Church Planting Discussion

Balancing Ministry and Family from Mark Coffey on Vimeo.

Learn to Lead Gently from Mark Coffey on Vimeo.

This is a great quote for discipleship and for your training of leaders

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood, and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Source

(Author: Johnathon Bowers)

The following is a guest post by Johnathon Bowers, a student at The Bethlehem Institute. He blogs at The Fool’s Gold and loves dreaming about the future with his wife, Crystal.

* * *

God has been on the move in your heart lately. Maybe it all started with that sermon. Maybe it was that National Geographic issue on Iran. Maybe your Chinese friend. Maybe the missionary biography you just finished. Maybe Romans 15.

Whatever it was, you can’t get the nations out of your mind now. You’ve begun to think of other countries in terms of unreached people groups rather than their diplomatic relationship with America. Missions used to bore you. It was for…you know…”other people” (said in hushed tones with a shifty gaze).

But now, it’s strangely attractive. You start to get wobbly-kneed and giddy whenever you hear someone mention “contextualization” or “strategic access country.” When you meet someone who is interested in missions, you talk at length with them and ask lots of questions. You’re hooked. It’s taken a while, but you are seriously considering a missionary career.

When you finally muster the pluck to tell your spouse about your change of heart, his response is unsettlingly cool.

Polite, but cool.

He just doesn’t know if he could ever see the two of you overseas. Dinner is awkward that night. He asks for the check. The two of you drive home in silence. What you thought would be a glorious evening of united passion for missions has turned into a glorified punch in the gut.

What do you do?

M. David Sills, professor of Christian missions and cultural anthropology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has just written a book called The Missionary Call: Finding Your Place in God’s Plan for the World. In it he includes a chapter devoted to this very issue.

His counsel? Wait. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25). Wives, be subject to your own husbands and win them over by your respectful and pure conduct (1 Peter 3:2-3).

As it is with a call to faith, so it is with a call to missions. God must act. And you must wait, because a divided and resentful couple is no asset on the field.

But let your waiting be active. There is plenty to do to plow the soil that a unified call will sprout from. Sills writes:

While you wait, grow your marriage to be as healthy as it can be. Work on communication and ministering to one another. Learn a language together, read missionary biographies together, entertain furloughing missionaries in your home — as guests in a spare room or for a meal — and email missionaries on the field to be better able to pray for them. Go on short-term mission trips together. Be open and let God lead. In this way, when God clearly leads and guides you both into the same missionary calling, you will have a healthy marriage, practice learning new things together, and knowledge of missionary life. A healthy marriage and well-developed learning skills are essential for a couple living the missionary life with a world-changing testimony. (123-124)

May God extend his kingdom as his married servants bear with one another in love.