At the SEND Family Conference in July, I led a workshop on what we can still learn from Roland Allen’s book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? a hundred years after it was first published. Allen’s key principle of submission and dependence on the Holy Spirit and the Word of God was the focus of the first blog post. In this blog post contemporary application of Allen’s principles will be the subject.
Category: Leadership Page 7 of 10
Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash
In a previous post, we talked about the three main types of teams found in our mission organization. When new missionaries think about teaming, they are generally thinking about what we have called a basketball team. Basketball teams work together closely and interact frequently with each other about their various ministries.
But many of our mission teams are more like track teams than basketball teams. Track teams have a common purpose and team members support one another, but each person on the team works independently. They generally do not do ministry together. For many of our track teams, each team member works in a different church, a different ministry project, or even in a different town. While they are geographically close enough to one another to make it feasible to meet together regularly, team meetings are relatively rare, because there is little need for ongoing coordination of ministries.
In our last post, we talked about the three main types of teams found in our mission organization. Now I would like to discuss each of these three types in more detail.
Basketball teams work closely together and interact frequently with each other about their various ministries. Planning must be done as a team because most of the key ministries involve more than one person on the team, and each ministry role is interconnected with what other team members are doing.
Biblical examples of this type of a team would be Jesus with his disciples and Paul with his missionary band of Silas, Timothy, Luke, and others at various times. These ministry teams did ministry and life together, side-by-side experiencing both the joys and hardships of proclaiming the good news.
Photo by Afif Ramdhasuma on Unsplash
Our mission organization and many other agencies are committed to teaming. Our mission’s policy manual says that we seek to place our personnel in areas where they can meet and minister with other Christian workers (missionaries and/or national workers) who are committed to a common purpose, goal and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.
A desire to serve on a team
The majority of our new missionaries want to serve on teams. Yes, many of them are assigned to isolated locations, but nevertheless they want to be working together with other missionaries.
So it should come as no surprise that almost all missionaries talk about their “team”. Our staff meetings are called “team meetings” and our supervisors are called “team leaders”. Commonly, whenever more than one missionary family are located in the same city, they are considered a team. This is not only true of our organization.
The Israelites had done all the work just as the Lord had commanded Moses. Moses inspected the work and saw that they had done it just as the Lord had commanded. So Moses blessed them. Ex 39:42-43
The context of this passage is the construction of the first tabernacle in the first year after the Israelites left Egypt. The last project they complete are the priestly garments. Here again, the skilled craftsman are not given creative freedom to design whatever they want for their high priest. Repeatedly in Exodus 39, we see the refrain that each of the various pieces of the priest’s uniform was made exactly according to the design that the Lord had given Moses (Ex 39:1, 5, 6, 21, 26, 29, 31, 32, 42-43).
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabernacle |
Then comes inspection time. After Moses had inspected all the work, we read that he blessed the people. One short sentence but very significant in terms of its implications for leaders. What does it mean that Moses blessed the people? Douglas Stuart in his commentary on Exodus says that he said a prayer for them, asking that God would bring benefit to these people. We don’t know the actual words that Moses used, but we do know that it was meaningful and significant to these people. Moses was someone who spoke to God face-to-face, so the people could assume that in blessing them, Moses was speaking for God.
By blessing them, Moses communicated to the people that they had done what was commanded, and that both the Lord and Moses were pleased. He was commending them for a job well done. In other words, he was saying “Thank you” on behalf of God.