they live in the metro area, what they believe and how to pray for them.

Your local dose of cultural variation may not be as diverse as what one can find in metropolitan New York. Possibly reaching the lost in your community involves interacting with people of the same background and ethnicity as you. However, many American Christian churches reflect a stereotypical American image—white, middle-class individuals of distant European descent—while the nations remain unreached down the block or on the other side of the tracks.

Clayman and Lee believe awareness of the lost cultures in our backyards creates responsibility. So what nations live around you? Don’t ignore them; get to know them.

Creating a resource like ethNYcity may your first step to starting a movement of impacting the nations in your community. Or learn more about how to reach the lost of urban centers by attending an ethnéCITY conference near you.

Written by Natalie Bunch. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in North Carolina.

Join us on Wednesday, October 19th, for an About East Asia miniconference. The free event will be held in the LifeWay Tower from 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM, and will feature Ed Stetzer and workers from East Asia. These get-togethers are like short, informal missions conferences with lots of practical ideas for how to select a people group or city, how to begin to develop a strategy for them, and how to cast that vision for your church.

LifeWay will serve coffee and pastries. Upstream will serve good conversation that helps your church think and act like missionaries.

The Upstream Report, Fall 2011

Each month, Upstream submits a report of our activity to those individuals, agencies, and churches to whom we are accountable. This long-form, text-based, private report includes schedules, statistics, financial activity, communications strategies, and information regarding personnel.

In order to promote transparency and give our audience a better picture of what we do, we will release a (much more interesting) graphical summary of those reports each quarter. These graphics are available to all and meant to give a quick glimpse into the workings of Upstream. As you pray for us, please consider the information included in the image.

We are thankful to be part of this ongoing missions conversation, and we appreciate our partners, readers, and friends.

Please feel free to post questions in the comments section, or send via email.

At the beginning of last week The Upstream Collective, in partnership with LifePoint Church in Smyrna, Tenn., facilitated a Sending Church Roundtable. With the premise that the Great Commission belongs to the church and the conviction that Christ has called her to make disciples of all nations, we simply felt led to help some churches of varying size, time in existence and networks to think and talk through what it does and might look like for the church to think and act like a missionary.

The conversations with friends old and new were good. Both the presentations and discussions were rich with experience and hope. Everything was going along just fine, and then somewhere in there it happened.

Imagine leaders from 25 churches working together, conversing with one another and learning from each other. Even with many senior pastors present, that ADD thing didn’t happen. The “I’m so glad you are here to listen to how we have this whole church thing pegged” monologue didn’t get dialed in. But what came through from so many was a commitment to seek to pursue what it means for their church body to function as the sending church. The primary question we seemed to hear was, “What are the next steps?” This was not a question simply about the next proposed Sending Church event, but a more a question of, “How do we move forward in obedience?”

While Upstream would love to provide the notes to study and prepare for the test, this one does not seem so simple and straightforward. Sure, elements of it may be such as, “Pray more.” That’s always a safe and right answer. But significantly more difficult to discern is the whole of how your church takes the next step in being on mission. We’re still trying to figure out how to best facilitate helping the church move forward in this way. Frankly, I think the Upstream leaders were expecting to deal with a different question coming out of this. Instead we are stuck with a better, though more difficult question of how we now take action steps. Thankfully it’s not our question to answer for each church, but helping you arrive there may be a bit more important.

As we try to figure out how to move forward in this, since something seems to have happened, we encourage those 25 and other churches to continue to pursue what it looks like for each church to think and act like a missionary. Some are already traveling a good ways down this road, while others just got disoriented enough to begin to evaluate their course and destination.

To aid in that, we encourage you to check out what has already been posted at thesendingchurch.com, as well as check in here over the upcoming weeks as we bring more of the conversation from the Roundtable for churches to deal with. And as you continue on your current journey or prepare to start it, we wish and pray the very best for you, and look forward to talking with and encouraging you along the way.

Written by almost an M, who is networking and consulting in the United States. He seeks to learn, grow and influence others while seeking to play a part individually and with his family in obeying the Great Commission.

8:45AM Jason Dukes talking starting the day by talking about being both Spirit-led AND strategic.
Pray.
Value and validate the people you equip.
Celebrate when people get on mission.
Get specific about how you’re equipping your people to plant the gospel.
Investigate and relate. Rather than declare vision and rally people to go, you’re the Gatorade-giver, the resourcer and encourager for people to follow what God has told them.
Sow for the general sending, then cultivate for the contextual relationships.

Instead, Americans love to develop strategies before forming relationships.

In Orlando, they require would-be church planters to do one- year internships before they get the ok to plant a church.

Now, Westpoint church is sending families to Montreal.

