Please follow this link to see more information.

This is open to anyone attending the conference who has a desire to network with people seeking to penetrate some of the least reached places of our world with the gospel.

Here are some details of the luncheon and the network.

Who is Sponsoring this?

There are 3 churches coming together for this event.

• Sonlight Community Church in Cheasapeake , VA.
• First Baptist Church of Norfolk, VA.
• Liberty Baptist of Hampton, VA.

Who? This is non denominational.  Anyone with a desire to move forward in reaching to the least reached places with the gospel is invited.

Why ? We are simply looking for churches with like minded people who desire to go to the least reached places of our world. There is great power and synergy when people work together.  Our hope is that those deciding to connect will share info with each other so we can grow and learn from one another.  While we are not affiliated with this missions group this video shares a little of what drives us.  The job is not done and so few are going to the hard to reach places.  Join us !

Where is the Lunch ? Click here to see

What is the Catch? No catch and we PROMISE , we are not looking for money or some endorsement or anything like that.  We are simply trying to create a network of people for information and engagement purposes. Our passion is to take the gospel to people groups here and around the world.

Guest Speaker:  Mark Morris who is now with the IMB but was formerly a missionary in Central Asia, and missions pastor at Germantown BC, and served at Saddleback CC.

Do I have to Live in Virginia? NO ! This is both a virtual network and a geographical network.  If you live in Virginia we will have times to get together and discuss happenings, provide training, talk about strategy and more. But it is also intended to be virtual and web based .  Our hope is that a great array of connections can be built to further the mission of God.

How Do I Register? Just click here and sign up. (Registration Link will open Monday May 3rd. ) Due to the limited space we ask that each church seek to send only 2 representatives from each church.

More Questions ?

Contact us at :

Ken McLemore – Liberty , nations1@gmail.com , 757-826-2110

Craig Clayton – First Norfolk , livethemission@gmail.com

Kenny Bass – Sonlight Community Church , kenny@sonlightchurch.org

Join us at The Whiteboard Sessions Conference ( WIBO ) for a free lunch.  WIBO is put on by  Ben Arment .

Mark Morris of the IMB  will be our guest speaker for the luncheon along with a special guest from a Central Asian country.

If you are going to this conference then write to me Ken , at kmclemore@lbcmin.com to let me know you are coming and would like to attend the free lunch. By the way the lunch will be right across the street from the Sandler Center as you can see here

The purpose of this lunch to begin a Missions network among pastors and others seeking to work among the least reached places of our world.  Due to space issues only 2 people from each church will able to attend.

For those who found this blog, then,  you get first shot at it.  Invitations on a broader level go out later this week.  In the meantime we hope that those who desire to be a part of this network will join us.

On January 28th the 24.14 conference will be hosting a one day meeting in Wake Forest, North Carolina. The idea of this meeting is to share practical things your church can do to move forward in missions. Our goal is for it to be simple and useful.

Date : January 28th, 2010

Location:

Wakefield Baptist Church
13029 Falls of Neuse Road
Wake Forest, NC. 27587
919-570-5777
www.wakefieldbaptist.org

Time: 9-3 PM

The Format: Each topic will have a presentation for about 30 minutes followed by a 15-20 minute discussion. Our goal is to engage with one another to learn and grow together. Networking is vital to our work and our prayer is that we will be able to have plenty of time for discussion and getting to know one another. 

The Topics:

• Preaching the nations (ethnic groups) to your church.  Preaching ideas to lead the people to see how deep God’s heart is for different people groups.
• Leading your church to engage the unreached peoples of the world. (This would include those coming to North America)
• Training your lay people for the mission ahead.
• Finding the right missionary to work with in the field.
• Resources to help your church move forward.
• Learning mission strategies and teaching mission strategy to your people.
• Networks and alliances.

Note: These may change a bit depending on feedback from you guys.  Also due to time constraints some topics may be combined with others.

The Presenters: All our presenters are people with both strategic and practical experience working among the UPG’s and UUPG’s.  Our goal is to bring people who have and are still doing mission in a local church setting. We do not bring theorists to the table to share what could happen but instead what does happen.

• Ken Lassiter – Missions pastor at First Baptist Woodstock.
• Ken McLemore – Former missionary, Missions pastor at Liberty Baptist , Hampton , VA. for 10 years.
• Joe Dillon – Former Missionary with the IMB, Pastor for 20 years and now Mobilization Strategist with the IMB.
• Others – TBA

How to Sign Up – Simply send an e-mail to Ken McLemore at   nations1@gmail.com  telling us who is coming.

Lunch: Lunch that day will be on your own.

People are moved by story.  Jesus used story or parable if you would like to call it, to share His messages with  the audience. What I have discovered is that we can tell the story in simple, inexpensive ways. This video slide show took one hour.  I simply sent an email and twittered about it. Hits are coming in quickly.  Amazing. We also sent this to our donors to let them see some pics from the trip.  This has been both helpful in giving fast feedback to them, but in also motivating more to go next time.

Words are good but in today’s culture, pictures say it all and more !  A friend is hosting a conference on Story that some of you may want to attend.  You can click here to find it. Below you can find a video we posted about a recent trip to reach the Navajo People, one of our long term partnerships.

Below is a simple way you can share the story to your people that encourages them to GO. I created a slide show of pictures taken on a recent trip.  We simply placed them in a slide presentation program (I used iMovie 08), and them posted them on my You Tube account, which is free.

