Tag Archives: community

Talking about Jesus in A Complex World

World Methodist Evangelism (WME) is proud to work with partners around the world to train indigenous, front-line evangelism leaders to talk about Jesus in a complex world. Usually lasting one week, these evangelism seminars provide laity and clergy in the Wesleyan Methodist family the opportunity to explore the nature and practice of evangelism in a cross-cultural environment.

Pastors and laity from the United States are encouraged to join with international church leaders in learning, worship, and mutual growth. We have three seminars in 2020: Indonesia, Fiji, and Romania.

These unique learning opportunities address topics important to Christ followers in these respective locations. Some topics include:
–Ministry in migrant communities
–Faithful creation care
–Providing a faithful witness under the pressures of an increasingly secular society
–The role of healing in evangelism and discipleship
–Addressing local and global poverty from a biblical perspective
–Ministering in places where folk religion is being mixed with Christian teaching

These issues are of increasing importance and provide helpful insights for leaders around the world. In addition, these seminars provide an arena for the World Methodist family to meet together for sharing, learning, and preparing for evangelism. Teaching is led by local church leadership as well as pastors and scholars from the United States.

These experiences are perfect opportunities to grow as leaders and faithful followers of Jesus, and to encounter the wonderful things God is doing in the church around the world. Additionally, continuing education credit is available while experiencing evangelism and church leadership in these exceptional environments.

Upcoming Opportunities:
– Indonesia
– Fiji
– Romania

To learn more, click HERE.

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Here is the Church

By Rev. Dr. Robert Haynes

When I was a child, my grandmother taught me an old saying, a little rhyme that she would act out with her hands. It went something like this:

“Here is the Church”

(She interlaced her fingers, hiding them inside a two-handed fist)

“Here is the Steeple”

(She pointed her two index fingers upwards to make a steeple”

“Look inside, there’s all the people”

(She turned her palms upwards, revealing her wiggling, interlaced fingers)

With all due respect to my loving grandmother, is it fair to divide the church and the people that way? What does the Bible say about what, or who, the church is?

The New Testament gives no formal definition of the church. However, looking at contextual clues for the church’s own understanding of itself provides important insight. From its origins, the church understood itself as a gathered group in, and for the sake of, the world. The term used in Acts to describe the gathering of Christians, the church, is ekklesia. At the time of the writing of the New Testament, the term was already in common use to describe the gathering of the people of the city at the bidding of the municipal leaders. Ekklesia is a term that was used in Ancient Greek to describe the assembly called by the town clerk. It was the role of this clerk to call the people to assemble for his purposes: to make an announcement, dictate a policy change, or conduct some business. The gathering, the ekklesia, was called together by their leader for the purposes that leader wanted to fulfill.

However, the early church was not just a gathering of people to fulfill a political purpose. Rather, they were the gathering of the people at the request of the Highest Authority: a Christian community proclaiming that God was calling all believers for his purposes. Such a bold proclamation said that Jesus’ lordship is over all aspects of life. As such, they were publicly declaring all other religions and societal structures as inferior to God, Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son of God. Even the government and its leaders were to be molded and shaped by the teaching of Scriptures and lived out by the people gathered and scattered—the Christians, the church. What made the members of the early movements of Christianity distinct from the world was that they saw themselves as not just a gathering of people, rather as the gathering of the people of God.

By choosing to call themselves ekklesia, the New Testament church desired to be a group gathered among the whole city and desired that they could, one day, be a gathering of the whole city. Christians, from the very beginning, were a movement of people launched into the public life. They lived in such a manner that the social, political, and economic structures would reflect Christ’s teaching. They expected others to be transformed by Word: the teaching of Scripture, Deed: their acts of mercy and service, and Sign: the divine works of the Holy Spirit. They did not leave this work to a select few, what we today might call the “clergy.” Rather, they understood this to be the work of every Christian.