8:53AM Roundtable discussion: “What are the implications if the will of God is sought by the pastor, the mission pastor, key leaders, the whole church staff, or individuals?

What are some ways to lead your church to seek God’s will for your church on mission?

9:08AM When the church leadership casts vision, the whole church gets on board. When it’s left to the individual, we get spread out.

There may be a tension between what the leaders feel led to do and what the individuals feel led to do.

9:20AM Kyle Goen (Lifepoint, Belgium) Equipping is extremely important.
Our team was formed into a community over a year and a half before we left for Brussels. It is a healthy, biblically-modeled community.

We have 2 families already in Belgium, and we’re still working to equip the other 3 families as they prepare to come.

“Friend-raising.” working to build a network not only of supporters, but of friends of the ministry. We have partners who go with us.

Team-building is key. Establish leadership of the team, working relationships. Training together. financial counseling, marriage counseling, serving together.

9:53 Caleb is asking a question from Freakonomics, “which is more dangerous, guns or swimming pools?”

Churches and mission orgs are prone to key on the scary stuff to emphasize training. Whereas the top reasons people leave cross-cultural settings are health, children, financial and conflict in order.

Often, missionaries will say they were not prepared for the loneliness. We don’t prepare well for that, we often don’t know how to prepare for that.

10:00 break

10:15 Mike Wall from Henderson Hills in OKC shared about some of what they learned about engagement in Barcelona.
– learned to be learners
– importance of humility and how learning aids that posture
– take intercessory prayer people and allow them to set their own schedule

10:26 almost an M facilitated discussion of engagement and how a proclamation / presence strategy impacts engagement. Also, groups discussed key factors in determining if our engagement strategy fits those to whom we are called.

10:51 Henderson Hills ministry in Barcelona looks like a big party.
Andrew Jones (aka Tall Skinny Kiwi) shares that mission is about throwing parties and telling stories.

11:05 Matt Elkins with The Village Church shares about how they do selection for those to send out. Those that aren’t doing it here aren’t likely to be doing it there. They don’t send those out.

There are “not yets” that aren’t living a full gospel-centered life now, they are not ready to go yet.

Jason Bourne missionaries and escapism doesn’t make for healthy mission expectations.

11:29 Caleb is sharing that mobilization is a military term and perhaps not the best method of setting realistic expectations.

Some churches expect those that join their church expect their people to view themselves as missionaries.

If everything is mission, then nothing is.

There is often a discrepancy between the assessment issues for a mission agency vs for a church. There are different issues that impact this.

Don’t just take assessment criteria from an existing mission process or organization. Seek this out in Scripture.

12:23 Joe Parnell with Mobberly Baptist is sharing about partnership and the role it plays in their church planting around the world.

They have planted in Anchorage, planting in Vancouver and have just relocated a couple to the UK to plant.

They are looking to partner with people and open to many things though there are theological barriers to close partnership.

In Malawi, they saw 5 churches planted in a one week trip. All still functioning with avg of 100 in attendance. Yet in other places like Romania, they have seen the CP process to be very slow.

When going into a new place, the first thing they look to do is meet and bless imb people. After that, they are open to looking to partner with those that are theologically similar.

The way you communicate with and motivate your people is through story-telling. Joe’s favorite part of his job is weekly writing a story for his people to see how God is working.

Important to identify what missionaries are there that would be good to partner with.

Good to partner with an association if they are helpful, but when not, they press on anyway. Some pastors will hate you for planting in their area, but you love them and move forward.

12:53 Larry McCrary is sharing about partnership from Scripture and his experience.

- Paul was thankful for the Philippian church for their ongoing church.
- There was longevity in the partnership.
-

Partnership is mutual. It involves high levels of trust. Respect is essential. Partners believe in one another.

An important part of partnership is being invited in.

Identify partnership needs to know what types of partnerships to pursue.

Look for partners in your own context. God is doing something in your church. Find those partners.

Look for existing networks like SkyBridgeCommunity.net or BAMmatch.

Internationalization of missions is key to what God is doing in many parts of the world.

1:03 Nathan Sloan from Sojourn in Louisville is sharing about diversifying approaches to sending people.

When the people that are being called to be sent don’t fit old patterns, what do we do? We think differently.

It would be easy to have a critical spirit, but that’s not what we are to be about.

Our first family that we sent out was with our church from the beginning. We didn’t send him well. As things began to explode there, we started to send teams and other short-term personnel to help them. This has developed into a regional partnership.

Our church is all about teams. Finding the right people on the ground and then working with them to develop healthy teams.

Starting to look more into southern France to place 3 to 5 couples that are business persons. Looking to establish a coffee shop and roastery. This would help fund their presence.

Getting behind Steve Timmis to see his network develop throughout western Europe to plant churches.

