Notices
Missions Interlink AGM - The Annual General Meeting of Missions Interlink was held on the 17 of November at the Pakuranga Baptist Church, led by the Chairman of MI, Wayne Freeman. Over 50 people attended the meeting and most stayed for the Korean lunch prepared by Bridge to Asia ministry. Minutes of the meeting will be available soon.
PrayerLinks – Please send requests today! - If your agency would like to contribute to the Dec-Feb PrayerLinks, please send in your prayer requests and praise reports by the end of today to: info@missions.org.nz. Entries should be approximately 150 words and should be agency/ministry focused.
INF – International Nepal Fellowship - 1. The International Director of INF, David Stevens, and his wife Carol will be in NZ from 19 February to 16 March 2009. They will be speaking at an INF conference along with the INF Nepal Director, Deependra Gautam, and his wife Buddhi. The conference will be held in Auckland on 21 February at St George’s Church, Epsom from 9.30 to 4.30 and in Christchurch at Spreydon Baptist on 14 March 9.30 to 4.30 pm. Contact Ian Bissett for details: 09 5792052. 2. There is a prayer meeting for Nepal in Onehunga. Contact Ian Bissett for details: 09 5792052.
Missionary / Pastor Available - After many years of ministry of various kinds and having led my local church more recently in community outreach, especially to the poor, I am looking for a place somewhere in the world to serve for 6 months to 1 year working on behalf of the chronically poor or otherwise disadvantaged or oppressed people. Perhaps you would know an agency in your part of the world where my particular background and interests might fit. Bill Stump - U.S.A. (Contact MI if you would like to see a copy of his CV.)
Accommodation and Cars: Needs and Availability -
David and Christine Foris (Wycliffe missionaries) are looking for accommodation or a house-sitting situation in Auckland from the beginning of February, preferably in the vicinity of the Wycliffe office in Manukau City, but they’re open to other possibilities. Contact: david_foris@sil.org.
A house has been made available in the Weymouth, Manukau area from 23rd January to 21st February 2009. The perfect location for resting whilst keeping up with deputation in Auckland. A 3 bedroom house with lovely gardens located beside the beach and a 5 km walking track though a park. Walking distance to primary and intermediate schools, shops and bus stop. 10 minutes to airport. Quiet neighbourhood. Totally set up for your arrival. Only need to bring your toothbrush. Contact: Lorna Das Phone: 09 2661296 or lornadas@gmail.com.
If you know of anyone wanting to housesit in Wellington from 28 December to 20 January please contact: characterflaws@paradise.net.nz. The house is spacious, extremely sunny, and has a master bedroom, large kids' room with 2 beds, and another room with a single bed. Feeding the cat would be part of the deal.
A Nissan Prairie (5 adults, 2 children, 4wd) has been made available for mission folk who need a vehicle for a week or a month or two in the Timaru area. For more info contact Rohan Rudd: rohan@eventz.co.nz.
ACC Developments - The CMS mission partners’ case was won and ACC will be supporting the injured party for the rest of his life. A large part of winning the case by appeal was due to the fact that CMS pays ACC levies when their mission partners come home for furlough as part of their furlough stipend. Mission organisations that don’t employ their missionaries or don’t pay ACC for them in some way still might find themselves unable to obtain ACC compensation for their missionaries injured overseas.
Missions Office space - We have not had sufficient response to accept the offer of a whole floor at the Manukau Missions Centre, though we expect the offer to come up again in the future. Meanwhile WBT is willing to make some room for others in the current space available.
Translate: Living in the Story of Scripture - Featuring Dr Rod Thompson, translate is a short event (Fri night - Sat afternoon) that explores how the full story of Scripture frames a worldview, a vision for life, and how we can translate this into every area of life. When: 7-10pm, Friday 28 November and 9am-4:30pm, Saturday 29 November. Where: Main Lecture Theatre, Laidlaw College, 80 Central Park Dr, Henderson. Price: $85/single, $160/couple (Price includes notes, supper, tea, lunch, and tea).
Mission Web - Tranzsend and Missions Interlink are working on a new web site that will hopefully bless the whole missions community – in time. The primary target audience is the person filling the church pew with the aim of seeing them involved some way in missions. It will include Myers-Briggs type self-evaluation and other resources and tools from sources like Alistair Mackenzie’s NavPress book Soul Purpose – Making a Difference in Life and Work. Once a preliminary site is functional - hopefully in time for Destination World at Parachute ’09 - further development will be open to wider involvement.