John Wesley understood this at many levels. For Wesley, the empowering of the laity in ministry was the way that God’s Kingdom is demonstrated through a community of believers demonstrating the love of God and neighbor, therefore fulfilling God’s commandments. Wesley sought to revitalize the church by re-energizing the laity in the Christian faith they seemed to profess, but failed to demonstrate. The early Methodists exemplified the lesson that the laity embodies the church, visible in the world. The Wesleyan Methodist movement continues to thrive where this is embodied today.

It is important to remember, that from the earliest foundations of the Christian movement, the church is not first a building or the clergy leadership. Rather, the church is just that, a movement of people who have been transformed by Christ and are inviting others to experience that transformation as well. The church is not merely the building, nor is the church merely the clergy. Rather, as another old saying goes, “If the building burned down and the preacher left town, what you would have left is the church.”

Dr. Haynes is the Director of Education and Leadership for World Methodist Evangelism and the author of Consuming Mission: Towards a Theology of Short-Term Mission and Pilgrimage. He is an ordained member of The United Methodist Church. He can be reached at rob@worldmethodist.org.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_facebook][vc_tweetmeme][/vc_column][/vc_row] [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The Work and the Rest that is Worship

By Rev. Dr. Robert Haynes

In the midst of the Advent season, many church leaders are busy preparing for some extra special: Extra and Special worship services. These services generally draw people to church who have not been before or who have not been in a long time. These can be wonderful times of evangelistic energy. Newcomers to the church can be invited into the Christian community when church leaders work to prepare themselves and their congregations for authentic worship.

Though it may seem paradoxical, Christmas services maybe a time to demonstrate that the work of worship can lead to a divine rest. It is work that does not exhaust, but refreshes.

Church leaders will spend a great deal of time preparing for worship services. Every word to be spoken has been carefully prayed over. Music has been rehearsed. The worship space has been prepared. Leaders should also teach the congregation that worship takes some work on their part. It takes a holy work, and therefore, it is work worth doing. Whether we participate in a uniform, regular order of worship or not, we all participate in a “liturgy.” Liturgy literally means “the work of the people.” Liturgy does not have to be confined to something we read through in traditional worship.

It is indeed powerful to remember, participate, and celebrate the traditions of the centuries of worship that came before us. But all worship: traditional, contemporary, emerging, etc. can be a “liturgy” or a work of the people. Worship is not a spectator’s sport. True worship occurs when we bring ourselves to the worship of God. This requires more than our mere physical presence. This requires our entire being, our time, and our full attention. This can be real work sometimes, but it is always worth it.

Because the Holy Spirit is working in authentic, work-filled worship it is powerful! The power is already there in the Person and Presence of the Holy Spirit. We do not have to force it or make it happen. The Spirit is already there. When we open ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit by reverent and careful preparation for worship God is glorified, and we transformed in the process.

Worship is also about rest. Let’s face it, many of us have trouble resting. Sometimes we even look down upon those who rest as lazy or unproductive. To be the child of God that we are called to be, we need to rest. We must take a deep breath: spiritually, emotionally, physically.

True worship is a time of rest. We rest in the arms of the God who loves us and desires that we too love Him. He wants us to cast our cares upon Him and take rest from the burdens that the world, others, or even ourselves have placed upon us.

In our worship we can sometimes get so caught up in singing about God or reading about God or hearing about God that we forget that worship is an experience of God. We experience God’s love so that we too might be changed more into the likeness of Him. Have you ever considered how you might move from all those things about God and move into a restful experience of God?

Our worship truly takes on a whole new meaning when we live out that which we say and do in worship. We affirm that God is all powerful, that He forgives sins, that the saints are to commune together, and that there is more to our being than just this earthly life.