Also in partnership with Crowded House where we will swap our interns.

Want to highlight that we can send our people locally. This cross-cultural approach can be intimidating. 10% of our city is immigrants with some groups not having a single believer. We have identified those groups that do not have a church among their people to send our guys out to.

Our website for international missions. International.sojournchurch.com

1:32 Caleb sharing about professionals that quit their job to be full time missionaries to go and work like crazy go set up platforms to share the gospel.

Sometimes we can do with less creativity and take who we are and what we do to the mission field. Need to move from seeing mission as full-time to seeing it as part-time or shared-time or even to a virtual presence.

What if through clear communication like an info graphic we can help teachers and trade guys see how they can use their skills and career.

1:38 Pat Hood sharing on Ongoing Support (Remember Care)

We want to care before they get there. It helps us send out healthier people.

Some things the senior pastor cannot delegate. This is true of caring for team leaders on a regular basis. I go to each of our spots at least twice a year.

We also send short-term teams and individuals to go and be with these people. It is best for us to go in smaller groups. We have business persons traveling and families vacationing to spend time with and bless our teams.

I don’t go with our mission teams to these locations because I will meet with each family unit and other leaders in town that they want me to meet with.

These things have to be driven by the senior pastor. He has to drive it from the pulpit or it won’t get done. I try to keep mentioning our teams to our congregation.

Our small groups adopt a team or a family. We have a point person for each initiative. This person helps keep these guys in front of our people.

When our people return home, we provide mission housing and help in every way we possibly can. Also, we provide professional marriage counseling as needed, provide an annual retreat, etc.

2:20 Larry McCrary on member care for the sending church

This is the story of Epaphroditus. He is the church’s messenger, the minister to his needs.

You may need to outsource some of this. There is professional counseling available for those that need it.

Great to hear from the church “what are your needs?” It is hard for a missionary to feel like they are asking for something.

Snail mail packages are meaningful. They show that someone really cares.

MOU is important to set expectations.

2:36 Jason Howard of Stonecreek Church dealing with accountability

In a matrix, we have a high trust / low trust vertical with a low control / high control horizontal. As people were at or moved toward a high trust, high control quadrant, our leadership became more positive on working with those people or organization.

3:14 Caleb on accountability
- resentment makes effective accountability impossible. Relationship is key! Boxes to check make it virtually impossible to have effective accountability.

Often accountability is best not done by the pastor, but by a close friend.

22 churches have been invited to participate in a roundtable discussion about the role of the local church in global mission. These practitioners have come together as peers to share ideas, best practices, and lessons learned as they’ve engaged in God’s redemptive work among the nations.
Lifepoint put together awesome swag bags for the event:

10:38 Welcome to the live blog of the Sending Church roundtable event! We’re setting up now.

10:40 By “we,” we mean “Larry and Rodney.”

2:28PM Taking a look at the round tables for tonight’s roundtable:

4:42PM Off to get last cup of coffee before starting up.

5:18 People starting to arrive. Good to see old and meet new friends.

6:46PM Pat Hood kicks things off with a word of prayer.

6:47PM “People spend lots of time and money on doing good things, but only the gospel will change the world.”

6:50PM Pat telling how Lifepoint, Smyrna became a Sending Church.

6:51PM Acts 13. We begin with prayer and fasting. In 2004, God led us to pray and fast. Early Christians left Jerusalem due to persecution. They didn’t really have a plan, but they took the gospel with them. But in Acts 13, we see a plan develop.

We fasted for a week, and met each night to pray together. No preaching, no other plan.

We were in the process of building a new building, and we assumed that God’s calling to fast and pray had to do with preparing our hearts for that.

During that time, God called many families lout of our church to the international mission field. When God does that, it affects you. You’ve got to rethink how you spend your time and money. Now, 100% of our budget goes to mission. It’s everything we do. Missions isn’t a department of Lifepoint, it’s our heartbeat.

7:30 @calebcrider is sharing about his experience as “the disconnected missionary.”

He didn’t see a way for people to participate in Barcelona until Mike Wall from Henderson Hills was persistent / pushy.

That experience helped Caleb try to figure out how he as a missionary could get out of the way and help churches live out the mission.

Through this and the launch of Upstream, he was able to meet with Pat Hood and Lifepoint and others like them.

Serving as a missionary helps you think and see things in a different way, but that influence does not often come back this way.

7:36 @larrymccrary sharing about his mulligan he would take in church planting…he would seek to put mission in the DNA from the beginning.

7:41PM It’s a good thing Larry McCrary lost his church planting books- it forced him to turn to the scriptures!

7:4PM We don’t send ourselves, our Lord sends us.
We must be obedient to the Spirit.
In Acts 13, God called Paul and Barnabas. For the church at Antioch, it was just another day. They were doing what they did- fasting, worshiping, and praying.

