Gospel in the glut: evangelists' workshop

The average Brit is exposed to 1500 advertisements per day, the average American 3000! This information glut concomitantly causes people to filter communication and become skeptical about the veracity of the information that makes it through their grids.
So when we share the Good News of Christ with someone, it is quite possibly perceived as commercial message number 743 for the day, sandwiched between the $2000 rebate with 0% financing, and the free vacation for two to Hawaii (just remember to read the fine print!).

In light of information overload, (not to mention other realities of postmodernism and postchristendom), how then might one communicate the gospel so that it does not just bounce off the eardrum, but actually registers in the mind and heart?

Alfredo is the organizer and facilitator for the Evangelists' Workshop

March 2-4, members of the GBIM Europe team will gather in Lisbon for an Evangelists’ Workshop. Alfredo and friends will be sharing with us some of their insights as people on mission in Portugal for two decades and more.

We will also spend time in prayer and reflection in the Gospel of John and the Song of Songs to rekindle our heartfelt love for Jesus, the one we proclaim.

Together we will explore prayer, hot hearts, corporate testimony, service, creative approaches and other God-guided ways that help people comprehend the difference between tabloid communication and truly Good News.

Ministering to ministers

Detlef and Manfred of the German Missionary Fellowship shared at the GBIM Europe Shepherds’ Workshop last week. My teammates and I listened intently and interacted with them about their philosophy and principles for caring for over 300 missionaries in 76 countries.

Detlef (left) and Manfred (right) are director and Africa coordinator respectively for the DMG (Deutsche Missionsgemeinschaft: www.dmgint.de)

The first priority of the DMG is: "to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to people of all nations and races."

The purpose of the DMG is: “We want to glorify God by helping churches to send out and care for their missionaries who build up missional churches among and together with other peoples.”

And to pursue that purpose, they have determined that “member care” / pastoral care / shepherding must be a high priority so that missioners remain close to God, focused on and enthusiastic about their God-given call. The goal is to both see missionaries start strongly AND finish well.

John (above) organized and led the workshop until he had to leave because his mother had a stroke. Sam (below) then took over and ably led the workshop.

The DMG has a holistic view of caring for their missionaries. To preclude the recurrent tendency of missioners to become ministry machines, the DMG seeks to promote the health of body, soul and spirit. They therefore keep their eye on the following areas in the lives of their people:

1/ Do they rest & recreate? Do they have a hobby?

2/ How is their physical health? Do they exercise regularly?

3/ How are their relationships with colleagues & the people with whom they work?

4/ How is their devotional life? (It is all too easy to focus on God’s mission and neglect God himself.)

5/ Are they growing in their understanding of the culture & language acquisition?

6/ Do they have a plan for “lifelong learning,” that is to say are they pursuing ongoing training?
While nothing is written in concrete, the ideas that our workshop participants are batting around for the GBIM Europe team is to create a four person SHEPHERDING TEAM that would:

• Develop sending church care suggestions.

• Interface with the GBIM member care team in the USA.

• Assemble a grass roots shepherding network so that teammates share their concerns and needs before a crisis occurs. (In my experience, problems are often ignored until there are physical symptoms. Could we not deal with the root causes before they degenerate?)

• Develop and send ideas to teammates about personal responsibilities they should assume in their pursuit of holistic health. Send regular health tips—for body, soul and spirit—to the team.

• Determine what needs may be met by the various layers of shepherding: personal relationship with God, sending church, Europe Team, GBIM…

• Discern how we could help with “little” problems, fears and insecurities before they attain critical mass.

• Compile a list of European specialists for outside help.

• Establish a confidential prayer network, not about ministry, but for the personal needs of our teammates.

John emphasized that prayer is an important aspect of the shepherd's ministry.

Well, we have our work cut out for us. But Jesus gave shepherds to his Church for the equipping and edification of his people so that they might grow in every respect (Ephesians 4:11-16).

And the shepherd's ministry extends to all sheep, including ministers—apostles, prophets, evangelists, other shepherds, teachers and leaders in general.