If done carefully, prayerfully, and intentionally every worship service can be filled with holy work and holy rest. As new people come to our churches, may Christian leaders model this work and this rest some that others would come to know God’s work and rest for themselves as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Dr. Haynes is the Director of Education and Leadership for World Methodist Evangelism and the author of Consuming Mission: Towards a Theology of Short-Term Mission and Pilgrimage. He is an ordained member of The United Methodist Church. He can be reached at rob@worldmethodist.org. To learn more about, or to order, Consuming Mission, visit www.ConsumingMission.com.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_facebook][vc_tweetmeme][/vc_column][/vc_row] [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Show Up and Pay Attention

By Rev. Dr. Robert Haynes

I was recently visiting my son who is away studying at University, and we attended Sunday worship at a church near his school. After the service, quite a few people stopped us to thank us for showing up to church. The congregation was made up of mostly older members who seemed thankful, relieved, and overjoyed that people from a younger generation would show up to church. That is the way the church is supposed to respond when people show up to church, right? So why don’t more people show up?

In an age of increasing moral relativism, secularization, and skepticism, convincing those outside the Church to show up inside the walls of a local church to seek answers to life’s problems will only grow more difficult. Standing on the front steps of the church while yelling, wooing, or cajoling passersby (literally or figuratively) to come on inside is likely to fail. Rather, those who would seek to effectively share the life-changing message of Jesus Christ must move in another space.

Sociologists say that we live and move in three different spaces. The first is our domestic space: where we live, eat our meals, and spend time with our families. This is our most private space. The second is where we go to work/school. We build relationships here, but they are limited by the confines of the nature of our work environment or school situations. The third space is where we spend the rest of our time. This can be a coffee shop, restaurant, pub, park, or playground. It may be the gym, the athletic fields, or the shopping mall. Used to its fullest potential, the third space is where we do life together. It is where we catch up with friends and neighbors. It is where we are able to hear one another’s hopes and dreams. It is where we are able to talk and reason and learn from one another. The third space allows for an exchange of ideas in a reasonable and measured way.

Faith-sharing is important in all of these spaces. At home, families should worship and study together. At work and school, there is an appropriate way for one to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ who shares love and hope with others. However, it is in the third space where a great impact can be made on non-believers. When people come together around a common interest or on common ground then Christians find themselves entering into spaces where God works in some remarkable ways.

Consider the example of the Apostle Paul in Acts 19 in which we see Paul living and working in Ephesus. In verse 9, we learn that for two years Paul and the disciples went daily to the hall of Tyrannus (an Ephesian third space, if you will). It was there that Paul taught any who would hear, Jews and Greeks, to the point where God did “extraordinary things through Paul” including healing people with the handkerchiefs and aprons that Paul had touched. Wow! Notice that it was not a cleverly devised outreach event where this happened. Rather, Paul deliberately and consistently moved out of the confines of his home and the marketplace of tent making and moved into a third space in Ephesus.

A mentor continues to remind me that in order to share your faith, you must show up and pay attention. Show up in people’s lives. Show up in the momentous and the mundane. Show up in times of joy and of sorrow. Show up for celebrations and for struggles. And pay attention. Pay attention to their hopes and dreams. Pay attention to their doubts and fears. Pay attention to their questions and curiosities.

Most importantly, pay attention to what the Holy Spirit is doing. When Christians show up in other peoples’ lives and pay attention to what is going on, the Holy Spirit will work in ways we could never imagine. As Wesleyans we know that God is calling each and every person to life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ. We also know that we have the privilege and responsibility to use our presence, our works, and our words to be a part of God’s invitation to others. So, pay attention to the promptings and urgings of the Spirit to speak words of comfort and hope. Pay attention to the nudges you feel about when to speak of your faith and when to remain silent and to listen more. Pay attention to the doors that open for you to declare with loving kindness God’s saving grace.

So, move out into your third space. Show up. Pay attention. Then, celebrate what the Holy Spirit does in and among you!

