In This Issue: Six Ways to Reach the World
- QUESTION: What’s a Mobilizer to Do?
- VIDEOS: 6 Ways to Reach God’s World – Learn, Pray, Go, Send, Welcome, Mobilize
- SCRIPTS: Missions Skits for Kids, Now Downloadable
- TRAINING: Online School of Missions
- EVENTS: Member Care
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!
Resource Reviews, edited by Marti Smith, are published once a month.
QUESTION: What’s a Mobilizer to Do?
Source: Marti Smith
After adopting the “mission mobilizer” title as my own I found it came with many shades of meaning. Some who call themselves mobilizers are tasked with recruiting missionaries for an agency. Others carefully guard their neutrality. Yet when we sit down to listen to one another we find a common cause: We share a calling to serve in missions but instead of just going ourselves, we work to enlist more laborers. And we agree that we are not trying to make anybody do anything, but to come alongside and help them discover and get to where God might be leading them.
Is the essence of the mission mobilizer’s job to mobilize missionaries? To find people who will put on the missionary hat and go to the ends of the earth? That’s a crucial task; I don’t want to downplay it. But surely mission involvement can and should include other responses, too. Might mission mobilizers do more to change the world by multiplying not just missionaries but also senders, welcomers, intercessors, mission-minded parents and teachers and businesspeople, and even more mobilizers, too? And what about the many “goers” who don’t do full-time, long-term ministry through a mission agency? How can we support them? Is that part of our job as mobilizers?
Some of us have these questions answered for us by our organizations or churches: our work and message must be focused toward a specific end, or it must be inclusive and flexible. For me, the stickiest question may be this: How do we keep calling people to the most critical and neglected tasks without dismissing the contributions of those God calls (and designs) to serve in various other ways (1 Corinthians 12:15-26)?
One thing I have found helpful is to consider the work of goers, senders, intercessors, and the rest as practices of a “World Christian” or avenues for involvement rather than lifelong mandates, roles, or identities. Many of us will have experiences in several areas or all of them, while maybe focusing on one or two.
This week’s edition includes tools you can use to issue invitations to follow God in different kinds of mission-related service. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear how you balance focus and flexibility. If you think of yourself as a mobilizer, what do you mean by that? What are your greatest challenges in fulfilling that role? Please join the conversation below.
Mobilization
“Someone must sound the rallying call. Those who desire to see others trained, prepared, and released to ministry are known as mobilizers. Mobilizers stir other Christians to active concern for reaching the world. They coordinate efforts between senders, the local churches, sending agencies, and missionaries on the field. Mobilizers are essential. To understand the role of mobilizers, think of World War II as a parallel. Only ten percent of the American population went to the war. Of those, only one percent were actually on the firing lines. However, for them to be successful in their mission, the entire country had to be mobilized!” Phil Parshall (quoted in Mobilization – The Key to World Evangelization and elsewhere)
VIDEOS: 6 Ways to Reach God’s World – Learn, Pray, Go, Send, Welcome, Mobilize
Source: OMF International
OMF International and the Perspectives Study Program have a vision to see an ever-growing number of believers get involved in seeing the gospel of Jesus preached to every people group on earth. But what practical ways are there for the average Christian to be involved?
6 Ways to Reach God’s World is a series of seven short (five-minute) videos for use in small or large groups to help viewers discover ways to be involved in reaching the world through intentional learning, prayer, serving cross-culturally, sending, and welcoming internationals, as well as mobilizing others for all of these strategic roles. An introductory video provides an overview of the six ways to be involved, while the other six focus on one specific role with practical suggestions for next steps. Each includes interviews with people God has called to action in those roles.
>> Learn more or watch the videos. Download them for free, or get them on DVD from OMF Books for US$4.99. Also available from OMF is a booklet of the same name, recently revised to include discussion questions.
SCRIPTS: Missions Skits for Kids, Now Downloadable
Source: Pioneers Resources
Looking for a creative way to help your church understand God’s heart for the nations and the state of missions today? Maybe something you can use for a mission conference? Kids’ Mission Skits includes 20 motivational dramas that can be presented to children or family audiences. Previously published by Caleb Project, this book has been updated to reflect current mission statistics and now comes in downloadable format.
Fourteen creative and fun skits on mission topics are suitable for children and youth to perform. They include a children’s version of the popular World View Demonstration (an overview of the world population). The collection also contains historical narratives (monologues) of famous missionaries Gladys Aylward, Elisabeth Elliot, Eric Liddell, David Livingstone and Florence Nightingale (combined), Harriet Tubman, and William Tyndale, which youth or adults can perform for children or adults.
>> Learn more, view excerpts, or download for US$4.99 from Pioneers. Also available for youth and adults is a Missions Skits 2-Disc Set. Both sets include the (same) six historical monologues.
>> For more resources and ideas for engaging children, check out Stand4Kids.
TRAINING: Online School of Missions
Source: The Long View
The Online School of Missions is a virtual “classroom” intended to (eventually) provide a comprehensive missionary training course specifically designed for people who do not normally have access to this training due to their location, or for people who want to “fill in the gaps” of their knowledge or have a bit of a refresher. Modules posted cover the biblical basis of missions, missions history, and trends. Newest material explores the missionary call and preparing to go.
“We cannot replace a missionary school and are not intending to. By going to an in-person missionary school you will benefit from the experience of instructors, mentoring, coaching, and interaction with fellow students. The resources here will help to acquaint you with some of the topics that will be covered, and may help to flesh out areas which shorter courses don’t address.
