Home > Emmanuel Research Review > Issue No. 13 > > Stoney
EdwardsTalk to Me!
Church Planting Panel Discussion,
Boston, October 15, 2005
Supplement to Issue No. 13, January 31,
2006
Issue No. 13 main article
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The Speakers:
IP: Ismail Pereira, International Baptist Church, Fall River, MA
MC: May-Lynn Chang, Mosaic Boston, Boston’s Fenway area
MK: Matt Kruse, Edgeworth Community Church, Malden, MA
RK: Ralph Kee, Discussion Facilitator, Greater Boston Church Planting Collaborative, Boston
SE: Stoney Edwards, Urban/World Missions Researcher from the First Baptist Church of Los Altos California
TK: Torli Krua, Liberian church plants in Philadelphia; Providence; and Lynn and Peabody, MA
X: members of the audienceListen to Stoney's comments (MP3 file, 10 minutes)
Listen to Q&A (MP3 file, 10 minutes)RK: Ok. We have about 15-20 minutes. Stoney, do you want to take a couple of minutes and make any comments or observations? Then we want to be able to have time for interaction.
Relationships
SE: I’m just trying, to kind of, mentally digest what I’ve heard; things that we have heard in the Bay Area [San Francisco] in regards to Cambodia, Brazil, over the last couple of years. And two things that come right to the top of the pile. One is relationships, relationships, relationships. Relationships seem to be the way church planting can happen effectively around the world. We heard all the speakers here, and in that respect, the language, the cultural knowledge, seems to come right to the surface. Yes, we have to be able to talk about the gospel, but you have to relate it in the language of the people and in their culture. I’ve been reading a book on the history of Australia. In there, somewhere, they were commenting that the first missionaries in Australia had absolute zero impact for something like twenty years because they didn’t [?] the aboriginals because [?].Missionaries in Ukraine, we visited a couple of months ago, they have been there for ten years. They spent the first two years with just total language saturation and building relationships. And I think it is similar to what May-Lynn was saying [about] not looking or acting or sounding “missionary-like,” but that people know it just by your building relationship within the community.
Reaching the affluent
One thing I haven’t heard from anybody here, is one of our biggest challenges in our home. Because where we live is in an affluent area of the Bay Area, and what I have heard here is, I think, maybe [the affluent] are perhaps the hardest people to reach, because they’ve got what they want. They think things are going well, or at least they think so. We have personal friends who are marvelous, marvelous family people that live almost like Christians in the ways that they conduct their lives. But, they don’t want to have nothing to do with the church. You know, “Religion causes wars and dissension,” and they see another pastor who is in sexual indiscretion. And they hear the Catholic priest problem. A Baptist children’s pastor, who for twenty years conducted boys camps, they found out that he was [sexually] abusing boys. And that just destroyed thousands of people.Church mission support
One of the things our church asks is, how can we get others to come and be comfortable? In our church, with six hundred members, we spend almost 25% of our budget on missions. We are a very mission-oriented church. So this is outreach right in our backyard, and we are looking ahead to the next few years. How do we concentrate our support on fewer and fewer missionaries and our overall objective is evangelism and church planting? And those ministries build. Church planting will be at the absolute top of the list that we support. Yes, there are other missions on the forefront, like Bible translation. I think that sometimes schools are necessary for our mission to flourish somewhere.We discontinued all of our support for mission agencies generally sponsored and decided to funnel it directly to the missionaries right on the frontline. We’re putting pressure on MTTA (Mission to the Americas) and CBI (Conservative Baptist International) to find other ways to raise funds, where they are not taxing the missionaries. Missionaries in the USA and Europe are hurting very bad because of the value of the dollar. The cut to the missions agencies keeps going up. And I think Mission to the Americas is looking in that direction. The churches don’t want to support tax. And if it doesn’t change, more and more megachurches are bypassing mission as agencies, partly for that reason.
More on reaching the affluent
RK: This is one of the concerns in Boston. Because in Boston, like the South End here, is becoming more like Beacon Hill now. Gentrification. I’ve seen it. But it is still 40% subsidized housing. Boston still seems to become more rich and poor than middleclass. They just sold the first million-dollar condominium in East Boston. So, this is becoming more common. I admit this is a big concern here. [?] has been lower middleclass. But I think, over the last thirty years, these are increasingly affluent neighborhoods. More and more people [are] saying this is the primary mission field in Boston and Cambridge now. And how is that going to be evangelized? So I think this is a concern right here in Boston, just like Los Altos.SE: Within the Bay Area, we support urban ministry, and the churches are generally smaller and multiethnic in flavor. And we are operating the same concept as you are talking about here. The other big experiment that is going on is… church planters with house church planting in San Jose [California], particularly in Spanish neighborhoods. So it will be interesting to hear what your experiences are in church planting in neighborhoods. Another [sponsored ministry of FBCLA is] with home church planting in India.
RK: I think there needs to be a whole lot more discussion—I call it discourse—in church planting. We need to define our terms a whole lot better. We need to expand our glossaries to know what we are talking about. But so much has been offered here. And I don’t know if this tape will be available or not. Hopefully this might be available and we’ll do our best to get a copy to you for your own use or to share with other people. That would be great.
RK: In the last ten minutes what kind of questions do you have to ask? For any [panelist], or for the panel as a whole?
Church-planting missionaries sent by a church
X: I have this question, mainly for Ismail. I was wondering, your talking about sending out missionaries all the time from your church. And I was wondering, are these people who are getting a burden to go to these different places, or are they already in their job situation, having a reason to move there, and they’re wanting to start a church in their language in that location? And also, those people who are going out from your churches, are you able to maintain any contact with them, supporting them, mentoring them as they go out? And what have been the results? How have they fared going out in other places?
