In This Issue: A Conversation with Rev. Dave Moody, Pastor and Mobilizer
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Practical Mobilization by Shane Bennett is published once a month.
A Conversation with Rev. Dave Moody, Pastor and Mobilizer
By Shane Bennett
These are wild days for me and the Bennett tribe. A few months ago, just as the ACMC/Caleb Project/Initiative360 ship began to go aground, we accepted a part-time mission pastor role at one of the coolest churches in Indiana. While the waves tore our former organization to bits we were making plans to relocate. This week we sailed our life raft across the great plains from Colorado to the rural heartland, the crossroads of America: our new home. I’ll continue to speak and write from this safe port, now through a great agency called Frontiers, as well as serve the local church we’ve teamed up with.
On the way across the country we stopped off at the house of our great pals Dave and Barb Moody. Dave joined Caleb Project about the same time I did, in 1987. Shortly after that he married Barb and brought her aboard – a great blessing for all of us. Some years ago, the Moodys went to Regent College for a Master’s, then were ordained and took the pastorate of a smallish church in southern Illinois.
As our combined flock of nine kids squawked about like seagulls, Dave and I carved out a few minutes to chat about mobilization. Here are some highlights from our conversation.
Q: As a former mobilizer, now local pastor, what do you see as the best thing mobilizers can do for their own church and the churches they influence?
A: Help people fall in love with Christ. Help them place him in the absolute center of their lives. Help your people connect their story with the story God is showing us in the Bible; help them get drawn into that. Help them connect to the Church worldwide. We have responsibility to our brothers and sisters, and to the family business of seeing the name and fame of the Lord lifted up by every group of people.
Q: How do you keep your own missions vision as a local pastor?
A: Specifically, I go to missions conferences and tune into things that help, such as Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, The Outreach Foundation, and the New Wilmington Mission Conference. I also correspond with friends who are overseas, pray for them, and support their work.
Q: What do you do to build mission vision in your church?
A: I bring in mission speakers, talk about the persecuted church in sermons, and keep the world in front of people in the pews through sermon illustrations and prayers. I introduce the missions committee to things like Perspectives, the dearly departed ACMC, and other programs that can enflesh what I talk about. Like so many things, these ideas are more apt to be caught than taught. We have done a missions trip to Mexico and Habitat for Humanity projects. People want stuff they can get their hands on.
Q: What advice would you give mobilizers about the local church?
A: Love the church, the people in the church, as God does. Don’t just see it as a resource for whatever you’re mobilizing for. See the church as God’s people, and nurture a deeper love for it. As a mobilizer, read your Bible from the posture of someone in the church. You’re inside. Don’t place yourself above or outside the church, trying to change it.
Find places to serve as a mobilizer, but outside of “missions-specific” areas. Become a trustee, teach Sunday school; move missions into all aspects of church life. Show your pastor that you are for the church, not just for your vision.
Q: Have you seen specific mistakes in that regard?
A: Hmmmmm, how about myself? As a young 20-something mobilizer, thinking I held the keys of Biblical interpretation in my hands, it took me years to come to grips with my own pride. Looking back, I see I did not take all scripture as seriously as the significant ‘mobilization’ scriptures. I had to grow in my understanding that God has compassion for the poor and that Jesus is concerned for the details. Jesus is not okay with collateral damage, even in a mobilization effort.
Q: What’s it like to switch from being a mobilizer to being a pastor?
A: Stripping gears! I was really used to working with folks who were Biblically literate, motivated, activists – working with them to get things done. Now I’m much deeper in the normal rhythms of life: birth, death, seasons, Christmas, Easter. The trick is to help in the midst of that, to help people see what God is doing in their midst, in their normal lives. As normal as bread and wine, but full of meaning. This is slow, slow growth. Incredibly frustrating, but the way God has designed it, apparently. There is good in it.
Q: You used to be a mobilizer, now you’re a pastor. Are you still a mobilizer?
A: I hope the Lord will use me to move people more into what he has for them. I’ll always be an advocate for least-evangelized people, maybe more than most pastors. But I am a pastor: Those normal rhythms of life take up most of my time.
Q: So do we need full-time, focused mobilizers?
A: Absolutely. We need advocates for specific peoples and ministries. We need people grounded in churches or the business world so they have a context and long-term staying power and influence. There are peoples who still are unreached and it’s easy for the church to be myopic. We need people who tell us, as Jesus did, to lift up our eyes. But we need to all be people who define themselves as disciples of Christ. We need to have that posture.
Dave Moody blogs at blog137. You can also reach him by email. (Yeah, all that and he’s a Mac user, too!)
Questions? Problems? Submissions? Contact publisher/managing editor Marti Smith.