“In addition, these courses may be used freely by schools in Majority World countries where instructors are perhaps hard to come by. Integrate these courses into your own training work, mixing and matching as needed.
“I’m starting to pass the word about this course, and I trust it will be useful for mobilizers as well as new candidate directors. I’d invite you to check it out and send me any feedback.”
>> Visit the Online School of Missions.
EVENTS: Member Care
Source: Missions Catalyst Calendar
Holding the ropes for someone serving cross-culturally? Several 2011 events are planned just for you:
April 01 to 02 – Care Connexion 2010 (Beaverton, OR, USA). Equipping and networking leaders to provide relevant and effective care for missionaries. Meet others serving in missionary care from churches, missions organizations, schools, and Christian counseling centers. Speakers from around the country will share strategies, resources, and encouragement in efforts to meet the needs of overseas workers.
June 12 to 17 – Caring for Others Missionary Conference (Frederic, WI, USA). Designed for missionaries, field leaders, and member care specialists, this training conference is an interactive week of skill development in the areas of listening and pastoral care. A ministry of Caring for Others, it will be repeated in November in Lake Geneva, WI.
Readers might also be interested in the popular Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills workshops held by ministries all over the world.
Looking for something easier to access? Check out the thoughtful broadcasts and other resources from Member Care Media (formerly Member Care Radio, a ministry of TWR).
>> See our complete calendar for mission conferences and other events.
Marti Smith is a writer, speaker, and project manager for Pioneers. Since the mid-90’s she has helped prepare cultural research teams and sent them out to explore unreached communities and mobilize efforts to serve these groups. Marti manages and publishes Missions Catalyst and is the author of Through Her Eyes, a book about the lives of missionary women in the Muslim world.
Hello, Marti. This was a great article with some links that are extremely valuable and much appreciated. I started as a “mobilizer” in Sep ’09 with http://www.medicalmissions.org . We wanted a free resource to be available to connect as many people with missions as possible with a focus on medicine.
Have you attended the GMHC? http://www.medicalmissions.com Thank goodness they do Christian missions as they have almost the exact same domain name as us 🙂
Please drop me a line as I’d love to chat with you 1:1 about this topic.
Blessings,
Steven
What’s a Mobilizer to Do?
A lot of the role of the mobilizer has to do with how one approaches the task. The need “on the firing lines” is great and essential in reaching the world. However, one needs to approach a potential recruit with as if they are a disciple. The mobilizer is to look at the person as a person, not as an object to mobilize to the agency.
My biggest frustration is that many that I mobilize need to be moved past their wimpy excuses for not pursuing unreached people groups. Yes, there are other tasks and needs, but too many leap towards the more comfortable roles too quickly. If I’ve only known them for fifteen minutes, I don’t have the relationship to turn into the butt-kicker they need in their life. Any pushing, even if necessary, looks like you’re a used car salesmen turner recruiter, trying to drag them into your organization.
Numbers are necessary, and I think a mobilizer must mobilize people for their agency—or they’re in the wrong role. But one can still approach people with love, listen to how God has made them, and (if appropriate) challenge them to the tasks with the greatest need.
Being funded by an organization, I’m responsible for how I use my time. I’m not paid to be a full-time discipler. If that is my calling, I would need to look for a role in a church. But I can still approach my role as a discipler. If a person I’m mobilizing is interested in being a sender—or another mobilizer—I need to turn them over to the appropriate person. That way I can still help them, but then get on with my role as a mobilizer for the organization.
This can be a difficult balance, but it’s necessary to develop an approach with guidelines so that you fulfill your responsibility to your organization with integrity.
Steven: Your comment would have published immediately but the folks at WordPress, looking out for us, tend to flag comments that include links. Many are spam. I set ’em straight, as yours is on-topic.
Yes, we’re aware of the Global Health Missions Conference – picked up on it through Brigada or John McVay or both. Good stuff. Love to see avenues for professionals to bring their skills together with the opportunities we have in mission! Happy to send people your way to explore the options.
Marti
Kevin, thanks for writing in. Seems like when you’re in the “I just met you 15 minutes ago” situation, such as manning a table at a missions conference, there’s not much you can do to help people grow in their global and biblical awareness, is there? But you’re right, you can listen, encourage, and (if appropriate) refer them to someone else. You put out the welcome mat for all, while knowing your attention will (and should) go to those God has already led to embrace values similar to those of your agency (e.g., reaching the least reached).
It =is= a difficult balance. I’m rather glad I’m not expected to be a recruiter, myself – that would be tough. More often, I get to issue the broader invitations to be involved (such as through Perspectives classes) or come alongside those already in specific roles (often Missions Catalyst subscribers). Have realized, though, that I could do a better job connecting people with specific opportunities. I used to hand out a top-20 agency list. Unfortunately, the contact info tended to become inaccurate too quickly and my resource lists would take on a life of their own, spreading misinformation all over the world. Time to reconsider my matchmaking strategies. And send more people =your= way. Keep up the good work!
I’ve always considered it the role of a mobilizer to stir up mission passion, commitment and involvement, not necessarily or even primarily to recruit workers. We mobilize people for whatever greater involvement the Spirit will spark in them.
Dave, thanks for writing!
That’s definitely the way I prefer to approach it. And, by the grace of God and the ministries I’ve been part of, have always been able to do so. On the other hand, there are so many people serving in a few ministries, while other opportunities remain hidden or neglected…
Please add me to your free mailing list.
Thank you.
Done – thanks for your interest!
Marti