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Register for Together for Adoption's Fall Conference on Missional Orphan Care

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This is a guest post by Dan Cruver, director of Together for Adoption.

Want to learn more about missional living and our call as Christians to care for orphans in their distress?

Last year over 1,000 gathered together in Austin, TX to consider The Gospel, the Church, and the Global Orphan Crisis. Join us this October 21-22 at Redemption Church (Gilbert Campus) in Phoenix for Together for Adoption (T4A) Conference 2011 as we explore the theme Missional Living, the Gospel and Orphan Care.

As written in Reclaiming Adoption: Missional Living Through the Rediscovery of Abba Father, “To live missionally means to live each waking moment in light of the gospel so that it increasingly affects every part of our lives for the glory of God’s grace in our fallen world” (p 17). James 1:27 tells us that the practice of true religion necessarily involves caring for orphans in their distress. Therefore, to live missionally means that the Gospel is increasingly moving and empowering us to care for those who live on the razor-sharp edge of our world’s brokenness. Whether we are conscious of it or not, the Gospel is at the center of missional living and the evangelical orphan care movement.

General session speakers include: Darrin Patrick, Tullian Tchividjian, Tim Chester, Bryan Loritts, Juan Sanchez, and Jeff Vanderstelt

Worship Leaders: Shaun Groves, Aaron Ivey, and Jimmy McNeal

General Session Hosts: Shaun Groves and Johnny Carr (National Director of Church Partnerships at Bethany Christian Services)

Save $30 by registering this week for Together for Adoption’s October 21-22 orphan care/adoption conference (read full-details here). You may now register for just $75 today, July 26th, through Saturday, July 30th. This limited-time discount is over $30 less than our current early bird special. Take advantage of this super early bird price and help us spread the word about it this week. This sale ends on Saturday, July 30th at 11:59pm. Register here for this super early bird rate.

Note: If you are coming with a group from your church, this would be the perfect opportunity for your group’s members to register.

Short Documentary of Cape Town 2010

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Below is a short documentary of the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization that was held in Cape Town, South Africa, last October.

Here’s the intro from the website:

Cape Town 2010 has been called the most representative gathering of Christian leaders in the 2000 year history of the Christian movement (Christianity Today).  Four-thousand Christian leaders representing 198 countries attended the Congress in Cape Town, South Africa.  The Congress was brought together by a globalized leadership team from Africa, Egypt, Malaysia, India, North America and elsewhere.  Several thousand more leaders participated in the Congress through the Cape Town GlobaLink, Cape Town Virtual Congress and Lausanne Global Conversation.  Learn more about this gathering by watching this short documentary.

Church Productivity: Organizational Effectiveness and Not Personal Effectiveness

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This is a guest post by Loren Pinilis. Loren blogs on time stewardship at Life of a Steward.

For a long time, my desire has been to not waste my life. I wanted to do great things for God and to bring him as much glory as possible.

But I was going about it all wrong.

My thinking was refined by Dave Harvey’s Rescuing Ambition and by what Matt has said here on What’s Best Next.

I had an individualistic view of good works. Productivity was all about what I personally could contribute and accomplish. I looked for ways to use my strengths and to follow the callings and burdens that God had given me.

But I’ve realized the New Testament model for effectiveness is strikingly different. Instead, we see God working through his church. We see the passion of the apostles to build up this corporate body. We see God creating, refining, and growing local congregations of believers — and expressing his love to the nations through them.

This should radically change our view of productivity. We shift from a model that focuses on personal effectiveness to one that centers on organizational effectiveness. The most important thing is the team record, not the stats of the players.

This organizational productivity is not about finding fulfillment in our ministry. It’s not about making sure our gifts are utilized to the fullest. It’s about what’s best for the church.

There is a relationship between personal effectiveness and organizational effectiveness. God did, after all, give us strengths and gifts that he intends for us to steward well. But when spiritual gifts are discussed in the Bible, it’s in the context of the church. These gifts are given so that we join with others who have complementary strengths – and together we build up the church, serve the needs of others, and fulfill the Great Commission.

The danger, however, is when the church becomes merely a vehicle for us to pursue our personal ministry goals. In the desire to maximize our own individual productivity, we end up devaluing the local church. Instead of the church being a functioning body, it becomes some Frankenstein’s monster of individual parts sewn together.

I like the way Dave Harvey puts it: “The church shouldn’t merely accommodate our ministry; it should help define it according to the present needs of the church. This means if you have a burden for adult education but the church needs someone to teach kids, then grab the milk and cookies and get your lessons ready.”

