Last November, I wrote about constraints that needed to be considered in covering matters of faith mainstream.
The requisite awareness, allocation of resources, and individuals brought to bear in this case, however, I think, demanded that that be put aside. With a specific sense of “The Great Commission” made manifest here in our own neighborhoods, the Michigan Baptist State Convention “North American Mission Board” (“NAMB”) identified the need “to support the language pastors and their churches as they face the challenge of creating churches with one generation that identifies with their origins while the newer generations, who were born and grew up in America, would identify themselves as North Americans.”
In the first of a three-part Saline Journal series titled, “Baptist State Convention of Michigan hosted ethnic-linguistic event to support new church startups,” I focused on the “Call to act.”
Part II then “listened” to personal stories through “Testimonials.”
Part III finished-up by closing the circle through applied “Work Sessions.”
On the surface, this was obviously a decidedly 180-degree turn on gut-ideas of missions work and church-planting. Establishing, sustaining, and growing new, different sorts of congregations right here in the United States does not happen on auto-pilot, nor should it be left to do so.
Serendipitously, however, gatherings such as this provide opportunities to see what goes on from an on-the-ground perspective when congregations give money to, send individuals to serve in, and passionately pray for new mechanisms for spreading the Gospel near and far beyond American borders.
That was the more expansive story that demanded to be told in May of 2022 installments of Saline Journal.