Jeff Adams

I drove up to Lincoln, Nebraska today for the first ever Joint Venture Summit sponsored by Avant Ministries. Avant is an excellent mission agency with about 300 missionaries in various countries around the world. Their headquarters is in Kansas City. Some of you may remember when they were called Gospel Missionary Union. KCBT has had the privilege to help support some of their missionaries and they are a great group. You can learn more about them on their website.

One of the biggest struggles in missions today is working out the relationship between churches and mission agencies. Mission agencies sometimes feel that local church place unnecessary demands on them or fail to understand some of today’s complex issues involving God’s mission in a rapidly changing world. Local churches often get frustrated with missions and feel that they make unilateral decisions without their input or are only interested in getting their money and people. To Avant‘s credit they are attempting to explore ways to improve the communication, trust and cooperation between missions and local churches.

A generous foundation make this meeting possible here in Lincoln. Eleven large churches from various locations in the United States and Canada are represented here. This is an invitation only event and I feel blessed to represent KCBT. I always find it encouraging to meet people from other churches and learn from them.

Part of their effort to improve mission/church relationships involved commissioning a major research project that surveyed some of the largest churches in America about their missions ministry, concerns, values, goals, etc. Tonight they presented some of the results of the survey. There was also opportunity for all of us to contribute in sharing what we hope to get out of this meeting and some of the desires we have to see a better trust relationship between churches and missions. We also shared some of the blessings our churches have experienced recently in missions.

Our church has sent out a fair number of missionaries over the years and we have acted as our own mission board in many of those cases. In that way we have represented a trend among many larger churches, cutting out the “middle man” of the mission so to speak. While there are some advantages to that approach, I have also been very concerned about our changing world. As God has led us to focus more and more on the more strategic least reached peoples of the world, I have realized that we need the expertize and experience that a mission organization can offer. The difficulty level is often to the degree that it is more than what a single church can do. I am thankful for good missions like Avant that give us options when God leads some of our people to serve in other places in the world.

Pray for us as we continue meeting tomorrow and explore ways to work together in better partnerships. Tonight, I was able to share with the group our partnership with The Seed Company in three scripture translation projects in Mexico. This partnership has been a positive experience for both mission and church and it has stretched us both.