As pastor of Sardinia Baptist Church, I got a cold call today from a town two hours away – a missionary-to-be looking for financial support to get him and his family to the mission field.<\/p>\n\n\n
I admired his gumption, but as we talked, I had more and more questions.<\/p>\n\n\n
Let’s call him Joe.<\/p>\n\n\n
Joe needs to raise roughly $11,000 per month to put his family on the field. That’s pretty steep!<\/p>\n\n\n
And the mission field?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Hawaii!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Joe might have an easier time if God was calling him to the French Riviera! At least that would be overseas.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Joe wants to plant churches there among the local Japanese community.<\/p>\n\n\n
I asked, “Have you ever planted a church?”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
No.<\/p>\n\n\n
Are you working to plant a church among the immigrant community where you live right now?<\/p>\n\n\n
No, but I am very active in my home church.<\/p>\n\n\n
Are there already churches among the Japanese living on Oahu?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n
Shouldn’t they be the ones planting new churches? Why is an outsider better suited than a local Christian? Could the local believers be trained in church planting by you going on a short-term trip?<\/p>\n\n\n
There were no good answers for these questions.<\/p>\n\n\n
I was talking to Melissa over coffee after she got home from school. She had another question I hadn’t even thought of:<\/p>\n\n\n
Why doesn’t Joe just take a job in Hawaii and plant a church on the side?<\/p>\n\n\n
I am all for missions, of course, but my time in Haiti gave me a healthy skepticism when it comes to missionaries and their sending organizations – their competency, motivations, and methods.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Sometimes missionaries end up on fields where they have no business. And lots of money is flushed down the drain. And damage done to God’s Kingdom.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
All because nobody asked the hard questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As pastor of Sardinia Baptist Church, I got a cold call today from a town two hours away – a missionary-to-be looking for financial support to get him and his family to the mission field. I admired his gumption, but as we talked, I had more and more questions. Let’s call him Joe. Joe needs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2362,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361\/revisions\/2362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}