IP: Well… we could have many stories to tell you. We keep in touch with these people, mentoring them from a distance. And I’m not sure if this is their plan, or if this is God’s plan. As they did in Jerusalem, as you know, they got kicked out. So then everybody had to go out and tell the world about Jesus. Maybe most of them think that this is their plan. They are searching for a better job, better opportunities, searching for a better dollar. You know, they are searching for a better everything. And they can’t find it in Fall River. So, they go to Canada, they go back to New York, they go back to Brazil or Japan. They go to many places searching for that. And really I see God behind the big picture, you know, telling them that they need to keep on going. You know, some of them experience God and go to another place. You know, some of them come to Christ and then they experience peace and they stop searching. Many of them find Christ and still searching. I really see God working in both directions here. And it’s really not about [me]. I’m not really in control of any of that and neither is the church. Some of them went back, basically, because of their family. And after their family came to Christ, they came back. So they basically planted a church there. So we have had Americans that married Brazilians that came to Christ, and in within six months brought the whole family to Christ, because [of] that burden to bring them to Christ. So it’s God doing the whole operation. Most of the time, I don’t know what is going on.
Catholic Church questions
SE: I have a general question. Have any of you experienced or heard about the Cursillo movement in the Catholic Church here in Boston?
RK: What’s it called?
SE: Cursillo… it means short course in Christ.
X: Yes, I have bumped into some people who are involved in it.
SE: It is very active in the Bay Area it is very positive, very, very well done. I attended a Cursillo weekend as a guest. It’s actually sponsored out of the Vatican. It started in Spain about fifty years ago to get men into the church. And it’s amazing. It’s a real evangelical outreach in the Catholic Church.
[For more information on the Cursillo movement visit http://www.natl-cursillo.org/]
SE: Is the Catholic Church here hostile to the evangelical movement?
X: The Catholic Church in this area [Boston], really isn’t in a position to judge.
SE: One of the biggest problems in the Ukraine is the Russia Orthodox Church, which ironically was one of the most persecuted churches under communism, has now become openly hostile, including TV ads, even not accepting converts from evangelical churches back into the Russian Orthodox Church. And yet, they will accept Jew or Muslim converts.
IP: You see among the Portuguese-speaking people community there is a tremendous movement in the Catholic Church. And they have become very much like evangelicals in their preaching, their singing, in their worship, the whole thing. I remember living in an apartment where I could hear the Catholic church, and I didn’t know that it was a Catholic church. You would have thought it was a Baptist church. And they have been reaching out and evangelizing, doing a prayer walk, doing all the things that the evangelicals do.
SE: That’s marvelous!
IP: In the Portuguese-speaking nations, in countries like Brazil, there is a tremendous revival among the Catholic people.
SE: Wow!
Walls
MC: I have a general question. We are finding a little bit of difficulty bringing in more people. We are trying to network. We’re trying to build these relationships, but I think we are still running into so many walls. So, do any of you have any advice?
IP: You are called to it … you are called to run into walls. That’s mission.
MC: Ahhhh
X: Just a quick thought. I wonder why we don’t ask people themselves that question more often? You know, it’s like, I’m not going to tell you anything if you don’t ask me anything. The other day, I saw this short, five-minute video or something where they were asking people on campuses various questions about faith and letting people tell them what they were thinking. So I was just wondering, might we benefit from just asking the people that we are trying to reach? Asking, what would it take to get you to move from here to here? Just sort of, kind of, always asking people that. I bet we’d learn a lot about what it might take.
X: I heard you say walls. Do you have any idea about what the wall is? Do you have a diagnosis? You have people that come but they don’t return?
MC: Yeah, we have a lot of visitors, but we don’t have a whole lot of people who come to church. But we have a lot of people coming out to our events. But basically that’s what we want; people to have a point of connection at these events. Last year I started to be involved in Dragon Boat. And I don’t know if any of you know, it’s a huge water sport. I’m not spiritual enough to go to nursing homes every week and I’m just not that way. I’m about: how do I change my lifestyle to be with these people because my Christian life is totally in a bubble. But it’s about teamwork, about being out there in competition, winning. So I feel like I’m doing that alone. But my friends say, you can’t do that by yourself. So I invited all my Dragon Boat friends to a party. Now they are friends with my church friends. So now when they come into a room, they are like, “Hey Bob!” and they feel like they know people. But you know that takes a long time. You know, it would be great to have a flood of people on Sunday morning. I can’t really name the obstacle. So I don’t know.
[Living Root, Dragon Boat club: http://www.livingroot.org/]
[Dragon Boat: http://www.bostondragonboat.org/]
TK: I think what you said before in the presentation was one of the most beautiful methods of outreach I have heard, just trying to get to people at their level of interest at whatever you are doing to support them. [That’s what] I’ve learned [and] I’ve seen in my time here in Boston. We have the Katrina, for example, and then we have the tsunami, they actually had to tell people to stop giving for the tsunami. They had to tell them we have enough for the tsunami. Give to the general fund and not just to tsunami because we have enough stuff for the tsunami. I think that within those areas there is very increased involvement. For example, in the area of refugees, here in Boston, I don’t know how many Christians will want to go to the place where the people, the refugee people, have the problems.
[Torli continues to challenge the Christians and churches to increase their involvement in the meeting the needs of refugees and for increased federal and systemic involvement. He closes with a request for American Christians to organize and center on issues beyond themselves.]
[Ralph Kee reminds the group of the time, thanks everyone and the group closes with prayer.]
Issue No. 13 main article | Research Review index | Emmanuel Gospel Center
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