Jeff Adams

I am truly appreciative and grateful for the feedback received during our current series this Summer on The Mission. Our leadership team felt it important that we all understand the focus of the church as we opened the new children’s wing and lobby.

Also this Summer, we are doing something we have never done before. I am teaching the same series on La Misión in Spanish on Wednesday evenings. This has been very interesting. I was thrilled to see such a good group in our Spanish study tonight.

Now, here is the really neat thing that is happening in the background. As we go through this series on The Mission, the podcast appears on our website immediately after the service. By the next day, The Mission is up in streaming video. Not long afterward, the Spanish version follows. Very cool.

You would be amazed at the visitors to our website from the Spanish-speaking world. Many are completely fluent in English and do not have to wait for the Spanish version to be posted. From Morelia, Mexico this week I heard from a pastor friend who has been profoundly affected by the series. Others have also weighed in with comments and thanks.

A young woman from Costa Rica visited us a few weeks ago. She is involved in a wonderful ministry to college students in San Jose. The ministry has a thorough and systematic approach to making disciples not unlike what we do here at KCBT. The leaders of this ministry asked my friend to add a missionary component to their teaching. Having just been with us, she is teaching the same series to them!

Monday night she taught lesson #1 to a group of about a dozen students in San Jose. Tonight, as I taught lesson #5 here in Spanish, she was repeating lesson #1 to a different group of students. Last Sunday in English I taught lesson #8. This is fun! This is the biblical concept of reproducing ourselves and making disciples of Jesus Christ. This is The Mission!

No, that’s not taken from a Batman comic strip. It’s an acronym that you spotted in your notes on The Mission. I didn’t have time to touch on it this morning, so I thought I would give you a brief explanation of BAM.

This morning’s topic was The New Missionary in the Mission. We learned that the new missionary really the old missionary, the biblical one. We often have a lot of add on’s in the way of tradition, methodology and techniques that, over time, rise to the level of sacred doctrine. Pretty soon we are doing things because that’s just the way we’ve always done them.

Every so often it’s a good exercise to the examine what we are doing and be sure it’s still close to what the Bible teaches. Our current model of missionary is between 200 and 300 years old. It has been an fine model, but even your old Honda might need to be replaced after that many miles!

We examined four characteristics of the new/biblical missionary this morning, the last of which was that they live our their faith through their natural spheres of influence, whether that be economics, family, the arts, medicine, justice, governance, education or agriculture. In other words, instead of dividing their lives up into spiritual and secular, they see life as a single integrated system.

Instead of loading the kids into the minivan and spending a couple of years going from church to church raising support, the new missionary sees this as only one of any number  of viable possibilities. Paul received support from his sending church of Antioch of Syria, from partner churches like that of the Philippians, from wealthy individual like Philemon or from the exercise of  his own vocation of making tents.

A few decades back, tent-making became a trendy way to think of entry into creative access areas to minister among least-reached peoples. The idea was to find some business, educational or medical opportunity, for example, that could justify their presence to be able to plant churches.

Those who engaged in tent-making were soon reporting that it was extremely difficult to work a secular job and plant a church among a people of a different language and culture at the same time.  Working a “secular” job and trying to engage in a “spiritual” activity as tough as planting a church is a very hard act to juggle!

Enter BAM – Business as Missions. Rather than viewing business as a “cover” to be in restricted access areas, those engaged in BAM prefer to see their vocation as the sphere through which they normally and naturally live their faith and take advantage of the opportunities God gives them to interact with others and share their faith as appropriate. In many cases it is not long before they are engaged in making disciples.

BAM also offers potential as a means to make contact with identified people groups, provide employment opportunities for new believers as well as community development. There are many other aspects to BAM that merit serious consideration.

The pressure of trying to plant a church while working is lessened as the new missionary understands another point I was sharing this morning. If we make disciples, Jesus builds his church, not us. If  missionaries focus on making disciples of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ will build his church even though it make not bear much external resemblance to the church in the missionary’s sending culture.

Entire books are written about BAM, and this is nothing more than a scratch on the surface of an encouraging movement in the world of missions that is helping us gain what I consider a more biblical perspective on the task of going about the mission in challenging areas.

Next week, the church as the missionary!

You have probably heard me toss that term around the past couple of years, but what does it really mean? Is there a biblical basis for it? That’s what I want to lay out tomorrow morning in all three services.

This will be interesting for me, too, since I preached this same message in El Salvador Thursday night. I just hope I can keep focused on speaking English.

Speaking of the new missionary, I can’t believe how much things have changed in my short lifetime. I can remember packing all our belongings into a VW Van and driving south through Mexico into Central America. The trip took several days and involved a ferry, hopelessly bad roads, a series of chaotic border crossings, armed guard escorts and all sorts of dangers and surprises.

Today I left the home where I was staying in San Salvador at 5:30 this morning and was pulling into my garage in Kansas City at 7:30 pm complaining about being several hours late. My 7:15am flight sat on at the gate for almost 3 hours this morning with a mechanical problem. Of course I missed my connecting flight in Houston.