Then we let our donors and church people know about the slide show.  We have done video and still pictures both. People can see the story without having to read a ton of text.  So far it has been effective and people begin to see that reaching the ethnos is nothing like they envisioned.  A picture truly is worth a thousand words.

Time:  It took only an hour or so to do this.

• Preaching the nations (ethnic groups) to your church.  Preaching ideas to lead the people to see the scriptures.
• Leading your church to engage the hard places.
• Training your lay people for the mission ahead.
• Finding the right missionary to work with in the field.
• Resources to help your church move forward.
• Learning mission strategies and teaching mission strategy to your people.
• Networks and alliances .
• Telling the Story to your church.

Dates: January 28, 2010, Thursday .

Location: TBD – Somewhere near Wake Forest, Raleigh, Durham area.

Cost: Minimal

Goals:

1. Practicality , We want this to be very practical in helping churches to do missions.
2. Networking – Our desire is to see those mission active churches connect and work together.
3. To not waste your time   – I have been to so many meetings that were information download.  That is good, but I need practical advice on HOW to do it. That is what this one day meeting will focus upon, HOW.  We will be assuming you already have the desire to move forward.
4. To maintain a smaller atmosphere so discussion can take place.

We will be giving you sign up information in the next month or so.

PS:  We want to hear form you .  SO please let us know what would be of benefit to your churches .

I have it here for your convenience.

Lord, What Can We Do

The surprising thing I learned from Dr. Jim Slack at the IMB is that America is fast becoming illiterate.  In my area of Hampton Roads, VA. , according to the 2000 census,  28% of the people are illiterate while another 27% are functionally illiterate . Functional illiteracy means they can read but not with very much comprehension. Of those who can read, many choose not to read much at all. This will have a huge impact on the churches of the future.

With people choosing to read less , we must learn to hone our oral communication skills to be able to better tell our own stories, the stories of God’s working and to be able to story the bible to a culture that reads little, which brings me to the point of my post.

Had lunch a few weeks ago with a friend , Ben Arment, who recently moved back to our area.  Ben was a church planter we connected with in northern Virginia.  He went on to do different things working at Catalyst, writing a book, and producing the Whiteboard conference.

Now he is producing a new conference that I think will help those of us who desire to penetrate culture deeper, and to gain skills for overseas work in sharing the gospel. You can check out the conference here at the Story conference in Chicago.

I will be there with the goal of finding out how I can better communicate our story of missions to our own church, our community , and to the nations.

Those who came to the 24.14 conference heard Dr Ashford speak. He is awesome in his challenges to the church to go beyond their comfort zone to develop  a more biblically based missions strategy.

Bruce is posting some articles for students and pastors at discussing some books that I think will be helpful to all of us.  You can check out the SEBTS blog at : http://betweenthetimes.com/

• Pastors / Staff : Make sure to delegate this task out. You cannot always lead this effort in order for it to succeed.
• Train your leaders well: There are tools out there to where you can train leaders that know as much about missions and strategy as the missionary. Send them to conferences for training.  This will fire up the team in an amazing way.  Purchase materials for them to review and share with others. Ask another church  to include them in their training .
• Define Success from a Biblical point of view : Success from an American point of view is usually based on pragmatics. We usually define it in terms of numbers of church members or baptisms.  While we love it when God moves and people come to Christ, this should never be our sole indicator of success. Under this model of missions measurement the unreached people groups of the world will never be reached. Americans will always and only desire to go where they can be “successful” . We end going to places that are either:
  • Easy. Places that are easy are usually designed to reach a need in us not necessarily the people we minister to.
  • Open and and free.
  • Experiencing a harvest

Success is faithfulness to the call of God to go to the UPG’s. (See Matt. 28:19-20 , Romans 15:18-21, Rev. 5:9, Rev. 7:9)  One of the reasons the unreached remain unreached is because Americans choose to only go to places where numbers of supposed salvation’s can be large. My experience has been that nationals will raise their hands to almost anything in order to please the foreigner.  I am not advocating to never go to harvest fields or easy places for mission trips, but I am saying that those places should not be our focus.  There is an excellent article on this at 9 Marks that you can access here.

• Find the right team members: I realize this is obvious but let me share some of the key roles I see .
  • Leader : This person has a passion to drive the boat and is what I call a synergist. They may not be the best at everything but they know how to find and motivate the right people. They know how to bring all the elements together.  Important, they cannot be glory hounds.
  • Passionate recruiters:  These people are the amazing front line of the team who go out lead others to the mission work . They are passionate about the task and cannot stop talking about the work.  They are great story tellers and can share those stories about God’s work among your people group in a way that makes others want to join your tribe.
  • Admin people:  These people help us know what is necessary to get things done. Things such as trip details, the web site, and other behind the scene things that , if not done, will cause things to crash.
  • Prayer Warriors:   A big must for any successful team. These people help the team to focus on God and what He wants from the work.  They lead us back to the source of Jesus and help us remember that this is not a business that can be done solely on a pragmatic level.
  • Develop your team with other skills in mind: For example:
    • If your people group is a farming people, look for farmers in the church who can help with this.
    • If they are heavily into business then look for business men in your area.
    • If you need help ministering to the missionary family then look for people who have mercy gifting to pour themselves into ministering to the missionaries.

  These are just a few ideas to get us started .  But remember, the team will most of the time, need your encouragement and leading to make it happen.