Burning hope or burned out?

Burnout: “'the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.' Herbert Freudeberger (who coined the term) quoted in EMQ, July 2008.

"In a word, burnout is the loss of the spirit of adventure.” Gregory Waddell

If your church participates in the ministry of missionaries, how often do you consider their spiritual, emotional and physical needs?

I became very aware of the physical needs of missioners in the Balkans during a trip to Bosnia. How much more so then for those serving in the 2/3rds world?

Sarajevo, Bosnia 2002

But for all, including those like my teammates, who serve in the materially affluent, spiritually impoverished West, burnout, “the condition of being spiritually, emotionally, and physically spent, of having nothing more to offer… a condition that does not go away with a good night’s sleep and a day at the beach” can also be a pernicious bane.

And burnout is just one of the many issues that we will discuss at the shepherds’ workshop that begins Friday at the German Missionary Fellowship headquarters in S. Germany.

In preparation for the workshop I read an article by Gregory Waddell. Waddell described his own slow journey toward burnout as a missionary in Uruguay then Argentina, in the Evangelical Missions Quarterly article “Missionary Burnout: Who is Adequate for These Things?”

To sensitize you the needs that those in the ministry have (whether it be pastoral, church planting, etc.), here are a few excerpts from the article on burnout:
“Missionaries often go to the mission field with a view to conquer, which is couched in the terminology of planting churches. They arrive on the field knowing what they want and what the people need. They go with their plans, strategies, objectives, and goals.”

Describing his own journey, Waddell says,

“We intended to be a blessing to the people, whether they liked it or not. We thought we were giving them what they needed. In reality, we were out to achieve our objectives.”

“Yet there is a major problem with approaching missions purely from the perspective of our objectives. God has created people to be free moral agents. People do what they want, not what the missionary wants them to do. I had my plans and objectives; however, the people didn’t cooperate. It seemed that no matter how hard we tried, no matter how innovative our methods, no matter how detailed our strategies, nothing worked.”
Now he is expressing how he felt in order to make a point because Dr. Waddell actually planted three churches, started a Bible institute, training and youth centers and a soup kitchen! But underneath this success was his spiritual-emotional state was eroding. He says,
“It was like plodding through a dense, muddy forest, always seeing just enough light ahead to keep our hopes from totally dying out, yet never seeming to draw any nearer to that open place, never reaching the goal.… A deep, suffocating sense of frustration sets in that eventually expresses itself in anger. The missionary senses that the people are not cooperating with his or her plans.… Even though he or she may be able to keep it hidden under a facade of hard-nosed perseverance, anger can eat away at the missionary’s inner life."
"Even efforts at benevolence can breed contempt rather than gratitude.… Burnout may be experienced as a sense that one is falling into a pattern of growing anger, frustration, and cynicism.…a feeling of emptiness.”

I did my undergrad studies in business at Penn State. I remember vividly, classmates discussing their hopes to land a first job with accounting firms that paid well, used up their CPAs in a matter of two years, cast them away and recruited a fresh crop.

Well, as director of a group of people that bears good news I do not want to be guilty of employing a disposable approach toward church planters. Abraham, Moses and David were all shepherds before they were asked to care for God’s people. So this upcoming workshop will be quite instrumental in helping me care for (or ensuring that they are shepherded) for the team of about forty missionaries entrusted to me.

Fortunately, Waddell explains that there is hope and help. He says,
“If burnout is the extinction of motivation or incentive, then recovery is the reverse. It is the igniting of motivation and incentive, and the rekindling of hope that one can achieve the life purpose to which he or she has been called. This begins with a return to the source of that calling, a return to God. For me, this meant learning how to pray again—not as a missionary, but as a soul in need of God’s grace and loving touch.”
Oh by the way, if you are a church member, have you ever considered the spiritual, emotional and physical needs of your pastor and those of the pastoral staff? How are they being shepherded? What can your church do for them to help hope burn brightly rather than burnout?