In This Issue: One Recommendation, Two Questions, and the Best Funding Idea You’ve Heard This Year
- FEATURE: Bridges Might Be What You’re Looking For
- Question One: Gaping Voids in Mobilization
- Question Two: You’re Smart, What Would You Say?
- SUBVERSIVE MOBILIZATION: Funding Hat Trick
- MISSION EVENTS: New on Our Calendar
Missions Catalyst is a free, weekly electronic digest of mission news and resources designed to inspire and equip Christians worldwide for global ministry. Use it to fuel your prayers, find tips and opportunities, and stay in touch with how God is building his kingdom all over the world. Please forward it freely!
Practical Mobilization by Shane Bennett is published once a month.
FEATURE: Bridges Might Be What You’re Looking For
I smiled when I read this in an email this morning:
“To be honest, I was a little bit intimidated on my first day. The majority of the students are young men from Saudi Arabia. By looks alone, any one of them would fit right in with the pictures of terrorists I’d seen on the news. But as we talked, I quickly saw that they were far from that. They were just kids, about the age of my own daughters, wanting to make a future for themselves …”
The author goes on to describe befriending these Saudis, inviting them home and sharing life with them. I live for this kind of thing. My soul is nourished when people begin to replace fear with compassion, and disinterest with initiative.
One reason for this in my life is the debt of hospitality I owe to Muslims. Right around the planet I’ve been fed, housed and cared for by Muslims. It’s my turn. So I give a healthy portion of my time, energy and life to caring for and helping others care for Muslims.
One expression of that is sending our 15-year-old daughter to the Middle East for the summer. You can follow her journey here. Another way is to reach out to Muslims myself. Perhaps the most significant thing I do is try to help as many people as possible think like Jesus about followers of Muhammad.
The best tool I’ve seen to that end is a brief, DVD-based course called Bridges, produced by Crescent Project. Bridges is six weeks long. Each week consists of 25 minutes of brilliantly produced video instruction, open time frame discussion questions in a work book, and challenging homework assignments. Week one’s homework is: Meet a Muslim! This is kindergarten to many of us, but to most of the church, a major step. (A step many Bridge-ers likely don’t take right away!) Subsequent weeks ask students to discuss the lesson’s content with their new friends.
The course, winsomely narrated by Crescent Project founder, Fouad Masri, presents the bare basics about Islam, common objections Muslims have toward Christianity, and instruction on how Christians can, with love and respect, invite Muslims to follow Jesus.
Given current immigration trends, more of your constituents (whoever they might be) will cross paths with or rub shoulders with Muslims this year than last. You sharing Bridges with them will help them make the most of those God-given opportunities.
If you’ve used Bridges or know of similar curricula, please leave a comment. Go here to find out about live training options with Crescent Project. Send the link for this post to someone you know who might want to know about Bridges.
Question One: Gaping Voids in Mobilization
Straight up, here’s the question: What are we missing in mobilization today?
Background: Restlessness is stirring in my family these days. We’ve hit our three-year anniversary in our current location, which is pretty much a record for us. On the one hand we celebrate our newfound stability. While on the other hand, our thoughts are increasingly drawn to cool, new places where we haven’t yet lived; places where we could hang out with Muslims and encourage others to do the same.
As we think about this and talk over possibilities with God and others, I wonder how we’re doing in mobilization: What’s going well? But even more, what are we missing? If you had a dozen people to deploy, either full- or part-time, to helping people who love Jesus connect with people who’ve never heard of him, what would you do with them?
So here’s the question: If we want to help the whole Church take the whole gospel to the whole world, where are the holes? Report your observations here. I’ll compile and presents the results in an upcoming Practical Mob. column.
Question Two: You’re Smart, What Would You Say?
God has brought a fun opportunity my way: I’ve been asked to keynote the Laity Session at the June Annual Conference of the Indiana United Methodist Church. One brief encounter with 700 of the dearest and best my current denomination has to offer. Here are the basics – Time: 30 minutes. Average age: ~65. Attitude toward mission: Limited, but I expect genial. Assignment: Uncork on them. Give them goods about God’s plan to reach the world; maybe focus particularly on how that includes Muslims.
I would totally love to hear your thoughts on this. What would you say? What would you avoid? What Scripture would you anchor in? What media would you employ? What action steps would you propose? Please email me with thoughts or leave a comment here. Forward the link to this page to your best Methodist pal who might have some good advice for me!
SUBVERSIVE MOBILIZATION: Funding Hat Trick
Sometimes you sit and eat lunch. Sometimes you sit, eat lunch, and score an amazing idea. I was hanging out at Crescent Project recently and ate lunch with a sharp, young mobilizer named Brad. We were talking about raising support, and then the conversation threatened to descend to the pathetic depths of, “I’m more under-supported than you …”
Brad quietly began to explain something he’s doing to fund his life and work. Here’s his idea in a nutshell: He purchased a duplex in which both units have multiple bedrooms. He rents the rooms to male Muslim international students attending a nearby university. He has a male Christian student living in each unit, whom he mentors in how to relate to and care for Muslims. And the kicker? The rent that comes in, compared to his mortgage on the property, nets him a cool $1,000 a month. Hat trick!
1. He does his ministry: Caring for Muslims.
2. He leverages his ministry: Training others to do the same.
3. He helps fund his ministry.
I was totally encouraged. Now I can already hear some of you whining, “I don’t have the money to buy a property.” Of course you don’t. And some of us live where a sweet, little duplex costs a sweet 1.5 million pounds! This idea isn’t for everyone. If you can’t fix a toilet, it might not be for you. If you’re a single, 24-year-old female mobilizer, it might not be for you. But, if you’re in the right place (low-cost housing and Muslims) and can muster the courage to ask a deep-pocketed donor to partner with you, I stand ready to throw my hat on the ice and cheer you on.
MISSION EVENTS: New on Our Calendar
Day of Prayer for Turkey (global). April 18. Sponsored by the Alliance of Protestant Churches, Turkey.
ACMI Annual Conference (Manhattan, KS, USA). May 27 to 29. Sponsored by the Association of Christians Ministering Among Internationals.
Global Consultation on Music and Missions (Singapore). July 4 to 7.
Abide: Reentry and Renewal Retreat (Joplin, MO, USA). August 2 to 6. Sponsored by TRAIN International.
Story ’10 (Orlando, FL, USA). December 28 to 31. Multigenerational missions conference sponsored by Pioneers.
Questions, comments, submissions? Contact us.
I like the idea of the mission-funding hat trick involving duplexes. I’ve been considering a similar system. What makes it a little complicated is if you go out of town (or out of country) for an extended time you are still responsible for the property. However, having one of your people in there as a manager could reduce the risk of things going wrong. There are property management companies out there to do this, but that eats up the profits from the property, and you don’t get compensated for the risk you take. Real estate is harder to liquidate than stocks, but does offer a long-term income stream and other opportunity like your friend described.
A couple thoughts about the hat trick: How does he find male Muslims to rent to? Arabic ad in the newspaper? It is against the federal law to discriminate against someone based on religion, so if a non-Muslim came to rent you could not turn him down because he wasn’t Muslim. I have considered renting to refugees (we do some ministry with refugees). However, then I think about how heart wrenching it would be to have to evict them because they can’t find a job or lost their job and couldn’t pay the rent. Anna
Luke and Anna: Thanks for the responses to the real estate idea. I agree it’s fraught with risk. But for those with the right aptitude, it could be a good way to combine business acumen with practical love and connection to Muslims.