International Conference on Computing and Mission - From the 10th-12th of February next year, Missions Interlink Australia will be holding the second annual localised ICCM (International Conference on Computing and Mission). Those involved in IT in Missions in NZ are kindly invited to attend this event in Sydney. For more information contact Andrew Smith at: andrew.smith@sim.org or phone 09 4421290 or 021 2169095.
Special Report: World Evangelical Alliance – General Assembly - Six major resolutions
The World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly had five days of intensive discussion to plan out the way forward in world evangelisation. More than 500 senior evangelical leaders gathered for the assembly in Pattaya, Thailand from 25 to 30 October 2008.
Delegates agreed on six major resolutions setting out an evangelical response to religious liberty, HIV and Aids, poverty, peacemaking, creation care and the global financial crisis. "The worldwide financial turmoil is, at its root, evidence of what happens when too many are captivated by greed and put their faith in, and entrust their security and future aspirations to, a system animated by the maximization of wealth. Many legitimately feel betrayed," read the resolution on the global financial crisis. "While we hope that the painful consequences of the turmoil will be mitigated, our concern is that its impact will continue to permeate into more regions and economies of the world. We recognize that this economic crisis will have the most painful impact on the poor, who are the most vulnerable. "We reaffirm our faith in God and acknowledge that He is in control. We repent when we have placed our trust in money, institutions and persons, rather than God. Our security is not found in the things of this world." The resolution called on Christians to care for the poor during the crisis and live simply and generously.
“The Body of Christ, His Church, is living with HIV,” stated the resolution on HIV, a major focus area for the WEA. “With brokenness we admit that as Evangelical Christians we have allowed stigmatisation and discrimination to characterise our relationships with people living with HIV. We repent of these sinful attitudes and commit to ensuring that they are changed.”
In the preamble to the resolution on the Millennium Development Goals, evangelical leaders stated, “In coping with the financial crisis of 2008, governments and international institutions have shown how quickly and effectively they can move to mobilise massive resources in the face of serious threats to our global, common economic well being. “Yet one child dying of preventable causes every three seconds and 2.7 billion people barely sustained on an income of less than two dollars per day has yet to evoke a similar level of urgent response. “We believe this to be an affront to God, a shame to governments and civil society, and a massive challenge to the witness and mission of the followers of Christ.”
WEA international director Dr Geoff Tunnicliffe told delegates that they faced additional challenges to fulfilling the Great Commission from radical secularism, postmodernism, declining Christianity at the same time as growing interest in spirituality, trafficking and migration. He insisted that great challenges also brought great opportunities for evangelical engagement. We see this tremendous growth and this seismic shift in the church around the world and we are excited what God is doing as he raises up women and men around the world in so many different places. “As we think about the global reality of the world in which we live, [there are] immense challenges but also immense opportunities.”
Dr Tunnicliffe also said that the WEA would remain committed to integral mission "or holistic transformation, a proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel. It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are done alongside of each other but rather in integral mission proclamation has social consequences. We call people to love and repentance in all areas of life." He reaffirmed the WEA's commitment to world evangelisation. “If anyone tells you that we’ve gone soft on world evangelisation you can tell them that we are totally committed to world evangelisation because it is only Jesus Christ that changes people’s lives,” he said.
A highlight of the week was an address from the Rev Joel Edwards, who was commissioned during the assembly as the new director of Christian anti-poverty movement Micah Challenge. In his address, the former head of the UK Evangelical Alliance told delegates that the power to rehabilitate the word ‘evangelical’ lay in their hands. “Whatever people think of evangelical Christians, if people are going to think differently about evangelicals the only people who can actually change their minds are evangelicals,” he said. “We must reinvent, rehabilitate and re-inhabit what evangelical means as good news. We must present Christ credibly to our culture and we should seek to be active citizens working for long-term spiritual and social change. “Words can change their meaning. If 420 million evangelicals in over 130 nations across the world really wanted it to happen, evangelical could mean good news.”
In another key address, the head of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, the Rev Richard Howell said that an identity anchored in Christ and a universal God was an evangelical non-negotiable in an age of pluralism. "We have but one agenda: obedience to the Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ," said Dr Howell. "We are evangelical Christians for the sake of God. Our identity has to be related back to God. Unless we do that, we will never know who we are. The Christian belief in the oneness of God implies God's universality, and the universality implies transcendence with respect to any given culture. Christians can never be first of all Asians, Africans, Europeans, Americans, Australians and then Christians."
