Just this last week, Christ Community took a bus load of folks to the Global Missions Health Conference in Louisville, KY. We met with thousands of other God-centered, Gospel-driven, Global-minded students, physicians, and mobilizers. It was a great time.
The Christian Medical and Dental Association has always played a leading role in mobilizing students and professionals to take up the call of Christ to go and make disciples of all nations. With years of experience responding to the same questions offered up by willing but weak disciples, the CMDA decided to formulate responses to the most common questions in the form of a short book distributed at this conference - A Missional Life.
In my travels from Louisville to Denver I was able to read through the articles, and had the following takeaways. They are a mixture of questions, suggestions, and remarks:
1. What about now? Are you open to the continual teaching of God's spirit? Is his word still alive to correct, inspire, and train you in righteousness?
2. Living for the glory of God instead of aiming to correct the failures of previous well-intentioned believers allows you to build on the good they did instead of reinventing the wheel.
3. Ministry and leadership are primarily about communicating your value of others. You value people when you need them. This applies to our ministry to the poor.
4. Since pride is the symptom of poverty for those who are materially rich, flippant and cheap praise like "You're so rich!" or "You're so knowledgeable." is the equivalent of Christmas turkeys to the materially poor.
5. Read Let Justice Roll Down by John Perkins.
6. Mentoring is not simply pouring into someone else. Mentoring is pouring yourself out for someone else.
7. "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I might remember. Involve me and I will learn." Benjamin Franklin
8. In mentoring be willing to bring close to the relationship at the right time (both from the disciple and mentor perspective).
9. Rick Donlon's title is that It Start Locally meaning that all missions starts with your focus on what is around you. He's right. However, I would strengthen the phrase and say, "All mission is local". Though you travel land and sea to get to a new place, once there, it is local. It's what's around you. Therefore, we must understand that missions is always here not there.
10. The reason those faithful with little are faithful with much is because once you have more it seems little in light of the much you can now see.
11. With regard to material things and financial frugality, missionaries use things up, wear things out, make things do, or do without.
12. Don't assume what is trending is beneficial. Do your homework and go with what works. Ask your people and listen to them. They are the experts on how they receive our efforts.