“Having a heart” for a particular area of ministry is a signpost pointing you to an area where you may be the most productive. Passions are often God’s way of showing you how you can contribute to the greatest organizational effectiveness of the church.

But the performance of the body is the final measure of success — not our fulfillment. Not our individual accomplishments.

If the pursuit of our lives is to bring God glory, let’s make sure we’re doing it in a way that honors him and his body. Let’s do what will help the church the most — asking first “what needs to be done,” rather than simply “what would I like to do.”

In South Africa

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I’m in South Africa for the next few weeks for the Lausanne Congress.

For this week, I’m with John Piper and some others from DG as he speaks at a couple pastors conferences.

Then, beginning Sunday, I’ll be in Cape Town for the actual Congress. It’s a gathering of more than 4,000 Christians from more than 200 nations to discuss the state of global Christianity and world evangelization. The first congress was called by Billy Graham in 1974 and was a major landmark in the progress of modern missions. The second congress was in 1989, and this I now the third. You can learn more about it from the Lausanne website and the helpful article in Christianity Today, The Most Diverse Gathering Ever.

While I’m here I’ll post some updates from the congress and possibly some various insights on issues of missions strategy, Christianity and culture, solving large global problems, and just being in Africa.

Giving to the Lausanne Congress

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In a little less than a month, the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization begins in Cape Town.

The first Congress was held in 1974 and is regarded as a milestone in the history of modern missions. Here’s a bit of the history:

In July 1974 some 2,700 participants and guests from over 150 nations gathered in the Swiss Alps for ten days of discussion, fellowship, worship and prayer. The Congress achieved an unprecedented diversity of nationalities, ethnicities, ages, occupations and denominational affiliations. In fact, TIME magazine described the Lausanne Congress as “a formidable forum, possibly the widest-ranging meeting of Christians ever held.”

Congress participants heard addresses from some of the world’s most respected Christian leaders of the time, including Graham, Samuel Escobar, Francis Schaeffer, Malcolm Muggeridge, and John Stott. Ralph Winter’s plenary address, in which he introduced the term “unreached people groups” was hailed as “one of the milestone events in missiology.” In contradistinction to those calling for a moratorium on foreign missions, Winter argued that because thousands of groups remained without a single Christian witness, cross-cultural evangelization should be the primary task of the church. Dr. Scott Moreau (Evangelical Missions Quarterly) and Dr. Mike O’Rear (Global Mapping) have called the people groups concept “the most significant development in evangelical mission strategy over the last 25 years” (Moreau 1998).

Lausanne II was held in 1989, and the third Congress is next month. You can learn about the Lausanne movement here.

I noticed that as of last week, there are still some funds left to raise to ensure that the Congress is fully funded. This would be a worthy cause worth giving to, and if interested you can give online at their site.

Upcoming Lausanne 12 Cities Conversation Thursday Night

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I’m looking forward to attending the Lausanne Congress this fall in South Africa. Prior to the congress they are hosting 12 conversations in 12 cities to start a conversation on major issues facing the church such as global poverty, injustice, world evangelization, and more. The next one is this Thursday night at Saddleback Church. It will also be webcast live (7:00-9:00 Pacific Time). You can find more info here.

Also, here is the description from that page:

The Saddleback Conversation Gathering

Global Poverty, Injustice, Other World Faiths, HIV/AIDS, Religious Persecution
We live in a new world with new realities, and it’s time for a new conversation about the internal struggles and external pressures facing the Church. 12 Cities | 12 Conversations, hosted by the Lausanne Movement, are free gatherings in strategic US cities to facilitate conversation among church leaders, thinkers, pastors, authors, musicians, advocates, artists, social entrepreneurs, and YOU.

Business as Missions in the Wall Street Journal

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This was a good article from last month on business as missions in the Wall Street Journal. Here are three interesting excerpts:

Faith-at-work movements have been popular at least since the 1857 businessmen’s revival in New York City, in which noon-hour prayer meetings were so full of the city’s professionals that many businesses closed during the gatherings. But churches have typically kept business people at a distance, needing their money but questioning their spiritual depth. With the business as mission movement, that has changed. In 2004, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism, founded by Billy Graham, featured a track on business as mission. At a recent missionary conference in Hong Kong, Doug Seebeck says mission leaders apologized to the business people present. They had been guilty of asking for their money while keeping them in the foyer of the church, outside of the sanctuary.

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Now Mr. Seebeck says, “Business is the greatest hope for the world’s poor.”

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While advanced economies question capitalism, Christians who work in developing countries see how essential business is to provide jobs and health care, build communities and even minister to souls. For these business owners, a desk job overseas has become a full-time ministry.