Dr. Haynes is the Director of Education and Leadership for World Methodist Evangelism and the author of Consuming Mission: Towards a Theology of Short-Term Mission and Pilgrimage. He is an ordained member of The United Methodist Church. He can be reached at rob@worldmethodist.org. To learn more about, or to order, Consuming Mission, visit www.ConsumingMission.com.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_facebook][vc_tweetmeme][/vc_column][/vc_row] [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

A Celebration of Continued Vision

A Note from Board Chair Davis Chappell

It is with great joy and thanksgiving that we celebrate Kim Reisman’s 5th anniversary as Executive Director of WME. What a blessing she has been to our mission and ministry! God has used her in marvelous ways to continue the witness and work of WME. Her passion for Christ, her love for people, her vision, teaching, preaching and organizational gifts have faithfully led us into a strategic place for the days ahead.

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On behalf of the board of WME, we give thanks for Kim and are excited about the future, with her at the helm.

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“The past five years have been filled with lots of learning; we have all worked hard and come a long way. It is a true blessing to serve and to be part of this life-changing work.”

Through Kim’s leadership, WME has:

Expanded leadership: In addition to the amazing Board of Directors, Regional Secretaries and our newly formed Next Generation Advisory Team, WME has doubled the size of the operations staff, going from two to five positions. Take a minute to meet the dedicated team.
WME held our 24th gathering of Order of the FLAME and are working to create a database of all its members. If you have participated and are a member of the Order, please be sure to complete the FLAME Member Form and stay connected.
ICYCE (International Christian Youth Conferences on Evangelism) has been rebranded and is now called Metanoia. WME held our 10th Metanoia event after a nine-year hiatus. Young adults from over twenty different countries attended.
WME feels a strong commitment to missional evangelism, and therefore, has established the Residency In Mission (RIM) program. We have two residents working with host ministries in New Zealand to strengthen the work in their local contexts, while offering Residents an environment in which to grow in their ministry service.
Published the Embrace materials and began holding training workshops. Embrace is an evangelism resource melding personal experience and theological integrity to equip Christ followers to share their faith with confidence, competence and grace.

In this ever-changing and tech-savvy world in which we live, WME has worked to make advances in technology. We have updated the website, established a stronger presence on Facebook and other social media outlets, and created a working and more efficient database.

But most importantly, through the ministry of WME, lives of literally thousands of people around the world have been touched and changed. Collectively we will continue to empower Christ followers to share their faith in Jesus Christ!

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Share, Give, Join

Have you been influenced by the work of WME? Share how Kim’s leadership has impacted you by commenting on our Facebook page here.

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You can support the work of WME and make a gift in honor of Kim. Donate NOW.

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Reaching Young Adults

By Rev. Dr. Robert Haynes

People sometimes ask me for advice on how to get more young adults to come to church. Frequently, their church is warm and friendly, but is made of up older and/or elderly adults. They sometimes speak passionately about their desire to see their church not die off as members age. These conversations usually occur with church leaders in parts of the world where the church attendance is in decline, particularly in the West.

When I ask them what sort of things they have tried, they tell me they are thinking of putting ads in the newspaper. Or they hung signs up outside inviting people to come to church. Or they held an event and they hung up fliers in places like the post office. They seem disappointed that the response to these has been poor.

At this point, I try to steer the conversation away from these passive, impersonal efforts at “outreach.” None of these require a great deal of time of true investment in people. Effective ministry takes work, a great deal of hard work. It takes an investment of time, of love, and of self-abasing service. While no single formula provides a simple solution to increasing the spiritual involvement of young adults, I will offer a few principles for fruitful ministry.

Pray. This seems so basic, but it cannot be overstated. Pray for God to open your eyes to those you are to serve. Remember that prayer not only changes the one who is the subject of your prayer, but it changes the one who offers the prayer. Pray that God will set your heart right to minister to others.

Check your motives. Simply wanting young adults to come to church merely because it will keep your particular congregation alive is disingenuous and unbiblical. People will see right through it and be turned off. Rather, the gospel calls us to share the love of Jesus because it changes lives, transforms relationships, sets free those enslaved to sin, and heals the broken hearted. If that is your focus, the church will grow as a natural result. If you seek maintenance of an “institution” without prioritizing mission, you will get neither.

