by Raymond Chang
One of the exciting opportunities in global evangelism is how much smaller the world has become. With access to internet and satellite TV, we can be living in one country and enjoying the television shows or newspapers of our home town. To emphasize the classic Disney song, “It’s a small world after all.” With the world becoming smaller and smaller, missions doesn’t seem like some distant remote location, rather it is something that can be very close to home. As a pastor of a local church who is beginning the journey of connecting the global to the local or “glocal” as Bob Roberts calls it, I’m excited about the opportunity to make the connection between the overseas culture to our local culture.
Sadly, there has been a disconnect between our approach to short-term missions and the local church. I was at a missions forum where a professor at Trinity International University mentioned that short-term trips may have no correlation to the people group of the local community. A group to which he referred traveled to Mexico, but there was very little missions done with the local, Spanish-speaking people in their own community.
As part of our training and global effectiveness, our church has decided to make it an intentional process to tie our mission trips to the people group we are reaching. We will take two trips to Vietnam, in January and June. We have recruited local Vietnamese-Americans to help us, but we will also partner with local Vietnamese churches. Our goal is to be involved in both places.
As part of your role in the field, one question to ask is, “How can we help churches develop better partnerships within their own context, and then make the tie with the work abroad?”
Some quick ideas to consider:
1) Vision Trip Abroad Begins at Home
2) Local – Global Connection
3) Church Planting for People Groups in the U.S. (Reverse Planting)
As I think through partnerships, I’m so thankful for my partnerships overseas. Now if we can start at home.
Question: How is your church connecting the local to the global? Post a comment or question.
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4 comments:
Excellent article. Our church finds that most short-term mission trips are really Christian sightseeing trips.
As a missionary in Europe, I've found that the North American churches can serve the European churches by coming to help create an opportunity for the European churches to engage their neighbors with the gospel. This is different than the North American churches coming to do evangelism. Regardless, it takes intentional effort on everyone's part to create healthy partnerships.
I don't buy in to the Trinity professor's assumption that there must be a correlation between working with a particular people in their country of origin and the immigrants from that same country. People who have immigrated for economic or political reasons have a very complex existence trying to sort out their identity and loyalties relative to the country they left and the country where they now live. The idea of "glocal" ministry sounds good, but I don't think it should be a strategic objective.
Excellent approach to use the local V church as a "screen" and as a vision builder. They can help you determine your team members' eagerness for the expereince of going on a trip, or for the purpose of the trip. They can obviously help you with the cross cultural aspects of team training. Perhaps there may be one or two from their church that would be part of your team. With that experience together you'd know if there is a good basis for actually forming a partnership.
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