7:50PM Larry prays, “Thank you for this reunion of likeminded churches on mission.”

7:51PM Almost an M tells the perfect story of the church on mission. It’s a composite of what we see God doing through the churches present. (We will post the text here on the blog).

7:52PM “It’s the story of the Church humbly taking responsibility for the mission of God.”

It begins with the Most High, who sends us out. He speaks, the church responds. He leads, she follows.

The sending church “holds the ropes” for those sent out.

7:58PM The sent and sending God called His bride to be a sent and sending church.

How do we fit into the story?
Objectives for our time together: learn from one another. Advance the conversation. Process together how to. Implement what God is telling us.

“What are the barriers to our direct involvement in God’s global mission?”
Finances
Creating momentum
Past failures, baggage
Old paradigms
Culture shift
Time/priorities re-arrangement
Avoiding “programming” missions

8:06PM A great group of practitioners here.

Today and tomorrow The Upstream Collective has the honor of discussing this question and more with the leaders of about 20 churches at the Sending Church Roundtable.

Generally, we’re discussing nine topics, including what it means for a church to send out its own, how to be strategic and Spirit-led, and how to select a worker or team to send. While we hope church leaders get many ideas from these two days, we pray this time together will help foster community between these churches. They need to know they are not alone.

What is a sending church?

The Great Commission belongs to the church, as modeled in Acts 13. A church that sends out its own in order to have an incarnational presence in the world is a church that obeys the call of God and the Great Commission; it is a sending church. This means not only engaging the community around it, but the lost in all parts of the world.

The Great Commission is a call from Christ to make disciples of all peoples both here and there. Some people view Acts 1:8 progressively—you start by reaching your neighbors and then move to the next step and then the next until the world is reached. But we live in a day where globalization makes this a here-and-there-at-the-same-time call; the church needs to find a way both locally and globally to be a part of the Great Commission.

Sending church beginnings

A church begins to look for ways to do this by starting with prayer. Wrestle with the question, “To whom am I sent?” Next, do research. I’ve seen churches sense a leading from the Holy Spirit through watching National Geographic or reading a brochure about an unreached people group. God can use anything to direct us.

Also, take a look at your congregation. How many people speak different languages, and what are they? Whose work takes them to international locations? Do you have a lot of teachers or medical professionals? Examining your church’s existing patterns may give clues toward where God is leading you to be on mission.

The next step would be to take a vision trip. Go to the location you think God is sending your church, explore what partnerships may exist and experience the culture and spiritual status firsthand.

Ultimately, a church needs to go where the Holy Spirit leads. If a church doesn’t clearly follow the Spirit’s guiding in this, then the first time it faces personnel changes in leadership or a difficult encounter among its focus people group, it will likely be the beginning of the end of its involvement with them. However, when a church obeys the Spirit’s guidance to be on mission, it sees barriers as challenges to take to God in prayer.

While you’re looking for where God may send you internationally, also keep your eyes open for the same people group in your own city. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for a church to send people to an international location while ignoring that same people group in their own area. Explore how to engage those people both locally and globally.

Challenges and blessings

Challenges
As a church does this it can face a few challenges as well as blessings. Challenges may come in the form of a lack of resources. Some churches may look at the efforts of larger congregations and in turn think because their own membership hits closer to the 100 mark, all they can do is give a little money.

This is shortsighted. A church doesn’t need to have a long list of resources, but to be creative. For example, it can contribute to God’s here-and-there mission through sending short-term teams and praying.

Another challenge can come in the form of time. Mission becomes a segment of a person’s life instead of who he/she is; it becomes a program instead of a lifestyle.

Blessings
On the other hand, when a church is obeying the Great Commission and seeking to be a sending church, a spirit of generosity begins to characterize it. This church is going to be blessed and enriched as it expands its worldview and sees the Gospel come alive in so many ways. As this church develops partnerships it realizes this Great Commission thing is not all about itself, but about God’s bigger picture, His kingdom, and doing whatever it takes to do His mission.

If you have questions regarding how your church can put feet to these thoughts on being a sending church, contact one of us by commenting below. We’d be happy to talk through some ideas with you.

Written by Larry McCrary. Larry and his family have lived in Europe since 2001, and have been involved in church planting both in the United States and in Europe. Larry is co-founder of The Upstream Collective, and is passionate about seeing the church think and act as a missionary both in its community and internationally. Larry blogs and tweets as part of an effort to influence the conversation of missions.

Follow Upstream’s live blog of the event here.

Check out this video about Greater Europe Mission in France from Sojourn Community Church and its custom Jet Set trip. Sojourn is working through the question, “To whom are we sent?” so it can be in partnership to take the Gospel to the nations.