The assembly also heard from the Chair of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelisation, Douglas Birdsall. The World Evangelical Alliance is collaborating with the LCWE in its major Cape Town 2010 meeting, which will bring together 4,000 evangelicals to assess the next steps in realising the movement’s vision of ‘the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world’. “You might ask is there a need for an international congress that deals with world evangelisation,” Birdsall told the assembly. “I would say that throughout history, such a gathering is only necessary when the future of the life of the church is threatened by some type of challenge – either internal challenge or external pressure.”
The assembly also saw the launch of the WEA Leadership Institute, a brand new initiative to see the leaders of the WEA’s 128 national alliances trained to serve and proclaim Christ within some challenging contexts. “Leading an Evangelical Alliance is not easy,” commented Dr Tunnicliffe.
Dr Tunnicliffe rounded up the assembly with a call to evangelicals to keep in step with God’s work on earth. “It is my prayer that we in our community will be women and men who live with divine purpose within our lives, that we will be good leaders envisioned by God to make a difference in the world,” he said. “The most important thing that you can do with your [life] is to integrate it into the never ending story of God’s kingdom. God’s already at work in the world. He’s doing things. We just need to align with what He is doing.”
Special Report: WEA - Mission Commission - Four new initiatives launched
In the land of the orchids (Thailand) the Mission Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance celebrated its 11th Global Consultation with the attendance of 250 mission and church leaders from over 50 nations. The MC convenes a global consultation every two or three years for mutual encouragement, fellowship and building of relationships, growth in the understanding of the missional enterprise around the globe, dealing with global issues and challenges, and planning the joint work and strategies, in order to become better equipped for the work.
This time the MC consultation focused primarily on the missiological issues of Contextualisation, Mission and Spirituality, and Mission in the Context of Suffering, Violence, Persecution and Martyrdom. The general reflection of all participants and the specific missiological teams generated the core content for a new series of three missiological books based on the work done by the Global Missiology Task Force. These books will be published during the next three years.
The MC related Networks, Task Forces and Interest Groups dedicated time to evaluate, envision and plan their activities for the coming three to five years, providing services, research and materials to the national mission movements and the mission community worldwide.
Four new initiatives were launched during the consultation:
1. The Continuum – a network of younger reflective practitioners;
2. The Mission & Art Task Force;
3. The Pastors and Church in Mission Task Force; and
4. The Global Dialogue of the MC contributed to the current North-South Dialogue between mission leaders.
The five days in Pattaya, Thailand, gave all the participants a unique opportunity to listen to God and to each other, helping us all to discern the relevant issues for mission today, as well as the priorities for the MC collectively for the period 2009 to 2012.
For more information see these websites: www.worldevangelicals.org/commissions/mc/ OR www.weaconnections.com
-- Pray for Destination World at Parachute 09 –
Evangelical Missions Quarterly - Professional journal for the worldwide mission community - Vol. 44, No.4
ARTICLES
An Interview with Bruce Olsen - David Miller - Bruce Olson discusses what God did during his time with the Motilone—and how he saw Christ renew a nearly extinct people.
An Ordinary Family in Ministry - Lila W. Balisky - Balisky lays out a “theology of the family in mission,” reflecting on missional families in the Bible.
Pitfalls Missions Committees Must Avoid - Allan G. Hedberg - Missions committees must constantly update their mission vision and strategy. Hedberg outlines nine pitfalls committees must avoid.
Christological Monotheism and Muslim Evangelism - David Teague - How do missionaries in Muslim churches speak of the divinity of Christ without appearing to contradict their belief in monotheism?
Circles & Cycles: Letters to a Stressed Community - Juha Jones and Ikram - The authors ask and offer suggestions on understanding relational needs and relationship services for missionary teams.
Discipleship and the Missionary Kid - Bonnie Gouge - Godly parenting with the goal of spiritual formation of children requires a focused and strong commitment to be involved in the lives of our children.
Five Rules for Writing a Good Prayer Letter - Ryan Murphy - Murphy shows how to transform a mundane prayer letter into something exciting and engaging.
Four Ways to Mentor Church Planters - Juha Jones - Jones offers four ways in which church planters need mentoring—and how they correspond to four eras in a church planter’s life.
On Furlough: What Returning Missionaries and Home Churches Want - Brad Hill - Ten ways missionaries on furlough and mission committees and churches can bless each other.