Seek Community. Research continues to show that today’s younger adults are looking for an authentic community that will help them discover the meaning and purpose of their lives. There is no better place than the community of vibrant Christians faithfully living out the gospel to aid in that discovery. However, true community looks much different than the institutional nature of many churches, and young adults, generally speaking, do not trust institutions. They have grown up watching banks “too big to fail,” fail. They do not trust government because they see political acrimony everywhere they turn. They see the institutional church racked by scandal again and again. Hence, they will not give blind loyalty to an institution, as maybe the previous generations have done. In order to help them see the good news of the gospel, authentic relationships in a dynamic community of Christians dedicated to scriptural holiness must be developed to provide a healthy picture of the church.

Prioritize Belonging. Too many times the church has told people that they must behave and believe before they can belong. However, this is not the pattern Jesus models. In Luke 19, Jesus is passing through Jericho. When he sees Zacchaeus, Jesus publicly invites Zacchaeus into the community of faith. Picture it, Jesus offers a notorious cheat and swindler a place in the community of people of faith. The members of the religious establishment immediately disapproved. But notice that the result is Zacchaeus’ confession and repentance. Offering community where people are free to belong and can honestly share their doubts, struggles, and questions about faith and have them answered with the transforming love of the gospel is a powerful agent of change.

Celebrate multi-generational ministry. In many parts of the world, young adult Christians are a minority in their peer group. Anecdotal evidence and academic research alike show that young adults want relationships with Christians of older generations to help them navigate life. This does not mean that the older adults need to have all the right answers every time. Rather, young adults tend to seek someone who will say, “I’ve have been walking this road a bit longer. I do not have it all figured it, but I will walk this road with you.” I know I am thankful for the mentors who came alongside my wife and me to help us learn how to be better parents, buy our first home, or take on new community projects. We received invaluable friendship and wisdom from people of several generations.

Be authentic. Young adults value genuine relationships that demonstrate sustained authenticity. Putting on a false front or a fake persona will only hurt ministry. It is not necessary to dazzle them with fancy lights, sound, smoke machines, and mirrors. Do not prioritize another slick event to get people in the door. Leave these things to the entertainment industry. Similarly, do not rely on the latest, trendy program to solve everything. Share your struggles and successes alongside one another, just as the New Testament churches did. Live in community, devoting yourselves to the apostle’s teaching, sharing meals with one another, and sharing as any has need (Acts 2). When a church operates this way people, communities, and the world are radically transformed.

Practicing principles like these in your ministry can help reach people for Christ of all ages, particularly young adults, in your community. The work of World Methodist Evangelism provides even more resources and events to equip your church for ministry. Contact us today to learn more.

Dr. Haynes is the Director of Education and Leadership for World Methodist Evangelism and the author of Consuming Mission: Towards a Theology of Short-Term Mission and Pilgrimage. He is an ordained member of The United Methodist Church. He can be reached at rob@worldmethodist.org. To learn more about, or to order, Consuming Mission, visit www.ConsumingMission.com.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_facebook][vc_tweetmeme][/vc_column][/vc_row] [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Community: Connecting the Dots

Recently, the World Methodist Evangelism staff met for a time of connection, relationship-building, and vision casting. As our team has expanded and grown, we look forward to new ways of living out our mission to equip church leaders in the Wesleyan Methodist family to share their faith effectively.

Technology allows flexibility for our team to work, with our Associate Director of Education and Leadership Development Dr. Rob Haynes living in Alabama, our Associate Director of Community and Creative Development Elizabeth Glass Turner located in Ohio, Executive Assistant Shirley Dominick coordinating from Indiana, and our new Director of Development Bonnie Hollabaugh working from Tennessee. We are able to join in weekly video conference calls together, seeing each other’s faces, hearing each other’s voices, and utilizing email and phone apps to stay connected daily.

Yet there is something irreplaceable about face to face meetings. In these contexts, we are able to stand circled in prayer, eating together, laughing together, and continuing to learn how God has wired each of us uniquely for the work at hand. In those moments, the concept of embrace is embodied: we open our arms, wait, close our arms, and release.