Not to worry! Continental already had a spot on the next flight set aside for me and I’d only be an extra hour or so getting home. All went reasonably well until we were on approach to KCI, when I noticed we were circling. Some big storms temporarily shut down the airport. The flight right before us made it in, but we did not. Tight on fuel, we were diverted. I suddenly found myself in Omaha. No offense, but that was not where I wanted to be. I finally made it home around 4 hours late. I suppose I only have to remember not that many years ago to keep things in perspective and not get upset about being a little bit late.

I am so thankful to those of you who prayed for Gabriel, the adult son of the widow in whose home I stayed while in El Salvador. The surgery to remove his kidney yesterday went according to plan and they believe that the cancer was totally contained.

See you tomorrow!

Yesterday in our study of The Mission we were talking about the different people groups of the world. The mission we have received is to make the Good News accessible to every ethnic group on the planet. This is quite an ambitious task, but clearly doable with today’s technology and modern transportation. All the technology and travel in the world is to no avail without an understanding of how to communicate effectively across language and culture. This is the hardest part of all.

An advantage of being a “church for all peoples” is that we have real life opportunity to communicate cross-culturally on a daily basis. This is an amazing advantage for raising children and also for our growth as adults. In our church you don’t have to search far to find someone from a different culture.

Let me reiterate something I said Sunday. One of the greatest gifts you can give to someone who is in our city from another culture is to invite them into your home for a meal. In many cultures, an invitation to a meal in someone’s home is like making a covenant of friendship and something that is taken extremely seriously. Sadly, there are countless thousands of foreign college students who spend years here without ever having the chance to be in a typical American home.

Not just students, but those who are here on business also appreciate an invitation to friendship. Our youngest daughter and her family met a Japanese family here on business through having children of the same age in school. The mother is an avid student of American culture, but had no contacts to be invited to American homes. We invited the family to a Christmas meal and they absolutely loved seeing our seasonal decorations and the inside of our home. A wonderful friendship has ensued and they have been back several times. Th e mother has even visited our daughter’s church – a huge step for her.

Here’s a very important element. Do NOT invite a foreign guest to your home just as a “hook” to “present the Gospel” to them or invite them to church. Do not do this unless you are willing to be friends no matter whether they ever come to share your faith in Christ or not. For many, many cultures, to invite someone to your home and then press your faith upon them, even in a gentle way, is considered the ultimate of insults and demonstrates the insincerity of your character, even if you consider yourself totally sincere.  If you are living the life of Christ, your ensuing friendship will give you plenty of opportunities to answer questions and share you faith at some point in the future.

A lawyer once tried to trip up Jesus by asking him what he had to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds by asking him what the scripture says. The lawyer smugly quotes the law by saying that one should love God with all his heart, strength, soul and mind, and to love his neighbor as himself.

Jesus says that this is a fine answer, but that he should actually live this out in addition to being able to quote scripture. The lawyer, wanting to justify himself, asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In his mind the lawyer is probably categorizing different types of people to congratulate himself that he loves all the people who are like himself. Jesus, though, responds with the famous parable of the Good Samaritan, a story of selfless love that crosses fierce ethnic barriers.

Though the lawyer’s question had impure motives, let me throw it back at you. Who is your neighbor? Are you willing, like the Good Samaritan, to cross ethnic barriers to be a reflection of God’s saving love?

Some things to consider:

• How many people groups are represented in your immediate neighborhood?
• Remember how kids sometimes plays games in the car on a long trip by counting the state license plates they see? Why not see how many ethnic groups you can count at your local Wal-Mart (or similar store).
• How many different ethnic groups can you identify as servers in restaurants? You can say something like, “You are a great server and your English is impeccable. But I have a hobby of trying to identify accents. Could I ask where you are from originally?”
• Do you have any idea how many languages are spoken in your local school district? Why not find out!
• Who do you know at KCBT that is of ethnic group different from yours? Why not invite someone of a different ethnic group to your home for a meal?

Some years ago we began saying that KCBT is a church for all peoples. Occasionally, people will say “church for all people,” not peoples. Or, they might ask if it is not more correct to say a church for all people, thinking that means that all are  welcome.

The plural form “peoples” is most intentional and is meant to reflect that not only is anyone welcome, but that we purposely desire to reach out to every ethnic group – all peoples.

Matthew 28:18-20 is probably the most recognizable expression of what we often call the Great Commission. The command is to make disciples of  ”all nations (KJV).” When we hear “all nations” today, we commonly think of geo-political nations. The Greek phrase is panta ta ethne, or literally all ethnic groups.

Sunday we continue in our series The Mission. This week the idea is to understand what we really mean by saying that KCBT is a church for all peoples. And, what is the biblical basis for that? What’s a people? Who are the peoples? 8:00, 9:30 and 11:00am