Personal Piety vs. Institutional Aid: A Case for a Return to Alms-giving - Gene Daniels - Daniels suggests missionaries on the field return to personal alms-giving, thereby investing in relationships on a deeper level.
Preparing Missionary Couples for Cultural Stress - Sue Eenigenburg - Even the most stable marriages are severely strained in the context of cross-cultural living. Eenigenburg lists potential stressors couples may face on the field—and offers helpful tips to overcome these.
PERSPECTIVES: GUEST EDITORIAL
Christian Ministry: Call or Career? - Abhijit Nayak - A look at some of the calls to ministry in the Old and New Testaments show that each of these individuals had an amazing commitment to the commission of God.
IN THE WORKSHOP
Training Leaders by Planting Seed Truths - Tom Julien - The process of sowing and the harvest teaches us four basic principles or “laws.”
MISSION RESOURCES ON THE WEB
Mapping Resources for Missions - A. Scott Moreau and Mike O'Rear
BOOK REVIEWS
Antioch Revisited: Reuniting the Church with Her Mission - Tom Julien - “If the Antioch church was supposed to be an example, modern missions somehow had lost the blueprint.” Julien weaves a compelling story of a missionary who rediscovered that blueprint in Acts 13 and purposed to coax his home church back to Antioch’s example.
Encountering Missionary Life and Work: Preparing for Intercultural Ministry - Tom Steffen and Lois McKinney Douglas - A much-needed textbook to prepare missionaries.
Faith Comes By Hearing: A Response to Inclusivism - Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson, eds. - Faith Comes by Hearing is a contribution to an evangelical theology of the unevangelized.
Good and Faithful—New Zealand Missionaries and Their Experience of Attrition - Hudson Deane - Why do missionaries come home prematurely and what can be done about it? Hudson Deane has asked these questions to 92 evangelical missionaries from nineteen agencies who were returning to NZ.
Imagined Hindusim: British Protestant Missionary Constructions of Hinduism, 1793-1900 - Geoffrey A. Oddie - Many today may be startled to learn that “Hinduism” is a relatively recent term that did not come into vogue until the late eighteenth century.
Music in the Life of the African Church - Roberta King, Jean Kidula, James Krabill, and Thom - We European and American missionaries brought the Word to Africa, and we relegated music to its pagan past. This book, very positive in tone, provides a sobering look at what we missed.
The Great Commission: Evangelicals and the History of World Missions - Martin I. Klauber and Scott M. Manetsch, eds. - Historians have long discussed the theological and cultural influence of the eighteenth-century evangelical awakenings on Great Britain and her North American colonies. A gap has remained, however, in the historical study of evangelical impact on global missions.
Historians Martin Klauber and Scott Manetsch intend to fill the void with this collection of essays.
The Kingdom of Character: The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1886-1926 - Michael Parker - traces the history of the SVM by focusing on a variety of themes that shaped the movement’s birth and development.
The Missional Church in Context: Helping Congregations Develop Contextual Ministry - Craig Van Gelder, ed. - The book is the first in a new series entitled the “Missional Church series,” and is comprised of essays that come from a conference on the missional church hosted by Luther Seminary.
Why Church Matters: Worship, Ministry, and Mission in Practice - Jonathan R. Wilson - …believes that the “practicing church” declares God’s redemptive work and enhances the church’s witness through the empowerment of the Spirit.
2009 Daily Planner and Prayer Diary
Join a 29-year legacy, a powerful mission oriented prayer chain that extends around the globe!
Order now. Limited supply. Regular Retail price: $29.95 – MI special: $25.00 (includes postage) Email: info@missions.org.nz - or call MI with your order at 09 275 8333.
Mission Prayer / Fellowship Gatherings
Balmoral (Auckland) – Johannes Balzer - johannes@interserve.org.nz
Christchurch – Max Palmer - max@lr.org.nz
Manukau City – Wayne Freeman - wayne_freeman@wycliffe.org
North Shore – Richard Hemmingsen – richardh@sga.org.nz
Phil Richardson – phil.richardson@ihug.co.nz
Penrose (Auckland) – Graeme Lee - admin@edc.org.nz
Tauranga – James Muir - james-muir.aonz@clear.net.nz
David B. Hall, Director
Missions Interlink
PO Box 59 049, Mangere Bridge, Manukau 2151
www.missions.org.nz
New Zealand's Mission Networks
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the Missions Interlink Bulletin or at any of the events listed, do not necessarily express the views of MI or any of its members or affiliates.