It can be tempting in an era in which many of us spend chunks of time online to think that a social media post stating our beliefs is sufficient as a way of sharing our faith, or that cleaning out the back of the hall closet for donations is an ample expression of generosity. Yet Christ calls us to be his hands, his feet to those around us in a very physical, tangible way: to be ready to embrace others, not just mentally or emotionally, but to be prepared to physically embrace living, breathing people, who are flawed, or hurting, or growing, or obeying God’s call as best they can.

Many resources have been published recently on the value of physical proximity and neighboring in our living out of the Christian faith. As we continue to live into digital existence, we stay rooted as communities of Christ followers who give and learn together. People who follow Christ are people who value creation and who value embodiedness, because Jesus took on flesh in the Incarnation, redeeming physical life and raising it from the power of death. As we share communion in congregations around the world, we remember this truth: that we depend on the Body of Christ, broken for us. We taste bread and grape and we know that our senses are speaking to us of God’s love.

Joining together in fellowship, in physical presence, allows our senses to whisper that among a group of particular people, we belong. We have entered each other’s presence, we have embraced each other as people being shaped more and more into the likeness of Jesus, and we received grace. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The Humility of Interdependence

To grasp the depth of the humility that infuses authentic evangelism, it is helpful to explore human identity and the nature of sin. Though these are vast subjects, there are a few basic things that are important for our understanding of evangelism.

From the very beginning, God’s creative process has been a practice of separating and joining. God separates the light from the darkness to create day and night, and joins all the waters together into one place to create dry land. In like fashion, human identity is formed as we navigate a process of separating and joining. We become most fully who we are, not when we reach independence, but when we understand our interdependence and recognize that we are both separate and connected to those around us. As Miroslav Volf has said, “The boundaries that mark our identities are both barriers and bridges.”

Though God desires us to discover our interdependence, the reality of human sin makes us more inclined to focus on our independence. If we think of God’s creative process as separating and joining, there is a meaningful sense in which sin disconnects what God has bound together and unites what God has separated. It disrupts God’s pattern of interdependence, making us estranged from one another and from God.

Yet as Christians, we believe in the one God of Abraham. A significant point flowing from that is reflected in the Scripture passage that began this session – the belief that all of humanity will receive God’s blessings. Through Abraham, all the families of the earth will be blessed. N. T. Wright calls this “God’s covenant-with-Abraham-for-the-blessing-of-all.” It signals that in keeping this promise, God plans to redeem the overarching situation of estrangement that affects every human being.

Considering these ideas about identity and sin, cultivating humility as an essential value of evangelism involves remembering Jesus’ remarkable practice of both renaming and remaking. He renamed people and things that had been falsely labeled unclean, thus reconnecting people and things that sin had wrongly separated. (Mark 7:14-23) Jesus also remade people and things. He took truly unclean things and made them clean through forgiveness, spiritual transformation, and healing. In this way, Jesus tore down barriers created by wrongdoing. (Mark 5:1-20, Mark 2:15-17)

The humility that lies at the heart of all evangelism is rooted in an acute awareness of the reality of sin in our world. We recognize the brokenness and woundedness that marks human life. We confess that we are no more immune to that brokenness than anyone else, whether within or outside the church. We acknowledge we are unable to redeem our situation of estrangement. We admit we are unable to rename or remake ourselves.

This humility undergirds our way of being in the world and is vividly illustrated in the metaphor of embrace, particularly in open arms. When we open our arms to initiate embrace we indicate a desire for the other; they signal that, “I want you to be part of who I am and I want to be part of you.” Open arms point to the deeper truth that a void exists because of the absence of the other. In signaling desire, our open arms also show that in a real sense the other is somehow already present to fill the void, even before an embrace occurs.

The messages of open arms are significant for evangelism and the humility that is an essential value. Open arms point to the void created by the absence of some from the divinely promised one family of Abraham. They indicate that the boundaries surrounding the one family of Abraham have been made passable and that there is an invitation to shared life, which flows in two directions